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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Social & political philosophy
This volume sheds new light on Immanuel Kant's conception of anthropology. Neither a careful and widespread search of the sources nor a merely theoretical speculation about Kant's critical path can fully reveal the necessarily wider horizon of his anthropology. This only comes to light by overcoming all traditional schemes within Kantian studies, and consequently reconsidering the traditional divisions within Kant's thought. The goal of this book is to highlight an alternative, yet complementary path followed by Kantian anthropology with regard to transcendental philosophy. The present volume intends to develop this path in order to demonstrate how irreducible it is in what concerns some crucial claims of Kant's philosophy, such as the critical defense of the unity of reason, the search for a new method in metaphysics and the moral outcome of Kant's thought.
Although Canada is regarded as one of the least corrupt countries, this volume draws on wide ranging evidence and innovative research from scholars around the world to challenge this assumption. Corruption, defined as the "abuse of entrusted power for private gain," is often understood as being caused by internally motivated greed leading to prohibited acts in contravention of laws, rules and regulations. It can also be defined as "dishonest action that destroys people's trust." These traditional forms of corruption pose problems for Canada in a variety of policy domains, as well as "institutional corruption" evidenced by deception and financial inconsistency that undermine the effectiveness and transparency of policy objectives. This volume contains chapters that investigate various areas of corruption in Canada, ranging from corruption amongst the First Nations, to the armed forces, to the delivery of foreign assistance. It also offers suggestions to reduce future outbreaks of corruption. Each chapter provides detailed empirical analysis evidenced through real world examples that highlight key lessons amidst the numerous challenges posed by corruption. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal.
This book provides a diverse contextualization of Popper's critical rationalism concerning knowledge and his generalized attitude of criticism on appropriate social and political reforms in contemporary Africa. The book evaluates how best to address contemporary political problems, especially in politically very troubled parts of the world. To address these contemporary problems, especially as it relates to Africa, the authors found the political philosophy of Popper as suitable. The discussion of Popper's political philosophy engages us directly with all the particularities of socio-economic and political problems within contemporary Africa. In other words, it presents the truth of the present socio-political reality in Africa where the question of what kinds of political ideas and concepts can be offered as appropriate to a political environment, which so greatly faces facets of developmental issues. Although the issues and events that informed the writings of Popper's The Poverty of Historicism as well as The Open Society and Its Enemies, were among others, the rise of fascism and communism in Europe, the inventiveness of this work is how happily scholars in non-liberal societies, such as in Africa, can pick up Popper's insights and usefully work with them to offer appropriate social reforms for their society. This volume is a critical juxtaposition of Popper's ideas in a bid to make good sense of social and intellectual conditions in Africa, particularly as it relates to the scale and speed of social change that is needed in most African nations that are often ridden by corruption. The book is suitable for studies in political philosophy, economic and development studies, African Studies and Indigenous Knowledge systems.
This volume offers eleven philosophical investigations into our future relations with social robots--robots that are specially designed to engage and connect with human beings. The contributors present cutting edge research that examines whether, and on which terms, robots can become members of human societies. Can our relations to robots be said to be "social"? Can robots enter into normative relationships with human beings? How will human social relations change when we interact with robots at work and at home? The authors of this volume explore these questions from the perspective of philosophy, cognitive science, psychology, and robotics. The first three chapters offer a taxonomy for the classification of simulated social interactions, investigate whether human social interactions with robots can be genuine, and discuss the significance of social relations for the formation of human individuality. Subsequent chapters clarify whether robots could be said to actually follow social norms, whether they could live up to the social meaning of care in caregiving professions, and how we will need to program robots so that they can negotiate the conventions of human social space and collaborate with humans. Can we perform joint actions with robots, where both sides need to honour commitments, and how will such new commitments and practices change our regional cultures? The authors connect research in social robotics and empirical studies in Human-Robot Interaction to recent debates in social ontology, social cognition, as well as ethics and philosophy of technology. The book is a response to the challenge that social robotics presents for our traditional conceptions of social interaction, which presuppose such essential capacities as consciousness, intentionality, agency, and normative understanding. The authors develop insightful answers along new interdisciplinary pathways in "robophilosophy," a new research area that will help us to shape the "robot revolution," the distinctive technological change of the beginning 21st century.
