Epicurus, though popularly and indeed nominally associated with a doctrine advocating the procurement of rather expensive pleasure, lived very simply in his garden with a circle of friends. The 14th of his Sovran Maxims or Cardinal Tenets , as collected by Diogenes Laertius, reads: ‘When tolerable security against our fellowmen is attained, then on a basis of power sufficient to afford support and of material prosperity arises in most genuine form the security of a quiet private life withdrawn from the (...) multitude’ R. D. Hicks, the translator, gives, as an alternative to ‘power sufficient to afford support’, ‘power to expel’, but on either reading, we are to think of Epicurus's garden, both the real place and the conceptualized, or tropologized, topos of wisdom and earthly felicity, as enclosed and exclusive. This enclosure, exclusivity, and—what is also implied—abstention of its inmates from participation in the affairs of state are given apophthegmatic expression in ‘Live hidden!’ We contemplate this adage, or slogan, from an enormous cultural distance and, for most of us, ‘Live hidden!’ is much more likely to trigger secondary reflections about the relations between ethics and politics, private and public, perfection of self and improvement of the world, than it is to constitute an actual, or potential, piece of advice we might think about whether , and how , to follow. (shrink)

Throughout his career, Deleuze developed a series of original philosophies of time and applied them successfully to many different fields. Now James Williams presents Deleuze's philosophy of time as the central concept that connects his philosophy as a whole. Through this conceptual approach, the book covers all the main periods of Deleuze's philosophy: the early studies of Hume, Nietzsche, Kant, Bergson and Spinoza, the two great philosophical works, Difference and Repetition and Logic of Sense, the Capitalism and Schizophrenia works (...) with Guattari, and the late influential studies of literature, film and painting.The result is an important reading of Deleuze and the first full interpretation of his philosophy of time. (shrink)

Former Google advertising strategist, now Oxford-trained philosopher James Williams launches a plea to society and to the tech industry to help ensure that the technology we all carry with us every day does not distract us from pursuing our true goals in life. As information becomes ever more plentiful, the resource that is becoming more scarce is our attention. In this 'attention economy', we need to recognise the fundamental impacts of our new information environment on our lives in order (...) to take back control. Drawing on insights ranging from Diogenes to contemporary tech leaders, Williams's thoughtful and impassioned analysis is sure to provoke discussion and debate. Williams is the inaugural winner of the Nine Dots Prize, a new Prize for creative thinking that tackles contemporary social issues. This title is also available as Open Access. (shrink)

This important collection of essays details some of the more significant methodological and philosophical differences that have separated the two traditions, as ...

Jean-Francois Lyotard was one of the most influential European thinkers in recent decades. He was a leading participant in debates about post-modernism and the decline of Marxism, and he made important contributions to ethics, aesthetics and political philosophy. In this authoritative introduction, Williams tracks the development of Lyotard's thought from his early writings on the libidinal economy to his more recent work on the post-modern condition. Williams argues that despite the wide-ranging character of Lyotard's writings, they are animated by a (...) long-standing concern to develop a new theory of political action. Lyotard's productive use of avant-garde art and the aesthetics of the sublime are interpreted within this context. In the final chapters some of the main criticisms that have been levelled at Lyotard's work are outlined and assessed. A challenging but also accessible book, it will be welcomed by students and researchers in continental philosophy, literary theory and the humanities generally. (shrink)

Understanding Poststructuralism presents a lucid guide to some of the most exciting and controversial ideas in contemporary thought. This is the first introduction to poststructuralism through its major theorists - Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, Lyotard, Kristeva - and their central texts. Each chapter takes the reader through a key text, providing detailed summaries of the main points of each and a critical and detailed analysis of their central arguments. Ideas are clearly explained in terms of their value to both critical thinking (...) and to contemporary issues. Criticisms of poststructuralism are also assessed. The aim throughout is to illuminate the main methods of poststructuralism - deconstruction, libidinal economics, genealogy and transcendental empiricism - in context. A balanced and up-to-date assessment of poststructuralism, the book presents the ideal introduction to this most revolutionary of philosophies. (shrink)

This collection of 216 letters offers an accessible, single-volume distillation of the exchange between celebrated brothers William and Henry James. Spanning more than fifty years, their correspondence presents a lively account of the persons, places, and events that affected the Euro-American world from 1861 until the death of William James in August 1910. An engaging introduction by John J. McDermott suggests the significance of the Selected Letters for the study of the entire family.

