A much-maligned feature of ancient and medieval political thought is its tendency to appeal to nature to establish norms for human communities. From Aristotle's claim that humans are "political animals" to Aquinas' invocation of "natural law," it may seem that pre-modern philosophers were all too ready to assume that whatever is natural is good, and that just political arrangements must somehow be natural. The papers in this collection show that this assumption is, at best, too crude. From very early, for instance in the ancient sophists' contrast between nomos and physis, there was recognition that political arrangements may be precisely artificial, not natural, and it may be questioned whether even such supposed naturalists as Aristotle in fact adopt the quick inference from "natural" to "good." The papers in this volume trace the complex interrelations between nature and such concepts as law, legitimacy, and justice, covering a wide historical range stretching from Plato and the Sophists to Aristotle, Hellenistic philosophy, Cicero, the Neoplatonists Plotinus and Porphyry, ancient Christian thinkers, and philosophers of both the Islamic and Christian Middle Ages.

An intellectual and cultural history of mid-twentieth century plans for European integration, this book calls into question the usual pre- and post-war periodizations that have structured approaches to twentieth-century European history. It focuses not simply on the ideas of leading politicians but analyses debates about Europe in "civil society" and the party-political sphere in Germany, asking if, and how, a "permissive consensus" was formed around the issue of integration. Taking Germany as its case study, the book offers context to the post-war debates, analysing the continuities that existed between interwar and post-war plans for European integration. It draws attention to the abiding scepticism of democracy displayed by many advocates of integration, indeed suggesting that groups across the ideological spectrum converged around support for European integration as a way of constraining the practice of democracy within nation-states.

This is an important new analysis of the problematic relationship between dreams and madness as perceived by nineteenth-century French writers, thinkers, and doctors. Those wishing to know the nature of madness, wrote Voltaire, should observe their dreams. The relationship between the dream-state and madness is a key theme of nineteenth-century European, and specifically French, thought. The meaning of dreams and associated phenomena such as somnambulism, ecstasy, and hallucinations (including those induced by hashish) preoccupied writers, philosophers, and psychiatrists. In this path-breaking cross-disciplinary study, Tony James shows how doctors (such as Esquirol, Lelut, and Janet), thinkers (including Maine de Biran and Taine), and writers (for example, Balzac, Nerval, Baudelaire, Victor Hugo, and Rimbaud) grappled in very different ways with the problems raised by the so-called 'phenomena of sleep'. Were historical figures such as Socrates or Pascal in fact mad? Might dream be a source of creativity, rather than a merely subsidiary, 'automatic' function? What of lucid dreaming? By exploring these questions, Dreams, Madness, and Creativity in Nineteenth-Century France makes good a considerable gap in the history of pre-Freudian psychology and sheds new and fascinating light on the central French writers of the period.

This book presents a map of the application of memory studies concepts to the study of translation. A range of types of memory from personal memory and electronic memory to national and transnational memory are discussed, and links with translation are illustrated by detailed case studies.

The "Encyclopedia of Political Anarchy" charts history's most misunderstood social movement. Covering political anarchy worldwide for the past 300 years, the book also examines the ancient roots of the movement, spotlights key individuals, and explores important groups, organizations, events, laws, legal cases, and theories.

More than just a reference source, "Encyclopedia of Political Anarchy" also tells the interesting story of sophisticated and complex social and philosophical forces that left their mark on the world--from the 13th century Free Spirit movement against the oppressive power of the church in France to the present-day Zapatista National Liberation Army in Mexico.

This book further qualifies the postcolonial thesis and shows its limits. To reach these goals, it links text analysis and political history on a global comparative scale. Focusing on imperial agents, their narratives of progress, and their political aims and strategies, it asks whether Enlightenment gave birth to a new colonialism between 1760 and 1820. Has Enlightenment provided the cultural and intellectual origins of modern colonialism? For decades, historians of political thought, philosophy, and literature have debated this question. On one side, many postcolonial authors believe that enlightened rationalism helped delegitimize non-European cultures. On the other side, some historians of ideas and literature are willing to defend at least some eighteenth-century philosophers whom they consider to have been "anti-colonialists". Surprisingly enough, both sides have focused on literary and philosophical texts, but have rarely taken political and social practice into account.

