. . . The book is bound to start controversy. . . . The very passion and insight with which he writes about the tragedies that have moved him prove that the vision still lives and that words can still enlighten and reveal."—R.B. Sewall, New York Times Book Review "A remarkable achievement. . . . The knowledge is marshalled here with the skill and authority of a great general, and from it a large strategic argument emerges with clarity and force. . . . A brilliantly thoughtful and eloquent book which deserves to be read with the greatest attention and respect."—Philip Toynbee, The Observer "As brilliant, thorough, and concerned a contemplation of the nature of dramatic art as has appeared in many years."—Richard Gilman, Commonweal "A rich and illuminating study, full of intelligence and sensibility."—Times Literary Supplement (London) "His merits are shining and full of the capacity to give both delight and illumination. . . . His style is throughout vigorous, sensitive, and altogether worthy of its subject."—Harold Hobson, Christian Science Monitor "Immensely useful and [a book] to be reckoned with by everyone working in this field."—Raymond Williams, The Guardian

    Against the prevailing view that such violence is an instance of impenetrable madness, the book demonstrates that there is logic to it and that it has much less to do with collective emotions, ideologies, and cultures than currently believed. Kalyvas specifies a novel theory of selective violence: it is jointly produced by political actors seeking information and individual civilians trying to avoid the worst but also grabbing what opportunities their predicament affords them. Violence, he finds, is never a simple reflection of the optimal strategy of its users; its profoundly interactive character defeats simple maximization logics while producing surprising outcomes, such as relative nonviolence in the 'frontlines' of civil war.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    From Gillian Beer's reading of Virginia Woolf, Rachel Bowlby's cultural history of Uncle Tom's Cabin and Francis Mulhern's study of Leaviste's 'English ethics'; to Doris Sommer's study of the 'magical realism' of Latin American fiction and Sneja Gunew's analysis of Australian writing, Nation and Narration is a celebration of the fact that English is no longer an English national consciousness, which is not nationalist, but is the only thing that will give us an international dimension.

    In short, philology was the queen of the human sciences. How did it become little more than an archaic word?In Philology, the first history of Western humanistic learning as a connected whole ever published in English, James Turner tells the fascinating, forgotten story of how the study of languages and texts led to the modern humanities and the modern university. The humanities today face a crisis of relevance, if not of meaning and purpose. Understanding their common origins--and what they still share--has never been more urgent.

    If not modern, he asked, what have we been, and what values should we inherit? Over the last twenty-five years, Latour has developed a research protocol different from the actor-network theory with which his name is now associated—a research protocol that follows the different types of connectors that provide specific truth conditions. These are the connectors that prompt a climate scientist challenged by a captain of industry to appeal to the institution of science, with its army of researchers and mountains of data, rather than to “capital-S Science” as a higher authority. Such modes of extension—or modes of existence, Latour argues here—account for the many differences between law, science, politics, and other domains of knowledge.Though scientific knowledge corresponds to only one of the many possible modes of existence Latour describes, an unrealistic vision of science has become the arbiter of reality and truth, seducing us into judging all values by a single standard. Latour implores us to recover other modes of existence in order to do justice to the plurality of truth conditions that Moderns have discovered throughout their history. This systematic effort of building a new philosophical anthropology presents a completely different view of what Moderns have been, and provides a new basis for opening diplomatic encounters with other societies at a time when all societies are coping with ecological crisis.

    Caputo has a long career as one of the preeminent postmodern philosophers in America. The author of such books as Radical Hermeneutics, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, and The Weakness of God, Caputo now reflects on his spiritual journey from a Catholic altar boy in 1950s Philadelphia to a philosopher after the death of God. Part spiritual autobiography, part homily on what he calls the nihilism of grace, Hoping Against Hope calls believers and nonbelievers alike to participate in the praxis of the kingdom of God, which Caputo says we must pursue without why.Caputos conversation partners in this volume include Lyotard, Derrida, and Hegel, but also earlier versions of himself: Jackie, a young altar boy, and Brother Paul, a novice in a religious order. Caputo traces his own journey from faith through skepticism to hope after the death of God. In the end, Caputo doesnt want to do away with religion; he wants to redeem religion and to reinvent religion for a postmodern time.

