In this powerful and thought-provoking book, Sundeep Waslekar examines the history and politics of war and offers solutions for achieving world peace by ending the arms race. The invention of dangerous weapons, such as hypersonic missiles, killer robots and deadly pathogens, along with the rise of nationalism and intolerance, has made the human civilization more vulnerable today it has ever been before. It might endure terrorist attacks, climate change and pandemics, but humankind cannot survive a global war involving (...) nuclear weapons. Most people live in denial of such an existential risk because they feel it is not imminent. For them, this book serves as a wake-up call. In A world without war, Waslekar moves from examining the roots of war to suggesting a global social contract for lasting peace. Drawing from his comprehensive research in politics, technology, phylosophy and history, he talks about the origins of war and weaponry, the dangers inherent in the introduction of new weapons and the chilling links between nationalism and war. He argues that war is a matter of choice and that peace is essential for human beings to realize their true potential"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

En el marco del debate humanista del siglo XX, el pensamiento político de Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) se constituye como una de las voces críticas y testimoniales que buscaron reflexionar sobre lo acontecido en la Segunda Guerra Mundial. A partir de su propia experiencia como judía en la Alemania de las primeras décadas de su siglo y como intelectual exiliada, concentró sus esfuerzos en comprender el significado filosófico y político de lo ocurrido. Sin pretender afirmar o definir la naturaleza humana sin (...) más, de forma deshistorizada y significada desde una filosofía omnisciente de la historia, orientó su responsabilidad a soportar la carga del siglo, enfrentar los hechos y habilitar otros vínculos con el pasado, con la herencia, con las tradiciones, con lo aún no del futuro y los múltiples modos de proyectarlo en espacios políticos (nacionales e internacionales) cruzados por conflictos y contradicciones. En la lucha entre la omnipotencia y la impotencia humanas como experiencias vitales, la acción aparece como constitutiva de la condición humana y se inscribe en el tiempo como iniciativa, como posibilidad de un futuro diferente. El trabajo explora dimensiones éticas, políticas e históricas de un humanismo que pretende dialogar con su presente. In the debate of the twentieth century humanist, the political thought of Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was established as one of the critics and testimony that sought to reflect on what happened in the Second World War. From his own experience as a Jew in Germany in the early decades of the century and as an intellectual in exile, she concentrated his efforts on understanding the philosophical and political significance of what happened. Without attempting to confirm and to define the human nature without so dehistoricized and meaning from an omniscient philosophy of history, turned her responsibility to bear the burden of the century, face the facts and enable other links with the past, the inheritance, traditions, yet with the future and project it into multiple modes of political space (national and international) crossed by conflicts and contradictions. In the struggle between the omnipotence and the human powerlessness and life experiences, the action appears to constitute the human condition and fits the time and initiative, as the possibility of a different future. The paper explores ethical, political and historical humanism that seeks dialogue with its present. (shrink)

A testament to the richness of Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War is that it has been studied for centuries with great profit by scholars of various stripes. Since the nineteenth century students of historiography have found in his narrative and methodological statements the principles by which Greeks of the fifth century BCE collected, recorded, and arranged material for their accounts of the ancient world. During the twentieth century international relations scholars, focusing on some of the more famous speeches (...) of the work's Athenians and the unsentimental tone of the author's narrative, saw in Thucydides an early advocate of realpolitik. And Thucydides's detailed accounts of political and diplomatic... (shrink)

9/11 represents less a tear in the fabric of history, or a break with the past, than an inflection in ongoing historical processes, such as the continued expansion of capitalism that at some recent time has supposedly attained a level of globalization. This paper considers the relation of war and politics with respect to three instances arising in the wake of 9/11, including the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, and finally the global war on terror. I (...) argue that these wars are superficially dissimilar, but that on a deeper level they all relate to a single ideological position that is an important motivation in current US foreign policy, and that this position is further related to capitalism. (shrink)

