As long as we care about suffering in the world, says political philosopher Simona Forti, we are compelled to inquire into the question of evil. But is the concept of evil still useful in a postmodern landscape where absolute values have been leveled and relativized by a historicist perspective? Given our current unwillingness to judge others, what signposts remain to guide our ethical behavior?
Surveying the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western philosophical debates on evil, Forti concludes that it is time to leave behind what she calls "the Dostoevsky paradigm": the...
As long as we care about suffering in the world, says political philosopher Simona Forti, we are compelled to inquire into the question of evil. Bu...
By his national affiliation and choice of genre, French novelist Gustave Flaubert can be considered emblematic of modernity. This book showcases his specific and highly refined imaginary as at once unique and symptomatic of an era. In particular, it contributes to the controversial discussion of modernity's relation to religion. At a time when new religious fundamentalisms throughout the world are on the rise, this has only become a more pressing issue. Through this single acclaimed author, we realize that modernity can only be understood in terms of its critical rewriting of religious dogma....
By his national affiliation and choice of genre, French novelist Gustave Flaubert can be considered emblematic of modernity. This book showcases his s...
What Is a Classic? revisits the famous question posed by critics from Sainte-Beuve and T. S. Eliot to J. M. Coetzee to ask how classics emanate from postcolonial histories and societies. Exploring definitive trends in twentieth- and twenty-first century English and Anglophone literature, Ankhi Mukherjee demonstrates the relevance of the question of the classic for the global politics of identifying and perpetuating so-called core texts. Emergent canons are scrutinized in the context of the wider cultural phenomena of book prizes, the translation and distribution of world...
What Is a Classic? revisits the famous question posed by critics from Sainte-Beuve and T. S. Eliot to J. M. Coetzee to ask how classics eman...
Combining phenomenology and psychoanalysis in highly innovative ways, this book seeks to undo the binary opposition between appearance and Being that has been in place since Plato's parable of the cave. It is, essentially, an essay on what could be called -world love, - the possibility and necessity for psychic survival of a profound and vital erotic investment by a human being in the cosmic surround. Here, the author takes her cue from Freud's assertion that the -loss of reality- associated with psychosis is a function of a disturbance not in the capacity to reason or perceive, but rather in...
Combining phenomenology and psychoanalysis in highly innovative ways, this book seeks to undo the binary opposition between appearance and Being that ...
In The Reality of the Mass Media, Luhmann extends his theory of social systems--applied in his earlier works to the economy, the political system, art, religion, the sciences, and law--to an examination of the role of mass media in the construction of social reality. Luhmann argues that the system of mass media is a set of recursive, self-referential programs of communication, whose functions are not determined by the external values of truthfulness, objectivity, or knowledge, nor by specific social interests or political directives. Rather, he contends that the system of mass media is...
In The Reality of the Mass Media, Luhmann extends his theory of social systems--applied in his earlier works to the economy, the political syst...
Addressed not only to specialists in German studies but also to readers interested in modern poetry, philosophy, and aesthetics, this volume is wide in scope but succinct in nature, aiming to assert the relevance of the work of Friedrich Holderlin (1770-1843) for thinking about history, culture, and language today.
Addressed not only to specialists in German studies but also to readers interested in modern poetry, philosophy, and aesthetics, this volume is wide i...
This book returns to a time and place when the concept of transparency was met with deep suspicion. It offers a panorama of postwar French thought where attempts to show the perils of transparency in politics, ethics, and knowledge led to major conceptual inventions, many of which we now take for granted.
Between 1945 and 1985, academics, artists, revolutionaries, and state functionaries spoke of transparency in pejorative terms. Associating it with the prying eyes of totalitarian governments, they undertook a critical project against it--in education, policing, social psychology,...
This book returns to a time and place when the concept of transparency was met with deep suspicion. It offers a panorama of postwar French thought ...
This new collection of previously untranslated essays by renowned German conceptual historian and theorist Reinhart Koselleck provides new insight into his theory of history, an ambitious attempt to unearth the conditions of all possible histories.
This new collection of previously untranslated essays by renowned German conceptual historian and theorist Reinhart Koselleck provides new insight int...
This book shows how early economic ideas structured Christian thought and society, giving crucial insight into why money holds such power in the West. Examining the religious and theological sources of money's power, it shows how early Christian thinkers borrowed ancient notions of money and economic exchange from the Roman Empire as a basis for their new theological arguments. Monetary metaphors and images, including the minting of coins and debt slavery, provided frameworks for theologians to explain what happens in salvation. God became an economic administrator, for instance, and...
This book shows how early economic ideas structured Christian thought and society, giving crucial insight into why money holds such power in the We...
