Politics Recovered

Politics Recovered PDF

Author: Matt Sleat

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2018-03-13

Total Pages: 423

ISBN-13: 0231547552

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Is political theory political enough? Or does a tendency toward abstraction, idealization, moralism, and utopianism leave contemporary political theory out of touch with real politics as it actually takes place, and hence unable to speak meaningfully to or about our world? Realist political thought, which has enjoyed a significant revival of interest in recent years, seeks to avoid such pitfalls by remaining attentive to the distinctiveness of politics and the ways its realities ought to shape how we think and act in the political realm. Politics Recovered brings together prominent scholars to develop what it might mean to theorize politics “realistically.” Intervening in philosophical debates such as the relationship between politics and morality and the role that facts and emotions should play in the theorization of political values, the volume addresses how a realist approach aids our understanding of pressing issues such as global justice, inequality, poverty, political corruption, the value of democracy, governmental secrecy, and demands for transparency. Contributors open up fruitful dialogues with a variety of other realist approaches, such as feminist theory, democratic theory, and international relations. By exploring the nature and prospects of realist thought, Politics Recovered shows how political theory can affirm reality in order to provide meaningful and compelling answers to the fundamental questions of political life.

Russell, Moore and Wittgenstein

Russell, Moore and Wittgenstein PDF

Author: Herbert Hochberg

Publisher: Ontos Verlag

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 9783826700200

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Hochberg's masterful essays present studies in ontology and analysis that focus on the "revolt against idealism" strongly identified with the brilliant trio of Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore, and Ludwig Wittgenstein in the early part of the twentieth century. The chapters focus upon the development of analytic philosophy and revival of realism. The volume is at once a history of a special period, time, and place in the evolution of the analytic tradition, an examination of influences upon and differences among these three major figures, and a close reading of their primary works. The author takes up the problems posed by reference and predication, truth, facts, causality, dispositions, intentionality, propositions, particulars and universals, the analytic-synthetic distinction, logicism. abstract entities, and materialism. The essays present a systematic analysis of such issues in the context of classical works of these three Cambridge philosophers, who were all critical to the development of modern philosophy. For those who wish to understand the essential contours of the work of these exemplars of the analytic tradition, there can be no more impressive work. Hochberg is more than a commentator; he is a participant in major debates within philosophy. Indeed, his critique of materialism and defense of realism rests on a sophisticated examination of the status of mental states or phenomenal objects in the world, and the inability of all varieties of reductionism to explain the universe. The materialist is in the same situation as the extreme idealists: denial either of mental states or physical states. For Hochberg, the old argument that only physical or mental states are real has littleto do with the phenomena about us. The great strength of Cambridge philosophy is in mov

Degenerative Realism

Degenerative Realism PDF

Author: Christy Wampole

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2020-06-23

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 0231546033

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A new strain of realism has emerged in France. The novels that embody it represent diverse fears—immigration and demographic change, radical Islam, feminism, new technologies, globalization, American capitalism, and the European Union—but these books, often best-sellers, share crucial affinities. In their dystopian visions, the collapse of France, Europe, and Western civilization is portrayed as all but certain and the literary mode of realism begins to break down. Above all, they depict a degenerative force whose effects on the nation and on reality itself can be felt. Examining key novels by Michel Houellebecq, Frédéric Beigbeder, Aurélien Bellanger, Yann Moix, and other French writers, Christy Wampole identifies and critiques this emergent tendency toward “degenerative realism.” She considers the ways these writers draw on social science, the New Journalism of the 1960s, political pamphlets, reportage, and social media to construct an atmosphere of disintegration and decline. Wampole maps how degenerative realist novels explore a world contaminated by conspiracy theories, mysticism, and misinformation, responding to the internet age’s confusion between fact and fiction with a lament for the loss of the real and an unrelenting emphasis on the role of the media in crafting reality. In a time of widespread populist anxieties over the perceived decline of the French nation, this book diagnoses the literary symptoms of today’s reactionary revival.

After the Enlightenment

After the Enlightenment PDF

Author: Nicolas Guilhot

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-04-24

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1316764079

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After the Enlightenment is the first attempt at understanding modern political realism as a historical phenomenon. Realism is not an eternal wisdom inherited from Thucydides, Machiavelli or Hobbes, but a twentieth-century phenomenon rooted in the interwar years, the collapse of the Weimar Republic, and the transfer of ideas between Continental Europe and the United States. The book provides the first intellectual history of the rise of realism in America, as it informed policy and academic circles after 1945. It breaks through the narrow confines of the discipline of international relations and resituates realism within the crisis of American liberalism. Realism provided a new framework for foreign policy thinking and transformed the nature of American democracy. This book sheds light on the emergence of 'rational choice' as a new paradigm for political decision-making and speaks to the current revival in realism in international affairs.

Realism in the Age of Impressionism

Realism in the Age of Impressionism PDF

Author: Marnin Young

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2015-01-01

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0300208324

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The late 1870s and early 1880s were watershed years in the history of French painting. As outgoing economic and social structures were being replaced by a capitalist, measured time, Impressionist artists sought to create works that could be perceived in an instant, capturing the sensations of rapidly transforming modern life. Yet a generation of artists pushed back against these changes, spearheading a short-lived revival of the Realist practices that had dominated at mid-century and advocating slowness in practice, subject matter, and beholding. In this illuminating book, Marnin Young looks closely at five works by Jules Bastien-Lepage, Gustave Caillebotte, Alfred-Philippe Roll, Jean-Franocois Raffaeelli, and James Ensor, artists who shared a concern with painting and temporality that is all but forgotten today, having been eclipsed by the ideals of Impressionism. Young's highly original study situates later Realism for the first time within the larger social, political, and economic framework and argues for its centrality in understanding the development of modern art.