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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies > Cultural studies > History of ideas, intellectual history
This book talks of perhaps one of the greatest education experiments in the history of America. In 1894 John Dewey moved his position as Chairman of the Philosophy Department at the University of Michigan to assume the position as Chairman of the Department of Philosophy, Psychology, and Pedagogy at the University of Chicago. He would remain there until 1904, his departure prompted in great part by his dissatisfaction regarding his wife's treatment by the administration in her role of principal of the Laboratory School. At this time Dewey was anxious to translate his more abstract ideas into practical form and he saw the position at Chicago affording him a rare opportunity to do this. The school itself was conceived by Dewey as having an organic functional relation to the theoretical curriculum. Just as Dewey was anxious to merge philosophy and psychology and to relate both of these disciplines to the theoretical study of education, similarly he saw the school as a laboratory for these studies analogous to the laboratory used in science courses. This effort to merge theory and practice is perhaps the major characteristic of Dewey's entire professional career. In the opening sentence of Dewey's remarks in his essay in this volume, "The Theory of the Chicago Experiment," we see the extent to which this problem preoccupied him: "The gap between educational theory and its execution in practice is always so wide that there naturally arises a doubt as to the value of any separate presentation of purely theoretical principles." This book is an accurate and detailed account of one of the most interesting experiments ever undertaken in America. It provides the reader with the complexity of John Dewey's abstract philosophy experimentalism.
During the Renaissance, very divergent conceptions of knowledge were debated. Dominant among these was encyclopedism, which treated knowledge as an ordered and unified circle of learning in which branches were logically related to each other. By contrast, writers like Montaigne saw human knowledge as an inherently unsystematic and subjective flux. The Palace of Secrets explores the tension between these two views by examining specific areas such as theories of knowledge, uses of genre, and the role of fiction in philosophical texts. Examples are drawn from numerous sixteenth- and seventeenth-century texts but focus particularly on the polymath Beroalde de Verville, whose work graphically illustrates these two competing conceptions of knowledge, since he gradually abandoned encyclopedism. Hitherto Beroalde has been mainly known for the extraordinary and notorious Moyen de parvenir; this is the first detailed study of the whole range of his work, both fictional and learned. The book straddles literary and intellectual history, and indeed it demonstrates that the division between the two has little meaning in Renaissance terms. The intellectual conflicts which it explores have significance for the history of thought right up to the Enlightenment.
Best known for his guide on writing and recognizing good prose, Style (1955), F.L. Lucas addresses four of the most popular 18th-century English poets and writers in this book: Samuel Johnson, Lord Chesterfield, James Boswell and Oliver Goldsmith. Knowledgeably, conversationally, and often amusing, he sketches the images of men who greatly influenced 18th century England and its literary landscape.
Examines the new internationalism which emerged in Europe during the Enlightenment. This is the study of cosmopolitanism, which takes into account feminist and post-colonial critiques of the Enlightenment. It also offers cosmopolitanism as a solution to contemporary struggles to reach a post-national political identity.
This book deconstructs the whole lineage of political philosophy, showing the ways democracy abuts and regularly undermines the sovereignist tradition across a range of texts from the Iliad to contemporary philosophy. Politics is an object of perennial difficulty for philosophy-as recalcitrant to philosophical mastery as is philosophy's traditional adversary, poetry. That difficulty makes it an attractive topic for any deconstructive approach to the tradition from which we inherit our language and our concepts. Scatter 2 pursues that deconstruction, often starting with, and sometimes departing from, the work of Jacques Derrida by attending to the concepts of sovereignty on the one hand and democracy on the other. The book begins by following the fate of a line from Homer's Iliad, where Odysseus asserts that "the rule of many is no good thing, let there be one ruler, one king." The line, Bennington shows, is quoted, misquoted, and progressively Christianized by Aristotle, Philo Judaeus, Suetonius, the early Church Fathers, Aquinas, Dante, Ockham, Marsilius of Padua, Jean Bodin, Etienne de la Boetie, up to Carl Schmitt and Erik Peterson, and even one of the defendants at the Nuremberg trials, before being discussed by Derrida himself. In the book's second half, Bennington begins again with Plato and Aristotle and tracks the concept of democracy as it regularly abuts and undermines that sovereignist tradition. In detailed readings of Hobbes and Rousseau, Bennington develops a notion of "proto-democracy" as a possible name for the scatter that underlies and drives the political as such and that will always prevent politics from achieving its aim of bringing itself to an end.
