This book offers a cognitive-semantic insight into the roots of the human decisionmaking process, using the metaphor of CHOICE as CUBE. The areas of key interest are language, culture, and education as forms of social organization. This book addresses issues relevant to a number of fields, including social epistemology, cognitive linguistics, cognitive anthropology, philosophy, culture and education studies, and will be of interest to readers in these and related disciplines.

This timely anthology brings into sharp relief the extent of violence against women. Its range is global and far reaching in terms of the number of victims. There are deeply entrenched values that need to be rooted out and laid bare. This text offers a philosophical analysis of the problem, with important insights from the various contributors. Topics range from sexual assault to media violence, prostitution and pornography, domestic violence, and sexual harassment. Each of the four parts include essays which tackle these issues and provide us with tools for bringing about change. The philosophical approaches to the topic give readers insight into the harms of interpersonal violence and its impact on the lives of its victims. Analyzing Violence Against Women calls us to examine public policies and work for systemic change. In the process, we are reminded that the concerns of the discipline of Philosophy encompasses issues with a wider scope. Students will especially benefit from seeing how the various authors grapple with this pressing issue and clarify why we need to bring about change.

"Marx Through Post-Structuralism" presents a thorough critical examination of the readings of Marx given by four post-structuralist thinkers, all key figures in Continental philosophy: Jean-Francois Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze. Arguing that both Marx and the post-structuralists seek to produce a genuinely materialist philosophy, the author aims to develop a better understanding of both Marx and post-structuralism and in so doing to reflect on the possibilities and problems for materialist philosophy more broadly.
Against the common assumption that post-structuralism begins with a rejection of Marx, Choat argues that Marx has been a key influence on post-structuralist thought and that each of the four thinkers examined affirms Marx's contemporary significance. By looking at how these thinkers have read Marx - analysing their direct comments, unspoken uses, and implicit criticisms - the book demonstrates that there is a distinct and original post-structuralist approach to Marx that allows us to read him in a new light.

This book presents a set theoretical approach to sociological research. It revisits existing sociological approaches and discusses their limitations, before suggesting an alternative. While the existing canonical approaches of Positivism, Conflictualism, and Pragmatism are based on biology, history, and physics, respectively, the set theoretical approach is based on mathematics. Utilising its philosophical exploration delineated by Alain Badiou, the book further translates his work into the field of social science. The result of this translation is termed Multiplitism, which evades the limiting contradictions of existing approaches. Drawing on the mathematical notion of 'set' and relating it to recent sociological turns such as the relational and the ontological, the book proposes a scale-relativity through which the researcher (as subject) and the researched (as object) are integrated. The book will be of interest to social scientists, particularly social theorists and advanced level students.

Hegel's enduring importance lies in the fact that his philosophy sheds light on many contemporary problems; his conception of freedom enables us to reconcile many of the differences that divide liberalism and communitarianism. While liberalism tends to overemphasize the individual and devalue the community, communitarianism tends to do the reverse. One of his central aims is to integrate liberalism's concern for the political rights and interests of individuals within the framework of a community. He tries to reconcile the individual and community in a way that creates the proper mix of liberty and authority. One of Hegel's goals is to discover social structures that will allow individuals to escape the alienation that characterizes contemporary life. He sought a method of reconciling his contemporaries to the modern world by overcoming the things that split the self from the social world; that is, a place where people are at home in the social world. A sense of estrangement is all too common, even for those who enjoy more personal freedom and material abundance than ever thought possible. While Hegel is speaking directly to and about his contemporaries, their social world bears much in common with ours. Consequently, his attempt to reconcile philosophical and social contradictions can elucidate our own condition. While the modern world reflects important contributions, the advent of modern liberalism leads to excessive individualism that fragments social life, leaving individuals disconnected and adrift from meaningful social life. The major goal of Hegel's political philosophy is to reconcile the individual with his or her political community in a way that overcomes the alienation of modern life.

Our cosmic soup is in an endless churn, changing the circumstances of events from moment to moment. Russ Otter swims in this cosmic soup every waking moment, to discover, learn, fail, and grow. In this, the second edition of his "Swimming in Cosmic Soup," he shares his most recent discoveries and theories from his lifelong quest for understanding, truth, and peace.

This study provides a review of the scientific knowledge we have of our universe, presented in easy-to-understand terms, and a suggestion of what this might mean to us. It takes a look at religion from a new perspective, one in which all sentient people can enjoy a loving, religious life whose teachings are removed from human extrapolations, rituals, suppositions, and institutions. It also offers a pragmatic view of theocratic histories-and the fallout we are living with today as a result.

