ROOTS OF WISDOM, Seventh Edition, invites students to explore universal and current philosophical issues through a rich tapestry of perspectives including the ideas and traditions of men and women from the West, Asia, the Americas, and Africa. No other book offers such breadth of multicultural coverage coupled with a clear, concise, and approachable writing style. Mitchell presents striking images to illustrate our diverse cultural inheritance, using fine art, cartoons, poetry, movies, current events, and popular music to bring the issues (...) of philosophy to life for students. This edition includes a new discussion of logos and mythos as laid out by Karen Armstrong, material on calculative vs. meditative thinking from Heidegger, expanded treatment of sovereignty and citizenship with new discussion on the so-called Arab Spring, and more. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. (shrink)

The anthology is a collection of readings from a wide range of philosophical and cultural perspectives. Interesting and reader-friendly selections were purposely selected so as to be accessible to a wide range of students. While designed to accompany Mitchell's ROOTS OF WISDOM, it can also be used with any other introductory text.

This book collects readings from a very wide range of philosophical and cultural perspectives. The readings are interesting and accessible to all levels of students. While designed to accompany Mitchells text, THE ROOTS OF WISDOM: SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE OF PHILOSOPHY, it is also can be used without the text or with any other introductory text.

Has some of the fruit of feminism begun to rot on the vine? Or is the work of feminist philosophy just beginning? Are we still in thrall to pervasive sexist assumptions at the roots of our thinking and our language? With Marjorie Jolles, Ellen Klein, and Helen Mitchell.

As we know, Merleau-Ponty was struggling with a dynamic shift in his thinking at the premature end of his life. In those last notes he raises the question of how to elaborate a phenomenology of “’the other world’, as the limit of a phenomenology of the imaginary and the ‘hidden’”—a phenomenology that would open onto an invisible life, community, other and culture (VI, Jan. 1960). In her essay on “Eye and Mind”, “To Paint the Invisible”, Luce Irigaray shows why Merleau-Ponty (...) was not yet ready to address this question, why he was not yet ready to engage the limits of his vision posed by the presence of an other. Against Merleau-Ponty’s assertion that the artist has no other task than to bring to appearance the world in the way he corporeally encounters it employing no “other technique than what his eyes and hands discover in seeing and painting”, Irigaray argues that the painter as phenomenologist then appropriates what is other to his vision without reflecting upon a limit to vision, as well as the limit provided by the invisible of an other, an other world. This is not to say that there are no intertwinings with this other, for there are other metabolisms with which we engage the world. Moreover, the sharing of vision with an other can alter the ways I see, challenging cultural complicity, rather than providing evidence that we share the same world. Irigaray is of course not the first to challenge a phenomenological approach to art and to vision—and here I turn specifically to Gilles Deleuze—who is critical of the phenomenological tendency to take on a world given to us by others. His artist, Francis Bacon, focuses on the sensation, which remains unmediated by narration or the feelings of others. Finally, the artworks of abstract expressionist artist Joan Mitchell are considered in the ways that they open up a different time-space; they suggest an other world with which we intertwine without appropriation. Her works, I argue, defy reduction to essences, but also do not rely merely on sensation—for this reason they point in the direction of how to think phenomenology anew. For I do think Merleau-Ponty would be open to these conversations, to these other worlds and other visions. (shrink)

As we know, Merleau-Ponty was struggling with a dynamic shift in his thinking at the premature end of his life. In those last notes he raises the question of how to elaborate a phenomenology of “’the other world’, as the limit of a phenomenology of the imaginary and the ‘hidden’”—a phenomenology that would open onto an invisible life, community, other and culture. In her essay on “Eye and Mind”, “To Paint the Invisible”, Luce Irigaray argues that Merleau-Ponty was not yet (...) ready to address this question, of the limits posed to his vision by the presence of an other. The artworks of abstract expressionist artist Joan Mitchell are considered in the ways that they open up a different time-space suggesting an other world with which we intertwine without appropriation. Her works, I argue, defy reduction to essences, but also do not rely merely on sensation—for this reason they point in the direction of how to think phenomenology anew. For I do think Merleau-Ponty would be open to these conversations, to these other worlds and other visions. (shrink)

