This book argues that Michael Oakeshott's political philosophy contributes to current debates in normative international theory and international political theory on the historical, social, and moral dimension of international society. Davide Orsi contends that the theory of civil association may be the ground for an understanding of international society as a rule-based form of moral association constituted by customary international law. The book also considers the role of evolving practices of morality in debates on international justice. Orsi grounds this work on a study of Oakeshott's philosophical arguments and compares the Oakeshottian perspective to recent constructivist literature in International Relations.

Bernard Stiegler's work on the intimate relations between the human and the technical have made him one of the most important voices to have emerged in French philosophy in the last decade. At the same time both an accessible summation of that work and a continuation of it, "The Re-Enchantment of the World" advances a critique of consumer capitalism that draws on Freud and Marx to construct an utterly contemporary analysis of our time. The book explores the cognitive, affective, social and economic effects of the 'proletarianization' of the consumer in late capitalism and the resulting destruction of the consumer's "savoir-vivre. "Reflecting the collective work of his activist organisation, "Ars Industrialis," Stiegler here sets forth an alternative path to that of 'industrial populism', one that appeals to the force of the human spirit."The Re-Enchantment of the World" also includes the manifesto of "Ars Industrialis" and an account of the organisation's 2005 summit in Tunis.

The Liberatory Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. is a philosophical anthology which explores Dr. King's legacy as a philosopher and his contemporary relevance as a thinker-activist. It consists of sixteen chapters organized into four sections: Part I, King within Philosophical Traditions, Part II, King as Engaged Social and Political Philosopher, Part III, King's Ethics of Nonviolence, and Part IV, Hope Resurgent or Dream Deferred: Perplexities of King's Philosophical Optimism. Most chapters are written by philosophers, but two are by philosophically informed social scientists. The contributors examine King's relationships to canonical Western philosophical traditions, and to African-American thought. King's contribution to traditional branches of philosophy such as ethics, social philosophy and philosophy of religion is explored, as well as his relevance to contemporary movements for social justice. As is evident from the title, the book considers the importance of King's thought as liberatory discourse. Some chapters focus on "topical" issues like the relevance of King's moral critique of the Vietnam War to our present involvement in Middle Eastern wars. Others focus on more densely theoretical issues such as Personalism, existential philosophy or Hegelian dialectics in King's thought. The significance of King's reflections on racism, economic justice, democracy and the quest for community are abiding themes. But the volume closes, quite fittingly, on the importance of the theme of hope. The text is a kind of philosophical dialogue on the enduring value of the legacy of the philosopher, King.

This book reflects recent scholarly and theoretical developments in media studies, or Medienwissenschaft. It focuses on linkages between North America and German-speaking Europe, and brings together and contextualizes contributions from a range of leading scholars. In addition to introducing English-language readers to some of the most prominent contemporary German media theorists and philosophers, including Claus Pias, Sybille Kramer and Rainer Leschke, the book shows how foundational North American contributions are themselves inspired and informed by continental sources. This book takes Harold Innis or Marshall McLuhan (and other members of the "Toronto School") as central points of reference, and traces prospective and retrospective lines of influence in a cultural geography that is increasingly global in its scope. In so doing, the book also represents a new episode in the international reception and reinterpretation of the work of Innis and McLuhan, the two founders of the theory and study of media.

Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen tackles the major questions concerning luck egalitarianism, providing deep, penetrating and original discussion of recent academic discourses on distributive justice as well as responses to some of the main objections in the literature. He offers a new answer to the "Why equality?" and "Equality of what?" questions, and provides a robust luck egalitarian response to the recent criticisms of luck egalitarianism by social relations egalitarians. This systematic, theoretical introduction illustrates the broader picture of distributive justice and enables the reader to understand the core intuitions underlying, or conflicting with, luck egalitarianism.

