Although Auguste Comte is conventionally acknowledged as one of the founders of sociology and as a key representative of positivism, few new editions of his writings have been published in the English language in this century. He has become virtually dissociated from the history of modern positivism and the most recent debates about it. Gertrud Lenzer maintains that the work of Comte is, for better or for worse, essential to an understanding of the modern period of positivism. This collection provides (...) new access to the work of Comte and gives practitioners of various disciplines the possibility of reassessing concepts that were first introduced in Comte's writings. Today much of the ordinary business of academic disciplines is conducted under the assumption that the realm of science is essentially separate from the realms of politics and science. A close reading of Comte will reveal how deeply such current ideas and theories were originally embedded in a particular political context. One of his central methodological principles was that the theory of society had to be removed from the arena of political practice precisely in order to control that practice by means of these same sciences. It is in Comte's work that the reader will be able to observe how the forces of social and political reaction began to be powerfully organized to combat the critical forces in its own and later eras. Auguste Comte and Positivism will be of importance to the work of philosophers, sociologists, political theorists, and historians. (shrink)

Combining knowledge of social policy and practice with insights from poststructural and feminist theory, the text demonstrates how democratic citizens and the political are continually recreated.

In the seventeenth century, a vision arose which was to captivate the Western imagination for the next three hundred years: the vision of Cosmopolis, a society as rationally ordered as the Newtonian view of nature. While fueling extraordinary advances in all fields of human endeavor, this vision perpetuated a hidden yet persistent agenda: the delusion that human nature and society could be fitted into precise and manageable rational categories. Stephen Toulmin confronts that agenda—its illusions and its consequences for our present (...) and future world. "By showing how different the last three centuries would have been if Montaigne, rather than Descartes, had been taken as a starting point, Toulmin helps destroy the illusion that the Cartesian quest for certainty is intrinsic to the nature of science or philosophy."—Richard M. Rorty, University of Virginia "[Toulmin] has now tackled perhaps his most ambitious theme of all.... His aim is nothing less than to lay before us an account of both the origins and the prospects of our distinctively modern world. By charting the evolution of modernity, he hopes to show us what intellectual posture we ought to adopt as we confront the coming millennium."—Quentin Skinner, New York Review of Books. (shrink)

What is the purpose of higher education, and how should we pursue it? Debates over these issues raged in the late nineteenth century as reformers introduced a new kind of university—one dedicated to free inquiry and the advancement of knowledge. In the first major study of moral education in American universities, Julie Reuben examines the consequences of these debates for modern intellectual life. Based on extensive research at eight universities—Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Chicago, Stanford, Michigan, and California at Berkeley—Reuben (...) examines the aims of university reformers in the context of nineteenth-century ideas about truth. She argues that these educators tried to apply new scientific standards to moral education, but that their modernization efforts ultimately failed. By exploring the complex interaction between institutional and intellectual change, Reuben enhances our understanding of the modern university, the secularization of intellectual life, and the association of scientific objectivity with value-neutrality. (shrink)

Michael Foucault's writing has shaped the teaching of half a dozen disciplines, ranging from literary criticism to the history of criminology. But none of his books offers a satisfactory introduction to the entire complex body of his work. The Foucault Reader precisely serves that purpose. It contains selections from each area of Foucault's thought, a wealth of previously unpublished writings, and an interview with Foucault during which he discusses his philosophy with unprecedented candor.

A 1999 review of governmentality literature, derived from Foucault, which broke new ground in ethics and politics.

Derrida, in some remarks about the inauguration of new refuge-cities in Europe and America,argues for the invention of a new cosmopolitical polity which would be instituted on the basis of an ethics of hospitality. The implications run up against current notions of sovereigntyand challenge many current assumptions about citizenship and rights which draw from Enlightenment thought. This article will sketch these issues, linking up notions of rights and sovereignty inherited from the Enlightenment to their possible transmutation in contemporary conditions and (...) to questions of an ethics of responsibility and hospitality. It will examine the implications for the dissolution of the public sphere as it is now constituted and the emergence of culturally plural and transmodern forms of sociality. (shrink)

Derrida, in some remarks about the inauguration of new refuge-cities in Europe and America,argues for the invention of a new cosmopolitical polity which would be instituted on the basis of an ethics of hospitality. The implications run up against current notions of sovereigntyand challenge many current assumptions about citizenship and rights which draw from Enlightenment thought. This article will sketch these issues, linking up notions of rights and sovereignty inherited from the Enlightenment to their possible transmutation in contemporary conditions and (...) to questions of an ethics of responsibility and hospitality. It will examine the implications for the dissolution of the public sphere as it is now constituted and the emergence of culturally plural and transmodern forms of sociality. (shrink)

“ S pace, K no w l edge and P o w e r ” , en tr ev i s t a r ea l i z a d a en 1982 y pub li cada en P aul R ab i no w , The Foucau l t R eade r , N ueva Y o r k, 1984. A quí se pub li ca de acue r do a l a ve r s i ón f r (...) ancesa, t r aduc i da por P ab l o Bli t s t e i n y Tadeo L im a. (shrink)

Pragmatism provoked both admiration and fear, as global changes brought into the twentieth century provoked a revisioning of the cultural narratives about who the citizen and child are and should be. In a new book edited by Thomas S. Popkewitz, scholars representing twelve nations provide original chapters to explore the epistemic features and cultural theses figured in Dewey's writings as they assembled in the discourses of public schooling. The significance of Dewey in the book is not about Dewey as the (...) messenger of pragmatism, but in locating different cultural, political, and educational terrains in which debates about modernity, the modern self, and the making of the citizen occurred. (shrink)

As a starting point this paper takes Dewey’s nowadays often stressed modernity and examines his social philosophy against the background of the current debates on republicanism and communitarianism. Particularly, the anaysis of Dewey’sThe Public and its Problem concludes that the attention being paid to Dewey is problematic as specific religious assumptions — explicitly developed inA Common Faith -lie in the background of his social philosophy, and are hardly being recognized. However, as it shall be shown, without considering the religious basis, (...) neither Dewey’s social philosophy nor his educational theory can be properly understood. (shrink)