Sarah Buss has recently argued that endorsement theories of autonomy face three problems: they conflate autonomous agency with agency simpliciter, they face a vicious regress, and they get the extension of autonomous actions wrong. I argue that one such theory, Gary Watson’s Platonic Model, is not subject to any of these problems. I conclude that Buss has not given us reason to reject the Platonic Model and that it may be compatible with her own theory of accountability.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 36.1 (2003) 1-21 [Access article in PDF] Did Habermas Cede Nature to the Positivists? Gordon R. Mitchell Jürgen Habermas's "colonization of the lifeworld" thesis (1987, 332-73) posits that many of society's pathologies are due to the tendency of institutions to convert social issues that ought to be sorted out by a debating citizenry into technical problems ripe for resolution by expert bureaucracies, thus pre-empting important (...) public discussion. Habermas has attempted to lay bare the pernicious effects of this colonization process in his analysis of public opinion polling, welfare policy, education, German reunification, immigration, and other social issues (see Habermas 1997, 1994, and 1970; Holub 1992). In each of these contexts, Habermas has publicly challenged the encroachment of scientistic modes of decision-making into spheres where joint communicative action by deliberating citizens would yield more appropriate and legitimate judgments. This critical impulse is also evident in Habermas's methodological reflections on the proper role of academic scholarship, where he has argued vigorously against attempts to graft "objectivating" methods of natural scientific inquiry onto research projects in the social sciences (1971, 304-17).From all of this, one might gather that Habermas's commitment to rolling back the influence of technical forms of reasoning is connected to some intrinsic quarrel he has with the natural sciences. Yet such a sweeping generalization is hard to sustain in light of the fact that Habermas does not oppose technical reasoning per se; he recognizes that the daunting complexity of social life in late capitalism requiresthat certain "steering" tasks be delegated to systems that utilize largely instrumental logics to co-ordinate action. Likewise, he acknowledges that the disciplines of the natural sciences necessarily play important supporting roles in such steering projects.One normative presupposition of Habermas's colonization thesis is that there exists some proper boundary demarcating where the sphere of technical reasoning ends and the realm of communicative rationality begins. [End Page 1] On one side of this boundary, Habermas has provided many details on what he sees as the essential qualities of a properly functioning "public sphere," where "new social movements" continuously reweave the threads of communicative fabric holding society together (1996, 359-87), and where "historico-hermeneutic" academic study reflects on public life, sluicing insight back into the capillaries of democratic deliberations (1987, 374-403).What lies on the other side of the boundary is murkier. The proper role of natural scientific investigation has received relatively scant attention in Habermas's critical theory of society, and this has led to some confusion regarding his account of the natural sciences, as well as debate over whether this account has political purchase. One would think that sympathetic commentators, such as Helen Longino (who bases much of her own coherence theory of scientific truth on Habermas), would have reassuring things to say on this point. Yet her lukewarm assessment that, "in trying to clear a space for an autonomous social and critical theory, [Habermas] has ceded nature to the positivists" (1990, 202), raises questions about the flexibility and scope of Habermas's theory of communicative action as a basis for critique of scientific practice.One way to test Habermas's account of the natural sciences on this count is to put his views in conversation with science studies commentators who share a similar commitment to the idea that dialogue and argumentation are constitutive elements of scientific practice. Such an approach recasts the "ceding to positivism" question into a moment of controversy over the role of dialogue, not only as an essential motor driving the scientific enterprise, but also as a vehicle for democratic decision-making on issues related to the purpose and direction of scientific inquiry in society.Part one of this essay locates discursive norms embedded pragmatically in the notion of scientific objectivity. By bringing a modified version of Habermas's theory of communicative action into conversation with other approaches to science studies that foreground intersubjective dialogue as the key motor driving the scientific enterprise, I develop a foundation for robust criticism of systematically distorted scientific communication. Specific strategies of... (shrink)

This book brings together an international group of scholars to discuss the ramifications of Heidegger's Black Notebooks for philosophy and the humanities. In contrast to both those who seek to exonerate Heidegger and those who simply condemn him, they urge careful reading and rereading of his work to turn Heideggerian thought against itself.