El presente trabajo se propone reflexionar sobre la relación entre guerra y política. El punto de partida de son algunas indicaciones realizadas por Juan Carlos Marín acerca de la necesidad de producir una crítica del fetichismo de las armas presente en las concepciones militaristas del estatuto de la guerra en el marco del capitalismo que sea paralela a la crítica del fetichismo de la mercancía en Marx. Para pensar este paralelismo se toman los conceptos de “estado-nación” y “ciudadano” como las (...) claves de la construcción de la fuerza armada de la burguesía. La “ciudadanización” como proceso de disciplinamiento de los cuerpos fundamental del capitalismo es explorada a partir de dos autores. Por un lado, se retoma a Louis Althusser, quien afirma que en la lucha de clases lo que se enfrentan no son solo dos clases, sino también dos formas de lucha. Por otra parte, se explora esta tesis a partir de los análisis que Dardo Scavino hace del dispositivo sarmientino de la oposición entre "Civilización y Barbarie" como modelo de constitución de la lucha de clases burguesa y proceso de ciudadanización en la Argentina. Por último, en las conclusiones se exploran los límites de la noción de "ciudadano" en el marco de las políticas neoliberales impuestas por las dictaduras latinoamericanas y el dominio del capital financiero en el ultra-imperialismo. (shrink)

In politics, utopians do not have a monopoly on imagination. Even the most conservative defenses of the status quo, Raymond Geuss argues, require imaginative acts of some kind. In this collection of recent essays, including his most overtly political writing yet, Geuss explores the role of imagination in politics, particularly how imaginative constructs interact with political reality. He uses decisions about the war in Iraq to explore the peculiar ways in which politicians can be deluded and citizens can (...) misunderstand their leaders. He also examines critically what he sees as one of the most serious delusions of western political thinking--the idea that a human society is always best conceived as a closed system obeying fixed rules. And, in essays on Don Quixote, museums, Celan's poetry, Heidegger's brother Fritz, Richard Rorty, and bourgeois philosophy, Geuss reflects on how cultural artifacts can lead us to embrace or reject conventional assumptions about the world. While paying particular attention to the relative political roles played by rule-following, utilitarian calculations of interest, and aspirations to lead a collective life of a certain kind, Geuss discusses a wide range of related issues, including the distance critics need from their political systems, the extent to which history can enlighten politics, and the possibility of utopian thinking in a world in which action retains its urgency. (shrink)

An exploration of Immanuel Kant's account of war and the controversies that have arisen from its interpretation. This book brings the ideas of Kant's critical philosophy to bear on one of the leading political and legal questions of our age: under what circumstances, if any, is recourse to war legally and morally justifiable?

