Download or read book Existential Utopia written by Michael Marder and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-11-24 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Radical political thought of the 20th century was dominated by utopia, but the failure of communism in Eastern Europe and its disavowal in China has brought on the need for a new model of utopian thought. This book thus seeks to redefine the concept of utopia and bring it to bear on today's politics. The original essays, contributed by key thinkers such as Gianni Vattimo and Jean-Luc Nancy, highlight the connection between utopian theory and practice. The book reassesses the legacy of utopia and conceptualizes alternatives to the neo-liberal, technocratic regimes prevalent in today's world. It argues that only utopia in its existential sense, grounded in the lived time and space of politics, can distance itself from mainstream ideology and not be at the service of technocratic regimes, while paying attention to the material conditions of human life. Existential Utopia offers a new and exciting interpretation of utopia in contemporary culture and a much-needed intervention into the philosophical and political discussion of utopian thinking that is both accessible to students and comprehensive.
Download or read book Utopia written by Thomas More and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2023-12-03 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utopia is a work of fiction and socio-political satire by Thomas More published in 1516 in Latin. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. Many aspects of More's description of Utopia are reminiscent of life in monasteries.
Download or read book Who Needs a World View written by Raymond Geuss and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-19 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the world’s most provocative philosophers attacks the obsession with comprehensive intellectual systems—the perceived need for a world view. We live in a unitary cosmos created and cared for in all its details by a benevolent god. That, for centuries, was the starting point for much philosophical and religious thinking in the West. The task was to accommodate ourselves to that view and restrict ourselves to working out how the pieces fit together within a rigidly determined framework. In this collection of essays, one of our most creative contemporary philosophers explores the problems and pathologies of the habit of overly systematic thinking that we have inherited from this past. Raymond Geuss begins by making a general case for flexible and skeptical thinking with room for doubt and unresolved complexity. He examines the ideas of two of his most influential teachers—one systematic, the other pragmatic—in light of Nietzsche’s ideas about appearance and reality. The chapters that follow concern related moral, psychological, and philosophical subjects. These include the idea that one should make one’s life a work of art, the importance of games, the concept of need, and the nature of manifestoes. Along the way, Geuss ranges widely, from ancient philosophy to modern art, with his characteristic combination of clarity, acuity, and wit. Who Needs a World View? is a provocative and enlightening demonstration of what philosophy can achieve when it abandons its ambitions for completeness, consistency, and unity.
Download or read book Utopia written by Sir Thomas More and published by Primedia E-launch LLC. This book was released on 1969 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edition includes: -Several illustrations from the original work -Extended and up to date introduction -A discussion of the structure of the book First published in 1516, Saint Thomas More's Utopia is one of the most important works of European humanism. Through the voice of the mysterious traveller Raphael Hythloday, More describes a pagan, communist city-state governed by reason. Addressing such issues as religious pluralism, women's rights, state-sponsored education, colonialism, and justified warfare, Utopia seems remarkably contemporary nearly five centuries after it was written, and it remains a foundational text in philosophy and political theory. Precminent More scholar Clarence H. Miller does justice to the full range of More's rhetoric in this new translation. Professor Miller includes a helpful introduction that outlines some of the important problems and issues that Utopia raises, and also provides informative commentary to assist the reader throughout this challenging and rewarding exploration of the meaning of political community.
Download or read book The Concept of Utopia written by Ruth Levitas and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Probes the contested concept of utopia, examining the different ways in which it has been used by commentators and theorists in both liberal and Marxist radiations. The works of Karl Mannheim, Georges Sorel, Ernst Bloch, William Morris, and Herbert Marcuse are studied. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Black Utopias written by Jayna Brown and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-11 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Black Utopias Jayna Brown takes up the concept of utopia as a way of exploring alternative states of being, doing, and imagining in Black culture. Musical, literary, and mystic practices become utopian enclaves in which Black people engage in modes of creative worldmaking. Brown explores the lives and work of Black women mystics Sojourner Truth and Rebecca Cox Jackson, musicians Alice Coltrane and Sun Ra, and the work of speculative fiction writers Samuel Delany and Octavia Butler as they decenter and destabilize the human, radically refusing liberal humanist ideas of subjectivity and species. Brown demonstrates that engaging in utopian practices Black subjects imagine and manifest new genres of existence and forms of collectivity. For Brown, utopia consists of those moments in the here and now when those excluded from the category human jump into other onto-epistemological realms. Black people—untethered from the hope of rights, recognition, or redress—celebrate themselves as elements in a cosmic effluvium.