A combination of economic transformation, political transitions and changes in media have substantially, if incrementally, altered the terrain for political participation globally, particularly in Asia, home to several of the most dramatic such shifts over the past two decades. This book explores political participation in Asia and how democracy and authoritarianism function under neoliberal economic relations. It examines changes that coincide seemingly perversely with a participation explosion: with mass street protests and 'occupations', energetic online contention, movements of students and workers, mobilization for and against democracy and more. Organized thematically in three parts - political participation in a 'post-democratic' context, changes in the scope and character of political space and the policing of that space - this book analyzes economic, regime and media shifts and how they function in tandem and both within and across states. Closely integrated, comparative and theoretically driven, this book will be of interest to scholars and practitioners in the fields of civil society, contentious politics or social movements, democratization, political economy/development, media and communications, political geography, sociology, comparative politics and Asian politics.
Political ethics is about how to act in response to the political-ethical challenges that confront us in everyday life. This book argues that the experience of living in illiberal regimes calls for the rethinking of common ways of understanding political ethics. It offers a Williamsian liberal-realist framework to explain how we should make sense of political ethics by focusing on the variety of normative contexts that shape political agency. It also demonstrates the usefulness of this framework by exploring the intricacies of dealing with the conflicting demands of various political offices in illiberal regimes. These demands spring from the specific constitutional purpose of these offices, the linkage of the office-holder qua office-holder with a great variety of people as well as from the constraints of the office-holder's personal integrity. -- .
A timely contribution from prominent philosophers to the public debate about morality and politics, exploring the fundamental problem of their relation and a string of specific issues. Is political morality more permissive of deception, manipulation and violence? Is there room for morality in international relations? Is patriotism a virtue? What are the moral costs of policies that keep out most of those seeking immigration or asylum? May we use torture in the 'war on terror'? What are the moral hazards of military obedience?
Cassirer's thought-provoking essay Form and Technology (1930) considers the theoretical work performed by material instruments and, in so doing, it ascribes to technology a new dignity as a genuine tool of the mind in equal company with language and art. Germinating in this essay, we find an ambitious program for a new kind of philosophy of technology that resonates with contemporary approaches focusing on material apparatuses, relational and performative processes, and the embodied, embedded, and enacted nature of perception and cognition. Cassirer's approach, however, is unique in the way that it integrates logical concerns, championed by scientifically oriented philosophers, with the concerns of the historical and cultural sciences. The current revival of interest in Cassirer's thinking has precisely to do with its potential for bridging unproductive intellectual gaps. Form and Technology, especially, provides a rich resource for current attempts, across disciplines, to develop new conceptual and ontological frameworks. Cassirer's classic essay, translated here into English for the first time, is accompanied by ten critical essays that explore its current relevance.
"Rethinking R.G. Collingwood" reviews Collingwood's thought via his
own rethinking of Hegel. It establishes the revisionary character
of Collingwood's defence of liberal civilization in theory and
practice. Collingwood is seen as avoiding the pitfalls of Hegel's
teleological historicism by developing an open and contestable
reading of the rationality of liberal civilization, which neither
reduces practice to theory nor philosophy to history. The
contemporary relevance of Collingwood's standpoint is demonstrated
by comparing it with those of recent defenders and critics of
liberalism Rawls, Lyotard and MacIntyre.
International Relations scholarship has typically engaged with vulnerability as a problem to be solved through 'rational' attempts to craft a global order marked by universality, predictability and stability. By recovering an awareness of the persistently vulnerable human subject, this book argues that we can re-engage with issues of emotion, relationality, community and history that are often excluded from the study of global politics. This collection proposes an agonistic approach to international ethics and politics, eschewing a rationalism that radically privileges white Western conceptions of the world and that actively oppresses alternative voices. The Vulnerable Subject addresses issues such as trust, judgement, climate change, identity, and post-colonial relations, allowing for a profound rethinking of one of the core driving assumptions at the heart of international politics.
