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Art, Morality and Human Nature
Art, Morality and Human Nature
Haldane, John
¥147.05
This collection brings together the text of the monograph Art and Morality by the philosopher Richard Beardsmore along with fourteen other essays (both published and previously unpublished) in which he explores further some of the themes of his seminal book. With the revival of interest among philosophers and others in the relationships between art and morality the publication of this material is especially timely. Beardsmore's original contribution first introduced the principal terminology in which discussions have been expressed and many of the later essays showed the influence of Wittgenstein. The publication of this anthology of his writings on these themes has been welcomed by others writing on the same or related themes.
T.H. Green and the Development of Ethical Socialism
T.H. Green and the Development of Ethical Socialism
Carter, Matt
¥220.63
This book uncovers the philosophical foundations of a tradition of ethical socialism best represented in the work of R.H. Tawney, tracing its roots back to the work of T.H. Green. Green and his colleagues developed a philosophy that rejected the atomistic individualism and empiricist assumptions that underpinned classical liberalism and helped to found a new political ideology based around four notions: the common good; a positive view of freedom; equality of opportunity; and an expanded role for the state. The book shows how Tawney adopted the key features of the idealists' philosophical settlement and used them to help shape his own notions of true freedom and equality, thereby establishing a tradition of thought which remains relevant in British politics today.
Universities
Universities
Graham, Gordon
¥63.67
Research assessment exercises, teaching quality assessment, line management, staff appraisal, student course evaluation, modularization, student fees - these are all names of innovations (and problems) - in modern British universities. How far do they reflect a more conscientious approach to the effective promotion of higher education, and how far do they constitute a significant departure from traditional academic concerns and values? Using some themes of Cardinal Newman's classic The Idea of a University as a springboard, this extended essay aims to address these questions.
Being Cultured
Being Cultured
Kennedy, Angus
¥107.81
Today culture is everywhere as maybe never before. We read culture reviews, watch culture shows, live in Cities of Culture, and witness the Cultural Olympiad. Government, museums and arts councils worry that we are not getting enough culture and shape policy around notions of art and culture for all. Access and inclusion are in. Difficulty and exclusivity out. In "e;Being Cultured: in defence of discrimination"e; Angus Kennedy asks if this explosion of culture, and the breaking down of distinctions between high and low culture, has emancipated us or left us adrift without cultural moorings. Is it true that all cultures are equal? Is cultural diversity a good thing? Is it unacceptably elitist to insist on the highest standards of judgment? To argue that some cultural works stand the test of time and some don't? Can anyone dare to call themselves cultured anymore? Might it even be the case that culture no longer actually means anything much to us? That our nervousness about exercising discrimination and good taste - the erosion of cultural authority - might have left us with a culture that may be open to all, but lacking in depth? This provocative book strikes a blow for discrimination in culture and argues that there is a responsibility on each of us as individuals to always be becoming more cultured beings: our best selves. Kennedy revisits the tradition - from Cicero to Kant, Arnold to Arendt - of autonomy in culture: both in the sense of its intrinsic value and how it rests on our individual freedom - quite apart from state and society - to discriminate and judge. A freedom, without which, we risk a widening culture of consensus and conformity. But which is the constitutive element of a world in common.
Why Spirituality is Difficult for Westeners
Why Spirituality is Difficult for Westeners
Hay, David
¥63.67
Dr Hay is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen. A zoologist by profession, his research has been guided by the hypothesis that religious or spiritual awareness is biologically natural to the human species and has been selected for in the process of organic evolution because it has survival value. Although naturalistic, this hypothesis is not intended to be reductionist with regard to religion. Nevertheless it does imply that all people, including those who have no religious belief, have a spiritual life. His research has included a number of national and in-depth surveys of reports of religious or spiritual experience in the United Kingdom.
