This book investigates notions of the individual, society, the state, economic relations and historical change that exist in the political left by drawing on contemporary philosophical, political and social thought. Using a discourse perspective, this work brings together the many fractious strains in the left, including social democracy, anarchism, communism and market socialism, and discusses them in terms of their relationships with each other. Not only does the study disentangle the left from liberal capitalism and progressive movements-such as those against racism and inequality-it sees the current left as intertwined with its history and its visions of the future.

Pindar-the 'Theban eagle', as Thomas Gray famously called him-has often been taken as the archetype of the sublime poet: soaring into the heavens on wings of language and inspired by visions of eternity. In this much-anticipated new study, Robert Fowler asks in what ways the concept of the sublime can still guide a reading of the greatest of the Greek lyric poets. Working with ancient and modern treatments of the topic, especially the poetry and writings of Friedrich Hoelderlin (1770-1843), arguably Pindar's greatest modern reader, he develops the case for an aesthetic appreciation of Pindar's odes as literature. Building on recent trends in criticism, he shifts the focus away from the first performance and the orality of Greek culture to reception and the experience of Pindar's odes as text. This change of emphasis yields a fresh discussion of many facets of Pindar's astonishing art, including the relation of the poems to their occasions, performativity, the poet's persona, his imagery, and his myths. Consideration of Pindar's views on divinity, transcendence, time, and the limits of language reveals him to be not only a great writer but a great thinker.

This book provides a comprehensive survey of Edmund Burke's historical thought, a neglected area of both Burke scholarship and historiography. Ranging from Burke's general conception of history to his accounts of English, European, American, Irish and Asian-Muslim history, this book offers much-needed depth and context to his political life. Sora Sato illuminates Burke's ideas on civilisation and world order with careful analysis of both his well-known historical concepts, such as the ancient constitution of England and the spirit of chivalry, as well as his lesser-known opinions on war and the military. Written with clarity and precision, this book is an invaluable reference for scholars of Burke, early modern European history and political philosophy.

Blending past and present, this brief history of economics is the perfect book for introducing students to the field.A Brief History of Economics illustrates how the ideas of the great economists not only influenced societies but were themselves shaped by their cultural milieu. Understanding the economists' visions - lucidly and vividly unveiled by Canterbery - allows readers to place economics within a broader community of ideas. Magically, the author links Adam Smith to Isaac Newton's idea of an orderly universe, F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby to Thorstein Veblen, John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath to the Great Depression, and Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities to Reaganomics.Often humorous, Canterbery's easy style will make the student's first foray into economics lively and relevant. Readers will dismiss "dismal" from the science.

This collection of essays is addressed to the legacy of Enlightenment thought, with respect to 18th-century notions of human nature, human rights, representative democracy or the nation state, and with regard to the barbarism, including the Holocaust, allegedly unleashed by 18th-century ideals of civilization. Each author offers an interpretation of modern or postmodern philosophy against the background of a so-called Enlightenment Project, envisaged as the conceptual ghost that haunts modernity.

This book deals with three major French thinkers of the seventeenth century, Descartes, Pascal, and Malebranche. It examines their influential critical accounts of the impact of the body and of social relationships on experience, and the need to correct this by reference to metaphysical or religious truth.

This book explores the Romanian Orthodox Church's arguments on national identity to legitimize its own place in a post-communist Romania. The work traces the clergy's deployment of the concepts of Christian Orthodoxy and Latin legacy as part of an uncharted constellation of arguments in contemporary intellectual history. A survey of public intellectuals' opinions on national identity complements the Church's views. The investigation attempts to offer an insight into the Church's efforts to re-assert itself, given free rein in a post-dictatorial world of accelerated modernization. After clarifying and surveying the Church's claims on institutional and national identity, the book then also explores the secular ideas on the subject. The subsequent analysis treats this material as "speech acts" (statements doing, not only saying, something) which are occasionally out of sync. Against a background of secularization, the Church's rhetoric articulates a distinct line of thought in the post-89 intellectual landscape.

"Women on the Edge re-envisions women's cinema as contemporary political practices by exploring the works of twelve filmmakers. Moving on from the 1970s feminist adage that the personal is political, Sharon Lin Tay argues that contemporary women's cinema must exceed the personal to be politically relevant and ethically cogent"--Provided by publisher.