Exploring the 'roads less travelled', MacDonald continues his monumental essay in the history of ideas. The history of heterodox ideas about the concept of mind takes the reader from the earliest records about human nature in Ancient Egypt, the Ancient Near East, and the Zoroastrian religion, through the secret teachings in the Hermetic and Gnostic scriptures, and into the transformation of ideas about the mind, soul and spirit in the late antique and early medieval epochs. These transitions include discussion of the influence of Central Asian shamanism, Manichean ideas about the soul in light and darkness, and Neoplatonic theurgy, 'working-on-god-within'. Sections on the medieval period are concerned with the rediscovery of magical practices and occult doctrines from Roger Bacon to Francis Bacon, the adaptation of Neoplatonic and esoteric ideas in the medieval Christian mystics, and the survival of these ideas mixed with natural science in the works of von Helmont, Leibniz and Goethe. The book concludes with an investigation of the many forms of dualism in accounts of the human mind and soul, and the concept of dual-life which underpins our aspiration to understand how humans could have an immortal nature like the gods.
This major reference work is a collection of over 125 of the best, most significant and influential articles in the field of social psychology. The three volume set provides a comprehensive overview of the field of social psychology including such topics as social cognition, attribution, attitudes, self, conformity, persuasion, groups, aggression, attraction, racism and research methods. Each article was selected on the basis of its contribution to the advancement of social psychological knowledge and to provide the reader with a representative sampling of the best articles in each of the major sub-fields (topics) of social psychology.Social Psychology covers over 70 years of social psychological research including articles of great historical significance and contemporary pieces destined to become classics in the field. It will be an essential reference source to those teaching graduate seminars as well as to the generalist seeking primary sources to provide an in-depth overview of the field of social psychology.
Though only 34 years old at the time of his death in 1917, T.E. Hulme had already taken his place at the center of pre-war London's advanced intellectual circles. His work as poet, critic, philosopher, aesthetician, and political theorist helped define several major aesthetic and political movements, including imagism and Vorticism. Despite his influence, however, the man T.S. Eliot described as 'classical, reactionary, and revolutionary' has until very recently been neglected by scholars, and T.E. Hulme and the Question of Modernism is the first essay collection to offer an in-depth exploration of Hulme's thought. While each essay highlights a different aspect of Hulme's work on the overlapping discourses of aesthetics, politics, and philosophy, taken together they demonstrate a shared belief in Hulme's decisive importance to the emergence of modernism and to the many categories that still govern our thinking about it. In addition to the editors, contributors include Todd Avery, Rebecca Beasley, C.D. Blanton, Helen Carr, Paul Edwards, Lee Garver, Jesse Matz, Alan Munton, and Andrew Thacker.
The Bible is the single most influential text in Western culture, yet the history of biblical scholarship in early modern England has yet to be written. There have been many publications in the last quarter of a century on heterodoxy, particularly concentrating on the emergence of new sects in the mid-seventeenth century and the perceived onslaught on the clerical establishment by freethinkers and Deists in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth century. However, the study of orthodoxy has languished far behind. This volume of complementary essays will be the first to embrace orthodox and heterodox treatments of scripture, and in the process question, challenge and redefine what historians mean when they use these terms. The collection will dispel the myth that a critical engagement with sacred texts was the preserve of radical figures: anti-scripturists, Quakers, Deists and freethinkers. For while the work of these people was significant, it formed only part of a far broader debate incorporating figures from across the theological spectrum engaging in a shared discourse. To explore this discourse, scholars have been drawn together from across the fields of history, theology and literary criticism. Areas of investigation include the inspiration, textual integrity and historicity of scriptural texts, the relative authority of canon and apocrypha, prophecy, the comparative merits of texts in different ancient languages, developing tools of critical scholarship, utopian and moral interpretations of scripture and how scholars read the Bible. Through a study of the interrelated themes of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, print culture and the public sphere, and the theory and practice of textual interpretation, our understanding of the histories of religion, theology, scholarship and reading in seventeenth-century England will be enhanced.
