The Age of Curiosity
The Age of Curiosity

Author: Simone Broders

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2021-05-10

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 3110722208

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Challenging the ‘success story’ of curiosity from original sin to intellectual virtue, this study uses an innovative methodological approach to the history of ideas as a non-teleological neural network based on current research in information technology and neurophysiology. The network offers a dynamic alternative to the ‘development’ of curiosity within the progress-oriented mythology of the Enlightenment, emphasizing the oscillation and interaction of ideas within the processes of their construction, as well as exposing the power relations behind them. The text corpus focuses on enactments of curiosity in English literature of the 'Long' Eighteenth Century (c. 1680-1818), such as transgression of boundaries, breach of taboo, gendered curiosity, sensationalism, or academic endeavour, bringing together a variety of examples from all major genres. The Age of Curiosity contributes to current debates on a post-Foucauldian renewal of Lovejoy’s history of ideas in Enlightenment studies, exploring both curiosity as an indispensable trait for the search of answers to the fundamental yet unresolved questions of ‘identity’ or ‘truth’, and its potential as cura, the care for others and the world.

The Strongmen
The Strongmen

Author: Hans Kribbe

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2020-10-22

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 0228004721

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Seven decades after the liberation of Europe, the strongmen of global politics are back, dominating not only the headlines but international relations, the global economy, and the world's security. The strongman has a style and strategy of leadership that is anathema to the liberal democratic norms and practices of Europe. He (it is always he) challenges principles of consensus and collaboration, willingly tears up trade agreements, invades territory, and seeks to provoke and disrupt the status quo in order to achieve advantage. Such behaviour confounds and frustrates his counterparts abroad and yet, as this book shows, it can be anticipated, even understood, offering hope for dealing with and neutralizing it. Hans Kribbe draws on a range of political ideas to provide insight into the strongman's seemingly irrational and idiosyncratic behaviour and to better understand how he wields power and to what end. With the world's largest economies, including Europe's key ally, as well as strategic neighbouring states controlled by strongmen - Xi Jinping, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan - Europe must learn to adapt and respond if it is to beat them at their own game.