The Conquest of Bread is Peter Kropotkin's famous critique of capitalism, wherein he excoriates that system in favor of anarcho-communism; a form of government he believed could ensure fairness for all. Kropotkin had an alternate vision of the way society, work, and population should be organized - in The Conquest of Bread, he interweaves his plans for a social revolution with critiques of the prevailing orthodoxy. We receive outlines of how his propositions will eliminate poverty and scarcity - conditions Kropotkin believed were artificially enforced in order to maintain control upon the working populace. As a philosopher and scientist, Peter Kropotkin abhorred the manner in which abject poverty characterized industrialized society. He also held a great resentment for centralized authority of government and the owners of capital, which he felt acted in concert to undermine the majority of humanity.

Martin Wight was perhaps the most profound thinker in international relations of his generation. In a discipline for too long mesmerized by the pseudo-science of the historically and philosophically illiterate, his work stands out like a beacon. Yet it is only in the decades since his death that his achievement has attained its true recognition.
Of the first volume of posthumously published lectures-- International Theory: The Three Traditions (1991)--one reviewer wrote: ' it] stands as a classic in the genre of printed lectures stretching from Aristotle to Ruskin... It is exhilarating... for there is nothing quite like it and-- which is a measure of Martin Wight's stature--there is not likely to be'.
That volume is here complemented and completed. In these four lectures Wight takes the archetypal thinkers of this three traditions--Machiavelli, Grotius, and Kant--to whom he adds Mazzini, the father of all revolutionary nationalism, and so the prototype of such as Nehru, Nasser, and Mandela, and subjects their writings and careers to a masterly analysis and commentary. The volume also contains an important new introduction to Wight's thought by Professor David S. Yost.

Western philosophy's relationship with prisons stretches from Plato's own incarceration to the modern era of mass incarceration. Philosophy Imprisoned: The Love of Wisdom in the Age of Mass Incarceration draws together a broad range of philosophical thinkers, from both inside and outside prison walls, in the United States and beyond, who draw on a variety of critical perspectives (including phenomenology, deconstruction, and feminist theory) and historical and contemporary figures in philosophy (including Kant, Hegel, Foucault, and Angela Davis) to think about prisons in this new historical era. All of these contributors have experiences within prison walls: some are or have been incarcerated, some have taught or are teaching in prisons, and all have been students of both philosophy and the carceral system. The powerful testimonials and theoretical arguments are appropriate reading not only for philosophers and prison theorists generally, but also for prison reformers and abolitionists.

This book contextualises philosophy by bringing Judith Butler's critique of identity into dialogue with an analysis of the transgressive self in dramatic literature. The author draws on Butler's reflections on human agency and subjectivity to offer a fresh perspective for understanding the political and ethical stakes of identity as formed within a complex web of relations with human and non-human others. The book first positions a detailed analysis of Butler's theory of subject formation within a broader framework of feminist philosophy and then incorporates examples and case studies from dramatic literature to argue that the subject is formed in relation to external forces, yet within its formation lies a space for transgressing the same environments and relations that condition the subject's existence. By virtue of a fundamental dependency on conditions and relations that bring human beings into existence, they emerge as political and ethical agents capable of resisting the formative forces of power and responding - ethically - to the call of others.

