In his philosophical reflections on the art of lingering, acclaimed cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han argues that the value we attach today to the vita activa is producing a crisis in our sense of time. Our attachment to the vita activa creates an imperative to work which degrades the human being into a labouring animal, an animal laborans. At the same time, the hyperactivity which characterizes our daily routines robs human beings of the capacity to linger and the faculty of contemplation. It therefore becomes impossible to experience time as fulfilling. Drawing on a range of thinkers including Heidegger, Nietzsche and Arendt, Han argues that we can overcome this temporal crisis only by revitalizing the vita contemplativa and relearning the art of lingering. For what distinguishes humans from other animals is the capacity for reflection and contemplation, and when life regains this capacity, this art of lingering, it gains in time and space, in duration and vastness. With his hallmark ability to bring the resources of philosophy and cultural theory to bear on the conditions of modern life, Byung-Chul Han's meditation on time will interest a wide readership in cultural theory, philosophy and beyond.

How did our universe come to be? Does God exist? Does time flow? What are we? Do we have free will? What is truth? Metaphysics is concerned with the nature of ourselves and the world around us. This clear and accessible introduction covers the central topics in metaphysics in a concise but comprehensive way. Brian Garrett discusses the crucial concepts and arguments of metaphysics in a highly readable manner. He addresses the following key areas of metaphysics: * God * Existence * Modality * Universals and particulars * Facts * Causation * Time * Puzzles of material constitution * Free will & determinism * Fatalism * Personal identity * Truth This third edition has been thoroughly revised. Most chapters include new and updated material, and there are now two chapters devoted to attacks on free will and fatalism. What is this thing called Metaphysics? contains many helpful student-friendly features, such as a glossary of important terms, study questions, annotated further reading, and a guide to web resources. Text boxes provide bite-sized summaries of key concepts and major philosophers, and clear and interesting examples are used throughout.

Asserting that 'Lenin was closer to Max's Weber's "Politics as Vocation'" than to the German working-class struggle', Italian philosopher and radical theorist of 1960s 'operaismo', Mario Tronti has engaged in a lifelong project of thinking 'the autonomy of the political'. These essays mark the conjunction of the English-language edition of Tronti's 1966 "Workers and Capital" with the centenary of Weber's famous 1919 lecture.

In the four volumes of The Development Trajectory of Eastern societies and the Theories and Practices of Socialism, the author re-examines Marx and Engels' theories on the development trajectory of Eastern societies by integrating theoretical analysis of Marxist theories and an historical investigation of socialist revolution and socialist construction around the world. The collection challenges some predominant interpretations of Marx and Engels' historical materialism by focusing on that materialism, explaining the general laws of historical development and its particular trajectory in Eastern societies; discussing the attempts of the Russian Commune to avoid the torments of the capitalist system and tracing the victories and failures of the 100-year trajectory of socialism. The significance of Marx and Engels' socialist theories for contemporary social development in the Eastern societies is henceforth laid bare. The book will be a key reference for readers studying Marxism, Marxist philosophy and the history of philosophy.

First published in 1962, Bodily Sensations argues that bodily sensations are nothing but impressions that physical happenings are taking place in the body, impressions that may correspond or fail to correspond to physical reality. In the case of such sensations as pains, these impressions are accompanied by certain attitudes to the impressions. He argues, that is to say that bodily sensations are a sub-species of sense-impression, standing to perception of our own bodily state (or in some cases to touch) as visual impressions stand to the sense of sight. He examines, and tries to refute, all plausible alternative accounts of the nature of bodily sensations. He prefaces his argument by an account of tactual and bodily perception. Here he argues that, with the exception of heat and cold, the qualities discerned by these senses are all reducible to spatial and temporal properties of material objects. Combined with his own conclusions on bodily sensations, this allows him to draw up a short and exhaustive list of the so-called "secondary" qualities of physical objects. This book will be of interest to students of philosophy.

First published in 1927, The Nature of Deity forms a sequel to Personality and Reality. The premise of this book is the conclusion of the prequel: that there exists a Supreme Self or Deity. In pursuing this argument, the author uses logic and broad facts that prove the existence of a Supreme Self. This book will be of interest to students of philosophy, religion, literature and science.

