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Presents a history of violence in Europe and discusses the theory that violence has actually been in decline since the thirteenth century.
This highly original and engaging book by French historian Robert Muchembled, is a journey through time and space in search of the changing perception and significance of the devil in Western culture. An outstanding book about the changing perception and significance of the devil in Western culture. Robert Muchembled is a well-known historian and an expert on witchcraft, whose work has already been translated into many languages. The author highlights the way that the changing notion of evil is connected to other changes in society at large. Draws on a wealth of examples, from the witch-hunts of the 15th and 16th centuries, to the films of Stanley Kubrick.
This wide ranging and challenging book explores the relationship between subjectivity and mortality as it is understood by a number of twentieth-century French philosophers including Sartre, Lacan, Levinas and Derrida. Making intricate and sometimes unexpected connections, Christina Howells draws together the work of prominent thinkers from the fields of phenomenology and existentialism, religious thought, psychoanalysis, and deconstruction, focussing in particular on the relations between body and soul, love and death, desire and passion. From Aristotle through to contemporary analytic philosophy and neuroscience the relationship between mind and body (psyche and soma, consciousness and bra...
Winston Churchill said of democracy that it was ‘the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.’ The same could be said of liberalism. While liberalism displays an unfailing optimism with regard to the capacity of human beings to make themselves ‘masters and possessors of nature’, it displays a profound pessimism when it comes to appreciating their moral capacity to build a decent world for themselves. As Michea shows, the roots of this pessimism lie in the idea – an eminently modern one – that the desire to establish the reign of the Good lies at the origin of all the ills besetting the human race. Liberalism’s critique o...
The issues that increasingly dominate the 21st century cannot be solved by any single country acting alone, no matter how powerful. To manage the global economy, prevent runaway environmental destruction, reign in nuclear proliferation, or confront other global challenges, we must cooperate. But at the same time, our tools for global policymaking - chiefly state-to-state negotiations over treaties and international institutions - have broken down. The result is gridlock, which manifests across areas via a number of common mechanisms. The rise of new powers representing a more diverse array of interests makes agreement more difficult. The problems themselves have also grown harder as global p...
This major new textbook introduces both the concepts and the contexts of the Enlightenment to students of eighteenth-century history.
This cutting-edge text offers an introduction to the emerging field of media archaeology and analyses the innovative theoretical and artistic methodology used to excavate current media through its past. Written with a steampunk attitude, What is Media Archaeology? examines the theoretical challenges of studying digital culture and memory and opens up the sedimented layers of contemporary media culture. The author contextualizes media archaeology in relation to other key media studies debates including software studies, German media theory, imaginary media research, new materialism and digital humanities. What is Media Archaeology? advances an innovative theoretical position while also presenting an engaging and accessible overview for students of media, film and cultural studies. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in the interdisciplinary ties between art, technology and media.
This 2007 volume reveals how a first European identity was forged from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries. Cultural exchange played a central role in the elites' fashioning of self. The cultures they exchanged and often integrated with included palaces, dresses and jewellery but also gestures and dances.
Supported by ten years of research, Wigmore has gathered extensive data covering the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recovery to provide the first comprehensive history of the period. Financial crises cannot occur unless institutional investors finance the bubbles that created them. Wigmore follows the trail of data putting pressure on institutional investors to achieve higher levels of returns that led to over-leverage throughout the financial system and placed such a burden on recovery. Here is a 'very good picture - and painful reminder - of the crisis' evolution across multiple asset classes, structures, participants, and geographies.' This work serves as a critical analysis of modern portfolio management and an important reference work for financial professionals, academics, investors, and students.