Worldwide political changes since 1990 have driven a re-evaluation of Marxism, a renaissance in Marx-studies, and a renewed interest in his lifelong intellectual partner and personal friend Friedrich Engels. In Terrell Carver's 30th anniversary edition of his pioneering biographical study of the 'junior partner' - which still remains the only one to balance Engels's pre-Marx, with-Marx, and post-Marx writings, giving a rounded view of his life and thought - Carver adopts a comparative and critical approach, neither taking the 'perfect partnership' as a given, nor presuming that all the intellectual fireworks were Marx's. Engels's famously 'bourgeois' class position and 'champagne socialist' lifestyle emerge as resolutions rather than contradictions - they provided opportunities for activist writing and politicking that would not otherwise occur. This study is driven by questions that readers might like to ask about Engels, rather than by the sheer weight of archival materials and stereotypical framing. A newly written introduction provides reflections on how politics since the 1990s has brought Marx, Engels, and Marxisms back to life, and how publication of the Marx-Engels 'collected works' in a definitive edition, and in English translation, have promoted interpretive innovation. Engels himself did his best to establish his own biographical narrative. This book enables readers to assess that dominating view for themselves.

A prolific philosopher who also held Rome's highest political office, Cicero was uniquely qualified to write on political philosophy. In this book Professor Atkins provides a fresh interpretation of Cicero's central political dialogues - the Republic and Laws. Devoting careful attention to form as well as philosophy, Atkins argues that these dialogues together probe the limits of reason in political affairs and explore the resources available to the statesman given these limitations. He shows how Cicero appropriated and transformed Plato's thought to forge original and important works of political philosophy. The book demonstrates that Cicero's Republic and Laws are critical for understanding the history of the concepts of rights, the mixed constitution and natural law. It concludes by comparing Cicero's thought to the modern conservative tradition and argues that Cicero provides a perspective on utopia frequently absent from current philosophical treatments.

This is the first single-authored critical engagement with the major works of Zygmunt Bauman. Where previous books on Bauman have been exegetical, here an unwavering light is shone on key themes in the sociologist's work, exposing serious weaknesses in Bauman's interpretations of the Holocaust, Western modernity, consumerism, globalisation and the nature of sociology. The book shows how Eurocentrism, the neglect of issues of gender and a lack of awareness of the racism faced by Europe's non-white ethnic minorities seriously limit Bauman's analyses of Western societies. At the same time, it points to Bauman's repeated insistence on the need for sociologists to take a moral stance in favour of the world's poor and downtrodden as being his most valuable legacy. The book will be of great interest to sociologists. Its readability will be valued by undergraduates and postgraduates and it will attract a readership well beyond the discipline. -- .

Two generations of students inspired by Harvey Mansfield come together here to demonstrate how their diverse approaches illuminate the topic of the arts of rule and speak to the wide scope of Mansfield's contributions. The essays collected here cover both ancient and modern ground. The first section covers topics such as Xenophon's question of what it is to be a gentleman, Aristotle's view of friendship, Montaigne's account of the highest good, and Montesquieu's elevation of modesty. The second section engages Machiavelli's political theory and its influence on subsequent thinkers, such as Bacon, Hobbes, and Hume. Authors in the third section examine the sources, conditions, and practices of freedom in the context of modern politics, drawing on writers from Shakespeare to Tocqueville to shed light on contemporary debates. The arts of rule cover the exercise of power by princes and popular sovereigns, but they range beyond the domain of government itself, extending to civil associations, political parties, and religious institutions. Artful rule both directs the use of authority toward a specific end and posits a more comprehensive vision of the best way of life for human beings. Making full use of political philosophy and benefiting from a range of backgrounds, this collection recognizes that although the arts of rule are comprehensive, the best government is a limited one.

Hobbes Today: Insights for the 21st Century brings together an impressive group of political philosophers, legal theorists, and political scientists to investigate the many ways in which the work of Thomas Hobbes, the famed seventeenth century English philosopher, can illuminate the political and social problems we face today. Its essays demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Hobbes's political thought on such issues as justice, human rights, public reason, international warfare, punishment, fiscal policy, and the design of positive law, among others. The volume's contributors include both Hobbes specialists and philosophers bringing their expertise to consideration of Hobbes's texts for the first time. This volume will stimulate renewed interest in Hobbes studies among a new generation of thinkers.