Otter presents an examination-using responsibility, freedom, and ethics-of the politically correct culture that leaves no stone unturned for the mischief this is brought down upon society, along with a look at the nature of politics and the direction of his own politics, coupled with the ultimate force and value of humor.

In this study, Otter presents an engaging ride through philosophy, history, and science as he questions assumptions and the great unknowns of mystery, discovery, and hope.

This book explores the implication of diversity for humanism. Through the insights of academics and activists, it highlights both the successes and failures related to diversity marking humanism in the US and internationally. It offers a timely depiction of how humanism in general as well as how particular humanist communities have wrestled with the nature of our changing world, and the issues that surface in relationship to markers of difference.

John Searle (1932-) is one of the most famous living American philosophers. A pupil of J. L. Austin at Oxford in the 1950s, he is currently Mills Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Language at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1995 John Searle published "The Construction of Social Reality", a text which not only promises to disclose the institutional backdrop against which speech takes place, but initiate a new 'philosophy of society'. Since then "The Construction of Social Reality" has been subject to a flurry of criticism. While many of Searle's interlocutors share the sense that the text marks an important breakthrough, he has time and again accused critics of misunderstanding his claims. Despite Searle's characteristic crispness and clarity there remains some confusion, among both philosophers and sociologists, regarding the significance of his proposals. This book traces some of the high points of this dialogue, leveraging Searle's own clarifications to propose a new way of understanding the text. In particular, Joshua Rust looks to Max Weber in suggesting that Searle has articulated an ideal type. In locating The Construction of Social Reality under the umbrella of one of sociology's founding fathers, this book not only makes Searle's text more accessible to the readers in the social sciences, but presents Max Weber as a thinker worthy of philosophical reconsideration. Moreover, the recharacterization of Searle's claims in terms of the ideal type helps facilitate a comparison between Searle and other social theorists such as Talcott Parsons.

This book explores the philosophical writings of Gerda Walther (1897-1977). It features essays that recover large parts of Walther's oeuvre in order to show her contribution to phenomenology and philosophy. In addition, the volume contains an English translation of part of her major work on mysticism. The essays consider the interdisciplinary implications of Gerda Walther's ideas. A student of Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein, and Alexander Pfander, she wrote foundational studies on the ego, community, mysticism and religion, and consciousness. Her discussions of empathy, identification, the ego and ego-consciousness, alterity, God, mysticism, sensation, intentionality, sociality, politics, and woman are relevant not only to phenomenology and philosophy but also to scholars of religion, women's and gender studies, sociology, political science, and psychology. Gerda Walther was one of the important figures of the early phenomenological movement. However, as a woman, she could not habilitate at a German university and was, therefore, denied a position. Her complete works have yet to be published. This ground-breaking volume not only helps readers discover a vital voice but it also demonstrates the significant contributions of women to early phenomenological thinking.

This book provides a thorough interdisciplinary analysis of the ways in which artists have engaged with political and feminist grassroots movements to characterise a new direction in the production of feminist art. The authors conceptualise feminist art in Turkey through the lens of feminist philosophy by offering a historical analysis of how feminism and art interacts, analysing emerging feminist artwork and exploring the ways in which feminist art as a form opens alternative political spaces of social collectivities and dissent, to address epistemic injustices. The book also explores how the global art and feminist movements (particularly in Europe) have manifested themselves in the art scenery of Turkey and argues that feminist art has transformed into a form of political and protest art which challenges the hegemonic masculinity dominating the aesthetic debates and political sphere. It is an invaluable reading for students and scholars of sociology of art, gender studies and political sociology.

How might we reinvent the humanities? This is the question at the heart of this provocative volume. It is a difficult mission and definitely one which needs to be addressed with increasing urgency. There is no better cast to confront and problematize this question than the contributors to Conflicting Humanities. They are world-renowned thinkers who can tackle the problem as researchers and teachers but also as prominent public intellectuals. Taking the intellectual and political legacies of Edward Said as a point of departure and frame of reference, the contributors - working in a range of disciplinary settings - consider the current condition of humanism and the humanities. Said's definition of the core task of the Humanities as the pursuit of democratic criticism remains more urgent than ever, though it needs to be supplemented by gender, environmental, and anti-racist perspectives as well as by detailed analysis of the necro-political governmentality of our time. An innovative piece of scholarship, this volume is committed to the refusal of a world riven by new kinds of warcraft, injustice and exploitation.

