This study offers a fresh reappraisal of the philosopher, political thinker, and historian of ideas Sir Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997) from childhood to the height of his intellectual career. It provides the first historically contextualized study of Berlin's formative years and identifies different stages in his intellectual development, allowing a reappraisal of his theory of liberalism. Applying a "double perspective" that examines Berlin both as an East European Jewish emigre as well as a British Liberal intellectual, author Arie Dubnov stresses the very ambivalent relation between Berlin's liberal philosophy and his pro-Zionist sentiments.

Theopoetics of the Word weaves together Christian theology, continental philosophy and cultural studies to present a new theology of language and technology for the 21st century. It is the final work of the famed death-of-God theologian Gabriel Vahanian completed only weeks before his death in 2012. It radicalizes his pioneering, iconoclastic work in contemporary religious thought by addressing issues of identity, Christology, secularity and the legacy of the Protestant West. The book continues Vahanian's longtime engagement with the thought of Paul Tillich and Jacques Ellul, and opens new pathways for thought in the work of Elisabeth Roudinesco and Francois Laurelle. Vahanian's is a prophetic and timely voice who has forged reputation as one of the most original and poetic religious thinkers of our time, who tells us here, 'You can only forget what you need to be reminded of. Read what follows in this book. And forget it.'

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

This is an in-depth analysis of dramatization as method in the work of Deleuze and Guattari. It provides an account of the value of this method for the study of the political with particular emphasis on the relationship between politics and art.

At the turn of the century, philosophical thinking on both sides of the Atlantic was dominated by the idealist movement, a school of thought that influenced the rise of both pragmatism and analytic philosophy. The essays in this edited collection introduce and critically assess the central themes of the main Anglo-American idealists, considering the philosophical arguments in their own context and terms, but also connecting them to current debates. The figures and topics covered include T. H. Green on the common good, Edward Caird on evolution, F. H. Bradley on relations, Bosanquet's view of the state, Royce's concept of the absolute, McTaggart's timeless personalism, JoachiM's theory of truth, and Collingwood's philosophy of history. The introduction provides a contextual overview of the movement, which, as a philosophy superseded by a more modern approach, was first subjected to much hostile criticism, then ignored, and is now once again beginning to interest historians of philosophy.

The rise of scientific (analytic) philosophy since the turn of the twentieth century is linked to the philosophical interaction between, on the one hand, Ernst Mach, the Vienna Circle around Moritz Schlick and Otto Neurath, the Berlin Group (Hans Reichenbach, Carl G. Hempel), and the Prague Group (Rudolf Carnap, Philipp Frank), and, on the other, philosophers and scientists in Denmark (Niels Bohr, Joergen Joergensen), Finland (Eino Kaila, Georg Henrik von Wright and their disciples), Norway (Arne Naess and his students), and Sweden (Ake Petzall, the journal Theoria and a younger generation of philosophers in Uppsala). In addition, the pure theory of law of Hans Kelsen achieved wide dissemination in the Nordic countries (through, for example, Alf Ross). One of the key events in the relations between the Central European philosophers and those of the Nordic countries was the Second International Congress for the Unity of Science which was arranged in Copenhagen in 1936.

Besides considering the interactions of these groups, the book also pays special attention to their interactions, in the context of the Cold War period following the Second World War, with the so-called Third Vienna Circle and with the Forum Alpbach/Austrian College around Viktor Kraft and Bela Juhos (along with Ludwig Wittgenstein and Paul Feyerabend), where the issues of (philosophical and scientific) realism and "psychologism"-the relationship between psychology and philosophy-were matters of controversy.

By comparison with the more extensively investigated and better known transatlantic transfer and transformation of "positivism" and logical empiricism, the developments outlined above remain

neglected and marginalized topics in historiography. The symposium aims to reveal the remarkable continuity of the philosophical enlightened "Nordic Connection." We intend to shed light on this forgotten communication and to reconstruct these hidden scholarly networks from an historical and logical point of view, thereby evaluating their significance for today's research."

This collection on the Standard of Taste offers a much needed resource for students and scholars of philosophical aesthetics, political reflection, value and judgments, economics, and art. The authors include experts in the philosophy of art, aesthetics, history of philosophy as well as the history of science. This much needed volume on David Hume will enrich scholars across all levels of university study and research.