As political discourse had been saturated with the ideas of "post-truth", "fake news", "epistemic bubbles", and "truth decay", it was no surprise that in 2017 The New Scientist declared: "Philosophers of knowledge, your time has come." Political epistemology has old roots, but is now one of the most rapidly growing and important areas of philosophy. The Routledge Handbook of Political Epistemology is an outstanding reference source to this exciting field, and the first collection of its kind. Comprising 41 chapters by an international team of contributors, it is divided into seven parts: Politics and truth: historical and contemporary perspectives Political disagreement and polarization Fake news, propaganda, and misinformation Ignorance and irrationality in politics Epistemic virtues and vices in politics Democracy and epistemology Trust, expertise, and doubt. Within these sections crucial issues and debates are examined, including: post-truth, disagreement and relativism, epistemic networks, fake news, echo chambers, propaganda, ignorance, irrationality, political polarization, virtues and vices in public debate, epistocracy, expertise, misinformation, trust, and digital democracy, as well as the views of Plato, Aristotle, Mozi, medieval Islamic philosophers, Mill, Arendt, and Rawls on truth and politics. The Routledge Handbook of Political Epistemology is essential reading for those studying political philosophy, applied and social epistemology, and politics. It is also a valuable resource for those in related disciplines such as international relations, law, political psychology, political science, communication studies, and journalism.

'Electrifying ... A user manual for our polarized world' Adam Grant, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of Think Again By a two-time debating world champion, a dazzling look at how arguing better can transform your life - and the world - for the better Everyone debates, in some form, most days. Sometimes we do it to persuade; other times to learn, discover a truth, or simply to express something about ourselves. We argue to defend ourselves, our work, and our loved ones from external threat. We do it to get our way, or just to get ahead. As a two-time debating world champion, Bo has made a career out of arguing. Over the past few years, however, he's noticed how we're not only arguing more and more, but getting worse at it - a fact proven by our polarised politics. By tracing his own journey from immigrant kid to world champion, as well as those of illustrious participants in the sport such as Malcolm X, Edmund Burke and Sally Rooney, Seo shows how the skills of debating - information gathering, truth finding, lucidity, organization, and persuasion - are often the cornerstone of successful careers and happy lives. Along the way, he provides the reader with an unforgettable toolkit to use debate as a means to improve their own. This book is an everyperson's guide to disagreeing well, so that the outcome of having had an argument is better than not having it at all. Taking readers on a thrilling intellectual adventure into the eccentric and brilliant subculture of competitive debate, The Art of Disagreeing Well proves that good-faith debate can enrich and improve our lives, friendships, democracies and in the process, our world.

An energetic new translation of an ancient Roman masterpiece about a failed coup led by a corrupt and charismatic politician In 63 BC, frustrated by his failure to be elected leader of the Roman Republic, the aristocrat Catiline tried to topple its elected government. Backed by corrupt elites and poor, alienated Romans, he fled Rome while his associates plotted to burn the city and murder its leading politicians. The attempted coup culminated with the unmasking of the conspirators in the Senate, a stormy debate that led to their execution, and the defeat of Catiline and his legions in battle. In How to Stop a Conspiracy, Josiah Osgood presents a brisk, modern new translation of the definitive account of these events, Sallust's The War with Catiline-a brief, powerful book that has influenced how generations of readers, including America's founders, have thought about coups and political conspiracies. In a taut, jaw-dropping narrative, Sallust pleasurably combines juicy details about Catiline and his louche associates with highly quotable moral judgments and a wrenching description of the widespread social misery they exploited. Along the way, we get unforgettable portraits of the bitter and haunted Catiline, who was sympathetic to the plight of Romans yet willing to destroy Rome; his archenemy Cicero, who thwarts the conspiracy; and Julius Caesar, who defends the conspirators and is accused of being one of them. Complete with an introduction that discusses how The War with Catiline has shaped and continues to shape our understanding of how republics live and die, and featuring the original Latin on facing pages, this volume makes Sallust's gripping history more accessible than ever before.

A field-defining masterwork, this posthumous publication maps the evolution of the idea of the state from ancient Greece to today Istvan Meszaros was one of the greatest political theorists of the twentieth century. Left unfinished at the time of his death, Beyond Leviathan is written on the magisterial scale of his previous book, Beyond Capital, and meant to complement that work. It focuses on the transcendence of the state, along with the transcendence of capital and alienated labor, while traversing the history of political theory from Plato to the present. Aristotle, More, Machiavelli, and Vico are only a few of the thinkers discussed in depth. The larger objective of this work is no less than to develop a full-edged critique of the state, in the Marxian tradition, and set against the critique of capital. Not only does it provide, for the first time, an all-embracing Marxian theory of the state, it gives new political meaning to the notion of "the withering away of the state." In his definitive, seminal work, Meszaros seeks to illuminate the political preconditions for a society of substantive equality and substantive democracy.