Part intellectual history, part critical theory, The Last Man Takes LSD challenges the way we think about both Michel Foucault and modern progressive politics. One fateful day in May 1975, Foucault dropped acid in the southern California desert. In letters reproduced here, he described it as among the most important events of his life, one which would lead him to completely rework his History of Sexuality. That trip helped redirect Foucault's thought and contributed to a tectonic shift in the intellectual (...) life of the era. He came to reinterpret the social movements of May '68 and reposition himself politically in France, embracing anti-totalitarian currents and becoming a critic of the welfare state. Mitchell Dean and Daniel Zamora examine the full historical context of the turn in Foucault's thought, which included studies of the Iranian revolution and French socialist politics, through which he would come to appreciate the possibilities of autonomy offered by a new force on the French political scene that was neither of the left nor the right: neoliberalism. (shrink)

Capturing a scientific change in thinking about personality and individual differences that has been building over the past 15 years, this volume stands at an important moment in the development of psychology as a discipline. Rather than viewing individual differences as merely the raw material upon which selection operates, the contributing authors provide theories and empirical evidence which suggest that personality and individual differences are central to evolved psychological mechanisms and behavioral functioning. The book draws theoretical inspiration from life history (...) theory, evolutionary genetics, molecular genetics, developmental psychology, personality psychology, and evolutionary psychology, while utilizing the theories of the "best and the brightest" international scientists working on this cutting edge paradigm shift. In the first of three sections, the authors analyze personality and the adaptive landscape; here, the authors offer a novel conceptual framework for examining "personality assessment adaptations." Because individuals in a social environment have momentous consequences for creating and solving adaptive problems, humans have evolved "difference-detecting mechanisms" designed to make crucial social decisions such as mate selection, friend selection, kin investment, coalition formation, and hierarchy negotiation. In the second section, the authors examine developmental and life-history theoretical perspectives to explore the origins and development of personality over the lifespan. The third section focuses on the relatively new field of evolutionary genetics and explores which of the major evolutionary forces--such as balancing selection, mutation, co-evolutionary arms races, and drift--are responsible for the origins of personality and individual differences. Existing as a seminal work in the newly emerging evolutionary psychology field, this book is a "must-read" for anyone invested in the development of psychology as a field. (shrink)

Band 1. Von Augustinus bis Nietzsche -- Band 2. Das 20. Jahrhundert.

Martin Heideggers Denken nach 1938 ist vor allem durch drei grosse Themen gepragt: den Wandel des Menschenbildes, die Einfuhrung eines neuen Begriffes vom Denken und den Nachweis, dass Sein Seyn in Beziehung ist. Dabei stutzt er sich auf das Denken Franz Rosenzweigs, das bereits in der Formulierung von Sein und Zeit erkennbar ist, in den Schriften der 40er und 50er Jahre aber in besonders intensiver Weise nachwirkt. Ausgehend von dieser Zusammenschau von Heideggers und Rosenzweigs Denken zeichnet sich auch eine neue (...) Bewertung des Denkens von Emmanuel Levinas ab. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Literature, Fiction, and Truth Literary Cognitivism Thought Experiments Genres Learning by Supposing De se Suppositions.

At Republic 435c-d and again at 504b-e, Plato has Socrates object to the city/soul analogy and declare that a “longer way” is necessary for gaining a more “exact grasp” of the soul. I argue that it is in the Philebus, in Socrates’ presentation of the “god-given” method of dialectic and in his distinctions of the kinds of pleasure and knowledge, that Plato offers the resources for reaching this alternative account. To show this, I explore (1) the limitations of the tripartition (...) of the soul that Socrates’ own objections in the Republic suggest, (2) the route of the “longer way” through the Eleatic dialogues to the Philebus, (3) the procedures that constitute the “god-given” method and the structure of the eidetic field it discloses, and (4) the resources that, considered in light of the method, Socrates’ distinctions of the kinds of pleasure and knowledge provide for the more “exact grasp” of the soul. (shrink)

Much work performed under the banner of social epistemology still centers the problems of the individual cognitive agent. AU distinguishes multiple senses of "social," some of which are more social than others, and argues that different senses are at work in various contributions to social epistemology. Drawing on work in history and philosophy of science and addressing the literature on testimony and disagreement in particular, this paper argues for a more thoroughgoing approach in social epistemology.

Source [1] Andrew E. P. Mitchell, Federica Galli, Sondra Butterworth. (2023). Editorial: Equality, diversity and inclusive research for diverse rare disease communities. Front. Psychol., vol. 14. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1285774. "It is also important to recognize that certain mental health disorders are classified as rare conditions and have their own cultural concepts of distress, as defined in the DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association, 2013)" and require “equal attention and support for individuals and their families, both physically and emotionally”. [1].

