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After Law
by Laurent de SutterLaw is the most sacred fetish of our time. From radicals to conservatives, there is no militant, activist or thinker who would consider doing without it. But the history of our fascination with law is long and complex, and reaches deeper into our culture than we might think. In After Law, Laurent de Sutter takes us on a journey to uncover the sources of our fascination. He shows that at a certain moment in our history a choice was made to treat law as a decisive feature of civilization, but this choice was neither obvious nor necessary. Other political, social, religious or cultural possibilities could have been chosen instead – from ancient Egypt to Mesopotamia, from medieval Japan to China, from Islam to Judaism, other cultures have devised sophisticated tools to help people live together without having to deal with norms, rules and principles. This is a lesson worth reflecting on, especially at a time when the rule of law and the functioning of justice are increasingly showing their sinister side – and their impotence. Is there life beyond law?
After Leo Strauss: New Directions in Platonic Political Philosophy (SUNY series in the Thought and Legacy of Leo Strauss)
by Tucker LandyFew thinkers of the twentieth century studied the fundamental questions of ethics and politics, or penetrated further into the philosophical sources of the moral relativism of our times, more deeply than Leo Strauss. After Leo Strauss is not yet another attempt to explicate, critique, or defend Strauss. Instead, it encourages us to look in new directions, and to escape certain aspects of Strauss's powerful influence, in order to revisit classic texts and make our own judgments about what those texts might mean. Tucker Landy proposes a post-Straussian reading of the Platonic dialogues that is non-esoteric yet respectful of their subtle dramatic-pedagogic form and urges us, in a spirit of Socratic humility, to reexamine ancient and modern theories of natural right to seek possible grounds for reconciliation between them. Landy puts forth a Socratic theory of democratic liberalism as an example of such reconciliation.
After Lockdown, Opening Up: Psychosocial Transformation in the Wake of COVID-19 (Studies in the Psychosocial)
by Darren Ellis Angie VoelaThis edited volume examines the psychosocial transformations experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, and envisions those that might lead to a more equitable society as we ‘open up’. The book integrates psychoanalysis, sociology, cultural studies, and psychology to address three main areas: personal experiences of the lockdown, new formations of power and desire that the lockdown has shaped, and global concerns related to the pandemic. Within those three areas, the chapters discuss key themes that include the uses of space during lockdown; experiences of death, loss, and domestic violence; race and the pandemic; technology, media, and viral media; chronic illness; handwashing and COVID-19; and conspiracy theories.Drawing together academics and practitioners with a common vision of social justice and active pedagogy, the contents of this volume combine experiential writing with cutting-edge, theoretically-informed interdisciplinary debates. The book advances and demonstrates the productive diversity of psychosocial studies, drawing on psychoanalytic theories, critical psychologies, critical theories, critical race theories, process philosophies, affect theories, and critical pedagogy. In doing so, it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences.
After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene
by Jedediah PurdyNature no longer exists apart from humanity. The world we will inhabit is the one we have made. Geologists call this epoch the Anthropocene, Age of Humans. The facts of the Anthropocene are scientific--emissions, pollens, extinctions--but its shape and meaning are questions for politics. Jedediah Purdy develops a politics for this post-natural world.
After Parmenides: Idealism, Realism, and Epistemic Constructivism
by Tom RockmoreEngages with one of the oldest philosophical problems—the relationship between thought and being—and offers a fresh perspective with which to approach the long history of this puzzle. In After Parmenides, Tom Rockmore takes us all the way back to the beginning of Western philosophy, when Parmenides asserted that thought and being are the same. This idea created a division between what the mind constructs as knowable entities and the idea that there is also a mind-independent real, which we can know or fail to know. Rockmore argues that we need to give up on the idea of knowing the real as it is, and instead focus on the objects of cognition that our mind constructs. Though we cannot know mind-independent objects as they “really” are, we can and do know objects as they appear to us.After Parmenides charts the continual engagement with these ideas of the real and the knowable throughout philosophical history from Plato and Aristotle to Descartes, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx, and others. This ambitious book shows how new connections can be made in the history of philosophy when it is reread through a new lens.
After Physics
by David Z. AlbertHere the philosopher and physicist David Z Albert argues, among other things, that the difference between past and future can be understood as a mechanical phenomenon of nature and that quantum mechanics makes it impossible to present the entirety of what can be said about the world as a narrative of "befores" and "afters."
