This edtion has been revised and extended to include eleven new entries on Berlin, Chomsky, Derrida, Rorty and many others. Comprising 169 entries, it also includes non-Western political thinkers.

Twentieth Century Political Theory brings together 47 thinkers who form and expand the "canon" of contemporary political thought. It will be of value to students and all those interested in the development of a richer public life.

This book is the first major account of political thought in twentieth-century Europe, both West and East, to appear since the end of the Cold War. Skillfully blending intellectual, political, and cultural history, Jan-Werner Müller elucidates the ideas that shaped the period of ideological extremes before 1945 and the liberalization of West European politics after the Second World War. He also offers vivid portraits of famous as well as unjustly forgotten political thinkers and the (...) movements and institutions they inspired. Müller pays particular attention to ideas advanced to justify fascism and how they relate to the special kind of liberal democracy that was created in postwar Western Europe. He also explains the impact of the 1960s and neoliberalism, ending with a critical assessment of today's self-consciously post-ideological age. (shrink)

"I think this is an outstanding book. The coverage is comprehensive, the lines of thought and exposition are clear, and the level of discussion is very high yet remarkably lively and accessible. It has an underlying intellectual seriousness and engagement which shines out through the individual chapters, and the author's unwillingness to make do with secondary analyses and received ideas gives it a strength and freshness of approach which is extremely welcome." -- Professor William Outhwaite, University of Sussex Social Theory (...) in the Twentieth Century offers an easy-to-read but provocative account of the development of social theory. Patrick Baert covers a wide range of key figures and schools of thought, including Giddens, Foucault and Habermas. Written in a lively style and avoiding jargon, this book is aimed at students who wish to understand the main debates and dilemmas driving social theory. Rather than providing a neutral summary of the different thinkers and theories, Baert challenges the conventional readings of social theory with new and original interpretations. In effect, he bridges the gap between philosophy and social theory by placing the theoretical views within wider historical traditions. Social Theory in the Twentieth Century will undoubtedly become the standard introduction to social theory for students in sociology, politics, and anthropology. (shrink)

Ugo Spirito's Memoirs of the Twentieth Century is the intellectual autobiography of one of the most original and anticonformist contemporary Italian philosophers. In it, Spirito makes an evaluation of his long career (spanning from the decade of the 20's to that of the 70's of the twentieth century) as a thinker who was never satisfied with any theoretical or philosophical system, while constantly aiming at finding a definitive truth: the "incontrovertible" or absolute. The various stages of (...) his search deal with different philosophical and scientific systems - from positivism to actual idealism, from problematicism to omnicentrism, from scientism to neoproblematicism - revealing at the same time an inherent antinomic procedure that does not permit him to take any truth for granted. At the end of his life, Spirito realized that he could only be sure of his present state of "unawareness," thus challenging the validity of his lifelong investigative activity. "Man cannot know himself," Spirito wrote. Confronted with the manifestations of life and universe, he could not help but feel a sense of "surprise and astonishment." Throughout his life, he was only a spectator of his destiny, not the conscious creator of it, as he believed in the early stage of his career. Consequently, he reached a position of negating any value system, bordering on skepticism and nihilism. Within this context, he offered a post-modern interpretation of life. This interpretation was also Spirito's conclusion, and as such, implied a rethinking about other faiths, both political and ideological, that for more than fifty years would develop parallel to philosophical faith. Consequently, he revisited some of the most important philosophical and political personalities who interpreted or materialized those faiths, from Benedetto Croce to Gentile, from Benito Mussolini to Giovanni Bottai, from Togliatti to Pope Paul VI. Spirito was not a thinker who remained secluded within the ivory tower of pure investigation, but in an effort to modify society according to principle of the identification of philosophy with life, he tried to act upon it by following thoughts with action. Memoirs of the Twentieth Century is divided in two parts: one purely autobiographical and theoretical, and the other more historical, where Spirito narrates his relationship with the above-mentioned personalities, as a way of testing the validity of his beliefs. Indeed, one can perceive his moment of adherence to each of the different approaches expounded, only to subsequently detach himself from them. For the English-speaking reader, the second part will appear more interesting and poignant, since Spirito's involvement with history foretells the intellectual fate of a nation. Memoirs of the Twentieth Century is a reflection on life, in which personal history serves as a vehicle for judgment upon an entire century. (shrink)

The course of German philosophy in the twentieth century is one of the most exciting and controversial in the history of human thought. In this outstanding and engaging introduction, a companion volume to his German Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: Weber to Heidegger, Julian Young examines and assesses the way in which some of the major German thinkers of the period reacted, often in starkly contrasting ways, to the challenges posed by the nature of modernity, (...) the failure of liberalism and the concept of decline. Divided into two parts exploring major intellectual figures of the left and right respectively, Young introduces and assesses the thought of the following figures: Georg Lukács: the critique of capitalism: alienation, reification, and false consciousness Ernst Bloch: the Marxist utopia Walter Benjamin: the confluence of phenomenology and left-wing thought: the Arcades Project, aura, and the technological reproduction of the artwork Oswald Spengler: the pessimistic right and the concept of Western decline Max Scheler: Catholic conservatism and the 'objective hierarchy of values' Carl Schmitt: the failure of liberalism, dictatorship, 'friends' versus 'enemies' Leo Strauss: the rejection of moral relativism and the return to classical philosophy. Highly relevant when the viability of liberal democracy is again called into question, German Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: Lukacs to Strauss is essential reading for students of German philosophy, phenomenology and critical theory, and will also be of interest to students in related fields such as literature, religious studies, and political theory. (shrink)

