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Working Knowledge (UK Higher Education OUP Humanities & Social Sciences Higher Education OUP)
by Colin Symes John Mcintyre"a rich inter-weaving of carefully articulated critical stances... It is impossible, in a short review, to do justice to the quality and variety of all these perspectives... The result is strong coverage of the territory set out in the title, in ways that many working in the field will find valuable." (Phil Hodkinson, Journal of Education for Teaching)Universities are undergoing a series of profound changes. One of the more pronounced of these involves the partnerships that are now being formed between business enterprises and higher education. The emergence of these partnerships has much to do with the changing economy, which is increasingly based around knowledge and information - the traditional stock-in-trade of the university. Knowledge capitalism has given a renewed impetus to higher education. One expression of this is work-based learning, which challenges the scope and site of the university curriculum. This book analyses this development from a number of perspectives: critical, historical, philosophical, sociological and pedagogical. Its various contributors argue that work-based approaches contain much that is challenging to the university, and also much that could help to create new frameworks of learning and new roles for academics. Working Knowledge offers a comprehensive examination of the new vocationalism in higher education.
Working the System: A Political Ethnography of the New Angola
by Jon SchubertWorking the System offers key insights into the politics of the everyday in twenty-first-century dominant party and neo-authoritarian regimes in Africa and elsewhere. Detailing the many ways ordinary Angolans fashion their relationships with the system—an emic notion of their current political and socioeconomic environment—Jon Schubert explores what it means and how it feels to be part of the contemporary Angolan polity.Schubert finds that for many ordinary Angolans, the benefits of the post-conflict "New Angola," flush with oil wealth and in the midst of a construction boom, are few. The majority of the inhabitants of the capital, Luanda, struggle to make ends meet and live on under $2.00 per day. The "New Angola" as promoted by the ruling MPLA, Schubert contends, is an essentially urban, upwardly mobile, and aspirational project, premised on the acceptance of the regime’s political and economic dominance by its citizens. In the first ethnography of Angola to be published since the end of that country’s twenty-seven years of intermittent violent internal conflict in 2002, Schubert traces how Angolans may question and resist the system within an atmosphere of apparent compliance. Working the System will appeal to anthropologists and political scientists, urban sociologists, and scholars of African studies.
Working Through Ethics in Education and Leadership: Theory, Analysis, Plays, Cases, Poems, Prose, And Speeches
by J. Kent Donlevy Keith D. WalkerThis book, although targeting educational leaders, - teachers, school-based administrators, superintendents, board members, policy makers and education students, is also addressed to those interested in the topic of ethics and those who seek the development of an ethical awareness and an appropriate intellectual processes when facing ethical issues. In particular, the book uses both deductive and inductive methods to provide the reader with a progressive experience of ethical discernment and analysis in order to deal with and prepare the reader to address ethical issues in the public square - a task which requires that such decisions are rational, defensible, and clearly articulated. Institutional leaders' diligence and integrity requires no less in attaining and sustaining the support of those they must lead in and through the institutional decisions and policies which effect constituents' lives. Through the use of clearly stated definitions, the presentation of ethical schools of thought, cases, original plays - within which readers are encouraged to engage while in a safe learning environment - and references to poems, movie, and video clips, the book provides a lively and challenging approach to studying the topic of ethics.
Working Toward Solutions in Fluid Dynamics and Astrophysics: What the Equations Don’t Say (SpringerBriefs in History of Science and Technology)
by Lydia Patton Erik CurielThis book focuses on continuing the long-standing productive dialogue between physical science and the philosophy of science. Researchers and readers who want to keep up to date on front-line scientific research in fluid mechanics and gravitational wave astrophysics will find timely and well-informed analyses of this scientific research and its philosophical significance. These exciting frontiers of research pose deep scientific problems, and raise key questions in the philosophy of science related to scientific explanation and understanding, theory change and assessment, measurement, interpretation, realism, and modeling. The audience of the book includes philosophers of science, philosophers of mathematics, scientists with philosophical interests, and students in philosophy, history, mathematics, and science. Anyone who is interested in the methods and philosophical questions behind the recent exciting work in physics discussed here will profit from reading this book.
