In his sweeping account of humanity's social and political development, the author develops a theory of human evolution that prefigures Darwinian thought and encompasses aspects of ethics, sociology, and epistemology. He concludes that people are inevitably corrupt as a result of both natural (or physical) inequalities and moral (or political) inequalities.One of the most influential works of the Enlightenment, the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality offers a thought-provoking account of society's origins and a keen criticism of unequal modern political institutions.

    Richard Tarnas performs the near-miracle of describing profound philosophical concepts simply but without simplifying them. Ten years in the making and already hailed as a classic, THE PASSION OF THE WESERN MIND is truly a complete liberal education in a single volume.

    It is our cultures and not our genes that determine which foods we eat, which languages we speak, which people we love and marry, and which people we kill in war. But how did our species develop a mind that is hardwired for culture—and why?Evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel tracks this intriguing question through the last 80,000 years of human evolution, revealing how an innate propensity to contribute and conform to the culture of our birth not only enabled human survival and progress in the past but also continues to influence our behavior today. Shedding light on our species’ defining attributes—from art, morality, and altruism to self-interest, deception, and prejudice—Wired for Culture offers surprising new insights into what it means to be human.

    The beginning of the twenty-first century has rudely disposed of such ideas--most obviously through 9/11and its aftermath. But just as damaging has been the rise in the West of a belief that a single model of political behaviour will become a worldwide norm and that, if necessary, it will be enforced at gunpoint. In "Black Mass," celebrated philosopher and critic John Gray explains how utopian ideals have taken on a dangerous significance in the hands of right-wing conservatives and religious zealots. He charts the history of utopianism, from the Reformation through the French Revolution and into the present. And most urgently, he describes how utopian politics have moved from the extremes of the political spectrum into mainstream politics, dominating the administrations of both George W. Bush and Tony Blair, and indeed coming to define the political centre. Far from having shaken off discredited ideology, Gray suggests, we are more than ever in its clutches."Black Mass "is a truly frightening and challenging work by one of Britain's leading political thinkers. John Gray is the author of many critically acclaimed books, including "Straw Dogs "and "Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern." A regular contributor to "The New York Review of Books," he is a professor of European thought at the London School of Economics.

    Fisher searches for the traces of these lost futures in the work of David Peace, John Le Carré, Christopher Nolan, Joy Division, Burial and many others.

    This first English translation of Koselleck's tour de force demonstrates a chronological breadth, a philosophical depth, and an originality which are hardly equalled in any scholarly domain. It is a history of the Enlightenment in miniature, fundamental to our understanding of that period and its consequences. Like Tocqueville, Koselleck views Enlightenment intellectuals as an uprooted, unrealistic group of onlookers who sowed the seeds of the modern political tensions that first flowered in the French Revolution. He argues that it was the split that developed between state and society during the Enlightenment that fostered the emergence of this intellectual elite divorced from the realities of politics. Koselleck describes how this disjunction between political authority proper and its subjects led to private spheres that later became centers of moral authority and, eventually, models for political society that took little or no notice of the constraints under which politicians must inevitably work. In this way progressive bourgeois philosophy, which seemed to offer the promise of a unified and peaceful world, in fact produced just the opposite. The book provides a wealth of examples drawn from all of Europe to illustrate the still relevant message that we evade the constraints and the necessities of the political realm at our own risk.Critique and Crisis is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy.

    "An intellectually dazzling view of our past and future."--Time magazineContents1. How humans have repeatedly lost hope, and how new encounters, and a new pair of spectacles, revive them2. How men and women have slowly learned to have interesting conversations3. How people searching for their roots are only beginning to look far and deep enough4. How some people have acquired an immunity to loneliness5. How new forms of love have been invented6. Why there has been more progress in cooking than in sex7. How the desire that men feel for women, and for other men, has altered through the centuries8. How respect has become more desirable than power9. How those who want neither to give orders nor to receive them can become intermediaries10. How people have freed themselves from fear by finding new fears11. How curiosity has become the key to freedom12. Why it has become increasingly difficult to destroy one’s enemies13. How the art of escaping from one’s troubles has developed, but not the art of knowing where to escape to14. Why compassion has flowered even in stony ground15. Why toleration has never been enough16. Why even the privileged are often somewhat gloomy about life, even when they can have anything the consumer society offers, and even after sexual liberation17. How travellers are becoming the largest nation in the world, and how they have learned not to see only what they are looking for18. Why friendship between men and women has been so fragile19. How even astrologers resist their destiny20. Why people have not been able to find the time to lead several lives21. Why fathers and their children are changing their minds about what they want from each other22. Why the crisis in the family is only one stage in the evolution of generosity23. How people choose a way of life, and how it does not wholly satisfy them24. How humans become hospitable to each other25. What becomes possible when soul-mates meet

    Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by", metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them.In this updated edition of Lakoff and Johnson's influential book, the authors supply an afterword surveying how their theory of metaphor has developed within the cognitive sciences to become central to the contemporary understanding of how we think and how we express our thoughts in language.

    From its publication amid the social upheavals of the 1960s up to the present, the volatile theses of this book have decisively transformed debates on the shape of modernity, capitalism and everyday life in the late twentieth century. Now finally available in a superb English translation approved by the author, Debord's text remains as crucial as ever for understanding the contemporary effects of power, which are increasingly inseparable from the new virtual worlds of our rapidly changing image/information culture.

