This open access book explores the ways in which the global south reimagined the future world order at the end of the Second World War, and the cultural and intellectual breakthroughs that these new narratives created. The end of the Second World War and the eclipse of empires brought a wave of efforts to reimagine the future world order. When nation states emerging from colonial rule met at Bandung to chart alternative destinies and challenge global inequalities, they hoped to create a less hierarchical, more pluralistic and more distributive world. This volume considers the alternative visions put forth by the third world at the close of WWII to recover their world-changing aspirations as well as its cultural and intellectual breakthroughs. Demonstrating how the invention of the third world sought to create new institutions of solidarity, new expressions and alternative narratives to the imperial ones that they had inherited, this book reveals how writers, artists, musicians and photographers created networks to circulate and exchange these ideas. Exploring these ideas put forth from various regions of the global south, the chapters trace their search for new meanings of freedom, self-determination and the promise of development. Out of this moment came efforts in the south to create new histories of global relations, icons and genres, and placed the promises of decolonization and struggles for social and racial justice at the centre of global history. Showing how efforts to remake the world intersected with and altered the trajectories of the global Cold War, Inventing the Third World discusses how this conflict existed outside of the traditional east-west framework and offers an insight into a radically different 'global cultural cold war'. It shows that the Cold War era was marked by attempts to bring about a different world order that would achieve global racial, social justice and a different kind of peace. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open Access was funded by Princeton University, USA.

What is philosophy? A question often asked, but usually in an abstract or speculative way. Rarely do we find a case of 'philosophy' being determined in the real world. However, at Cambridge in 1992, this is exactly what happened, as a debate took place over the merits, or otherwise, of awarding an Honorary Doctorate of Letters to the philosopher Jacques Derrida. Derrida's supporters argued that his deconstruction of Western traditions of thinking ushered in an important new manner of doing philosophy; his detractors dismissed his work as charlatanism, philistinism - and non-philosophy. As arguments raged over the validity of introducing the canon of Continental philosophy to the Humanities in British Higher Education - the so-called 'Theory Wars' - Derrida's 'Cambridge Affair' focalized this decisive conflict more than anything else. This is the first study of the Cambridge Affair. Drawing upon archival and unpublished material, little-known texts pertaining to the Affair, and Derrida's own oeuvre, this original account offers an historical and philosophical reconstruction of this crucial debate, evaluating it against the body of work it put on trial.

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 Ends of Critique re-examines the stakes of critique in the 21st century. In view of increasingly complex socio-political realities and shifts in a fully globalized world, the roles and manners of critique also change. The volume offers an unprecedented re-examination of critique under those conditions of global entanglement and asymmetrical relations from a diversity of scholarly perspectives within the humanities. All contributions move the notion of critique into more diverse traditions than the Eurocentric, Kantian tradition and emphasize the need to attend to a plurality of critical perspectives. The volume's reflections move critique toward a situated, perspectival, and entangled critical stance, with interventions from decolonial and systemic, deconstructive and (post)human(ist) perspectives. In that way, the volume develops a decidedly different approach to critique than recent considerations of critique as post-critique (Felski) or those endebted to Frankfurt School thought and liberal theories of democracy. It is the first full-length research publication of the interdisciplinary research network Terra Critica.

Does economics hold the key to everything or does the recent financial crisis show that it has failed? This book provides an assessment of modern economics that cuts through the confusion and controversy on this question. Case studies of the creation of new markets, the Russian transition to capitalism, globalization, and money and finance establish that economics has been very successful where problems have been well defined and where the world can be changed to fit the theory, but that it has been less successful in tackling bigger problems. The book then offers a historical perspective on how economists have, since the Second World War, tried to make their subject scientific. It explores the evolving relationship between science and ideology and investigates the place of heterodoxy and dissent within the discipline.

Ecology is the science of ecosystems, of habitats, of our world and its future. In the latest New Naturalist, ecologist David M. Wilkinson explains key ideas of this crucial branch of science, using Britain's ecosystems to illustrate each point. The science of ecology underlies most of the key issues facing humanity, from the loss of biodiversity to sustainable agriculture, to the effects of climate change and the spread of pandemics. In this accessible and timely addition to the New Naturalist series, ecologist David M. Wilkinson introduces some of the key ideas of this science, using examples from British natural history. Extensively illustrated with photographs of the species and habitats that can be seen in the British countryside, this book shows how the observations of field naturalists link into our wider understanding of the working of the natural world. Investigating ecosystems across the British Isles, from the Scottish and Welsh mountains to the woodlands of southern England and the fens of East Anglia, Wilkinson describes the relationships between organisms and their environments. Factors such as climate and chemistry influence populations of every kind of organism, and the interactions between these organisms determine the makeup of ecological communities. Using examples from the full range of organisms on Earth - from bacteria to badgers - Wilkinson introduces the crucial ecological processes that support life, addressing how these ideas can be applied to understand our effect on the environment not just of Britain, but of the whole planet.