This book presents a survey of approaches to dealing with 'rival histories' in the classroom, arguing that approaching this problem requires great sensitivity to differing national, educational and narrative contexts. Contested narratives and disputed histories have long been an important issue in history-teaching all over the world, and have even been described as the 'history' or 'culture' wars. In this book, authors from across the globe ponder the question "what can teachers do (and what are they doing) to (...) address conflicting narratives of the same past?", and puts an epistemological issue at the heart of the discussion: what does it mean for the epistemology of history, if it is possible to teach more than one narrative? Divided into three sections that deal with historical cultures, multicultural societies and multiperspectivity, the chapters of the book showcase that dealing with rival histories is very much dependent on context, and that diverse teaching traditions and societal debates mean that teachers' abilities in engaging with the teaching of rival narratives are very different. The volume will be compelling reading for students and researchers in the fields of education, history, sociology and philosophy, as well as practising teachers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Ramsey: Idealist and Pragmatic Christians on Politics, Philosophy, Religion, and WarBradley BurroughsReinhold Niebuhr and Paul Ramsey: Idealist and Pragmatic Christians on Politics, Philosophy, Religion, and War Kevin Carnahan Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2010. 302 pp. $75.00.In a time when the “war on terror” and the polarization of American political culture have raised acute questions about politics, war, and the use of (...) power, Kevin Carnahan believes ethicists could benefit from the legacies of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Ramsey. During a similarly vexed period, Niebuhr and Ramsey found themselves at odds over the morality of the Vietnam War. Carnahan’s project seeks to elucidate the underlying sources of this disagreement, examining in turn how each thinker construes the task of moral theology, the nature of political society, and the moral status of war. Throughout these treatments, Carnahan illustrates how Niebuhr and Ramsey elaborated “overlapping but divergent” positions profoundly influenced by their respective encounters with pragmatism and idealism.Even as he shows how Niebuhr modified the pragmatist inheritance and Ramsey the idealist, Carnahan highlights how both were shaped especially by the way in which these traditions sought to counter specific moral dangers. For pragmatists, the key danger lay in the kind of moral fanaticism that blithely assumes its own righteousness. Sensitized to this threat, Niebuhr articulated a moral theology centered upon an understanding of love as an ideal that is always relevant yet never fully realizable in history, a construal that subverts all pretensions to righteousness. Idealism, on the other hand, sets itself against the danger of atomistic individualism, which Ramsey opposed by depicting social institutions in their essential forms as “‘garments of skin’... with which God... clothed naked human relations” (129) and by characterizing love as fundamentally a matter of upholding the covenants implied in such institutions. Ultimately, Niebuhr’s opposition to fanaticism predisposed him to focus upon the idolatries at play in political society and war and allowed him rather early on to descry the pretentiousness of the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, Ramsey’s thought included a presumption in favor of supporting the policies developed by social and political leaders that led him to defend American intervention in Vietnam until sometime around 1973. [End Page 218]The book’s expository work is generally surefooted and illuminative, although it at times falls into redundancy, baldly reiterating its thesis. Nonetheless, it complements existing scholarship on Niebuhr and Ramsey with an investigation of the philosophical premises of their ethical thought that each was eager to conceal. Such work will benefit scholars of Niebuhr and Ramsey as well as advanced students seeking to grasp the general architecture of their thought. Moreover, many will find Carnahan’s interpretations of Niebuhr and Ramsey impressive. For example, Carnahan portrays Niebuhr as a more Barthian and ecclessially minded thinker than most accounts. Although Carnahan understandably does not treat such indictments in detail, his rendering undercuts charges leveled by many of Niebuhr’s critics, including Bennett, Yoder, and Hauerwas. Unfortunately, though, Carnahan’s arguments on some of these disputed points are predicated upon a relatively narrow selection of essays. Still, the book unsettles assumptions and suggests further possibilities for inquiry.In addition to his expository work, Carnahan also makes a further contribution as he subjects both Niebuhr and Ramsey to constructive criticism that exposes—and identifies ways of reinforcing—some of the weaknesses of pragmatism and idealism. Eschewing a synthesis, Carnahan instead offers a mutually constructive dialogue capable of helping thinkers of both stripes think through the issues that confront contemporary America. Even if he does not elaborate on a more precise application of his insights to contemporary politics, he offers advice helpful to pragmatists and idealists alike and leaves many of us hoping that he has more to say on such matters. [End Page 219]Bradley BurroughsEmory UniversityCopyright © 2012 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

9/11 represents less a tear in the fabric of history, or a break with the past, than an inflection in ongoing historical processes, such as the continued expansion of capitalism that at some recent time has supposedly attained a level of globalization. This paper considers the relation of war and politics with respect to three instances arising in the wake of 9/11, including the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, and finally the global war on terror (GWT). (...) I argue that these wars are superficially dissimilar, but that on a deeper level they all relate to a single ideological position that is an important motivation in current US foreign policy, and that this position is further related to capitalism. (shrink)

In medias res: the life of Claude de Seyssel -- The scholar diplomat -- The translator of histories -- Seyssel in Italy : a scholar looks at war -- The scholar and the state -- Seyssel, the church, and the ideal prelate.

This essay begins by considering Samuel Fuller's 1963 film Shock Corridor as a model of schizo-violence – a disorganised violence that eludes the Oedipal, moralising binary of action and reaction, and instead opens up the violent action to multiple becomings outside Oedipal and nationalistic framings. Through the de-Oedipalisation of the violent events punctuating American history, Shock Corridor performs a schizoanalytic model of desire capable of giving free rein to the force of traumatic affections. The latter part of the discussion (...) situates Fuller's film and the contemporary US military machine as diametrically opposed in their approaches to what we might call ‘the affective politics of war’. Several contemporary scenarios revolving around both actual war violence and Kathryn Bigelow's film The Hurt Locker (2008) serve to show how the schizophrenising operations of the brain itself constitute the greatest obstacle in the military's efforts to contain or repress the traumatic affections generated by violence and war. (shrink)