Edited by veteran Czech diplomat and senior religion scholar Glenn Hughes, The Presence of the Past presents new insights from a conference hosted by the Vaclav Havel Program for Human Rights and Diplomacy at Florida International University, in cooperation with the Czech non-profit organization Post Bellum and the Vaclav Havel Library. Its fundamental topic is memory, the human capacity to retain its contents in the flux of time, which is explored and discussed both theoretically and in terms of current action-oriented public discourse. The distinguished group of philosophers, theologians, political scientists, historians, journalists, and political activists who contributed to this volume share their perspectives on pressing issues in the modern world, at the nexus of politics and philosophy. This book's most central goal is to bring together those who are used to operating in the realm of ideas, in the so-called "ivory tower," and those who work on the ground-sharp observers of human matters, trained to study them from different perspectives and exposed in their daily lives to the practical problems connected with our capacities of memory, individual or collective. The aim of this dialogue and communication is to open a path to a new beginning. A postscript tries to demonstrate that such an encounter is truly possible; that it can even be productive, and make a good deal of sense.

This volume employs new empirical data to examine the internationalization of the social sciences and humanities (SSH). While the globalization dynamics that have transformed the shape of the world over the last decades has been the subject of a growing number of scientific studies, very few such studies have set out to analyze the globalization of social and human sciences themselves. Arguing against the complacent assumption that Science is 'international by nature', this work demonstrates that the growing circulation of scholars and scientific ideas is a complex, contradictory and contested process. Arranged thematically, the chapters in this volume present a coherent exploration of patterns of transnationalization, South-North and East-West exchanges, and transnational regionalization. Further, they offer fresh insight into specific topics including the influence of the Anglo-American research infrastructure and the development of social and human sciences in postcolonial contexts. Featuring contributions from leading international scholars in the field, this work will advance the research agenda and will have interdisciplinary appeal for scholars from across the social sciences.

This book addresses the fate of intellectuals in modern culture and politics. Russell Jacoby's seminal The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe (1987, 2000) introduced the term "public intellectual" and gave rise to heated controversy. Here Jacoby assesses contemporary public intellectuals, their profound failings and limited achievements. The book includes biting appraisals of well-known intellectuals, such as Noam Chomsky, Hannah Arendt, and Bernard-Henri Levy, as well as interventions on violence, utopia and multiculturalism.

The phrase "solidarity of the shaken" was introduced into the today's political vocabulary by Jan Patocka, one of the last students of the philosopher Edmund Husserl and undoubtedly the most important Czech philosopher of the twentieth century. In January 1977, Patocka became - together with Vaclav Havel and Jiri Hajek -- one of the first three spokespersons of Charter 77, Czechoslovakia's anti-communist resistance movement. He died less than three months later, as a result of total exhaustion caused by days-long police interrogations. Patocka's Socratic death is an unavoidable component of his philosophical legacy. Is his main message still relevant today, after the "short" twentieth century ended with the collapse of communism in Europe in 1989? Is it still in circulation and perceived as an important Central European contribution to the new "dialogue of mankind" taking place today, as we approach the end of the second decade of new millennium? Six years ago, the Vaclav Havel Library organized a seminar in Prague where a group of scholars sought to answer these questions. This book offers any readers concerned with human rights the results of these incisive discussions. Patocka's life and work are decidedly not diminishing with time. On the contrary, they have been actualized by our current spiritual crisis.

This book will offer a full reconstruction of the history of Theoretical Marxism in Italy between 1895 and 1935, based on a rigorous philological method. The starting term (1895) is marked by the publication of Antonio Labriola's first essay on historical materialism (In memory of Communist Manifesto); the final term coincides with the conclusion of the "Prison Notebooks" written by Antonio Gramsci. This book analyses the original character of the Marxist philosophy in Italy, which emerged by distinguishing itself from the "orthodoxy" of the Second and Third International. By delineating a significant chapter in the history of Marxism, the book will also propose a specific contribution to the history of Italian Philosophy, which is here studied in relation to the developments of European philosophy, beyond the traditional subdivisions of Positivism, Idealism and Marxism.

If natural law arguments struggle to gain traction in contemporary moral and political discourse, could it be because we moderns do not share the understanding of nature on which that language was developed? Building on the work of important thinkers of the last half-century, including Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, John Finnis, and Bernard Lonergan, the essays in Concepts of Nature compare and contrast classical, medieval, and modern conceptions of nature in order to better understand how and why the concept of nature no longer seems to provide a limit or standard for human action. These essays also evaluate whether a rearticulation of pre-modern ideas (or perhaps a reconciliation or reconstitution on modern terms) is desirable and/or possible. Edited by R. J. Snell and Steven F. McGuire, this book will be of interest to intellectual historians, political theorists, theologians, and philosophers.