This book commemorates a place and a time in American law teaching, but more importantly, an outlook: the common law tradition. That outlook was empirical and tolerant. These values were carried into expression by a group of people who were not part of a cult or faction nor ruled by the herd instinct. Now in paperback, The Common Law Tradition is a collective portrait of five scholars who epitomize the tradition. The focus is Chicago in the 1960s. The five figures considered--Edward H. Levi, Harry Kalven, Jr., Karl Llewellyn, Philip Kurland, and Kenneth Culp Davis--did much to broaden the perspectives of the legal academy. Levi made use of sociology, economics, and comparative law. Kalven collaborated with sociologists on the Jury Project and with economists on tax law and auto compensation plans. Llewellyn's commitment to empirical research underpinned his work on the Uniform Commercial Code. Kurland's approach to constitutional law was highlighted by his insistence on the relevance of legal history. Davis was an energetic comparativist in his work on administrative law. What distinguished these Chicagoans is that their work was practical and rooted in the law, and hence yielded concrete applications. The group's diversity, the tolerant atmosphere in which they taught and wrote, and the attachment of its individual members to empirical approaches differentiate them from today's legal scholars and make their ideas of continuing importance.
Julien Benda's classic study of the European 1920s resonates today. La trahison des clercs is one of those phrases that bristle with hints and associations without stating anything definite. In his new introduction, Roger Kimball quotes from a contemporary, Alain Finkielkraut, who recalls in haunting words the essence of The Treason of the Intellectuals. "When hatred of culture becomes itself a part of culture, the life of the mind loses all meaning." As Kimball reminds us, in the present age, only the title of the book, not its argument, enjoys currency. The book itself is well known without being known well. Its release at this time should overcome that neglect. The "treason" of which Benda writes was the betrayal by the intellectuals of their unique vocation. From the time of the pre-Socratics, intellectuals, in their role as intellectuals, had been a breed apart. In Benda's terms, they were understood to be "all those whose activity essentially is not the pursuit of practical aims, all those who seek their joy in the practice of an art or a science or a metaphysical speculation, in short in the possession of non-material advantages." Thanks to such men, Benda noted, "humanity did evil for two thousand years, but honored good. This contradiction was an honor to the human species, and formed the rift whereby civilization slipped into the world." According to Benda, this situation began to change in the early decades of the twentieth century. More and more, intellectuals abandoned their attachment to the traditional panoply of philosophical and scholarly ideals. One clear indication of the change was the attack on the Enlightenment ideal of universal humanity and the concomitant glorification of various particularisms. The implications for intellectual life today are transparent, and this long unavailable classic of European thought should interest all those who teach and who preach the human sciences.
The Cambridge Companion to the Rule of Law introduces students, scholars, and practitioners to the theory and history of the rule of law, one of the most frequently invoked-and least understood-ideas of legal and political thought and policy practice. It offers a comprehensive re-assessment by leading scholars of one of the world's most cherished traditions. This high-profile collection provides the first global and interdisciplinary account of the histories, moralities, pathologies and trajectories of the rule of law. Unique in conception, and critical in its approach, it evaluates, breaks down, and subverts conventional wisdom about the rule of law for the twenty-first century.
This book is not a conventional history of mathematics as such, a museum of documents and scientific curiosities. Instead, it identifies this vital science with the thought of those who constructed it and in its relation to the changing cultural context in which it evolved. Particular emphasis is placed on the philosophic and logical systems, from Aristotle onward, that provide the basis for the fusion of mathematics and logic in contemporary thought. Ettore Carruccio covers the evolution of mathematics from the most ancient times to our own day. In simple and non-technical language, he observes the changes that have taken place in the conception of rational theory, until we reach the lively, delicate and often disconcerting problems of modern logical analysis. The book contains an unusual wealth of detail (including specimen demonstrations) on such subjects as the critique of Euclid's fifth postulate, the rise of non-Euclidean geometry, the introduction of theories of infinite sets, the construction of abstract geometry, and-in a notably intelligible discussion-the development of modern symbolic logic and meta-mathematics. Scientific problems in general and mathematical problems in particular show their full meaning only when they are considered in the light of their own history. This book accordingly takes the reader to the heart of mathematical questions, in a way that teacher, student and layman alike will find absorbing and illuminating. The history of mathematics is a field that continues to fascinate people interested in the course of creativity, and logical inference u quite part and in addition to those with direct mathematical interests.
