It is an indispensable secondary source which aims to situate, explain, and provoke thought about the major works of political theory likely to be encountered ...

Edmund Burke's work spans a variety of subjects - from aesthetics through history to constitutional politics and political theory - and has generated an enormous literature drawing on many disciplines, and it continues to feature in a range of contemporary polemics. This volume brings together a representative selection of articles and essays from the last 50 years of this scholarship, and includes an introduction which guides the reader through the selection as well as offering pointers towards more substantial studies that (...) form the critical heritage of this major figure. (shrink)

Hoewel enorm invloedrijk in Duitstalig Europa, heeft de conceptuele geschiedschrijving (Begriffsgeschichte) tot nu toe weinig aandacht in het Engels gekregen. Dit genre van intellectuele geschiedschrijving verschilt van zowel de Franse geschiedschrijving van mentalités als de Engelstalige geschiedschrijving van verhandelingen door het concept. Aan de hand van practische voorbeelden in de geschiedschrijving wordt deze vorm toegelicht door Bram Kempers, Eddy de Jongh en Rolf Reichardt.

This volume brings together a selection of Iain Hampsher-Monk's writings on questions of historicity and rationality in political theory, together with a substantial introduction written for the volume. There are two loci around which the work revolves - one is the relationship between history and philosophy in the analysis of key concepts such as liberty, democracy and toleration, the other is the role of reason in political science's explanations. Despite a background in PPE, the author played a (...) major role in the 'historical', revolution in political theory. Here, his reflections on the historicity of concepts in political science are presented alongside articles dealing with the role and limitations of economic modes of rationality in social and political theorising. Unifying these themes is a commitment to an understanding of human action as conscious and essentially meaning-bearing and the case for a human science rooted in such self-understandings. 'Accessible by specialists and non-specialists alike, Iain Hampsher-Monk's essays illustrate the author's broad intellectual profile, crossing borders between the history of political thought and other forms of political theorising; normative and interpretative forms of political theory; or political theory and political economy. Though he works mainly in the Anglophone tradition, Hampsher-Monk applies himself to continental styles of thinking and writing, such as the history of concepts. Rather than leave the study of political institutions to empiricists, he deals with them as subject of political theorising - a valuable point.' Kari Palonen, University of Jyvaskyla 'Iain Hampsher-Monk is one of our leading historians of political thought. These remarkable essays display his range and erudition, and demonstrate why the study of political thought remains an essential basis for understanding politics.' Andrew Gamble, Queens' College Cambridge". (shrink)

Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France was the first sustained theoretical critique of the French Revolution; and is now recognised as the classic statement of modern conservatism. Reflections surveys the British political culture of traditionalism, gradualism and deference, and contrasts it with the French Revolutionaries' programme of appeal to abstract right, transformational change and popular agency. Ultimately Burke advocated a counterrevolutionary war and the restoration of the French monarchy. This accessible new edition brings together for the first time Burke's (...) first and last published thoughts on the revolution including as it does the first Letter on a Regicide Peace; a work that has contributed to a particular view of international society. Featuring a comprehensive introduction and extensive annotations, Iain Hampsher-Monk's edition helps readers new to Burke to better understand the historical, political and philosophical context behind his writings, and the significance of contemporary and classical allusions. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt's critique of liberalism includes a specific attack on the philosophical coherence of the rule of law as a component of constitutional sovereignty, a view he identifies with the wider liberal tradition. Despite his associations with Nazism it has been taken up recently by post-modern critics of Liberalism. This article analyses Schmitt's claims and then compares them with what representative liberals actually say about the rule of law. The finding is that at least two major thinkers -- Locke and (...) Burke -- show none of the ignorance or naivete with which Schmitt charges the tradition. Concepts such as the exception are recognised and included in their political analyses -- but, unlike Schmitt, not in their prescriptions. (shrink)

Reading Burke’s Vindication of Natural Society as targeting Rousseau insinuates continuity between Burke’s preoccupations in that work and his later opposition to Rousseau as supposedly also based on radical state-of-nature arguments. But neither contextual nor intra-textual evidence supports any Rousseau—Vindication connection, and the putative link implicitly misreads Burke’s preoccupation in the Vindication , the grounds of his critique of Rousseau, and the role Burke ascribes to the latter in the revolution. The real target of the Vindication was Bolingbroke’s application of (...) philosophical rationalism to religion. This kind of argument he only later came to see applied to politics. Burke’s later opposition to Rousseau is based not on the revolutionaries’ (dubious) claim that Rousseau endorsed their radical state-of-nature and natural rights discourse, but on Rousseau’s espousal of a new moral psychology opposed to Christian deontology. This was the ‘revolution in manners’ which made the revolution possible and for which Rousseau provided a philosophical underpinning. (shrink)