This article considers the state of research on the two-way relationship of causation between politics and war in ancient Athens from the attempted coup of Cylon in 632 BC to the violent overthrow of its democracy by the Macedonians in 322. Also canvassed is how a closer integration of Ancient History and Political Science can enhance the research of each discipline into the important problem of democracy's effect on war- making. Classical Athens is well known for its full (...) development of popular politics and its cultural revolution, which clearly was a dependent variable of the democracy. By contrast, few are aware of its contemporaneous military revolution, which saw the classical Athenians intensify the waging of war and gain an unrivalled record of military success and innovation. Although a prima facie case exists for these military changes being due to popular government, ancient historians have conducted very little research on the impact of democracy on war. In the last decade our discipline has also witnessed the collapse of the longstanding understanding of the affect of military changes on political developments in ancient Greece, which means we can no longer explain why Athenian democracy emerged and was consolidated during the classical period. For the sake of ameliorating this situation the article proposes new directions and a social-science approach for research into the military and non-military causes of Athenian democratisation and the relative effect of Athenian democracy on warfare. At a time when established democracies face complex challenges of foreign policy such research into the case study of ancient Athens is of real contemporary relevancy. (shrink)

This article considers the state of research on the two-way relationship of causation between politics and war in ancient Athens from the attempted coup of Cylon in 632 BC to the violent overthrow of its democracy by theMacedonians in 322. Also canvassed is how a closer integration of Ancient History and Political Science can enhance the research of each discipline into the important problem of democracy’s effect on war-making. Classical Athens is well known for its full development of (...) popular politics and its cultural revolution, which clearly was a dependent variable of the democracy. By contrast, few are aware of its contemporaneous military revolution, which saw the classical Athenians intensify the waging of war and gain an unrivalled record of military success and innovation. Although a prima facie case exists for these military changes being due to popular government, ancient historians have conducted very little research on the impact of democracy on war. In the last decade our discipline has also witnessed the collapse of the longstanding understanding of the affect of military changes on political developments in ancient Greece, which means we can no longer explain why Athenian democracy emerged and was consolidated during the classical period. For the sake of ameliorating this situation the article proposes new directions and a social-science approach for research into the military and non-military causes of Athenian democratisation and the relative effect of Athenian democracy on warfare. At a time when established democracies face complex challenges of foreign policy such research into the case study of ancient Athens is of real contemporary relevancy. (shrink)

In a wonderfully written and engaging text, Christopher Clark has crafted both a specific analysis of German politics and history over three-hundred years and a broad review of the changes in histo...

I begin with a kind of phenomenological reporting of the recent war between Israel and the Hezbollah in Lebanon, in order to explain the meaning of the thesis that "historicity is predication" - meaning by that to clarify the sense in which predication is a kind of political act (for good and sufficient philosophical reasons) and how the "objective" description of an evolving war illuminates such a philosophical reading of history.

Athens at the time of the Peloponnesian war was the arena for a dramatic battle between politics and religion in the hearts and minds of the people. 'Fear and loathing in ancient athens', originally published in German but now available for the first time in an expanded and revised English edition, sheds new light on this dramatic period of history and offers a new approach to the study of Greek religion. The book explores an extraordinary range of events (...) and topics: impiety charges and prosecutions; the horrors of the plague; the mutilation of hermai and the profanation of the mysteries; the controversy created by the adoption of new gods; the impressive architectural structures of the sculptor Phidias; the military conflicts of the Peloponnesian war; and the thoughts of the mysterious philosopher Socrates. 'Fear and Loathing in Ancient Athens' will be an indispensible study for students and scholars studying Athenian religion and politics. (shrink)

A philosophical yet detailed history of the American party battle explaining why partisan debate is so perverse and how it could be made less so. Building upon the heritage of American pragmatism, from Peirce to Rorty and the new pragmatists, as well as the work of historian Charles Beard, the book identifies that battle as a struggle between nation state and market state, with special emphasis on the perversity of Civil War politics.

The existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers is the father of a discourse on the spiritual consequences of the Holocaust. First addressed as the Schuldfrage (the question of guilt) by Jaspers immediately after the Second World War in his famous Heidelberg lecture, it has reappeared in various forms in German life and letters. Post-unification Germany has witnessed the valorization of the German experience of the Second World War. This ongoing re-evaluation has its antecedents in the generational literature of the 1970s and 1980s. (...) Whereas the Vaterliteratur of the 1970s (by authors such as Christoph Meckel, Uwe Timm, and Peter Henisch) was often embedded in a left-wing critique of the establishment, recent contributions to this growing genre (by Marcel Beyer, Stephan Wackwitz, Wibke Bruhns, and Ulla Hahn among others) speak to the issue of collective identity and transgenerational family trauma outside distinct left- and right-wing interpretations of National Socialism. The current writings on the life during the Third Reich (filtered through the experiences of discrete generations) are a confluence of historical writing, memorial literature, biography, and fiction. They are closely related to the discussions that W. G. Sebald initiated in his 1997 lecture series on the silence of German postwar literature with respect to German suffering. The subsequent debate on how to bring closure to this ?German suffering? was intensified by Günter Grass's widening of the concept of German victimization beyond the air war controversy in his book Crabwalk (2002). As Grass distinguishes clearly between the various post-World War II generations (and their different perspectives on historical events), the question becomes whether these recent writings will bring about a final so-called ?zero hour? in German postwar history. (shrink)

The legacy of classical antiquity -- War and peace in the medieval world -- Holy wars, crusades, and religious wars -- Humanism and Neo-Stoicism -- The search for a science of peace.

In this history of the development of ideas of honor in Western philosophy, Peter Olsthoorn examines what honor is, how its meaning has changed, and whether it can still be of use. Political and moral philosophers from Cicero to John Stuart Mill thought that a sense of honor and concern for our reputation could help us to determine the proper thing to do, and just as important, provide us with the much-needed motive to do it. Today, outside of the (...) military and some other pockets of resistance, the notion of honor has become seriously out of date, while the term itself has almost disappeared from our moral language. Most of us think that people ought to do what is right based on a love for justice rather than from a concern with how we are perceived by others. Wide-ranging and accessible, the book explores the role of honor in not only philosophy but also literature and war to make the case that honor can still play an important role in contemporary life. (shrink)

The role of elites vis-à-vis the mass public in the construction and successful functioning of democracy has long been of central interest to political theorists. In _Silence and Democracy_, John Zumbrunnen explores this theme in Thucydides’ famous history of the Peloponnesian War as a way of focusing our thoughts about this relationship in our own modern democracy. In Periclean Athens, according to Thucydides, “what was in name a democracy became in actuality rule by the first man.” This political transformation (...) of Athenian political life raises the question of how to interpret the silence of the demos. Zumbrunnen distinguishes the “silence of contending voices” from the “collective silence of the demos,” and finds the latter the more difficult and intriguing problem. It is in the complex interplay of silence, speech, and action that Zumbrunnen teases out the meaning of democracy for Thucydides in both its domestic and international dimensions and shows how we may benefit from the Thucydidean text in thinking about the ways in which the silence of ordinary citizens can enable the domineering machinations of political elites in America and elsewhere today. (shrink)

In 1946, the British biochemist Joseph Needham returned from a four-year stay in China. Needham scholars have considered this visit as a revelatory period that paved the way for his famous book seriesScience and Civilization in China. Surprisingly, however, Needham's actual time in China has remained largely unstudied over the last seventy years. As director of the Sino-British Scientific Cooperation Office, Needham travelled throughout Free China to promote cooperation between British and Chinese scientists to contain the Japanese invasion during the (...) Second World War. By rediscovering Needham's peregrinations, this paper re-examines the origins of his fascination for China. First, it contests the widely held idea that this Chinese episode is quite separate and different from Needham's first half-life as a leftist scientist. Second, it demonstrates how the political and philosophical commitments he inherited from the social relations of science movement, and his biochemical research, shaped his interest in China's past. Finally, this paper recounts these forgotten years to reveal their implications for his later pursuits as historian of science and as director of the natural-science division of UNESCO. It highlights how, while in China, Needham co-constituted the philosophical tenets of his scientific programme at UNESCO and the conceptual foundations of hisSCC. (shrink)

This book examines how ideas of war and peace have organized frames of reference within the history of political theory. It argues for a political philosophy that takes both conditions seriously and for a style of political theory committed to questioning rather than closure.

