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Books > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Social & political philosophy
The Oxford Handbook of the History of Terrorism presents a
revaluation of the major narratives in the history of terrorism,
exploring the emergence and the use of terrorism in world history
from antiquity up to the twenty-first century. The essays collected
in this handbook constitute the first systematic analysis of the
relationship between terrorism and modernity on a global scale from
the French Revolution to the present. Historians and political
theorists have long asserted such a link, but this causal
connection has rarely been rigorously investigated, and the failure
to examine such a crucial aspect of terrorism has contributed to
the spread of unsubstantiated claims about its nature and origins.
Terrorism is often presented as a perennial barbarism forever
lurking outside of civilization when, in fact, it is a historically
specific form of political violence generated by modern Western
culture that was then transported around the globe, where it was
transformed in accordance with local conditions. This handbook
offers cogent arguments and well-documented case studies that
support a reading of terrorism as an explicitly modern phenomenon.
It also provides sustained analyses of the challenges involved in
the application of the theories and practices of modernity and
terrorism to non-Western parts of the world. The volume presents an
overview of terrorism's antecedents in the pre-modern world,
analyzes the emergence of terrorism in the West, and presents a
series of case studies from non-Western parts of the world that
together constitute terrorism's global reception history. Essays
cover a broad range of topics from tyrannicide in ancient Greek
political culture, the radical resistance movement against Roman
rule in Judea, the invention of terrorism in Europe, Russia, and
the United States, anarchist networks in France, Argentina, and
China, imperial terror in Colonial Kenya, anti-colonial violence in
India, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, and the German Autumn, to
right-wing, eco-and religious terrorism, as well as terrorism's
entanglements with science, technology, media, literature and art.
The Oxford Handbook of the History of Terrorism ultimately provides
an account of the global history of terrorism and coverage of the
most important cases from this history, always presented with an
eye towards their entanglement with the forces and technologies of
modernity.
The foremost collection of essays from one of Britain's most
important 20th century Marxist writers Considered by many to be the
most innovative British Marxist writer of the twentieth century,
Christopher Caudwell was killed in the Spanish Civil War at the age
of 29. Although already a published writer of aeronautic texts and
crime fiction, he was practically unknown to the public until
reviews appeared of Illusion and Reality: A Study of the Sources of
Poetry, which was published just after his death. A strikingly
original study of poetry's role, it explained in clear language how
the organizing of emotion in society plays a part in social change
and development. Caudwell had a powerful interest in how things
worked - aeronautics, physics, human psychology, language, and
society. In the anti-fascist struggles of the 1930s he saw that
capitalism was a system that could not work properly and distorted
the thinking of the age. Self-educated from the age of 15, he wrote
with a directness that is alien to most cultural theory. Culture as
Politics introduces Caudwell's work through his most accessible and
relevant writing. Material will be drawn from Illusion and Reality,
Studies in a Dying Culture and his essay, "Heredity and
Development."
What is the relation between our selfhood and appearing? Our
embodiment positions us in the world, situating us as an object
among its visible objects. Yet, by opening and shutting our eyes,
we can make the visible world appear and disappear-a fact that
convinces us that the world is in us. Thus, we have to assert with
Merleau-Ponty that we are in the world that is in us: the two are
intertwined. Author James Mensch employs the insights of Jan
Patocka's asubjective phenomenology to understand this double
relationship of being-in. In this volume, he shows how this
relation constitutes the reality of our selfhood, shaping our
social and political interactions as well as the violence that
constantly threatens to undermine them.
The German-Austrian social theorist and philosopher Leo Kofler
(1907-1995) represents what Oskar Negt once called 'unmutilated,
living Marxism'. Throughout his life he dealt with issues of
history and modernity, Marxist philosophy and the critique of
ideology, philosophical anthropology and aesthetics. In this
volume, author and Kofler biographer Christoph Junke elucidates the
contours of his philosophy of praxis, traces an arc from the
socialist classics to postmodernism, and outlines the socialist
humanist thinker's enduring relevance. The book also includes six
essays by Leo Kofler published in English for the first time. The
main work was first published in German as Leo Koflers Philosophie
der Praxis: Eine Einfuhrung in sein Denken by Laika Verlag, 2015,
ISBN 978-944233-33-8. Copyright by Laika Verlag.
