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"This book explores the extent to which theological discourse has been, and continues to be, relevant in shaping the meanings, symbols and realities of certain instituted political practices. This relevance has historically manifested itself in the hybridisation of theological and political concepts, images, gestures, and rituals. Combining theological and political concepts, Herrero shows that some divine traces could be embedded in institutionalised political practices. She argues that these theopolitical figures - scripture, prophecy, oath, charisma and hospitality - should be read negatively as other names of God, in the sense of a negative theology, in the post-secular world. By analysing the symbolic meaning of these figures, Theopolitical Figures sheds new light on crucial questions for contemporary societies, such as the unconditional character of justice, the unfeasibility of historical expectation, the stability of the word, the idea of power as a gift, and openness to otherness as an ethical-political imperative.
Resorting to natural law is one way of conveying the philosophical conviction that moral norms are not merely conventional rules. Accordingly, the notion of natural law has a clear metaphysical dimension, since it involves the recognition that human beings do not conceive themselves as sheer products of society and history. And yet, if natural law is to be considered the fundamental law of practical reason, it must show also some intrinsic relationship to history and positive law. The essays in this book examine this tension between the metaphysical and the practical and how the philosophical elaboration of natural law presents this notion as a "limiting-concept", between metaphysics and eth...
Uses both political and democratic studies perspectives as well as economic, philosophical and managerial to provide a practical insight into the issues like the extensive economic power of large enterprises and changing balance of power between public and private sector, regulation and the governance of large private entities.
The book provides an original and captivating perspective on international law and Giorgio Agamben's work. The manuscript is profoundly aesthetic-textual in its approach, as exemplified in its deft and insightful close readings of drama (Goethe's Faust), prose fiction (Melville's Bartleby and Benito Cereno) and lyric, be it devotional (Laudes Regiae, Handel, 'The Lord is a Man of War') or otherwise (Edwin Starr's 'War', Boy George's 'War Song'). Attentive to language, plot, theme and characterisation, these readings not only read the texts in question, but they also read them anew, yielding fresh, innovative, and unique cultural legal interpretations.
This book joins the contemporary recovery of Kant’s empirical works to highlight the relevance of his concept of culture for understanding the sources of various characteristic modern dilemmas, such as the tension between culture and happiness, the morally ambivalent nature of cultural progress, or the existing conflicts between a factual plurality of cultures and the historical forces pressing toward a universal civilization. The book will be of special interest for Kantian scholars, moral and political philosophers, as well as philosophers of culture.
Respect for and promotion of human rights have come to be seen as the basis of legitimacy of modern Western civilization. There is nevertheless a striking contrast between our common view on the importance of rights and our profound disagreement on their meaning and content. This disagreement has become increasingly sharp in the last decades, due to the emergence of controversial “new rights”. This book offers an in-depth account of the most important moral debates, exploring the ethical and political foundations underlying the different understandings of rights. In the first part, the author focuses on the role played by the ideas of “good” and “reason” in the Thomistic-Aristotelian and Kantian traditions; and he compares those concepts with the main currents of contemporary liberalism, which, among other things, focus on our emancipation from the limits of nature. The book attempts to show the dehumanizing effects of denying the relevance of integral human good in defining the scope of human rights and liberties, and offers an alternative way forward for our understanding of human rights in a pluralistic society.
This volume takes a fresh and innovative approach to the history of ideas of work, concerning perceptions, attitudes, cultures and representations of work throughout Antiquity and the medieval and early modern periods. Focusing on developments in Europe, the contributors approach the subject from a variety of angles, considering aspects of work as described in literature, visual culture, and as perceived in economic theory. As well as external views of workers the volume also looks at the meaning of work for the self-perception of various social groups, including labourers, artisans, merchants, and noblemen, and the effects of this on their self-esteem and social identity. Taking a broad chronological approach to the subject provides readers with a cutting-edge overview of research into the varying attitudes to work and its place in pre-industrial society.
This comprehensive research companion examines the theory, practice and historical development of the principle of federalism from the ancient period to the contemporary world. It provides a range of interpretations and integrates theoretical and practical aspects of federalism studies more fully than is usually the case. The volume identifies and examines nascent conceptions of the federal idea in ancient and medieval history and political thought before considering the roots of modern federalism in the ideas of a number of important European political theorists of the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. The contributors focus on the development and institutionalization of the principle...
How did early modern philosophy of space shape the modern concept of political universalism? In this book, Pablo Bustinduy persuasively argues that political universalism emerged from both the developments of Newtonian science and the formulation of the modern philosophy of the State. In the metaphysics of an open, empty, abstract and absolute space, Bustinduy suggests, the universalist project of modern politics found its logical model and foundation. There, the anxiety of a dislocated world was overcome, and the ontology of modern physics found a specific political expression that, despite being besieged by multiple crises, still animates our political imagination. By offering a political ...
Authoring the Past surveys medieval Catalan historiography, shedding light on the emergence and evolution of historical writing and autobiography in the Middle Ages, on questions of authority and authorship, and on the links between history and politics during the period. Jaume Aurell examines texts from the late twelfth to the late fourteenth century—including the Latin Gesta comitum Barcinonensium and four texts in medieval Catalan: James I’s Llibre dels fets, the Crònica of Bernat Desclot, the Crònica of Ramon Muntaner, and the Crònica of Peter the Ceremonious—and outlines the different motivations for the writing of each. For Aurell, these chronicles are not mere archaeological ...