Buss, S.R., The undecidability of k-provability, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 53 75-102. The k-provability problem is, given a first-order formula ø and an integer k, to determine if ø has a proof consisting of k or fewer lines . This paper shows that the k-provability problem for the sequent calculus is undecidable. Indeed, for every r.e. set X there is a formula ø and an integer k such that for all n,ø has a proof of k sequents (...) if and only if n ε X. (shrink)

Heidegger's later thought is a thinking of things, so argues Andrew J. Mitchell in The Fourfold. Heidegger understands these things in terms of what he names "the fourfold"--a convergence of relationships bringing together the earth, the sky, divinities, and mortals--and Mitchell's book is the first detailed exegesis of this neglected aspect of Heidegger's later thought. As such it provides entré to the full landscape of Heidegger's postwar thinking, offering striking new interpretations of the atomic bomb, technology, plants, animals, (...) weather, time, language, the holy, mortality, dwelling, and more. What results is a conception of things as ecstatic, relational, singular, and, most provocatively, as intrinsically tied to their own technological commodification. A major new work that resonates beyond the confines of Heidegger scholarship, The Fourfold proposes nothing less than a new phenomenological thinking of relationality and mediation for understanding the things around us. (shrink)

Over the last two decades J.N. Williams has developed an account of the absurdity of such utterances as Its raining but I dont believe it that is both intuitively plausible and applicable to a wide variety of forms that this so-called Moorean absurdity can take. His approach is also noteworthy for making only minimal appeal to principles of epistemic or doxastic logic in its account of such absurdity. We first show that Williams places undue emphasis upon assertion and belief: It (...) is similarly absurd for a person to accept a proposition P as a supposition for the sake of argument while denying that her state of mind is one of supposing P, yet Williams has no account of this. Williams approach is then modified to account for such a case. That modification employs a principle of doxastic logic that is at least plausible as the one on which Williams relies, while being unlike his principle in applying to cases other than belief. (shrink)

A biblically informed guidebook for Christians facing difficult health care decisions, from the making of life (infertility, organ donation, cloning) and taking of life (abortion, euthanasia) to the technologically driven faking of life (genetic engineering, etc.).

A biblically informed guidebook for Christians facing difficult health care decisions, from the making of life (infertility, organ donation, cloning) and taking of life (abortion, euthanasia) to the technologically driven faking of life (genetic engineering, etc.).

Art history on the edge : iconology, media, and visual culture -- Four fundamental concepts of image science -- Image science -- Image X text -- Realism and the digital image -- Migrating images : totemism, fetishism, idolatry -- The future of the image : Rancière's road not taken -- World pictures : globalization and visual culture -- Media aesthetics -- There are no visual media -- Back to the drawing board : architecture, sculpture, and the digital image -- Foundational (...) sites and occupied spaces -- Border wars : translation and convergence in politics and media -- Art X environment -- The historical uncanny : phantoms, doubles, and repetition in the war on terror -- The spectacle today : a response to retort -- Coda : for a sweet science of images. (shrink)

Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: surveying the landscape and defining terms -- The seventeenth-century denigration of tradition and a nineteenth-century response -- Michael oakeshott and the epistemic role of tradition -- Alasdair macintyre's tradition-constituted inquiry -- Michael polanyi and role of tacit knowledge -- The incoherence of liberalism and the response of tradition -- Afterword: a conservatism worth conserving, or conservatism as stewardship -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.

Wie kann eine Theorie der Ethik beschaffen sein, wenn sie aus dem gedanklichen Repertoire der Existenzphilosophie entworfen wird? Sie bedarf vor allem einer speziellen Sprachfindung, die einen Diskurs mit zeitgenossischen Ethik-Konzeptionen im ersten Moment zu erschweren scheint. Susanne Mobua zeigt auf, dass dieses nicht zwangslaufig gilt, wenn der strukturelle Rahmen, in dem die Ethik der Existenz sich artikulieren kann, in die Untersuchung einbezogen wird. Hier kommt das Konzept des Neuen Denkens zum Tragen, das 1925 von Franz Rosenzweig vorgestellt wurde. Zum (...) ersten Mal ist es moglich, die Bedeutung des Rosenzweig'schen Denkens fur die Entwicklung von Existenzphilosophie und Dekonstruktion darzustellen. (shrink)