Working with Preferences: Less Is More (Cognitive Technologies)
by Souhila KaciPreferences are useful in many real-life problems, guiding human decision making from early childhood up to complex professional and organizational decisions. In artificial intelligence specifically, preferences is a relatively new topic of relevance to nonmonotonic reasoning, multiagent systems, constraint satisfaction, decision making, social choice theory and decision-theoretic planning The first part of this book deals with preference representation, with specific chapters dedicated to representation languages, nonmonotonic logics of preferences, conditional preference networks, positive and negative preferences, and the study of preferences in cognitive psychology. The second part of the book deals with reasoning with preferences, and includes chapters dedicated to preference-based argumentation, preferences database queries, and rank-ordering outcomes and intervals. The author concludes by examining forthcoming research perspectives. This is inherently a multidisciplinary topic and this book will be of interest to computer scientists, economists, operations researchers, mathematicians, logicians, philosophers and psychologists.
Working without a Net: A Study of Egocentric Epistemology
by Richard FoleyIn this new book, Foley defends an epistemology that takes seriously the perspectives of individual thinkers. He argues that having rational opinions is a matter of meeting our own internal standards rather than standards that are somehow imposed upon us from the outside. It is a matter of making ourselves invulnerable to intellectual self-criticism. Foley also shows how the theory of rational belief is part of a general theory of rationality. He thus avoids treating the rationality of belief as a fundamentally different kind of phenomenon from the rationality of decision or action. His approach generates promising suggestions about a wide range of issues--e.g., the distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic reasons for belief; the question of what aspects of the Cartesian project are still worth doing; the significance of simplicity and other theoretical virtues; the relevance of skeptical hypotheses; the difference between a theory of rational belief and a theory of knowledge; the difference between a theory of rational belief and a theory of rational degrees of belief; and the limits of idealization in epistemology.
The Works of Jacques-Auguste de Thou (International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées #18)
by S. KinserUntil the nineteenth century Jacques-Auguste de Thou (1553-1617) was among the most famous and most valued of historians. While his first fame was a succes de scandale - the History of His Time was placed on the Index in 160g - de Thou's work quickly found favor with the humanistically-educated learned class throughout Europe. The esteem in which the History was held transcended religious divisions. The historian received letters of praise from staunchly orthodox Spain and Portugal as well as from heretic England and Germany; through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries his History was read with enthusi asm by certain cardinals at the very curia which condemned it; and so staunch a champion of orthodoxy as Bishop Bossuet did not hesitate to appeal to "such a great author" for support in his own historical works. ! To the philosophe of the Enlightenment de Thou's impartiality in de scribing the impassioned times through which he lived and the exact yet eloquent style with which he wrote the History of His Time were familiar touchstones. Voltaire appealed to the "truthful and eloquent de Thou" again and again in his works,2 William Pitt rose in the House of Commons to quote the words of the "great historian of France" during the early years of the French Revolution,3 Lessing 4 and Herder 5 praised him with poetic hyperbole, and Edward Gibbon re ferred to "the authority of my masters, the grave Thuanus and the philosophic Hume . . . .
Works Righteousness: Material Practice in Ethical Theory
by Anna L. PetersonIn Works Righteousness, Anna L. Peterson examines the place of practice in contemporary ethical theory. Peterson argues that rather than assuming that pre-established moral ideas guide action, ethicists should acknowledge and explore the relationship between ideas, actions, and results. Both an analysis of alternative models in which practice plays a stronger role and an argument for taking practice more seriously in broad questions of ethics as well as in concrete case studies, Works Righteousness contends that what we do generates and alters our values, just as often as expressed values motivate or guide the ways we act. Peterson here challenges prevailing philosophical and religious theories that ideas are what truly matter, underlining the value of attention to people's concrete experiences and highlighting the relevance of theoretical insights to contemporary social issues such as climate change, euthanasia, and hate speech. Through examinations of pragmatism, Marxism, and religious pacifism, all of which significantly highlight a practice-focused approach, Works Righteousness addresses the way social structures condition moral ideas and actions, the dangers of thinking about moral problems as polarized dilemmas, and the complex mutual shaping of ideas and actions.
