Life on earth is currently approaching what has been called the sixth mass extinction, also known as the Holocene or anthropocene extinction. Unlike the previous five, this extinction is due to the destructive practices of a single species, our own. Up to 50% of plant and animal species face extinction by the year 2100, as well as 90% of the world's languages. Biocultural diversity is a recent appellation for thinking together the earth's biological, cultural and linguistic diversity, the related causes of their extinctions and the related steps that need to be taken to ensure their sustainability. This book turns to the work of Jacques Derrida to propose a notion of 'general ecology' as a way to respond to this loss, to think the ethics, ontology and epistemology at stake in biocultural sustainability and the life and death we differentially share on earth with its others. It articulates an appreciation of the ecological and biocultural stakes of deconstruction and provokes new ways of thinking about a more just sharing of the earth.

This is the first comprehensive study of the IRA's attempts to create a "social republicanism, " a marriage between militant nationalism and the politics of the left. From agitation among the peasantry in the 1920s to efforts in the 1990s to add a political dimension to purist nationalism in the form of Sinn Fein's "peace process, " Henry Patterson analyzes the various failed attempts to marry two fundamentally incompatible ideologies.

"Into the Open" is a philosophical and literary inquiry into the deeper meanings of genius. What precisely do we mean when we describe someone this way? What legacy do we invoke when we apply this term?

To address this question, Benjamin Taylor here explores how three great minds--Walter Pater, Paul Valry, and Sigmund Freud--viewed a figure widely considered the first great modern genius, Leonardo da Vinci. For each of these great thinkers, Da Vinci is of central importance because for each the received idea of genius has ceased to be a romantic certitude or sacred truth and has become a problem.

Invoking Nietzsche's drastic critique of genius, Taylor assesses the less programmatic and more anxious cases of Pater, Valry, and Freud. Whereas Nietzsche sought for and found an escape from romantic humanism, Pater, Valry, and Freud cannot relinquish the idea of genius and serve as troubled witnesses to the dilemma posed by the notion of genius. A myth of genius has been our way of making good the losses romantic modernity entails, Taylor writes, A myth of genius has existed to affirm that, among human lives, some have sacramental shape; that, among human lives, some put into abeyance the equation between life and loss. Such is the post-theological, post-metaphysical role into which we have compelled our geniuses. They make for us one last claim on the sublime.

A shift away from the special pleading that has lately plagued literary studies, Taylor's unfazed humanism reasserts the timeless standards of substantiveness, clarity, and grace.

The political climate of many Western countries is characterised by political disillusion, distrust and political alienation. These problems cannot be solved by politicians alone, but are also problematic for educators. Invoking the classical, democratic connection between education and political participation, this book introduces central concepts from radical-creative political thought into educational thought and practice. Based on the belief that political change is fostered by trusting ordinary people's creative imagination, it is also a call for increased political participation. The book offers possibilities to reflect upon the potential for political change in contemporary Western societies. The domains in question are arenas for the creative imagination, ranging from political philosophy via educational theory and young people's literature to the greatest challenge of contemporary political creation: anthropogenic climate change.

Europe has to come to terms with its increasing cultural diversity. In current debate migration is typically presented merely as a social burden. This book envisions a future in which 'native' Europeans and those with a migrant background - together the New Europeans - come to the conclusion that they should build a new society jointly. An inclusive European society can be generated by launching a common project as an alternative to neoliberalism, developing an economy that is at the service of society. For this, democratic ownership should be the lever. In that process, migrants will be important and resilient catalysts. The book sets out a roadmap for what the future could look like, presenting a vision of Europe at the end of the 21st century as a 'real Utopia'. This book bucks the trend of depressing accounts on migration from outside Europe. It offers a promissory narrative for the continent's long-term future. Drawing on political, sociological, economic and philosophical insights, the author sticks his neck out, provokes perhaps, but always with the invitation for a constructive dialogue.