Many studies of fictions of city life take the flneur as the characteristic metropolitan type and streets and plazas as definitive urban spaces. Looking at novels and films set in London and Paris from L'Assommoir to Nil By Mouth, this book shows that mass housing is equally central to images of the modern city.

"A Brief History of Economics" illustrates how the ideas of the great economists not only influenced societies but were themselves shaped by their cultural milieu. Understanding the economists' visions - lucidly and vividly unveiled by Canterbery -allows readers to place economics within a broader community of ideas. Magically, the author links Adam Smith to Isaac Newton's idea of an orderly universe, F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" to Thornstein Veblen, John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" to the Great Depression, and Tom Wolfe's "The Bonfire of the Vanities" to Reaganomics. Often humorous, Canterbery's easy style should make the student's first foray into economics lively and relevant. Readers will no longer dare call it the "dismal science".

Literature and Encyclopedism in Enlightenment Britain tells the story of long-term aspirations to comprehend, record, and disseminate complete knowledge of the world. It draws on a wide range of literary and non-literary works from the early modern era and British Enlightenment.

This introductory guide to Louis Althusser provides the first major overview of his work since the publication in French of thousands of pages of essays, books, and letters unknown before 1990. Focusing on Althusser's writing on art, theater, and literature, Warren Montag traces the contradictory development of Althusser's thought from the early 60s to his autobiography, The Future Lasts Forever. Montag also explores how Althusser's reflections on reading can shed new light on well-known texts such as Heart of Darkness and Robinson Crusoe.

A collection of essays based on an international conference in 1989. The essays examine both the historical dimension of the European idea and the problems of national and transnational identity confronting European integration in the 1990s. Chapters discuss post-modern Europe, Europe and Japan, the European identity, political parties, contemporary feminist movements, socialism, Austrian identity and an essay on Mitterand.

In a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the relationship between sociology and cultural studies, Gregor McLennan lucidly guides us from central philosophical questions in the social sciences to new interpretations of such urgent contemporary questions as Eurocentrism, multiculturalism, and reflexivity. The author offers a range of closely linked arguments concerning the viability of the 'idea of sociology', the development of cultural studies, and the balance between positivity and reflexivity in setting the right kind of 'mood music' for progressive intellectual work.

One of the most vital questions of our time is how the new electronically based information technology can be used to its best advantage. We are now entering an era of multi-media communication which can bring benefit or dangers in its train. This volume offers a comprehensive, up-to-date survey of the present and future impact of these modern technologies (including word processors, videotex and video and digital optical discs) on professional, business and scholarly research information, as well as on information to the general public. The contributors are all experts in their fields, and include practitioners as well as scholars. The volume is intended for anyone who has a professional interest in information transfer, and those who wish to keep abreast of matters of important current concern. It provides a balanced and detailed, but easily readable introduction to the topic.

"Based on impressive research in a wide variety of sources, including popular literature, advertisements, true confession and physique magazines, advice columns, sex surveys, vice investigation reports, and personal letters, "The First Sexual Revolution" offers a provocative interpretation of the impact of the sexual revolution on men. White's boldly-stated criticism of sexual liberalism is sure to arouse controversy. Yet his view of men confused by new expectations of attractiveness and sexiness, threatened by women's demands for sexual satisfaction, yet essentially still in control, is compelling."
--Leila J. Rupp Ohio State University, Co-author of "Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women's Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s,"

In the early 1900s, a sexual revolution took place that was to define social relations between the sexes in America for generations. As Victorian values gradually faded, and a commercialized consumer culture emerged, the female figure of the flapper came to embody early-twentieth century femininity. Simultaneously, masculine ideals were also undergoing radical change. Who then was this New Man to accompany the New Woman? Who was the flapper's boyfriend?

In this remarkable book, Kevin White draws on a vast array of sources to examine the ideology--spread through movies, advertisements, sex confession magazines, social hygienists, sex manuals, and Freudian popularizers --that has defined modern American manhood. Examining attitudes toward masturbation, homosexuality, violence against women, feminism, free love, and the emerging dating system, "The First Sexual Revolution" shows how American men in the Jazz Age were subjected to a barrage ofinformation and advice about their sexuality that stressed not character but personality and sex appeal. Repression was out; sexual expression--performance--was in.