After Postmodernism
by Jan FayeThe philosophy of the humanistic sciences has been a blind-spot in analytic philosophy. This book argues that by adopting an appropriate pragmatic analysis of explanation and interpretation it is possible to show that scientific practice of humanistic sciences can be understood on similar lines to scientific practice of natural and social sciences.
After Poststructuralism: Transitions and Transformations (The History of Continental Philosophy)
by Rosi BraidottiThe end of the Cold War revitalised continental philosophy and, more particularly, interest in it from outside philosophy. "After Poststructuralism: Transitions and Transformations" analyses the main developments in continental philosophy between 1980-1995, a time of great upheaval and profound social change. The volume ranges across the birth of postmodernism, the differing traditions of France, Germany and Italy, third generation critical theory, radical democracy, postcolonial philosophy, the turn to ethics, feminist philosophies, the increasing engagement with religion, and the rise of performativity and post-analytic philosophy. Analyses of the major figures are integrated within the discussion. After Poststructuralism reveals how continental philosophy - fuelled by an intense ethical and political desire to reflect changing social and political conditions - responded to the changing world and to the key issues of the time, notably globalisation, technology and ethnicity.
After Repression: How Polarization Derails Democratic Transition (Princeton Studies in Political Behavior #24)
by Elizabeth R. NugentHow differing forms of repression shape the outcomes of democratic transitionsIn the wake of the Arab Spring, newly empowered factions in Tunisia and Egypt vowed to work together to establish democracy. In Tunisia, political elites passed a new constitution, held parliamentary elections, and demonstrated the strength of their democracy with a peaceful transfer of power. Yet in Egypt, unity crumbled due to polarization among elites. Presenting a new theory of polarization under authoritarianism, After Repression reveals how polarization and the legacies of repression led to these substantially divergent political outcomes.Drawing on original interviews and a wealth of new historical data, Elizabeth Nugent documents polarization among the opposition in Tunisia and Egypt prior to the Arab Spring, tracing how different kinds of repression influenced the bonds between opposition groups. She demonstrates how widespread repression created shared political identities and decreased polarization—such as in Tunisia—while targeted repression like that carried out against the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt led opposition groups to build distinct identities that increased polarization among them. This helps explain why elites in Tunisia were able to compromise, cooperate, and continue on the path to democratic consolidation while deeply polarized elites in Egypt contributed to the rapid reentrenchment of authoritarianism.Providing vital new insights into the ways repression shapes polarization, After Repression helps to explain what happened in the turbulent days following the Arab Spring and illuminates the obstacles to democratic transitions around the world.
After Socialism: Reconstructing Critical Social Thought
by Gabriel KolkoDoes socialism have a future in the world of the twenty-first century? If not, what is the future for progressive politics? This is a major contribution to contemporary social and political thought written by one of the world's leading critical historians. Gabriel Kolko ask the difficult questions about where the left can go in a post-Cold War world where neoliberal policies appear to have triumphed in both the West and the former Soviet bloc. In trying to answer this, he interrogates both the origins and development of socialist ideas and the contemporary dynamics of the globalized economy dominated by American military, cultural and political might. While avoiding the temptations of either pessimism or utopianism, Kolko offers an original and practical solution about the way forward for a liberal politics.
After Sovereignty: On the Question of Political Beginnings
by Charles Barbour George PavlichAfter Sovereignty addresses the vexed question of sovereignty in contemporary social, political, and legal theory. The emergence, and now apparent implosion, of international capital exceeding the borders of known political entities, the continued expansion of a potentially endless 'War on Terror', the often predicted, but still uncertain, establishment of either a new international American Empire or a new era of International Law, the proliferation of social and political struggles among stateless refugees, migrant workers, and partial citizens, the resurgence of religion as a dominant source of political identification among people all over the globe – these developments and others have thrown into crisis the modern concept of sovereignty, and the notions of statehood and citizenship that rest upon it. Drawing on classical sources and more contemporary speculations, and developing a range of arguments concerning the possibility of political beginnings in the current moment, the papers collected in After Sovereignty contribute to a renewed interest in the problem of sovereignty in theoretical and political debate. They also provide a multitude of resources for the urgent, if necessarily fractured and diffuse, effort to reconfigure sovereignty today. Whilst it has regularly been suggested that the sovereignty of the nation-state is in crisis, the exact reasons for, and exact implications of, this crisis have rarely been so intensively examined.