The book deals with Gerbert of Aurillac (Pope Sylvester II) and his investigations in the field of theoretical (philosophy of numbers) and practical (counting) arithmetic. The book represents the comprehensive inquiry of both these aspects of arithmetic in his thought. The analysed sources are Gerbert's so-called scientific letters written to his friends, colleagues or pupils, and also including some of his other texts. On this basis, attention is paid to arithmetic as the mother of all sciences and as the path to wisdom (e.g., the so-called Saltus Gerberti, relation between arithmetic and other disciplines of the quadrivium, etc.) and also to practical arithmetic (e.g., the introduction of Hindu-Arabic numerals and the re-introduction of a new form of abacus to the Latin Christian West).

This book provides a reinterpretation of early modern clock and watch dials on the basis of use. Between 1550 and the emergence of a standard format in 1770, dials represented combinations of calendrical, lunar and astronomical information using multiple concentric rings, subsidiary dials and apertures. Change was gradual, but significant. Over the course of eight chapters and with reference to thirty-five exceptional images, this book unlocks the meaning embedded within these early combinations. The true significance of dial change can only be fully understood by comparing dials with printed paper sources such as almanacs, diagrams and craft pamphlets. Clock and watch makers drew on traditional communication methods, utilised different formats to generate trust in their work, and tried to be help users in different contexts. The calendar, lunar and astronomical functions were useful as a memory prompt for astrology up until the mid-late seventeenth century. After the decline of this practice, the three functions continued to be useful for other purposes, but eventually declined.

Considered the most original thinker in the Italian philosophical tradition, Giambattista Vico has been the object of much scholarly attention but little consensus. In this new interpretation, David L. Marshall examines the entirety of Vico s oeuvre and situates him in the political context of early modern Naples. He demonstrates Vico s significance as a theorist who adapted the discipline of rhetoric to modern conditions. Marshall presents Vico s work as an effort to resolve a contradiction. As a professor of rhetoric at the University of Naples, Vico had a deep investment in the explanatory power of classical rhetorical thought, especially that of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. Yet as a historian of the failure of Naples as a self-determining political community, he had no illusions about the possibility or worth of democratic and republican systems of government in the post-classical world. As Marshall demonstrates, by jettisoning the assumption that rhetoric only illuminates direct, face-to-face interactions between orator and auditor, Vico reinvented rhetoric for a modern world in which the Greek polis and the Roman res publica are no longer paradigmatic for political thought.

What associates fragmentation with Romanticism? In this book, Alexander Regier explains how fracture and fragmentation form a lens through which some central concerns of Romanticism can be analysed in a particularly effective way. These categories also supply a critical framework for a discussion of fundamental issues concerning language and thought in the period. Over the course of the volume, Regier discusses fracture and fragmentation thematically and structurally, offering new readings of Wordsworth, Kant, Burke, Keats, and De Quincey, as well as analysing central intellectual presuppositions of the period. He also highlights Romanticism's importance for contemporary scholarship, especially in the writings of Benjamin and de Man. More generally, Regier's discussion of fragmentation exposes a philosophical problem that lies behind the definition of Romanticism.

The work of Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) has a variety of meanings for different interpreters. Some attribute to him a new 'scientific method' of drawing conclusions from practical or historical experience in order to form rules for successful political behaviour, with its emphasis on man's behavioural patterns rather than on moral precepts as a basis for politics. Others attribute to him a belief in the autonomy of the state - that the state is a structure governed by its own laws of development and that it finds its justification only in terms of its success. Others again emphasise his republicanism and see him as a theorist of the modern state. [Some believe his first name is the proper basis of an appellation of the Devil.] Although a lucid writer in many respects, the metaphorical way in which Machiavelli expressed some of his key concepts and his preference for working through examples rather that elaborating principles has given much scope for debate about his actual intentions. These volumes present in chronological order the most significant articles on Machiavelli written in the 20th century and offer a representative selection of the numerous interpretations of his work.

Now is a time of tremendous anxiety about the present and future state of the world. The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy never decreases, that time marches relentlessly forward, and that systems and energy inevitably break down. Entropy thus serves as a powerful metaphor capturing expressions of growing malaise, chaotic breakdown, and death. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Entropic Philosophy: Chaos, Breakdown, and Creation, traces the development of entropic themes in philosophy, anthropology, psychoanalysis, literature, and art. It also provides tools for rethinking how to confront the urgency of the now. Entropic thinking gives voice to novel phenomena born of collapse and dissolution. Originally describing the loss of energy available for work, entropy blossoms into an umbrella concept capturing phenomena ranging from chaos, disorder, homogenization, slackening, dissipation, and ultimately, death. However, "entropy" comes from the Greek, entropia, meaning "a turning toward" or "transformation." Thus, what from one perspective induces anxiety, fear, or resignation, from another opens new ways of thinking and being that are crucial in preventing existential inertia and despair.