Raymond Aron is widely regarded as the most important figure in the history of twentieth-century French liberalism. Yet his status within the history of liberal thought has been more often proclaimed than explained. Though he is frequently lauded as the inheritor of France's liberal tradition, Aron's formative influences were mostly non-French and often radically anti-liberal thinkers. This book explains how, why, and with what consequences he belatedly defined and aligned himself with a French liberal tradition. It also (...) situates Aron within the larger histories of Cold War liberalism and decolonization, re-evaluating his contribution to debates over totalitarianism, the end of ideology, and the Algerian War. By exposing the enduring importance of Aron's student political engagements for the development of his thought, Iain Stewart challenges the prevailing view of Aron's early intellectual trajectory as a journey from naïve socialist idealism to mature liberal realism, offering a new critical perspective on one of the twentieth century's most influential intellectuals. (shrink)

From Plato through the nineteenth century, the West could draw on comprehensive political visions to guide government and society. Now, for the first time in more than two thousand years, Tracy B. Strong contends, we have lost our foundational supports. In the words of Hannah Arendt, the state of political thought in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has left us effectively “thinking without a banister.” _Politics without Vision_ takes up the thought of seven influential thinkers, (...) each of whom attempted to construct a political solution to this problem: Nietzsche, Weber, Freud, Lenin, Schmitt, Heidegger, and Arendt. None of these theorists were liberals nor, excepting possibly Arendt, were they democrats—and some might even be said to have served as handmaidens to totalitarianism. And all to a greater or lesser extent shared the common conviction that the institutions and practices of liberalism are inadequate to the demands and stresses of the present times. In examining their thought, Strong acknowledges the political evil that some of their ideas served to foster but argues that these were not necessarily the only paths their explorations could have taken. By uncovering the turning points in their thought—and the paths not taken—Strong strives to develop a political theory that can avoid, and perhaps help explain, the mistakes of the past while furthering the democratic impulse. Confronting the widespread belief that political thought is on the decline, Strong puts forth a brilliant and provocative counterargument that in fact it has endured—without the benefit of outside support. A compelling rendering of contemporary political theory, _Politics without Vision_ is sure to provoke discussion among scholars in many fields. (shrink)

The course of German philosophy in the twentieth century is one of the most exciting, diverse and controversial periods in the history of human thought. It is widely studied and its legacy hotly contested. In this outstanding introduction, Julian Young explains and assesses the two dominant traditions in modern German philosophy - critical theory and phenomenology - by examining the following key thinkers and topics: Max Weber's setting the agenda for modern German philosophy: the `rationalization' and `disenchantment' (...) of modernity resulting in 'loss of freedom' and 'loss of meaning'; Horkheimer and Adorno: rationalization and the 'culture industry'; Habermas' defence of Enlightenment rationalization, the 'unfinished project of modernity'; Marcuse: a Freud-based vision of a repression-free utopia; Husserl: overcoming the 'crisis of humanity' through phenomenology; Early Heidegger's existential phenomenology: `authenticity' as loyalty to 'heritage'; Gadamer and `fusion of horizons' ; Arendt: the human condition; Later Heidegger: the re-enchantment of reality. German Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: Weber to Heidegger is essential reading for students of German philosophy, phenomenology, and critical theory, and will also be of interest to students in related fields such as literature, religious studies, and political theory. (shrink)

Long considered "the noblest of the senses," vision has increasingly come under critical scrutiny by a wide range of thinkers who question its dominance in Western culture. These critics of vision, especially prominent in twentieth-century France, have challenged its allegedly superior capacity to provide access to the world. They have also criticized its supposed complicity with political and social oppression through the promulgation of spectacle and surveillance. Martin Jay turns to this discourse surrounding vision and explores (...) its often contradictory implications in the work of such influential figures as Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, Guy Debord, Luce Irigaray, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida. Jay begins with a discussion of the theory of vision from Plato to Descartes, then considers its role in the French Enlightenment before turning to its status in the culture of modernity. From consideration of French Impressionism to analysis of Georges Bataille and the Surrealists, Roland Barthes's writings on photography, and the film theory of Christian Metz, Jay provides lucid and fair-minded accounts of thinkers and ideas widely known for their difficulty. His book examines the myriad links between the interrogation of vision and the pervasive antihumanist, antimodernist, and counter-enlightenment tenor of much recent French thought. Refusing, however, to defend the dominant visual order, he calls instead for a plurality of "scopic regimes." Certain to generate controversy and discussion throughout the humanities and social sciences, _Downcast Eyes_ will consolidate Jay's reputation as one of today's premier cultural and intellectual historians. (shrink)

At the beginning of the twentieth century the tropes of messianism, apocalypse and redemption, which had been so central to the West's religious formation, seemed spent forces in Germany. Nietzsche had pronounced God as dead and theology seemed to be travelling the same secular route as philosophy. But World War I changed that. This book introduces some of Germany's key thinkers in theology, philosophy, literature and social and political thought through their engagement with these previously discarded (...) concepts. They initiated a new and urgent dialogue between philosophy and theology. This imaginative and innovative collection brings together essays by established scholars on Messiamism, Redemption and Apocalypse in twentieth century German thought. Major theologians such as Barth, Buber, Bonhoeffer, Rahner, Pannenberg and Moltmann are discussed alongside leading intellectuals such as Adorno, Benjamin, Bloch, Heiddeger and Rosenzweig. Literary figures, such as Kafka and George, are also included. The interfaces imply a different way of reading theology and challenge the reader to think what the implications of immanence in a specific philosophical culture are for the theological project. Some of the essays introduce thinkers who are little known to English speaking readers. Others cast new light on more familiar figures. The collection as a whole contextualises German religious and philosophical thought on these crucial topics in very useful ways. The dialogue at work in these pages is a very important one and should be carried further. (shrink)

The tragedy of European civilization is a protracted historical event spanning the twentieth century and in many ways is ongoing. During this time some of the greatest modern thinkers were active, producing works that both refl ected what was happening in history and contributed towards shaping it. This work is a critique of their ideas. Harry Redner establishes where and how they went wrong, in some cases with apocalyptic consequences for Europe and the world. The great intellectuals (...) of the age, at once philosophers, sociologists, political theorists, historians and much else besides, include Marx, Weber, Freud, Elias, Spengler, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Arendt, Nietzsche, and Foucault. All of them had a historical impact, even if only in molding academic disciplines and shaping of public opinion, as was the case with the philosophers Wittgenstein and Arendt. This book explores the close links between anti-Semitism and cultural pessimism and the relation between psychology and sociology. Other themes range from the history and theory of the state, to the misconception of language and power. Suitable for students of sociology, philosophy, political theory, history, and cultural studies, this brilliant exploration of our civilization and its tragedies will also be of interest to intellectual general readers. (shrink)