After The Demise Of The Tradition: Rorty, Critical Theory, And The Fate Of Philosophy
by Kai NielsenThis ambitious book addresses the "end-of-philosophy" debate and the challenge it presents to contemporary philosophy, both continental and analytic. It is a chain of argument as well as a conversation conducted in the presence of the major contributors to that debate: the critics (especially Richard Rorty) of the dominantly Platonic-Cartesian-Kantian tradition on the one hand and its defenders on the other. Nielsen's account draws on Wittgenstein, Quine, Davidson, Habermas, and Foucault, among others. Nielsen takes Rorty's arguments seriously and insists that they demand a rethinking of the role of philosophy in a world in which the claims of relativism, nihilism, and historicism loom increasingly larger. But, unlike most who are impressed with the end-of-philosophy argument, he provides an original and constructive response: the development of a holistic, antifoundationalist account of philosophy that utilizes a form of critical theory and wide reflective equilibrium in carving out a positive role for a new kind of philosophy. This is an important book not just for philosophers but tor social theorists, for literary critics, and indeed for scholars in any field in which the status of knowledge has become problematic.
After The Open Society: Selected Social and Political Writings
by Jeremy Shearmur Karl Popper Piers Norris TurnerIn this long-awaited volume, Jeremy Shearmur and Piers Norris Turner bring to light Popper's most important unpublished and uncollected writings from the time of The Open Society until his death in 1994.After The Open Society: Selected Social and Political Writings reveals the development of Popper's political and philosophical thought during and after the Second World War, from his early socialism through to the radical humanitarianism of The Open Society. The papers in this collection, many of which are available here for the first time, demonstrate the clarity and pertinence of Popper's thinking on such topics as religion, history, Plato and Aristotle, while revealing a lifetime of unwavering political commitment. After The Open Society illuminates the thought of one of the twentieth century's greatest philosophers and is essential reading for anyone interested in the recent course of philosophy, politics, history and society.
After Two Thousand Years: A Dialogue between Plato and A Modern Young Man (Routledge Revivals: Collected Works of G. Lowes Dickinson)
by G. Lowes DickinsonFirst published in 1930, this book presents an imagined account of conversation between Plato and ‘A Modern Young Man’. In the first part, political and social institutions are considered and property, forms of government, socialism, the control of population, war and education, are discussed. The second part examines the idea of real Goods including the concepts of truth, art and love. In this work, the author sees Plato reaffirming his belief that real Goods come from some higher world, which it is the destiny of the spirits to pursue.
After Utopia: The Decline of Political Faith
by Judith N. ShklarA political philosophy classic from one of the foremost political thinkers of the twentieth centuryAfter Utopia was Judith Shklar’s first book, a harbinger of her renowned career in political philosophy. Throughout the many changes in political thought during the last half century, this important work has withstood the test of time. In After Utopia, Shklar explores the decline of political philosophy, from Enlightenment optimism to modern cultural despair, and she offers a critical, creative analysis of this downward trend. She looks at Romantic and Christian social thought, and she shows that while the present political fatalism may be unavoidable, the prophets of despair have failed to explain the world they so dislike, leaving the possibility of a new and vigorous political philosophy. With a foreword by Samuel Moyn, examining After Utopia’s continued relevance, this current edition introduces a remarkable synthesis of ideas to a new generation of readers.
After Virginia Tech: Guns, Safety, and Healing in the Era of Mass Shootings
by Thomas P. KapsidelisIn what has become the era of the mass shooting, we are routinely taken to scenes of terrible violence. Often neglected, however, is the long aftermath, including the efforts to effect change in the wake of such tragedies. On April 16, 2007, thirty-two Virginia Tech students and professors were murdered. Then the nation’s deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman, the tragedy sparked an international debate on gun culture in the United States and safety on college campuses. Experiencing profound grief and trauma, and struggling to heal both physically and emotionally, many of the survivors from Virginia Tech and their supporters put themselves on the front lines to advocate for change. Yet since that April, large-scale gun violence has continued at a horrifying pace.In After Virginia Tech, award-winning journalist Thomas Kapsidelis examines the decade after the Virginia Tech massacre through the experiences of survivors and community members who have advocated for reforms in gun safety, campus security, trauma recovery, and mental health. Undaunted by the expansion of gun rights, they have continued their national leadership despite an often-hostile political environment and repeated mass violence. Kapsidelis also focuses on the trauma suffered by police who responded to the shootings, and the work by chaplains and a longtime police officer to create an organization dedicated to recovery. The stories Kapsidelis tells here show how people and communities affected by profound loss ultimately persevere long after the initial glare and attention inevitably fade. Reaching beyond policy implications, After Virginia Tech illuminates personal accounts of recovery and resilience that can offer a ray of hope to millions of Americans concerned about the consequences of gun violence.