Cognition is a paradoxical process, from the moment of the formation of human subjectivity, through its relationship with the Other (or more precisely: l'autre) and with the world, to the ontological status of the world as such. This is what this book has at stake. The book deals with selected aspects of poststructural thought which are introduced into the language of contemporary science, prose, and poetry. Such an enterprise is possible by treating philosophy, science, and poetry as languages which can try to enter into a dialogue through metaphors. This is the ground on which the project is implemented.

This book is edited based on a series of lectures on Chinese cultural history delivered at the Peking University in 2004. It stands out with its distinctive methodology and unique stand, and is popular with readers, with 17 reprints for the Chinese edition since 2006.Before the 1980s, traditional culture was often the target of criticisms and put in a negative light in China. After the 1980s, due to the belief that traditional culture can contribute to modernization, people decided to 'take its essence and discard its dregs'. As of today, most books on this theme have been written in accordance with this principle.However, in this book, the author argues that many problems have emerged from the modernization of the Western society, and thus the need for reflection and re-examining. Traditional Chinese culture is a source for comparison and reflection. As such, when we discuss traditional culture nowadays, not only should we excavate its long-hidden meanings, but we should also develop contrastive resources to facilitate our collaborative development in future.The discussions in this book adopt a vertical structure that begins with how Chinese define a human, followed by topics on the human body, Qi, food, male and female, home and state, the relationship between heaven and human beings, ritual systems, historical consciousness, thinking patterns, the art of expressing sentiments, commitments to the politics of virtues and achievements, and cultural practices. In every chapter, there is also a horizontal method of comparison on Chinese, Western and Indian cultures, to foreground the particularities and advantages of the Chinese culture.Apart from elaborating on the major characteristics of traditional Chinese culture, there is also a discussion on how the modern disdain for and misunderstandings of the traditional culture originated from the West. The author also elaborates on Montesquieu's views of China and the various misconceptions and misunderstandings of the traditional Chinese legal systems. Finally, it ends with the author's thoughts on the revitalization of the Chinese civilization.

The main goal of Critical Writing is to provide students with a set of robust, integrated critical concepts and processes that will allow to them think through a topic, and then write about it, and to do so in a way that is built on, and permeated by, substantive critical thinking. The "topic" in question can be virtually anything that can be written about: issues, situations, problems, questions, arguments, and decisions are just some examples. The critical thinking tools and concepts are built on the Paul-Elder Approach to critical thinking.[1] A major part of the goal of the book is to provide not only the "what" of writing a paper, but the "how" of it. The "what" is constituted by the essential components of a well-thought-out paper: thesis statement and main points, an articulated structure, development, research, the need for clarity, grammatical correctness, and several others. Addressing the "how" of these occupies a significantly greater part of Critical Writing. The aim throughout is to show: how you can actually construct a thesis statement and the other main points that constitute the structure of the paper; how you can write the actual paragraphs that make up the body of the paper; how you can engage in productive research and do so in a planned, self-directed way; how you can make a point clear-not just grammatically or stylistically clear, but clear in thought and clear in communicating that thought to an audience; how you can think your way through the numerous unanticipated issues (including aspects of grammatical correctness, transitions, as well as many others) that arise in the course of writing papers. The book aims to provide close and careful processes for carrying out each of these, always through the use of one's best reasoned judgment-through critical thinking. A closely related goal in the book is to bring in the standards of critical thinking. A well-thought-out paper needs to be clear, accurate, relevant, and fair; it needs to stress the important parts of a topic (rather than the minor side-issues); it should be as precise, deep, broad, and sufficient as it needs to be for the context in which the paper is written. But recognizing that these standards are essential is plainly not enough. With the critical thinking standards, the "how" is again paramount. Critical Writing provides concrete usable ways for students to make their paper more accurate, more relevant, and so forth, and to communicate its accuracy, relevance, and the rest to the writers' audience. Perhaps just as important, the book gives specific prompts that help to direct writers toward the thinking required to help them meet those standards. The specific focus in the book is on writing a paper, but the concepts and processes of critical writing apply in a direct and useful way to virtually any kind of non-fictional writing. [1]Critical Writing: A Guide to Writing a Paper Using the Concepts and Processes of Critical Thinking lays out the main dimensions of the Foundation for Critical Thinking's articulation of critical thinking (www.criticalthinking.org) as they apply to writing. The approach was developed by Richard Paul, Linda Elder and myself. Probably the best overview of it is contained in Paul and Elder's Critical Thinking: Concepts and Tools. Though Paul and Elder's book is highly condensed, it spells out the essential components of a robust conception of critical thinking.