Aus einer bestimmten Perspektive betrachtet, zeigt sich Martin Heideggers erste systematische Schrift "Sein und Zeit" als Konzeptualisierung des "Sterns der Erlosung" von Franz Rosenzweig. Diesen Befund gilt es anhand eines intensiven Vergleiches beider Texte zu bestatigen. Erganzend werden Heideggers Arbeiten uber rund zwanzig Jahre von seiner Dissertation bis zu den "Beitragen zur Philosophie" verfolgt, um die Phasen einer Rezeption zwischen Aneignung, Widerspruch und Negation rekonstruieren zu konnen, die in der Geschichte der westlichen Rationalitat ihresgleichen sucht. Denn es wird sichtbar, wie (...) stark Heideggers Begrundung eines angeblichen seinsgeschichtlichen Auftrages der Deutschen von jenen Aussagen Franz Rosenzweigs gepragt ist, in denen dieser das judische Volk charakterisiert. Ein vertiefender Blick auf das Selbstverstandnis Martin Heideggers zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus wird moglich, der dazu beitragen kann, die Frage seiner ideologischen Positionierung vor neuem Hintergrund zu stellen. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that there is an urgent need for more empirical research into everyday experiences of living with datafication, something that has not been prioritised in the emerging field of data studies to date. As a result of this absence, the knowledge produced within data studies is not as aligned to the aims of data activism as it might be. Data activism seeks to challenge existing, unequal data power relations and to mobilise data in order to enhance (...) social justice, yet data studies has focused primarily on identifying the former and not on imagining the latter. To build a picture of what more just conditions of datafication might look like, I argue that it is important to take account of everyday experiences of datafication, of what people themselves say would enable them to live better with data and would constitute more just data arrangements, based on their experiences. I explore two possible approaches to this endeavour, both of which suggest the need for a vocabulary of emotions in researching everyday living with data. (shrink)

Taking a pragmatist stance toward the practices and products of science shapes our answers to central philosophical questions. In argue that from within a perspective consisting of goals, actions and questions, what we say there is and what we say it does, is justified by the ongoing interactions among representative models, causal experience and experiment, and conceptual frameworks in reaching a fallible convergence to what is real. I offer a non-dichotomous alternative. I propose an alternative to fundamentalist approaches, arguing that (...) what we are justified in claiming as real phenomena are the affordances constructed from the integration of top-down and bottom-up strategies. (shrink)

Change is the fundamental idea of evolution. Explaining the extraordinary biological change we see written in the history of genomes and fossil beds is the primary occupation of the evolutionary biologist. Yet it is a surprising fact that for the majority of evolutionary research, we have rarely studied how evolution typically unfolds in nature, in changing ecological environments, over space and time. While ecology played a major role in the eventual acceptance of the population genetic viewpoint of evolution in the (...) synthetic era (circa 1918-1956), it held a lesser role in the development of evolutionary theory until the 1980s, when we began to systematically study the evolutionary dynamics of natural populations in space and time. As a result, early evolutionary theory was initially constructed in an abstract vacuum that was unrepresentative of evolution in nature. The subtle synthesis between ecology with evolutionary biology (eco-evo synthesis) over the past 40 years has progressed our knowledge of natural selection dynamics as they are found in nature, thus revealing how natural selection varies in strength, direction, form, and, more surprisingly, level of biological organization. Natural selection can no longer be reduced to lower levels of biological organization (i.e., individuals, selfish genes) over shorter timescales but should be expanded to include adaptation at higher levels and over longer timescales. Long-term and/or emergent evolutionary phenomena, such as multilevel selection or evolvability, have thus become tenable concepts within an evolutionary biology that embraces ecology and spatiotemporal change. Evolutionary biology is currently suspended at an intermediate stage of scientific progress that calls for the organization of all the recent knowledge revealed by the eco-evo synthesis into a coherent and unified theoretical framework. This is where philosophers of biology can be of particular use, acting as a bridge between the subdisciplines of biology and inventing new theoretical strategies to organize and accommodate the recent knowledge. Philosophers have recommended transitioning away from outdated philosophies that were originally derived from physics within the philosophical zeitgeist of logical positivism (i.e., monism, reductionism, and monocausation) and toward a distinct philosophy of biology that can capture the natural complexity of multifaceted biological systems within diverse ecosystems—one that embraces the emerging philosophies of pluralism, emergence, and multicausality. Therefore, I see recent advances in ecology, evolutionary biology, and the philosophy of biology as laying the groundwork for another major biological synthesis, what I refer to as the Second Synthesis because, in many respects, it is analogous to the aims and outcomes of the first major biological synthesis (but is notably distinct from the inorganic and contrived progressive movement known as the extended evolutionary synthesis). With the general development of a distinctive philosophy of science, biology has rightfully emerged as an autonomous science. Thus, while the first synthesis legitimized biology, the Second Synthesis autonomized biology and afforded biology its own philosophy, allowing biology to finally realize its full scientific potential. (shrink)

Presenting an understanding of the mind, emotions, and communication, Calm, Clear, and Loving invites an understanding of the transformation of mind, both in a meditative and therapeutic context. It is relevant to those dealing with histories of abuse and trauma, for those in the fields of mental health, and for those on meditative and spiritual evolution.

