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This volume presents a series of essays in honor of noted scholar of political theory, Mary P. Nichols. The essays reflect Nichols’ pathbreaking work in ancient Greek political thought, as well as her influential treatments of works of literature and film in conversation with political theory. Part I: Conversations Concerning Love and Friendship features essays about the philosophical meaning of human connection and affection. Part II: Conversations Between Politics and Poetry looks at the political significance of art, and the ways in which political rule can be understood to be “artistic” or poetic. Part III: Conversations from Tragedy to Comedy considers whether the human need for community is something to be lamented or celebrated. Broad in scope and interdisciplinary in approach, the essays in this volume address authors such as Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Mary Wollstonecraft, G.W.F. Hegel, Jane Austen, Henry James, William Faulkner, Albert Camus, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, as well as the films of Woody Allen and Whit Stillman.
The main premise of Philosophical Perspective on Cinema is simple: Can a visual medium such as cinema put in greater perspective diverse aspects of human experience? Films are usually sorted by genres, but by applying metaphysical/existential categories to cinema, the author enables readers to reflect on the nature and essence of existence by making life appear less transparent to itself. Undoubtedly, the connection between sensual reality and philosophical reflection is often glossed over when the emphasis is placed on theoretical abstractions, and not life itself. While this work is a reflection on the philosophy of existence, the author embraces a practical approach to the metaphysical/existential foundation of human existence.
“As to Europe—keep it in a gray, ominous, evil fog.”—Ayn Rand (1905–1982) thus commented on the role of Europe in her key novel, Atlas Shrugged (1957). The same could be said of the way Europe features in her own biography and in the general perception of her persona. Even though Rand was born in pre-revolutionary Russia, she is nowadays considered anAmerican phenomenon, whose reach ends at the Atlantic shore. This book lifts the "gray fog" cast over her relationship with Europe, retracing the changing perception of the continent in both her fiction and thought. Her apparent lack of success with European readers is often explained by allegedly different reading tastes. However, a look at her publication history and reception shows that many factors played a role why her work found fewer European than US readers. Finally, an archipelago of European readers and admirers emerges which is testament to Rand's impact on European art and politics.
'Wall to Wall: Law as Culture in Latin America and Spain' comprises interventions from a wide array of scholars based in the US, Spain, and Latin America, exploring the encounter of Hispanophone cultures and the law. Its contributors delineate a fraught relationship of complicity, negotiation, and outright confrontation covering five centuries and a truly global landscape, from Inquisitorial processes at the onset of the Spanish Empire to last-ditch plans to preserve it in the 19th century Philippines, to the challenges to contemporary articulations of the nation-state in Catalonia. Beyond single, specialized time-period and national cultures, 'Wall to Wall' embraces and showcases the hetero...
The four last plays of Shakespeare’s First Folio—Cymbeline, The Tempest, Henry VIII, and The Winter’s Tale—provide underappreciated resources for political thought and reflection. Political Wisdom in Late Shakespeare: A Way Out of the Wreck examines the ruling communities in each of these plays, exploring what virtues are dramatized as necessary in a courtier’s fulfillment of his or her political obligations. By lending courtly virtues their close attention, Shakespearean audiences can better appreciate how much a given court has been reformed or could be further reformed in the future. Indeed, these four late plays prove remarkably united in their presentation of five virtues—patience, piety, fidelity, clemency, and diligence—which consistently appear desirable for rulers to have and regimes to encourage. Moreover, the visions of tyranny offered in these plays remind readers how much is at stake should these courtly virtues decay or collapse. Their presence or absence signals whether any political community will, to borrow the language of Henry VIII, chart for themselves “a way out of the wreck.”
This book presents the first extended analysis of the friendship network of John Adams, forged during his lengthy public career from 1774-1801. While scholars have considered historic friendships, this monograph examines Adams’s friendship network within a generation of revolutionaries. The six friendships explored exemplify the diversity of political interaction: primary friendship (Abigail), intimate confidence (Rush), political alliance (Gerry), emergent rivalry (Jefferson), the politics of personal difference (Mercy Otis Warren), and idolised revolutionary (Samuel Adams). This work positions friendship at the heart of the historian’s craft; reconstructing historic relationships and c...
When was the last time you participated in an election for an online group chat or sat on a jury for a dispute about a controversial post? Platforms nudge users to tolerate nearly all-powerful admins, moderators, and “benevolent dictators for life.” In Governable Spaces, Nathan Schneider argues that the internet has been plagued by a phenomenon he calls “implicit feudalism”: a bias, both cultural and technical, for building communities as fiefdoms. The consequences have spread far beyond online spaces themselves. Feudal defaults train us to give up on our communities' democratic potential, inclining us to be more tolerant of autocratic tech CEOs and authoritarian politicians. But onl...
For seven seasons, AMC’s Mad Men captivated audiences with the story of Don Draper, an advertising executive whose personal and professional successes and failures took viewers on a roller coaster ride through America’s tumultuous 1960s. More than just a television show about one of advertising’s “bad boys,” the series investigates the principles of the American regime, exploring whether or not the American Dream is a sustainable vision of human flourishing and happiness. This collection of essays investigates the show’s engagement with the philosophic and political foundations of American democracy.
This book examines the basic tenets of nation, nationalism and citizenship. It explores the relevance of the nation-state to human freedom and flourishing, as well as the concept of citizenship that it implies, in contrast to that of the ancient polis and the "global community." The volume focusses on the shifting notions of various political concepts over time to present a systematic understanding of core concepts such as polis, nation and state from antiquity to the present. It includes contributions that analyze ancient and modern thought, and sections that address postmodern and contemporary thinkers, including Aristotle, Cicero, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Tocqueville, Nietzsche, Arendt, Weil, Grant and Manent. A comprehensive handbook to introductory politics, this book will be invaluable to students and teachers of political science, especially political theory, political philosophy, democracy, political participation and international relations theory.
The Matthew's Bible brings together the work of two giants of sixteenth century English Bible translation. William Tyndale and Myles Coverdale shared a vision of making the scriptures available to ordinary believers concerned that their authority might be undermined in a time when kings and clerics alike opposed translating them into English. William Tyndale's New Testament (1526) was the first English translation made from the original language, and it made the most of the emerging English tongue. Knowing neither Hebrew nor Greek, Myles Coverdale consulted Latin, English and German sources to guide his work. The vocabulary of Tyndale, John Wycliff, and other appears in the Coverdale Bible (...