In recent decades, scholars have vigorously revised Jacob Burckhardt's notion that the free, untrammeled, and essentially modern Western individual emerged in Renaissance Italy. Douglas Biow does not deny the strong cultural and historical constraints that placed limits on identity formation in the early modern period. Still, as he contends in this witty, reflective, and generously illustrated book, the category of the individual was important and highly complex for a variety of men in this particular time and place, for both those who belonged to the elite and those who aspired to be part of it. Biow explores the individual in light of early modern Italy's new patronage systems, educational programs, and work opportunities in the context of an increased investment in professionalization, the changing status of artisans and artists, and shifting attitudes about the ideology of work, fashion, and etiquette. He turns his attention to figures familiar (Benvenuto Cellini, Baldassare Castiglione, Niccolo Machiavelli, Jacopo Tintoretto, Giorgio Vasari) and somewhat less so (the surgeon-physician Leonardo Fioravanti, the metallurgist Vannoccio Biringuccio). One could excel as an individual, he demonstrates, by possessing an indefinable nescio quid, by acquiring, theorizing, and putting into practice a distinct body of professional knowledge, or by displaying the exclusively male adornment of impressively designed facial hair. Focusing on these and other matters, he reveals how we significantly impoverish our understanding of the past if we dismiss the notion of the individual from our narratives of the Italian and the broader European Renaissance.

American Imaginaries examines the diverse societies and nations of the Western hemisphere as they have emerged across the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Exploring cities, capitalism, nations, nationalism, and politics from both comparative and transnational perspectives, the book develops a unique approach based on the paradigms of civilizational analysis and social imaginaries. As well as taking a fresh perspective on the Americas, American Imaginaries gives proper analysis of multinational and intra-national regions and, crucially, the civilizational force of resurgent indigenous nations. Ideal for scholars and students of history, Atlantic Studies, comparative and historical sociology and social theory, the book engages with debates about modernity, civilizations, historical constellations, and social imaginaries.

The Traite des systemes is a milestone in the intellectual history of the eighteenth century. This is a study of its content, structure, sources and importance. It includes a discussion of Condillac's analysis of good and bad systems, the adequacy of his knowledge and under standing of the speculative metaphysics of the preceding century, the effectiveness of his method of attack on seventeenth-century metaphysical systems, his conception of empirical and scientific method, and in particular his understanding of the role of hypotheses, his application of the Newtonian scientific method to politics, physics, and the arts, and, finally, his preoccupation with the meaning of words and with the origin and purpose oflanguage. Speculative metaphysical systems, such as those of Descartes, Malebranche, Boursier, Leibniz and Spinoza, are attacked by Con dillac, as are popular superstitions and prejudices, with the weapon of linguistic criticism. It is the systematic use of this weapon which makes the Traite des systemes more than a reflection of his contem poraries' antipathy towards speculative metaphysics. In memory of my MOTHER and FATHER ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to several people. I should like first and foremost to thank Dr. W. H. Barber, who has for many years tirelessly given me encouragement and invaluable assistance. I wish to thank also Professors RH. Rasmussen, A. D. Wilshere and C. Wake for their help and their support in the early days of the preparation of this study. lowe special thanks also to Mrs. M. V."

This volume contains a number of studies on Jewish-Christian re lations, in which special attention is given to the Netherlands and England, and the texts of some recently discovered and other rare documents in the same field. The work originates in a symposium on this subject held on 23 January 1985 at the University of Leiden under the auspices of the Sir Thomas Browne Institute for the study of Anglo-Dutch relations. Various authors have contributed to this volume. Each author is responsible for his own contribu tion; thus, in cases of discrepancies in interpretation, orthography or method of transcription we have made no attempt at harmoni zation. We thank all those who have made publication possible. The Stichting Dr Hendrik Muller's Vaderlandsch Fonds gave a gener ous grant in defrayal of the cost of printing, and the Ir. F.E.D. Enschede-Stichting kindly covered the additional expenses re sulting from the translation and editing of some of the contribu tions. Last but not least we should like to thank Prof. R.H. Pop kin for his stimulating interest in the publication of this volume."

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.

Sudanese Intellectuals in the Global Milieu: Capturing Cultural Capital propels Sudanese intellectuals into the global intellectual milieu and argues for their place in world intellectual history. The contributors posit that Sudan is currently in its most uncertain and perhaps most generative period, as the unrest, conflicts, and upheavals of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries threw Sudanese intellectuals and activists into identity, economic, environmental, religious, and existential crises. Despite these crises, the unrest has created a period of knowledge production and cultural production in Sudan. The contributors to the collection are Sudanese intellectuals who explore the history and evolution of knowledge production, thought, and cultural capital in Sudan.