Recent interpretation stresses the narrow role of consent in locke: it is a ground, Not of legitimacy but of legitimate revolt. Locke is less precise. In rejecting filmer's claim that birth imposes absolute political obligations locke implicitly denies its determination of the locus as well as the degree of those obligations. Using consent to limit political absolutism, Thus inadvertently raised the question of its direct link with citizenship, Hence locke's confused discussion of tacit and express consent. Locke leaves the issue (...) unresolved, Making the common patriarchal assumption that the location, If not the degree of political obligation, Can be inferred from birth. (shrink)

The Varieties of British Political Thought 1500?1800 edited by J. G. A. Pocock with the assistance of Gordon J. Schochet and Lois G. Schwoerer, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, in association with the Folger Institute, Washington D.C., 1993, pp. 373 + x, ISBN 0 521 443776, £40.00 $59.95.

However little that various disciplines in the humanities and social sciences might seem to have in common, they share certain interests in methodological problems relating to evidence, inference, and interpretation. By pursuing these shared interests across divergent topics and fields, the contributors to this book advance our understanding of how such truth-seeking, proof-finding methods work, and of what it means to prove something in a range of contexts. Coedited by William Twining, one of the world's outstanding evidence scholars, and Lain (...) HempsherMonk, a leading political theorist, the volume considers intriguing questions from different realms--Assyriology, theatre iconography, musicology, criminology, the history of ideas and colonial history--as it reveals how particular concepts, lines of questioning, and techniques of reasoning and analysis developed in one context can be fruitfully applied in others. (shrink)

In this 2001 volume a distinguished international team of contributors characterises the nature of, and developments in, the history of political thought in their respective countries. The essays scrutinise not only the different academic histories and methodological traditions on which the study of the history of political thought has drawn, but also its relationship to cultural and political debates within nations. This collection represents a major contribution to the history of ideas, in which political thought has always been central, whilst (...) reflecting the disciplinary tensions - and national differences - of what remains a 'borderline' subject, located at the intersection of history, politics and philosophy. The different national characteristics taken on by political discourse, and the complex relationship these characteristics have to the aspirations of the discipline itself, are considered in these wide-ranging essays, which cover the history of political thought in the UK, the USA, France, Germany, Italy, Central and Eastern Europe. (shrink)

The History of Political and Social Concepts: A Critical Introduction by Melvin Richter History of Concepts: Comparative Perspectives by Iain Hampsher-Monk; Karin Tilmans; Frank van Vree History and Theory.

The History of Political and Social Concepts: A Critical Introduction by Melvin Richter History of Concepts: Comparative Perspectives by Iain Hampsher-Monk; Karin Tilmans; Frank van Vree History and Theory.

Ludwig Wittgenstein is perhaps the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century, and certainly one of the most original in the entire Western tradition. Given the inaccessibility of his work, it is remarkable that he has inspired poems, paintings, films, musical compositions, titles of books -- and even novels. In his splendid biography, Ray Monk has made this very compelling human being come alive in a way that perfectly explains the fascination he has evoked. Wittgenstein's life was one of great (...) moral and spiritual depth. Although his work addresses problems of logic, language, mind, and knowledge, he often described it as having an ethical point, and once said that he "could not help seeing every problem from a religious point of view." In successfully bridging the gap assumed by many to exist between Wittgenstein's life and his work, Monk's biography helps to explain the interest in Wittgenstein's later philosophy on the part of Buddhist scholars. (shrink)

In what follows I offer some reflections on an ethics of listening, or perhaps more generally a philosophy of listening, that can be discerned in different forms in the experimental music that, since the 1950s, has challenged and radicalised how music is understood. I situate these reflections around three of my own concert experiences as an audience member.

