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Books > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy
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Anti-Machiavel
(Hardcover)
Innocent Gentillet; Edited by Ryan Murtha; Translated by Simon Patericke
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Just War Theory is the governing moral doctrine for all of the
major democratic militaries and indeed beyond. This book is a close
study of a critical component of Just War theory, the moral status
of noncombatants. In this post September 11th, 2001 time of
cascading unconventional or 'dirty' wars, issues of treatment of
noncombatants - whether as incidental casualties during grey area
operations or as prisoners swept up by preventative security
measures - have resonance across national lines. Whether or not the
democracies and other states pursue their national security
interests within the limits of Just War reasoning and laws, or
break out of these limits in prosecuting war and security measures
against terrorist organizations, is one of the top security issues
of the day. Zupan examines the flaws that this complex body of
moral reasoning often exhibits, arguing that many of the
shortcomings of Just War theory can be resolved using Kantian
methodology and the theory of autonomy. According to this
conception, human beings have unconditional worth which imposes
moral constraints upon the actions of other human beings. From this
understanding Zupan generates principles that serve as moral
guidelines for the use of force which establish a presumption
against harming any human being and greatly restrict the conditions
under which we may justify any unintended, collateral harm that may
affect those who do not intend our harm. Considering the work of
moral theorists such as Onora O'Neill, T. M. Scanlon, Michael
Walzer, Paul Christopher and G. E. M. Anscombe and such issues as
the Doctrine of Double Effect, autonomy and supreme emergency,
Zupan concludes that if we ever are justified in targeting the
innocent, it will only be under very rare conditions where the
innocent themselves should accept the principle that permitted
their being killed.
Examines the meaning of "life" in an era of emerging biotechnology.
What happens to prevailing beliefs about the uniqueness of
individual life when life can be cloned? Or to traditional
understandings of family relationships when a child can have up to
five parents? These are some of the questions addressed by Valerie
Hartouni in her consideration of the cultural effects of new
reproductive technologies as reflected in video images, popular
journalism, scientific debates, legal briefs, and policy
decisions.
In Cultural Conceptions, Hartouni tracks the circulation and
communication of various myths, images, and stories pertaining to
new reproductive technologies and their effects, both imagined and
real, during the past two decades. While addressing topics ranging
from surrogacy and cloning to adoption, ultrasound imaging, and
abortion, Hartouni looks to American popular culture for clues to
what these new -- and not so new -- reproductive practices tell us
about issues of personhood.
Hartouni investigates the emergence of new anxieties about the
nature of selfhood as well as the recurrence of age-old myths
regarding individuality, sexuality, property, and family. She
argues that both are being played out in cultural contests over the
meaning and organization of women's reproductive capacity. In her
discussion of provocative issues such as The Bell Curve controversy
and the Baby M. case, Hartouni traces the dialectic of crisis and
containment unleashed by reproductive technologies. Ultimately,
however, Cultural Conceptions argues that the anxieties that
surround new reproductive technologies provide openings for
alternative understandings and practices of life to emerge
andchallenge those currently in place.
A thoughtful, daring, and original look at this complex set of
issues, Cultural Conceptions provides an much-needed guide to our
nation's psyche as we approach the new millennium.
Gandhi and Philosophy presents a breakthrough in philosophy by
foregrounding modern and scientific elements in Gandhi's thought,
animating the dazzling materialist concepts in his writings and
opening philosophy to the new frontier of nihilism. This
scintillating work breaks with the history of Gandhi scholarship,
removing him from the postcolonial and Hindu-nationalist axis and
disclosing him to be the enemy that the philosopher dreads and
needs. Naming the congealing systematicity of Gandhi's thoughts
with the Kantian term hypophysics, Mohan and Dwivedi develop his
ideas through a process of reason that awakens the possibilities of
concepts beyond the territorial determination of philosophical
traditions. The creation of the new method of criticalisation - the
augmentation of critique - brings Gandhi's system to its exterior
and release. It shows the points of intersection and infiltration
between Gandhian concepts and such issues as will, truth, violence,
law, anarchy, value, politics and metaphysics and compels us to
imagine Gandhi's thought anew.
In Adulthood, Morality, and the Fully Human, John J. Shea describes
an adult, moral, and fully human self in terms of integrity and
mutuality. Those who are fully human are caring and just. Violence
is the absence of care and justice. Peace-the pinnacle of human
development-is their embodiment. Integrity and mutuality together
beget care and justice and care and justice together beget peace.
Shea shows the practical importance of the fully human self for
education, psychotherapy, and spirituality. This book is especially
recommended for scholars and those in helping professions.