"Reading Ranciere" brings together leading international in the first sustained critical exploration of Ranciere's work on politics, aesthetics and philosophy in English. Over the past 40 years, Jacques Ranciere's work has defined itself through a remarkable set of philosophical differences in relation to other key figures working in the fields of politics, philosophy and aesthetics. There have been significant philosophical, theoretical and aesthetic disagreements with influential figures in contemporary thought, including Althusser, Bourdieu, Derrida, Agamben, Deleuze, Foucault, Habermas and Badiou. Through these differences Ranciere has emerged as one of the world's leading contemporary theorists. Whilst Ranciere has long been a well-known force in francophone contexts, the translation of his works into English has generated a lot of excitement and catapulted him to the forefront of attention in several putatively distinct but interconnected fields: philosophy, politics, critical theory, aesthetics and film. "Reading Ranciere" intervenes in this ongoing discourse by assembling an eminent collection of critical assessments of the significance of Ranciere's diverse impact and growing influence. This book offers the first sustained and critically balanced response to the work of this major contemporary theorist.

Occasional Paper No. 44 of the Royal Anthropological Institute Published in association with the Anglo-Finnish Society Westermarck was a remarkable man, but one who has received little credit for the significant part he played in the creation of modern anthropology. He spanned two worlds: the comparative anthropological endeavours of the nineteenth century, and the establishment of social anthropology at the LSE, in which he played a major role. One of Malinowski's principal teachers, he was himself an outstanding fieldworker. His work on Morocco has, even today, hardly been surpassed. Yet, his theories on the nature of human marriage and the origins of the incest taboo place him firmly in the earlier, generalist camp, and the controversies to which they have given rise have hardly settled down to this day. In this volume, Westermarck's place in anthropology is discussed, along with detailed descriptions of his very active academic life in Finland and in Britain, whilst other chapters consider his equally pioneering writings in morals and ethics. Westermarck's own writings are featured by way of illustration of his ideas, including his LSE inaugural lecture, his Huxley lecture, and a hitherto unpublished paper on ritual and survivals. This volume shows, indeed, that Westermarck is a 'missing link' in today's history of anthropology, and our understanding of that history will be profoundly changed by a better appreciation of his role within it.

The first volume in the Lives of the Left series, Annie Cohen-Solal's Sartre is a remarkable achievement. "A sensation" upon its initial publication in France, as the New York Times reported, Sartre was subsequently translated into sixteen languages and went on to become an international bestseller, appealing to the broadest audience. First published in the United States in 1987, it is the definitive biography of a man and an age, an intimate portrait of a complex life. A major accomplishment of this biography is that it places Sartre in the context of history while at the same time reassessing the full import of his literary and political accomplishments. Discovering untold aspects of Sartre's private and political life, Cohen-Solal weaves together all the elements of an exceptional career. From the fascinating description of his hitherto-unknown father to the painful last moments of Sartre's own declining years, this is biography on the grandest scale, fully deserving of the praise it has received.

Foucault lived in Tunisia for two years and travelled to Japan and Iran more than once. Yet throughout his critical scholarship, he insisted that the cultures of the "Orient" constitute the "limit" of Western rationality. Using archival research supplemented by interviews with key scholars in Tunisia, Japan and France, this book examines the philosophical sources, evolution as well as contradictions of Foucault's experience with non-Western cultures. Beyond tracing Foucault's journey into the world of otherness, the book reveals the personal, political as well as methodological effects of a radical conception of cultural difference that extolled the local over the cosmopolitan.

French thinkers such as Lacan and Derrida are often labelled as representatives of 'poststructuralism' in the Anglophone world. However in France, where their work originated, they use no such category; this group of theorists - 'the poststructuralists' - were never perceived as a coherent intellectual group or movement. Outlining the institutional contexts, affinities, and rivalries of, among others, Althusser, Barthes, Foucault, Irigaray, and Kristeva, Angermuller - drawing from Bourdieu's concepts of cultural capital and the academic field - insightfully explores post-structuralism as a phenomenon. By tracing the evolution of the French intellectual field after the war, Why There is No Poststructuralism in France places French Theory both in the specific material conditions of its production and the social and historical contexts of its reception, accounting for a particularly creative moment in French intellectual life which continues to inform the theoretical imaginary of our time.

This fascinating and nuanced volume engages with the innovative and at the same time contentious debate on religious pluralism mooted by John Hick, one of the most prominent British philosophers of religion. In celebrating Hick's voluminous work, a team of eminent and emerging scholars, representing a broad range of philosophical and theological perspectives, offer a succinct and incisive analysis of Hick's ideas and their enduring relevance for a world which is becoming increasingly polarized. These essays not only deal with theoretical and doctrinal aspects of interreligious discourse, but also focus on developing a discourse that challenges any form of religious absolutism.They address important questions such as how to articulate a philosophy or theology of religious pluralism that is not triumphalistic, how to affirm a spirituality that is not restrictive, how to speak about liberation that does not smack of theological finality. Besides issues related to religious pluralism, this volume also contains illuminating essays on themes such as suffering and theodicy. This insightful volume should be of immense interest and value to scholars and students of religion and lay readers.