Despite, or quite possibly because of, the structuralist, post-structuralist, and deconstructionist critiques of subjectivity, master signifiers, and political foundations, contemporary philosophy has been marked by a resurgence in interest in questions of subjectivity and the political. Guided by the contention that different conceptions of the political are, at least implicitly, committed to specific conceptions of subjectivity while different conceptions of subjectivity have different political implications, this collection brings together an international selection of scholars to explore these notions and their connection. Rather than privilege one approach or conception of the subjectivity-political relationship, this volume emphasizes the nature and status of the and in the 'subjectivity' and 'the political' schema. By thinking from the place between subjectivity and the political, it is able to explore this relationship from a multitude of perspectives, directions, and thinkers to show the heterogeneity, openness, and contested nature of it. While the contributions deal with different themes or thinkers, the themes/thinkers are linked historically and/or conceptually, thereby providing coherence to the volume. Thinkers addressed include Arendt, Butler, Levinas, Agamben, Derrida, Kristeva, Adorno, Gramsci, Mill, Hegel, and Heidegger, while the subjectivity-political relation is engaged with through the mediation of the law-political, ethics-politics, theological-political, inside-outside, subject-person, and individual-institution relationships, as well as through concepts such as genius, happiness, abjection, and ugliness. The original essays in this volume will be of interest to researchers in philosophy, politics, political theory, critical theory, cultural studies, history of ideas, psychology, and sociology.
The problem of intergenerational justice is among the most important issues in contemporary politics. Yet contemporary philosophers and political theorists have had great difficulty coming to grips with the nature and extent of our intergenerational obligations. This book examines the historical roots of intergenerational justice and analyzes this concept critically. Contemporary approaches are critiqued for their inability to address adequately such essential intergenerational questions as whether, and under what circumstances, we have an obligation to perpetuate the human species, the moral implications of our power to affect the identity of future persons, and the nature of our obligations to the dead. The concluding chapters propose a broader understanding of intergenerational justice and the moral necessity of establishing a tradition of just intergenerational action as our legacy to posterity.
Modern states claim rights of jurisdiction and control over particular geographical areas and their associated natural resources. Boundaries of Authority explores the possible moral bases for such territorial claims by states, in the process arguing that many of these territorial claims in fact lack any moral justification. The book maintains throughout that the requirement of states' justified authority over persons has normative priority over, and as a result severely restricts, the kinds of territorial rights that states can justifiably claim, and it argues that the mere effective administration of justice within a geographical area is insufficient to ground moral authority over residents of that area. The book argues that only a theory of territorial rights that takes seriously the morality of the actual history of states' acquisitions of power over land and the land's residents can adequately explain the nature and extent of states' moral rights over particular territories. Part I of the book examines the interconnections between states' claimed rights of authority over particular sets of subject persons and states' claimed authority to control particular territories. It contains an extended critique of the dominant "Kantian functionalist " approach to such issues. Part II organizes, explains, and criticizes the full range of extant theories of states' territorial rights, arguing that a little-appreciated Lockean approach to territorial rights is in fact far better able to meet the principal desiderata for such theories. Where the first two parts of the book concern primarily states' claims to jurisdiction over territories, Part III of the book looks closely at the more property-like territorial rights that states claim - in particular, their claimed rights to control over the natural resources on and beneath their territories and their claimed rights to control and restrict movement across (including immigration over) their territorial borders.
The book shows the ideological underpinning of the economist's work, and the ideological perspectives are those that have largely prevailed in the last couple of centuries: liberalism, nationalism and socialism. It is on the ground and strength of these ideologies that systems of political economy have been built. Roselli explores the connections between theory and value judgements to identify the philosophical premises behind the economic reasoning of economists as diverse as Smith, Ricardo, Marx, Pareto, Keynes, Hayek, among others. Liberalism originally leaned towards an unhindered laissez-faire, then towards a wider role of the State in the economic system, under the influence of socialist ideology, then again it has relied on an individualistic approach to issues of wealth production and distribution; more recently the unrealiability of this approach has been revealed by systemic crises, suggesting new reflections and uncertainties about the coherence of economic reasoning with the liberal idea: an institutional and historical perspective may open new spaces to the understanding of a liberal and capitalistic economy. The vicissitudes of economic nationalism, its statist and protectionist features, its decline and recent resurgence are examined, being unclear what shape it is currently taking from an economic and political viewpoint. This is particularly obscure in the case of that specific form of nationalism called populism. The decline and fall of Marx's historical materialism cannot hide the inherent contrast of interest between the two sides of a labour contract. The lasting legacy of socialism is the enduring and multiform relevance - from a cowed labour force to environmental issues - of social themes in modern economies.
The substantially revised third edition of this widely-used text introduces nine major theoretical approaches and their key protagonists, including a new chapter on global justice, and assesses their ability to generate clear, consistent and illuminating accounts of justice as a distinctive social, political and legal value.