What is the relationship between the sacred and the political,
transcendence and immanence, religion and violence? And how has
this complex relation affected the history of Western political
reason? In this volume an international group of scholars explore
these questions in light of mimetic theory as formulated by Rene
Girard (1923-2015), one of the most original thinkers of our time.
From Aristotle and his idea of tragedy, passing through Machiavelli
and political modernity, up to contemporary biopolitics, this work
provides an indispensable guide to those who want to assess the
thorny interconnections of sacrality and politics in Western
political thought and follow an unexplored yet critical path from
ancient Greece to our post-secular condition. While looking at the
past, this volume also seeks to illuminate the future relevance of
the sacred/secular divide in the so-called 'age of globalization'.
From Revolution to Revolution (1973) examines England, Scotland and
Wales from the revolution of 1688 when William became King, to the
American Revolution of 1776. In this period lies the roots of
modern Britain, as it went from being underdeveloped countries on
the fringe of European civilization to a predominating influence in
the world. This book examines the union of the island, development
of an organized public opinion and national consciousness, as well
as Parliament and its factions, the landed and business classes.
Views on religion, art, architecture and the changing face of the
countryside are also examined, as is the tension between London and
the rest of the island. The important issues of colonial expansions
in Ireland, America, India and Africa are also analysed.
The Court and the Country (1969) offers a fresh view and synthesis
of the English revolution of 1640. It describes the origin and
development of the revolution, and gives an account of the various
factors - political, social and religious - that produced the
revolution and conditioned its course. It explains the revolution
primarily as a result of the breakdown of the unity of the
governing class around the monarchy into the contending sides of
the Court and the Country. A principal theme is the formation
within the governing class of an opposition movement to the Crown.
The role of Puritanism and of the towns is examined, and the
resistance to Charles I is considered in relation to other European
revolutions of the period.
A Nation of Change and Novelty (1990) ranges broadly over the
political and literary terrain of the seventeenth century,
examining the importance of the English Revolution as a decisive
event in English and European history. It emphasises the historical
significance of the English Revolution, exploring not only its
causes but also its long term consequences, basing both in a broad
social context and viewing it as a necessary condition of England's
having nurtured the first Industrial Revolution.
Reflections on the Puritan Revolution (1986) examines the damage
done by the Puritans during the English Civil War, and the enormous
artistic losses England suffered from their activities. The
Puritans smashed stained glass, monuments, sculpture, brasses in
cathedrals and churches; they destroyed organs, dispersed the
choirs and the music. They sold the King's art collections,
pictures, statues, plate, gems and jewels abroad, and broke up the
Coronation regalia. They closed down the theatres and ended
Caroline poetry. The greatest composer and most promising scientist
of the age were among the many lives lost; and this all besides the
ruin of palaces, castles and mansions.
A History of Political Thought in the English Revolution (1954)
examines the large range of political doctrines which played their
part in the English revolution - a period when modern democratic
ideas began. The political literature of the period between 1645,
when the Levellers first seized upon the revolution's wider
implications, and 1660, when Charles II restored the monarchy to
power, is here studied in detail.
Cromwell and Communism (1930) examines the English revolution
against the absolute monarchy of Charles I. It looks at the
economic and social conditions prevailing at the time, the first
beginnings of dissent and the religious and political aims of the
Parliamentarian side in the revolution and subsequent civil war.
The various sects are examined, including the Levellers and their
democratic, atheistic and communistic ideals.