Scholars have long noticed in Thucydides' account of the Peloponnesian War a concern with the collective 'character' of cities. Thucydides and his Greeks appear to rely in understanding the course of the war on consistent Athenian and Spartan character traits. Focusing on the protagonist of the History, and drawing in part on an Arendtian notion of identity, I offer a re-conceptualization of Athenian character as characteristic action and as the subject of political rhetoric. This view, I suggest, more fully (...) reveals what Thucydides has to contribute to our understanding of the dynamics and complexities of democratic politics. (shrink)

Though the recent election of American President Barack Obama and his signing of the executive order to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay signals a considerable shift away from the policies of the Bush era, the lessons to be learned from the war on terror will remain relevant and necessary for many years to come. In the aftermath of 9/11, the United States government approved interrogation tactics for enemy combatant detainees that could be defined as torture, which was outlawed in (...) Europe in the eighteenth century as well as prohibited by the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Convention Against Torture. In conjunction with these policies, the Bush administration vocally defended torture as a necessary tool in its war on terror. In _Torture and the War on Terror_,_ _Tzvetan_ _Todorov argues that the use of the terms “war” and “terror” dehumanize the enemy and permit treatment that would otherwise be impermissible. He examines the implications and corrupting impact of the attempt to impose “good” through violence and the attempt to spread democratic values by unethical means. Todorov asks: Can violence overcome violence? Does the need to protect one’s own country justify violating human rights? Invalidating one by one the political and ethical arguments in favor of torture, Todorov likens institutional torture to a cancer that is eroding our society and undermining the very fundamental democratic ideas of justice and right. __ _Torture and the War on Terror _is a significant work in ethics, human rights, and political and social history by one of the world’s leading intellectuals, and its arguments will be influential in shaping our policies to come. (shrink)

Naukovedenie (literarily meaning ‘science studies’), was first institutionalized in the Soviet Union in the twenties, then resurfaced and was widely publicized in the sixties, as a new mode of reflection on science, its history, its intellectual foundations, and its management, after which it dominated Soviet historiography of science until perestroika . Tracing the history of meta-studies of science in the USSR from its early institutionalization in the twenties when various political, theoretical and institutional struggles set the stage for (...) the development of the field, to the sixties when the field resurfaced within the particular political context of the Cold War, and using the history of Moscow Institute for the History of Science and Technology as a case-study, I situate Soviet naukovedenie project within the culture of late-socialism in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, asking what this discourse meant for its creators and practitioners, as well as for the high-ranked Soviet officials who provided the authoritative support for this field. (shrink)

In this major intellectual history, Ira Katznelson examines the works of Hannah Arendt, Robert Dahl, Richard Hofstadter, Harold Lasswell, Charles Lindblom, Karl Polanyi, and David Truman, detailing their engagement with the larger project of reclaiming the West's moral bearing.

The late scholastics, writing in the Baroque and Early Modern periods, discussed a wide variety of moral questions relating to political life in times of both peace and war. Is it ever permissible to bribe voters? Can tax evasion be morally justified? What are the moral duties of artists? Is it acceptable to fight in a war one believes to be unjust? May we surrender innocents to the enemy if it is necessary to save the state? These questions are no (...) less relevant for philosophers and politicians today than they were for late scholastic thinkers. By bringing into play the opinions and arguments of numerous authors, many of them little known or entirely forgotten, this book is the first to provide an in-depth treatment of the dynamic and controversial nature of late scholastic applied moral thinking which demonstrates its richness and diversity. (shrink)

According to philosopher Michel Foucault, the 'history of the present' should constitute the starting point for any enquiry into the past and a critical ontology of ourselves. This book comprises a series of essays all centering on the question of the present, or rather, multiple presents which compose contemporary experience. The collection brings together philosophical readings of Foucault which try to rework his thought in light of our present, together with practical analyses of our own moment which draw on (...) his methodological approaches to questions of power, knowledge and subjectivity. Covering a range of topics including freedom, politics, ethics, security, war, migration, incarceration, the sociology and political economy of new media, Marxism and activism, Foucault and the History of Our Present features essays from Tiziana Terranova, Alberto Toscano, Judith Revel, Sanjay Seth, Saul Newman, Mark Neocleous and William Walters. (shrink)