INTRODUCTION A story has been passed down to us from some two millennia ago of a conversation between a wealthy Athenian estate owner, ...

This book examines how the academic discipline of International Relations has conceptualised the world historical crisis that has shaped world affairs between the end of the First World War and the end of the 1990s. A distinguished group of contributors trace the development of the subject through the main historical periods and in relation to key debates: ethics, power and nationalism; conditions of peace; law and peaceful change; and globalization. It provides the most comprehensive survey of the discipline’s past and (...) the key issues to be faced in the future. (shrink)

'This is an unusually ambitious book... a considerable achievement. It raises important issues, and affords many valuable insights in the course of its historical reflections.' -Maurice Wiles, Journal of Theological Studies 'Every issue and thinker is expounded clearly and concisely, with attention always drawn to strengths as well as weaknesses. To this non-specialist the argument was always accessible and regularly persuasive.' -The Expository TimesCanon and Criterion in Christian Theology provides an original and important narrative on the significance of canon in (...) the Christian tradition. Abraham shows that the move to treat canon as a criterion of truth has had unsuspecting consequences for the history of theology and philosophy, from the Fathers to modern feminist theology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Rethinking Utopia and Utopianism by Lyman Tower SargentWilliam James MetcalfLyman Tower Sargent. Rethinking Utopia and Utopianism. Ralahine Utopian Studies 26. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2022. 412 pp. Softcover, US$61, £53, €40. ISBN 978-1-80079-489-4.In the field of utopian studies, Lyman Tower Sargent is well known and respected globally. His new book, Rethinking Utopia and Utopianism, is well written, witty, and persuasively argued, reflecting on, and updating, his life’s [End (...) Page 137] work. It includes several previously published pieces, such as Sargent’s oft-cited “The Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited” (1994), along with his current thinking across the broad field of utopian studies.Sargent admits to naiveté when, as a young scholar in the 1960s, he set out to write a “history of utopian literature”—probably thinking it wouldn’t take long! This field, he soon found, ever expands the more one looks. Sargent continues to look for, and discover, examples from around the world—many of which he has made available online in Utopian Literature in English: An Annotated Bibliography from 1516 to the Present.1 But now, at eighty-two years of age, he accepts that this project will require “quite a few lifetimes, lifetimes that are not available to me, so I hope that others will take up these topics” (349).Sargent thinks utopianism is best understood as “social dreaming—the dreams and nightmares that concern the ways in which groups of people arrange their lives and which usually involve a radically different society” (7). Utopia, he points out, “expresses deep-seated needs, desires and hopes” (42). This, he asserts, is a universal phenomenon—part of being human—certainly not confined to the Western Christian tradition, as some scholars have argued.We must be careful, Sargent warns, not to equate utopia with perfection; utopias are about betterment, not perfection. He argues that equating utopia with perfection is a ruse employed “by those opposed to the idea that human beings can bring about significant social change and is intended to undermine that possibility” (323). Sargent argues that all humans “need the idea that a better life is possible” (325) and this is what utopianism provides.As someone who has spent much of my professional life studying intentional communities, I have always recognized that almost all such groups have an underlying utopian impulse. So I came to utopianism research as a subset of intentional communities research. Sargent, on the other hand, sees “communitarianism as a sub-category of utopianism” (85). He acknowledges that intentional community members are “trying to find better ways of living together, making decisions about all important aspects of life, whether it is political, economic, religious, or sexual.... They are actually doing with their own lives what literary utopias describe in words” (93). Perhaps our different paths are a bit like asking whether the chicken or egg came first?Sargent quite correctly observes that many intentional community members reject the label of “utopian” because they confuse it with the naïve, and unobtainable notion of perfection—and I have often observed the same. Nevertheless Sargent asserts “that continued utopian thinking is essential to the overcoming of [End Page 138] the dystopian reality of... the last century” (178). This, he argues, is why intentional communities are important test sites for enacting utopian dreams.In discussing dystopia, Sargent points out how utopian aspirations occasionally lead to the creation of dystopias. “The hopes of communism became the dystopia of Stalinism.... The utopian dreams of Pol Pot became the dystopia of Kampuchea” (172). “Utopian visions from Lenin to the Taliban that purported to have the potential of producing an enhanced life have been hijacked and turned into dystopias” (175). While acknowledging that some colonization schemes, particularly for New Zealand and South Australia, had a utopian angle, nevertheless those schemes generally created dystopia for the Indigenous peoples. “The original inhabitants’” idea of the good life “inconveniently did not include having their land stolen, being enslaved, and being slaughtered” (262).That reminds us that utopianism, like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder. Sargent offers a wonderful personal example, “my utopia would include a strong right to die” whenever and however he... (shrink)

