This interdisciplinary reader offers a fascinating exploration of the intersection of biopolitics and utopia by employing a range of theoretical approaches. Each essay provides a unique application of the two concepts to topics spanning the social sciences and humanities.

The Anthropocene is heralded as a new epoch distinguishing itself from all foregoing eons in the history of the Earth. It is characterized by the overarching importance of the human species in a number of respects, but also by the recognition of human dependence and precariousness. A critical human turn affecting the human condition is still in the process of arriving in the wake of an initial Copernican Revolution and Kant's ensuing second Copernican Counter-revolution. Within this landscape, issues concerning the human - its finitude, responsiveness, responsibility, maturity, auto-affection and relationship to itself - appear rephrased and re-accentuated as decisive probing questions. In this book Sverre Raffnsoe explores how the change has ramifications for the kinds of knowledge that can be acquired concerning human beings and for the human sciences as a study of human existential beings in the world.

This volume is a reappraisal of the work of Peter Guy Winch (1926 -1997), one of the most important philosophers of the 20th Century. Winch faded into relative obscurity compared to his contemporaries due to a mistaken belief that there are no systematic connections between the different aspects of his work. This volume corrects that presupposition and reintroduces Winch's work to a new generation of scholars. By showing how ethical, political and social issues are interrelated in Winch's work, and by making clear the connections between these issues and themes in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, the volume demonstrates both the breadth and the unity of Winch's approach. It discusses topics such as ethics, political philosophy, social science, the philosophy of action, the philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language. Despite this apparent variety of topics, the contributors to the volume share Winch's conviction that the different areas of philosophy are interdependent. As a result, the volume as a whole shows unity in diversity and provides an example of a manner of philosophising in which different approaches and sub-disciplines are placed in dialogue with each other. Peter Guy Winch is most famous for his early work on the philosophy of the social sciences. His On the Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy (ISS) generated controversy within both philosophical and social scientific circles. In that work and subsequent publications Winch argued against the presupposition that social relations could be understood using the conceptual tools of the natural sciences. Winch would later describe ISS as a 'young man's book' and would come to regret the reputation it garnered him - a mixture of roughly equal degrees fame and infamy. Alongside his work on the philosophy of social sciences, Winch was an interpreter and exegete of Wittgenstein. He also published a ground-breaking study of the philosophy of Simone Weil, entitled Simone Weil: The Just Balance. Winch also published numerous essays on issues in ethics, political philosophy and the philosophy of religion, and at his death was working on a book manuscript on the problem of political authority.

This book applies a range of ideas about scientific discovery found in contemporary philosophy of science to psychology and related behavioral sciences. In doing so, it aims to advance our understanding of a host of important methodological ideas as they apply to those sciences. A philosophy of local scientific realism is adopted in favor of traditional accounts that are thought to apply to all sciences. As part of this philosophy, the implications of a commitment to philosophical naturalism are spelt out, and a correspondence theory of truth is defended by showing how it helps explain various features of scientific practice. The central chapter of the book presents a broad theory of scientific method that comprises the detection of empirical phenomena and their subsequent understanding by constructing explanatory theories through the use of abductive methods. This theory of scientific method is then used as a framework to reconstruct the well-known qualitative method of grounded theory, and to present a systematic perspective on clinical reasoning and case formulation. Relatedly, an abductive or explanationist understanding of methods is employed to evaluate the knowledge credentials of evolutionary psychology. In addition, the conceptual and methodological foundations of a variety of quantitative methods are examined. Exploratory factor analysis and tests of statistical significance are given special attention.

One consequence of the triumph of the political left is the proliferation of fanciful psychiatric diagnoses for all manner of conservatives.

Now Kerry Bolton has written a factually based account of the pathology of the left - the vanity of Rousseau, the narcissistic personality of Karl Marx, the megalomania of Trotsky, the father-hating hedonist Mao Zedong, through to the paedophile promoting Allen Ginsberg, and the Oedipus complex of Louis Althusser who on release from a mental hospital strangled his wife.

Kerry Bolton's The Psychotic Left not only makes fascinating reading, but it provides an insight into the hypocrisy of many of the leading figures on the political left, who despite their rhetoric were totally devoid of compassion or empathy for their fellow man.