When we criticize social institutions and practices, what kinds of reasons can we offer for such criticism? Political philosophers often assume that we must rely on universal moral principles that are not necessarily connected to the particular social practices of our communities. Traditionally, continental critical theory has rejected this claim through its endorsement of the method of immanent critique. Immanent critique is a critique of social practices that draws on norms already present within these practices to demand social change, rather than merely conservatively reproducing them. Titus Stahl defends the claim that such a critique is not only possible, but also has politically powerful potential. Taking up recent developments in analytic enquiry into collective intentionality theory and in the philosophy of language, he argues that all social practices rest on structures of mutual recognition between persons that allow social theorists to reconstruct hidden norms present within these practices. Starting from a comprehensive critique of contemporary critical theory, Immanent Critique also spells out the consequences of this line of thought for the practice of social critique, for the social sciences and for political philosophy. The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaften International - Translation Funding for Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany, a joint initiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office, the collecting society VG WORT and the Boersenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (German Publisher & Booksellers Association)

Operating within the framework of postcolonial studies and decolonial theory, this important work starts from the assumption that the violence exercised by European colonialism was not only physical and economic, but also 'epistemic'. Santiago Castro-Gomez argues that toward the end of the 18th century, this epistemic violence of the Spanish Empire assumed a specific form: zero-point hubris. The 'many forms of knowing' were integrated into a chronological hierarchy in which scientific-enlightened knowledge appears at the highest point on the cognitive scale, while all other epistemes are seen as constituting its past. Enlightened criollo thinkers did not hesitate to situate the blacks, Indians, and mestizos of New Granada in the lowest position on this cognitive scale. Castro-Gomez argues that in the colonial periphery of the Spanish Americas, Enlightenment constituted not only the position of epistemic distance separating science from all other knowledges, but also the position of ethnic distance separating the criollos from the 'castes'. Epistemic violence-and not only physical violence-is thereby found at the very origin of Colombian nationality.

Memory. A word so often said, often thought of, and continuously studied. Yet, we know relatively so little other than how vast and magnificent it is. In Who Will Remember You? A Philosophical History and Theory of Memory and Will, Israel B. Bitton, offers an interdisciplinary perspective that unifies philosophy of memory with history, neuroscience, culture and ethics, yielding novel insights into the elusive phenomena of memory, namely its universality. Bitton posits that the current and typical "misunderstanding of memory" stems from over-specialization in scientific research, a compartmentalization that does not support reaching holistic conclusions which are necessary for fully appreciating the totality of memory phenomena. No longer should memory be thought of as residing only in the brain, for the body is known to have memory too, but neither should it be thought of as exclusively human since it inheres in all matter as a physical and biological fact. Indeed, Bitton extends the philosophical and practical meanings of memory furthest in great detail, employing the latest research in neuroscience to support his case. In this work, Bitton traces the kernels of these ideas from the ancient Egyptians and Israelites all the way through to the modern period in philosophy, science and popular culture, demonstrating that his philosophical formulation has always been and remains accepted de facto by society as can easily be detected in various social trends. Upon offering his holistic account that considers the magnitude of memory phenomena across several disciplines, Bitton presents a novel theory that postulates the primary human drive as categorized by a will to significance, which, because of the universality of memory becomes a will to memorability. By placing the individual at the center of their own memory-reality, they can be empowered to safeguard, enhance, and extend the universal force of memory within and around them. From that vantage point, this book provides its audience with ideas meant to provoke and incite the readers' own reflections on memory's meaning and import as well as what it takes to be an ethical "memory agent" in an era of hyper-fake news.