What kind of technology is the piano? It was once a distinctly everyday technology. In the bourgeois home of the nineteenth century it became an emblematic figure of gendered social life, its role shifting between visually pleasing piece of furniture, source of light entertainment, and expression of cultured upbringing. It performed this role unobtrusively, acting as a transparent mediator of social relations. To the composer of concert music it was, and sometimes still is, says Samuel Wilson, like the philosopher’s table: (...) “an assumed background on which one writes.” Like other instruments standard to Western art music, the piano was designed to facilitate the production of a consistent and refined timbre. More than most other such instruments, the piano also facilitated a kind of sonic neutrality. With its wide pitch range and smoothing of the percussive attack of its predecessor instruments, the piano presented composers with a technological means of approaching composition from a seemingly objective vantage point. It exemplified, in Heideggerian terms, the instrumentality of the instrument, serving as a mediator between idea and expression that apparently adds no character of its own. -/- This notion of the invisibility, or transparency, of the mediations that musical technologies such as the piano enact is one of my areas of concern here. So too is its inverse: when these mediations become visible or opaque. Transparency has been a topic of significant recent theoretical attention. Stefanos Geroulanos, for example, has detailed how the supposed transparency of intersubjective, epistemological, and social relations was a major point of critique in postwar French thought, where the supposition of transparency was taken to suppress how the world was “complex, layered, structured, filled with heterogeneity” – and, as I will stress here, contingency. The thinkers Geroulanos considers, from Jean-Paul Sartre through to Jean-François Lyotard, can be said to be united in their refusal to invisibilise mediatedness. From a starting point of conceiving of the piano as a technological artifact, and in particular from John Cage’s ‘prepared piano,’ I will explore how a similar concern has appeared in musical contexts, albeit not without the risk of reversion back into a logic of transparency. (shrink)

Adorno's remarks on the philosophy of history are scattered throughout his works. Perhaps the most important passages are to be found in Negative Dialectics and the 1964–1965 lectures on History and Freedom, as well as in texts such as Dialectic of Enlightenment and the essays on “The Idea of Natural‐History,” “Progress,” and “The Meaning of Working through the Past.” However, these works do not constitute anything like a complete theory. Nevertheless, many themes and references recur in Adorno's writings, allowing for (...) a selectively thematic reconstruction of the most central lines of argument. The present text brings together a few concepts and problems from Adorno's readings of Kant, Hegel, and Marx, mainly, in order to provide the reader with a general picture of what is at issue. (shrink)

Iain Atack identifies the contribution of nonviolence to political theory through connecting central characteristics of nonviolent action to fundamental debates about the role of power and violence in politics. This in turn provides a platform for going beyond historical and strategic accounts of nonviolence to a deeper understanding of its transformative potential. From Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King to toppled communist regimes in Eastern Europe and pro-democracy movements in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine, nonviolent action has played a significant (...) role in achieving social and political change in the last century. The Arab Spring revolutions, particularly those in Tunisia and Egypt, and the Occupy movement in the US and UK demonstrate that nonviolence continues to be a vital feature of many campaigns for democracy, human rights and social justice. (shrink)

Fischer suggests that the endless life of an immortal would be just as desirable as the very long but finite life of a long‐lived mortal. Fischer acknowledges that this is “one of the most difficult and challenging issues surrounding immortality.” This chapter answers the following: Why do we think, conversely, that being able to die makes a crucial difference? Why would an individual existence that could never come to an end necessarily be bad?. An immortal being could conceivably cycle through (...) an endless succession of such selves, each organized into a coherent and meaningful identity by the new life‐project born out of the collapse of the old one. The author argues, however, that the endless life of an immortal would necessarily fail to qualify as life worth living. So, were we ever to face that choice with which we began, we think living with death remains preferable to the alternative. (shrink)

Two important debates have characterized mainstream epistemology in recent years. The first is the debate between foundationalists and anti-foundationalists. The second is the debate over the details of a naturalized epistemology. Both debates have meant that traditional concepts of rationality and justification are now understood in a new light. Both debates have helped focus attention on the future direction of epistemology, its goals and its limitations.

This chapter contains section titled: Some Personal Prefatory Remarks Introduction: Wittgenstein's Chief Contribution? The Reception of Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Mathematics in His Own Lifetime The Post 1956 Reaction.

In Kant and the Role of Pleasure in Moral Action, Iain Morrisson offers a new view on Kant’s theory of moral action.

Preface to paperback edition -- Why Schelling? why naturephilosophy? -- The powers due to becoming: the reemergence of platonic physics in the genetic philosophy -- Antiphysics and neo-Fichteanism -- The natural history of the unthinged -- "What thinks in me is what is outside me". phenomenality, physics and the idea -- Dynamic philosophy, transcendental physics -- Conclusion: transcendental geology.