Jobymon Skaria, an Indian St Thomas Christian Scholar, offers a
critique of Indian Christian theology and suggests that
constructive dialogues between Biblical and dissenting Dalit voices
- such as Chokhamela, Karmamela, Ravidas, Kabir, Nandanar and
Narayana Guru - could set right the imbalance within Dalit
theology, and could establish dialogical partnerships between Dalit
Theologians, non-Dalit Christians and Syrian Christians. Drawing on
Biblical and socio-historical resources, this book examines a
radical, yet overlooked aspect of Dalit cultural and religious
history which would empower the Dalits in their everyday
existences.
Ironically, the philosophy of love has long been neglected by
philosophers, so-called "lovers of wisdom," who would seemingly
need to understand how one best becomes a lover. In Kierkegaard and
the Philosophy of Love, Michael Strawser shows that the philosophy
of love lies at the heart of Kierkegaard's writings, as he argues
that the central issue of Kierkegaard's authorship can and should
be understood more broadly as the task of becoming a lover.
Strawser starts by identifying the questions (How should I love the
other? Is self-love possible? How can I love God?) and themes
(love's immediacy, intentionality, unity, and eternity) that are
central to the philosophy of love, and he develops a rich context
that includes analyses of the conceptions of love found in Plato,
Spinoza, and Hegel, as well as prominent contemporary thinkers.
Strawser provides an original and wide-ranging analysis of
Kierkegaard's writings-from the early The Concept of Irony and
Edifying Discourses to the late The Moment, while maintaining the
prominence of Works of Love- to demonstrate how Kierkegaard's
writings on love are relevant to the emerging study of the
philosophy of love today. The most unique perspective of this work,
however, is Strawser's argument that Kierkegaard's writings on love
are most fruitfully understood within the context of a
phenomenology of love. In interpreting Kierkegaard as a
phenomenologist of love, Strawser claims that it is not Husserl and
Heidegger that we should look to for a connection in the first
instance, but rather Max Scheler, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Emmanuel
Levinas, and most importantly, Jean-Luc Marion, who for the most
part center their thinking on the phenomenological nature of love.
Based on an analysis of the works of these thinkers together with
Kierkegaard's writings, Strawser argues that Kierkegaard presents
readers with a first phenomenology of love, a point of view that
serves as a unifying perspective throughout this work while also
pointing to areas for future scholarship. Overall, this work brings
seemingly divergent perspectives into a unity brought about through
a focus on love-which is, after all, a unifying force.
Against Value in the Arts and Education proposes that it is often
the staunchest defenders of art who do it the most harm, by
suppressing or mollifying its dissenting voice, by neutralizing its
painful truths, and by instrumentalizing its ambivalence. The
result is that rather than expanding the autonomy of thought and
feeling of the artist and the audience, art's defenders make art
self-satisfied, or otherwise an echo-chamber for the limited and
limiting self-description of people's lives lived in an "audit
culture", a culture pervaded by the direct and indirect excrescence
of practices of accountability. This book diagnoses the
counter-intuitive effects of the rhetoric of value. It posits that
the auditing of values pervades the fabric of people's work-lives,
their education, and increasingly their everyday experience. The
book uncovers figures of resentment, disenchantment and alienation
fostered by the dogma of value. It argues instead that value
judgments can behave insidiously, and incorporate aesthetic,
ethical or ideological values fundamentally opposed to the "value"
they purportedly name and describe. The collection contains
contributions from leading scholars in the UK and US with
contributions from anthropology, the history of art, literature,
education, musicology, political science, and philosophy.
This volume traces the topic of affect across Lyotard's corpus and
accounts for Lyotard's crucial and original contribution to the
thinking of affect. Highlighting the importance of affect in
Lyotard's philosophy, this work offers a unique contribution to
both affect theory and the reception of Lyotard. Affect indeed
traverses Lyotard's philosophical corpus in various ways and under
various names: "figure" or "the figural" in Discourse, Figure,
"unbound intensities" in his "libidinal" writings, "the feeling of
the differend" in The Differend, "affect" and "infantia" in his
later writings. Across the span of his work, Lyotard insisted on
the intractability of affect, on what he would later call the
"differend" between affect and articulation. The singular awakening
of sensibility, affect both traverses and escapes articulation,
discourse, and representation. Lyotard devoted much of his
attention to the analysis of this traversal of affect in and
through articulation, its transpositions, translations, and
transfers. This volume explores Lyotard's account of affect as it
traverses the different fields encompassed by his writings
(philosophy, the visual arts, the performing arts, literature,
music, politics, psychoanalysis as well as technology and
post-human studies).
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