The motto of the Royal Society-Nullius in verba-was intended to highlight the members' rejection of received knowledge and the new place they afforded direct empirical evidence in their quest for genuine, useful knowledge about the world. But while many studies have raised questions about the construction, reception and authentication of knowledge, Evidence in the Age of the New Sciences is the first to examine the problem of evidence at this pivotal moment in European intellectual history. What constituted evidence-and for whom? Where might it be found? How should it be collected and organized? What is the relationship between evidence and proof? These are crucial questions, for what constitutes evidence determines how people interrogate the world and the kind of arguments they make about it. In this important new collection, Lancaster and Raiswell have assembled twelve studies that capture aspects of the debate over evidence in a variety of intellectual contexts. From law and theology to geography, medicine and experimental philosophy, the chapters highlight the great diversity of approaches to evidence-gathering that existed side by side in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In this way, the volume makes an important addition to the literature on early science and knowledge formation, and will be of particular interest to scholars and advanced students in these fields.

This book is the first comprehensive examination of the close relationship that obtained between leading groups of British socialists and American progressives in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Employing new methods of conceptual and institutional analysis, and drawing on extensive original archival research, the book examines the efforts of leading political theorists to transform the initially distinctive theories of the British and American lefts into a single unified ideology. In so doing it challenges traditional narratives emphasising the exceptional development the American and British lefts, and argues instead that the central theoretical and practical commitments of both movements were constantly shaped and reshaped by international ideological exchange.

As one of the few books on the history and philosophy of American elementary school education, Cavanaugh's work examines the pioneering careers of Francis Wayland Parker, John Dewey, Rudolph Steiner, Hughes Mearns, and Laura Zirbes. Finding the basic framework for current fashionable trends in education like the Whole Language and Process Writing Movement, Cavanaugh shows how educators came to these ideas over 100 years ago. After presenting the five biographies, Cavanaugh goes on to explain how children learn to read and write; what kinds of schools foster this learning; the roles of teachers, students, and parents; and the important tools of grading, evaluation, and assessment. In all these areas there are important lessons to learn from the past.

The "Key Issues" series aims to make available the contemporary responses that met important books and debates on their first appearance. These take the form of journal articles, book extracts, public letters, sermons and pamphlets which provides an insight into the historical relevance and the social and political context in which a publication or particular topic emerged. The 1870s is a key decade in the evolution of British thinking about the nature, purpose and future of empire. Increasing economic competition began to disturb the assumption about Britain's leadership in technology and in the world economy. The growth of other countries, most notably the United States and Germany, also put a question mark over Britain's survival as a great power. These changes set in motion a reappraisal of Britain's empire and its importance to the motherland, and a debate as to whether colonialism and imperialism were a burden rather than a benefit to Britain. The discussions on the 1870s set the agenda for the debates of the next half-century. This text documents the writings that were central to this debate, and includes contributions by British thinkers, statesmen and officials such as J.A. Froude, Robert Lowe, Edward Dicey, Frederic Seebohm, Lord Carnarvon, Gladstone, Julius Vogel and Lord Blachford.

This book is about the life and times of Richard Congreve. This polemicist was the first thinker to gain instant infamy for publishing cogent critiques of imperialism in Victorian Britain. As the foremost British acolyte of Auguste Comte, Congreve sought to employ the philosopher's new science of sociology to dismantle the British Empire. With an aim to realise in its place Comte's global vision of utopian socialist republican city-states, the former Oxford don and ex-Anglican minister launched his Church of Humanity in 1859. Over the next forty years, Congreve engaged in some of the most pressing foreign and domestic controversies of his day, despite facing fierce personal attacks in the Victorian press. Congreve made overlooked contributions to the history of science, political economy, and secular ethics. In this book Matthew Wilson argues that Congreve's polemics, 'in the name of Humanity', served as the devotional practices of his Positivist church.

Paul Abela presents a powerful, experience-sensitive form of realism about the relation between mind and world, based on an innovative interpretation of Kant. Abela breaks with tradition in taking seriously Kant's claim that his Transcendental Idealism yields a form of empirical realism, and giving a realist analysis of major themes of the Critique of Pure Reason. Abela's blending of Kantian scholarship with contemporary epistemology offers a new way of resolving philosophical debates about realism.