A common thread of many of the personalities discussed in this book is an overwhelming narcissism - the arrogance of people who are absolutely confident in their prescriptions for redesigning society and absolutely ruthless in putting their ideas into action - whatever the cost in human lives and suffering.

This book compares two major leisure activities - watching sport and engaging with art. It explores a range of philosophical questions that arise when sport and art are placed side by side: The works of Shakespeare, Rembrandt and Mozart have continued to fill playhouses, galleries and concert halls for centuries since they were created, while our interest in even the most epic sporting contests fades after just a few years, or even a single season. What explains this difference? Sporting contests are merely games. So why do sports fans attach such great importance to whether their team wins or loses? Do sporting contests have meaning in the way works of art do? Beauty is a central value in art. Is it important in sport? What role does morality play in sport and art? What value do sport and art contribute to the world and to the meaning of people's lives?

Modern Social Contract Theory provides an exposition and evaluation of major work in social contract theory from 1950 to the present. It locates the central themes of that theory in the intellectual legacy of utilitarianism, particularly the problems of defining principles of justice and of showing the grounds of moral obligation. It demonstrates how theorists responded in a novel way to the dilemmas articulated in utilitarianism, developing in their different approaches a constructivist method in ethics, a method that aimed to vindicate a liberal, democratic and just political order. A distinctive feature of the book is its comparative approach. By placing the works of Barry, Buchanan and Tullock, Harsanyi, Gauthier, Grice, Rawls, and Scanlon alongside one another, similarities and differences are brought out, most notably in the way in which principles are derived by each author from the contractual construction as well as the extent to which the obligation to adopt those principles can be rationally grounded. Each theory is placed in its particular intellectual context. Special attention is paid to the contrasting theories of rationality adopted by the different authors, whether that be utility theory or a deliberative conception of rationality, with the intention of assessing how far the principles advanced can be justified by reference to the hypothetical choices of rational contracting agents. The book concludes with a discussion of some principal objections to the enterprise of contract theory, and offers its own programme for the future of that theory taking the form of the empirical method.

The Mystery of Moral Authority argues for a sceptical and pragmatic view of morality as an all-too-human institution. Searching, intellectually rigorous, and always fair to rival views, it represents the state of the art in a tradition of moral philosophy that includes Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, and J.L. Mackie.

Through an intersectional feminist re-reading of the Habermasian theoretical framework, this book analyses how women's activism has developed and operated in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Chapters look at three key areas of women's activism in Iran: how women deliberately engaged with media activism despite the government's controlling and repressive policies; women's involvement in civil society organisations, institutions and communities, and cooperation through multilevel activism; and women's activism in the political sphere and its connection with media and civil society activism despite the theocratic system. Drawing upon interviews, analyses of journal and newspaper articles and documentary/non-documentary films, as well as personal experiences, observations and communications, the book examines to what extent Iranian women's rights' groups and activists have collaborated not only with each other but with other social groups and activists to help facilitate the formation of a pluralist civil society capable of engaging in deliberative processes of democratic reform. This book will be of interest to scholars in Gender Studies and Middle Eastern Studies, particularly those who study women's and other social movements in Iran.

It is rare for anybody on the political "Left" to be critical of Political Correctness - it is after all a doctrine of their making - but in this book the anarchist Keith Preston is not only highly critical of the "PC" mindset, but he equates political correctness with the totalitarian regimes of Communist Russia and Nazi Germany. The banning of books, the intolerance of dissenters, and even show-trial by the media have all become part of the totalitarian regime that now dominates Western society.

Our Political representatives can sleep soundly for endorsing financially motivated wars, the creation of mass unemployment, the cutting of welfare payments, and even opposing tax increases on the rich - but they fear being attacked in the media for the "non-pc" aspects of their private lives. Publishing houses who established their reputation publishing the works of libertarians such as Thomas Paine, Murray Rothbard and Gustav Landauer, now warn their contemporary authors to omit all references in their work that can be seen to suggest any endorsement of cultural or social inequality for fear of offending the ever vigilant "pc" Stasi.

In "The Tyranny of the Politically Correct - Totalitarianism in the Postmodern Age" Keith Preston provides an analysis of how Political Correctness began, and how it has been embraced by not only the political left, but by global corporations in the furtherance of their mutual "One World - One People" agenda.