Every year since 1933 many of the world's leading intellectuals have met on Lake Maggiore to discuss the latest developments in philosophy, history, art and science and, in particular, to explore the mystical and symbolic in religion. The Eranos Meetings - named after the Greek word for a banquet where the guests bring the food - constitute one of the most important gatherings of scholars in the twentieth century. The book presents a set of portraits of some of (...) the century's most influential thinkers, all participants at Eranos: Carl Jung, Erich Neumann, Mircea Eliade, Martin Buber, Walter Otto, Paul Tillich, Gershom Scholem, Herbert Read, Joseph Campbell, Erwin Schrodinger, Karl Kereyni, D.T. Suzuki, and Adolph Portmann. The volume presents a critical appraisal of the views of these men, how the exchange of ideas encouraged by Eranos influenced each, and examines the attraction of these esotericists towards authoritarian politics. (shrink)

Introduction: an 'untimely' political thought for serious times -- The twentieth-century politics of contempt -- 'Undisguised influences' -- Tragic beginnings mystic 'communion' with nature -- An artist's point of view -- Rethinking participation beyond 'romanticism' -- A stranger to the world of ressentiment -- Commencement of freedom -- Sisyphus or happiness in hell -- Nothing is possible, everything is permitted -- The absurd and power -- Combat with nihilism -- Between Sade and the Dandy -- Conclusion.

This collection contains the first English translations of a group of important eighteenth-century German essays that address the question, "What is Enlightenment?" The book also includes newly translated and newly written interpretive essays by leading historians and philosophers, which examine the origins of eighteenth-century debate on Enlightenment and explore its significance for the present. In recent years, critics from across the political and philosophical spectrum have condemned the Enlightenment for its complicity with any number of present-day social (...) and cultural maladies. It has rarely been noticed, however, that at the end of the Enlightenment, German thinkers had already begun a scrutiny of their age so wide-ranging that there are few subsequent criticisms that had not been considered by the close of the eighteenth century. Among the concerns these essays address are the importance of freedom of expression, the relationship between faith and reason, and the responsibility of the Enlightenment for revolutions. Included are translations of works by such well-known figures as Immanuel Kant, Moses Mendelssohn, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Johann Georg Hamann, as well as essays by thinkers whose work is virtually unknown to American readers. These eighteenth-century texts are set against interpretive essays by such major twentieth-century figures as Max Horkheimer, Jürgen Habermas, and Michel Foucault. (shrink)

Originating from the teachings of Confucius, Confucianism became the mainstream of Chinese culture and had enormous effects on all aspects of Chinese society. Confucianism has gone through three major changes in Chinese history: the first occurred during the Han period, the second during the Song period, and the third during the Qing period, after the first Opium War. In the late Qing period, China experienced a rapid decline due to the invasion of Western forces. Progressive intellectuals attributed this to the (...) conservative nature of Confucianism at that time. Their Anti-Confucianism Movement grew especially active during the May Fourth Movement in the early twentieth century. Two prominent figures in this movement were Chen Duxiu, from the political field, and Lu Xun, from the literary field. Chen Duxiu, who was a thinker and politician, and Lu Xun, who was a thinker and novelist, were both strongly critical of the problematic social habits connected to conservative Confucian ideologies, such as humaneness, courtesy, filial piety, and so on. However, there were also important differences between these two figures: while Chen Duxiu criticized the bad habits of Confucianism across various fields of society at a rather abstract political angle through his articles, Lu Xun more specifically criticized the bad habits of Confucianism in daily life from a literary perspective through his novels. These differences derived from their respective vocations. Consequently, while Chen Duxiu’s Anti-Confucianism Movement had a huge impact on intellectuals, Lu Xun’s Anti-Confucianism Movement had a huge impact on the general public. While the former led the Anti-Confucianism Movement, the latter popularized it. The third major change in Confucianism is still ongoing. It seems likely that the Anti-Confucianism Movement of Chen Duxiu and Lu Xun will help us to anticipate what kind of changes in Confucianism may go through in future. (shrink)