    These profound teachings point the way to love, peace, bliss and freedom, encouraging a transformation of consciousness and spiritual awakening.

    The book consists of a series of essays treating, among other topics, the definition of orthodox Marxism, the question of legality and illegality, Rosa Luxemburg as a Marxist, the changing function of Historic Marxism, class consciousness, and the substantiation and consciousness of the Proletariat. Writing in 1968, on the occasion of the appearance of his collected works, Lukacs evaluated the influence of this book as follows:"For the historical effect of History and Class Consciousness and also for the actuality of the present time one problem is of decisive importance: alienation, which is here treated for the first time since Marx as the central question of a revolutionary critique of capitalism, and whose historical as well as methodological origins are deeply rooted in Hegelian dialectic. It goes without saying that the problem was omnipresent. A few years after History and Class Consciousness was published, it was moved into the focus of philosophical discussion by Heidegger in his Being and Time, a place which it maintains to this day largely as a result of the position occupied by Sartre and his followers. The philologic question raised by L. Goldmann, who considered Heidegger's work partly as a polemic reply to my (admittedly unnamed) work, need not be discussed here. It suffices today to say that the problem was in the air, particularly if we analyze its background in detail in order to clarify its effect, the mixture of Marxist and Existentialist thought processes, which prevailed especially in France immediately after the Second World War. In this connection priorities, influences, and so on are not particularly significant. What is important is that the alienation of man was recognized and appreciated as the central problem of the time in which we live, by bourgeois as well as proletarian, by politically rightist and leftist thinkers. Thus, History and Class Consciousness exerted a profound effect in the circles of the youthful intelligentsia."

    Taking account of the most recent scholarship, Manfred Kuehn allows the reader to follow the same journey that Kant himself took in emerging as a central figure in modern philosophy. Manfred Kuehn was formerly Professor of Philosophy at Purdue University. A specialist on German philosophy of the period, he is the author of numerous articles and papers on Immanuel Kant.

    This is the last of Bakhtin's extant manuscripts published in the Soviet Union. All but one of these essays (the one on the Bildungsroman) were written in Bakhtin's later years and thus they bear the stamp of a thinker who has accumulated a huge storehouse of factual material, to which he has devoted a lifetime of analysis, reflection, and reconsideration.

    Here Girard explores violence as it is represented and occurs throughout history, literature and myth. Girard's forceful and thought-provoking analyses of Biblical narrative, Greek tragedy and the lynchings and pogroms propagated by contemporary states illustrate his central argument that violence belongs to everyone and is at the heart of the sacred.

    Orwell gives an anecdotal account of his experiences in a french public hospital which triggers a contemplation of hospital literature in the context of 19th-century medicine.

    In the second and third volumes, The History of Eroticism and Sovereignty, Bataille explores the same paradox of utility from an anthropological and an ethical perspective, respectively. The History of Eroticism analyzes the fears and fascination, the prohibitions and transgressions attached to the realm of eroticism as so many expressions of the "uselessness" of erotic life.

    For Marx, first published in France in 1968, has come to be regarded as the founding text of the school of “structuralist Marxism” which was presided over by the fascinating and enigmatic figure of Louis Althusser. Structuralism constituted an intellectual revolution in the 1960s and 1970s and radically transformed the way philosophy, political and social theory, history, science, and aesthetics were discussed and thought about. For Marx was a key contribution to that process and it fundamentally recast the way in which many people understood Marx and Marxism.This book contains the classic statements of Althusser's analysis of the young Marx and the importance of Feuerbach during this formative period, of his thesis of the “epistomological break” between the early and the late Marx, and of his conception of dialectics, contradiction and “overdetermination.” Also included is a study of the materialist theater of Bertolazzi and Brecht and the critique of humanist readings of Marxism. Since his death in 1990, Althusser's legacy has come under renewed examination and it is increasingly recognized that the influence of his ideas has been wider and deeper than previously thought: reading For Marx, in its audacity, originality and rigor, will explain why this impact was so significant.