Tracing the stylistic self-conceptualization of modernism from Schopenhauer and Flaubert in the 1850s, through Nietzsche and the symbolists in the 1880s, to the high modernists of the 1920s, this book explores the far-reaching implications of Roland Barthes' claim that modern literature is "saturated with style." It offers both a broad, comparative survey of European modernism and an inventive re-reading of the major genres of the period, namely poetry, prose, and the manifesto. With reference to a wide range of canonical figures, including Aragon, Baudelaire, Eliot, Remy de Gourmont, Joyce, Mina Loy, Thomas Mann, Jean Paulhan, Proust, Rilke, Tzara, Valery, and Virginia Woolf, Hutchinson argues that modernism oscillates between embracing a literature of "pure" style and rejecting a literature that is "purely" style. Between these two poles, style emerges, in the words of John Middleton Murry, not as "an isolable quality of writing, but as writing itself."

Wily Elites and Spirited Peoples in Machiavelli's Republicanism is one of few books that explicitly proposes Machiavelli's republicanism, understood as a contentious mixture of elitism and populism, as a model for our time. Based on a careful study of his Discourses on Livy, this book shows how Machiavelli's principles can provide both support for and constructive criticism of modern liberal democracy. Recent scholars sympathetic to Machiavelli have described him as an advocate of civic virtue or democracy, but these interpretations are incomplete and insufficiently Machiavellian. Machiavelli relies less on civic virtue than on self-interest, properly channeled through an antagonism between the elite (the great or grandi) and the people. Only the elite's wily pursuit of domination, combined with the people's spirited resistance to such domination, can produce that compromise between servitude and license known as liberty. Machiavelli is not exactly a democrat, since he believes that a prudent and far-seeing elite is indispensable for counteracting dangerous popular enthusiasms. On the other hand, he emphasizes that the people must vigorously contest the elite's aggrandizements.And he explains how to construct and maintain a political framework that will allow each side to make its appropriate contribution. Machiavelli's arguments should be particularly appealing today, when many of us distrust the motives of our political and economic elites without being ready to embrace untrammeled populism. This book uses the conflict between the elite and the people as the lens through which to understand the other major features of Machiavelli's republicanism: his views on religion, war and imperialism, goodness and corruption, and the relation between republics and princes. In sum, this book demonstrates that still today, Machiavelli's principles are extremely relevant to the survival and success of liberty.

This volume provides a comprehensive account of Wilhelm Roepke as a liberal political economist and social philosopher. Wilhelm Roepke (1899-1966) was a key protagonist of transatlantic neoliberalism, a prominent public intellectual and a gifted international networker. As an original thinker, he always positioned himself at the interface between political economy and social philosophy, as well as between liberalism and conservatism. Roepke's endeavors to combine these elements into a coherent whole, as well as his embeddedness in European and American intellectual networks of liberal and conservative thinkers, are a central theme throughout the book. The volume includes papers by international experts from a conference in Geneva on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Roepke's passing. The first part focuses on new biographical insights into his exile years in Istanbul and Geneva, while the second part discusses his business cycle theory in the context of the Great Depression, and the third part elaborates on his multifaceted social philosophy. Wilhelm Roepke was among the most important thinkers within the classical liberal revival post-WWII, with intriguing tensions between liberalism and conservatism. A highly recommended volume. -- Peter J. Boettke, 2016-2018 President of the Mont Pelerin Society and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, George Mason University This important collection of papers provides an in-depth assessment of Wilhelm Roepke's contributions, placing him in the context of his time. A fine contribution. -- Bruce J. Caldwell, Director of the Center for the History of Political Economy and Research Professor of Economics, Duke University

