History begins inseparably with the birth of the polis and of philosophy. Both represent a unity in strife. History is life that no longer takes itself for granted. To speak, then, of the meaning of history is not to tell a story with a projected happy or unhappy ending, as Western civilization has hoped, at least since the French Revolution. History's meaning is the meaning of the struggle in which being both reveals and conceals itself. Technological society represents both the (...) triumph of historicity and its implosion, since here humans turn from reaching for the sacrum imperium - life lived in the perspective of truth and justice - to the mundane satisfaction of mundane needs, to life lived for the sake of catering to life. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The Czech philosopher Jan Patocka (1907-1977), who studied with Husserl and Heidegger, is widely recognized as the most influential thinker to come from postwar Eastern Europe. Refusing to join the Communist party after World War II, he was banned from academia and publication for the rest of his life, except for a brief time following the liberalizations of the Prague spring of 1968. Joining Vaclav Havel and Jiri Hajek as a spokesman for the Chart 77 human-rights declaration of 1977, Patocka (...) was harassed by authorities, arrested, and finally died of a heart attack during prolonged interrogation. Plato and Europe, arguably Patocka’s most important book, consists of a series of lectures delivered in the homes of friends after his last banishment from the academy just three years before his death. Here, he presents his most mature ideas about the history of Western philosophy, arguing that the idea of the care of the soul is fundamental to the philosophical tradition beginning with the Greeks. Explaining how the care of the soul is elaborated as the problem of how human beings may make their world one of truth and justice, Patocka develops this thesis through a treatment of Plato, Democritus, and Aristotle, showing how considerations about the soul are of central importance in their writings. He demonstrates in vivid fashion how this idea forms the spiritual heritage of Europe. (shrink)

“Supposing that truth is a women-what then?” This is the very first sentence in Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil . Not very often are philosophers so disarmingly explicit in their intention to discomfort the reader. In fact, one might say that the natural state of Nietzsche’s reader is one of perplexity. Yet it is in the process of overcoming the perplexity that one realizes how rewarding to have one’s ideas challenged. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche critiques the mediocre in (...) modernity and challenges the reader to accept their state of becoming and accept improvisation and creativity of the process. Nietzsche’s book is carefully designed to disorient the reader, to systematically provoke and tease her to the point of stealing away her certainties. It is challenging yet rewarding to overcome the perplexities of Nietzsche’s teachings. (shrink)

The enlargement of the European Union to include eventually Turkey and the former communist countries is a major challenge for our understanding of the meaning of Europe as a geopolitical, social and cultural space. It is also a question of the identity of Europe as one shaped by social or systemic integration. With the diminishing significance of national borders within the EU, the outer territorial frontier is also losing its significance and Europe will become more and more postwestern. It thus (...) appears that the eastern frontier is more flexible than was previously thought. The EU is now at the decisive point of moving beyond postnationality to a transnational encounter with multiple civilizational forms. Enlargement is not just about getting bigger but is crucially a matter of cultural transformation and therefore it differs from all previous dynamics of Europeanization. Rather than tell the story of Europeanization exclusively as one of national histories and of closure, a civilizational analytic offers the possibility of multiple modernities and thus of a more appropriate theorization of the current situation. (shrink)

First published in English in 1953, this important book from eminent philosopher Karl Jaspers deals with the philsophy of the history of mankind. More specifically, its avowed aim is to assist in heightening our awareness of the _present_ by placing it within the framework of the long obscurity of prehistory and the boundless realm of possibilities which lie within the undecided future.This analysis is split into 3 parts: World history The present and the future The meaning of history.

Avec une rare intrépidité mais solidement préparé à la tâche, l'historien élabore une fresque de la fin du 19e siècle (1894) à nos jours. Trois grandes époques : l'avant-guerre, l'entre-deux-guerres et l'après-guerre icônisées en trois héros ou plutôt héraults : Barrès, Gide, Sartre. Sorte de "roman" intellectuel très vivant et panorama diachronique enlevant. [SDM].

This book assesses the German liberal theological tradition in the early years of the twentieth century, concentrating in particular on the work of Ernst Troeltsch. It locates theology in its social and political context, and seeks to understand the period on its own terms and not through the distorting lens of the First World War.

The Protestant ethic — a moral code stressing hard work, rigorous self-discipline, and the organization of one's life in the service of God — was made famous by sociologist and political economist Max Weber. In this brilliant study (his best-known and most controversial), he opposes the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism and its view that change takes place through "the struggle of opposites." Instead, he relates the rise of a capitalist economy to the Puritan determination to work out anxiety over (...) salvation or damnation by performing good deeds — an effort that ultimately discouraged belief in predestination and encouraged capitalism. Weber's classic study has long been required reading in college and advanced high school social studies classrooms. (shrink)

Pourquoi saint Paul? Pourquoi requérir cet «apôtre», d’autant plus suspect qu’il s’est, de toute évidence, auto-proclamé tel, et que son nom est couramment associé aux dimensions les plus institutionnelles et les moins ouvertes du christianisme? Et quel usage prétendons-nous faire du dispositif de la foi chrétienne, dont il semble proprement impossible de dissocier la figure et les textes de Paul? Pourquoi invoquer et analyser cette fable? Ce qui va nous retenir, quant à nous, dans l’oeuvre de Paul est cette connexion (...) paradoxale, dont il est l’inventeur, entre un sujet sans identité et une loi sans support, qui fonde la possibilité dans l’histoire d’une prédication universelle. Le geste inouï de Paul est de soustraire la vérité à l’emprise communautaire, qu’il s’agisse d’un peuple, d’une cité, d’un Empire, d’un territoire, ou d’une classe sociale. Repenser ce geste et sa force instituante, en déplier les chicanes, est à coup sûr une nécessité contemporaine. (shrink)

Postcolonial theory, particularly in its poststructuralist variant, presents important challenges to sociology's self-image, and open debate on these attempts to `unsettle' the modernist, Westernized disciplines is both conceptually and politically interesting. However, the postcolonial unsettling of sociology has to be actively extracted and reconstructed from the key texts of postcolonial theory - it is not transparently available as such - and this is the first main goal of the article. Particular attention is paid to the framings of these issues by (...) Stuart Hall, Homi Bhahba and Robert Young. Second, the article offers the elements of a counter-critique, pointing out where the anti-sociological impulses of postcolonialism are exaggerated or unfounded, and also indicating serious internal problems for postcolonial theory when it is pitched as a direct and superior alternative to the modernist sociological `imaginary'. The continuing centrality (and difficulty) of questions on the nature of and purpose of explanatory social theory and postcolonial cultural studies are discussed. (shrink)