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This book examines the political and international thought of Harold Laski (1893-1950). Early chapters discuss his socialist critique of politics within states, paying close attention to the turbulent environment of the early to mid-twentieth century. His ideas on democracy, rights, freedom and sovereignty are closely analyzed and clarified. The book goes on to discuss the way in which he applied many of his political ideas to the analysis of international politics. The final chapter investigate...

We like to think of ourselves, our friends, and our families as decent people. We may not be saints, but we are still honest, relatively kind, and mostly trustworthy. Miller argues here that we are badly mistaken in thinking this. Hundreds of recent studies in psychology tell a different story: that we all have serious character flaws that prevent us from being as good as we think we are - and that we do not even recognize that these flaws exist. But neither are most of us cruel or dishonest...

Nietzsche's relationship with Wagner has long been a source of controversy and has given rise to a number of important studies, including this major breakthrough in Nietzsche scholarship, first published in 1982. In this work Hollinrake contends that the nature and extent of the anti-Wagnerian pastiche and polemic in Thus Spake Zarathustra is arguably the most important factor in the association between the two. Thus Wagner, as the purveyor of a particular brand of Schopenhauerian pessimism, is...

This book offers an innovative analytic account of Cicero's treatment of key political ideas: liberty and equality, government, law, cosmopolitanism and imperialism, republican virtues, and ethical decision-making in politics. Cicero (106-43 BC) is well known as a major player in the turbulent politics of the last three decades of the Roman Republic. But he was a political thinker, too, influential for many centuries in the Western intellectual and cultural tradition. His theoretical writings st...

Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism continues to be one of the most influential texts in the sociology of modern Western societies. Although Weber never produced the further essays with which he intended to extend the study, he did complete four lengthy Replies to reviews of the text by two German historians. Written between 1907 and 1910, the Replies offer a fascinating insight into Weber's intentions in the original study, and the present volume is the first complete...

Presents a philosophical look at the world in these uncertain times. This work searches out the road signs of history and walks along the footpath of industrialisation to partial post industrial self-sufficiency.

En 1979, Jean-Francois Lyotard a articule la condition postmoderne, annoncant la fin de la modernite. Mais la modernite nous tient encore et se reinvente dans des nouvelles periodisations. Il nous incombe de reprendre la reflexion sur ce paradigme a la fois historique, culturel et social, et ceci, a partir de notre condition de " puines " de la modernite. Tel est le programme de reflexion de cet ouvrage collectif qui privilegie une approche interdisciplinaire et internationale. In 1979, Jean-Fra...

This work is a philosophical intervention into contemporary cultural theory challenges the terms of its understanding of time and history. If Aristotle sought to understand time through change, might we not reverse the procedure and seek to understand change through time? Once we do this, argues Peter Osborne, it soon becomes clear that ideas such as avant-garde, modern, postmodern and tradition - which are usually only treated as markers for empirically discrete periods, movements or styles - a...

Climate Engineering: A Normative Perspective takes as its subject a prospective policy response to the urgent problem of climate change, one previously considered taboo. Climate engineering, the "deliberate, large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment in order to counteract anthropogenic climate change," encapsulates a wide array of technological proposals. Daniel Edward Callies here focuses on one proposal currently being researched-stratospheric aerosol injection-which would spray ae...

In The Theory of the Leisure Class, his first and best-known work, Thorstein Veblen challenges some of society's most cherished standards of behavior and, with devastating wit and satire, exposes the hollowness of many of our canons of taste, education, dress, and culture.Veblen uses the leisure class as his example because it is this class that sets the standards followed by every level of society. The sign of membership in the leisure class is exemption from industrial toil and the mark of suc...

Philosopher John Lachs observes that humans today live lives of comfort but also sees that these comfortable lives come at a cost: our increasing unhappiness. In The Cost of Comfort, Lachs contemplates what humans need in order to live fulfilled lives in today's world. While comfort has not always reached everyone evenly, Lachs acknowledges that most of us who live in the US today reap the benefits of modern life. We live longer, we eat better food, we have access to good medical care, and we ca...