|
Books > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Social & political philosophy
With notes and an apparatus, a new translation of Hegel's essay
"Machiavelli's "The Prince" and Italy," and the first pages of "The
Prince" in the original Italian
At the end of an industrious political career in conflict-riven
Italy, the Florentine diplomat Niccolo Machiavelli composed his
masterpiece "The Prince," a classic study of power and politics,
and a manual of ruthlessness for any ambitious ruler. Controversial
in his own time, the work made Machiavelli's name a byword for
manipulative scheming, and had an impact on such major figures as
Napoleon and Frederick the Great. It contains principles as true
today as when they were first written almost five centuries
ago.
A Feminist Mythology takes us on a poetic journey through the
canonical myths of femininity, testing them from the point of view
of our modern condition. A myth is not an object, but rather a
process, one that Chiara Bottici practises by exploring different
variants of the myth of "womanhood" through first- and third-person
prose and poetry. We follow a series of myths that morph into each
other, disclosing ways of being woman that question inherited
patriarchal orders. In this metamorphic world, story-telling is not
just a mix of narrative, philosophical dialogues and metaphysical
theorizing: it is a current that traverses all of them by
overflowing the boundaries it encounters. In doing so, A Feminist
Mythology proposes an alternative writing style that recovers
ancient philosophical and literary traditions from the pre-Socratic
philosophers and Ovid's Metamorphoses to the philosophical novellas
and feminist experimental writings of the last century.
"A brilliant critique of the Right with very sharp insight on some
of the shortcomings of the Left, this book is a must-read for
anyone looking to understand how dishonest actors spread their
propaganda." Ana Kasparian, Host and Executive Producer of The
Young Turks Michael Brooks takes on the new "Intellectual Dark
Web". As the host of The Michael Brooks Show and co-host of the
Majority Report, he lets his understanding of the new media
environment direct his analysis of the newly risen conservative
rebels who have taken YouTube by storm. Brooks provides a
theoretically rigorous but accessible critique of the most
prominent "renegades"; including Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, and
Brett Weinstein while also examining the social, political and
media environment that these rebels thrive in.
How can we be sure the oppressed do not become oppressors in their
turn? How can we create a feminism that doesn't turn into yet
another tool for oppression? It has become commonplace to argue
that, in order to fight the subjugation of women, we have to unpack
the ways different forms of oppression intersect with one another:
class, race, gender, sexuality, disability, and ecology, to name
only a few. By arguing that there is no single factor, or arche,
explaining the oppression of women, Chiara Bottici proposes a
radical anarchafeminist philosophy inspired by two major claims:
that there is something specific to the oppression of women, and
that, in order to fight that, we need to untangle all other forms
of oppression and the anthropocentrism they inhabit. Anarchism
needs feminism to address the continued subordination of all
femina, but feminism needs anarchism if it does not want to become
the privilege of a few. Anarchafeminism calls for a decolonial and
deimperial position and for a renewed awareness of the somatic
communism connecting all different life forms on the planet. In
this new revolutionary vision, feminism does not mean the
liberation of the lucky few, but liberation for all living
creatures from both capitalist exploitation and an androcentric
politics of domination. Either all or none of us will be free.
This interdisciplinary volume revisits Adorno's lesser-known work,
Minima Moralia, and makes the case for its application to the most
urgent concerns of the 21st century. Contributing authors situate
Adorno at the heart of contemporary debates on the ecological
crisis, the changing nature of work, the idea of utopia, and the
rise of fascism. Exploring the role of critical pedagogy in shaping
responses to fascistic regimes, alongside discussions of extractive
economies and the need for leisure under increasingly precarious
working conditions, this volume makes new connections between
Minima Moralia and critical theory today. Another line of focus is
the aphoristic style of Minima Moralia and its connection to
Adorno's wider commitment to small and minor literary forms, which
enable capitalist critique to be both subversive and poetic. This
critique is further located in Adorno's discussion of a utopia that
is reliant on complete rejection of the totalising system of
capitalism. The distinctive feature of such a utopia for Adorno is
dependent upon individual suffering and subsequent survival, an
argument this book connects to the mutually constitutive
relationship between ecological destruction and right-wing
authoritarianism. These timely readings of Adorno's Minima Moralia
teach us to adapt through our survival, and to pursue a utopia
based on his central ideas. In the process, opening up theoretical
spaces and collapsing the physical borders between us in the spirit
of Adorno's lifelong project.
Connecting several strands of Aristotle's thought, Zoli Filotas
sheds light on one of the axioms of Aristotle's ethics and
political philosophy - that every community has a ruler - and
demonstrates its relevance to his ideas on personal relationships.
Aristotle and the Ethics of Difference, Friendship, and Equality
reveals a pluralistic theory of rule in Aristotle's thought,
tracing it through his corpus and situating it in a discussion
among such figures as Gorgias, Xenophon, and Plato. Considering the
similarities and differences among various forms of rule, Filotas
shows that for Aristotle even virtuous friends must exercise a
version of rule akin to that of slaveholders. He also explores why
Aristotle distinguishes the hierarchical rule over women from both
the mastery of slaves and the political rule exercised by free and
equal citizens. In doing so, he argues that natural and social
differences among human beings play a complex, and troubling, role
in Aristotle's reasoning. Illuminating and thought-provoking, this
book reveals Aristotle's ambivalence about political relations and
the equal treatment they involve and offers an engaging inquiry
into how he understood the common structures of human
relationships.
"Why is it so difficult to develop and sustain liberal democracy?
The best recent work on this subject comes from a remarkable pair
of scholars, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. In their latest
book, The Narrow Corridor, they have answered this question with
great insight." -Fareed Zakaria, The Washington Post From the
authors of the international bestseller Why Nations Fail, a crucial
new big-picture framework that answers the question of how liberty
flourishes in some states but falls to authoritarianism or anarchy
in others--and explains how it can continue to thrive despite new
threats. In Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson
argued that countries rise and fall based not on culture,
geography, or chance, but on the power of their institutions. In
their new book, they build a new theory about liberty and how to
achieve it, drawing a wealth of evidence from both current affairs
and disparate threads of world history. Liberty is hardly the
"natural" order of things. In most places and at most times, the
strong have dominated the weak and human freedom has been quashed
by force or by customs and norms. Either states have been too weak
to protect individuals from these threats, or states have been too
strong for people to protect themselves from despotism. Liberty
emerges only when a delicate and precarious balance is struck
between state and society. There is a Western myth that political
liberty is a durable construct, arrived at by a process of
"enlightenment." This static view is a fantasy, the authors argue.
In reality, the corridor to liberty is narrow and stays open only
via a fundamental and incessant struggle between state and society:
The authors look to the American Civil Rights Movement, Europe's
early and recent history, the Zapotec civilization circa 500 BCE,
and Lagos's efforts to uproot corruption and institute government
accountability to illustrate what it takes to get and stay in the
corridor. But they also examine Chinese imperial history,
colonialism in the Pacific, India's caste system, Saudi Arabia's
suffocating cage of norms, and the "Paper Leviathan" of many Latin
American and African nations to show how countries can drift away
from it, and explain the feedback loops that make liberty harder to
achieve. Today we are in the midst of a time of wrenching
destabilization. We need liberty more than ever, and yet the
corridor to liberty is becoming narrower and more treacherous. The
danger on the horizon is not "just" the loss of our political
freedom, however grim that is in itself; it is also the
disintegration of the prosperity and safety that critically depend
on liberty. The opposite of the corridor of liberty is the road to
ruin.
|
|