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Science Fiction and Political Philosophy
Sometimes called the “literature of ideas,” science fiction is a natural medium for normative political philosophy. Science fiction’s focus on technology, space and time travel, non-human lifeforms, and parallel universes cannot help but invoke the perennial questions of political life, including the nature of a just social order and who should rule; freedom, free will, and autonomy; and the advantages and disadvantages of progress. Rather than offering a reading of a work inspired by a particular thinker or tradition, each chapter presents a careful reading of a classic or contemporary work in the genre (a novel, short story, film, or television series) to illustrate and explore the themes and concepts of political philosophy.
Between Science and Society
In Between Science and Society: Charting the Space of Science Fiction, Douglas A. Van Belle uses interviews with 24 science fiction authors to analyze the conceptual space that science fiction occupies between science and society. Using these interviews, Van Belle studies the similarities and differences between the academic and professional understandings of the genre. Between Science and Society arguesthat, for authors, all of the aspects of the genre that are emphasized by academics, such as science communication and depictions of scientists, are secondary to the artistic effort to entertain through storytelling. Through his interviews, Van Belle explores both the genre’s place in relation to science and society and key elements to surviving as a professional science fiction author. Van Belle creates a definition of science fiction based on the creative ideals expressed by these authors and compared to those that arise from the academic perspective, showing that academics are struggling to engage one of the two central ideals of the genre.
Philosophical Perspective on Cinema
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.
Politics, Literature, and Film in Conversation
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 Unknown Satanic Verses Controversy on Race and Religion
The worldwide controversy surrounding its first publication in 1988 and concurrent death threat against its author, Salman Rushdie, paradoxically led to a narrow understanding of The Satanic Verses, which focused on whether it is insulting to Islam and whether it should be banned. And despite piecemeal attention to its epistemic intricacies by students of postcolonial literature in the aftermath, The Satanic Verses’ essential opacity has never been sufficiently met. The Unknown Satanic Verses Controversy on Race and Religion now responds to this gap through painstakingly detailed attention to the totality of Rushdie’s text. Indeed it uniquely approaches The Satanic Verses’ attempt to m...
Why Moralize upon It?
Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously declared that “the greatest duty of a statesman is to educate." The central claim of Why Moralize upon It? is that it is not only statesmen who can help educate a democratic citizenry, but also novelists and filmmakers. This book’s title is drawn from Melville’s “Benito Cereno.” Near the end of this novella, after he has put down a rebellion of enslaved Africans, the American captain Amasa Delano claims that “the past is passed,” and thus there is no need to “moralize upon it.”Melville suggests, though, that it is crucial for Americans to critically examine American history and American political institutions; otherwise, they may be blind ...
Out of a Gray Fog
“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.
Theology and Geometry
This collection, the first of its kind, brings together specially commissioned academic essays to mark fifty years since the death of John Kennedy Toole.
Short Stories and Political Philosophy
Short Stories and Political Philosophy: Power, Prose, and Persuasion explores the relationship between fictional short stories and the classic works of political philosophy. This edited volume addresses the innovative ways that short stories grapple with the same complex political and moral questions, concerns, and problems studied in the fields of political philosophy and ethics. The volume is designed to highlight the ways in which short stories may be used as an access point for the challenging works of political philosophy encountered in higher education. Each chapter analyzes a single story through the lens of thinkers ranging from Plato and Aristotle to Max Weber and Hannah Arendt. The contributors to this volume do not adhere to a single theme or intellectual tradition. Rather, this volume is a celebration of the intellectual and literary diversity available to students and teachers of political philosophy. It is a resource for scholars as well as educators who seek to incorporate short stories into their teaching practice.
Aristotle's Art of Rhetoric
A “singularly accurate, readable, and elegant translation [of] this much-neglected foundational text of political philosophy” (Peter Ahrensdorf, Davidson College). For more than two thousand years, Aristotle’s“Art of Rhetoric” has shaped thought on the theory and practice of persuasive speech. In three sections, Aristotle defines three kinds of rhetoric (deliberative, judicial, and epideictic); discusses three rhetorical modes of persuasion; and describes the diction, style, and necessary parts of a successful speech. Throughout, Aristotle defends rhetoric as an art and a crucial tool for deliberative politics while also recognizing its capacity to be misused by unscrupulous politi...