Allegiance in Church and State (1928) examines the evolution of
ideas and ideals, their relation to political and economic events,
and their influence on friends and foes in seventeenth-century
England - which witnessed the beginning of both the constitutional
and the intellectual transition from the old order to the new. It
takes a careful look at the religious and particularly political
ideas of the Nonjurors, a sect that argued for the moral
foundations of a State and the sacredness of moral obligations in
public life.
Leveller Manifestoes (1944) is a collection of primary manifestoes
issued by the Levellers, the group which played an active and
influential role in the English revolution of 1642-49. This book
collects together rare pamphlets and tracts that are seldom
available, and certainly not in one place for ease of research.
Suvin's 'X-Ray' of Socialist Yugoslavia offers an indispensable
overview of a unique and often overlooked twentieth-century
socialism. It shows that the plebeian surge of revolutionary
self-determination was halted in SFR Yugoslavia by 1965; that
between 1965- 72 there was a confused and hidden but still
open-ended clash; and that by 1972 the oligarchy in power was
closed and static, leading to failure. The underlying reasons of
this failure are analysed in a melding of semiotics and political
history, which points beyond Yugoslavia - including its
achievements and degeneration - to show how political and economic
democracy fail when pursued in isolation. The emphasis on socialist
Yugoslavia is at various points embedded into a wider historical
and theoretical frame, including Left debates about the party,
sociological debates about classes, and Marx's great foray against
a religious State doctrine in The Jewish Question.
Confronting Capital and Empire inquires into the relationship
between philosophy, politics and capitalism by rethinking Kyoto
School philosophy in relation to history. The Kyoto School was an
influential group of Japanese philosophers loosely related to Kyoto
Imperial University's philosophy department, including such diverse
thinkers as Nishida Kitaro, Tanabe Hajime, Nakai Masakazu and
Tosaka Jun. Confronting Capital and Empire presents a new
perspective on the Kyoto School by bringing the school into
dialogue with Marx and the underlying questions of Marxist theory.
The volume brings together essays that analyse Kyoto School
thinkers through a Marxian and/or critical theoretical perspective,
asking: in what ways did Kyoto School thinkers engage with their
historical moment? What were the political possibilities immanent
in their thought? And how does Kyoto School philosophy speak to the
pressing historical and political questions of our own moment?
Loren Lomasky is a leading advocate of a rights-based libertarian
approach to political and social issues. This volume collects
fifteen of his articles that have appeared since his influential
volume Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community (OUP, 1987)
alongside one new essay. The volume represents Lomasky's more
recent efforts at constructing the underpinnings of liberal rights
theory, in which he formulates a series of questions about the
nature and scope of rights and rights holders. Among the questions
Lomasky addresses: In what way is classical utilitarianism
fundamentally illiberal? To what extent might utilitarian
cost-benefit analyses be admissible within rights-upholding
political theory? Does it even make sense to speak of maximizing
liberty? How can this be understood in Hobbesian, Kantian, and
Rawlsian theoretical settings? In a world in which rights-talk is
ubiquitous, what is the role of traditional virtues such as loyalty
and charity? Is it inconsistent to espouse both an austere
classical liberalism and a social safety net? Liberalism is most
often presented as a theory about the internal contours of the
state, but how does it speak to the relationships between one state
and another? Between the state and would-be immigrants? In a world
displaying massive cross-border inequalities, does justice require
the extension of aid from the rich to the poor? The book opens with
an unpublished essay, "Everything Old is New Again: The Death and
Rebirth of Classical Liberalism," which features a history of the
century-long decline of traditional liberalism and its remarkable,
unanticipated return to vitality in the second half of the 20th
century. It then offers the prospectus for a libertarian research
program for the next half century. "Lomasky is one of the most
brilliant political philosophers of his generation and also has a
great gift with the pen. He instead picks away at bad arguments and
bad rhetoric whether in general agreement with his priors or not.
And he likes to entertain unusual twists on arguments. The upshot
is a wonderful journey through deep questions in political
philosophy and organization. "-Peter Boettke, University Professor
of Economics & Philosophy, George Mason University
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