Author: Miguel de BeisteguiPublisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226815560
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 287
Book Description
Introduction -- On stupidity -- On superstition -- On spite -- Conclusion.
Thought Under Threat
Author: Miguel de BeisteguiPublisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226815560
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 287
Book Description
Introduction -- On stupidity -- On superstition -- On spite -- Conclusion.
Thought under Threat
Author: Miguel de BeisteguiPublisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226815579
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 287
Book Description
Thought under Threatreveals and combats the forces diminishing the power and role of critical thinking, whether in our individual lives or collectively. Thought under Threat is an attempt to understand the tendencies that threaten thinking from within. These tendencies have always existed. But today they are on the rise and frequently encouraged, even in our democracies. People “disagree” with science and distrust experts. Political leaders appeal to the hearts and guts of “the people,” rather than their critical faculties. Stupidity has become a right, if not a badge of honor; superstition is on the rise; and spite is a major political force. Thinking is considered “elitist.” To see those obstacles as vices of thought, Miguel de Beistegui argues, we need to understand stupidity not as a lack of intelligence or judgment, but as the tendency to raise false problems and trivial questions. Similarly, we need to see spite not as a moral vice, but as a poison that blurs and distorts our critical faculties. Finally, superstition is best described not as a set of false beliefs, but as a system that neutralizes one’s ability to think for oneself. For de Beistegui, thinking is intrinsically democratic and a necessary condition for the exercise of freedom. Thought under Threat shows how a training of thought itself can be used to ward off those vices, lead to productive deliberation, and, ultimately, create a thinking community.
The Conservative Sensibility
Author: George F. WillPublisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 0316480916
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 598
Book Description
The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist's "astonishing" and "enthralling" New York Times bestseller and Notable Book about how the Founders' belief in natural rights created a great American political tradition (Booklist) -- "easily one of the best books on American Conservatism ever written" (Jonah Goldberg). For more than four decades, George F. Will has attempted to discern the principles of the Western political tradition and apply them to America's civic life. Today, the stakes could hardly be higher. Vital questions about the nature of man, of rights, of equality, of majority rule are bubbling just beneath the surface of daily events in America. The Founders' vision, articulated first in the Declaration of Independence and carried out in the Constitution, gave the new republic a framework for government unique in world history. Their beliefs in natural rights, limited government, religious freedom, and in human virtue and dignity ushered in two centuries of American prosperity. Now, as Will shows, conservatism is under threat -- both from progressives and elements inside the Republican Party. America has become an administrative state, while destructive trends have overtaken family life and higher education. Semi-autonomous executive agencies wield essentially unaccountable power. Congress has failed in its duty to exercise its legislative powers. And the executive branch has slipped the Constitution's leash. In the intellectual battle between the vision of Founding Fathers like James Madison, who advanced the notion of natural rights that pre-exist government, and the progressivism advanced by Woodrow Wilson, the Founders have been losing. It's time to reverse America's political fortunes. Expansive, intellectually thrilling, and written with the erudite wit that has made Will beloved by millions of readers, The Conservative Sensibility is an extraordinary new book from one of America's most celebrated political writers.
Societies Under Threat
Author: Denise JodeletPublisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030393151
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 222
Book Description
This book illuminates the importance of threat on the representation of everyday life, from an interdisciplinary perspective. Divided into three parts, the book sets out by addressing the conceptual aspects of threat and by opening views on phenomena and social processes associated with threat. It shows how threat constitutes an analytical category that simultaneously involves social, psychological, religious, historical and political factors, and calls for a sufficiently broad conceptual definition to integrate pluri-disciplinary contributions. The second part focuses on the building of threats, mainly the environmental threats that have reached a tragic dimension today and are a core aspect of world concerns, the contemporary global terrorism, the migrations and the challenges these bring to contemporary societies, as well as the threats associated with the emergence of nationalism and the diverse aspects of excluding the Other. The final part examines the coping strategies, including oblivion, denial and defiance associated with different sources of threats, for instance those arising from epidemic and collective diseases, financial technology, natural disasters and collective traumas.
Water Under Threat
Author: Larbi BouguerraPublisher: Zed Books
ISBN: 9781842777053
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 228
Book Description
Water has been described as 'the oil of the 21st century' with rapid population growth, climate change and pollution conspiring to make it the resource over which wars may be fought in years to come. But does water have a price? Is it a right or a need? Increasingly, water is viewed as a commodity whose function is to generate profits. In this book, Larbi Bouguerra argues that instead we should view it as a common good of humanity. Water has an exceptional cross-cultural symbolic value and its use raises enormous questions about our lifestyle, our ethics and our relationship to nature. Bouguerra makes a powerful case for a society that is more economical with water and manages it openly and democratically, as a global resource.
On Politics
Author: Alan RyanPublisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871404656
Category : Political science
Languages : en
Pages : 1147
Book Description
Looks at the history of politics from Hobbes to the twenty-first century.
The Murder of Professor Schlick
Author: David EdmondsPublisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691211965
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336
Book Description
"On June 22, 1936, the philosopher Moritz Schlick was on his way to deliver a lecture at the University of Vienna when Johann Nelböck, a deranged former student of Schlick's, shot him dead on the university steps. Some Austrian newspapers defended the madman, while Nelböck argued in court that his onetime teacher had promoted a treacherous Jewish philosophy. Weaving an enthralling narrative set against the backdrop of rising extremism in Hitler's Europe, David Edmonds traces the rise and fall of the Vienna Circle--associated with billiant thinkers like Otto Neurath, Kurt Gödel, Rudolf Carnap, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Karl Popper--and of a philosophical movement movement that sought to do away with metaphysics and pseudoscience in a city darkened by and unreason."--
Biodiversity Under Threat
Author: Royal Society of Chemistry (Great Britain)Publisher: Royal Society of Chemistry
ISBN: 0854042512
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
There is much public concern about threats to global biodiversity, for example from pollution and from climate change, resulting from build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This book addresses these concerns by detailing some of the research currently in progress.
Under Threat
Author: Robin StevensonPublisher: Orca Book Publishers
ISBN: 145981133X
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 71
Book Description
Franny is close to her parents, adores her horse and is head over heels in love with her girlfriend, Leah. But Franny’s parents are abortion providers at the local hospital, and an anonymous stranger is prepared to do whatever it takes to stop them. A stranger who phones at all hours. Who knows where they live. Who knows Franny’s name. When Leah’s older brother, Jake, refers to her parents as baby killers, Franny starts to wonder if perhaps the threats aren’t coming from a stranger at all. If she tells the police about her suspicions, she could lose her girlfriend. But if she doesn’t—and if she’s right—she could lose her parents.
A Mighty Capital under Threat
Author: Bill LuckinPublisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822987449
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
Demographically, nineteenth-century London, or what Victorians called the “new Rome,” first equaled, then superseded its ancient ancestor. By the mid-eighteenth century, the British capital had already developed into a global city. Sustained by its enormous empire, between 1800 and the First World War London ballooned in population and land area. Nothing so vast had previously existed anywhere. A Mighty Capital under Threat investigates the environmental history of one of the world’s global cities and the largest city in the United Kingdom. Contributors cover the feeding of London, waste management, movement between the city’s numerous districts, and the making and shaping of the environmental sciences in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.