This book aims to explore precisely how modern Japanese poetry has remained central to public life in both Japan and its former colony of Taiwan. Though classical Japanese poetry has captivated the imagination of Asian studies scholars, little research has been conducted to explore its role in public life as a discourse influential in defining both the modern Japanese empire and contemporary postcolonial negotiations of identity. This book shows how highly visible poetry in regular newspaper columns and blogs have in various historical situations in Japan and colonial Taiwan contested as well as promoted diverse colonial imaginaries. This poetry reflects both contemporary life and traditional poetics with few counterpoints in Western media. Methodologically, this book offers a defense of the public influence of poetry, each chapter enlisting a wide range of social and media theorists from Japan, Europe, and North America to explore specific historical moments in an original recasting of intertextuality as a vital feature of active inter-evental material engagements. In this book, rather than recite a standard survey of literary movements and key poets, the approach taken is to examine uses of poetry shown not only to support colonialism and imperialism, emerging objectionable forms of exploitation as well as the destruction of ecologies (including old-growth forests in Taiwan and the Fukushima Disaster), but also to present a medium of resistance, a minor literature for registering protest, forming transnational affiliations, and promoting grass-roots democracy. The book is based on years of research and fieldwork partially in conjunction with the production of a documentary film, Horizons of the Rising Sun: Postcolonial Nostalgia and Politics in the Taiwan Tanka Association Today (2017).
Contemporary deep-reaching changes - whether in financial or real economy, in Europe's political conditions, in the context of scientific theories, in the field of global (environmental) security, or gender relations - are also a challenge to philosophy. The volume comprises cutting-edge scholarly articles from renowned philosophers with various geographical backgrounds and from different philosophical strands. Next to investigating general questions as to the relation of philosophy and critique (What is philosophical critique and which philosophical concepts of critique are of importance today? Where do we need it most? Where are its limits?), the articles focus on issues like theories of democracy and modes of election; the roles of emotions in the political realm; challenges from a widespread discontent in society to politics and science; changes to social identities and different theoretical approaches to social identity formation. The book is indispensable for all who are interested in what contemporary philosophy has to say on crucial issues of our time.
How did European imperialism shape the ideas and practices of religion in East and Southeast Asia? "Casting Faiths" brings together eleven scholars to show how Western law, governance, education and mission shaped the basic understanding of what religion is, and what role it should play in society.
Negotiating the terrain between techno-optimism and eco-pessimism, this work establishes the political connections between technologies of "the body," property, and the environment. Specific technologies of the body, such as surrogacy and in vitro fertilization, are examined in relation to their political and legal constructions. Next, Shevory analyzes private property as an evolving historical concept that implicates environmental and biological transformations with particular attention given to biotechnology cases. He then considers the body's appearance and its alterations through plastic surgery, dieting, or piercing as political constructions. A theoretical overview specifies technoprogressivist (liberal) and technophobic traditions, especially as they have evolved in the United States during the second half of the 20th-century. Drawing upon critical and feminist theories, Shevory specifies a body politics that negotiates the terrain between these two traditions. Body technologies and markets, he argues, interact to consolidate and reinforce dominant systems of power, while at the same time resisting and sometimes subverting them. "Technology" is often a factor in the fragmentation of evolving political ideological discourses on the "left" and "right; " however, the resulting instabilities create the potential for both the expansion of global capital and its subversion via democratic interventions.
