In "The Frankfurt School on Religion," Eduardo Mendieta has brought together a collection of readings and essays revealing both the deep connections that the Frankfurt School has always maintained with religion as well as the significant contribution that its work has to offer. Rather than being unanimously antagonistic towards religion as has been the received wisdom, this collection shows the great diversity of responses that individual thinkers of the school developed and the seriousness and sophistication with which they engaged the core religious issues and major religious traditions.
Through a careful selection of writings from eleven prominent theorists, including several new and previously untranslated pieces from Leo Lowenthal, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, and Jurgen Habermas, this volume provides much needed sources for religious leaders, philosophers, and social theorists as they grapple with the nature and functions of religion in the contemporary social, political, andeconomic landscape.
"The Frankfurt School on Religion" recovers the religious dimensions of the Frankfurt School, for too long sidelined or ignored, and offers new perspectives and insights necessary to the development of a fuller and more nuanced critical theory of society.
Selections and essays from: Ernst Bloch, Erich Fromm, Leo Lowenthal, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Johann Baptist Metz, Jurgen Habermas, Helmut Peukert, Edmund Arens.

Full Contributors:
Linda Martin Alcoff, David Batstone, Robert N. Bellah, Judith Butler, Barbara Christian, Michael Lerner, Eduardo Mendieta, Ronald Takaki, Cornel West

Simultaneously arising out of such diverse contexts as the black community in the United States, grassroots religious communities in Latin America, and feminist circles in North Atlantic countries, theologies of liberation have emerged as a resource and inspiration for people seeking social and political freedom. Over the last three decades, liberation theology has irrevocably altered religious thinking and practice throughout the Americas.
Liberation Theologies, Postmodernity and the Americas provides a meaningful and spirited debate on vital interpretive issues in religion, philosophy, and ethics. The renowned group of scholars explore liberation theologies' uses of discourses of emancipation, revolution and utopia in contrast with postmodernism's suspicion of grand narratives, while assessing what the postmodernism/liberation debate means for strategies of social and political transformation. Guided by the experiences of those at the margins of social power, liberation theologies demystifythe eurocentric myths of secularization and modernity, and calls for a re-appraisal of religion in contemporary societies.
Contributors: Edmund Arens, David Batstone, Maria Clara Bingemer, Enrique Dussel, Gustavo Gutierrez, Jurgen Habermas, Franz Hinkelammert, Dwight Hopkins, Lois Ann Lorentzen, Eduardo Mendieta, Amos Nascimento, Elsa Tamez, Mark McLain Taylor, and Sharon Welch, Robert Allen Warrior

eBook available with sample pages: HB:0415916585

In "The Frankfurt School on Religion," Eduardo Mendieta has brought together a collection of readings and essays revealing both the deep connections that the Frankfurt School has always maintained with religion as well as the significant contribution that its work has to offer. Rather than being unanimously antagonistic towards religion as has been the received wisdom, this collection shows the great diversity of responses that individual thinkers of the school developed and the seriousness and sophistication with which they engaged the core religious issues and major religious traditions.
Through a careful selection of writings from eleven prominent theorists, including several new and previously untranslated pieces from Leo Lowenthal, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, and Jurgen Habermas, this volume provides much needed sources for religious leaders, philosophers, and social theorists as they grapple with the nature and functions of religion in the contemporary social, political, andeconomic landscape.
"The Frankfurt School on Religion" recovers the religious dimensions of the Frankfurt School, for too long sidelined or ignored, and offers new perspectives and insights necessary to the development of a fuller and more nuanced critical theory of society.
Selections and essays from: Ernst Bloch, Erich Fromm, Leo Lowenthal, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Johann Baptist Metz, Jurgen Habermas, Helmut Peukert, Edmund Arens.