The canonical image of John Locke as one of the first philosophes is so deeply engrained that we could forget that he belonged to a very different historico-political context. His influence on Enlightenment thought, not least that of his theories of political liberty, has been the subject of widespread debate. In Locke's political liberty: readings and misreadings a team of renowned international scholars re-evaluates Locke's heritage in the eighteenth century and the ways it was used. Moving beyond reductive conceptions of Locke as either central or peripheral to the development of Enlightenment thought, historians and philosophers explore how his writings are invoked, exploited or distorted in eighteenth-century reflections on liberty. Analyses of his reception in England and France bring out underlying conceptual differences between the two nations, and extend an ongoing debate about the difficulty of characterising national political epistemologies. The traditional Anglocentric view of Locke and his influence is demystified, and what emerges is a new, more diverse vision of the reception of his political thinking throughout Europe. Of interest to political philosophers and historians, Locke's political liberty: readings and misreadings reveals how the issues identified by Locke recur in our own debates about difference, identity and property - his work is as resonant today as it has ever been.

What the Roman poet Horace can teach us about how to live a life of contentment What are the secrets to a contented life? One of Rome's greatest and most influential poets, Horace (65-8 BCE) has been cherished by readers for more than two thousand years not only for his wit, style, and reflections on Roman society, but also for his wisdom about how to live a good life-above all else, a life of contentment in a world of materialistic excess and personal pressures. In How to Be Content, Stephen Harrison, a leading authority on the poet, provides fresh, contemporary translations of poems from across Horace's works that continue to offer important lessons about the good life, friendship, love, and death. Living during the reign of Rome's first emperor, Horace drew on Greek and Roman philosophy, especially Stoicism and Epicureanism, to write poems that reflect on how to live a thoughtful and moderate life amid mindless overconsumption, how to achieve and maintain true love and friendship, and how to face disaster and death with patience and courage. From memorable counsel on the pointlessness of worrying about the future to valuable advice about living in the moment, these poems, by the man who famously advised us to carpe diem, or "harvest the day," continue to provide brilliant meditations on perennial human problems. Featuring translations of, and commentary on, complete poems from Horace's Odes, Satires, Epistles, and Epodes, accompanied by the original Latin, How to Be Content is both an ideal introduction to Horace and a compelling book of timeless wisdom.

Physician assisted suicide occurs when a terminally ill patient takes the decision to end their life with the help of their doctor. In this book the authors argue clearly and forcefully for the legalization of physician assisted suicide.

"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.

Mary Warnock's Critical Reflections on Ownership is a sustained meditation on the significance that ownership has for us from one of our finest philosophical voices. First exploring the responsibility and love we have for things that are owned, she goes on to provide a penetrating investigation of the relationship we have to those things which we do not, indeed cannot, own, in particular the natural world. Critical Reflections on Ownership is required reading for anyone who wants to think deeply, and clearly, about the prospect of a global environmental cataclysm and what we might do to address it.' - J.E. Penner, author of The Idea of Property in LawIn this thought-provoking work, Mary Warnock explores what it is to own things, and the differences in our attitude to what we own and what we do not. Starting from the philosophical standpoints of Locke and Hume, the ownership of gardens is presented as a prime example, exploring both private and common ownership, historically and autobiographically. The author concludes that, besides pleasure and pride, ownership brings a sense of responsibility for what is owned and a fundamental question is brought to light: can we feel the same responsibility for what we do not, and never can, own? Applying this question to the natural world and the planet as a whole, a realistic and gradualist perspective is offered on confronting global environmental degradation. Critical Reflections on Ownership examines the effect of the Romantic Movement on our attitudes to nature and is a salient commentary on the history of ideas. Providing an accessible entrance into moral philosophy and its practical applications, this book is an invaluable source for students in the fields of politics and philosophy. Academics interested in conceptions of ownership, and in the interface between philosophy, morality and politics, will find this deeply considered insight to be a stimulating read.

An introductory textbook, Logic for Justice covers, in full detail, the language and semantics of both propositional logic and first-order logic. It motivates the study of those logical systems by drawing on social and political issues. Basically, Logic for Justice frames propositional logic and first-order logic as two theories of the distinction between good arguments and bad arguments. And the book explains why, for the purposes of social justice and political reform, we need theories of that distinction. In addition, Logic for Justice is extremely lucid, thorough, and clear. It explains, and motivates, many different features of the formalism of propositional logic and first-order logic, always connecting those features back to real-world issues. Key Features Connects the study of logic to real-world social and political issues, drawing in students who might not otherwise be attracted to the subject. Offers extremely clear and thorough presentations of technical material, allowing students to learn directly from the book without having to rely on instructor explanations. Carefully explains the value of arguing well throughout one’s life, with several discussions about how to argue and how arguments – when done with care – can be helpful personally. Includes examples that appear throughout the entire book, allowing students to see how the ideas presented in the book build on each other. Provides a large and diverse set of problems for each chapter. Teaches logic by connecting formal languages to natural languages with which students are already familiar, making it much easier for students to learn how logic works.