The main goal of Critical Writing is to provide students with a set of robust, integrated critical concepts and processes that will allow to them think through a topic, and then write about it, and to do so in a way that is built on, and permeated by, substantive critical thinking. The "topic" in question can be virtually anything that can be written about: issues, situations, problems, questions, arguments, and decisions are just some examples. The critical thinking tools and concepts are built on the Paul-Elder Approach to critical thinking.[1] A major part of the goal of the book is to provide not only the "what" of writing a paper, but the "how" of it. The "what" is constituted by the essential components of a well-thought-out paper: thesis statement and main points, an articulated structure, development, research, the need for clarity, grammatical correctness, and several others. Addressing the "how" of these occupies a significantly greater part of Critical Writing. The aim throughout is to show: how you can actually construct a thesis statement and the other main points that constitute the structure of the paper; how you can write the actual paragraphs that make up the body of the paper; how you can engage in productive research and do so in a planned, self-directed way; how you can make a point clear-not just grammatically or stylistically clear, but clear in thought and clear in communicating that thought to an audience; how you can think your way through the numerous unanticipated issues (including aspects of grammatical correctness, transitions, as well as many others) that arise in the course of writing papers. The book aims to provide close and careful processes for carrying out each of these, always through the use of one's best reasoned judgment-through critical thinking. A closely related goal in the book is to bring in the standards of critical thinking. A well-thought-out paper needs to be clear, accurate, relevant, and fair; it needs to stress the important parts of a topic (rather than the minor side-issues); it should be as precise, deep, broad, and sufficient as it needs to be for the context in which the paper is written. But recognizing that these standards are essential is plainly not enough. With the critical thinking standards, the "how" is again paramount. Critical Writing provides concrete usable ways for students to make their paper more accurate, more relevant, and so forth, and to communicate its accuracy, relevance, and the rest to the writers' audience. Perhaps just as important, the book gives specific prompts that help to direct writers toward the thinking required to help them meet those standards. The specific focus in the book is on writing a paper, but the concepts and processes of critical writing apply in a direct and useful way to virtually any kind of non-fictional writing. [1]Critical Writing: A Guide to Writing a Paper Using the Concepts and Processes of Critical Thinking lays out the main dimensions of the Foundation for Critical Thinking's articulation of critical thinking (www.criticalthinking.org) as they apply to writing. The approach was developed by Richard Paul, Linda Elder and myself. Probably the best overview of it is contained in Paul and Elder's Critical Thinking: Concepts and Tools. Though Paul and Elder's book is highly condensed, it spells out the essential components of a robust conception of critical thinking.

This is an invaluable survey of the most influential theoretical approaches adopted for the study of medieval economy and society. It offers a readily intelligible introduction to medieval economic history, an up-to-date critique of established models, and a succinct treatise on historiographical method, and will be essential reading for graduate students and historians of medieval and early modern England.

Operating within the framework of postcolonial studies and decolonial theory, this important work starts from the assumption that the violence exercised by European colonialism was not only physical and economic, but also 'epistemic'. Santiago Castro-Gomez argues that toward the end of the 18th century, this epistemic violence of the Spanish Empire assumed a specific form: zero-point hubris. The 'many forms of knowing' were integrated into a chronological hierarchy in which scientific-enlightened knowledge appears at the highest point on the cognitive scale, while all other epistemes are seen as constituting its past. Enlightened criollo thinkers did not hesitate to situate the blacks, Indians, and mestizos of New Granada in the lowest position on this cognitive scale. Castro-Gomez argues that in the colonial periphery of the Spanish Americas, Enlightenment constituted not only the position of epistemic distance separating science from all other knowledges, but also the position of ethnic distance separating the criollos from the 'castes'. Epistemic violence-and not only physical violence-is thereby found at the very origin of Colombian nationality.