What is it to do justice to the absent victims of past injustice, given the distance that separates us from them? Grounded in political theory and guided by the literature on historical justice, W. James Booth restores the dead to their central place at the heart of our understanding of why and how to deal with past injustice. Testimonies and accounts from the race war in the United States, the Holocaust, post-apartheid South Africa, Argentina's Dirty War and the conflict (...) in Northern Ireland help advance and defend Booth's claim that caring for the dead is a central part of addressing past injustice. Memory, Historic Injustice, and Responsibility is an insightful and original book on the relationship of past and present in thinking about what it means to do justice. A valuable addition to the currently available literature on historical justice, the volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of political science, philosophy, history, and law. (shrink)

. . . and I spread it out broader and clearer, and at last it gets almost finished in my head, even when it is a long piece, so that I can see the whole of it at a single glance in my mind, as if it were a beautiful painting of a handsome human being; in which way I do not hear it in my imagination at all as a succession - the way it must come later - but (...) all at once, as it were. (shrink)

This essay shows how real objects must be processes for Gilles Deleuze. These processes are determined by his account of time as a nine-fold manifold of processes deduced from Deleuze’s account of three interconnected syntheses of time in his Difference and Repetition . It will also be argued that Deleuze’s philosophy of time is speculative in a broad sense and that Deleuze’s account of the real is opposed to forms of abstraction which associate objects with conceptual, perceptual or transcendental identity. (...) In order to demonstrate the radical and systematic nature of Deleuze’s account of process, there is a discussion of a basic process underlying his manifold of time. This process is opposed to Markov chains, in order to set up an opposition to interpretations of Deleuze’s philosophy that deny its metaphysical and speculative approach in favour of scientific realism. (shrink)

A Critical Response to William James Booth's article in Economics of Time.

This is the first critical study of The Logic of Sense, Gilles Deleuze's most important work on language and ethics, as well as the main source of his vital philosophy of the event.James Williams explains the originality of Deleuze's work with careful definitions of all his innovative terms and a detailed description of the complex structure he constructs. This reading makes connections to his ground-breaking work on literature, to his critical but also progressive relation to the sciences, and to (...) his controversial denial of the priority of standard logics, human values and 'meaning' in thinking.This book will open new debates and develop current ones around Deleuze's work in philosophy, politics, literature, linguistics, cultural studies and sociology. (shrink)

We call sublime those things and experiences supposed to be the very best. But what if the best actually leads to inequality and exploitation? Williams critiques the sublime over its long history and in recent returns to sublime nature and technologies. Deploying a new critical method that draws on process philosophy, he shows how the sublime has always led to inequality. This holds true even where it underpins ideas of cosmopolitan enlightenment, and even when refined by Burke, Kant, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer (...) and Zizek. Against the unjust legacies of the traditional sublime, James Williams defends a new, anarchist sublime: multiple, self-destructive and temporary; opposed to any idea of highest value to be shared by all but always imposed on the powerless. (shrink)

My friendship with René Girard and Raymund Schwager has been of utmost significance for my life and work; therefore it is an honor to share some of my reflections on their correspondence. I should point out that I know René Girard much better than I knew Raymund Schwager. I first met Girard in 1987, and I have been with him many times in the classroom, in seminars, in his home, and on the telephone. However, I do feel that in 1991 (...) I became a friend of Raymund Schwager quickly in a deep spiritual way. This friendship continued and deepened until his death in 2004, even though I saw him and conversed with him far fewer times than with Girard. I have treasured my friendship with both of them and learned much from .. (shrink)