In an exciting study of ideas accompanying the rise of the West, Thomas McCarthy analyzes the ideologies of race and empire that were integral to European-American expansion. He highlights the central role that conceptions of human development (civilization, progress, modernization, and the like) played in answering challenges to legitimacy through a hierarchical ordering of difference. Focusing on Kant and natural history in the eighteenth century, Mill and social Darwinism in the nineteenth, and theories of development and modernization in the twentieth, he proposes a critical theory of development which can counter contemporary neoracism and neoimperialism, and can accommodate the multiple modernities now taking shape. Offering an unusual perspective on the past and present of our globalizing world, this book will appeal to scholars and advanced students of philosophy, political theory, the history of ideas, racial and ethnic studies, social theory, and cultural studies.

Theodor W. Adorno is best known for his contributions to aesthetics and social theory. Critics have always complained about the lack of a practical, political or ethical dimension to Adorno's philosophy. In this highly original contribution to the literature on Adorno, J. M. Bernstein offers the first attempt in any language to provide an account of the ethical theory latent in Adorno's writings. Bernstein relates Adorno's ethics to major trends in contemporary moral philosophy. He analyses the full range of Adorno's major works, with a special focus on Dialectic of Enlightenment, Minima Moralia and Negative Dialectics. In developing his account Bernstein lays particular stress on Adorno's contention that the event of Auschwitz demands a new categorical imperative. This book will be widely acknowledged as the standard work on Adorno's ethics and as such will interest professionals and students of philosophy, political theory, sociology, history of ideas, art history and music.

In recent years, the relations between science and religion have been the object of renewed attention. Developments in physics, biology and the neurosciences have reinvigorated discussions about the nature of life and ultimate reality. At the same time, the growth of anti-evolutionary and intelligent design movements has led many to the view that science and religion are necessarily in conflict. This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the relations between science and religion, with contributions from historians, philosophers, scientists and theologians. It explores the impact of religion on the origins and development of science, religious reactions to Darwinism, and the link between science and secularization. It also offers in-depth discussions of contemporary issues, with perspectives from cosmology, evolutionary biology, psychology, and bioethics. The volume is rounded out with philosophical reflections on the connections between atheism and science, the nature of scientific and religious knowledge, and divine action and human freedom.

Peter Szondi is widely regarded as being among the most distinguished post-war literary critics. This first English edition of one of his most lucid and interesting series of lectures opens up his work in hermeneutics for English-speaking readers. The question of what is involved in understanding a text occupied Biblical and legal scholars long before it became a concern of literary critics. Peter Szondi here traces the development of hermeneutics through examination of the work of eighteenth-century German scholars. Ordinarily treated only as prefigurations of Schleiermacher, the work of Enlightenment theorists Johann Martin Chladenius, George Friedrich Meier, and Friedrich Ast yields valuable insight into the 'material theory' of interpretation, on which a practical interpretive methodology might be built.

Ezra Pound is one of the most visible and influential poets of the twentieth century. He is also one of the most complex, his poetry containing historical and mythical allusions, experiments of form and style and often controversial political views. Yet Pound's life and work continue to fascinate. This Introduction, first published in 2005, is designed to help students reading Pound for the first time. Pound scholar Ira B. Nadel provides a guide to the rich webs of allusion and stylistic borrowings and innovations in Pound's writing. He offers a clear overview of Pound's life, works, contexts and reception history and his multidimensional career as a poet, translator, critic, editor, anthologist and impresario, a career that placed him at the heart of literary modernism. This invaluable and accessible introduction explains the huge contribution Pound made to the development of modernism in the early twentieth century.

This is the most accessible guide available both for students of literature new to this developing field, and for students of gender studies and readers interested in the interactions of feminism, literary criticism and literature.

How was magic practised in medieval times? How did it relate to the diverse beliefs and practices that characterised this fascinating period? In Magic in the Middle Ages Richard Kieckhefer surveys the growth and development of magic in medieval times. He examines its relation to religion, science, philosophy, art, literature and politics before introducing us to the different types of magic that were used, the kinds of people who practised magic, and the reasoning behind their beliefs. In addition, he shows how magic served as a point of contact between the popular and elite classes, how the reality of magical beliefs is reflected in the fiction of medieval literature, and how the persecution of magic and witchcraft led to changes in the law. This 2000 book places magic at the crossroads of medieval culture, shedding light on many other aspects of life in the middle ages.