Multiple Normalities enhances sociological understandings of normality by illustrating it with the help of British novels. It demonstrates commonalities and differences between the meanings of normality in these two periods, exemplifying the emergence of the multiple normalities and the transformation of ways in which we give meaning to the world.

This collection of original essays by prominent historians from the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and Germany provides new insight into the social, political and intellectual components of German conservatism from its origins in the late-18th century through to the end of the Third Reich. The essays combine fresh empirical research with new theoretical and historiographical perspectives to provide the basis for a collective reassessment of the role that conservatism has played in Germany's national development. The collection thus serves to fill a prominent gap in the existing body of secondary literature on modern German history and to provide the history of German conservatism with the sort of detailed attention that German liberalism and socialism have recently received.

At the end of the eighteenth century, Jeremy Bentham devised a scheme for a prison that he called the panopticon. It soon became an obsession. For twenty years he tried to build it; in the end he failed, but the story of his attempt offers fascinating insights into both Bentham's complex character and the ideas of the period. Basing her analysis on hitherto unexamined manuscripts, Janet Semple chronicles Bentham's dealings with the politicians as he tried to put his plans into practice. She assesses the panopticon in the context of penal philosophy and eighteenth-century punishment and discusses it as an instrument of the modern technology of subjection as revealed and analysed by Foucault. Her entertainingly written study is full of drama: at times it is hilariously funny, at others it approaches tragedy. It illuminates a subject of immense historical importance and which is particularly relevant to modern controversies about penal policy.

Books and reading have contributed to the success of generations of Americans, many of whom have had distinguished careers and have left their mark on history. While the accomplishments of these notable Americans are well known, their adventures with books and reading are less familiar. Some have struggled to gain access to books, while others were fortunate enough to be exposed to literature at an early age. This reference surveys the role books and reading have played in the lives of notable Americans from colonial times to the present.

Included are alphabetically arranged entries for 50 notable Americans from a range of historical periods, professions, and racial and ethnic backgrounds. Many are featured prominently in school and college texts, while others are a significant part of popular culture. Such diverse figures as Benjamin Franklin, Helen Keller, Willa Cather, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Mark Twain, Oprah Winfrey, and Ronald Reagan are covered. Each entry includes a discussion of books and reading in the person's life, a chronology, and a brief bibliography.

Once, nutmeg was worth its weight in gold. For much of human history, the tiny Banda Islands in Indonesia were the only source of this esteemed spice. From the age of the Silk Roads through to the mid-19th century partial shift of production to the Caribbean, covering battles between the Honourable East India Company and the Dutch Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, this book traces the story of nutmeg, revealing its extensive and often surprising influence over conflict, politics, social mores, and Western society. Beautiful antique silver, gold, enamel, bone, ivory, treen and Tunbridgeware graters and rasps demonstrate how much nutmeg was valued throughout history. This book gathers pictures of some of the finest examples world-wide, alongside mechanical and base metal graters and spice containers. It illustrates, and provides useful information on, the history of pomanders which were associated with nutmeg, as this spice was once thought to ward off pestilence and plague. Combining the social history of nutmeg with explanations of the spice production and transportation process, and illustrating in detail examples in international nutmeg grater collections and museums, this book is the essential reference work for collectors, antique dealers and auctioneers.

This book is the first study to engage with the relationship between cosmopolitan political thought and the history of global conflicts. Accompanied by visual material ranging from critical battle painting to the photographic representation of ruins, it showcases established as well as emerging interdisciplinary scholarship in global political thought and cultural history. Touching on the progressive globalization of conflicts between the eighteenth and the twentieth century, including the War of the Spanish Succession, the Seven Years' War, the Napoleonic wars, the two World Wars, as well as seemingly 'internal' civil wars in eastern Europe's imperial frontiers, it shows how these conflicts produced new zones of cultural contact. The authors build on a rich foundation of unpublished sources drawn from public institutions as well as private archives, allowing them to shed new light on the British, Russian, German, Ottoman, American, and transnational history of international thought and political engagement.