State and civil society -- Empire without state -- Politics of life -- Saint Foucault -- Blood-dried codes -- The state of immanence -- Virtual state-making -- When society prevails -- Political and economic theology -- Foucault's apologia of neoliberalism.

Women most fully experience the consequences of human reproductive technologies. Men who convene to evaluate such technologies discuss "them": the women who must accept, avoid, or even resist these technologies; the women who consume technologies they did not devise; the women who are the objects of policies made by men. So often the input of women is neither sought nor listened to. The privileged insights and perspectives that women bring to the consideration of technologies in human reproduction are the subject (...) of these volumes, which constitute the revised and edited record of a Workshop on "Ethical Issues in Human Reproduction Technology: Analysis by Women" (EIRTAW), held in June, 1979, at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Some 80 members of the workshop, 90 percent of them women (from 24 states), represented diverse occupations and personal histories, different races and classes, varied political commitments. They included doctors, nurses, and scientists, lay midwives, consumer advocates, historians, and sociologists, lawyers, policy analysts, and ethicists. Each session, however, made plain that ethics is an everyday concern for women in general, as well as an academic profession for some. (shrink)

This chapter examines Davidson's treatment of emotions as complexly bound up with cognitive states such as belief, rather than as being essentially opposed to such states. Emotions on Davidson's view can be justified, and can be both causes of and reasons for action. We also consider Davidson's elucidation and defense of David Hume's analysis of pride and similar affective states. Objections to that elucidation and defense are discussed, and it is explained how Davidson could rebut those objections. Davidson's theory is (...) then discussed in light of unconscious emotions, irrational emotions, and the possibility of nonhuman animals possessing emotions. (shrink)

Cooperation in evil or wrongdoing is one of the most perplexing areas in bioethics, both for those working in the field and those seeking their advice. The papers collected in this book are written by philosophers, theologians and lawyers who have studied these problems and / or by those who have faced these problems in their own work in law, healthcare and research, and political campaigning. The volume includes both general treatments of the subject of cooperation and conscientious objection, and (...) more specific treatments of topics such as voting to improve unjust laws, research on fetal / embryonic cells, and care of suicidal patients. The book is offered as a guide to a field which is both of academic interest and of personal concern to those who face cooperation problems in their own life and work. Contributors include: Bishop Donal Murray, Bishop Anthony Fisher OP, Jane Adolphe, Mike Delany, John Finnis, Luke Gormally, Colin Harte, Cathleen Kaveny, Richard Myers, Charlie O'Donnell, Alexander Pruss, Neil Scolding and Helen Watt. (shrink)

Nation and liberty: two ideas that in spite of the innumerable works that have been devoted to them are still open to new approaches, indeed, to new definitions. They pose a problem whose essence is to remain without a definitive answer, to be always actual, because it concerns man of all times, all countries and all conditions. This apparently-simple remark raises a question: is it possible to put nation and liberty on the same level? It is permissible to consider liberty (...) and nation as a pair forming a new concept, or do we simply have a relationship located in a precise time at a given place? (shrink)

The relationship between education and democratic development has been a growing theme in debates focussed upon public education, but there has been little work that has directly related educational leadership to wider issues of freedom, politics and practice. Engaging with ELMA through the work of Hannah Arendt enables these issues of power to be directly confronted. Arendt produced texts that challenged notions of freedom and politics, and notably examined the lives of people, ideas and historical events in ways that are (...) pertinent to the purposes and practices of education. This significant volume examines the main texts in the Arendt library and explains each of the key ideas and how they can enable critical thinking about knowledge production and practice in educational leadership. The analysis draws upon a range of exemplars and empirical projects from the field of educational leadership, investigating utility issues regarding Arendt's ideas, and engaging with the debates concerning her insights and contribution. Included in the book: -using Arendt to think about ELMA -the relationship between policy and practice, and organisation and leadership -critiques of the Vita Activa and Vita Contemplativa -thinking with and against Arendt. Gunter uses the work of Arendt to challenge the purposes and practices of intellectual work, with a view to developing perspectives on the responsibility for research and ideas. The book will be of value to all those working and researching in the field of Educational Leadership, Management and Administration. (shrink)