The Bhagavata Purana is one of the most important, central and popular scriptures of Hinduism. A medieval Sanskrit text, its influence as a religious book has been comparable only to that of the great Hindu epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Ithamar Theodor here offers the first analysis for twenty years of the Bhagavata Purana (often called the Fifth Veda ) and its different layers of meaning. He addresses its lyrical meditations on the activities of Krishna (avatar of Lord Vishnu), the central place it affords to the doctrine of bhakti (religious devotion) and its treatment of older Vedic traditions of knowledge. At the same time he places this subtle, poetical book within the context of the wider Hindu scriptures and the other Puranas, including the similar but less grand and significant Vishnu Purana. The author argues that the Bhagavata Purana is a unique work which represents the meeting place of two great orthodox Hindu traditions, the Vedic-Upanishadic and the Aesthetic. As such, it is one of India s greatest theological treatises. This book illuminates its character and continuing significance."

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.

In 1884, American historian and philosopher John Fiske published The Destiny of Man, which discussed humanity's origin, destiny and place in the universe. A leading populariser of Darwin's theory in the United States and influenced by Herbert Spencer, Fiske considers views of human progress via evolutionary social change and the harmony between science and religion. The Destiny of Man is composed of sixteen chapters that anticipate philosophical questions from a typical non-scientific audience: the origins of atheism, the shifting hierarchal positions of humanity through history as proposed by Copernicus and later by Darwin, human brain size, and the 'dawning of consciousness' as a result of the growth and development of moral sentiment and inventiveness through natural selection. Interestingly, at the end of the book, Fiske discusses the historical power relationships of ruling governments and predicts that as humans evolve and become more civilised, war will eventually end.

In this book, Christiane L. Joost-Gaugier offers the first systematic study of Pythagoras and his influence on mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, religion, medicine, music, the occult, and social life as well as on architecture and art in the late medieval and early modern eras. Following the threads of admiration for this ancient Greek sage from the fourteenth century to Kepler and Galileo in the seventeenth, this book demonstrates that Pythagoras s influence in intellectual circles Christian, Jewish, and Arab was more widespread than has previously been acknowledged. Joost-Gaugier shows that during this period Pythagoras was respected by many intellectuals in different areas of Europe. She also shows how this admiration was reflected in ideas that were applied to the visual arts by a number of well known architects and artists who sought, through the use of a visual language inspired by the memory of Pythagoras, to obtain perfect harmony in their creations. Among these were Alberti, Bramante, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Thus did, she suggests, some of the greatest art works in the Western world owe their modernity to an inspirational force that, paradoxically, had been conceived in the distant past."

What conclusions do the facts of cosmic and organic evolution require or permit on the origin and destiny of the world and the individual? From 1881 to 1925 Thomas Whittaker, an Oxford-trained scientist turned philosopher, grappled with this question, which he tried to answer by metaphysical interpretation of the sciences. The majority of the essays in this volume first appeared in Mind, and a few in other journals, while three had not been previously published. Whittaker ranges widely over some of the most daring theories of the past, from the early centuries of the common era (including Apollonius of Tyana and Origen), to the middle ages (including John Scotus Erigena and Nicholas of Cusa), the renaissance (Giordano Bruno, Shakespeare) and the early modern period. Whittaker's own view is that hypothesis and imagination are legitimate aids in the search for truth in both science and philosophy in a new synthesis.

Robert Mackintosh (1858 1933), a professor at the Congregationalist Lancashire Independent College, traces the influence of biology and evolutionism on the study of human ethics and society during the second half of the nineteenth century in this 1899 book. He begins with Comte's founding of sociology, and continues with the renewed appeal to biology for the understanding of human affairs found in the work of Darwin, Spencer and their circle. He then looks at Benjamin Kidd's Social Evolution, published in 1894 (and also reissued in this series). Fifty years after Comte, Kidd argued that sociology required further grounding by a new recourse to biology. Mackintosh supported Kidd's view. If biological clues are to afford guidance for human conduct, Mackintosh contended, they must be supplemented by a clearer moral and religious vision, and in philosophy by some scheme of metaphysical evolutionism. His work marks a transition from Darwinism to a new Hegelianism.