The astronomical material in Ovid's Fasti has been overlooked by the current trend of scholarly interest in the poem. It is this material which is the subject of this book. The author does not study Ovid's stars using the techniques of mathematical astronomy. Rather she aims to combine the methodology of recent 'programmatic' or genre-based readings with a broad cultural perspective. Arguing that the stars serve to align the Fasti with hexameter didactic poetry, she first tests the assumption that the Fasti is influenced by the Phaenomena of Aratus. A second task is to assess the value of such writing in Augustan Rome: the Fasti and its Aratean model may be removed from the literary-historical sphere and placed in the political setting of the later Augustan Principate, in which the stars had been appropriated to express the powerful connection between the Julian family and the cosmos.

This book uses a pioneering quantitative approach to investigate many aspects of the Roman Empire, such as the amount of wealth over which people disposed and the costs associated with many institutions important to the Roman economy.

The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism is a multi-authored interdisciplinary guide to the study of Christian mysticism, with an emphasis on the third through the seventeenth centuries. The book is thematically organized in terms of the central contexts, practices and concepts associated with the mystical life in early, medieval and early modern Christianity. This book looks beyond the term 'mysticism', which was an early modern invention, to explore the ways in which the ancient terms 'mystic' and 'mystical' were used in the Christian tradition: what kinds of practices, modes of life and experiences were described as 'mystical'? What understanding of Christianity and of the life of Christian perfection is articulated through mystical interpretations of scripture, mystical contemplation, mystical vision, mystical theology or mystical union? This volume both provides a clear introduction to the Christian mystical life and articulates a bold new approach to the study of mysticism.

Review
"Readers of this volume will be richly rewarded by the breadth and depth of Professor Loewe's scholarship. Divination, Mythology and Monarchy in Han China is also a stimulating introduction to important issues concerning Han intellectual and religious history and well illustrates the kind of penetrating cultural analysis that is possible with the adept use of both traditionally received texts and evidence from the archeological record." Journal of Chinese Religions
"A very valuable source of rich information....Because of rapid changes in the field, we welcome more of this kind of work, that is, collections of proven scholarship that reflect the accumulated wisdom of a veteran scholar." Cho-Yun Hsu, American Historical Review
"Shows how the study of the Han period has developed in the past few decades. This impressive collection is of value to scholars and students of Chinese religion, history, and culture." Religious Studies Review
"Anyone who prefers faddish jargon to lucid exposition is advised to look elsewhere." Journal of Interdisciplinary History
Product Description
The four centuries of the Han dynasties from 206 BC to AD 220 witnessed major developments in the ideas of sovereignty. Michael Loewe traces these changes along with some of their religious aspects, including the techniques used by emperors and others to forecast the future or to divine the present. Both mythology and the tradition of learning affected the growth of the imperial ideal that, despite its failings, was of major importance both for the Han and China's subsequent dynasties.

This fourth volume in John Pocock's great sequence on Barbarism and Religion focuses on the idea of barbarism. Barbarism was central to the history of western historiography, to the history of the enlightenment, and to Edward Gibbon himself. As a concept it was deeply problematic to enlightened historians seeking to understand their own civil societies in the light of exposure to newly-discovered civilizations hitherto beyond the reach of history. The troubled relationship between philosophy and history is addressed directly in this fourth volume.

Ancient China and Greece are two classical civilizations that have exerted far-reaching influence in numerous areas of human experience and are often invoked as the paradigms in East-West comparison. This book examines gender relations in the two ancient societies as reflected in convivial contexts such as family banquets, public festivals, and religious feasts. Two distinct patterns of interpersonal affinity and conflict emerge from the Chinese and Greek sources that show men and women organizing themselves and interacting with each other in social occasions intended for collective pursuit of pleasure. Through an analysis of the two different patterns, Yiqun Zhou illuminates the different sociopolitical mechanisms, value systems, and fabrics of human bonds in the two classical traditions. Her book will be important for readers who are interested in the comparative study of societies, gender studies, women's history, and the legacy of civilizations.