Nuclear bodies contribute to non‐random organization of the human genome and nuclear function. Using a major prototypical nuclear body, the Cajal body, as an example, we suggest that these structures assemble at specific gene loci located across the genome as a result of high transcriptional activity. Subsequently, target genes are physically clustered in close proximity in Cajal body‐containing cells. However, Cajal bodies are observed in only a limited number of human cell types, including neuronal and cancer cells. Ultimately, Cajal body (...) depletion perturbs splicing kinetics by reducing target small nuclear RNA (snRNA) transcription and limiting the levels of spliceosomal snRNPs, including their modification and turnover following each round of RNA splicing. As such, Cajal bodies are capable of shaping the chromatin interaction landscape and the transcriptome by influencing spliceosome kinetics. Future studies should concentrate on characterizing the direct influence of Cajal bodies upon snRNA gene transcriptional dynamics.Also see the video abstract here. (shrink)

Following on the explorations of culture and politics in his previous collection The Good European, the writings in Zest delve into less obvious but important aspects of social life-- into manual work and 'dolce far niente', into ancient vernacular craft traditions and the data stockpiles of modernity. Early in the book we visit the Garden of Eden with Hieronymus Bosch, where we share with him the first fruit. It takes us by way of writers, artists, philosophers, travellers, photographers, musicians and (...) flavours into the world of Zest-- how we can find it and what its discovery does to us. Bamforth's sensuous, richly nuanced essays affect us as stories do, each one creating a world in which its arguments live and breathe, laugh and explore. His diverse interests, from Bible studies to communication theory, from photography to the impact of globalisation, and his shifts from botanising in the Garden of Eden to 'botanising on the asphalt' (Walter Benjamin) always keep in sight the philosophical issue that provides Zest's subtitle-- 'the art of living'. (shrink)

Heidegger is now widely recognized as one of the most influential and controversial philosophers of the twentieth century, yet much of his later philosophy remains shrouded in confusion and controversy. Restoring Heidegger's understanding of metaphysics as 'ontotheology' to its rightful place at the center of his later thought, this book demonstrates the depth and significance of his controversial critique of technology, his appalling misadventure with Nazism, his prescient critique of the university, and his important philosophical suggestions for the future of (...) higher education. It will be required reading for those seeking to understand the relationship between Heidegger's philosophy and National Socialism, as well as the continuing relevance of his work. (shrink)

The cuticle of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans forms the barrier between the animal and its environment. In addition to being a protective layer, it is an exoskeleton which is important in maintaining and defining the normal shape of the nematode. The cuticle is an extracellular matrix consisting predominantly of small collagen‐like proteins that are extensively crosslinked. Although it also contains other protein and non‐protein compounds that undoubtedly play a significant part in its function, the specific role of collagen in cuticle (...) structure and morphology is considered here. The C. elegans genome contains between 50 and 150 collagen genes, most of which are believed to encode cuticular collagens. Mutations that result in cuticular defects and grossly altered body form have been identified in more than 40 genes. Six of these genes are now known to encode cuticular collagens, a finding that confirms the importance of this group of structural proteins to the formation of the cuticle and the role of the cuticle as an exoskeleton in shaping the worm. It is likely that many more of the genes identified by mutations giving altered body form, will be collagen genes. Mutations in the cuticular collagen genes provide a powerful tool for investigating the mechanisms by which this group of proteins interact to form the nematode cuticle. (shrink)

The problem -- The proof -- The principle -- The programme -- Practical advice -- The prognosis.

Heidegger, Art, and Postmodernity offers a radical new interpretation of Heidegger's later philosophy, developing his argument that art can help lead humanity beyond the nihilistic ontotheology of the modern age. Providing pathbreaking readings of Heidegger's 'The Origin of the Work of Art' and his notoriously difficult Contributions to Philosophy, this book explains precisely what postmodernity meant for Heidegger, the greatest philosophical critic of modernity, and what it could still mean for us today. Exploring these issues, Iain D. Thomson examines (...) several postmodern works of art, including music, literature, painting and even comic books, from a post-Heideggerian perspective. Clearly written and accessible, this book will help readers gain a deeper understanding of Heidegger and his relation to postmodern theory, popular culture and art. (shrink)

This paper investigates the difficulties of creating economic, social, and environmental values when operating as a hybrid venture. Drawing on hybrid organizing and sustainable business model research, it explores the implications of alternative forms of business model experimented with by farmer owned, fairtrade social enterprise Cafédirect. Responding to changes and challenges in the market and societal environment, Cafédirect has tried multiple business model innovations to deliver on all three forms of value capture, with differing levels of success. This longitudinal case (...) study, therefore, provides a contribution to our understanding of how business models enact hybrid mission, providing a platform for triple-bottom-line value capture. In doing so, we are able to expand on the normative understandings of integrating hybrid objectives, and the complications of multiple types of value capture. (shrink)