The world cries out for ethical leaders. We expect the best, but we are often left profoundly disappointed. While leadership programs may feature ethics as part of their curriculum, the approach is often either simplistic or overly esoteric. This book addresses this scarcity of resources for training ethical leaders by providing a primer of several ethical frameworks accompanied by extended examples to help inform decision-making. The text also presents a number of leadership models that claim an ethical component. By providing a consistent case analysis based on the Five Components of Leadership Model, readers benefit from a uniform approach to evaluating ethical leadership. By using the Five Components of Leadership Model as a consistent point of reference, McManus, Ward, and Perry offer readers a variety of insights on ethical leadership. Conclusions include the importance of drawing from multiple ethical and leadership perspectives, moving away from exclusively leader-centric approaches to ethical leadership, the importance of asking questions to maximize self-awareness, and considering multiple points of view whenever addressing an ethical conundrum. To connect 'ethical thinking' and 'ethical doing', the text uses classroom-friendly framing questions, timelines, visual models, summary tables, case studies, discussion questions, and recommended resources for additional study. After reading the book, students will benefit from a foundational understanding of theories and models of both ethics and leadership, as well as a concrete view of what these theories and models look like in practice. Professors will benefit by having all these resources in one text, viewed through the lens of the Five Components of Leadership Model. Striving to be both comprehensive and approachable, this book is an excellent resource for upper-level students studying leadership, especially those who are new to philosophy or ethics. It is inclusive enough to serve as a primary text or as a supplement for a well-rounded ethics or leadership course. Contributors include: J. Cervantes, A. Council, B.P. Dean, G.G. Enck, R.M. McManus, B.A. Pauchnik, A.K. Perry, S. Raible, M. Saleem-Tanner, P.H. Sarkaria, L. Sequeira, M. Sowcik, J.N. Thomas, S.C. Trainor, S. Varnon-Hughes, S.J. Ward
Does contemporary anti-capitalism tend towards, as Slavoj Zizek believes, nihilism, or does it tend towards, as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri believe, true egalitarian freedom? Within The Cultural Contradictions of Anti-Capitalism, Fletcher presents an answer that manages to tend towards both simultaneously. In entering into contemporary debates on radicalism, this innovative volume proposes a revised conception of Hardt and Negri's philosophy of emancipatory desire. Indeed, Fletcher reassesses Hardt and Negri's history of Western radicalism and challenges their notion of an alter-modernity break from bourgeois modernity. In addition to this, this title proposes the idea of Western anti-capitalism as a spirit within a spirit, exploring how anti-capitalist movements in the West pose a genuine challenge to the capitalist order while remaining dependent on liberalist assumptions about the emancipatory individual. Inspired by post-structuralism and rejecting both revolutionary transcendence and notions of an underlying desiring purity, The Cultural Contradictions of Anti-Capitalism offers new insight into how liberal capitalist society persistently produces its own forms of resistance against itself. This book will appeal to graduate and postgraduate students interested in fields such as: Sociology, Politics, International Relations, Cultural Studies, History, and Philosophy.
Understanding Max Weber's contribution to social theory is vital for students and scholars of social science. This insightful text offers critical discussion of Weber's ideas, focusing on their uses - how they have been appropriated and applied to contemporary events. Written by one of the world's leading Weber scholars, this is an essential read.
This book presents a cutting-edge critical analysis of the trope of miscegenation and its biopolitical implications in contemporary Palestinian and Israeli literature, poetry, and discourse. The relationship between nationalism and demographics are examined through the narrative and poetic intrigue of intimacy between Arabs and Jews, drawing from a range of theoretical perspectives, including public sphere theory, orientalism, and critical race studies. Revisiting the controversial Brazilian writer Gilberto Freyre, who championed miscegenation in his revisionary history of Brazil, the book deploys a comparative investigation of Palestinian and Israeli writers' preoccupation with the mixed romance. Author Hella Bloom Cohen offers new interpretations of works by Mahmoud Darwish, A.B. Yehoshua, Orly Castel-Bloom, Nathalie Handal, and Rula Jebreal, among others.
This book examines the politics of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania during the crucial period between the Russian tsar Peter the Great's victory over Sweden at the battle of Poltava and the 1717 Silent Sejm, the Polish-Lithuanian parliament's session which is traditionally seen as responsible for opening the way to Russian domination of Polish-Lithuanian politics. It not only challenges the accepted view of the passivity of the Lithuanian gentry and their subservience to the Russians, but also presents a clear view of how the Lithuanian economy and political system were functioning in 1710-1717, factors which have never been studied in depth in any language. Sapoka argues that much more blame for the Confederations of Vilnius and Tarnogrod that had led to the Silent Sejm can be attributed to the Polish king Augustus II than is argued by the conventional scholarship. By so completely and deliberately ignoring the Commonwealth's institutions and refusing to work within them, the Polish king provoked justified suspicion that by destroying the basis of the consensual political system, he wanted to introduce absolute monarchy.
The papers in this volume explore various issues relating to theories of individual and collective choice, and theories of social welfare. The topics include individual and collective rationality, motivation and intention in economics, coercion, public goods, climate change, and voting theory. The book offers an excellent overview over latest research in these fields. |
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