In the history of religious organizations of Western Ukraine in the 20-30th years of the XX century. The activity of such an early protestant denominational formation as the Ukrainian Evangelical-Reformed Church occupies a prominent position. Among UCRC researchers there are several approaches to the preconditions for the birth of the Ukrainian Calvinistic movement in Western Ukraine. In particular, O. Dombrovsky, studying the historical preconditions for the formation of the UREC in Western Ukraine, expressed the view that the formation of (...) the Calvinist cell should be considered in the broad context of the Ukrainian national revival of the 19th and 20th centuries, a new assessment of the religious factor in public life proposed by the Ukrainian radical activists, and significant socio-political, national-cultural and spiritual shifts caused by the events of the First World War. Other researchers of Ukrainian Calvinism, who based their analysis on the confessional-polemical approach, interpreted Protestantism in Ukraine as a product of Western cultural and religious influences, alien to Ukrainian spirituality and culture. (shrink)

This collection of scholarly essays analyzes the concept of the acceleration of history, or moments in which the rate of change increases and leads to rapid alteration of the status quo. The contributors outline a theoretical framework and examine specific examples of such historical moments"--Provided by publisher.

Introduction: Why so serious? -- The super body-politic: nationally assembling Joss Whedon's exceptional The avengers -- "He was deceived by a lie": tragedy and the dark plague of the politics of fear in George Lucas' Star wars -- Dystopian polyvalence: emancipating the mediated life from The matrix.

Introduction: Why so serious? -- The super body-politic: nationally assembling Joss Whedon's exceptional The avengers -- "He was deceived by a lie": tragedy and the dark plague of the politics of fear in George Lucas' Star wars -- Dystopian polyvalence: emancipating the mediated life from The matrix.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:CHRISTOLOGY IN POLITICAL AND LIBERATION THEOLOGY R. R. RENO Creighton University Omaha, Nebraska Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! He who sat upon it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems ; and he has a name inscribed which no one knows but himself. (...) He is clad in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, followed him on white horses. From his mouth issues a sharp sword with which to smite the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron; he will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name inscribed, King of kings and Lord of lords. Revelation 19:11-16 SHARP IS THE SWORD of The Word of God: so proclaims a growing body of literature in political and liberation theology. Although this literature evidences a deep pluralism when describing wherein the sword is sharp and toward what it is aimed, the unifying claim is that Christianity has decisive political significance. And this significance takes an explicitly theoretical form. Unlike other politically directed theological programs (e.g., Reinhold Niebuhr, Walter Rauschenbush, Paul Lehmann), political and liberation theologies do not restrict the practical to a pre- or post-theoretical moment. The practical questions of liberation and justice are internal to explicitly theological reflection. The manner in which questions of liberation and justice are 291 292 R. R. RENO woven into the fabric of theology is manifold. Juan Luis Segundo, in Liberation of Theology, presents an account of theological method which is necessarily political.1 He attempts to show that, to the degree that it is faithful, theological reflection must be constituted by ideological critique and transformative social commitment. In a similar although more ambiguous way, Matthew Lamb's Solidarity with Victims seeks to build social and political issues into the ground floor of method.2 On a different front, Jiirgen Moltmann's Theology of Hope emphasizes the necessarily political dimension of eschatology.3 Quite far removed from the radicalism of most political and liberation theologies, but equally important and increasingly self-conscious of its theological context, the Roman Catholic human rights tradition can be seen as a political theology which chooses to operate within the context of a strong doctrine of creation.4 1 Juan Luis Segundo, Liberation of Theology. (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1976). 2 Lamb's program is more than a methodological proposal for theology in itself. He promotes an interesting mixture of critical theory and interdisciplinary study as a path for all inquiry. The result is a pastiche of Adorno and Lonergan. Lamb explains his interdiscipinary vision as follows : " Such a noetic praxis of theologizing would develop academically institutionalized ways of promoting an intellectual conversion (metanoia) whereby the suffering witness of the victims of history would challenge the systems and theories constitutive of our world experience " (Victims, p. 17). However, the critical element of this interdisciplinary "noetic praxis" which Lamb draws from Adorno's Negative Dialectics militates against this " institutionalized" use. At the deepest level Adorno questions the very possibility of a noetic practice which mediates the reality of experience, and he certainly rejects any institutional reification of the small insights which we might garner. For Adorno, critical thought cannot mediate the actual suffering of concrete individuals ; rather, its ultimate impotence in the face of such a reality mirrors the suffering of finite beings. Thought bears witness formally not materially. This basic feature of Adorno's thought runs counter to Lonergan's cognitive optimism, making Lamb's program interesting but implausible. Matthew Lamb, Solidarity with Victims (New York: Crossroad, 1982). SJiirgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope. (New York: Harper & Row, 1967). 4 David Hollenbach's Claims in Confiict (New York: Paulist Press, 1979) provides an example of a recent attempt to uncover the theological foundations for a theory of rights. Showing that the language of rights flows from a basic respect... (shrink)

