The second edition of this seminal work includes the original text, first published in 1974, alongside two major new chapters. Power: A Radical View assesses the main debates about how to conceptualize and study power, including the influential contributions of Michel Foucault. Power Revisited reconsiders Steven Lukes' own views in light of these debates and of criticisms of his original argument. With a new introduction and bibliographical essay, this book has consolidated its reputation as a classic work and a major reference point within Social and Political Theory. It can be used on modules across the Social and Political Sciences dealing with the concept of power and its manifestation in the world. It is also essential reading for all undergraduate and postgraduates interested in the history of Social and Political Thought. New to this Edition: - An additional introduction explaining the context of the first edition of Power: A Radical View - Two new chapters defending Lukes' original argument and assessing the main debates about power since - A detailed guide to further reading on essential concepts and key thinkers
Individualism embraces a wide diversity of meanings and is widely used by those who criticise and by those who praise Western societies and their culture, by historians and literary scholars in search of the emergence of 'the individual', by anthropologists claiming that there are different, culturally shaped conceptions of the individual or 'person', by philosophers debating what form social science explanations should take and by political theorists defending liberal principles. In this classic text, Steven Lukes discusses what 'individualism' has meant in various national traditions and across different provinces of thought, analysing it into its component unit-ideas and doctrines. He further argues that it now plays a malign ideological role, for it has come to evoke a socially-constructed body of ideas whose illusory unity is deployed to suggest that redistributive policies are neither feasible nor desirable and to deny that there are institutional alternatives to the market.
Do we as humans have no shared standards by which we can understand each other? Do we truly have divergent views about what constitutes good and evil, harm and welfare, dignity and humiliation, or is there some underlying commonality that wins out? These questions show up everywhere, from the debate over female circumcision to the UN Declaration of Human Rights. They become ever more pressing in an age of mass immigration, religious extremism and the rise of identity politics. So by what right do we judge particular practices as barbaric? Who are the real barbarians? This provocative book takes an enlightening look at what we believe, why we believe it and whether there really is an irreparable moral discord between 'us' and 'them'.
By turns witty and profound, The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat is a novel in the spirit of Gulliver's Travels or Animal Farm. Telling the story of the travels of a Professor Caritat, who is in search of the perfect world, Steven Lukes us on an irreverent romp through the history of western political philosophy. Doing for that discipline what Sophie's World did for philosophy in general, The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat is both a refreshing humorous introduction to the clasing ideologies of our time, and a passionate defence of the much-abused Enlightenment and its core values of reason, freedom and tolerance.
With debates on the meaning of “liberal society” more heated than ever, this is a timely re-issue of a classic text Can the tension between relativism and the moral universalism current in contemporary politics be resolved within the framework of liberalism? How is liberal society to interpret the diversity of morals? Is pluralism the appropriate response? How does pluralism differ from the widely condemned ethnocentric relativism—“liberalism for the Liberals, cannibalism for the cannibals”? Confronting liberal thought with its own limitations, Steven Lukes’ work is more relevant than ever. While recognizing the dangers of moral imperialism, Lukes argues that a relativist position based on identifying clearly distinct cultural and moral communities is incoherent. Drawing on work in anthropology and philosophy, he examines the nature of social justice, the politics of identity and human rights theory.
A whirlwind tour through the utopias of modernity The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat is a brilliant fictional excursion through Western political philosophy from one of our most original thinkers. Professor Caritat, a middle-aged Candide, walks naively from his native land to the neighbouring countries of Utilitaria, Communitaria, and Libertaria on a quest to find the best of all possible worlds. Freed from the confines of his ivory tower, this wandering intellectual is made to confront the perplexed state of modern thinking in a dazzling comedy of ideas.
The law was central to Durkheim's sociological theory and to his efforts to establish sociology as a distinctive discipline. This revised and updated second edition of Durkheim and the Law brings together key texts which demonstrate the development of Durkheim's thinking on the sociology of law, several of them newly translated here. The editors, both world-renowned Durkheim scholars, provide a comprehensive analysis of the intellectual significance and distinctiveness of Durkheim's work on the subject. They show how his ideas evolved over time; how they contributed to the development of a distinctively Durkheimian vision of a science of society; and they provide a comprehensive assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of his theorizing about law, as well as its continuing relevance for contemporary sociology. Enriched with a new introduction and useful learning features, this book remains a major reference for students of socio-legal theory.
This study of Durkheim seeks to help the reader to achieve a historical understanding of his ideas and to form critical judgments about their value. To some extent these tow aims are contradictory. On the one hand, one seeks to understand: what did Durkheim really mean, how did he see the world, how did his ideas related to one another and how did they develop, how did they related to their biographical and historical context, how were they received, what influence did they have and to what criticism were they subjected, what was it like not to make certain distinctions, not to see certain errors, of fact or of logic, not to know what has subsequently become known? On the other hand, one seeks to assess: how valuable and how valid are the ideas, to what fruitful insights and explanations do they lead, how do they stand up to analysis and to the evidence, what is their present value? Yet it seems that it is only by inducing oneself not to see and only by seeing them that one can make a critical assessment. The only solution is to pursue both aims--seeing and not seeing--simultaneously. More particularly, this book has the primary object of achieving that sympathetic understanding without which no adequate critical assessment is possible. It is a study in intellectual history which is also intended as a contribution to sociological theory.
This fascinating study, Steven Lukes, one of the foremost political theorists writing in English today, examines value pluralism and moral conflict and their implications for political thinking and practice. In Parts I and II he discusses them directly and their consequences for how we are to think about equality, liberty, power, and authority. In Part III he focuses on the non-obvious role of morality in Marxist theory and practice, and in Part IV he examines the contributions of contemporary political thinkers, including Vaclav Havel. In the final section he puts theory to the test, looking at important political issues and showing how political moralities influence the world we live in. This book will be of particular interest to teachers and students of political theory, political philosophy, and moral philosophy.
An examination of the literary device of narrative asides, including parenthetical remarks addressed directly to the reader which interrupt the logical progression of the story and establish a relationship between the narrator and the narratee. Narrative asides in Luke-Acts are located, categorized according to their function, and examined within their literary context. With this discussion in mind, the book offers a narrative-critical exploration of the relationship of asides to the plot, narrator, and audience of Luke-Acts.
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