In The Lesson of this Century Popper's purpose is to warn us against the increasing violence and egoism of our society. What solutions can we offer to the problems of the environment, demography and corruption? How can we prevent the violence our society engenders? How can we preserve our democratic system while at the same time paving the way for global peace? Popper believes that the philosopher has a duty to intervene in politics and he utters a clear call to all of us to recognise our responsibilities. He reminds us that it is our actions which will create the world of tomorrow. The interviews in this volume were originally given to the Italian journalist Giancarlo Bosetti. The volume also includes the transcript of an interview about the moral dangers of television not previously available in English.
The book examines cinema in post-1989 Europe by looking at how the new post-Cold War cinematographic co-productions articulate the political and cultural objectives of a new Europe as they redefine a European identity.
This book investigates Italian foreign cultural policy from the 1947 Constitution to the present. How has Italy conveyed its language and culture to the outside world? Where does the Italian experience fit into a wider international context? Finally, what can be learned from the answers to such questions in relation to the Italian experience in Australia?
This book offers an account of ten crucial moments in the history of ideas, which represent ten key moments of the discovery of pluralism. From the Indian emperor Ashoka to Origen and from Nicola Cusano to Las Casas, Montaigne, Lessing, giants who opened the way to the thought of tolerance, challenging the dogma of a unique truth dictated by authority, followed in this reconstruction by other glowing thinkers of the twentieth century, such as Horace Kallen, Margaret Mead, and Jacques Dupuis. These protagonists, each in their own way, battled against monism for the respect of differences and for the knowledge of otherness. This kind of hall of fame of pluralist thinkers ends with the most important figure of the pluralism of values, Isaiah Berlin, of whom an unpublished interview appears here for the first time in English. The volume is unique in this two-thousand-year-old variety of voices gathered under the denominator of cultural pluralism that they embody in the deepest and most challenging sense, often at the limits and beyond the limits of heresy. It is of great value and interest to scholars and students of theoretical, moral, political philosophy, sociology, comparative studies, comparative literature, religious diversity, religious studies, anthropology, and all those interested in the history of tolerance.
A comprehensive introduction to the philosophical and political thought of Karl Popper divided into three parts. The first part provides a biography, the second part examines his works and recurring themes and the last part looks at his critics.
This volume combines rigorous empirical and theoretical analyses with political engagement to look beyond reductive short-hands that ignore the historical evolution and varieties of Islamic doctrine and that deny the complexities of Muslim societies' encounters with modernity itself. Are Islam and democracy compatible? Can we shed the language of 'Islam vs. the West' for new political imaginaries? The authors analyze struggles over political legitimacy since the Arab Spring and the rise of Al Qaeda and ISIS in their historical and political complexity across the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. Distinguishing multiculturalism from interculturalism and understanding multiple modernities, philosophers in the volume tease out the complexities of civilizational encounters. The volume also shows how the Paris massacres or the Danish caricature controversy do not remain confined to Europe but influence struggles and confrontations within Muslim societies. Gender and Islam are addressed from a comparative perspective bringing into conversation not only the experience of different Muslim countries with Islamic law but also by analysing Jewish family law.
At the age of eight, Karl Popper was puzzling over the idea of infinity and by fifteen was beginning to take a keen interest in his father's well-stocked library of books. Unended Quest recounts these moments and many others in the life of one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century, providing an indispensable account of the ideas that influenced him most. As an introduction to Popper's philosophy, Unended Quest also shines. Popper lucidly explains the central ideas in his work, making this book ideal for anyone coming to Popper's life and work for the first time.
In this long-awaited volume, Jeremy Shearmur and Piers Norris Turner bring to light Popper's most important unpublished and uncollected writings from the time of The Open Society until his death in 1994. After The Open Society: Selected Social and Political Writings reveals the development of Popper's political and philosophical thought during and after the Second World War, from his early socialism through to the radical humanitarianism of The Open Society. The papers in this collection, many of which are available here for the first time, demonstrate the clarity and pertinence of Popper's thinking on such topics as religion, history, Plato and Aristotle, while revealing a lifetime of unwavering political commitment. After The Open Society illuminates the thought of one of the twentieth century's greatest philosophers and is essential reading for anyone interested in the recent course of philosophy, politics, history and society.
Sir Karl Popper (1902 1994) is one of the most controversial and widely read philosophers of the 20th century. His influence has been enormous in the fields of epistemology, logic, metaphysics, methodology of science, the philosophy of physics and biology, political philosophy, and the social sciences, and his intellectual achievement has stimulated many scholars in a wide range of disciplines. These three volumes of previously unpublished essays, which originate in the congress 'Karl Popper 2002' held in Vienna to mark the centenary of Popper's birth, provide an up-to-date examination of many aspects of Popper's life and thought. Volume 1 discusses a variety of topics in Popper's early intellectual history, and considers also some features of his remarkable influence outside philosophy. The second part of the volume contains papers that from different political perspectives tackle problems raised by Popper's principal contribution to political theory, democracy and community, "The Open Society and Its Enemies". Volume 2 deals especially with Popper's metaphysics and epistemology, including his proposal (critical rationalism) that it is through sharp criticism rather than through the provision of justification that our knowledge progresses. Several papers tackle the problem of the empirical basis, and offer decidedly different answers to some unresolved questions. The volume contains also a number of papers evaluating Popper's celebrated, but much contested, solution to Hume's problem of induction. Volume 3 examines Popper's contribution to our understanding of logic, mathematics, physics, biology, and the social sciences, from economics to education. Among the topics covered are: verisimilitude, quantum and statistical physics, the propensity interpretation of probability, evolutionary epistemology, the so-called Positivimusstreit, Popper's critique of Marx, and his defence of the rationality principle as a component of all social explanations.