Professor David Kettler commented at the time of initial release,
that this book is "writing with great poise and clarity, the author
says important things in a deceptively simple way about a problem
of paramount significance. A fine piece of clarification, blending
just the right mixture of respect and impiety toward the important
heroes of contemporary political science, this is the kind of book
I look forward to having available for our courses in political
theory."
There are almost as many works about intellectuals as there are
intellectuals. Perhaps this is because intellectuals are masters of
the word and their mastery is often used to write about themselves.
Indeed, with the possible exceptions of sports figures and film
actors, intellectuals may be the most overpublicized people in
America. In this classic study, originally published in 1974,
Charles Kadushin examines the attitudes of that class of people
known as the American intellectual elite.
As originally planned this volume was meant to cover a somewhat wider scope than, in fact, it has turned out to do. When, in rg68, I initially conceived of preparing it, it was proposed to deal with several aspects of early modern scepticism, in addition to the fortuna of the Academica, and to publish various loosely related pieces under the title of 'Studies in the History of Early Modern Scepticism. ' Thereby, I foresaw that I would exhaust my knowledge of the subject and would then be able to turn my attention to other matters. In initiating my research on this topic, however, I soon found that there remained a much greater bulk of material to study than could possibly be dealt with between the covers of the single modest volume which I envisioned. My proposed section on Cicero's Academica was to cover between 50 and 75 pages in the original plan. It soon became apparent, however, especially after Joannes Rosa's hitherto unstudied commentary on Cicero's work was uncovered, that this material would have to be treated at a much greater length than I had foreseen. The present volume is the result of this expanded investigation. The monograph which has come from this alteration in plans has, I think, the virtues of continuity and cohesive ness and one hopes that these advantages offset the benefits of a broader scope which were sacrificed."
The third volume in the final section of the Pioneers in Economics series. This section of the series offers an assessment of significant economists of the 20th century, and this volume deals with Edward Chamberlin.
The eighth volume in the final section of the Pioneers in Economics series. This section of the series offers an assessment of significant economists of the 20th century, and this volume deals with Bertil Ohlin.
Satire takes as its subject the absurdity of human beings, their societies, and the institutions they create. For centuries, satirists themselves, scholars, critics, and psychologists have speculated about the satirist's reasons for writing, temperament, and place in society. The conclusions they have reached are sometimes contradictory, sometimes complementary, sometimes outlandish. In this volume, Leonard Feinberg brings together the major theories about the satirist, to provide in one book a summary of the problems that specialists have examined intensively in numerous books and articles. In part 1, Feinberg examines the major theories about the motivation of the satirist, and then proposes that "adjustment" comes most closely to answering this question. In his view, the satirist resolves his ambivalent relation to society through a playfully critical distortion of the familiar. The personality of the satirist, the apparently paradoxical elements of his nature, the problem of why so many great humorists are sad men, and the contributions of psychoanalysts are explored in part 2, where Feinberg contends that the satirist is not as abnormal as he has sometimes been made to seem, and that if he is a neurotic he shares traits of emotional or social alienation with many others. Part 3 explores the beliefs of satirists and their relation to the environment within which they function, particularly in the contexts of politics, religion, and philosophy. Feinberg stresses the ubiquity of the satirist and suggests that there are a great many people with satiric temperaments who fail to attain literary expression. Ranging with astonishing breadth, both historical and geographical, The Satirist serves as both an introduction to the subject and an essential volume for scholars. Brian A. Connery's introduction provides an overview of Feinberg's career and situates the volume in the intellectual currents in which it was written.
Conceptualised in 1920s Japan by Yanagi Soetsu, the Mingei movement has spread world wide since the 1950s, creating phenomena as diverse as Mingei museums, Mingei connoisseurs and collectors, Mingei shops and Mingei restaurants. The theory, at its core and its adaptation by Bernard Leach, has long been an influential 'Oriental' aesthetic for studio craft artists in the West. But why did Mingei become so particularly influential to a western audience? And could the 'Orientalness' perceived in Mingei theory be nothing more than a myth? This richly illustrated work offers controversial new evidence through its cross-cultural examination of a wide range of materials in Japanese, English, Korean and Chinese, bringing about startling new conclusions concerning Japanese modernization and cultural authenticity. This new interpretation of the Mingei movement will appeal to scholars of Japanese art history as well as those with interests in cultural identity in non-Western cultures.
