Explores and illuminates Roland Barthes' profound impact on our understanding of literary modernism.

This book explores questions concerning personal identity and individual conduct within neoliberal academe. The author suggests that neoliberal academe is normal academe in the new millennium though well aware of its contested nature and destructive capacities. Examining higher education through a number of ideals, such as austerity and transparency, brings readers on a journey into its present as well as its past. If some of these ideals can be identified and critiqued, there is a chance that the foundations of neoliberal (...) academe can be weakened. This book actively pursues pathways out of the neoliberal abyss--and offers that demanding a role for pleasure in higher education may be one of them. (shrink)

Explores and illuminates Slavoj Žižek's impact on our understanding of literary and cultural modernism.

Explores the intersections between philosophy and literature through a transnational, comparative lens.

What is the legacy of Theory after the deaths of so many of its leading lights, from Jacques Derrida to Roland Barthes? Bringing together reflections by leading contemporary scholars, Dead Theory explores the afterlives of the work of the great theorists and the current state of Theory today. Considering the work of thinkers such as Derrida, Deleuze, and Levinas, the book explores the ways in which Theory has long been haunted by death and how it might endure for the future."--Page (...) 4 of cover. (shrink)

This collection of case studies in public management bridges the gap between mainstream CSR - confined to the for-profit corporations - and the vast bodies of workers and organizations that make up government and its public administration. The variety and discretion of managerial endeavours in public management calls for accountability and responsibility of government beyond current legal instruments: The book argues that CSR must be brought to bear with government. In government in fact, knowledge management is not a linear process, (...) but the result of working with passion of the parts, implying discretionary behaviour and creativity which in turn imply choice and responsibility. Cases ranging from the USA to Central America, New Zealand and Europe all confirm the complex nature of public management, entailing partnership synergy for disaster recovery, the intertwined link between management and new technology and mindfulness at individual level. The cases are set in a framework by theoretical essays on bureaucratic behaviour and unknown stakeholders. Public-sector management has long drawn upon principles, tools, and techniques developed in the private sector, aiming to infuse bureaucracies with touches of efficiency and productivity. But good governance is also central to good management. This fascinating, wide-ranging volume shows how ideas from the Corporate Social Responsibility movement apply to the governance and administration of public agencies. A series of detailed and informative case studies, written by researchers and practitioners with deep knowledge of their industries and agencies, explores the challenges of managing public and government agencies in a socially responsible manner. The book offers a nuanced and balanced portrait that calls for greater public involvement and oversight in keeping public organizations on track. Highly recommended! Peter G. Klein University of Missouri Norwegian School of Economics and Mises Institute Here are six compelling case studies that reveal the relevance, even the imperative, of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the public sector. In doing so, the authors simultaneously expand the role of CSR and provide us with a refreshed concept of government and public management. The authors then lay the theoretical groundwork for their observations in ways that enrich our understanding of both CSR and the evolving roles of government in our lives. This is "must reading" for corporate officers and for public managers. Thomas R. Sexton Stony Brook University, NY College of Business and School of Professional Development. (shrink)

In this work we will try to demonstrate the presence and the role that God has in Thomas Hobbes's political philosophy. We consider that this religious belief, that it is the system's equilibrium, guaranties that the Hobbesian political project does not fall into revolutionary or totalitarian excesses. Thus, we shall analyse the arguments of the existence of God that are introduced by the philosopher Malmesbury with the objective of proving that reason does not necessarily lead to atheism, but that such (...) faculty requires the Revelation intervention to be able to channel it into a peaceful and lasting life. (shrink)

In this work we will try to demonstrate the presence and the role that God has in Thomas Hobbes's political philosophy. We consider that this religious belief, that it is the system's equilibrium, guaranties that the Hobbesian political project does not fall into revolutionary or totalitarian excesses. Thus, we shall analyse the arguments of the existence of God that are introduced by the philosopher Malmesbury with the objective of proving that reason does not necessarily lead to atheism, but that such (...) faculty requires the Revelation intervention to be able to channel it into a peaceful and lasting life. (shrink)