The article provides proof that the concept of time articulated in Russian philosophy of the nineteenth century was very close to the understanding of time in the philosophy of Henri Bergson. This explains the close attention of Russian culture to the philosophical system of the French thinker at the beginning of the twentieth century. It also allows us to hypothesize about the possible influence of the ideas of Russian philosophers of the late nineteenth century on Bergson. (...) Bergson’s most original idea is the recognition of the metaphysical primacy of the subjective, inner time of the human in relation to physical time. In physical time, only the moment of the present has real existence; in internal time, designated by Bergson as duration, all moments of the past are preserved as real, and this is expressed by memory. Internal time turns out to be the spiritual Absolute from which the entire material world originates. A very similar metaphysical concept is presented in Pyotr Chaadaev’s Philosophical Letters. According to Chaadaev, each person is directly involved in the spiritual Absolute, which has the characteristic of integral time. In this time, all moments are in unity, and there is no division into the past, present, and future; this division arises only in the time intrinsic to the material reality that originates from the spiritual Absolute. In the religious teaching of Leo Tolstoy, personality is defined as the appearance of God within the limits of material existence, so a person is simultaneously involved in the earthly physical time and absolute time, which manifests itself through memory. The article concludes that Bergson’s ideas determined the most important features of Russian avant-garde culture of the twentieth century; in particular, thanks to them, the opposite trends of Russian thought were brought to unity: metaphysics of pan-unity and personalism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In Kant’s Wake: Philosophy in the Twentieth CenturyRobert HannaTom Rockmore. In Kant’s Wake: Philosophy in the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. Pp. 213. Paper, $24.95.In In Kant's Wake, Tom Rockmore sets himself the almost impossibly ambitious task of telling a coherent story about the sprawling set of thinkers, doctrines, arguments, journal articles, books, social institutions, teachings, and other intellectual practices that make up philosophy (...) in the twentieth century. His highly plausible unifying hypothesis is that twentieth-century philosophy is a series of creative and reactive footnotes to Kant's Critical Philosophy as encapsulated in the Critique of Pure Reason, and in particular, to Kant's transcendental idealism. Of course the same unifying hypothesis is equally plausible of the nineteenth century. In this sense, the history of philosophy since Kant is just the history of post-Kantian philosophy.Rather than telling a single long story, Rockmore tells five shorter stories. He begins his narrative with a chapter on Kant's metaphysics and immediate responses to the Critique of Pure Reason (ch. 2). Then he focuses, in turn, on the diachronic developments of Marxism (ch. 3), pragmatism, (ch. 4), phenomenology (ch. 5), and analytic philosophy (ch. 6). The five stories are framed by a methodological chapter on the problem of interpreting twentieth-century philosophy (ch. 1), and a concluding chapter on the relation between Kant and the overall shape of philosophy in the twentieth century (ch. 7).Three more or less explicitly-stated interpretive principles run through each of Rockmore's historical narratives. The first, as I have already mentioned, is the grand unifying hypothesis of the essentially protean character of Kant's first Critique and the metaphysics of transcendental idealism. The second is that each distinct philosophical movement is [End Page 676] fundamentally organized around the teachings and writings of a few "master" or "strong" thinkers (14). And the third is that the history of philosophy is nothing but a multi-voiced Socratic conversation (13). Everyone knows how even the most intensely animated intellectual conversation can end with an inconclusive whimper instead of a conclusive bang. According to Rockmore, that is basically what happened to the great philosophical conversation of the twentieth century.In the chapter on Kant, Rockmore usefully distinguishes between two strands of transcendental idealism that Kant regarded as fully complementary, but which tended to run and pull in sharply opposite directions in post-Kantian philosophy: (1) the representationalist strand, and (2) the constructivist strand (36). Now Kant's transcendental idealism says four things. First, cognition is the mental representation of objects. Second, the objects we cognize are nothing but appearances or phenomena and never things-in-themselves or noumena. Third, the generic structure of the objects and the world we cognize is identical to the non-empirical or a priori generic structure of the innate cognitive capacities or faculties of our minds. And fourth, the human mind is spontaneously active in producing the specific structures of the very objects we cognize when our faculties are triggered by particular sensory inputs. The first and second theses of transcendental idealism constitute its representationalist strand, and the third and fourth theses constitute its constructivist strand.The decomposition of the orginal Kantian vector into its representationalist and constructivist components helps Rockmore in his interpretation of the four main sub-movements of twentieth-century philosophy. Marxism or dialectical materialism, organized of course around the teachings and writings of Karl Marx, is an economic, social, and political version of post-Kantian constructivism focused on the concrete struggles of alienated individuals and groups to achieve liberation and self-realization in collective action. So too pragmatism, organized around the teachings and writings of C. S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, is another version of post-Kantian constructivism, this time focused on the idea that the meaning and truth of concepts and propositions is strictly determined by the practical pay-offs of applying those concepts and propositions.By contrast, phenomenology and analytic philosophy are both versions of representationalism. Phenomenology is organized around the teaching and writings of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and focuses on the structures of consciousness and object-directedness... (shrink)

Apparitions takes a new look at the critical legacy of one of the 20th century's most important and influential thinkers about music, Theodor W. Adorno. Bringing together an international group of scholars, the book offers new historical and critical insights into Adorno's theories of music and how these theories, in turn, have affected the study of contemporary art music, popular music, and jazz. The essays review the impact of Philosophy of New Music a fter World War II, examine (...) Adorno's struggle to adapt his aging philosophy to the new music of the 1950s and 1960s, and trace his influence on recent composers. Several essays in this volume also re-evaluate Adorno's controversial contribution to the study of popular music and jazz, as well as his theories of mass media and mass culture in the context of an increasing consolidation of corporate and political power in the entertainment industry. This volume will be indispensable for both scholars and students of Adorno, who seek a historical context and a critical assessment of some of his most influential as well as most contested writings on music. (shrink)

Long considered "the noblest of the senses," vision has increasingly come under critical scrutiny by a wide range of thinkers who question its dominance in Western culture. These critics of vision, especially prominent in twentieth-century France, have challenged its allegedly superior capacity to provide access to the world. They have also criticized its supposed complicity with political and social oppression through the promulgation of spectacle and surveillance. Martin Jay turns to this discourse surrounding vision and explores (...) its often contradictory implications in the work of such influential figures as Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, Guy Debord, Luce Irigaray, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida. Jay begins with a discussion of the theory of vision from Plato to Descartes, then considers its role in the French Enlightenment before turning to its status in the culture of modernity. From consideration of French Impressionism to analysis of Georges Bataille and the Surrealists, Roland Barthes's writings on photography, and the film theory of Christian Metz, Jay provides lucid and fair-minded accounts of thinkers and ideas widely known for their difficulty. His book examines the myriad links between the interrogation of vision and the pervasive antihumanist, antimodernist, and counter-enlightenment tenor of much recent French thought. Refusing, however, to defend the dominant visual order, he calls instead for a plurality of "scopic regimes." Certain to generate controversy and discussion throughout the humanities and social sciences, _Downcast Eyes_ will consolidate Jay's reputation as one of today's premier cultural and intellectual historians. (shrink)

