The conviction that Gilles Deleuze is doing something radical in his work has been accompanied by a corresponding anxiety as to how to read it. In this rigorous and lucid work, Ian Buchanan takes up the challenge by answering the following questions: How should we read Deleuze? How should we read _with_ Deleuze? To show us how Deleuze’s philosophy works, Buchanan begins with Melville’s notion that “a great book is always the inverse of another book that could only be written (...) in the soul, with silence and blood.” Buchanan demonstrates that the figure of two books—one written in ink and the other written in blood—lies at the center of Deleuze’s hermeneutics and that a special relation must be established in order to read the second book from the first. This relation is Deleuzism. By explicating elemental concepts in Deleuze—desire, flow, the nomad—Buchanan finds that, despite Deleuze’s self-declared moratorium on dialectics, he was in several important respects a dialectician. In essays that address the “prehistory” of Deleuze’s philosophy, his methodology, and the utopic dimensions of his thought, Buchanan extracts an apparatus of social critique that arises from the philosopher’s utopian impulse. _Deleuzism_ is a work that will engage all those with an interest in the twentieth-century’s most original philosopher. (shrink)

Smith's experience at Balliol College was disappointing, since the dons he encountered were not interested in teaching, and their easy enjoyment of sinecures as Fellows did not encourage that competition for students, and therefore revenue, prevalent among the Glasgow professors, which kept them abreast of their subjects and in touch with the advances of Enlightenment thought, especially the New Philosophy of Locke and the New Science of Newton. Smith read widely on his own, in politics and modern languages, but with (...) no one to supervise him, he seems to have overdone study and suffered a kind of nervous breakdown. He may have started reading Hume at this time, and been punished for doing so; certainly the religious orthodoxy of Balliol and the Jacobitism there, perhaps inflamed by the ’45 Rising’, must have repelled him, and he is reported to have left Oxford in 1746 ‘in disgust.’. (shrink)

Smith's last illness is described, along with his final order to have his unfinished manuscripts burned shortly before he died on 17 July 1790. His character is summed up as two‐sided: benevolent yet prudent, also firm and decisive, from one point of view; but from another darker one, that of a melancholy or, at times, volatile personality, subject to psychosomatic illness arising from his intense concentration on chains of abstract ideas. Nevertheless, he remained a tireless inquirer into human nature, particularly (...) its emotional range, and into its expressive forms and institutions. His free‐market system showed, he believed, how people in a relatively early phase of commerce and manufacturing might prosper within a framework of justice and equality before the law. He thought that self‐interest was centrally involved in economic transactions, but also held that the happiness of others is necessary to us, and he devoted his last years to moral philosophy, believing that he might help us aspire for virtue rather than wealth, and so become members of a truly civil society. (shrink)

From April to July, 1787 Smith was in London receiving medical attention and conferring with the government about fiscal and commercial reforms that allowed Britain to recover from the strains of the American war. On his return to Edinburgh in somewhat restored health, he set about preparing a greatly expanded sixth edition of TMS. This developed further the concept of the impartial spectator, and included an entirely new part VI, focused on moral theory applicable to such crucial issues as new‐modelling (...) a political constitution, highly relevant in view of the revolutions in America and France. He also added a chapter arguing that while our disposition to admire the rich and powerful is necessary to maintain the ‘order of society,’ it is the most universal cause of the ‘corruption of our moral sentiments.’ His Stoic outlook thus affords him a standpoint for criticism of the mechanisms of the acquisitive society analysed in WN, but at the same time, he suggests that the contemporary literature of sensibility dealing with love and friendship does more for us than the arguments for ‘stoical apathy.’. (shrink)

The local food movement has been touted by some as a profoundly effective way to make our food system become more healthy, just, and sustainable. Others have criticized the movement as being less a challenge to the status quo and more an easily co-opted support offering just another set of choices for affluent consumers. In this paper, we analyze three distinct sub-movements within the local food movement, the individual-focused sub-movement, the systems-focused sub-movement, and the community-focused sub-movement. These movements can be (...) combined within any particular campaign or within the goals of any particular organization or individual activist, but they are nevertheless quite different from each other, and come out of different conceptualizations of what food, people, and locality are. We argue that most of the critiques leveled against local food are actually directed against the individual-focused sub-movement, which is most compatible with the current industrial food system, and perhaps not surprisingly receives the most mainstream attention. Further, we argue that while each movement has its own strengths and weaknesses, it is the community-focused sub-movement that has the most potential to radically transform the global food system. (shrink)

