In this brilliant, controversial, and profoundly original book, Benjamin R. Barber fundamentally alters the terms of the current debate over the value of opportunity in American education, politics, and culture.Barber argues that the fashionable rallying cries of cultural literacy and political correctness completely miss the point of what is wrong with our society. While we fret about "the closing of the American mind" we utterly ignore the closing of American schools. While we wor...

Theories of Democracy builds on Robert Dahl's observation that there is no single theory of democracy; only theories. Beyond the broad commitment to rule by the majority, democracy involves a set of contentious debates concerning the proper function and scope of power, equality, freedom, justice, and interests. In this anthology, Ronald J. Terchek and Thomas C. Conte have brilliantly assembled the works of classical, modern, and contemporary commentators to illustrate the deep and diverse ...

Kipps - H. G. Wells - Kipps is a H. G. Wells novel, originally published in 1905. It's the rags to riches story of Arthur Kipps, whose life takes him on a journey from a little shop in Kent and childhood loves, to an inheritance and entry into a higher social class, right back to a shop in a coastal town, albeit with a little more money. Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote dozens of novels, short stories, and wo...

The Politics of Care in Habermas and Derrida provides a penetrating analysis of the tensions and possibilities that animate the dialogue between two of the most significant frameworks of moral philosophy in the contemporary Continental tradition. The dispute between Habermasian discourse ethics and Derridean deconstruction is the backdrop for the book's excursus on the problem of care for the "otherness of the other"-a question with profound implications at the level of both ethic...

This collection of essays articulates theoretical and philosophical arguments, and advances practical applications, as to why animals ought to matter to social work, in and of themselves. It serves as a persuasive corrective to the current invisibility of animals in contemporary social work practice and thought.

The goal of this volume is to highlight theoretical and methodological advances in cultural neuroscience and the implications of theoretical and empirical advances in cultural neuroscience for philosophy. The study of cultural and biological factors that contribute to human behavior has been an important inquiry for centuries, and recent advances in the field of cultural neuroscience allow for novel insights into how cultural and biological factors shape mind, brain and behavior. Theoretic...

Shakespeare's Political Wisdom offers interpretations of five Shakespearean plays with a view to the enduring guidance those plays can provide to human, political life. The plays have been chosen for their relentless attention to the questions that were once and may sometime become, or be recognized as being, the heart and soul of politics.

This book, for the first time, brings Niklas Luhmann's work into dialogue with other theoretical positions, including Lacan, Derrida, Deleuze, gender studies, bioethics, translation, ANT, eco-theories and complexity theory.

First published in 1931, this book provides a brief overview of the essentials of philosophy. It aims to combat the notion of the inaccessibility of philosophy by providing an introduction to its history and what the author believes to a ‘minimum dose…of incontrovertible philosophical truth’. The book merely assumes an ordinary level of adult education and offers an outline of the key areas of philosophy — consciousness, reality, experience, Life, God, love, aesthetics, conduct, logic — an...

This book shows that a concept of activity timespace drawn from the work of Martin Heidegger provides new insights into the nature of activity, society, and history. Although the book is a work of theory, it has significant implications for the determination and course, not just of activity, but of sociohistorical change as well.Drawing on empirical examples, the book argues (1) that timespace is a key component of the overall space and time of social life, (2) that interwoven time...

A Short History of My Philosophy is an autobiographic account of Agnes Heller's intellectual and academic career. While the narration mainly traces the development of ideas, we also learn how they occurred in the context of challenging life circumstances. Agnes Heller presents the life of her ideas is four stages: the first, "years of apprenticeship," details both the pre- and post-Hungarian revolution period during which she studied under György Lukács; the second, "years of dial...

The finall Cause, End, or Designe of men, (who naturally love Liberty, and Dominion over others,) in the introduction of that restraint upon themselves, (in which wee see them live in Common-wealths,) is the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life thereby; that is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable condition of Warre, which is necessarily consequent (as hath been shewn) to the naturall Passions of men, when there is no visible Power to keep them...