Works Righteousness: Material Practice in Ethical Theory
by Anna L. PetersonIn Works Righteousness, Anna L. Peterson examines the place of practice in contemporary ethical theory. Peterson argues that rather than assuming that pre-established moral ideas guide action, ethicists should acknowledge and explore the relationship between ideas, actions, and results. Both an analysis of alternative models in which practice plays a stronger role and an argument for taking practice more seriously in broad questions of ethics as well as in concrete case studies, Works Righteousness contends that what we do generates and alters our values, just as often as expressed values motivate or guide the ways we act. Peterson here challenges prevailing philosophical and religious theories that ideas are what truly matter, underlining the value of attention to people's concrete experiences and highlighting the relevance of theoretical insights to contemporary social issues such as climate change, euthanasia, and hate speech. Through examinations of pragmatism, Marxism, and religious pacifism, all of which significantly highlight a practice-focused approach, Works Righteousness addresses the way social structures condition moral ideas and actions, the dangers of thinking about moral problems as polarized dilemmas, and the complex mutual shaping of ideas and actions.
The World According to Kant: Appearances and Things in Themselves in Critical Idealism
by Anja JauernigThe world, according to Kant, is made up of two levels of reality: the transcendental and the empirical. The transcendental level is a mind-independent level at which things in themselves exist. The empirical level is a fully mind-dependent level at which appearances exist, which are intentional objects of experience. The distinction between appearances and things in themselves lies at the heart of Kant's critical philosophy and has been the focus of fierce debate among scholars for over two hundred years. Anja Jauernig offers this interpretation of Kant's critical idealism as an ontological position, which comprises transcendental idealism, empirical realism, and a number of other basic ontological theses, as developed in the Critique of Pure Reason and associated texts. In this interpretation Kant is a genuine idealist about empirical objects, empirical minds, and space and time. Yet in contrast to other intentional objects, appearances genuinely exist, which is due to both the special character of experience compared to other kinds of representations such as illusions or dreams, and to the grounding of appearances in things themselves. This is why Kant can also be considered a genuine realist about empirical objects, empirical minds, and space and time. This book spells out Kant's case for critical idealism thus understood, pinpoints the differences between critical idealism and ordinary idealism, and clarifies the relation between Kant's conception of things in themselves and the conception of things in themselves by other philosophers, in particular Kant's Leibniz-Wolffian predecessors.
The World According to Kant: Appearances and Things in Themselves in Critical Idealism
by Anja JauernigThe world, according to Kant, is made up of two levels of reality: the transcendental and the empirical. The transcendental level is a mind-independent level at which things in themselves exist. The empirical level is a fully mind-dependent level at which appearances exist, which are intentional objects of experience. The distinction between appearances and things in themselves lies at the heart of Kant's critical philosophy and has been the focus of fierce debate among scholars for over two hundred years. Anja Jauernig offers this interpretation of Kant's critical idealism as an ontological position, which comprises transcendental idealism, empirical realism, and a number of other basic ontological theses, as developed in the Critique of Pure Reason and associated texts. In this interpretation Kant is a genuine idealist about empirical objects, empirical minds, and space and time. Yet in contrast to other intentional objects, appearances genuinely exist, which is due to both the special character of experience compared to other kinds of representations such as illusions or dreams, and to the grounding of appearances in things themselves. This is why Kant can also be considered a genuine realist about empirical objects, empirical minds, and space and time. This book spells out Kant's case for critical idealism thus understood, pinpoints the differences between critical idealism and ordinary idealism, and clarifies the relation between Kant's conception of things in themselves and the conception of things in themselves by other philosophers, in particular Kant's Leibniz-Wolffian predecessors.