From the 1910s to the emergence of structuralism and post-structuralism in the 1960s, the writings of John Grierson, Siegfried Kracauer, Andre Bazin and Georg Lukacs dominated realist film theory. In this critical anthology, the first collection to address their work in one volume, a wide range of international scholars explore the interconnections between their ideas and help generate new understandings of this important, if neglected, field. Challenging preconceptions about 'classical' theory and the nature of realist representation, and in the process (...) demonstrating how this body of work can be seen as a cohesive theoretical model, this invaluable collection will help return the realist paradigm of film theory to the forefront of academic enquiry. ". (shrink)

`The work develops and articulates a brilliant and original central thesis; namely that modern individuals are best understood as complex bodies of thought, as embodied symbolic and material beings. Future work on mind, self, body, society and culture will have to begin with Burkitt's text' - Norman K. Denzin, University of Illinois `After his excellent Social Selves, Ian Burkitt has produced a new theory of embodiment which will become required reading for those working in the areas of social theory, sociology, (...) cultural studies and social psychology. Steering between constructionist and realist theories of the social actor, Bodies of Thought provides an innovative assessment of Foucaultian, Eliasian, and feminist approaches to the body and a sustained critique of Cartesian notions of the subject' - Chris Shilling, Department of Social and Historical Studies, University of Portsmouth In this incisive and truly impressive book, Ian Burkitt critically addresses the dualism between mind and body, thought and emotion, rationality and irrationality, and the mental and the material, which haunt the post-Cartesian world. Drawing on the work of contemporary social theorists and feminist writers, he argues that thought and the sense of being a person is inseparable from bodily practices within social relations, even though such active experience may be abstracted and expanded upon through the use of symbols. Overcoming classic dualisms in social thought, Burkitt argues that bodies are not purely the constructs of discourses of power: they are also productive, communicative, and invested with powerful capacities for changing the social and natural worlds. He goes on to consider how such powers can be developed in more ethical forms of relations and activities. Bodies of Thought will be essential reading for students and academics in social theory, social psychology, cultural studies, feminist theory and the sociology of the body. (shrink)

In A Photographer’s Guide to Ohio Ian Adams, Ohio’s leading landscape photographer, guides readers to some of the most photogenic sites in the Buckeye State. Natural beauty and historic architecture are prime subjects for photographers, and in a state that boasts 3,600 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places and is home to the world’s largest Amish communities, the photographic subjects seem endless. With nearly one hundred color photographs, Adams demonstrates through his own work how to capture the beauty (...) of the seasons when photographing Ohio’s covered bridges, numerous public gardens, state parks, and nature preserves. Each entry includes clear directions, related websites, and historical facts about the area, as well as Adams’s suggestions for capturing the best image. Both amateur and experienced photographers will find expert guidance in Adams’s clear instructions on digital photography and will be inspired to create their own stunning close-ups and scenic panoramas. (shrink)

In drawing upon the work of Jacques Derrida, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger and aligning it with a new trend in interdisciplinary phenomenology, Ian Andrews provides a unique and refreshing book. His account of how the composer John Cage and other avant-garde creatives such as Marcel Duchamp, Tristan Tzara, Sol LeWitt and Ed Ruscha used chance in their work to question the structures of experience and prompt a new engagement with these phenomena makes a truly important contribution to Continental philosophy.

Arguments strong enough to justify skeptical theism will be strong enough to justify the position that every claim about God is empirically unfalsifiable. This fact is problematic because that position licenses further arguments which are clearly unreasonable, but which the skeptical theist cannot consistently accept as such. Avoiding this result while still achieving the theoretical objectives looked for in skeptical theism appears to demand an impossibly nuanced position.