Top scholars provide a critical analysis of the current ethical challenges facing police officers, police departments, and the criminal justice system From George Floyd to Breonna Taylor, the brutal deaths of Black citizens at the hands of law enforcement have brought race and policing to the forefront of national debate in the United States. In The Ethics of Policing, Ben Jones and Eduardo Mendieta bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars across the social sciences and humanities to reevaluate the role of the police and the ethical principles that guide their work. With contributors such as Tracey Meares, Michael Walzer, and Franklin Zimring, this volume covers timely topics including race and policing, the use of aggressive tactics and deadly force, police abolitionism, and the use of new technologies like drones, body cameras, and predictive analytics, providing different perspectives on the past, present, and future of policing, with particular attention to discriminatory practices that have historically targeted Black and Brown communities. This volume offers cutting-edge insight into the ethical challenges facing the police and the institutions that oversee them. As high-profile cases of police brutality spark protests around the country, The Ethics of Policing raises questions about the proper role of law enforcement in a democratic society.

The last book by the eminent American philosopher and public intellectual Richard Rorty, providing the definitive statement of his mature philosophical and political views. Richard Rorty's Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism is a last statement by one of America's foremost philosophers. Here Rorty offers his culminating thoughts on the influential version of pragmatism he began to articulate decades ago in his groundbreaking Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Marking a new stage in the evolution of his thought, Rorty's final masterwork identifies anti-authoritarianism as the principal impulse and virtue of pragmatism. Anti-authoritarianism, on this view, means acknowledging that our cultural inheritance is always open to revision because no authority exists to ascertain the truth, once and for all. If we cannot rely on the unshakable certainties of God or nature, then all we have left to go on-and argue with-are the opinions and ideas of our fellow humans. The test of these ideas, Rorty suggests, is relatively simple: Do they work? Do they produce the peace, freedom, and happiness we desire? To achieve this enlightened pragmatism is not easy, though. Pragmatism demands trust. Pragmatism demands that we think and care about what others think and care about, which further requires that we account for others' doubts of and objections to our own beliefs. After all, our own beliefs are as contestable as anyone else's. A supple mind who draws on theorists from John Stuart Mill to Annette Baier, Rorty nonetheless is always an apostle of the concrete. No book offers a more accessible account of Rorty's utopia of pragmatism, just as no philosopher has more eloquently challenged the hidebound traditions arrayed against the goals of social justice.

What can theology offer in the context of neoliberalism, globalization, growing inequality, and an ever more ecologically precarious planet that disproportionately affects the poor? This book, by one of the country's best-known Latino theologians, explores possibilities for liberation from the forces that would impose certain forms of knowledge on our social world to manipulate our experience of identity, power, and justice.
Beautifully written in a refreshingly direct and accessible prose, Maduro's book is nevertheless built upon subtly articulated critiques and insights. But to write a conventional academic tractatus would have run counter to Maduro's project, which is built on his argument that ignorance is masked in the language of expertise, while true knowledge is dismissed because it is sometimes articulated in pedestrian language by those who produce it through the praxis of solidarity and struggle for social justice.
With a generosity and receptivity to his readers reminiscent of letters between old friends, and with the pointed but questioning wisdom of a teller of parables, Maduro has woven together a twenty-first-century reply to Marx's "Theses on Feuerbach." Neither conventional monograph nor memoir, neither a theological nor a political tract, but with elements of all of these, Maps for a Fiesta arrives as Maduro's philosophical and theological testament one that celebrates the knowledge-work and justice-making of the poor.
What Maduro offers here is a profound meditation on the relationship between knowledge and justice that could be read as a manifesto against the putatively unknowable world that capitalist chaos has made, in favor of a world that is known by the measure of its collective justice. His fiesta grants us the joy that nourishes us in our struggles, just as knowledge gives us the tools to build a more just society. What Maduro offers is nothing less than an epistemology of liberation.

Wendy Brown is one of the most prolific and influential political theorists of her generation. This collection of essays, designed for the undergraduate classroom, presents an introduction to and critical assessment of Brown's substantial body of work, with a particular focus on her contributions to the tradition of critical theory. Coeditors Amy Allen and Eduardo Mendieta provide an overview of Brown's work, situating her scholarship in relation to some of the major thinkers and methodologies of the Frankfurt School. Brown opens the discussion with a new essay expounding upon the meaning of freedom and the prospects for emancipation in our current political moment. Subsequent chapters address different aspects of Brown's corpus, including her early feminist interpretation of the history of political theory, her influential critiques of identity politics and progressive philosophies of history, and her recent interrogation of the rise of neoliberalism and the resurgence of authoritarian politics. The volume concludes with Brown's response to her critics, where she clarifies and expands upon the implications of her core ideas. In addition to Brown and the editors, the contributors to this volume include Robin Celikates, Loren Goldman, Asad Haider, Robyn Marasco, and Johanna Oksala.