The World According to Physics
by Jim Al-KhaliliQuantum physicist, New York Times bestselling author, and BBC host Jim Al-Khalili offers a fascinating and illuminating look at what physics reveals about the worldShining a light on the most profound insights revealed by modern physics, Jim Al-Khalili invites us all to understand what this crucially important science tells us about the universe and the nature of reality itself.Al-Khalili begins by introducing the fundamental concepts of space, time, energy, and matter, and then describes the three pillars of modern physics—quantum theory, relativity, and thermodynamics—showing how all three must come together if we are ever to have a full understanding of reality. Using wonderful examples and thought-provoking analogies, Al-Khalili illuminates the physics of the extreme cosmic and quantum scales, the speculative frontiers of the field, and the physics that underpins our everyday experiences and technologies, bringing the reader up to speed with the biggest ideas in physics in just a few sittings. Physics is revealed as an intrepid human quest for ever more foundational principles that accurately explain the natural world we see around us, an undertaking guided by core values such as honesty and doubt. The knowledge discovered by physics both empowers and humbles us, and still, physics continues to delve valiantly into the unknown.Making even the most enigmatic scientific ideas accessible and captivating, this deeply insightful book illuminates why physics matters to everyone and calls one and all to share in the profound adventure of seeking truth in the world around us.
World, Affectivity, Trauma: Heidegger and Post-Cartesian Psychoanalysis (Psychoanalytic Inquiry Book Series)
by Robert D. StolorowStolorow and his collaborators' post-Cartesian psychoanalytic perspective – intersubjective-systems theory – is a phenomenological contextualism that illuminates worlds of emotional experience as they take form within relational contexts. After outlining the evolution and basic ideas of this framework, Stolorow shows both how post-Cartesian psychoanalysis finds enrichment and philosophical support in Heidegger's analysis of human existence, and how Heidegger's existential philosophy, in turn, can be enriched and expanded by an encounter with post-Cartesian psychoanalysis. In doing so, he creates an important psychological bridge between post-Cartesian psychoanalysis and existential philosophy in the phenomenology of emotional trauma.
World, Affectivity, Trauma: Heidegger and Post-Cartesian Psychoanalysis (Psychoanalytic Inquiry Book Series)
by Robert D. StolorowStolorow and his collaborators' post-Cartesian psychoanalytic perspective – intersubjective-systems theory – is a phenomenological contextualism that illuminates worlds of emotional experience as they take form within relational contexts. After outlining the evolution and basic ideas of this framework, Stolorow shows both how post-Cartesian psychoanalysis finds enrichment and philosophical support in Heidegger's analysis of human existence, and how Heidegger's existential philosophy, in turn, can be enriched and expanded by an encounter with post-Cartesian psychoanalysis. In doing so, he creates an important psychological bridge between post-Cartesian psychoanalysis and existential philosophy in the phenomenology of emotional trauma.
A World after Liberalism: Philosophers of the Radical Right
by Matthew RoseA bracing account of liberalism’s most radical critics, introducing one of the most controversial movements of the twentieth century In this eye-opening book, Matthew Rose introduces us to one of the most controversial intellectual movements of the twentieth century, the “radical right,” and discusses its adherents’ different attempts to imagine political societies after the death or decline of liberalism. Questioning democracy’s most basic norms and practices, these critics rejected ideas about human equality, minority rights, religious toleration, and cultural pluralism not out of implicit biases, but out of explicit principle. They disagree profoundly on race, religion, economics, and political strategy, but they all agree that a postliberal political life will soon be possible. Focusing on the work of Oswald Spengler, Julius Evola, Francis Parker Yockey, Alain de Benoist, and Samuel Francis, Rose shows how such thinkers are animated by religious aspirations and anxieties that are ultimately in tension with Christian teachings and the secular values those teachings birthed in modernity.