Western Enlightenment ideas had already been introduced to Edo-period Japan in the early nineteenth century. However, it was not until the Meiji Restoration in 1868 that the modern Japanese Enlightenment movement really took off, when Japan left the sinocentric sphere and adopted Western civilization as its frame of reference. In this paper, I focus on two contrasting thinkers: Yukichi Fukuzawa and Kakuzô Okakura. Fukuzawa, one of the leading thinkers of the Japanese Enlightenment, internalized the Eurocentric view of (...) the history of civilization as a norm and made a significant contribution to the Westernization of Japan. In contrast, in the face of the oncoming modernization, or Westernization, Okakura sought on the one hand to revive the ideals of the East, which were in danger of being forgotten, and on the other hand, to relativize Western modernity itself. He thus reveals the possibility of another Enlightenment. (shrink)

Diversity is both an unavoidable aspect of twenty-first century living and a powerful challenge to older philosophical traditions that still assume as normatively universal a set of values, ways of thinking, institutions, and habits of living that emerged within earlier eras of more homogeneous cultures, less developed technologies, and more accepted forms of linguistic, legal, religious, economic, political, and military domination. Within recent years, new styles of philosophical discourse, including deconstruction, postmodernism, feminism, post-colonialism, and critical race theory, have (...) persuasively challenged these universalistic assumptions to reveal the important human differences they marginalize. Experience-based appreciation of the mutually educative potential of diverse standpoints as well as sober concern about the perils of our present times have led many thinkers to look for contemporary forms of pragmatism and cosmopolitanism as hospitable intellectual gathering places for urgently needed cross-difference conversations that may reflect and give substance to shared visions of democratic diversity. The eight authors in this volume engage in cross-difference conversations with other thinkers from earlier periods and other philosophical traditions, as well as with each other, in order to reconstruct pragmatism and cosmopolitanism in ways that are more attuned to our lived experience of diversity as well as our hopes for a diversity-appreciating democratic future. (shrink)

This article analyses the role of ideas about class in the conceptualization of citizenship in twentieth-century Britain. It argues that the way in which citizenship was conceptualized involved a process of ideological engagement, by which a specific interpretation of the concept of class was asserted, and other possible interpretations closed off, as a result of particular preferences and priorities. The analysis is pursued through a comparative case study of the way in which two particular thinkers -- Henry (...) Jones and T.H. Marshall -- developed their ideas about citizenship within two different historical contexts in Britain: the late nineteenth century through to the 1910s, and the 1940s through to the 1970s. Jones and Marshall defined their conceptions of citizenship in opposition to notions of class as a basis for social organization, and both saw citizenship as a means by which individuals could trans- cend the boundaries of class. The specific way in which each interpreted the concept of class, however, led to different conclusions as to the process by which this would be achieved, which, in turn, determined the principles upon which they based their conceptions of citizenship. (shrink)

"Knowing and History" charts the development of Hegelian philosophy of history in France from the 1930s through the postwar period, and critically assesses its significance for an understanding of our cultural present and of the possibilities for making meaning out of change over time. Michael Roth provides detailed analyses of the works of three of the most important Hegelian thinkers: Jean Hyppolite, Alexandre Kojève, and Eric Weil. These philosophers turned to history as the source of truths and criteria of (...) judgment: they forged connections between history and knowing as a means of confronting key modem philosophical problems, and of engaging their contemporary political concerns. According to Roth, the French Hegelians' work illuminates the power and limitations of the philosophical approach to history. Further, he finds in the development of their philosophies one of the crucial transformations in modem intellectual history: the shift from a concern with questions of significance to a concern with questions of use or function. Relevant to a wide variety of disciplines, "Knowing and History" will appeal to those specializing in intellectual history and political theory, as well as philosophers of history, critical theorists, and students of modem French thought and culture. (shrink)

This article assesses to what extent the future of democratic liberty depends upon its citizens employing a proper approach to the past, by analyzing Tocqueville’s views of three kinds of historical consciousness—aristocratic, revolutionary, and democratic. It is argued that democracies require certain aristocratic assumptions about historical dynamics to cultivate a historical consciousness that fosters liberty. Key to this is the belief in the human capacity to influence the trajectory of history. Tocqueville’s historical approach, which blends aristocratic and democratic elements, is (...) identified as the most effective method for tempering the fatalistic tendencies of the democratic point of view. Thus, for democracies to maintain liberty, citizens should recognize the dual role of general causes and human agency in directing the course of historical events. Tocqueville’s insights on the effects of historical consciousness on the future of democratic liberty remain particularly relevant today when Western democracies confront internal polarization and external anti-democratic challenges, whether neoliberal, illiberal, populist, or fascist. (shrink)

This article addresses Eric L. Santner’s claim that “there is more political theology in everyday life than we might have ever thought” by analyzing the “theologico-political problem” in the work of three prominent twentieth-century political thinkers—Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, and Hannah Arendt. Schmitt, Strauss, and Arendt share a preoccupation with the crisis of modern political liberalism and confront the theologico-political problem in a similar spirit: although their responses differ dramatically, their individual accounts (...) dwell on the absence of incontestable principles in modern society that can justify life-in-common and the persistence of the political order. Their writings thus engage with the question of the place of “the absolute” in the political realm. In particular, Arendt’s indirect approach to the theologico-political problem is crucial to understanding the radicality of a political world in which traditional certainties can no longer be re-established. The theoretical trajectory I present suggests that the dispersion of political theology in everyday life has a specific corollary: modern politics operates within the tragic and paradoxical nature of its unstable and common origins that cannot be incorporated in exceptionalist versions of the body politic. (shrink)