This volume's concept, 'ecoscape,' has been formed for the purpose of comprehending the spatial configuration (geography) of an ecosystem. Using this method, the contributors place emphasis not on things, but on the spatial patternings of relations and interrelations. Through the related notion of economy, conceptualized as the management of the ecoscape, contributors investigate ethical problems and value choices in light of the way that we are contextualized in the world. By envisioning specific environments as spatial processes of events composed of interrelated patternings, the co-editors intend to provide a fresh approach for framing the problems that beset our world.

Enrique Dussel's writings span the theology of liberation, critiques of discourse ethics, evaluations of Marx, Levinas, Habermas, and others, but most importantly, the development of a philosophy written from the underside of Eurocentric modernist teleologies, an ethics of the impoverished, and the articulation of a unique Latin American theoretical perspective. This anthology of original articles by U.S. philosophers elucidating Dussel's thought, offers critical analyses from a variety of perspectives, including feminist ones. Also included is an essay by Dussel that responds to these essays. Visit our website for sample chapters

What can theology offer in the context of neoliberalism, globalization, growing inequality, and an ever more ecologically precarious planet that disproportionately affects the poor? This book, by one of the country's best-known Latino theologians, explores possibilities for liberation from the forces that would impose certain forms of knowledge on our social world to manipulate our experience of identity, power, and justice.
Beautifully written in a refreshingly direct and accessible prose, Maduro's book is nevertheless built upon subtly articulated critiques and insights. But to write a conventional academic tractatus would have run counter to Maduro's project, which is built on his argument that ignorance is masked in the language of expertise, while true knowledge is dismissed because it is sometimes articulated in pedestrian language by those who produce it through the praxis of solidarity and struggle for social justice.
With a generosity and receptivity to his readers reminiscent of letters between old friends, and with the pointed but questioning wisdom of a teller of parables, Maduro has woven together a twenty-first-century reply to Marx's "Theses on Feuerbach." Neither conventional monograph nor memoir, neither a theological nor a political tract, but with elements of all of these, Maps for a Fiesta arrives as Maduro's philosophical and theological testament one that celebrates the knowledge-work and justice-making of the poor.
What Maduro offers here is a profound meditation on the relationship between knowledge and justice that could be read as a manifesto against the putatively unknowable world that capitalist chaos has made, in favor of a world that is known by the measure of its collective justice. His fiesta grants us the joy that nourishes us in our struggles, just as knowledge gives us the tools to build a more just society. What Maduro offers is nothing less than an epistemology of liberation.

Critique of Latin American Reason is one of the most important philosophical texts to have come out of South America in recent decades. First published in 1996, it offers a sweeping critique of the foundational schools of thought in Latin American philosophy and critical theory. Santiago Castro-Gomez argues that "Latin America" is not so much a geographical entity, a culture, or a place, but rather an object of knowledge produced by a family of discourses in the humanities that are inseparably linked to colonial power relationships. Using the archaeological and genealogical methods of Michel Foucault, he analyzes the political, literary, and philosophical discourses and modes of power that have contributed to the making of "Latin America." Castro-Gomez examines the views of a wide range of Latin American thinkers on modernity, postmodernity, identity, colonial history, and literature, also considering how these questions have intersected with popular culture. His critique spans Central and South America, and it also implicates broader and protracted global processes. This book presents this groundbreaking work of contemporary critical theory in English translation for the first time. It features a foreword by Linda Martin Alcoff, a new preface by the author, and an introduction by Eduardo Mendieta situating Castro-Gomez's thought in the context of critical theory in Latin America and the Global South. Two appendixes feature an interview with Castro-Gomez that sheds light on the book's composition and short provocations responding to each chapter from a multidisciplinary forum of contemporary scholars who resituate the work within a range of perspectives including feminist, Francophone African, and decolonial Black political thought.