Thomas Paine is a legendary Anglo-American political icon: a passionate, plain-speaking, relentlessly controversial, revolutionary campaigner, whose writings captured the zeitgeist of the two most significant political events of the eighteenth century, the American and French Revolutions. Though widely acknowledged by historians as one of the most important and influential pamphleteers, rhetoricians, polemicists and political actors of his age, the philosophical content of his writing has nevertheless been almost entirely ignored. This book takes Paine's political philosophy seriously. It explores his views concerning a number of perennial issues in modern political thought including the grounds for, and limits to, political obligation; the nature of representative democracy; the justification for private property ownership; international relations; and the relationship between secular liberalism and religion. It shows that Paine offers a historically and philosophically distinct account of liberalism and a theory of human rights that is a progenitor of our own.

Public Reason and Political Community defends the liberal ideal of public reason against its critics, but as a form of moral compromise for the sake of civic friendship rather than as a consequence of respect for persons as moral agents. At the heart of the principle of public justification is an idealized unanimity requirement, which can be framed in at least two different ways. Is it our reasons for political decisions that have to be unanimously acceptable to qualified points of view, otherwise we exclude them from deliberation, or is it coercive state action that must be unanimously acceptable, otherwise we default to not having a common rule or policy, on the issue at hand? Andrew Lister explores the 'anti-perfectionist dilemma' that results from this ambiguity. He defends the reasons model on grounds of the value of political community, and applies it to recent debates about marriage.

Philosopher David Hume was considered to one of the most important figures in the age of Scottish enlightenment. "A Treatise of Human Nature" broke new ground by attempting to base philosophy on human nature, making it one of the most important texts in Western Philosophy. Human passions and the ability to distinguish between virtue and vice are elucidated in the text. In "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" Hume discusses the weaknesses that humans have in their abilities to understand the world around them. This book is often a textbook for Philosophy Courses. "An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals" is an elegant enquiry into ethical theory, explained clearly and comprehensively. In Hume's "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion" he explores the very idea of God, the possibility of his existence, and his alleged nature as a good, perfect, omniscient, omnipotent Supreme Being.

How can we justify democracy's trust in the political judgments of ordinary people? In Knowing Democracy, Michael Raber situates this question between two dominant alternative paradigms of thinking about the reflective qualities of democratic life: on the one hand, recent epistemic theories of democracy, which are based on the assumption that political participation promotes truth, and, on the other hand, theories of political judgment that are indebted to Hannah Arendt's aesthetic conception of political judgment. By foregrounding the concept of political judgment in democracies, the book shows that a democratic theory of political judgments based on John Dewey's pragmatism can navigate the shortcomings of both these paradigms. While epistemic theories are overly and narrowly rationalistic and Arendtian theories are overly aesthetic, the neo-Deweyan conception of political judgment proposed in this book suggests a third path that combines the rationalist and the aesthetic elements of political conduct in a way that goes beyond a merely epistemic or a merely aesthetic conception of political judgment in democracy. The justification for democracy's trust in ordinary people's political judgments, Raber argues, resides in an egalitarian conception of democratic inquiry that blends the epistemic and the aesthetic aspects of the making of political judgments. By offering a rigorous scholarly analysis of the epistemic and aesthetic foundations of democracy from a pragmatist perspective, Knowing Democracy contributes to the current debates in political epistemology and aesthetics and politics, both of which ask about the appropriate reflective and experiential circumstances of democratic politics. The book brings together for the first time debates on epistemic democracy, aesthetic judgment and those on pragmatist social epistemology, and establishes an original pragmatist conception of epistemic democracy.

This study aims to understand the centrality of human rights in Venezuela today and what philosophical and political models it has proposed.

After critiquing chaos, catastrophe, and complexity theories, showing their limitations in the contemporary era, Rich furthers the development of crisis theory and applies the crisis theory approach to biological and social evolution. Treating evolution in the context of crisis theory, he shows that as evolution is both genetic and social, social evolution is an extension of biological evolution. As physical evolution results from problem solving, social evolution develops from the solving of historically significant problems, bringing about, for instance, the post-World War II era of knowledge. In this context, Rich discusses the problems of our era, with an emphasis on the paradox of industrialization and its consequences for wealthy and poor nations alike. The paradox of industrialization is approached in terms of crisis theory and resolved.

This edited book addresses the diversity across time and space of the sites, actors and practices of feminist translation from 1945-2000. The contributors examine what happens when a politically motivated text is translated linguistically and culturally, the translators and their aims, and the strategies employed when adapting texts to locally resonating discourses. The collection aims to answer these questions through case studies and a conceptual rethinking of the process of politically engaged translation, considering not only trained translators and publishers, but also feminist activists and groups, NGOs and writers. The book will be of interest to students and researchers in the fields of translation studies, gender/women's studies, literature and feminist history.