"Histories of the Irish Future" is an intellectual history of Ireland seen through the eyes of key individuals who in different eras sought to influence the country's future. Written by Bryan Fanning, a leading scholar of modern Irish intellectual history, the book offers a new, pioneering perspective on the country's development over the course of the last 400 years. ""In clearly defined chapters, the book focuses on twelve key figures and places these alongside many others within the wider social, political, economic and cultural debates of their times. It thus provides both a summary and an analysis of the bodies of work of great thinkers - writers, philosophers, politicians, economists and clergy - from Jonathan Swift to Fintan O'Toole. The intriguing and original concept and structure of the book lend themselves to discussion and group exercises in the classroom. It will appeal to undergraduate history students taking courses on modern Ireland and Britain as well as undergraduates in Irish Studies. The author's interdisciplinary background will also make the book attractive to undergraduates in related fields such as Cultural Studies, Philosophy and Political Science.

Concisely written and compelling, this book offers a provocative look at European-American relations. It focuses on the tradition of common political ideas, the original roots of common European and American thought, the decision by the two continents not to develop in isolation from one another, and the traditional ambivalence of the European caught indecisively between reliance upon and distance from the United States. From classical antiquity to contemporary society, Mathiopoulos unfolds the paradoxical relationship between the U.S. and Europe--the simultaneous occurrence of reciprocal attraction and mutual misunderstanding. She describes how America was born of European intellectual stock; enlightenment, reason, (religious) freedom, equality, democracy, the rights of man and the desire to achieve these things in the New World. She also tells us that the idealism of progress of the European enlightenment gave rise to the American Dream which constitutes the consciousness of the American people and is woven into their domestic and foreign policy to this day. This stimulating book will interest anyone involved in the field of comparative political thought as well as those interested in the evolutionary and revolutionary process of the idea of progress in Europe and the United States.

The idea of progress forms the core "History and ProgresS." Mathiopoulos shows that faith in progress and the desire for a better world have been the major stimuli for historical change in the modern world. She describes how Europe gave birth to this idea and throughout history became largely disenchanted with it. In contrast, the United States inherited this concept and has utilized it for over 200 years to maintain its sense of identity and self-awareness. History and Progress explains not only how the idea of progress inspired the founding of America, but how the concept provides momentum for the historical development of the nation to the present. In short, the 'American DreaM' preserved the progressive optimism projected by the Enlightenment in the United States, even when it had since disappeared from European historical thought.

Shaftesbury's Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times is a collection of treatises on interconnected themes in moral philosophy, aesthetics, literature, and politics. It was immensely influential on eighteenth-century British taste and manners, literature, and thought, and also on the Continental Enlightenment. The author was a Whig, a Stoic, and a theist, whose commitment to political liberty and civic virtue shaped all of his other concerns, from the role of the arts in a free state to the nature of the beautiful and the good. This is the first new edition of Shaftesbury's Characteristicks as a coherent collection for almost a century. A substantial Introduction discusses Shaftesbury's works and ideas in the context of his times, and traces the reception and influence of his writings through the eighteenth century and beyond. A full and scholarly commentary is provided, as well as a complete textual apparatus. The very thorough Index is Shaftesbury's own. The text is essentially that of the first edition of 1711, as marked up with changes by Shaftesbury himself in preparation for the posthumous second edition of 1714; and the striking emblematic engravings he commissioned especially for the second edition are incorporated.

This book examines the cultural production of Catalan intellectuals in Cuba through a reading of texts and journeys that show the contrapuntal relationship between transcultural identities and narratives of nationhood. Both the concept of transculturation and its instrumentalization to tame conflict within nationalist projects are problematic. By uncovering and examining the contradictions between the fluid character of identities in the Cuban context of the first half of the twentieth century and nationalist discourses, within both the Catalanist community of Havana and Cuban society, this book joins wider debates about identities.

The development of social democratic politics in the dominant states of Western Europe has been influenced by both domestic and international forces. A succinct history of the expanding popularity of social democracy in these countries, this work explains why political parties, whose electoral following was rooted in the growth of the industrial working class, failed to become dominant parliamentary forces in their respective political systems. The book concludes by discussing the implications of the social democratic past in Europe for the future of socialist politics in a post-Cold War context.