Nation in Want of a Grievance
Nation in Want of a Grievance
Grigor, Iain Fraser
¥19.52
A Nation in Want of a Grievance takes its name from a 19th century editorial in the Times newspaper. It consists of a collection of 35 essays written in Scotland around the end of the 20th century and the start of the present 21st century. Some of these are directly concerned with Scotland, some are not. Some are documentary in character, others are fictional. The first essay is a memoir, in a spirit of fictionised reportage, of the last herring-fishery on the west coast of Scotland - a fishery in which the author took part as a trawler deck-hand. A second piece in the collection is a re-jig of Lady Gregory's famous little one-act play, The Rising of the Moon, which has been re-written and located in the post-Jacobite Highlands of 1746. One piece of extended and research-intensive journalism examines in detail the long record of landlord chicanery relating to popular access to the waters of Loch Morar in western Lochaber. Another piece draws extensively on French and Spanish resources to tell the story - so far as it can be told - of Duncan Stewart of Balquidder, private doctor to Le Roi Christophe, the famous monarch of post-revolutionary Haiti. Oysters from Sweetings, meanwhile, is a fictional comment on modern Scotland in the style of John Buchan. The collection ends with two newspaper editorials. One, from a post-war edition of the Scotsman newspaper, is fictional, and relates to the forced merger of the churches of Scotland and England. The other is the Times editorial from the 19th century, in which Scotland is castigated as a nation in want of a grievance.
Authentic Tawney
Authentic Tawney
Armstrong, Gary
¥132.34
R.H. Tawney is an iconic thinker in British left-wing circles, whose writings during the early-mid 20th century helped to forge the direction of democratic socialist thinking and Labour Party policies.This book provides a fresh and accessible guide to the ideas of Tawney for new readers and to set straight the record of what Tawney's political thought really is, warts and all, in place of the rather over-simplified picture painted by the major commentators. It shows how Tawney's ideas changed over nearly 40 years of writing, as his own life experiences and the traumatic events of the two World Wars and their aftermaths drew him to a more secular and practical interpretation of politics.The book renders a service to scholarship, being based on original research, including examination of the Tawney Archive at the LSE, and makes use of unpublished works of Tawney.
Five Children and It
Five Children and It
Nesbit, Edith
¥44.05
When Cyril, Anthea, Robert, Jane, and their baby brother find a Psammead - an ancient sand-fairy - whilst digging in the sand, they get one wish granted each day. But, to the children's surprise, the wishes don't always turn out to be as they expect...! This classic children's tale from renowned author Edith Nesbit has been specially formatted for today's e-readers by Andrews UK.
Guide to the Classics
Guide to the Classics
Griffith, Guy
¥132.34
Originally written in 1936 by two young Cambridge Fellows, A Guide to the Classics is a light-hearted manual on how to pick the Derby winner. However, as the tongue-in-cheek title suggested, there is more to the book than meets the eye, especially as one of the young dons went on to become, according to his 1990 Telegraph obituary, 'the greatest political philosopher in the Anglo-Saxon tradition since Mill - or even Burke'.The book takes the abstraction out of the Derby by attacking the systems which had been developed by generations of 'form' experts. It exposes theoretical solutions as fraudulent - instead it applies hard-headed empirical and historical analysis. Oakeshott went on to apply this methodology to his famous critique of 'rationalism' in politics.This long-awaited edition of Griffith and Oakeshott's classic text includes a new preface and foreword by horse racing journalist and author Sean Magee, and political commentator Peter Oborne.
Shaping The Ripples
Shaping The Ripples
Wallington, Paul
¥19.52
Jack Bailey's life wasn't worth living - until someone tries to take it away. Scarred by his childhood, and working as a counsellor at a domestic crisis centre in York, Jack Bailey often thinks of ending what he sees as a worthless life. But when he is targeted by a ruthless serial killer, who seems determined to destroy every aspect of his life, he finds that maybe it is worth fighting for. With the police suspecting Jack is responsible for the gruesome killings, he is drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse. Can he unmask and stop the killer before it is too late? Operating as both an exciting thriller and an exploration of to what extent we are shaped by our childhood experiences, this is a gripping and thought provoking read.
Microgenetic Theory and Process Thought
Microgenetic Theory and Process Thought
Brown, Jason W.
¥147.05
The chapters in this volume attempt to establish some foundational principles of a theory of the mind/brain grounded in evolutionary and process theory. From this standpoint, the book discusses some main problems in philosophical psychology, including the nature and origins of the mind/brain state, experience and consciousness, feeling, subjective time and free will. The approach - that of microgenesis - holds that formative phases in the generation of the mental state are the primary focus of explanation, not the assumed properties of logical solids. For microgenesis, the process leading to a conscious end point is, together with the final content, part of an epochal state, the outcome of which, an act, object or word, incorporates earlier segments of that series, such as value, meaning and belief.