Toleration and respect are often thought of as compatible, and indeed complementary, liberal democratic ideals. However, it has sometimes been said that toleration is disrespectful, because it necessarily involves a negative evaluation of the object of toleration. This article shows how toleration and respect are compatible as long as ‘ respect ’ is taken to mean recognition respect, as opposed to appraisal respect. But it also argues that recognition respect itself rules out certain kinds of evaluation of persons, and with (...) these, certain bases for toleration : if recognition respect is really distinct from appraisal respect, and if the fundamental rights assigned to people on the basis of recognition respect are to be equal rights, then recognition respect must itself involve a refusal to evaluate certain basic agential capacities of persons when deliberating about how to treat them. Even where ‘ respect ’ means recognition respect, then, there is some truth both in the thesis that toleration and respect are compatible, and in the thesis that they are incompatible. The different truths in these two theses help to shed light on the nature of toleration considered specifically as a liberal democratic virtue. This point can be illustrated by showing how the foregoing analysis provides a plausible solution to the so-called ‘paradox of the tolerant racist’. (shrink)

Rival Enlightenments, first published in 2001, is a major reinterpretation of early modern German intellectual history. Ian Hunter approaches philosophical doctrines as ways of fashioning personae for envisaged historical circumstances, here of confessional conflict and political desacralization. He treats the civil philosophy of Pufendorf and Thomasius and the metaphysical philosophy of Leibniz and Kant as rival intellectual cultures or paideiai, thereby challenging all histories premised on Kant's supposed reconciliation and transcendence of the field. This study reveals the extraordinary historical self-consciousness (...) of the civil philosophers, who repudiated university metaphysics as inimical to the intellectual formation of those administering desacralized territorial states. The book argues that the marginalization of civil philosophy in post-Kantian philosophical history may itself be seen as a continuation of the struggle between the rival enlightenments. Combining careful and well-documented scholarship with vivid polemic, Hunter presents penetrating insights for philosophers and historians alike. (shrink)

Within the limited, but growing, literature on small business ethics almost no attention has been paid to the issue of social responsibility within ethnic minority businesses. Using a social capital perspective, this paper reports on an exploratory and qualitative investigation into the attitudinal and behavioural manifestations of CSR within small and medium-sized Asian owned or managed firms in the U.K., with particular reference to the distinctive factors motivating organisational responses. It offers alternative explanations of entrepreneurial behaviour and suggests areas for (...) further research. (shrink)

As a young bachelor of theology William of Ockham found himself under attack for—among other things—views he had expressed regarding the Aristotelian accident of quantity and the related question of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist. This essay focuses on Ockham’s conception of academic freedom as it was articulated in defense of his own position. Against fellow schoolmen who mistake their own magisterial opinions for settled Catholic dogma, Ockham insists on the latitude that is afforded scholars in matters that have not (...) yet been definitively determined by the Roman Church. Hence when it comes to the precise alignment of the eucharistic accidents, until such time as the Roman Pontiff hands down an official determination, Ockham contends that he is under no obligation to yield to the pressures of envious academics. The younger Ockham, who pointedly refrains from accusing his opponents of heresy, simply asks that they would exhibit the same restraint. (shrink)

A study of the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and of its relevance for contemporary sociology.

How is a person's freedom related to his or her preferences? Liberal theorists of negative freedom have generally taken the view that the desire of a person to do or not do something is irrelevant to the question of whether he is free to do it. Supporters of the “pure negative” conception of freedom have advocated this view in its starkest form: they maintain that a person is unfree to Φ if and only if he is prevented from Φ-ing by (...) the conduct or dispositions of some other person. This definition of freedom is value-neutral in the sense that no reference is made to preferences over options or indeed to any other indicators of the values of options, either in the characterization of “Φ-ing” itself or in the characterization of the way in which Φ-ing can be constrained. (shrink)