Isaiah Berlin is one of the towering intellectual figures of the twentieth century, the most famous English thinker of the post-war era, and the focus of growing interest and discussion. Above all, he is one of the best modern exponents of the disappearing art of letter-writing. 'Life is not worth living unless one can be indiscreet to intimate friends, ' wrote Berlin to a correspondent. This first volume inaugurates a long awaited edition of his letters that might well adopt this remark as an epigraph. Berlin's life was well worth living, both for himself and for the world. Fortunately he said a great deal to his friends on paper as well as in person. Berlin's letters reveal the significant growth and development of his personality and career over the two decades covered within them. Starting with his days as an eighteen year old student at St. Paul's School in London, they cover his years at Oxford as scholar and professor and the authorship of his famous biography of Karl Marx. The letters progress to his World War II stay in the U.S. and finally, his trip to the Soviet Union in 1945-6 and return to Oxford in 1946. "Emotional exploitation, cannibalism, which I think I dislike more than anything else in the world." To Ben Nicolson, September 1937 "Valery delivered an agreeable but dull lecture here. He said words were like thin planks over precipices, and if you crossed rapidly nothing happened, but if you stopped on any of them and stared into the gulf you would get vertigo and that was what philosophers were doing." To Cressida Bonham Carter, March 1939 "I never don't moralize." To Mary Fisher, 18 April 1940 "I only feel happy when I feel the solidarity of the majority of people Irespect with and behind me." To Marion Frankfurter, 23 August 1940 "Certainly no politics are more real than those of academic life, no loves deeper, no hatreds more burning, no principles more sacred." To Freya Stark, 12 June 1944 "Nobody is so fiercely bureaucratic, or so stern with soldiers and regular civil servants, as the don disguised as temporary government official armed with an indestructible superiority complex." To Freya Stark, 12 June 1944 "My view on this is that you will not find life in the country lively enough for persons of your temperament. Life in the country in England depends entirely on (a) motor cars (b) rural tastes. As you possess neither, it is my considered view that apart from a weekend cottage or something of that sort, life in the country would bore you stiff within a very short time." To his parents, 31 January 1944 "This country is undoubtedly the largest assembly of fundamentally benevolent human beings ever gathered together, but the thought of staying here remains a nightmare." To his parents, 31 January 1944 "I am a hopeless dilettante about matters of fact really and only good for a column of gossip, if that." To W. J. Turner, 12 June 1945 "England is an old chronic complaint: every day in the afternoon in the left knee and the left leg below the kneecap, tiresome, annoying, not bad enough to go to bed with, probably incurable and madly irritating but not necessarily unlikely to lead to a really serious crisis unless complications set in." To Angus Malcolm, 20 February 1946

Do philosophers have a responsibility to their society that is distinct from their responsibility to it as citizens? This edited volume explores both what type of contribution philosophy can make and what type of reasoning is appropriate when addressing public matters now. These questions are posed by leading international scholars working in the fields of moral and political philosophy. Each contribution also investigates the central issue of how to combine critical, rational analysis with a commitment to politically relevant public engagement. The contributions to this volume analyse issues raised in practical ethics, including abortion, embryology, and assisted suicide. They consider the role of ethical commitment in the philosophical analysis of contemporary political issues, and engage with matters of public policy such as poverty, the arts, meaningful work, as well as the evidence base for policy. They also examine the normative legitimacy of power, including the use of violence.

The concluding volume of Francis Oakley's authoritative trilogy moves on to engage the political thinkers of the later Middle Ages, Renaissance, Age of Reformation and religious wars, and the era that produced the Divine Right Theory of Kingship. Oakley's ground-breaking study probes the continuities and discontinuities between medieval and early modern modes of political thinking and dwells at length on the roots and nature of those contract theories that sought to legitimate political authority by grounding it in the consent of the governed.

The history of mankind is fraught with clashes in the quest for liberty--in the name of often contradictory ideals of freedom. Roshwald explores the diverse understandings of the term liberty and its spectrum of application, in order to achieve a coherent and consistent definition of the concept in respect to both the individual and society. The issue of liberty is examined not only from the traditional angle of political philosophy but also from a philosophical-anthropological perspective. After analyzing examples of specific approaches to freedom, and describing a theoretically and practically viable definition of liberty, the book suggests the possibility and ways of attaining the ideal.

The concept of liberty has been tarnished by propaganda, conflicting political claims, and uncritical usage. This book attempts to restore value to the meaning of liberty, arguing that it must be clearly understood and defined in the context of human experience in order to be universally enjoyed. Through a cogent analysis of contradictions in individual and societal perceptions of the over-used and abused principle, this interdisciplinary volume rescues liberty from its current role as being a mere slogan and presents the possibility for individual and collective freedoms to coexist. A selected Bibliography chronicles historical and contemporary treatises on liberty.