After Virtue
by Jon W. ThompsonAlasdair MacIntyre’s 1981 After Virtue was a ground-breaking contribution to modern moral philosophy. Dissatisfied with the major trends in the moral philosophy of his time, MacIntyre argued that modern moral discourse had no real rational basis. Instead, he suggested, if one wanted to build a rational theory for morality and moral actions, one would have to go all the way back to Aristotle. To build his arguments – which are widely acknowledged to be as important as they are complex – MacIntyre relies on two critical thinking skills above all others: evaluation and interpretation. The primary goal of evaluation is to judge the strength or weakness of arguments, asking how acceptable a given line of reasoning is, and how adequate it is to the situation. In After Virtue, MacIntyre applies incisive evaluation skills to major positions and figures in moral philosophy one after the other – showing how and why Aristotle’s template remains a stronger way of considering moral questions. Throughout this process, MacIntyre also relies on his interpretative skills. As MacIntyre knows, clarifying meanings, questioning definitions, and laying down definitions of his key terms is as vital to advancing his arguments as it is to evaluating those of other philosophers.
After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (3rd edition)
by Alasdair MacintyreIn this classic work, Alasdair MacIntyre examines the historical and conceptual roots of the idea of virtue, diagnoses the reasons for its absence in personal and public life, and offers a tentative proposal for its recovery.
After War Ends
by Larry MayThere is extensive discussion in current Just War literature about the normative principles which should govern the initiation of war (jus ad bellum) and also the conduct of war (jus in bello), but this is the first book to treat the important and difficult issue of justice after the end of war. Larry May examines the normative principles which should govern post-war practices such as reparations, restitution, reconciliation, retribution, rebuilding, proportionality and the Responsibility to Protect. He discusses the emerging international law literature on transitional justice and the problem of moving from a position of war and possible mass atrocity to a position of peace and reconciliation. He questions the Just War tradition, arguing that contingent pacifism is most in keeping with normative principles after war ends. His discussion is richly illustrated with contemporary examples and will be of interest to students of political and legal philosophy, law and military studies.
After the Apocalypse
by Srećko HorvatIn this post-apocalyptic rollercoaster ride, philosopher Srećko Horvat invites us to explore the Apocalypse in terms of ‘revelation’ (rather than as the ‘end’ itself). He argues that the only way to prevent the end – i.e., extinction – is to engage in a close reading of various interconnected threats, such as climate crisis, the nuclear age and the ongoing pandemic. Drawing on the work of neglected philosopher Günther Anders, this book outlines a philosophical approach to deal with what Horvat, borrowing a term from climate science and giving it a theological twist, calls ‘eschatological tipping points’. These are no longer just the nuclear age or climate crisis, but their collision, conjoined with various other major threats – not only pandemics, but also the viruses of capitalism and fascism. In his investigation of the future of places such as Chernobyl, the Mediterranean and the Marshall Islands, as well as many others affected by COVID-19, Horvat contends that the ‘revelation’ appears simple and unprecedented: the alternatives are no longer socialism or barbarism – our only alternatives today are a radical reinvention of the world, or mass extinction. After the Apocalypse is an urgent call not only to mourn tomorrow’s dead today but to struggle for our future while we can.