Balancing Act
Balancing Act
Ichijo, Atsuko
¥63.67
This is a careful examination of the historical formation of Britain and of key moments in its relations with the European powers. The author looks at the governing discourses of politicians, the mass media, and the British people. The rhetoric of sovereignty among political elites and the population at large is found to conceive of Britain's engagement with Europe as a zero-sum game. A second theme is the power of geographical images - island Britain - in feeding the idea of the British nation as by nature separate and autonomous. It follows that the EU is seen as 'other' and involvement in European decision-making tends to be viewed in terms of threat. This is naive, as nation- states are not autonomous, economically, militarily or politically. Only pooling sovereignty can maximize their national interests. Atsuko Ichijo is Senior Researcher in European Studies at Kingston University.
Henry VIII and his Court
Henry VIII and his Court
Muhlbach, Luise
¥44.05
This novel is based on the true life of Henry VIII, one of England's most famous - or infamous kings. Marriages, divorces, beheadings, death and glory - all contained within the pages of this fantastic ebook. It was originally written by Luise Muhlbach in German and translated into English by Henry Niles Pierce. Sample Extract :"e;It was in the year 1543. King Henry the Eighth of England that day once more pronounced himself the happiest and most enviable man in his kingdom, for to-day he was once more a bridegroom, and Catharine Parr, the youthful widow of Baron Latimer, had the perilous happiness of being selected as the king's sixth consort. Merrily chimed the bells of all the steeples of London, announcing to the people the commencement of that holy ceremony which sacredly bound Catharine Parr to the king as his sixth wife. The people, ever fond of novelty and show, crowded through the streets toward the royal palace to catch a sight of Catharine, when she appeared at her husband's side upon the balcony, to show herself to the English people as their queen, and to receive their homage in return.
Your Brain's Politics
Your Brain's Politics
Lakoff, George
¥73.48
At first glance, issues like economic inequality, healthcare, climate change, and abortion seem unrelated. However, when thinking and talking about them, people reliably fall into two camps: conservative and liberal. What explains this divide? Why do conservatives and liberals hold the positions they do? And what is the conceptual nature of those who decide elections, commonly called the "e;political middle"e;?The answers are profound. They have to do with how our minds and brains work. Political attitudes are the product of what cognitive scientists call Embodied Cognition - the grounding of abstract thought in everyday world experience. Clashing beliefs about how to run nations largely arise from conflicting beliefs about family life: conservatives endorse a strict father and liberals a nurturant parent model. So-called "e;middle"e; voters are not in the middle at all. They are morally biconceptual, divided between both models, and as a result highly susceptible to moral political persuasion.In this brief introduction, Lakoff and Wehling reveal how cognitive science research has advanced our understanding of political thought and language, forcing us to revise common folk theories about the rational voter.
Seeking Meaning and Making Sense
Seeking Meaning and Making Sense
Haldane, John
¥63.67
Collection of short essays that range across philosophy, politics, general culture, morality, science, religion and art, focusing on questions of meaning, value and understanding.
Trial and Execution of George VI
Trial and Execution of George VI
Grigor, Iain Fraser
¥19.52
This novel is the first in a projected five-part series called The Second British Protectorate - a series of high-concept, story-driven commercial fictions from the viewpoint of alternate history, supposing a sovietised post-war Britain formally modelled on Cromwell's 17th century Protectorate. The themes are both historical and modern. For instance - what shape would a popular rising against such a state have taken? Who would have collaborated with the regime - who might have resisted - and who might have loafed on the leathered benches of least resistance? What would the state's religious policy have been? Might that policy have forced the merger of the churches of Scotland and England? Might the religious and messianic mania of the 17th century have returned? Might it have been believed that Jesus had come (back) to England? Might George VI have gone to the scaffold as Charles I had - dead by winter axe in London's Whitehall? What role would the great lawyers of the land and their sacred notions of constitutionality and amour-propre (not to mention the school-fees) have had in all of this? What about civil liberties, and clear and present dangers to the state? What about the asymmetric distribution of lethal capacities for oppression and resistance? What about the nature of religious identity as the ideology of that resistance? What role might cocaine have played in a ruined command-economy with a worthless currency? Might the Americans have smuggled it into Britain in huge quantities as a way of funding democratic terrorism? The Trial and Execution of George VI - as a popular rising is savagely crushed and the Messiah comes (back?) to Britain, a shipment of best American cocaine is swapped in the ruins of Perth for the lives of the King, his Queen and their kids. But what happened next - to the coke?
Hospitable Universe
Hospitable Universe
Gambini, Rodolfo
¥147.05
This book argues that new developments in the sciences, in particular twentieth-century physics and twenty-first-century biology, suggest revising several pessimistic outlooks for the development of a scientific understanding of the relationship of humans with the universe - in particular, implications for the development of a natural religiousness. In the new vision a universe which is friendly to life and consciousness naturally emerges.