Textual Layering: Contact, Historicity, Critique sets out to rethink our relation to textual tradition against the background of several contemporary developments, including the emergence of digital culture, the increasing spectacularization of psychic as well as social life, the renegotiation of historical thinking, and the precarious position of the theoretical humanities within academia. To this end, the volume re-invests the concept of "layering," a concept currently used in a wide range of fields, including metaphor studies and linguistics, cybernetics, the social sciences, art, and architecture. Drawing on existing definitions of "layering," the chapters in this book return to and re-appraise some of the most crucial concerns in the post-1960s theoretical scene: that is, concerns over the strained interplay between writing and the body; textuality and history; critique, differance and the feminine; memory, trace, and the immemorial. The aim of the diverse-often polemical-analyses carried out in this volume is to reactivate the critical force of textual tradition today through a renewed appreciation of its historical embeddedness, its libidinal sources, as well as its complex economy of separation and contact, diachronicity and synchronicity, (re)layering and de-layering. This collection will be of interest to scholars of continental philosophy, literary theory, gender studies, architecture, film and visual culture studies, psychoanalysis, postmodernism, post-colonial studies, and political and social theory.

Exploring phenomenological philosophy as it relates to psychiatry and the social world, this book establishes a common language between psychiatrists, anti-psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers. Phenomenology and the Social Context of Psychiatry is an inter-disciplinary work by phenomenological philosophers, psychiatrists, and psychologists to discover the essence and foundations of social psychiatry. Using the phenomenology of Husserl as a point of departure, the meanings of empathy, interpersonal understanding, we-intentionality, ethics, citizenship and social inclusion are investigated in relation to psychopathology, nosology, and clinical research. This work, drawing upon the rich classical and contemporary phenomenological tradition, touching on a broad range of thinkers such as Deleuze, Levinas, and R.D. Laing, also explicates how phenomenology is a method capable of capturing the human condition and its intricate relation to the social world and mental illness

Building Cosmopolitan Communities contributes to current cosmopolitanism debates by evaluating the justification and application of norms and human rights in different communitarian settings in order to achieve cosmopolitan ideals. Relying on a critical tradition that spans from Kant to contemporary discourse philosophy, Nascimento proposes the concept of a "multidimensional discourse community." The multidimensional model is applied and tested in various dialogues, resulting in a new cosmopolitan ideal based on a contemporary discursive paradigm. As the first scholarly text to provide an interdisciplinary survey of the theories and discourses on human rights and cosmopolitanism, Building Cosmopolitan Communities is a valuable resource to scholars of philosophy, political science, social theory, and globalization studies.

This book is a collection of English articles by Pan Guangdan, one of China's most distinguished sociologists and eugenicists and also a renowned expert in education. Pan is a prolific scholar, whose collected works number some fourteen volumes. Pan's daughters Pan Naigu, Pan Naimu and Pan Naihe-all scholars of anthropology and sociology-began editing their father's published works and surviving manuscripts around 1978. The collected articles, written between 1923 and 1945, are representative of Pan's insights on sociobiology, ethnology and eugenics, covering topics such as Christianity, opium, domestic war and China-Japan relations. The title of the book is taken from the fascinating two-part article "Socio-biological Implications in Confucianism", which essentially reworks Confucius as a kind of "forefather" of socio-biological and eugenic thinking, showing Pan's promotion of "traditional" values. These articles, mostly published in Chinese Students' Monthly and The China Critic, offer an excellent point of entry into Pan's ideas on population and eugenics, his polemics on family and marriage, and his intellectual positioning and self-fashioning. This collection is of great reference value, allowing readers to gain an overall and in-depth understanding of the development of Pan's academic thought, and to explore the spiritual world of the scholars brought together by The China Critic who were dedicated to rebuilding the Chinese culture and bridging the West and the East.

This book brings together philosophical, social-theoretical and empirically oriented contributions on the philosophical and socio-theoretical debate on migration and integration, using the instruments of recognition as a normative and social-scientific category. Furthermore, the theoretical and practical implications of recognition theory are reflected through the case of migration. Migration movements, refugees and the associated tensions are phenomena that have become the focus of scientific, political and public debate in recent years. Migrants, in particular refugees, face many injustices and are especially vulnerable, but the right-wing political discourse presents them as threats to social order and stability. This book shows what a critical theory of recognition can contribute to the debate. The book is suitable for researchers in philosophy, social theory and migration research. "A profound examination of how states and societies struggle to recognize migrants as fellow human beings in all their fullness. The contributions are exceptional for combining astute philosophy and social theory with a discussion of actual politics and real lives." Dr. Hugo Slim (Senior Research Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford and formerly Head of Policy at the International Committee of the Red Cross) "This impressive and timely volume offers an innovative way of understanding the issues of migration and integration by using a critical theory of recognition. Recognition theory has rich potential for effectively responding to the issues of autonomy, identity, integration, and empowerment that are at the core of the current public debates on mass migration, displacement, and the refugee crisis. By examining the normative and policy implications of recognition as they apply to migration, the book offers a pathbreaking look at the human dimension of the debate." Dr. Helle Porsdam (Professor of Law and Humanities and UNESCO Chair in Cultural Rights University of Copenhagen)