Ours is a post-political society that cannot imagine radical change; a 'one dimensional' society in which politics is reduced to economic concerns. Paradoxically, however, everybody today is subjected to the imperative of regular radical change. Populations have grown accustomed to the idea that one constantly needs to adapt to radical transformations, modify one's life strategy in tune with the demands of the market on the one hand and the politics of security on the other. Indeed, the idea that there are unquestionable authorities, the idea of 'despotism', no longer refers to exceptional circumstances in which politics is suspended but rather seems to have become normalized as part of daily life. This book aims to articulate the genealogy of the despotism-economy-voluntary servitude nexus focusing on their different constellations in the prism of social theory and political philosophy. As it traces the genealogy of this nexus its concern is the field of formation, intervention and intelligibility that arises when and as the three concepts encounter one another.

Few contemporary intellectuals have attempted to inform theory, the academy and social change as does Lewis Gordon. Following his own path of Fanon, Cesaire and Said, Gordon's work is an urgent call to action that is critical 'in the trying times' in which we find ourselves. In this important book, international scholars from many disciplines and areas of life engage in Gordon's work to prod, rattle and rethink our thinking to inform and change our practices as humans in institutions, politics, and the personal, legal and social paradigms. The book focuses on the importance of radical theory and thinkers to push for projects of change in the area of Black Existentialism. Gordon's now extensive oeuvre personifies this. The essays use the work of Lewis Gordon to demonstrate how theory and thought be can used for transformation of existence, antiracism and critiques of alterity, resistance, pedagogy, political action theory and disciplinary decadence in the academy and beyond.

The unlivable is the most extreme point of human suffering and injustice. But what is it exactly? How do we define the unlivable? And what can we do to prevent and repair it? These are the intriguing questions Judith Butler and Frederic Worms discuss in a captivating dialogue situated at the crossroads of contemporary life and politics. Here, Judith Butler criticizes the norms that make life precarious and unlivable, while Frederic Worms appeals to a "critical vitalism" as a way of allowing the hardship of the unlivable to reveal what is vital for us. For both Butler and Worms, the difference between the livable and the unlivable forms the critical foundation for a contemporary practice of care. Care and support, in all their aspects, make human life livable, that is, "more than living." To understand it, we must draw on the concrete practices of humans who are confronted with the unlivable: the refugees of today and the witnesses and survivors of past violations and genocide. They teach us what is intolerable but also undeniable about the unlivable, and what we can do to resist it. Crafted with critical rigor, mutual respect, and lively humor, the compelling dialogue transcribed and translated in this book took place at the Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS) on April 11, 2018, at a time when close to two thousand migrants were living in nearby makeshift camps in northern Paris. The Livable and the Unlivable showcases this 2018 dialogue in the context of Butler's and Worms's ongoing work and the evolution of their thought, as presented by Laure Barillas and Arto Charpentier in their equally engaging introduction. It concludes with a new afterword that addresses the crises unfolding in our world and the ways a philosophically rigorous account of life must confront them. While this book will be of keen interest to readers of philosophy and cultural criticism, and those interested in vitalism, new materialism, and critical theory, it is a far from merely academic text. In the conversation between Butler and Worms, we encounter questions we all grapple with in confronting the distress and precarity of our times, marked as it is by types of survival that are unlivable, from concentration camps to prisons to environmental toxicity, to forcible displacement, to the Covid pandemic. The Livable and the Unlivable at once considers longstanding philosophical questions around why and how we live, while working to retrieve a philosophy of life for today's Left.

These essays, written over more than thirty years of Vincent L. Wimbush's career as a scholar, provide a response to the nearly universal, persistent, and sedimented modern-world hyper-signification of Black flesh, always needing to be framed, humiliated, policed, and dirtied. Because Wimbush is a scholar of religion as culture-having to do with social practices and their psycho-politics as regimes of knowledge, discourse, formation, and power relations-his ex-centric transdisciplinary interest in scriptures has been viewed, in some circles, as controversial. Yet it is Wimbush's linkage of the modern hyper-signification of Black flesh-leading to racialization and racism, especially anti-Black racism-to the scriptural as shorthand for discourse and relations of power that makes this work compelling.

