Product Description: Where do political identities come from, how do they change over time, and what is their impact on political life? This book explores these and related questions in a globalizing world where the nation state is being transformed, definitions of citizenship are evolving in unprecedented ways, and people's interests and identities are taking on new local, regional, transnational, cosmopolitan, and even imperial configurations...read more

Product Description: El tiempo presente alberga numerosas paradojas y contradicciones que nos sumen en la perplejidad. Hoy, en un mundo profundamente desencantado, escéptico respecto de los ideales morales y políticos heredados de la modernidad, la pregunta acerca de si la forma de vida de las democracias de masas capitalistas avanzadas puede ...read more

The work of Richard J. Bernstein has achieved a groundbreaking synthesis of the analytical and continental modes of thought. Countering the highly technical metaphysical and epistemological puzzles of analytic philosophy in the early 1960s, Bernstein offered a model of philosophy in a democratic society as the work of the engaged public intellectual. Working within the tradition of American pragmatism, he also changed that tradition by opening it to the international intellectual currents of phenomenology, deconstructionism, and critical theory. These essays by leading philosophers and social thinkers pay tribute to Bernstein and reflect the themes that have engaged him throughout his career. Pragmatism, Critique, Judgment opens with a group of essays that examine the place of philosophy in a democratic society; included in this section are Richard Rorty's exploration of the legacy of American pragmatism and Jürgen Habermas's reconsideration of ethics in philosophy. The essays in the second section examine postpositivist social critique and include Jacques Derrida's consideration of the philosophical paradoxes of the death penalty. The third group of essays considers the theme of radical evil, and includes discussions of Bernstein's nuanced reading of Hannah Arendt. The book ends with a biographical essay based in part on a series of conversations with Bernstein himself.

In this re-examination of the political thought of Hannah Arendt, Seyla Benhabib decentres the standard and widespread reading of Arendt′s work, in which Arendt′s The Human Condition dominates, and discovers Arendt′s political philosophy in the light of newly gained insights into the historical and cultural context of Arendt′s complete work. This eloquently written book includes discussions of Arendt′s neglected early text on Rahel Varnhagen, her confrontation with German Existenz philosophy and Zionist politics, Arendt′s theory of totalitarianism, and the paradoxes of the rights of man. Hannah Arendt′s political thought anticipates some of the major preoccupations of today′s identity politics, from gender to nationalism and ethnicit

This collection of ten essays offers the first systematic assessment of Ju rgen Habermas's "Philosophical Discourse of Modernity," a book that defended the rational potential of the modern age against the depiction of modernity as a spent epoch. The essays (of which four are newly commissioned, five were published in the journal "Praxis International," and one -- by Habermas -- first appeared in translation in "New Critique" ) are divided into two sections: "Critical Rejoinders" and "Thematic Reformulations." An opening essay by d'Entre ves sets out the main issues and orients the debate between Habermas and the postmodernists by identifying two different senses of responsibility: a responsibility to act versus a responsibility to otherness (an openness to difference, dissonance, and ambiguity). These are linked with two alternative understandings of the primary function of language: action-orienting versus world-disclosing. This is a fruitful way of looking at the issues that Habermas has raised in his attempt to resurrect and complete the project of Enlightenment. Habermas's essay discusses the main themes of his book in the context of a critical engagement with neoconservative cultural and political trends. The main body of essays offer an interesting collection of points of view, for and against Habermas's position by philosophers, social scientists, intellectual historians, and literary critics. SECTIONS CONTRIBUTORS: "Introduction," Maurizio Passerin d'Entre ves. "Modernity versus Postmodernity," Ju rgen Habermas. Critical Rejoinders: Fred Dallmayr. Christopher Norris. David C. Hoy. James Schmidt. Joel Whitebook. ThematicReformulations: James Bohman. Diana Coole. Jay M. Bernstein. David Ingram.

Product Description: The global trend toward democratization of the last two decades has been accompanied by the resurgence of various politics of "identity/difference." From nationalist and ethnic revivals in the countries of east and central Europe to the former Soviet Union, to the politics of cultural separatism in Canada, and to social movement politics in liberal western-democracies, the negotiation of identity/difference has become a challenge to democracies everywhere...read more

Product Description: This collection of essays by German and American scholars will help familiarize English-speaking readers with the most important results of this recent work and, in conjunction with a companion volume of Horkheimer's essays, Between Philosophy and Social Science, should provide a much fuller and deeper picture of his role in the history of modern social theory...read more

Product Description: Max Horkheimer (1895-1973), one of the founders of critical theory has become a subject of renewed attention and appreciation in Germany in the last decade, especially since the publication of the German edition of his Collected Works in 1985...read more

Product Description: This timely reader in moral philosophy addresses a controversy that strongly affected recent European reflections on the relevance of ethics for theories of democratic institutions and democratic legitimacy. The debate centers around the idea of a communicative ethics as articulated by Jürgen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel, and it is representative both of recent attempts to bridge the gap between Continental and Anglo-American philosophy and of the turn to language that has characterized much of recent philosophy...read more