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.

The general view of scholars is that the Kabbalah had no meaningful influence on Leibniz's thought. } But on the basis of new evidence I am convinced that the question must be reopened. The Kabbalah did influence Leibniz, and a recognition of this will lead to both a better understanding of the supposed "quirkiness, 2 of Leibniz's philosophy and an appreciation ofthe Kabbalah as an integral but hitherto ignored factor in the emergence of the modem secular and scientifically oriented world. During the past twenty years there has been increasing willingness to recognize the important ways in which mystical and occult thinking contributed to the development of science and the emergence 3 of toleration. However, the Kabbalah, particularly the Lurianic Kabbalah with its monistic vitalism and optimistic philosophy of perfectionism and universal salvation, has not yet been integrated into the new historiography, although it richly deserves to be. On the basis of manuscripts in libraries at Hanover and Wolfenbiittel, it is clear that Leibniz's relationship with Francis Mercury van Helmont (1614- 1698) and Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1636-1689), the two leading Christian Kabbalists of the period, was much closer than previously imagined and that his direct knowledge of their writings, especially the collection of 4 kabbalistic texts they published in the Kabbala Denudata, was far more detailed than most scholars have realized. During 1688 Leibniz spent more than a month at Sulzbach with von Rosenroth.

Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy is an annual series, presenting a selection of the best current work in the history of early modern philosophy. It focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries -- the extraordinary period of intellectual flourishing that begins, very roughly, with Descartes and his contemporaries and ends with Kant. It also publishes papers on thinkers or movements outside of that framework, provided they are important in illuminating early modern thought.
The articles in OSEMP will be of importance to specialists within the discipline, but the editors also intend that they should appeal to a larger audience of philosophers, intellectual historians, and others who are interested in the development of modern thought.

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)

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.

When this book was first published, more than five years ago, I added an appendix on How the Pythagoreans discovered Proposition 11.5 of the 'Elements'. I hoped that this appendix, although different in some ways from the rest of the book, would serve to illustrate the kind of research which needs to be undertaken, if we are to acquire a new understanding of the historical development of Greek mathematics. It should perhaps be mentioned that this book is not intended to be an introduction to Greek mathematics for the general reader; its aim is to bring the problems associated with the early history of deductive science to the attention of classical scholars, and historians and philos ophers of science. I should like to conclude by thanking my translator, Mr. A. M. Ungar, who worked hard to produce something more than a mechanical translation. Much of his work was carried out during the year which I spent at Stanford as a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. This enabled me to supervise the work of transla tion as it progressed. I am happy to express my gratitude to the Center for providing me with this opportunity. Arpad Szabo NOTE ON REFERENCES The following books are frequently referred to in the notes. Unless otherwise stated, the editions are those given below. Burkert, W. Weisheit und Wissensclzaft, Studien zu Pythagoras, Philo laos und Platon, Nuremberg 1962."

Eighteenth-century Britain saw an explosion of interest in its own past, a past now expanded to include more than classical history and high politics.
Antiquaries, men interested in all aspects of the past, added a distinctive new dimension to literature in Georgian Britain in their attempts to reconstruct and recover the past. Corresponding and publishing in an extended network, antiquaries worked at preserving and investigating records and physical remains in England, Scotland and Ireland. In doing so they laid solid foundations for all future study in British prehistory, archaeology and numismatics, and for local and national history as a whole. Naturally, they saw the past partly in their own image. While many antiquaries were better at fieldwork and recording than at synthesis, most were neither crabbed eccentrics nor dilettanti. At their best, as in the works of Richard Gough or William Stukeley, antiquaries set new standards of accuracy and perception in fields ranging from the study of the ancient Britons to that of medieval architecture. Antiquaries is the definitive account of a great historical enterprise.

The portentous terms and phrases associated with the first decades of the Frankfurt School - exile, the dominance of capitalism, fascism - seem as salient today as they were in the early twentieth century. The Routledge Companion to the Frankfurt School addresses the many early concerns of critical theory and brings those concerns into direct engagement with our shared world today. In this volume, a distinguished group of international scholars from a variety of disciplines revisits the philosophical and political contributions of Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Jurgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, and others. Throughout, the Companion's focus is on the major ideas that have made the Frankfurt School such a consequential and enduring movement. It offers a crucial resource for those who are trying to make sense of the global and cultural crisis that has now seized our contemporary world.