On Liberty and Peace - Part 1
On Liberty and Peace - Part 1
Edge, Matt
¥63.67
The author writes:In this project I set out to provide an answer to two fundamental questions of political philosophy. How can human beings (living, as we do now, in a globalised world) live together, in conditions of co-operation over time, enjoying what Immanuel Kant famously called 'perpetual peace'? And how much individual freedom can we expect to enjoy, and to what degree can we expect that individual freedom to be equal, whilst engaged in the enterprise described by the first question? These may be age-old questions, but I aim, in this project, to offer a new approach to answering them.In part one of this project, I aim to provide a groundwork upon which an answer to these questions can be built. I argue, contrary to much contemporary (and historical) political philosophy, that the answers to these questions should not be provided by our representatives, a monarch, the elite, or by a process of philosophical abstraction (or anything else) but, instead, by each of us. That is to say, by you, me and everyone else together. Part one argues not only why it should be each of us who are to be engaged in this enterprise, but it also argues on behalf of a number of changes which might support us in this ongoing, and doubtless difficult, human project. I begin by arguing that, if we are to attempt to provide a genuine (and free) answer to how much individual freedom we should each be alloted in human society over time, this means that we must begin with the concept of freedom itself which, in turn, means detaching it from the philosophical and epistemological baggage it tends to carry in everyday language.
Social Radicalism and Liberal Education
Social Radicalism and Liberal Education
Paterson, Lindsay
¥147.05
Liberal education used to command wide political support. Radicals disagreed with conservatives on whether the best culture could be appreciated by everyone, and they disagreed, too, on whether the barriers to understanding it were mainly social and economic, but there was no dispute that any worthwhile education ought to hand on the best that has been thought and said. That consensus has vanished since the 1960s. The book examines why social radicals supported liberal education, why they have moved away from it, and what the implications are for the future of an intellectually stimulating and culturally literate education.
On Liberty and Peace - Part 2
On Liberty and Peace - Part 2
Edge, Matt
¥63.67
The author writes:In this project I set out to provide an answer to two fundamental questions of political philosophy. How can human beings (living, as we do now, in a globalised world) live together, in conditions of co-operation over time, enjoying what Immanuel Kant famously called 'perpetual peace'? And how much individual freedom can we expect to enjoy, and to what degree can we expect that individual freedom to be equal, whilst engaged in the enterprise described by the first question? These may be age-old questions, but I aim, in this project, to offer a new approach to answering them.In part two of this project, I aim to actually provide my own answer to the two fundamental questions with which I began and according to the structure I outline in Liberty. Which is to say, this is the answer I provide to you (and everyone else) to judge regarding how successfully it answers those age old political questions. In short, I argue that these are the changes in actual, material, human conditions - the necessary set of 'alterable human practices' to borrow a phrase of Isaiah Berlin's - required to create an enduring, desirable and just 'perpetual peace' on earth. In other words, this is not, in Kant's phrase, a 'philosophical sketch' on how perpetual peace might be attained, but, by focusing on the everyday, material, relationships and conditions which create and foster conflict and injustice across the globe today, I hope to provide a 'material sketch' as to how human beings might live in successfully together in conditions of peaceful cooperation and freedom over time.
Appearances
Appearances
Sampson, Nicolas D
¥58.76
APPEARANCES is a collection of twelve short stories revealing how fragile and elusive reality is. It is full of playful and powerful images that exist all around us. Funhouse mirrors of life. Or maybe the other way round. Raw images of a reality normally photoshopped and made to look gorgeous in the beauty parlors of everyday society, now shown for what they are, revealing their true nature. The mirror theme helps reflect on this reality. Stories are mirrors of life, of people and circumstances. Images in those mirrors range from the exact to the distorted. They can be revealing, misleading, or indicative of something. They can be full of promises and lies, changing the world according to their whims, or brutally honest, revealing the world as it was never meant to be seen. Whatever the case, the images are real, and so are the mirrors, phenomena of the everyday world, reflecting back to us who we are, what we do and how we have set up the world around us. They indicate to us the various aspects of humanity and the human psyche, exposing our longings and fears. Victor and Xavier share these stories with us, offering their perspective on life through the prism of mirrors that are playful, powerful and present wherever one looks. Nothing can be taken for granted. Only one thing's for certain. Appearances are not what they seem.