Critically and comprehensively examining the works of Habermas and Foucault, two giants of 20th century continental philosophy, this book illuminates the effects of scientific reason as it migrates from its specialized institutions into society. It explores how science permeates shared human consciousness, to produce effects that ripple through the entire social body to restructure relations between discourses, institutions, and power in ways which we are barely conscious of. The book shows how science, through its entwinement with power, politics, discourses, and practices, presents certain social arrangements as natural and certain courses of action as beyond question. By arguing for a non-reductive, liberal scientific naturalism that sees science as one form of rationality amongst others, it opens possibilities for thought and action beyond scientific knowledge. The book analyses the work of Foucault and Habermas in terms of their social, political, and historical contexts. It examines science in relation to society, power, and discourses and their shifting historical relations. But rather than withdrawing from normative dimensions by merely describing scientific practices within their contexts, McIntyre explicitly opens the normative question of the good life and the good society. He thus simultaneously raises the question of philosophy and how philosophical critique is both directed towards science and, at the same time, must accommodate it. Foucault and Habermas emerge as linked by a commitment to the Enlightenment tradition and its emancipatory telos which underlies their work. The significant differences between the two thinkers are seen to result from Foucault's radicalization of this tradition, a radicalization which is, at the same time, implicit within the Enlightenment project itself.

Collective remembering is an important way that communities name and make sense of the past. Places and stories about the past influence how communities remember the past, how they try to preserve it, or in some cases how they try to erase it. The research in this book offers key insights into how places and memories intersect with intercultural conflicts, oppressions, and struggles by which communities make sense of, deal with, and reconcile the past. The authors in this book examine fascinating stories from important sites-such as international commemorations of Korean "Comfort Women," a film representation of the Stonewall Riots, and remembrances of the post-communist state in Albania. By utilizing various critical and cultural studies and ethnographic and narrative-based methods, each chapter examines cultural memory in intercultural encounters, everyday experiences, and identity performances that evoke collective memories of colonial pasts, immigration processes, and memories of places and spaces that are shaped by power structures and clashing ideologies. This book is essential reading for understanding the links between space/place and cultural memory, memories of nationally, and places constituted by markers of ethnicity, race, and sexuality. These readings are especially useful in courses in intercultural communication, cultural studies, international studies, and peace and conflict studies.

Technology is a host of social, material, and epistemic transformation techniques, tools, and methods. The common perception of digital technology today is that it is determined, even over-determined. This volume suggests a different view: the digital is indeterminate. Mobilising insights from philosophy, art and architecture theory, mathematics, computer science and anthropology, it situates digital indeterminacy within the wider context of material and immaterial processes, causations, triggerings, modes of unintended conditioning, and their performative working. Part I, Social-Digital Technologies juxtaposes arguments for machinic/algorithmic indeterminacy to those of (over)determination in blockchain, cognitive augmentation, and digital ideology. Part II Spatial, Temporal, Aural and Visual Technologies delves deeper into received ideas about non-digital technologies such as those used for building spatial structures, manufacturing instruments and constructing the visual space. Part III Epistemic Technologies analyses the use of plasticity in cognitive science, contingency in thinking habits, ontogenesis in experimental computing, and divination techniques with an inbuilt margin of indeterminacy. The book's tripartite structure reflects technology's inherent capacity to transform knowledges, practices, and 'the past'.

This volume explores the various 'labyrinths' of Leibniz's philosophy, that is, hard-to-solve problems in which the human mind becomes entangled. Although the Hanoverian explicitly distinguished two such labyrinths (freedom and continuum), one may notice that in his theory there are more intricate issues the thinker can resolve with the help of the 'Ariadne's thread' - a certain principle to be followed by the reflecting mind. In the perspective of the mazes of theodicy, consciousness and absolute and relative differences, the authors try to unravel issues such as: the etymology of 'theodicee', the concepts of freedom and metaphysical evil, the reception of monadology by Olivier Sacks, the understanding of 'panpsychism', the similarity between jurisprudence and theology, and many others.