In 1893, the biologist and educator Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95) published the text of a public lecture on ethics and evolutionary theory. He opens Evolution and Ethics with the story of Jack and the Bean Stalk as a metaphor for cyclical evolution-the small seed that becomes a mature plant. Huxley then takes the reader on a journey through two culturally different belief systems Buddhism and Greek intellectual thought - to illustrate human attempts to understand the 'cosmic process'. Huxley outlines the growth of differing concepts of justice as populations became more organised, and how different societies dealt with the knowledge that nature is unjust. Huxley abhors the harsh applications of Darwin's work to society and decries the 'gladiatorial theory of existence'. Arguing against the concept of social Darwinism, Huxley proposes that ethical behaviour must counteract the painful effects of the 'struggle for survival' in order for society to progress.

In 1863, the biologist and educator Thomas Henry Huxley published Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature, a compilation of his public lectures on Darwin's theory of evolution - specifically the controversial idea of the ape ancestry of humans. An energetic supporter of Darwin, Huxley's argues that in order to understand the universe, everyone must know their place in the natural world. The book is divided into three parts, each written with the aim of persuading lay audiences. The first covers earlier human beliefs about exotic animals, especially 'man-like' apes. In Part 2, Huxley suggests that every animal on Earth is related in that all go through developmental stages from an egg, whether the animal is 'a silkworm or a school-boy'. Part 3 involves a discussion of recently discovered Neanderthal bones and compares prehistoric craniums to modern human skulls.

A Congregationalist clergyman, editor of the influential progressive journal The Outlook, and intimate with Henry Ward Beecher and Theodore Roosevelt, Lymon Abbott (1835-1922) played a central role in religion and politics in turn-of-the-century America. In this work, first published in 1897, Abbott shows his characteristic optimism in human moral development, arguing that the Christian faith can fully accommodate evolution as the means by which God changes and improves the world over time. Abbott writes 'not to disbelievers in evolution to prove that they are mistaken, but to believers in evolution to show them that their belief is not inconsistent with the Christian faith'. A companion to Abbott's popular previous work The Evolution of Christianity (also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection), this text presents an innovative and often elegant reconciliation of the ongoing debate concerning scientific empiricism and Christian belief.

This book explores the political ideas of the Belgian Revolution of 1830, which led to the break-up of the Restoration state of the 'united' Kingdom of the Netherlands. It uncovers the origins of liberalism and political Catholicism in the Southern Netherlands in the wake of the French Revolution, and traces the development of political language in the context of the tensions between the Northern and Southern part of the united Netherlands. It shows how differences in 'Dutch' and 'Belgian' political and intellectual history resulted in different understandings of essential political concepts such as 'sovereignty' and 'balance of powers', as well as of the nature of the constitutional order of 1815. Finally, it traces the emergence of Belgian nationalism within the discourse of opposition against the government. Stefaan Marteel therefore provides a fresh perspective on the intellectual background of the rise of the nation-state in the nineteenth century.

Under the terms of the will of the Oxford scholar Francis Henry, Earl of Bridgewater (1756-1829), a series of works was commissioned, designed to contribute to an understanding of the world as created by God. In 1834 Peter Roget, who was at the time compiling his celebrated Thesaurus, contributed two volumes to that controversial series, of which this is the first. He described in a manner designed to appeal to a wide audience the variety and complexity of the mechanical processes of the plant and animal kingdoms. Particular attention is given to those areas where animal life reveals something about human life and the man-made world, emphasising the magnificence of the all-encompassing creative process behind it. The plant kingdom is examined with the goal of establishing the mechanics behind the beauty of plant life as created by God.

In this second volume of his 1834 treatise on how God's creative process is manifest in the plant and animal kingdoms, Peter Roget, compiler of the celebrated Thesaurus, examines their physiologies. He covers aspects including nutrition and respiration, the sensory and nervous systems, the function of the brain and the reproductive process. Functions of individual plants and animals are seen as proving God's design by giving organisms the means of coexisting. The organic development process and change from the first cell beginnings to decay and death is studied closely with the aim of understanding how 'material particles first became animated with the breath of life' and why there is a time limit to their existence. The treatise concludes that God's intention pervades both kingdoms and is revealed in similarity of processes and the universal connectivity of the 'laws of analogy' that link all living things to common roots.

First published in 1896, this two-volume history of the conflict between theology and science quickly became a landmark text. It was widely recognised, along with John William Draper's History of the Conflict between Religion and Science, as a defining study of the relationship between religion and science. A distinguished educator, scholar and writer, Andrew Dickson White was the first president of Cornell University. White held the view that religion was historically opposed to progress in the field of science. He argued that any interference on the part of religion in science had always proved disastrous, whereas scientific investigation, no matter how seemingly damaging to religion, had always resulted in the highest good. This book is the culmination of thirty years of White's research, publication and lectures on the subject. Volume one discusses creation, evolution, geography, astronomy, meteorology, ethnology and antiquity.