This book argues that critics of consequentialism have not been able to make a successful and comprehensive case against all versions of consequentialism because they have been using the wrong methodology. This methodology relies on the crucial assumption that consequentialist theories share a defining characteristic. This text interprets consequentialism, instead, as a family resemblance term. On that basis, it argues quite an ambitions claim, viz. that all versions of consequentialism should be rejected, including those that have been created in response to conventional criticisms. The book covers a number of classic themes in normative ethics, metaethics and, particularly, ethical methodology and also touches upon certain aspects of experimental moral philosophy. It is written in clear language and is analytic in its argumentative style. As such, the book should appeal to students, graduate students as well as professional academics with an interest in analytic moral philosophy.

Wittgenstein's thought is reflected in his reading and reception of other authors. Wittgenstein Reading approaches the moment of literature as a vehicle of self-reflection for Wittgenstein. What sounds, on the surface, like criticism (e.g. of Shakespeare) can equally be understood as a simple registration of Wittgenstein's own reaction, hence a piece of self-diagnosis or self-analysis. The book brings a representative sample of authors, from Shakespeare, Goethe, or Dostoyevsky to some that have received far less attention in Wittgenstein scholarship like Kleist, Lessing, or Wilhelm Busch and Johann Nepomuk Nestroy. Furthermore, the volume offers means for the cultural contextualization of Wittgenstein's thoughts. Unique to this book is its internal design. The editors' introduction sets the scene with regards to both biography and theory, while each of the subsequent chapters takes a quotation from Wittgenstein on a particular author as its point of departure for developing a more specific theme relating to the writer in question. This format serves to avoid the well-trodden paths of discussions on the relationship between philosophy and literature, allowing for unconventional observations to be made. Furthermore, the volume offers means for the cultural contextualization of Wittgenstein's thoughts.

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Adorno: A Critical Reader" presents a collection of new essays by many of the world's top critics, who examine Adorno's lasting impact on the arts, politics, history, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and sociology.

Few intellectuals captured as much critical attention in the late twentieth century as Theodor W. Adorno. A growing number of his writings, lectures, and addresses have recently become available in English, a development that has inspired a reassessment of his oeuvre and placed Adorno at the center of debates about the role and responsibilities of the intellectual.

Readers interested in the origins of cultural studies and critical theory will find this book an important examination of the broad work of one of the major intellectuals of the twentieth century. Those interested in the arts, politics, history, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and sociology will delight in this important collection of essays that re-evaluate Adorno's work in the context of the many fields that his writings have shaped irreversibly.

This volume brings Cassirer's work into the arena of contemporary debates both within and outside of philosophy. All articles offer a fresh and contemporary look at one of the most prolific and important philosophers of the 20th century. The papers are authored by a wide array of scholars working in different areas, such as epistemology, philosophy of culture, sociology, psychopathology, philosophy of science and aesthetics.

This is the first single-authored critical engagement with the major works of Zygmunt Bauman. Where previous books on Bauman have been exegetical, here an unwavering light is shone on key themes in the sociologist's work, exposing serious weaknesses in Bauman's interpretations of the Holocaust, Western modernity, consumerism, globalisation and the nature of sociology. The book shows how Eurocentrism, the neglect of issues of gender and a lack of awareness of the racism faced by Europe's non-white ethnic minorities seriously limit Bauman's analyses of Western societies. At the same time, it points to Bauman's repeated insistence on the need for sociologists to take a moral stance in favour of the world's poor and downtrodden as being his most valuable legacy. The book will be of great interest to sociologists. Its readability will be valued by undergraduates and postgraduates and it will attract a readership well beyond the discipline. -- .

This monograph analyzes Nicholas Rescher's system of pragmatic idealism. It also looks at his approach to prediction in science. Coverage highlights a prominent contribution to a central topic in the philosophy and methodology of science. The author offers a full characterization of Rescher's system of philosophy. She presents readers with a comprehensive philosophico-methodological analysis of this important work. Her research takes into account different thematic realms: semantic, logical, epistemological, methodological, ontological, axiological, and ethical. The book features three, thematic-parts: I) General Coordinates, Semantic Features and Logical Components of Scientific Prediction; II) Predictive Knowledge and Predictive Processes in Rescher's Methodological Pragmatism; and III) From Reality to Values: Ontological Features, Axiological Elements, and Ethical Aspects of Scientific Prediction. This insightful analysis offers a critical reconstruction of Rescher's philosophy. The system he created is often characterized as pragmatic idealism that is open to some realist elements. He is a prominent representative of contemporary pragmatism who has made a great deal of contributions to the study of this topic. This area is crucial for science and it has been little considered in the philosophy of science.

The author demonstrates the significant role that some of the Edwardian philosophers played in the formation of Russell's work on the problem of the external world done at the tail-end of a controversy which raged between about 1900-1915.