World and Life as One: Ethics and Ontology in Wittgenstein’s Early Thought (Cultural Memory in the Present #440)
by Martin StokhofThis book explores in detail the relation between ontology and ethics in the early work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, notably the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and, to a lesser extent, the Notebooks 1914-1916. Self-contained and requiring no prior knowledge of Wittgenstein's thought, it is the first book-length argument that his views on ethics decisively shaped his ontological and semantic thought. The book's main thesis is twofold. It argues that the ontological theory of the Tractatus is fundamentally dependent on its logical and linguistic doctrines: the tractarian world is the world as it appears in language and thought. It also maintains that this interpretation of the ontology of the Tractatus can be argued for not only on systematic grounds, but also via the contents of the ethical theory that it offers. Wittgenstein's views on ethics presuppose that language and thought are but one way in which we interact with reality. Although detailed studies of Wittgenstein's ontology and ethics exist, this book is the first thorough investigation of the relationship between them. As an introduction to Wittgenstein, it sheds new light on an important aspect of his early thought.
World and Worldhood / Monde et Mondanéité (Philosophical Problems Today #3)
by Peter Kemp Institut International de PhilosophIn this book philosophers try to answer the following question: What is globalization and what does "globe" or "world" (monde) signify? Rémi Brague returns to the Greek idea of the cosmos in order to track the worldhood (mondanéité) of the world, that is, the process by which the idea of the world is formed. Don Ihde shows how a world has developed, in which technologies are no longer considered neutral means serving the ends of human action, but become the very means by which people exist in the world. Vittorio Mathieu describes the economical world at two levels – that of the individual and that of society. Tomonobu Imamichi analyses the capacity of aesthetic experience to disclose a world other than the world of technological efficiency. Francisco Miró Quesada C. emphasises that the great political questions are not solvable without worldviews that express value systems. David Rasmussen describes sensus communis as a cosmopolitan concept, which founds a political globalization of the world. And Peter Kemp attempts to grasp the meaning of that globalization upon which the destiny of our planet depends.
The World as a Mathematical Game: John von Neumann and Twentieth Century Science (Science Networks. Historical Studies #38)
by Giorgio Israel Ana Millán GascaGalileo and Newton’s work towards the mathematisation of the physical world; Leibniz’s universal logical calculus; the Enlightenment’s mathématique sociale. John von Neumann inherited all these aims and philosophical intuitions, together with an idea that grew up around the Vienna Circle of an ethics in the form of an exact science capable of guiding individuals to make correct decisions. With the help of his boundless mathematical capacity, von Neumann developed a conception of the world as a mathematical game, a world globally governed by a universal logic in which individual consciousness moved following different strategies: his vision guided him from set theory to quantum mechanics, to economics and to his theory of automata (anticipating artificial intelligence and cognitive science). This book provides the first comprehensive scientific and intellectual biography of John von Neumann, a man who perhaps more than any other is representative of twentieth century science.
The World as Idea: A Conceptual History (Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought)
by Charles P. WebelIn The World as Idea Charles P. Webel presents an intellectual history of one of the most influential concepts known to humanity—that of "the world." Webel traces the development of "the world" through the past, depicting the history of the world as an intellectual construct from its roots in ancient creation myths of the cosmos, to contemporary speculations about multiverses. He simultaneously offers probing analyses and critiques of "the world as idea" from thinkers ranging from Plato, Aristotle, and St. Augustine in the Greco-Roman period to Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty, and Derrida in modern times. While Webel mainly focuses on Occidental philosophical, theological, and cosmological notions of worldhood and worldliness, he also highlights important non-Western equivalents prominent in Islamic and Asian spiritual traditions. This ensures the book is a unique overview of what we all take for granted in our daily existence, but seldom if ever contemplate—the world as the uniquely meaningful environment for our lives in particular and for life on Earth in general. The World as Idea will be of great interest to those interested in the "world as idea," scholars in fields ranging from philosophy and intellectual history to political and social theory, and students studying philosophy, the history of ideas, and humanities courses, both general and specialized.
