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Nations and Nationalism
Originally published as hbk.: Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., Ã2006.
Nationalism
A provocative essay on a subject that, since the collapse of the Soviet empire, has become once again, a central subject of contemporary politics. Lucid, witty and brilliant, Gellner's essay combines the perspectives of politics, history, philosophy and anthropology with the multidisciplinary flair for which he is renowned
Encounters With Nationalism
The forecast demise of nationalism under the new moral orders of communism and internationalism has proved illusory. In the present century, to an extent greater perhaps than in all others, nationalism has been the dominant force in the affairs of humankind. Why should this have been? Why is it that a national identity should continue to be the aspiration of almost all peoples without one and, at the same time, the justification - in the process of obtaining, securing and expanding it- for casting aside every trace and tradition of civility? In Encounters with Nationalism Ernest Gellner seeks some answers. His approach is to consider first the ideas of the main modern thinkers on the subject...
An Analysis of Ernest Gellner's Nations and Nationalism
Ernest Gellner — a Jew who escaped from Czechoslovakia in 1939 after Hitler invaded — knew first-hand the catastrophic effects of excessive nationalism, and he was determined to understand the phenomenon that had shaped so much of 20th century history.
Anthropology and Politics
Ernest Gellner explores here the links between anthropology and politics, and shows just how central these are. The recent postmodernist turn in anthropology has been linked to the expiation of colonial guilt. Traditional, functionalist anthropology is characteristically regarded as an accessory to the crime, and anyone critical of the relativistic claims of interpretative anthropology (as Ernest Gellner is) is likely to be charged (as he sometimes is) with being an ex post imperialist. Ernest Gellner argues that cultures are crucially important in human life as constraining systems of meaning. Cultural transition means that the required characteristics are transmitted from generation to gen...
Postmodernism, Reason and Religion
First Published in 1992. On questions of faith, Ernest Gellner believes, three ideological options are available to us today. One is the return to a genuine and firm faith in a religious tradition. The other is a form of relativism which abandons the notion of unique truth altogether and resigns itself to treating truth as relative to the society or culture in question. The third, which Gellner calls enlightenment rationalism, upholds the idea that there is a unique truth, but denies that any society can ever possess it definitively. Learned and stimulating, Professor Gellner’s book is an important contribution to our understanding of postmodernism and the relations between Islam and the West. It will be of great interest to anyone concerned with the ideological condition of contemporary society.
Words and Things
First published in 1959, this classic challenge to the prevailing philosophical orthodoxy of the day, remains the most devastating attack on a conventional wisdom in philosophy to this day.
Language and Solitude
Ernest Gellner's final book, first published in 1998, is a synoptic interpretation of the thought of Wittgenstein and Malinowski.
Ernest Gellner, Selected Philosophical Themes
Ernest Gellner made major contributions in very diverse fields, notably philosophy and social anthropology. This set reprints a collection of three of his classic works.