Download or read book The Grasshopper written by Bernard Suits and published by Broadview Press. This book was released on 2005-11-09 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the mid twentieth century the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein famously asserted that games are indefinable; there are no common threads that link them all. "Nonsense," says the sensible Bernard Suits: "playing a game is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles." The short book Suits wrote demonstrating precisely that is as playful as it is insightful, as stimulating as it is delightful. Suits not only argues that games can be meaningfully defined; he also suggests that playing games is a central part of the ideal of human existence, so games belong at the heart of any vision of Utopia. Originally published in 1978, The Grasshopper is now re-issued with a new introduction by Thomas Hurka and with additional material (much of it previously unpublished) by the author, in which he expands on the ideas put forward in The Grasshopper and answers some questions that have been raised by critics.
Download or read book Patterns of Order and Utopia written by Dorothy F. Donnelly and published by Basingstoke, Hampshire MacMillan. This book was released on 1998 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today the term utopia is applied to any philosophy that contains traces of what is called utopian thought - any social, intellectual, political, religious, or psychological theory that speculates about the possibility of someday achieving the good life. Yet this looseness in definition did not always exist. This text looks at how an historical shift in attitude regarding the notion of order directly influenced both the tradition of utopian thought and additional other worldly concepts of an ideal existence. The study tracks the changes in point of view from the Greek period through the Middle Ages and up to the Renaissance. Author Dorothy Donnelly argues that the concept of order is a central clue to an understanding of the differences among utopias on the one hand, and between utopias and otherworldly visions of an ideal existence on the other. Donnelly begins with an analysis of Plato's Republic and concludes with a discussion on the subject of order and ideal existence that is found in Francis Bacon's New Atlantis.
Download or read book The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K Le Guin s The Dispossessed written by Laurence Davis and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2005 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Description of the seductions - and snares - of self-managed communist or, in other words, anarchist society. This title, an edited collection of original essays on "Le Guin's The Dispossessed", represents an exploration of the political ramifications of this work by a wide interdisciplinary swath of scholars from around the world.
Download or read book Existence and Utopia written by Bernard Susser and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The only complete study of Buber as a political thinker. Shed new light upon Buber's I Thou, while also attempting to understand Buber's Zionist thought and activity in a new and fresh manner.
Download or read book Utopianism A Very Short Introduction written by Lyman Tower Sargent and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-09-23 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are many debates about utopia - What constitutes a utopia? Are utopias benign or dangerous? Is the idea of utopianism essential to Christianity or heretical? What is the relationship between utopia and ideology? This Very Short Introduction explores these issues and examines utopianism and its history. Lyman Sargent discusses the role of utopianism in literature, and in the development of colonies and in immigration. The idea of utopia has become commonplace in social and political thought, both negatively and positively. Some thinkers see a trajectory from utopia to totalitarianism with violence an inevitable part of the mix. Others see utopia directly connected to freedom and as a necessary element in the fight against totalitarianism. In Christianity utopia is labelled as both heretical and as a fundamental part of Christian belief, and such debates are also central to such fields as architecture, town and city planning, and sociology among many others Sargent introduces and summarizes the debates over the utopia in literature, communal studies, social and political theory, and theology. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book Everyday Utopias written by Davina Cooper and published by Duke University Press Books. This book was released on 2013-12-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyday utopias enact conventional activities in unusual ways. Instead of dreaming about a better world, participants seek to create it. As such, their activities provide vibrant and stimulating contexts for considering the terms of social life, of how we live together and are governed. Weaving conceptual theorizing together with social analysis, Davina Cooper examines utopian projects as seemingly diverse as a feminist bathhouse, state equality initiatives, community trading networks, and a democratic school where students and staff collaborate in governing. She draws from firsthand observations and interviews with participants to argue that utopian projects have the potential to revitalize progressive politics through the ways their innovative practices incite us to rethink mainstream concepts including property, markets, care, touch, and equality. This is no straightforward story of success, however, but instead a tale of the challenges concepts face as they move between being imagined, actualized, hoped for, and struggled over. As dreaming drives new practices and practices drive new dreams, everyday utopias reveal how hard work, feeling, ethical dilemmas, and sometimes, failure, bring concepts to life.