This book uses a theoretical and empirical approach to explore the philosophies of European citizenship and European identity. The author applies a focused analytical framework to argue that European identity and citizenship should be perceived as postmodern categories which are multi-layered, dynamic and fluid. The book offers a detailed review of political and legal studies which do not comprehend or explain postmodernist concepts of citizenship and identity. In the theoretical part of the book various philosophical models of citizenship and identity (from antiquity to the postmodern era) are portrayed, and the author's own theory and analytical framework is developed. The empirical part of the book discusses a variety of case studies illustrating how European Union policies apply to this framework.

Social constructionism is one of the key ideas in the social sciences, offering different frameworks for understanding the human world. But what does it mean when we say that something is 'socially constructed'? What exactly do we construct in our social interaction? And what actually 'does' the constructing?
This dynamic text invites critical reflection on these questions and more, outlining the various ways that social constructionist theory has been utilised in the social sciences. Hjelm introduces the basic assumptions of social constructionism - before examining the differences between various constructionist traditions and perspectives - from Berger and Luckmann's sociology of knowledge, to constructionist approaches in social psychology and discourse analysis.
Through a diverse range of case studies on religion, crime, gender and the media, the chapters demonstrate how to apply constructionist ideas in empirical social research. "Social Constructionisms" is thus an invaluable source for students and scholars across the social sciences.

The book theoretically examines the recent and topical debates over democracy and social rights, arguing that there are four fundamental rights that should be constitutionalized; minimum income; housing; healthcare; and education. The theoretical discussion is explored within an analysis of important legal cases.

An early voice calling for reason as the ruler of the human mind, and a man with, at best, a Deistic outlook on religion, Spinoza is perhaps the first truly modern philosopher. He is certainly the first modern critic of the Bible. His devoted adherents include many great names of 19th-century literature: Goethe, Coleridge, Shelley, and George Eliot were deeply swayed by his writing; in the 20th century, Albert Einstein claimed Spinoza's deterministic outlook as an abiding influence; understanding the writings of all these figures is greatly enhanced by an appreciation of Spinoza. In Theologico-Political Treatise, first published anonymously in 1670, Spinoza rails against religious intolerance and calls for governments to be entirely secular. His Political Treatise, unfinished at his death, was published only posthumously, and deals with democratic government. Dutch philosopher BENEDICT DE SPINOZA (1632-1677), alternately and paradoxically known as "the best Jew" and "the best atheist," is best known for his Ethics.

In Hume's Social Philosophy, Christopher J Finlay presents a highly original and engaging reading of David Hume's landmark text, A Treatise of Human Nature, and political writings published immediately after it, articulating a unified view of his theory of human nature in society and his political philosophy. The book explores the hitherto neglected social contexts within which Hume's ideas were conceived. While a great deal of attention has previously been given to Hume's intellectual and literary contexts, important connections can also be made between the fundamentals of Hume's philosophy and the social world in which it was developed. Finlay argues that Hume's unified theory of human nature, conceived in terms of passions, reason and sociability, was meant to account for human nature in its most articulate manifestations, in the commercial and 'polite' social contexts of eighteenth-century Europe. Through careful exegetical study of Hume's analysis of reasoning and the passions, Finlay explores the diverse aspects of sociability which the Treatise of Human Nature invokes. In particular, this study finds in the Treatise an important exploration of the tensions between the selfish motivations of individuals and their propensity to bond with others in complex and diverse kinds of social group. Analysis of Book III of the Treatise and of essays published afterwards shows how the various individualist and social propensities explored through the passions are addressed in Hume's theories of justice, morals and politics.

The Moral Responsibilities of Companies is a philosophical analysis of the question of whether companies can be held morally responsible for the harms they create, and what implications such a view has on the moral position of employees and shareholders in these companies.