Twentieth-century political philosopher Eric Voegelin is best known as a severe critic of modernity. Much of his work argues that modernity is a Gnostic revolt against the fundamental structure of reality. For Voegelin, “Gnosticism” is the belief that human beings can transform the nature of reality through secret knowledge and social action, and he considered it the crux of the crisis of modernity. As Voegelin struggled with this crisis throughout his career, he never wavered in his judgment (...) that philosophers of the modern continental tradition were complicit in the Gnostic revolt of modernity. But while Voegelin’s analysis of those philosophers is at times scathing, his work also bears marks of their influence, and Voegelin has much more in common with the theorists of the modern continental tradition than is usually recognized. _Eric Voegelin and the Continental Tradition: Explorations in Modern Political Thought _evaluates this political philosopher—one of the most original and influential thinkers of our time—by examining his relationship to the modern continental tradition in philosophy, from Kant to Derrida. In a compelling introduction, editors Lee Trepanier and Steven F. McGuire present a review of the trajectories of Voegelin’s thought and outline what often is portrayed as his derisive critique of modernity. Soon, however, they begin to unravel the similarities between Voegelin’s thought and the work of other thinkers in the continental tradition. The subsequent chapters explore these possible connections by examining Voegelin’s intellectual relationship to individual thinkers, including Hegel, Schelling, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Gadamer. The essays in this volume go beyond Voegelin’s own reading of the modern philosophers to offer a reevaluation of his relationship to those thinkers. In _Eric Voegelin and the Continental Tradition_, Voegelin’s attempt to grapple with the crisis of modernity becomes clearer, and his contribution to the modern continental tradition is illuminated. The book features the work of both established and emerging Voegelin scholars, and the essays were chosen to present thoughtful and balanced assessments of both Voegelin’s thought and the ideas of the other thinkers considered. As the first volume to examine the relationship—and surprising commonalities—between Voegelin’s philosophy and the continental tradition as a whole, this text will be of interest not only to Voegelin disciples but to philosophers engaged by continental modernism and all disciplines of political philosophy. (shrink)

This major work of academic reference provides a comprehensive overview of the development of political thought from the late nineteenth to the end of the twentieth century. Written by a distinguished team of international contributors, this Cambridge History, first published in 2003, covers the rise of the welfare state and subsequent reactions to it, the fascist and communist critiques of and attempted alternatives to liberal democracy, the novel forms of political organisation occasioned by the rise of (...) a mass electorate and new social movements, the various intellectual traditions from positivism to post-modernism that have shaped the study of politics, the interaction between western and non-western traditions of political thought, and the challenge posed to the state by globalisation. Every major theme in twentieth-century political thought is covered in a series of chapters at once scholarly and accessible, of interest and relevance to students and scholars of politics at all levels from beginning undergraduate upwards. (shrink)

Twentieth-century French philosophers Jacques Maritain and Yves R. Simon pioneered new approaches to understanding and defending political democracy in the wake of two world wars. Rather than break from a religious tradition that seemed to struggle against modernity and certain forms of democratic theory and practice, these thinkers instead looked back to the philosophy of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas to propel Catholic political philosophy forward. The profound influence of Maritain and Simon is manifest in the (...) dramatic achievements of Vatican II and in the work of the scholars of political philosophy who learned from them. John P. Hittinger, one of the finest of these scholars, provides in Liberty, Wisdom, and Grace a comprehensive survey of the Thomists' contributions to contemporary political thought as well as a detailed analysis of their approach to democracy. Hittinger treats criticism of Maritain, including the work of Catholic political writer Aurel Kolnai, and discusses the alternative democratic visions of John Locke and David Richards. His portraits of thinkers who have wrestled with democracy in the Thomist tradition, such as Leo Strauss and John Paul II, are sensitive and engaging. Addressing questions of religion and philosophy broadly understood, the essays collected here offer a searching examination of democratic theory in the modern age. (shrink)

Pragmatism has enjoyed a considerable revival in the latter part of the twentieth century, but what precisely constitutes pragmatism remains a matter of dispute. In reconstructing the pragmatic tradition in political philosophy, Matthew Festenstein rejects the idea that it is a single, cohesive doctrine. His incisive analysis brings out the commonalities and shared concerns among contemporary pragmatists while making clear their differences in how they would resolve those concerns. His study begins with the work of John Dewey (...) and the moral and psychological conceptions that shaped his philosophy. Here Festenstein lays out the major philosophic issues with which first Dewey, and then his heirs, would grapple. The book's second part traces how Dewey's approach has been differently developed, especially in the work of three contemporary pragmatic thinkers: Richard Rorty, Jurgen Habermas, and Hilary Putnam. This first full-length critical study of the relationship between the pragmatist tradition and political philosophy fills a significant gap in contemporary thought. (shrink)

This book explores the significance of rhetoric from the perspective of its complex relationship with philosophy. It demonstrates how this relationship gives expression to a basic tension at the core of politics: that between the contingency of its happening and the transcendence toward which it strives. The first part of the study proposes a reassessment of the ancient quarrel between philosophy and rhetoric, as it was discussed by Plato, Aristotle, and above all Cicero and Quintilian, who ambitiously attempted to bring (...) them together creating an ideal that is at the roots of the humanist tradition. It then moves to twentieth-century political theory and shows how the questions that emerge from that quarrel still strongly resonate in the works of key thinkers such as H. Arendt, L. Strauss, and R. Rorty. The volume thus offers an original contribution that locates itself at the intersection of politics, rhetoric, and philosophy. (shrink)

An international team of over 100 leading scholars has been brought together to provide authoritative exposition of how history's most important philosophical thinkers - fron antiquity to the present day - have sought to analyse the concepts and tenets central to Western religious belief, especially Christianity. Divided, chronologically, into five volumes, _The History of Western Philosophy of Religion_ is designed to be accessible to a wide range of readers, from the scholar looking for original insight and the latest research (...) findings to the student wishing for a masterly encapsulation of a particular philosopher's views. It will become the standard reference in the field. Features: each volume opens with a general introduction, presenting an overview of philosophy of religion in the period each essay opens with a brief biography, then outlines and analyses that philosopher's contribution to thinking on religion, and concludes with key further reading essays are cross-referenced, highlighting the development of major ideas and influences across history each volume closes with a chronology, presenting a contextual guide to the main religious, political, cultural and artistic events of the period each volume contains its own bibliography and index. (shrink)

Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek together have emerged as two of Europe’s most significant living philosophers. In a shared spirit of resistance to global capitalism, both are committed to bringing philosophical reflection to bear upon present-day political circumstances. These thinkers are especially interested in asking what consequences the supposed twentieth-century demise of communism entails for leftist political theory in the early twenty-first century. _ Badiou, Žižek, and Political Transformations_ examines Badiouian and Žižekian depictions (...) of change, particularly as deployed at the intersection of philosophy and politics. The book details the origins of Badiou’s concept of the event and Žižek’s concept of the act as related theoretical visions of revolutionary happenings, delineating a number of difficulties arising from these similar concepts. Johnston finds that Badiou and Žižek tend to favor models of transformation that risk discouraging in advance precisely the efforts at changing the world of today that these uncompromising leftists so ardently desire. _Badiou, Žižek, and Political Transformations_ will surely join Johnston’s _Žižek’s Ontology _as an instant classic in its field. (shrink)

Drawing on a wide range of texts and using an interdisciplinary approach, this volume shows how Chinese and Japanese intellectuals mobilized the past to create a better future. It is especially significant today given a world where, amidst tensions within Asia and the rise of China, East Asian intellectuals and governments constantly find new political meanings in their traditions. The essays illuminate how throughout Chinese and Japanese history, thinkers constantly weaved together nationalism, internationalism and a politics of time. (...) This volume explores a broad range of subjects such as premodern and early modern attempts to conjure a politics of Confucianism, twentieth century Japanese Marxist interpretations of Buddhism and Japanese and Chinese endeavors to imagine a new world order. In sum, this book shows us why understanding East Asian pasts are essential to making sense of ideological trends in contemporary China and Japan. For example, without understanding Confucianism and how modern intellectuals in China grappled with this body of thought, we would be unable to make sense of the Chinese government's current promotion of the Chinese classics. This book will interest students and scholars of political science, history and Asian Studies, sociology and philosophy. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt and Theodor W. Adorno, two of the most influential political philosophers and theorists of the twentieth century, were contemporaries with similar interests, backgrounds, and a shared experience of exile. Yet until now, no book has brought them together. In this first comparative study of their work, leading scholars discuss divergences, disclose surprising affinities, and find common ground between the two thinkers. This pioneering work recovers the relevance of Arendt and Adorno for contemporary political (...) theory and philosophy and lays the foundation for a critical understanding of political modernity: from universalistic claims for political freedom to the abyss of genocidal politics. (shrink)

This volume presents the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a great philosopher and social theorist of mid-twentieth century, as a viable alternative to both modernism and postmodernism. Douglas Low argues that Merleau-Ponty's philosophy offers explanations and solves problems that other philosophies grapple with, but do not resolve, given their respective theoretical presuppositions and assumptions. Low brings the work of Merleau-Ponty into critical contact with important thinkers, including Sartre, Heidegger, Derrida, and Marx. He highlights Merleau-Ponty's connection to the early (...) Hegel, especially with regard to the criticism of modernism's "representational consciousness" and its subsequent skepticism with regard to our being in the world. Merleau-Ponty made a concerted effort to solve the problems that come about due to a wide variety of Western dualisms: body and mind, perception and conception, self and other, etc. He frequently does so by demonstrating the connection between these disparate terms, the connection of perception with affect and interest, fact with value, and a broadened view of science with moral and philosophical judgment. Merleau-Ponty's unique contribution is his focus on the lived-through perceiving body and its relationship to abstract thought and language. In his detailed analysis of the work of Merleau-Ponty, Low brings attention to a twentieth-century master capable of altering the landscape of modern and social philosophy in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

A philosopher and political thinker describes a new political grammar free of modernist assumptions. In 2004 and 2005, Antonio Negri held ten workshops at the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris to formulate a new political grammar of the postmodern. Biopolitics, biopowers, control, the multitude, people, war, borders, dependency and interdependency, state, nation, the common, difference, resistance, subjective rights, revolution, freedom, democracy: these are just a few of the themes Negri addressed in these experimental laboratories. Postmodernity, Negri (...) suggests, can be described as a “porcelain factory”: a delicate and fragile construction that could be destroyed through one clumsy act. Looking across twentieth century history, Negri warns that our inability to anticipate future developments has already placed coming generations in serious jeopardy. Describing the years 1917-1968 as the “short century,” Negri suggests that by the end of it, all of the familiar markers of modernity had lost their relevance. Confronted with an intolerable reality, indignation and the revolutionary will to transform the world have both taken new forms and must be understood anew, free of modernist assumptions. In the impassioned debates recounted in this book, Antonio Negri attempts to describe the formation of an alternative political horizon and looks for a way to define the practices and modes of expression that democracy could take.Antonio Negri is a philosopher and essay writer. A political and social activist in the 1960s and 1970s in Italy, he taught political sciences for many years and has written numerous books on political philosophy including Marx beyond Marx, The Savage Anomaly, Insurgencies ; and in collaboration with Michael Hardt, Empire and Multitude. (shrink)

A Political Life is the compelling autobiography of Norberto Bobbio, one of the foremost political thinkers in postwar Italy. In dramatic and lively prose, Bobbio guides us through some of the most significant events of the twentieth century, charting their influence on his life and work. Born in 1909, Norberto Bobbio's early life was marked by the experience of growing up in Mussolini's Italy - an experience that helped to shape his passionate commitment to the (...) anti-fascist cause. As a result of these early experiences, Bobbio has tirelessly emphasized the fundamental, unassailable importance of democratic rights in the modern state. He has been a voice of reason and moderation in a political context where democratic values have often been threatened by extremes. This masterly autobiography traces the development of Bobbio's political thought, providing a penetrating analysis of the changing political landscape of Italy. At the same time, it represents an intimate account of Bobbio's personal experiences, giving a rare insight into the life and work of this distinguished thinker.A Political Life will be of great interest to students and scholars of social and political theory and of Italian politics, as well as to a general readership interested in political biography and contemporary politics. (shrink)