Download or read book Mindful of Utopia written by Merritt Abrash and published by . This book was released on 2002-12-01 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Gaping Door can be also titled Closer to the Immutable Truth, Closer to Divine Ground, or The Mystery of Sacred Ecstasy. It argues that the chief illness, which causes the greatest disorder and affliction of any age is straying from truth and love; it is to deviate from the unchanging truth; it is the insensibility to be unconcerned or insufficiently concerned about our "personal eschatology." Without the quest for truth, which is inseparable from the quest for love, our existence becomes pointless, comfortless and beset with perils for neither felicity nor safety can be ensured by believing in falsehoods and abiding in untruth or half-truth. Any epistemic position which holds disbelief in God, robs one from the incentives for moral and educational improvements, from esteeming the intellectual power, from passionate aspiring, and more importantly, deprives one of the need to love. The power in accordance with which everything exists, preserves its being and is conceived, is the power of God, and human life is regarded as a supreme gift and act of God's dynamic, creative and inimitable love. Without God without the existence of ultimate truth and love, there is no possibility of being perfected and hence, there can neither be prospect of true progress nor true being. The spiritual evolution is viewed not as being brought from below but called forth from above; the final point the Omega is the dynamic, magnetic and appealing power to which the entire creation is moving upward. This book presents the "ethics of holiness" as the unequivocal way to get light on truth; it describes the process through which human reason can be perfected and employed properly in attaining true knowledge; it discusses the existence of evil and some of its functions, and the necessity and meaning of suffering; it examines the conception of true greatness of the soul; it explores thoroughly the concept of genuine love being viewed as our identity, dignity and fulfillment, and thus will serve the needs of adult believers and unbelievers of all ages, and all walks of life. The goal of this work is not only to confirm the readers' faith (in particular Christian faith) but also to challenge and stimulate thinking in areas of human freedom as opposed to true freedom, spousal love, abortion, and other critical issues facing real seekers of truth and the wider culture. It represents an integration of knowledge from all relevant fields (e.g., science, theology, psychology, philosophy) to offer a logical and convincing argument in the quest after truth and love in the quest to discover the inviolable beatitude we knowingly or unknowingly are searching for.
Download or read book History and Utopia written by E. M. Cioran and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-01-20 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Only a monster can allow himself the luxury of seeing things as they are,” writes E. M. Cioran, the Romanian-born philosopher who has rightly been compared to Samuel Beckett. In History and Utopia, Cioran the monster writes of politics in its broadest sense, of history, and of the utopian dream. His views are, to say the least, provocative. In one essay he casts a scathing look at democracy, that “festival of mediocrity”; in another he turns his uncompromising gaze on Russia, its history, its evolution, and what he calls “the virtues of liberty.” In the dark shadow of Stalin and Hitler, he writes of tyrants and tyranny with rare lucidity and convincing logic. In “Odyssey of Rancor,” he examines the deep-rooted dream in all of us to “hate our neighbors,” to take immediate and irremediable revenge. And, in the final essay, he analyzes the notion of the “golden age,” the biblical Eden, the utopia of so many poets and thinkers.
Download or read book Utopia A Way of Life written by Hrabia Rudy Sikora and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2007-09 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Radical Utopianism and Cultural Studies written by John Storey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-01-25 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Radical Utopianism and Cultural Studies, John Storey looks at the concept of utopianism from a cultural studies perspective and argues that radical utopianism can awaken the political promise of cultural studies. Between the Preface and the Postscript, there are seven chapters that explore different aspects of radical utopianism. The book begins with a definition of what radical utopianism means, with its productive combination of defamiliarization and desire. From there, it considers Thomas More’s invention of the concept of utopia with its double articulation of what is and what could be, Herbert Marcuse’s utopian rereading of Sigmund Freud’s concept of repression, Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers, the Paris Commune, and the Haight-Ashbury counterculture. In the final chapter, Storey examines two versions of utopian capitalism: retro and post. Although the main focus here is on Donald Trump’s presidential election campaign and Paul Mason’s recent bestseller Postcapitalism, the chaper begins with a brief discussion of Karl Marx on capitalism. Each chapter, in a different way, argues that radical utopianism defamiliarizes the manufactured naturalness of the here and now, making it conceivable to believe that another world is possible. This book provides an ideal introduction to utopianism for students of cultural studies as well as students within a number of related disciplines such as sociology, literature, history, politics, and media studies.
Download or read book Utopianism for a Dying Planet written by Gregory Claeys and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-09-06 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the utopian tradition offers answers to today’s environmental crises In the face of Earth’s environmental breakdown, it is clear that technological innovation alone won’t save our planet. A more radical approach is required, one that involves profound changes in individual and collective behavior. Utopianism for a Dying Planet examines the ways the expansive history of utopian thought, from its origins in ancient Sparta and ideas of the Golden Age through to today's thinkers, can offer moral and imaginative guidance in the face of catastrophe. The utopian tradition, which has been critical of conspicuous consumption and luxurious indulgence, might light a path to a society that emphasizes equality, sociability, and sustainability. Gregory Claeys unfolds his argument through a wide-ranging consideration of utopian literature, social theory, and intentional communities. He defends a realist definition of utopia, focusing on ideas of sociability and belonging as central to utopian narratives. He surveys the development of these themes during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries before examining twentieth- and twenty-first-century debates about alternatives to consumerism. Claeys contends that the current global warming limit of 1.5C (2.7F) will result in cataclysm if there is no further reduction in the cap. In response, he offers a radical Green New Deal program, which combines ideas from the theory of sociability with proposals to withdraw from fossil fuels and cease reliance on unsustainable commodities. An urgent and comprehensive search for antidotes to our planet’s destruction, Utopianism for a Dying Planet asks for a revival of utopian ideas, not as an escape from reality, but as a powerful means of changing it.