Critique of Latin American Reason is one of the most important philosophical texts to have come out of South America in recent decades. First published in 1996, it offers a sweeping critique of the foundational schools of thought in Latin American philosophy and critical theory. Santiago Castro-Gomez argues that "Latin America" is not so much a geographical entity, a culture, or a place, but rather an object of knowledge produced by a family of discourses in the humanities that are inseparably linked to colonial power relationships. Using the archaeological and genealogical methods of Michel Foucault, he analyzes the political, literary, and philosophical discourses and modes of power that have contributed to the making of "Latin America." Castro-Gomez examines the views of a wide range of Latin American thinkers on modernity, postmodernity, identity, colonial history, and literature, also considering how these questions have intersected with popular culture. His critique spans Central and South America, and it also implicates broader and protracted global processes. This book presents this groundbreaking work of contemporary critical theory in English translation for the first time. It features a foreword by Linda Martin Alcoff, a new preface by the author, and an introduction by Eduardo Mendieta situating Castro-Gomez's thought in the context of critical theory in Latin America and the Global South. Two appendixes feature an interview with Castro-Gomez that sheds light on the book's composition and short provocations responding to each chapter from a multidisciplinary forum of contemporary scholars who resituate the work within a range of perspectives including feminist, Francophone African, and decolonial Black political thought.

Decolonizing Epistemologies builds upon the contributions of liberation and postcolonial theories in both philosophy and theology. Gathering the work of three generations of Latina/o theologians and philosophers
who have taken up the task of transforming their respective disciplines, it seeks to facilitate the emergence of new knowledge by reflecting on the Latina/o reality in the United States as an epistemic locus: a place from which to start as well as the source of what is known and how it is known.
The task of elaborating a liberation and decolonial epistemology emerges from the questions and concerns of Latina/os as a minoritized and marginalized group. Refusing to be rendered invisible by the dominant discourse, the contributors to this volume show the unexpected and original ways in which U.S. Latina/o social and
historical loci are generative places for the creation of new matrices of knowledge.
Because the Latina/o reality is intrinsically connected with that of other oppressed groups, the volume articulates a new point of departure for the self-understanding not only of Latina/os but also possibly for other marginalized and oppressed groups, and for all those seeking to engage in the move beyond coloniality
as it is present in this age of globalization.

This collection explores the various forms of narrative, semiotic, and technological mediation that shape the experience of place. From the East End of London to Navajo lands to Ground Zero, Lived Topographies examines the great effect of language, mass media, surveillance, and other incursions of the contemporary world on topographical experience and description. Gary Backhaus and John Murungi have assembled a wide array of scholars to provide an interdisciplinary approach to this subject, giving this rich, focused collection a unique perspective on the phenomenology of place.

Karl-Otto Apel is one of the most important German philosophers of the 20th century, and is finally coming to be recognized as such. However, his work is still poorly understood and inadequately treated throughout most of the world. In The Adventures of Transcendental Philosophy, critical theory scholar Eduardo Mendieta examines the philosophical origins of discourse ethics through the prism of Apel's thought. Mendieta finds that Apel fundamentally transformed German philosophy, which had become stagnant in the years before World War II, and deeply influenced later thinkers such as Jurgen Habermas. Apel's turn toward pragmatism and analytic philosophy helped him bring the concept of a linguistic paradigm shift to Germany."

"Brilliant, lively, ethically inspiring, Richard Rorty's new compilation is an extension of his recent political analysis and diagnosis of the contemporary American condition. At least since Philosophy and Social Hope, but certainly well before then, Rorty has been one of the precious few eminent social critics and commentators whose thoughts are always conveyed with philosophical sophistication and supreme literary stylization. This is the kind of book that, unlike so many others today, truly deserves to be talked about, debated, and reviewed everywhere." --Drucilla Cornell, Rutgers University
"Rorty is an extraordinarily important and influential philosopher, both inside and outside philosophy. His thoughtful political and social views are worth presenting in interview format . . . . Many of the interviews here are otherwise inaccessible, making this collection invaluable." --Samuel C. Wheeler III, University of Connecticut

"The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere" represents a rare opportunity to experience a diverse group of preeminent philosophers confronting one pervasive contemporary concern: what role does--or should--religion play in our public lives? Reflecting on her recent work concerning state violence in Israel-Palestine, Judith Butler explores the potential of religious perspectives for renewing cultural and political criticism, while J?rgen Habermas, best known for his seminal conception of the public sphere, thinks through the ambiguous legacy of the concept of "the political" in contemporary theory. Charles Taylor argues for a radical redefinition of secularism, and Cornel West defends civil disobedience and emancipatory theology. Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan VanAntwerpen detail the immense contribution of these philosophers to contemporary social and political theory, and an afterword by Craig Calhoun places these attempts to reconceive the significance of both religion and the secular in the context of contemporary national and international politics.