This book advances a comprehensive moral defense of freedom of expression-one with implications for law and policy, but also for the choices of individuals and non-governmental institutions. Gary Chartier seeks to ground expressive freedom in mutually supportive concerns related to themes including property, autonomy, flourishing, and discovery, while seeking to tightly cabin the range of potential injuries that might trigger legal liability for expressive activity. Chartier argues suggestively for an understanding of expressive freedom as rooted and realized in a complex set of social ecosystems that merit protection on multiple grounds and applies it provocatively to a range of contemporary issues.

In recent years there has been increased interest in three contemporary French philosophers, all former students of Louis Althusser and each now an influential thinker in his own right. Alain Badiou is one of the most important living continental thinkers, well-known for his pioneering theory of the Event. Etienne Balibar has forged new approaches to democracy, citizenship and what he describes as 'equaliberty'. Jacques Ranciere has crossed boundaries between history, politics and aesthetics and his work is beginning to receive the attention it deserves. Nick Hewlett brings these three thinkers together, examining the political aspects of their work. He argues that in each of their systems there are useful and insightful elements that make real contributions to the understanding of the modern history of politics and to the understanding of contemporary politics. But he also identifies and explores problems in each of Badiou, Balibar and Ranciere's work, arguing that none offers a wholly convincing approach.

This title provides an introduction to the philosophical implications of the recent surge of political and ethical interest in historical redress. Should the British Museum return the Elgin Marbles to Greece? Should settler societies in North America and Australasia compensate the aboriginal people whom they dispossessed? Should Israel have accepted Germany's compensation for Nazi extermination policies? The last twenty years have seen a remarkable surge of political and ethical interest in historical redress - that is, the righting of old wrongs. In this fascinating book, Richard Vernon argues that whatever the kind of redress that's at issue, and whether the wrong is large or small, an important philosophical issue arises. Exploring recent and high profile cases, Vernon focuses on the issue of responsibility. Responsibility isn't something inherited, like property or one's DNA. How, then, can it fall to one generation to make good the wrongs done by another? The book addresses all the main issues and arguments relating to justice, memory, apology and citizenship, and concludes by arguing for a forward-looking approach that focuses on the right of future generations to live just lives. "Think Now" is a new series of books which examines central contemporary social and political issues from a philosophical perspective. These books aim to be accessible, rather than overly technical, bringing philosophical rigour to modern questions which matter the most to us. Provocative yet engaging, the authors take a stand on political and cultural themes of interest to any intelligent reader.

This book answers questions about secularization: Does it dissolve religion, or transform it into faith in a universally valid value? Is it restricted to the west or can it occur everywhere? Using ideas of Max Weber, the book conceives secularization as a process comparable to the rational development of science and production. What is the value secularization propagates? Sifting historical texts, Steinvorth argues the value is authenticity, to be understood as being true to one's talents developed in activities that are done for their own sake and provide life with meaning, and as unconditionally commanded. How can a value be unconditionally demanded? This question leads to an investigation of the self that combines Kant's ideas on the conditions of the possibility of experience with modern brain science, and to the metaphysical deliberation whether to prefer a world with creatures able to do both good and evil to one without them. It is not enough, however, to point to facts. We rather need to understand what secularization, religion and their possible rationality consist in. Max Weber's sociology of religion has provided us with the conceptual means to do so, which this book develops. Secularization is rediscovered as the same progress of rationality in the sphere of religion that we find in the development of the spheres of science, art, the economy and politics or public affairs. It proves to be the perfection rather than the dissolution of religion - a perfection that consists in recognizing authenticity as the successor of the absolute of religion.

In the first full length examination of the topic, Ethical Citizenship rediscovers a significant and distinctive contribution to how we might understand citizenship today. Leading international scholars bring together theory and practice to explore its historical roots, contemporary relevance and application to international politics.

Rousseau's The Social Contract is one of the most important works of political thought in the history of philosophy. Since its publication in 1762, it has been profoundly influential in shaping the historical developments of many societies and remains sharply relevant today. Geared towards the specific requirements of students coming to Rousseau's work for the first time, this Reader's Guide offers guidance on philosophical and historical context, key themes, reading the text, reception and influence and advice on further reading.