    As the idea of childhood innocence took hold, it became racialized: popular culture constructed white children as innocent and vulnerable while excluding black youth from these qualities. Actors, writers, and visual artists then began pairing white children with African American adults and children, thus transferring the quality of innocence to a variety of racial-political projects—a dynamic that Robin Bernstein calls “racial innocence.” This phenomenon informed racial formation from the mid-19th century through the early 20th century.Racial Innocence takes up a rich archive including books, toys, theatrical props, and domestic knickknacks which Bernstein analyzes as “scriptive things” that invite or prompt historically located practices while allowing for resistance and social improvisation. Integrating performance studies with literary and visual analysis, Bernstein offers singular readings of theatrical productions, from blackface minstrelsy to Uncle Tom’s Cabin to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; literary works by Joel Chandler Harris, Harriet Wilson, and Frances Hodgson Burnett; material culture including Topsy pincushions, Uncle Tom and Little Eva handkerchiefs, and Raggedy Ann dolls; and visual texts ranging from fine portraiture to advertisements for lard substitute. Throughout, Bernstein shows how “innocence” gradually became the exclusive province of white children—until the Civil Rights Movement succeeded not only in legally desegregating public spaces, but in culturally desegregating the concept of childhood itself.Writing in Children’s Literature, Philip Nel notes that Racial Innocence is “one of those rare books that shifts the paradigm—a book that, in years to come, will be recognized as a landmark in children’s literature and childhood studies.” In the journal Cultural Studies, reviewer Aaron C. Thomas says that Bernstein’s “theory of the scriptive thing asks us to see children as active participants in culture, and, in fact, as expert agents of the culture of childhood into which they have been interpellated. In this way, Bernstein is able not only to describe the effects of 19th-century radicalization on 21st century US culture, but also to illuminate the radicalized residues of our own childhoods in our everyday adult lives.” Racial Innocence was awarded the 2012 Outstanding Book Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, and the award committee noted that the book “is a historiographic tour de force that traces a genealogy of the invention of the innocent (white) child and its racialized roots in 19th and 20th century U.S. popular culture.”

    Primarily, it is the story of Joseph Jacotot, an exiles French schoolteacher who discovered in 1818 an unconventional teaching method that spread panic throughout the learned community of Europe.Knowing no Flemish, Jacotot found himself able to teach in French to Flemish students who knew no French; knowledge, Jacotot concluded, was not necessary to teach, nor explication necessary to learn. The results of this unusual experiment in pedagogy led him to announce that all people were equally intelligent. From this postulate, Jacotot devised a philosophy and a method for what he called "intellectual emancipation"—a method that would allow, for instance, illiterate parents to themselves teach their children how to read. The greater part of the book is devoted to a description and analysis of Jacotot's method, its premises, and (perhaps most important) its implications for understanding both the learning process and the emancipation that results when that most subtle of hierarchies, intelligence, is overturned.The book, as Kristin Ross argues in her introduction, has profound implications for the ongoing debate about education and class in France that has raged since the student riots of 1968, and it affords Rancière an opportunity (albeit indirectly) to attack the influential educational and sociological theories of Pierre Bourdieu (and others) that Rancière sees as perpetuating inequality.

    Self-taught, his appetite for knowledge--history, science, mankind--formed the basis of his insight to human nature. Reflections on the Human Condition is a collection of poignant aphorisms taken from his writings.

    Like civilization, play requires structure and participants willing to create within limits. Starting with Plato, Huizinga traces the contribution of Homo Ludens, or "Man the player" through Medieval Times, the Renaissance, and into our modern civilization. Huizinga defines play against a rich theoretical background, using cross-cultural examples from the humanities, business, and politics. Homo Ludens defines play for generations to come."A happier age than ours once made bold to call our species by the name of Homo Sapiens. In the course of time we have come to realize that we are not so reasonable after all as the Eighteenth Century with its worship of reason and naive optimism, though us; "hence moder fashion inclines to designate our species asHomo Faber Man the Maker. But though faber may not be quite so dubious as sapiens it is, as a name specific of the human being, even less appropriate, seeing that many animals too are makers. There is a third function, howver, applicable to both human and animal life, and just as important as reasoning and making--namely, playing. it seems to me that next to Homo Faber, and perhaps on the same level as Homo Sapiens, Homo Ludens, Man the Player, deserves a place in our nomenclature. "--from the Foreward, by Johan Huizinga

    Here, Sokal teams up with Jean Bricmont to expose the abuse of scientific concepts in the writings of today's most fashionable postmodern thinkers. From Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva to Luce Irigaray and Jean Baudrillard, the authors document the errors made by some postmodernists using science to bolster their arguments and theories. Witty and closely reasoned, Fashionable Nonsense dispels the notion that scientific theories are mere "narratives" or social constructions, and explored the abilities and the limits of science to describe the conditions of existence.

    At the time Jameson was actually writing the book, in the mid to late seventies, there was a major reaction against deconstruction and poststructuralism. As one of the most significant literary theorists, Jameson found himself in the unenviable position of wanting to defend his intellectual past yet keep an eye on the future. With this book he carried it off beautifully. A landmark publication, The Political Unconscious takes its place as one of the most meaningful works of the twentieth century.