The World as Idea: A Conceptual History (Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought)
by Charles P. WebelIn The World as Idea Charles P. Webel presents an intellectual history of one of the most influential concepts known to humanity—that of "the world." Webel traces the development of "the world" through the past, depicting the history of the world as an intellectual construct from its roots in ancient creation myths of the cosmos, to contemporary speculations about multiverses. He simultaneously offers probing analyses and critiques of "the world as idea" from thinkers ranging from Plato, Aristotle, and St. Augustine in the Greco-Roman period to Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty, and Derrida in modern times. While Webel mainly focuses on Occidental philosophical, theological, and cosmological notions of worldhood and worldliness, he also highlights important non-Western equivalents prominent in Islamic and Asian spiritual traditions. This ensures the book is a unique overview of what we all take for granted in our daily existence, but seldom if ever contemplate—the world as the uniquely meaningful environment for our lives in particular and for life on Earth in general. The World as Idea will be of great interest to those interested in the "world as idea," scholars in fields ranging from philosophy and intellectual history to political and social theory, and students studying philosophy, the history of ideas, and humanities courses, both general and specialized.
The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress
by Chris HedgesMany liberals are disappointed with Barack Obama. Some talk of "betrayal,” while others are writing abject letters to the White House asking the president to come back to his "true self.” Chris Hedges, however, is a progressive who doesn't feel betrayed. "Obama was and is a brand,” he argues. "He is a product of the Chicago political machine. He has been skillfully packaged by the corporate state.” In his newest book, Hedges argues that the conscious inertia of the left is destroying the progressive movement. Inaction and empty moral posturing leads not to change, but to an orgy of self-adulation and self-pity.Hedges argues that the gravest danger we face as a nation is not from the far right, although the right may well inherit power. Instead, the threat comes from a bankrupt liberal class that has lost the will to fight and the moral courage to stand up for what it espouses.
A World Beyond Physics: The Emergence and Evolution of Life
by Stuart A. KauffmanHow did life start? Is the evolution of life describable by any physics-like laws? Stuart Kauffman's latest book offers an explanation-beyond what the laws of physics can explain-of the progression from a complex chemical environment to molecular reproduction, metabolism and to early protocells, and further evolution to what we recognize as life. Among the estimated one hundred billion solar systems in the known universe, evolving life is surely abundant. That evolution is a process of "becoming" in each case. Since Newton, we have turned to physics to assess reality. But physics alone cannot tell us where we came from, how we arrived, and why our world has evolved past the point of unicellular organisms to an extremely complex biosphere. Building on concepts from his work as a complex systems researcher at the Santa Fe Institute, Kauffman focuses in particular on the idea of cells constructing themselves and introduces concepts such as "constraint closure." Living systems are defined by the concept of "organization" which has not been focused on in enough in previous works. Cells are autopoetic systems that build themselves: they literally construct their own constraints on the release of energy into a few degrees of freedom that constitutes the very thermodynamic work by which they build their own self creating constraints. Living cells are "machines" that construct and assemble their own working parts. The emergence of such systems-the origin of life problem-was probably a spontaneous phase transition to self-reproduction in complex enough prebiotic systems. The resulting protocells were capable of Darwin's heritable variation, hence open-ended evolution by natural selection. Evolution propagates this burgeoning organization. Evolving living creatures, by existing, create new niches into which yet further new creatures can emerge. If life is abundant in the universe, this self-constructing, propagating, exploding diversity takes us beyond physics to biospheres everywhere.