Where does Extreme Liberal Cynicism--so common in academic and popular culture--come from, and is it capable of solving the problems it identifies? A Critique of Liberal Cynicism: Peter Sloterdijk, Judith Butler, and Critical Liberalism identifies the motivations and resources within liberal cynicism and their potential for overcoming its pernicious extremes. Will Barnes describes Extreme Liberal Cynicism as a product of mourning, guilt, and the experience of powerlessness stemming from the trauma of holding liberal investments in a world in which these investments are vulnerable to ideological critique and seem to have failed. Extreme Liberal Cynicism seeks invulnerability through disavowing the efficacy of its constitutive ideals achieved via a reified hopelessness that eclipses trauma, guilt, and disempowerment leaving the cynic unhappy, alienated, hostile, obstinate, delusional, and desperate; thus, it is a failing self-defense mechanism. Barnes argues that although Extreme Liberal Cynicism is rationally unjustifiable and intrinsically harmful, it also contains the impetus for a reappropriation of its complex desires and losses. This adjustment could compel the extreme cynic to maintain a moderate critical liberal cynicism committed to critiquing and reinvigorating its constitutive ideals of freedom, equality, and justice, and thereby contribute positively to progressive politics.

Acclaimed writer and historian Noel Malcolm presents his sensational discovery of a new work by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679): a propaganda pamphlet on behalf of the Habsburg side in the Thirty Years' War, translated by Hobbes from a Latin original. Malcolm's book explores a fascinating episode in seventeenth-century history, illuminating both the practice of early modern propaganda and the theory of "reason of state."

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.

J. B. Schneewind presents a selection of his published essays on ethics, the history of ethics and moral psychology, together with a new piece offering an intellectual autobiography. The volume ranges across the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries: it includes Schneewind's early anti-foundationalist "Moral Knowledge and Moral Principles," the classic "The Misfortunes of Virtue," and other early essays on Kant's relation to pre-Kantian moral philosophy; also a long piece on "The Active Powers," and Schneewind's own interpretation of Kant's moral philosophy. These writings provide excellent introductions to Schneewind's two long books, and supplement them in important ways.

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.

This book draws upon the work of Georg Simmel to explore the limits, tensions and dynamism of social life through a close analysis of the works produced in the final years of his life and reveals what they might still offer some 100 years later. Focusing on the relationships between worlds, lives and fragments in these works, David Beer opens up a conceptual toolkit for understanding life as both an individual experience and as a deeply social phenomenon. Taking the reader through artistic and musical forms of inspiration, to the problems of culture and on to the conceptual understanding of lived experience, the book illuminates the richness of Simmel's ideas and thinking. This sophisticated dialogue with Simmel's lesser known later works will provide fresh insights for students and scholars of cultural and social theory and pave the way for a reinvigorated engagement with his ideas.

This volume covers a broad range of everyday private and public, touristic, commercial and fictional encounters between Britons and continental Europeans, in a variety of situations and places: moments that led to a meaningful exchange of opinions, practices, or concepts such as friendship or politeness. It argues that, taken together, travel accounts, commercial advice, letters, novels and philosophical works of the long eighteenth century, reveal the growing impact of British sociability on the sociable practices on the continent, and correspondingly, the convivial turn of the Enlightenment. In particular, the essays collected here discuss the ways and means - in conversations, through travel guides or literary works - by which readers and writers grappled with their cultural differences in the field of sociability. The first part deals with travellers, the second section with the spreading of various cultural practices, and the third with fictional encounters in philosophical dialogues and novels.

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.

In its portrayal of Judaism as a worldwide conspiracy dedicated to the destruction of Christian civilization, the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion remains one of the most infamous documents ever written. Despite being proven a crude forgery, the pamphlet managed to pervade twentieth-century thinking, often being twisted to suit its handlers' purposes, and to justify the most extreme persecution of the Jews. In A Rumor About the Jews, Stephen Eric Bronner provides a history of this notorious fabrication-one which has renewed salience in a "post truth" society dominated by "fake news"-and explores its influence on right-wing movements throughout the twentieth century and the ongoing appeal of bigotry. This new edition of Bronner's 2000 classic (described by Kirkus as "the best short book on anti-Semitism") expands the arguments of the first edition, bringing the work up to date in a new political context.