Author: Geoff Hodgson File Type: pdf

Author: Sydney Anglo File Type: pdf Between 1513 and 1525 Niccolo Machiavelli wrote a series of works dealing with political, military, and historical matters. One of these (the Arte della guerra) was published in 1521, but the rest of his major writings were not published until 1531-2, nearly five years after his death. They continued to be reissued regularly, well into the early seventeenth century. The popularity of Machiavellis books, the variety of his themes, the different contexts within which he was studied, the range of readers interests, and the fact that his name entered the vocabulary of every European language - all make his early reception a fruitful field of enquiry. Historians of ideas have tended to tidy up the past in order to make it comprehensible but Sydney Anglo is concerned with heterogeneity, and with the often irrational and emotional aspects of sixteenth-century thought. Basing his research entirely upon primary sources he quotes extensively in the conviction that, in a battle of words, the words themselves and their tone convey more than summaries of intellectual abstractions. **

Author: Gordon F. Davis File Type: pdf This volume of essays offers direct comparisons of historic Western and Buddhist perspectives on ethics and metaphysics, tracing parallels and contrasts all the way from Plato to the Stoics, Spinoza to Hume, and Schopenhauer through to contemporary ethicists such as Arne Naess, Charles Taylor and Derek Parfit.It compares and contrasts each Western philosopher with a particular strand in the Buddhist tradition, in some chapters represented by individual writers such as Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu, Santideva or Tsong Khapa. It does so in light of both analytic concerns and themes from the existentialist and phenomenological traditions, and often in an ecumenical spirit that bridges both analytic and continentalist approaches. Some of the deepest questions in ethics, dealing with the scope of agency, value-laden notions of personhood and the nature of value in general, are intertwined with questions in metaphysics.One set of questions addresses how varying conceptions of selfhood relate to moral values (e.g. the concern of self or selves for the well-being of others) another set of questions addresses how a conception of oneself or ones selves should or should not affect how one thinks of happiness, or eudaimonia, or in classical Indian terms artha, sukha or nirvana. Western philosophy has featured discussion of both, but some would argue that certain traditions of Asian philosophy have offered a more sustained and even treatment of both sets of questions. The Buddhist tradition in particular has not only featured much discussion on both fronts, but has attracted many contemporary philosophers to its distinctive spectrum of approaches, and to what is from many Western points of view a seemingly subversive analysis of ego, selfhood and personhood, whether in metaphysical, phenomenological or other incarnations. **From the Back Cover This volume of essays offers direct comparisons of historic Western and Buddhist perspectives on ethics and metaphysics, tracing parallels and contrasts all the way from Plato to the Stoics, Spinoza to Hume, and Schopenhauer through to contemporary ethicists such as Arne Naess, Charles Taylor and Derek Parfit.It compares and contrasts each Western philosopher with a particular strand in the Buddhist tradition, in some chapters represented by individual writers such as Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu, Santideva or Tsong Khapa. It does so in light of both analytic concerns and themes from the existentialist and phenomenological traditions, and often in an ecumenical spirit that bridges both analytic and continentalist approaches. Some of the deepest questions in ethics, dealing with the scope of agency, value-laden notions of personhood and the nature of value in general, are intertwined with questions in metaphysics.One set of questions addresses how varying conceptions of selfhood relate to moral values (e.g. the concern of self or selves for the well-being of others) another set of questions addresses how a conception of oneself or ones selves should or should not affect how one thinks of happiness, or eudaimonia, or in classical Indian terms artha, sukha or nirvana. Western philosophy has featured discussion of both, but some would argue that certain traditions of Asian philosophy have offered a more sustained and even treatment of both sets of questions. The Buddhist tradition in particular has not only featured much discussion on both fronts, but has attracted many contemporary philosophers to its distinctive spectrum of approaches, and to what is from many Western points of view a seemingly subversive analysis of ego, selfhood and personhood, whether in metaphysical, phenomenological or other incarnations. About the Author Associate Professor and former Chair of Philosophy Dept. (Carleton U.) B.Phil. and D.Phil. in Philosophy, University of Oxford (D.Phil. 2005) Founding executive member of Ethics and Public Affairs doctoral program (Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada) Research interests Ethical theory, Comparative Philosophy, Buddhist Philosophy, Buddhist Ethics, Metaethics, Political Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Personal Identity, Early Modern Metaphysics Author of Traces of Consequentialism and Non-Consequentialism in Bodhisattva Ethics (Philosophy East & West 2013) Moral Realism and Anti-Realism outside the West (Comparative Philosophy 2013)

Author: Mathijs Pelkmans File Type: pdf The Allied occupation of Japan is remembered as the good occupation. An American-led coalition successfully turned a militaristic enemy into a stable and democratic ally. Of course, the story was more complicated, but the occupation did forge one of the most enduring relationships in the postwar world. Recent events, from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan to protests over American bases in Japan to increasingly aggressive territorial disputes between Asian nations over islands in the Pacific, have brought attention back to the subject of the occupation of Japan. In Architects of Occupation, Dayna L. Barnes exposes the wartime origins of occupation policy and broader plans for postwar Japan. She considers the role of presidents, bureaucrats, think tanks, the media, and Congress in policymaking. Members of these elite groups came together in an informal policy network that shaped planning. Rather than relying solely on government reports and records to understand policymaking, Barnes also uses letters, memoirs, diaries, and manuscripts written by policymakers to trace the rise and spread of ideas across the policy network. The book contributes a new facet to the substantial literature on the occupation, serves as a case study in foreign policy analysis, and tells a surprising new story about World War II. **Review Fragile Conviction presents an original and thought-provoking meditation on the power and limitations of ideology. Mathijs Pelkmans explores the dynamics of conviction and disillusionment in the politically and economically unstable setting of post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. Using examples from Soviet agitprop, Christian and Muslim proselytism, and faith healers, he creates a vivid portrait of what he calls the pulsation of ideological engagement, its rhythms and temporalities.Sonja Luehrmann, Simon Fraser University, author of Secularism Soviet Style Teaching Atheism and Religion in a Volga Republic Fragile Conviction conjures a world area that has been plunged into profound and ongoing social disruption since the end of the USSR and is now being remade. Drawing on more than twenty years of ethnographic fieldwork, Mathijs Pelkmans advances a theory of faith that, refreshingly, insists on flexibility and contingency rather than assumptions of homogeneous wholesale conformity. From shamans to Pentecostalists to Islamic mens retreats, the reader gets a solid sense of the everyday life of religious practices and beliefs in Central Asia today. Pelkmans humanizes religion itself in a world area that is so often otherwise known only through its anticipated fundamentalisms.Bruce Grant, New York University, author of The Captive and the Gift Cultural Histories of Sovereignty in Russia and the Caucasus About the Author Mathijs Pelkmans is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of Fragile Conviction Changing Ideological Landscapes in Urban Kyrgyzstan andDefending the Border Identity, Religion, and Modernity in the Republic of Georgia, both from Cornell, and editor of Conversion after Socialism Disruptions, Modernisms and Technologies of Faith in the Former Soviet Union and Ethnographies of Doubt Faith and Uncertainty in Contemporary Societies.