This paper analyses how the Cold War influenced the discourses on basic research and on Science and Technology Policies of some leaders of the Argentine research community. It explores two key intersections to study the Cold War: the first between politics and policies; the second between the global and the regional/national. The basic assumption is that, just as there was no one Cold War, specific regional and national traits lent specific meanings to basic research. In dialogue with the literature (...) on Latin American history of STPs, on Cold War and on the conceptual history of science, the paper identifies three discursive configurations around S&T: the first refers to the semi-peripheral scientific context; the second is associated with the ‘democracy-totalitarianism’ dichotomy, and the third is linked to the ‘development-dependence’ dichotomy. Finally, the paper also traces some connections between these discourses and the institutional models proposed by different key actors of the research community to implement STPs. (shrink)

During two centuries of industrial revolution, history's most powerful ruling class has been produced, equipped, and armed to the teeth --not just with bullets but also with powerful media and an aggressive ideology of domination. Increasingly, the democratic institutions crafted at the dawn of capitalism are being undermined or overrun by corporate and financial overseers. Despite the fact that history gives ample reason to fear the worst for the future, social and political theory can be a form of (...) resistance and hope. The papers in this volume express this hope, exploring progressive and liberatory institutional conceptions; analyzing multiple experiences of alienation and culture; reconceiving gender, sexuality, and desire; and scrutinizing humanitarian intervention for both corrupted elements and future possibilities for the just defense of the defenseless. These papers were selected from among the best of those presented at the RPA's 4th biennial conference, held in November 2000 at Loyola University - Chicago. (shrink)

This argument aims to provide an overview of the historical context and main factors shaping the relation between left-wing radical politics and emergency powers in interwar Europe. It also brings to the fore how left-wing radical movements fuelled, reacted to and were connected with the multiple crises of the time span between the two world wars. The main argument is that emergency powers had the potential and were turned into a vehicle for an authoritarian drive, as several cases of (...) that time illustrate. The abuse of emergency powers led to a normalisation of political violence and worked as a corrosive force against the liberal order in several European countries during the interwar period. (shrink)

Presenting the first critical analysis of Carl Schmitt's _The Nomos of the Earth_ and how it relates to the epochal changes in the international system that have risen from the collapse of the ‘Westphalian’ international order. There is an emerging recognition in political theory circles that core issues, such as order, social justice, rights, need to be studied in their global context. Schmitt’s international political thought provides a stepping stone in these related paths, offering an alternative history of international (...) relations, of the genesis, achievements and demise of the ‘Westphalian system.’ Writing at a time when he believed that the spatial, political and legal order—the nomos of the earth—had collapsed, he highlighted the advent of the modern state as the vehicle of secularization, tracing how this interstate order was able to limit and ‘rationalize and humanize’ war. Providing a large number of case studies including: global terrorism, humanitarian intervention and US hegemony, this book will give further impetus to, and expand, the nascent debate on the significance of Schmitt’s legal and political thought for international politics. _The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt_ will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, law and history. (shrink)