This collection of original essays brings together a world-class lineup of philosophers to provide the most comprehensive critical treatment of Ted Honderich's philosophy, focusing on three major areas of his work: (1) his theory of consciousness; (2) his extensive and ground-breaking work on determinism and freedom; and (3) his views on right and wrong, including his Principle of Humanity and his judgments on terrorism. Grote Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College London, Honderich is a leading contemporary philosopher of mind, determinism and freedom, and morals. The collection begins with a comprehensive introduction written by Honderich followed by fourteen original chapters separated into three sections. Each section concludes with a set of remarks by Honderich. Contributors include Noam Chomsky, Paul Snowdon, Alastair Hannay, Barbara Gail Montero, Barry Smith, Derk Pereboom, Paul Russell, Kevin Timpe, Gregg D. Caruso, Mary Warnock, Paul Gilbert, Richard J. Norman, Michael Neumann, and Saul Smilansky.

This book addresses core questions about the nature and structure of contemporary capitalism and the social dynamics and countervailing forces that shape modern life. From a robust and self-consciously sociological framework, it analyzes and interrogates such issues as the nature of the social, the power of the sacred, the nature of authority, the problem of representation, reification, alienation, utopia, and collective resistance. Historical materialism reveals that the scope of productive functions is broader than the crude realism of economism. Marx's critical theory of the commodity and his analysis of the capitalist regime of accumulation remain as vital as ever and serve as a guiding light for the continued exploration of the philosophical underpinnings of critical inquiry and praxis.

American Philosophy Past and Present offers the first historically framed introduction to the tradition of American philosophy and it contemporary engagement with the world.Born out of the social and political turmoil of the Civil War, American philosophy was a means of dealing with conflict and change. In the turbulence of the 21st century, this remains as relevant as ever. Placing the work of present-day American philosophers in the context of a history of resistance through a philosophical tradition marked by a commitment to pluralism, fallibilism and liberation, this book tells the story of a philosophy shaped by major events that call for philosophical reflection and illustrates the ways in which philosophy is relevant to lived experience. The book presents a survey of the historical development of American philosophy, as well as coverage of key contemporary issues in America including race theory, feminism, indigenous peoples, and environmentalism. It is the ideal introduction to the work of the major American thinkers, past and present, and the sheer breadth of their ideas and influence.

This book examines the historical development of China's collective presidency and identifies five key mechanisms which effectively reduce the asymmetries of knowledge and power. The mechanisms discussed are: group or collective succession, collective division of responsibilities and cooperation, collective learning, collective research and collective decision making. This work presents many facts including historical details showing that the collective presidency of China is a unique and prodigious innovation of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and China's socialist political system. We see how China s political system stands in contrast to the presidential system that exists in the United States, which can be described as a system of personal responsibility of the president. The author identifies characteristics of the collective presidency and introduces a framework for analysis. Chapters then explore the phases of historical development in detail and examine fundamental features in terms of their historical development, operational characteristics and evaluation. The final chapter summarizes the political advantages of collective presidency, particularly international competitive advantages and readers will discover that the route to success for modern China lies in collective presidency. This book will appeal to anyone who wishes to discover how China s political system works, to explore its political institutions that operate in conjunction with the CPC and the Chinese state or to discover how a collective presidency can work successfully."

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to global legal thought. It argues that economic globalization and digitalization have induced significant insecurity about the future of human social organization. While traditional international law as a system based on the consent of national states is in the process of rapid adaptation to its new social preconditions, a variety of transnational regulatory levels compete for legal authority. In this process of change, there is more need than ever to guide the theoretical understanding because academic concepts have a crucial influence on the emerging practice of global law. This book highlights which choices are available and argues that global law requires taking a stand in mutually irreconcilable choices.