This analysis of Herbert Marcuse’s appropriation of the argument concerning the “mathematization of nature” in Edmund Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology shows that Marcuse and Husserl both assume that the perception of real, concrete individuals in the lifeworld underlies formal scientific abstractions and that the critique of the latter requires a return to such qualitative perception. In contrast, I argue that no such return is possible and that real, concrete individuals are constituted by the relation between (...) a given perception and its horizon. In this manner, Marcuse’s social critique can be combined with Husserl’s theoretical-perceptual one, making possible an ecological critique. L’analyse de l’appropriation que fait Herbert Marcuse de l’argument concernant la « mathématisation de la nature » dans la Crise des sciences europe ennes et la phénoménologie transcendantale de Husserl démontre que Marcuse et Husserl assument tous les deux que la perception des individus réels concrets dans le monde de la vie sous-tend les abstractions scientifiques formelles et que la critique de ces dernières nécessite un retour à la perception qualificative. J’avance au contraire qu’un tel retour n’est pas possible et que les individus réels concrets sont constitués par la relation entre une perception donnée et son horizon. Nous pouvons alors combiner la critique sociale de Marcuse avec la critique théorico-perceptuelle de Husserl pour en faire une critique égologique. (shrink)

Cora Diamond’s discussions of the ethics of our treatment of animals offer a critique of conceptions of morality which regard our ethical responses as founded on reasons which ought to be reasons for anyone. Diamond takes issue with accounts of our treatment of animals based on their possession of capacities which are shared with us. She offers instead a concept of the moral life, as a form of life—inherited, shared and negotiated—only within which can moral reasons count as reasons at (...) all. Our fellow creatures have some share in this life, but one that must be recognized as partial and problematic.In this discussion, we offer an account which is consistent with Diamond’s general perspective. But one which also offers a more generous account of ways in which the discoveries of the ethological sciences dynamically reshape the place of animals in our shared moral life. (shrink)

Michael Oakeshott is widely recognised to be one of the most original political philosophers of the twentieth century. He also developed a very influential interpretation of the ideas of the great seventeenth century philosopher Thomas Hobbes. While many commentators have noted the importance of Hobbes for understanding Oakeshott’s thought itself, this is the first book to provide a systematic interpretation of Oakeshott’s philosophy by paying close attention to all facets of Oakeshott’s reading of Hobbes. On the surface, Oakeshott, the philosophical (...) idealist and critic of rationalism in politics, would seem to have little in common with Hobbes, who is often regarded as a classic materialist and rationalist philosopher. This work shows, however, that despite appearances, there are many basic affinities between the two thinkers and that Oakeshott brought to the surface aspects of Hobbes’s thought that had previously been overlooked by Hobbes scholars. The development of Oakeshott’s own theory is shown to mirror changes in his reading of Hobbes and many of the distinctive features of Oakeshott’s thought including the modal and sceptical conception of human knowledge, the ‘morality of individuality’, the theory of civil association, and the critique of rationalism all find a fascinating focal point in his writings on Hobbes. Some attention is also paid to Oakeshott’s religious ideas, indicating what they share with Hobbes’s philosophy of religion. The book situates Oakeshott’s reading in relation to some other important twentieth century interpretations of Hobbes and examines its significance for broader debates in political theory and the history of ideas. (shrink)

This book takes Edmund Husserl's phenomenology and applies it to help psychotherapy practitioners formulate complex psychological problems. The reader will learn about Husserl's system of understanding and its concepts that point to first-person lived experience, and about the work of Husserl scholars who have developed a way to be precise about the experiences that clients have. Through exploring the connection between academic philosophy of consciousness and mental health, themes of biopsychosocial treatment planning, psychopathology of personality and psychological disorders, and the (...) treatment of complex psychological problems become clear. The author shows that Husserlian phenomenology can be used in the design of interventions for clients in a process called formulation. Once the intentionality of consciousness is understood, by asking simple questions, it becomes possible to define problematic experiences. This is a means of creating informed consent for treatment and it makes it clear to clients what is happening for them, so helping them understand themselves and how they see the world. We also see how Husserl's phenomenology is a vehicle for psychotherapists to present their knowledge about the research literature of what has been found to be effective care. This volume applies the concepts and practices of phenomenology in a concrete way, relating them to the practice of therapy and showing the value of a qualitative approach to understanding mental processes and the nature of human beings as motivated by values, meanings and other conscious experiences. This is a readable text in simple language that condenses key aspects of Husserl's thinking in relation to the theory and practice of psychotherapy, and it is suitable for philosophers and practitioners of psychology, psychiatry, and the psychotherapies, including psychoanalysis. (shrink)