This collection of essays aims to investigate the unique place of Jacques Ranciere in the contemporary intellectual scene. This book forms the first critical study of Jacques Ranciere's impact and contribution to contemporary theoretical and interdisciplinary studies. It showcases the work of leading scholars in fields such as political theory, history, cinema studies and literary theory; each of whom are uniquely situated to engage with the novelty of Ranciere's thinking within their respective fields. Each of the thirteen essays provides an investigation into the critical stance Ranciere takes towards his contemporaries, concentrating on the versatile application of his thought to diverse fields of study (including, cinema studies, literary studies and the 'history as fiction' and 'history from below' movements). The aim of this collection is to use the critical interventions Ranciere's writing makes on current topics and themes as a way of offering new critical perspectives on his thought. Wielding their individual expertise, each contributor assesses his perspectives and positions on thinkers and topics of contemporary importance.

Drawing connections between madness, philosophy and autobiography, this book addresses the question of how Nietzsche's madness might have affected his later works. It also explores why continental philosophy after Nietzsche is so fascinated with madness, and how it (re)considers, (re)evaluates and (re)valorizes madness. To answer these questions, the book analyzes the work of three major figures in twentieth-century French philosophy who were significantly influenced by Nietzsche: Bataille, Foucault and Derrida, examining the ways in which their responses to Nietzsche's madness determine how they understand philosophy as well as philosophy's relation to madness. For these philosophers, posing the question about madness renders the philosophical subject vulnerable and implicates it in a state of responsibility towards that about which it asks. Out of this analysis of their engagement with the question of madness emerges a new conception of 'autobiographical philosophy', which entails the insertion of this vulnerable subject into the philosophical work, to which each of these philosophers adheres or resists in different ways.

This book explores ways in which creative research practice can be explicitly and mindfully geared to make a difference to the quality of social and ecological existence. It offers a range of examples of how different research methods can be employed (and re-tuned) with this intention. The book suggests that what Romm names "active" research involves using the research space responsibly to open up new avenues for thinking and acting on the part of those involved in the inquiry and wider stakeholders. The book includes a discussion of a range of epistemological, ontological, methodological and axiological positions (or paradigms) that can be embraced by inquirers implicitly or explicitly. It details the contours of an epistemology where knowing is recognized to be grounded in social relations, as a matter of ethics. While focusing on discussing the "transformative paradigm" and attendant view of research ethics, it considers to what extent the borders between paradigms can be treated as being permeable in creative and active inquiries. Apart from considering options for enhancing responsible research practice during the process of inquiry (and reconsidering mixed-research designs) the book also considers options for responsible theorizing that is inspirational for pursuing goals of social and ecological justice.

The wide range of disciplines represented here enables the volume to stand as a contextualizing work in Fanon studies. It contains new original essays on Africana philosophy, the human sciences, dialectical humanism, women of color studies, neocolonial and postcolonial studies, violence, and tragedy.

This book focuses on the alternative paradigm, the pro-growth intellectual tradition that rejected the prophecies of doom and called for realism and pragmatism in dealing with the challenge of the future. Paul Dragos Aligica reconstructs and describes the basic elements of this tradition that emerged in the seventies as a response to the Club of Rome and the "limits to growth" movement. He outlines a comprehensive perspective on its methodological and conceptual foundations. Aligica uses the work of the two major founders of this alternative approach: Herman Kahn and Julian Simon. Herman Kahn was the first scholar and public intellectual to engage and refute the "doomsday" theses advanced by the Club of Rome and its followers. In his spirited and optimistic arguments he made a strong case for the feasibility, desirability and morality of global economic growth arguing that even given all the likely human, environmental, and material costs and risks, "the case is close to if not fully overwhelming." Julian Simon elaborated the "anti-doomsayers" lines opened by Kahn, further developing the emerging paradigm. He articulated new and precise arguments on issues such as population growth, natural resources scarcity and technological change, and reinforced Kahn's thesis that continued world economic development is a moral imperative as well as a practical desideratum. Together, Kahn and Simon managed to build the foundations on which rest the current counter-reaction to the "limits to growth" rhetoric and its initiatives. Both were not only public figures of great accomplishments and influence but also remarkable thinkers and personalities.