Decolonizing Epistemologies builds upon the contributions of liberation and postcolonial theories in both philosophy and theology. Gathering the work of three generations of Latina/o theologians and philosophers who have taken up the task of transforming their respective disciplines, it seeks to facilitate the emergence of new knowledge by reflecting on the Latina/o reality in the United States as an epistemic locus: a place from which to start as well as the source of what is known and how it is known. The task of elaborating a liberation and decolonial epistemology emerges from the questions and concerns of Latina/os as a minoritized and marginalized group. Refusing to be rendered invisible by the dominant discourse, the contributors to this volume show the unexpected and original ways in which U.S. Latina/o social and historical loci are generative places for the creation of new matrices of knowledge. Because the Latina/o reality is intrinsically connected with that of other oppressed groups, the volume articulates a new point of departure for the self-understanding not only of Latina/os but also possibly for other marginalized and oppressed groups, and for all those seeking to engage in the move beyond coloniality as it is present in this age of globalization.

Top scholars provide a critical analysis of the current ethical challenges facing police officers, police departments, and the criminal justice system From George Floyd to Breonna Taylor, the brutal deaths of Black citizens at the hands of law enforcement have brought race and policing to the forefront of national debate in the United States. In The Ethics of Policing, Ben Jones and Eduardo Mendieta bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars across the social sciences and humanities to reevaluate the role of the police and the ethical principles that guide their work. With contributors such as Tracey Meares, Michael Walzer, and Franklin Zimring, this volume covers timely topics including race and policing, the use of aggressive tactics and deadly force, police abolitionism, and the use of new technologies like drones, body cameras, and predictive analytics, providing different perspectives on the past, present, and future of policing, with particular attention to discriminatory practices that have historically targeted Black and Brown communities. This volume offers cutting-edge insight into the ethical challenges facing the police and the institutions that oversee them. As high-profile cases of police brutality spark protests around the country, The Ethics of Policing raises questions about the proper role of law enforcement in a democratic society.

"The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere" represents a rare opportunity to experience a diverse group of preeminent philosophers confronting one pervasive contemporary concern: what role does--or should--religion play in our public lives? Reflecting on her recent work concerning state violence in Israel-Palestine, Judith Butler explores the potential of religious perspectives for renewing cultural and political criticism, while J?rgen Habermas, best known for his seminal conception of the public sphere, thinks through the ambiguous legacy of the concept of "the political" in contemporary theory. Charles Taylor argues for a radical redefinition of secularism, and Cornel West defends civil disobedience and emancipatory theology. Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan VanAntwerpen detail the immense contribution of these philosophers to contemporary social and political theory, and an afterword by Craig Calhoun places these attempts to reconceive the significance of both religion and the secular in the context of contemporary national and international politics.

There is no place on earth that does not echo with the near or distant sounds of human activity. More than half of humanity lives in cities, meaning the daily soundtrack of our lives is filled with sound-whether it be sonorous, harmonious, melodic, syncopated, discordant, cacophonous, or even screeching. This new anthology aims to explore how humans are placed in certain affective attitudes and dispositions by the music, sounds, and noises that envelop us. Sound and Affect maps a new territory for inquiry at the intersection of music, philosophy, affect theory, and sound studies. The essays in this volume consider objects and experiences marked by the correlation of sound and affect, in music and beyond: the voice, as it speaks, stutters, cries, or sings; music, whether vocal, instrumental, or machine-made; and our sonic environments, whether natural or artificial, and how they provoke responses in us. Far from being stable, correlations of sound and affect are influenced and even determined by factors as diverse as race, class, gender, and social and political experience. Examining these factors is key to the project, which gathers contributions from a cross-disciplinary roster of scholars, including both established and new voices. This agenda-setting collection will prove indispensable to anyone interested in innovative approaches to the study of sound and its many intersections with affect and the emotions.