This New Man was more egalitarian and more sexual than the Victorian patriarch. But the diffusion to the middle class of the Victorian underworld ethos of primitivism and violence against women, and the flight from commitment to relationships, heralded instability and tensions that continues to define American sexual relations. To illustrate this point, Dr. White takes a close look--through letters and diaries--at the successes and failures of nine marriages involving actively feminist women, demonstrating the pressures that this revolution in values caused. Dr. White concludes that the return to primitivism characterized by the men's movement marks the most recent aftershock of the revolution that has shaped us all.

This book examines why several American literary and intellectual icons found themselves to be pioneering scholars and lifelong students of the Hispanic world. The author asserts that these gifted Americans focused on the Hispanic world that they might shape their own country's identity after Independence and the War of 1812, a crucial time for the young republic, and that they found inspiration in a most unlikely place: the seat of the collapsing Spanish empire.

The relations between science and philosophy in the early nineteenth century remain one of the most misunderstood topics in modern European intellectual history. By taking the brilliant career of Danish physicist-philosopher Hans Christian A~rsted as their organizing theme, leading international philosophers and historians of science reveal illuminating new perspectives on the intellectual map of Europe in the age of revolution and romanticism. They show how A~rsted, an intrepid traveller and cosmopolitan from the periphery of enlightened Europe, mediated between the great scientists of Germany, France, and Britain and profoundly shaped post-kantian philosophy and the emerging new energy physics of the nineteenth-century.

Although there are many pamphlets and monographs that cover specific aspects of the European Community, the literature seems to lack a single, scholarly reader that gives a complete account of the many dimensions of European integration. This volume, written by a distinguished group of international specialists, seeks to fill this void by pulling together a broad collection of papers focusing on the political, sociological, and economic issues surrounding the European Union. Beginning with a historical look at the genesis, evolution, and theoretical interpretation of the historical process of European integration, the book goes on to analyze the socio-economic structure of the European community and the social forces operating within it. Students and scholars will find this a valuable, flexible, and versatile text for manifold courses in the social sciences; policymakers and general readers will find this a highly informative and readable evaluation of the current state of the European Union.

At the start of the third Christian millennium we are aware of massive political, economic, and ideological changes which condition the chances of liberty, wealth, and equality. Yet it is surprisingly difficult to understand these forces, because we cannot see what surrounds us so closely. This book analyzes our condition by looking at the work of two great thinkers; F.W. Maitland provides a deep historical perspective, while Yukichi Fukuzawa lays down a wide comparative analysis.

This volume explores 'unknown time' as a cultural phenomenon, approaching past futures, unknown presents, and future pasts through a broad range of different disciplines, media, and contexts. As a phenomenon that is both elusive and fundamentally inaccessible, time is a key object of fascination. Throughout the ages, different cultures have been deeply engaged in various attempts to fill or make time by developing strategies to familiarize unknown time and to materialize and control past, present, or future time. Arguing for the perennial interest in time, especially in the unknown and unattainable dimension of the future, the contributions explore premodern ideas about eschatology and secular future, historical configurations of the perception of time and acceleration in fin-de-siecle Germany and contemporary Lagos, the formation of 'deep time' and 'timelessness' in paleontology and ethnographic museums, and the representation of time-past, present, and future alike-in music, film, and science fiction.

This work on microeconomics offers interpretations of both its strengths and its weaknesses. It shows how the general equilibrium ideas of Walras and Marshall were gradually transformed after 1930 into formalized accounts of imaginary economies where trading never occurs.

This collection of essays delineates the history of the rather disparate intellectual tradition usually labeled as "Platonic" or "Neoplatonic." In chronological order, the book covers the most eminent philosophic schools of thought within that tradition. The most important terms of the Platonic tradition are studied together with a discussion of their semantic implications, the philosophical and theological claims associated with the terms, the sources that furnish the terms, and the intellectual traditions aligned with or opposed to them. The contributors thereby provide a vivid intellectual map of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. Contributions are written in English or German.