This is a collection of essays, reflections and poems by Nora Bateson, the noted research designer, film-maker, writer and lecturer. She is the daughter of Gregory Bateson and president of the International Bateson Institute (IBI). Building on Gregory Bateson's famous book Towards an Ecology of Mind and her own film on the subject, Nora Bateson here updates our thinking on systems and ecosystems, applying her own insights and those of her team at IBI to education, organisations, complexity, academia, and the way that society organizes itself. She also introduces the term symmathesy to describe the contextual mutual learning through interaction that takes place in living entities at larger or smaller scales. While she retains her father's rigorous attention to definition, observation and academic precision, she also moves well beyond that frame of reference to incorporate more embodied ways of knowing and understanding. These are reflected in her essays and poems on food, Christmas, love, honesty, environmentalism and leadership. [Subject: Systems thinking, education, social anthropology, environmentalism, Bateson, symmathesy]

Politicians, financiers and bureaucrats claim to believe in free competitive markets, yet they have built the most unfree market system ever created. In this Gilded Age, income is funnelled to the owners of property - financial, physical and intellectual - at the expense of society. Wages stagnate as labour markets are transformed by outsourcing, automation and the on-demand economy, generating more rental income while broadening the precariat. Now fully updated with an introduction examining the systemic issues exposed by Brexit and Covid-19, The Corruption of Capitalism argues that rentier capitalism is fostering revolt and presents a new income distribution system that would achieve the extinction of the rentier while encouraging sustainable growth.

A vivid first-person study of a notorious equine ritual-from the perspective of the wild horses who are its targets Wild horses still roam the mountains of Galicia, Spain. But each year, in a ritual dating to the 1500s called rapa das bestas, villagers herd these "beasts" together and shave their manes and tails. Shaving the Beasts is a firsthand account of how the horses experience this traumatic rite, producing a profound revelation about the durability of sociality in the face of violent domination. John Hartigan Jr. constructs an engrossing, day-by-day narrative chronicling the complex, nuanced social lives of wild horses and the impact of their traumatic ritual shearing every summer. His story generates intimate, individual portraits of these creatures while analyzing the social practices-like grazing and grooming-that are the building blocks of equine society. Shaving the Beasts culminates in a searing portrayal of the inspiring resilience these creatures display as they endure and recover from rapa das bestas. Turning away from "thick" description to "thin," Hartigan moves toward a more observational form of study, focusing on behaviors over interpretations. This vivid approach provides new and important contributions to the study of animal behavior. Ultimately, he comes away with profound, penetrating insights into multispecies interactions and a strong alternative to humancentric ethnographic practices.

Deux cent cinquante ans apres la mort de Montesquieu, de nouvelles questions se posent. Ce volume presente en trois volets les dernieres recherches sur Montesquieu, suscitees par la nouvelle edition des OEuvres completes (Oxford, Voltaire Foundation). Avec les Lettres persanes apparait la necessite d'analyser les modes de lecture induits par les dispositifs editoriaux (paratexte, nouvelle edition 'augmentee et diminuee' en 1721, table des matieres ou des sommaires, usages typographiques du dix-huitieme ou du dix-neuvieme siecle) voire par la censure romaine. On voit ainsi combien hier et aujourd'hui la lecture est tributaire de facteurs jusque-la meconnus: les Lettres persanes sont decidement un texte redoutable... L'Esprit des lois est scrute d'abord dans son ecriture meme, grace a la mise en relation du manuscrit conserve a la Bibliotheque nationale de France et d'un enorme corpus de manuscrits et d'archives desormais disponible, mais disperse dans toute l'Europe (oeuvres inachevees, correspondance, actes notaries, etc.): les strates de composition et de redaction sont reperables et datables de maniere tres precise grace a l'identification des 'mains' des secretaires de Montesquieu, ce qui permet de reconstituer une methode de travail et une chronologie de composition sensiblement differentes de celles qui etaient admises depuis les travaux fondateurs de Robert Shackleton. Cela conduit a evoquer differents aspects complementaires de l'activite de Montesquieu, qui necessitaient une mise au point (sur la pretendue cecite de Montesquieu, sur 'L'invocation aux Muses' ou la chronologie generale des secretaires). Enfin, ce sont les themes essentiels de Montesquieu, les idees-forces autour desquelles se constitue l'oeuvre majeure, qui sont examines. Le droit comme expression d'une rationalite mais aussi comme prolongement des premiers temps de la monarchie (avec la notion de constitution), l'economie comme champ nouveau offert a la reflexion politique, et un traitement de l'histoire qui offre de fructueux rapprochements avec Voltaire: tels sont les modes d'approche d'une pensee avec laquelle s'est ouvert un horizon radicalement nouveau.