Princeton Readings in Political Thought is one of the most engaging and up-to-date samplers of the standard works of Western political thinking from antiquity through modern times. Organized chronologically, from Thucydides to Foucault, the book brings together forty-four selections of enduring intellectual value--key articles, book excerpts, essays, and speeches--that have shaped our understanding of Western society and politics. Readers will find this work to be an invaluable reference, and they will enjoy not only the varied selections but also (...) the lucid introductions to each historical era and the brief sketches of each thinker. The book includes the writings of many of the most distinguished observers of the Western experience from classical times, the Middle Ages, modern times, or the ideas of twentieth-century political philosophers and ideologists. (shrink)

In this book, Livingston develops the political implications of formal results obtained over the course of the twentieth century in set theory, metalogic, and computational theory. He argues that the results achieved by thinkers such as Cantor, Russell, Godel, Turing, and Cohen, even when they suggest inherent paradoxes and limitations to the structuring capacities of language or symbolic thought, have far-reaching implications for understanding the nature of political communities and their development and transformation. Alain Badiou's (...) analysis of logical-mathematical structures forms the backbone of his comprehensive and provocative theory of ontology, politics, and the possibilities of radical change. Through interpretive readings of Badiou's work as well as the texts of Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Livingston develops a formally based taxonomy of critical positions on the nature and structure of political communities. These readings, along with readings of Parmenides and Plato, show how the formal results can transfigure two interrelated and ancient problems of the One and the Many: the problem of the relationship of a Form or Idea to the many of its participants, and the problem of the relationship of a social whole to its many constituents. (shrink)

This is a significantly expanded edition of one of the greatest works of modern political theory. Sheldon Wolin's Politics and Vision inspired and instructed two generations of political theorists after its appearance in 1960. This new edition retains intact the original ten chapters about political thinkers from Plato to Mill, and adds seven chapters about theorists from Marx and Nietzsche to Rawls and the postmodernists. The new chapters, which show how thinkers have grappled with the (...) immense possibilities and dangers of modern power, are themselves a major theoretical statement. They culminate in Wolin's remarkable argument that the United States has invented a new political form, "inverted totalitarianism," in which economic rather than political power is dangerously dominant. In this new edition, the book that helped to define political theory in the late twentieth century should energize, enlighten, and provoke generations of scholars to come. Wolin originally wrote Politics and Vision to challenge the idea that political analysis should consist simply of the neutral observation of objective reality. He argues that political thinkers must also rely on creative vision. Wolin shows that great theorists have been driven to shape politics to some vision of the Good that lies outside the existing political order. As he tells it, the history of theory is thus, in part, the story of changing assumptions about the Good. In the new chapters, Wolin displays all the energy and flair, the command of detail and of grand historical developments, that he brought to this story forty years ago. This is a work of immense talent and intense thought, an intellectual achievement that will endure. (shrink)

The first publication of this major work by Isaiah Berlin, regarded by many as the twentieth century’s greatest thinker. It is the only text he ever wrote in which he laid out in one connected account most of his key insights about the “romantic age.”.

Chaos and Cosmos offers a new and unique interpretation of Argentine essayist and fiction writer Jorge Luis Borges as a thinker of what continental twentieth century political theory called the political. While not a political writer in the traditional sense, Borges was indeed an author whose response to the advent of totalitarianism, in particular in its Nazi form, generated the most experimental, insightful, and rigorous short fiction and non-fiction political interrogation. -/- As is well (...) known, Borges’ writing went beyond originality; it created a genre of its own, and the Borgesian style is not limited to form. This Borgesian style fundamentally relates to how his response to the advent of totalitarianism led to sharp and philosophically sophisticated interrogations-in-fiction of the political, understood in this book as related to three main distinctive dimensions: that of the question of the forms of society, that of the relationship between the imaginary and the real, and that of the relationship between the same and the other. -/- Chaos and Cosmos introduces the reader to Borges as an experimental writer, as an Argentine citizen, as a thinker of global political phenomena, and as a South American Pragmatist. The book also makes incursions in a political theorizing of its own, intertwining an interpretation of Borges’ essays and fiction pieces from the 1930s and 1940s with the central concerns of philosophers and political thinkers such as William James, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hannah Arendt, Claude Lefort, Michael Foucault, Richard Rorty, and Judith Butler. (shrink)

Civil Religion offers philosophical commentaries on more than twenty thinkers stretching from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. The book examines four important traditions within the history of modern political philosophy and delves into how each of them addresses the problem of religion. Two of these traditions pursue projects of domesticating religion. The civil religion tradition, principally defined by Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau, seeks to domesticate religion by putting it solidly in the service of politics. The (...) liberal tradition pursues an alternative strategy of domestication by seeking to put as much distance as possible between religion and politics. Modern theocracy is a militant reaction against liberalism, and it reverses the relationship of subordination asserted by civil religion: it puts politics directly in the service of religion. Finally, a fourth tradition is defined by Nietzsche and Heidegger. Aspects of their thought are not just modern, but hyper-modern, yet they manifest an often-hysterical reaction against liberalism that is fundamentally shared with the theocratic tradition. Together, these four traditions compose a vital dialogue that carries us to the heart of political philosophy itself. (shrink)

While the twentieth-century Confucian thinker Mou Zongsan has left behind one of the most thought-provoking and intensively studied bodies of philosophical writings in modern Chinese intellectual history, his own life and its relation to his philosophy, a theme at the centre of his Autobiography at Fifty from the mid1950s, has so far remained largely unexamined. After some introductory remarks on the context and outlook of the Autobiography, my paper turns to the close relation between Mou’s conception of life (...) and his approach to the “cultural life” of China as a nation. In doing so, I examine the notion of a distinctly Chinese “learning of life” in his writing and explore the motif of “life in itself ” running through the Autobiography. I argue that this motif is crucial for gaining a better understanding of Mou’s relation to his teacher Xiong Shili, his own father, the social conditions of his childhood in rural Shandong, as well as his overall approach to subjectivity as a space for articulating socio-political concerns. (shrink)