After the Avant-Gardes
by Elizabeth MillánA rallying call for all those who have been disquieted or disgusted by the excesses of artistic modernism. This is a collection of ten provocative essays on the arts, by writers of varied orientations who share a skepticism about the exaggerated role of modernism and the successive avant-gardes in shaping what is accepted as valid contemporary art. The essays cover painting and other visual arts, literature, music, and general observations about all the arts. It is not an exercise in hand-wringing about the current state of the arts, but looks for different directions in which the arts may now fruitfully evolve. Despite the diverse philosophies of the contributors, these essays together constitute a formidable case against the unhealthy impact of avant-gardism on our lives and aesthetic culture. The essays include the following, among others: a study of anti-modernist painter Odd Nerdrum, who sees modernist art as totalitarian; a critique of the avant-gardist neglect of mimesis as a key to art; an evaluation of "the end of art"; a critique of modern art in light of "the aesthetic harm principle"; an examination of Popper's objections to progressivism in music; the presentation of a new paradigm for literature.
After the Beautiful: Hegel and the Philosophy of Pictorial Modernism
by Robert B. PippinIn his Berlin lectures on fine art, Hegel argued that art involves a unique form of aesthetic intelligibility—the expression of a distinct collective self-understanding that develops through historical time. Hegel’s approach to art has been influential in a number of different contexts, but in a twist of historical irony Hegel would die just before the most radical artistic revolution in history: modernism. In After the Beautiful, Robert B. Pippin, looking at modernist paintings by artists such as Édouard Manet and Paul Cézanne through Hegel’s lens, does what Hegel never had the chance to do. While Hegel could never engage modernist painting, he did have an understanding of modernity, and in it, art—he famously asserted—was “a thing of the past,” no longer an important vehicle of self-understanding and no longer an indispensable expression of human meaning. Pippin offers a sophisticated exploration of Hegel’s position and its implications. He also shows that had Hegel known how the social institutions of his day would ultimately fail to achieve his own version of genuine equality, a mutuality of recognition, he would have had to explore a different, new role for art in modernity. After laying this groundwork, Pippin goes on to illuminate the dimensions of Hegel’s aesthetic approach in the path-breaking works of Manet, the “grandfather of modernism,” drawing on art historians T. J. Clark and Michael Fried to do so. He concludes with a look at Cézanne, the “father of modernism,” this time as his works illuminate the relationship between Hegel and the philosopher who would challenge Hegel’s account of both modernity and art—Martin Heidegger. Elegantly inter-weaving philosophy and art history, After the Beautiful is a stunning reassessment of the modernist project. It gets at the core of the significance of modernism itself and what it means in general for art to have a history. Ultimately, it is a testament, via Hegel, to the distinctive philosophical achievements of modernist art in the unsettled, tumultuous era we have inherited.
After the Berlin Wall: Germany and Beyond
by Beyond GermanyTwenty years after its fall, the wall that divided Berlin and Germany presents a conceptual paradox: on one hand, Germans have sought to erase it completely; on the other, it haunts the imagination in complex and often surprising ways
After the Death of God (Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture)
by Gianni Vattimo John CaputoIt has long been assumed that the more modern we become, the less religious we will be. Yet a recent resurrection in faith has challenged the certainty of this belief. In these original essays and interviews, leading hermeneutical philosophers and postmodern theorists John D. Caputo and Gianni Vattimo engage with each other's past and present work on the subject and reflect on our transition from secularism to postsecularism. <P><P>As two of the figures who have contributed the most to the theoretical reflections on the contemporary philosophical turn to religion, Caputo and Vattimo explore the changes, distortions, and reforms that are a part of our postmodern faith and the forces shaping the religious imagination today. Incisively and imaginatively connecting their argument to issues ranging from terrorism to fanaticism and from politics to media and culture, these thinkers continue to reinvent the field of hermeneutic philosophy with wit, grace, and passion.
After the Death of God: Secularization as a Philosophical Challenge from Kant to Nietzsche
by Espen HammerA fresh history of nineteenth-century philosophy’s many ideas about secularization. The secularization thesis, which held that religious belief would gradually yield to rationality, has been thoroughly debunked. What, then, can we learn from philosophers for whom the death of God seemed so imminent? In this book, Espen Hammer offers a sweeping analysis of secularization in nineteenth-century German philosophy, arguing that the persistence of religion (rather than its absence) animated this tradition. Hammer shows that Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche, each in their own way, sought to preserve and transform religion’s ethical and communal aspirations for modern life. A renewed appreciation for this tradition’s generous thought, Hammer argues, can help us chart a path through needlessly destructive conflicts between secularists and fundamentalists today.