This book offers a critical analysis of the rise of the US to global hegemony against a background of increased erosion of democracy and rule of law, and a rising linear pattern of near-absolute capitalist development. The author argues that the significant shrinkage of the ideological spectrum globally, as a result of worrisome levels of business and government interpenetration, has created a dangerous 'prefascist configuration' whereby unthinkable levels of violence have been normalized through the use of technologies such as drones, increasingly condoned even by 'liberal' groups and the so-called political left. Using the example of the Obama administration and its increased reliance on drone assassinations, the volume makes a case for the dangers that lie in today's unique convergence of lack of transparency in government, business-government interpenetration, informal social regimentation, and militarization of capitalism.

Setting the context for the upheavals and transformations of contemporary China, this text provides a re-assessment of Max Weber's celebrated sociology of China. Returning to the sources drawn on by Weber in The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism, it offers an informed account of the Chinese institutions discussed and a concise discussion of Weber's writings on 'the rise of modern capitalism'. Notably it subjects Weber's argument to critical scrutiny, arguing that he drew upon sources which infused the central European imagination of the time, constructing a sense of China in Europe, whilst European writers were constructing a particular image of imperial China and its Confucian framework. Re-examining Weber's discussion of the role of the individual in Confucian thought and the subordination, in China, of the interests of the individual to those of the political community and the ancestral clan, this book offers a cutting edge contribution to the continuing debate on Weber's RoC in East Asia today, against the background of the rise of modern capitalism in the "little dragons" of Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea, and the "big dragons" of Japan and the People's Republic of China.

Derrida's claim that 'without deconstruction there can be no responsible political thought' is one of his most provocative, and one that even his most vocal admirers have been reluctant to endorse fully. Deconstruction and Democracy evaluates and substantiates Derrida's assertion, assessing the importance of this eminent contemporary philosopher's work for political thought. From the early 1980s onwards, Derrida has addressed political subjects more and more explicitly; here Alex Thomson argues that the time has come for a fresh understanding of deconstruction -- one that acknowledges its relevance for, and potential contribution to, political thinking. The book provides cogent analysis and exegesis of Derrida's often rather abstruse and impenetrable political writings; explores the implications for political theory and practice of Derrida's work; and brings Derrida's work into dialogue with other major strands of contemporary political thought. Deconstruction and Democracy is the clearest and most detailed engagement available with the politics of deconstruction, and is a major contribution to scholarship on the later work of Jacques Derrida, most notably his Politics of Friendship.

This volume explores the role of some of the most prominent twentieth-century philosophers and political thinkers as teachers. It examines how these teachers conveyed truth to their students against the ideological influences found in the university and society. Philosophers from Edmund Husserl and Hannah Arendt to political thinkers like Eric Voegelin and Leo Strauss, and their students such as Ellis Sandoz, Stanley Rosen, and Harvey Mansfield, are in this volume as teachers who analyze, denounce, and attempt to transcend ideology for a more authentic way of thinking. What the reader will discover is that teaching is not merely a matter of holding concepts together, but a way of existing or living in the world. The thinkers in this volume represent this form of teaching as the philosophical search for truth in a world deformed by ideology.

The Limits of Reason in Hobbes's Commonwealth explores Hobbes's attempt to construct a political philosophy of enduring peace on the foundation of the rational individual. Hobbes's rational individual, motivated by self-preservation, obeys the laws of the commonwealth and thus is conceived as the model citizen. Yet Hobbes intimates that there are limits to what such an actor will do for peace, and that the glory-seeker - "too rarely found to be presumed on" - is capable of a generosity that is necessary for political longevity. Michael P. Krom identifies this as a fundamental contradiction in Hobbes's system: he builds the commonwealth on the rational actor, yet acknowledges the need for the irrational glory-seeker. Krom argues that Hobbes's attempt to establish a "king of the proud" fails to overcome the limits of reason and the precariousness of politics. This book synthesizes recent work on Hobbes's understanding of glory and political stability, challenging the view that Hobbes succeeds in incorporating glory-seekers into his political theory and explores the implications of this for contemporary political philosophy after Rawls.

This book questions how abortion laws can be regulated in a time when abortion rights are still subject to intense debate. It addresses objections to basing abortion law on considerations of moral risk, presents two anti-abortion arguments - the deprivation argument and the substance view - to demonstrate the risk of permitting abortion, and discusses the moral risk of restricting access to abortion when it may unjustifiably harm women. The author also shows how welfare states can address the negative effects of restrictive abortion laws by preventive, mitigative and compensatory measures. This is a thought-provoking and challenging book that will be of great interest to those considering abortion laws across the fields of medical ethics, bioethics, moral philosophy, law and politics.