Author: Ellen Meiksins Wood File Type: epub The formation of the modern state, the rise of capitalism, the Renaissance and Reformation, the scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment have all been attributed to the early modern period. Nearly everything about its history remains controversial, but one thing is certain it left a rich and provocative legacy of political ideas unmatched in Western history. The concepts of liberty, equality, property, human rights and revolution born in those turbulent centuries continue to shape, and to limit, political discourse today. Assessing the work and background of figures such as Machiavelli, Luther, Calvin, Spinoza, the Levellers, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, Ellen Wood vividly explores the ideas of the canonical thinkers, not as philosophical abstractions but as passionately engaged responses to the social conflicts of their day.**Review... This book is clearly written, incisively argued, and immensely informative.CHOICE a notable book, wide-ranging and perceptive ... [Wood] addresses the heartland of the historiography of political thought from Machiavelli to Rousseau, the territory of its most successful recent practitioners.Jonathan Clark, TLSAbout the Author Ellen Meiksins Wood, for many years Professor of Political Science at York University, Toronto, is the author of many books, including Democracy Against Capitalism and, with Verso, The Pristine Culture of Capitalism, The Origin of Capitalism, Peasant-Citizen and Slave, Citizens to Lords, Empire of Capital and Liberty and Property.

Author: Ban Wang File Type: pdf span orphans 2 widows 2The Confucian doctrine ofspanfont color=#333333 face=Roboto, UILanguageFont, Arial, serifspan 14px orphans 2 widows 2 background- (255, 255, 255)tianxiaspanfontspan orphans 2 widows 2(all under heaven) outlines a unitary worldview that cherishes global justice and transcends social, geographic, and political divides. For contemporary scholars, it has held myriad meanings, from the articulation of a cultural imaginary and political strategy to a moralistic commitment and a cosmological vision. The contributors tospanfont color=#333333 face=Roboto, UILanguageFont, Arial, serifspan 14px orphans 2 widows 2 background- (255, 255, 255)Chinese Visions of World Orderspanfontspan orphans 2 widows 2examine the evolution of tianxias meaning and practice in the Han dynasty and its mutations in modern times. They attend to its varied interpretations, its relation to realpolitik, and its revival in twenty-first-century China. They also investigate tianxias birth in antiquity and its role in empire building, invoke its cultural universalism as a new global imagination for the contemporary world, analyze its resonance and affinity with cosmopolitanism in East-West cultural relations, discover its persistence in Chinas socialist internationalism and third world agenda, and critique its deployment as an official state ideology. In so doing, they demonstrate how China draws on its past to further its own alternative vision of the current international system.spanbr orphans 2 widows 2br orphans 2 widows 2span orphans 2 widows 2Contributors. Daniel A. Bell, Chishen Chang, Kuan-Hsing Chen, Prasenjit Duara, Hsieh Mei-yu, Haiyan Lee, Mark Edward Lewis, Lin Chun, Viren Murthy, Lisa Rofel, Ban Wang, Wang Hui, Yiqun Zhouspan

Author: Patricia Allmer File Type: pdf The Belgian surrealist artist Rene Magritte redefined the way we think about art. Famous for his men in bowler hats, Magrittes witty and provocative work inspired generations of later artists, from Andy Warhol to Jasper Johns. In this illuminating new biography, Patricia Allmer radically repositions Magrittes work in relation to its historical and cultural circumstances. Allmer explores the significant influence of events and experiences in Magrittes early childhood and youth, recorded in his letters and essays his memories of visiting fairs and circuses of magical shows and performances of the cinema and in particular his first encounter with his future partner, Georgette, on a carousel. Allmers analyses of these events and their influence on both well-known and less familiar images give new insights into Magrittes art. The book will appeal to those who wish to know more about Magrittes life and work, as well as the wide audience for Surrealism. ** About the Author Patricia Allmer is a leading scholar of surrealism and senior lecturer in art history at the University of Edinburgh. Her books include Rene Magritte Beyond Painting and Lee Miller Photography, Surrealism, and Beyond , and she has curated major exhibitions such as Angels of Anarchy Women Artists and Surrealism.

Author: Michael Wayne File Type: pdf Is Kant really the bourgeois philosopher that his advocates and opponents take him to be? In this bold and original re-thinking of Kant, Michael Wayne argues that with his aesthetic turn in the Third Critique, Kant broke significantly from the problematic philosophical structure of the Critique of Pure Reason. Through his philosophy of the aesthetic Kant begins to circumnavigate the dualities in his thought. In so doing he shows us today how the aesthetic is a powerful means for imagining our way past the apparent universality of contemporary capitalism. Here is an unfamiliar Kant his concepts of beauty and the sublime are reinterpreted as attempts to socialise the aesthetic while Wayne reconstructs the usually hidden genealogy between Kant and important Marxist concepts such as totality, dialectics, mediation and even production. In materialising Kants philosophy, this book simultaneously offers a Marxist defence of creativity and imagination grounded in our power to think metaphorically and in Kants concept of reflective judgment. Wayne also critiques aspects of Marxist cultural theory that have not accorded the aesthetic the relative autonomy and specificity which it is due. Discussing such thinkers as Adorno, Bourdieu, Colletti, Eagleton, Lukacs, Ranciere and others, Red Kant Aesthetics, Marxism and the Third Critique presents a new reading of Kants Third Critique that challenges Marxist and mainstream assessments of Kant alike.ReviewNo longer just an archetypal bourgeois philosopher, Kant emerges from Waynes new book as a thinker whose system led him to grasp the stultifying limits of positivist reason. Wayne provides incisive critiques not just of bourgeois presentations of Kant but also of earlier left readings of his aesthetic by Bourdieu, Deleuze, Eagleton, Ranciere and others he demonstrates the contemporaneity of the Kantian model through sparkling analyses of films, ranging from Casablanca to Land of the Dead. A compelling demonstration of the continuing resourcefulness of rational critique for progressive cultural politics today. (Andrew Hemingway, Emeritus Professor of History of Art, University College London, UK 2014-05-07) Michael Wayne does more than just read Kants Critique of Judgment against the grain he manages to deliver us a truly radical Kantian agency that neither mainstream scholars nor dominant Marxist interpreters have dared to consider. Red Kant anticipates techniques of aesthetic estrangement found in Brecht, Benjamin and certain forms of science fiction. Red Kant rescues aesthetic populism for Marxist critics who have too long abandoned research into working class fantasy and imagination to anthropology, cultural studies and corporate marketers. Red Kant reassigns concepts such as beauty and the sublime to the social-historical realm, reinvigorating material production with a utopian inflection made possible by the metaphorical workings of the aesthetic. Red Kant rocks. (Gregory Sholette, Assistant Professor Queens College, CUNY, USA, and an Associate of the Art, Design and the Public Domain program at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, USA 2014-06-09) In this bold and original re-thinking of Kant, Michael Wayne argues that with his aesthetic turn in the Third Critique, Kant broke significantly from the problematic philosophical structure of the Critique of Pure Reason. Through his philosophy of the aesthetic Kant begins to circumnavigate the dualities in his thought. In so doing he shows us today how the aesthetic is a powerful means for imagining our way past the apparent universality of contemporary capitalism. (Eugene Wolters Critical-Theory blog) Book DescriptionA new Marxist reading of Kants Third Critique that challenges both Marxist theorists and mainstream Kant scholarship.