A World Beyond Physics: The Emergence and Evolution of Life
by Stuart A. KauffmanHow did life start? Is the evolution of life describable by any physics-like laws? Stuart Kauffman's latest book offers an explanation-beyond what the laws of physics can explain-of the progression from a complex chemical environment to molecular reproduction, metabolism and to early protocells, and further evolution to what we recognize as life. Among the estimated one hundred billion solar systems in the known universe, evolving life is surely abundant. That evolution is a process of "becoming" in each case. Since Newton, we have turned to physics to assess reality. But physics alone cannot tell us where we came from, how we arrived, and why our world has evolved past the point of unicellular organisms to an extremely complex biosphere. Building on concepts from his work as a complex systems researcher at the Santa Fe Institute, Kauffman focuses in particular on the idea of cells constructing themselves and introduces concepts such as "constraint closure." Living systems are defined by the concept of "organization" which has not been focused on in enough in previous works. Cells are autopoetic systems that build themselves: they literally construct their own constraints on the release of energy into a few degrees of freedom that constitutes the very thermodynamic work by which they build their own self creating constraints. Living cells are "machines" that construct and assemble their own working parts. The emergence of such systems-the origin of life problem-was probably a spontaneous phase transition to self-reproduction in complex enough prebiotic systems. The resulting protocells were capable of Darwin's heritable variation, hence open-ended evolution by natural selection. Evolution propagates this burgeoning organization. Evolving living creatures, by existing, create new niches into which yet further new creatures can emerge. If life is abundant in the universe, this self-constructing, propagating, exploding diversity takes us beyond physics to biospheres everywhere.
A World beyond Politics?: A Defense of the Nation-State (PDF)
by Pierre Manent Marc A. LepainWe live in the grip of a great illusion about politics, Pierre Manent argues in A World beyond Politics? It's the illusion that we would be better off without politics--at least national politics, and perhaps all politics. It is a fantasy that if democratic values could somehow detach themselves from their traditional national context, we could enter a world of pure democracy, where human society would be ruled solely according to law and morality. Borders would dissolve in unconditional internationalism and nations would collapse into supranational organizations such as the European Union. Free of the limits and sins of politics, we could finally attain the true life. In contrast to these beliefs, which are especially widespread in Europe, Manent reasons that the political order is the key to the human order. Human life, in order to have force and meaning, must be concentrated in a particular political community, in which decisions are made through collective, creative debate. The best such community for democratic life, he argues, is still the nation-state. Following the example of nineteenth-century political philosophers such as Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill, Manent first describes a few essential features of democracy and the nation-state, and then shows how these characteristics illuminate many aspects of our present political circumstances. He ends by arguing that both democracy and the nation-state are under threat--from apolitical tendencies such as the cult of international commerce and attempts to replace democratic decisions with judicial procedures.
The World Beyond Your Head: How to Flourish in an Age of Distraction
by Matthew CrawfordFrom Matthew Crawford, 'one of the most influential thinkers of our time' (Sunday Times), comes The World Beyond Your Head - a hugely ambitious manifesto on flourishing in the modern world.In this brilliant follow-up to The Case for Working with Your Hands, Crawford investigates the challenge of mastering one's own mind. With ever-increasing demands on our attention, how do we focus on what's really important in our lives?Exploring the intense focus of ice-hockey players, the zoned-out behaviour of gambling addicts, and the inherited craft of building pipe organs, Crawford argues that our current crisis of attention is the result of long-held assumptions in Western culture and that in order to flourish, we need to establish meaningful connections with the world, the people around us and the historical moment we live in.Praise for The Case for Working With Your Hands:'The best book I have read for ages . . . a profound exploration of modern education, work and capitalism' Telegraph'Full of interesting stories and thought-provoking aperçus enlivened with humour . . . Important, memorable and enjoyable' The Times'Masterly' EconomistMatthew Crawford is a philosopher and mechanic. He has a Ph.D. in political philosophy from the University of Chicago and served as a postdoctoral fellow on its Committee on Social Thought. Currently a senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, he also runs Shockoe Moto, a motorcycle repair shop.