Introduction / Jeffrey R. Di Leo, Peter Hitchcock, and Sophia A. McClennen -- Theory and history -- The rights to debt? / Sophia A. McClennen -- Kant at the Federal Reserve : on the aesthetics of quantitative easing / Peter Hitchcock -- Materialism : debt and sensuality / Christopher Breu -- The indebted man's cognitive mapping : boundaries and biohorror in the neoliberal debt economy / Liane Tanguay -- Living in the debt age -- The debt experience / Jeffrey J. (...) Williams -- Paying your debt to society : the neoliberal state and the logic of quid pro quo / Esther Peeren -- Indebted youth and neoliberalism / Tyler J. Pollard -- Austerity politics and the neoliberal target austerity politics and the neoliberal targeting of the body in public education / Kenneth J. Saltman -- Resisting the debt age -- On debt resistance / Jeffrey R. Di Leo -- Debt and financial literacy education : an ethics for capital or the other / Chris Arthur -- Student debt and the social functions of consolidation college / Christopher Newfield -- Confronting the creditor class / Andrew Ross -- Index. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Question of Style in Philosophy and the ArtsJeffrey R. Di LeoThe Question of Style in Philosophy and the Arts, edited by Caroline van Eck, James McAllister and Renée van de Vall; xi & 245 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, $49.95.The question, “Should philosophers concern themselves with questions of style?” motivates this rich collection of twelve essays on the interrelatedness of content and its formal representation in (...) both philosophical writing and the arts. Alongside issues such as aestheticized forms of philosophizing and the relationship between method and style, there are articles on Heinrich von Kleist’s Marionettentheater, the graphic works of William Hogarth, Alexis de Tocqueville’s use of metaphor and paradox, the use of ellipses in Johannes Kepler’s astronomical theories, and eclecticism in eighteenth-century English architecture.Style has been an explicit concern for historians and theorists of the arts long before it came to the fore in philosophy. The editors think philosophers can learn a lot not only about the concept of style but also about philosophical style by looking into the practices of musicians, architects, and painters and by thinking about how styles are formed, transformed, and understood in the arts. By comparing the arts and philosophy, we can move toward something lacking in contemporary discussions, namely stylistic categories specific to philosophy. Richard Wollheim’s essay, for example, offers many categories appropriate to painting that could be relevant to philosophical writing.A provocative point traced here is that until the end of the eighteenth century, “style” had little to do with the meaning of a work of art—the term merely denoted an artwork’s place in the hierarchy of art. Before 1800, there was hardly a question of choice among styles: contributions to a practice were regarded not as belonging to one style or another, but as falling within or being alien to a practice. Only in the early nineteenth century did style become a key element in the meaning of a work, when it took the place previously occupied by nature, antiquity, or absolute standards of reason. With the traditional bearers of meaning gone, one could no longer look to content for meaning, and artists turned to style to create meaningful art—style being that aspect of writing, painting, or building traditionally associated with ornament, that could be varied without changing the content. Gradually, the “variable” element in art became the prime bearer of meaning.The claim here is that an analogous transition from stylistic monism to pluralism occurred in philosophy about a century after it did in art. This shift away from the monistic geometrical and mathematical standards of philosophical reasoning established in the late sixteenth century was brought about by philosophers such as Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. Lambert Weising suggests that, with Wittgenstein, there is a substitution of style for truth—a point which seems equally true of others, notably Nietzsche. A consequence of this new [End Page 187] pluralism is a loosening of what can be called philosophical reasoning, and an increasing receptiveness to and acceptance of a diversity of philosophical styles. Questions of style do tend to arise in connections with philosophers of the literary sort—Plato or Kierkegaard. Now philosophers have much less difficulty regarding as philosophical a work such as Pascal’s Pensées, which has traditionally been treated more as literature than as philosophy.One of the challenges of this collection is to refute the view of those who deny that the content of their philosophical writing depends at all on style. This would give support to a thesis defended by Martha Nussbaum in this journal in 1983: “No stylistic choice can be presumed to be neutral—not even the choice to write in a flat or neutral style” (p. 146). Beryl Lang, who has addressed this question in other books and articles, argues that style is relevant to all philosophical writing, even that professed to be “style-less.” Lang correctly shows that philosophers’ general disregard for expressiveness, and their belief that the proper philosophical method will lead all who follow it to the same results, has itself become a feature of philosophical writing. So “style-less” writing is a philosophical... (shrink)

In this work we will try to demonstrate the presence and the role that God has in Thomas Hobbes's political philosophy. We consider that this religious belief, that it is the system's equilibrium, guaranties that the Hobbesian political project does not fall into revolutionary or totalitarian excesses. Thus, we shall analyse the arguments of the existence of God that are introduced by the philosopher Malmesbury with the objective of proving that reason does not necessarily lead to atheism, but that such (...) faculty requires the Revelation intervention to be able to channel it into a peaceful and lasting life. (shrink)

Una de las tantas disputas en torno a la interpretación de la obra de Tucídides estriba en determinar el género de su escritura. En este trabajo se considera a Tucídides como un pensador de lo político —es decir, un autor que identifica algunos de los rasgos subyacentes a, y fundantes de, un orden político— más que como un historiador de una guerra antigua. La aproximación que aquí se desarrolla identifica cuatro conceptos claves en el texto del pensador griego: la noción (...) de “causa” (próphasis) inmanente y psicológica como una explicación más efectiva que las míticas o finalistas a la hora de dar cuenta del acontecer humano; la consideración de una “naturaleza humana” (anthropeía phýsis) problemática que trasciende los estadios históricos; el “ocultamiento” (apokrýptein) de esta naturaleza en momentos de normalidad y su irrupción en momentos de crisis política; y, por último, el primado del “deseo” (epithymía) frente a la razón en la dinámica que impulsa la praxis de los seres humanos. Estos conceptos extraídos del texto de Tucídides forman un corpus teórico que serán retomados en más de una oportunidad por otros pensadores urgidos por pensar un nuevo orden político. De allí, que posean un carácter trans-histórico. (shrink)

We discuss the meaning of “being alive” and “being dead.” Our primary aim is to pave the way for a sound and accurate ethical debate concerning these two concepts. In particular, we analyze a metabolic approach and a genetic one and discuss the reasons for their failure to constitute a good starting point for successive debates. We argue that any ethical or social discussion of topics involving life and death must introduce cultural constructs such as, on the one hand, the (...) concept of clinical death and, on the other hand, the concept of existence. We argue that these two cultural constructs, although consistent with biomedical knowledge, cannot be ontologically grounded in it. To conclude, we apply our findings to the case of human embryos. (shrink)