This Palgrave Pivot examines how prominent thinkers throughout history, from ancient Greece to sixteenth-century France, have perceived tyrants and tyranny. Ancient philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle were the first to build a vocabulary for tyrants and the forms of government they corrupted. Thirteenth century analyses of tyranny by Thomas Aquinas and John of Salisbury, revived from Antiquity, were recast as short observations about what tyrants do. They claimed that tyrants govern for their own advantage, not for the people. Tyrants could be usurpers, increase taxes, and live in luxury. The list of tyrannical actions grew over time, especially in periods of turmoil and civil war, often raising the question: When can a tyrant be legitimately deposed or killed? In offering a brief biography of these political philosophers, including Machiavelli, Erasmus, More, Bodin, and others, along with their views on tyrannical behavior, Orest Ranum reveals how the concept of tyranny has been shaped over time, and how it still persists in political thought to this day.
Public Intellectuals: An Endangered Species? investigates the definition, role, and decline of public intellectuals in American society. Drawing from a wide range of commentaries and studies, this edited volume demonstrates the unique importance of public intellectuals and probes the timely question of how their voices can continue to be effective in our ever-changing social, academic and political climates. At a time when many argue that public intellectuals are dying out, the book addresses questions such as who qualifies as a public intellectual? Have their ranks thinned out and their qualities diminished? What is that special service that public intellectuals are supposed to render for the body politic? And, above all, is society being shortchanged?
Public Intellectuals: An Endangered Species? investigates the definition, role, and decline of public intellectuals in American society. Drawing from a wide range of commentaries and studies, this edited volume demonstrates the unique importance of public intellectuals and probes the timely question of how their voices can continue to be effective in our ever-changing social, academic and political climates. At a time when many argue that public intellectuals are dying out, the book addresses questions such as who qualifies as a public intellectual? Have their ranks thinned out and their qualities diminished? What is that special service that public intellectuals are supposed to render for the body politic? And, above all, is society being shortchanged?
Mark Berry explores the political and religious ideas expounded in Wagner's Ring through close attention to the text and drama, the multifarious intellectual influences upon the composer during the work's lengthy gestation and composition, and the wealth of Wagner source material. Many of his writings are explicitly political in their concerns, for Wagner was emphatically not a revolutionary solely for the sake of art. Yet it would be misleading to see even the most 'political' tracts as somehow divorced from the aesthetic realm; Wagner's radical challenge to liberal-democratic politics makes no such distinction. This book considers Wagner's treatment of various worlds: nature, politics, economics, and metaphysics, in order to explain just how radical that challenge is. Classical interpretations have tended to opt either for an 'optimistic' view of the Ring, centred upon the influence of Young Hegelian thought - in particular the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach - and Wagner's concomitant revolutionary politics, or for the 'pessimistic' option, removing the disillusioned Wagner-in-Swiss-exile from the political sphere and stressing the undoubtedly important role of Arthur Schopenhauer. Such an 'either-or' approach seriously misrepresents not only Wagner's compositional method but also his intellectual method. It also sidelines inconvenient aspects of the dramas that fail to 'fit' whichever interpretation is selected. Wagner's tendency is not progressively to recant previous 'errors' in his oeuvre. Radical ideas are not completely replaced by a Schopenhauerian world-view, however loudly the composer might come to trumpet his apparent 'conversion'. Nor is Wagner's truly an Hegelian method, although Hegelian dialectic plays an important role. In fact, Wagner is in many ways not really a systematic thinker at all (which is not to portray him as self-consciously unsystematic in a Nietzschean, let alone 'post-modernist' fashion). His tendency, rather, is agglomerative,
Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy is an annual series,
presenting a selection of the best current work in the history of
early modern philosophy. It focuses on the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries--the extraordinary period of intellectual
flourishing that begins, very roughly, with Descartes and his
contemporaries and ends with Kant. It also publishes papers on
thinkers or movements outside of that framework, provided they are
important in illuminating early modern thought. |
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