Politics Recovered
Politics Recovered

Author: Matt Sleat

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2018-03-13

Total Pages: 423

ISBN-13: 0231547552

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Is political theory political enough? Or does a tendency toward abstraction, idealization, moralism, and utopianism leave contemporary political theory out of touch with real politics as it actually takes place, and hence unable to speak meaningfully to or about our world? Realist political thought, which has enjoyed a significant revival of interest in recent years, seeks to avoid such pitfalls by remaining attentive to the distinctiveness of politics and the ways its realities ought to shape how we think and act in the political realm. Politics Recovered brings together prominent scholars to develop what it might mean to theorize politics “realistically.” Intervening in philosophical debates such as the relationship between politics and morality and the role that facts and emotions should play in the theorization of political values, the volume addresses how a realist approach aids our understanding of pressing issues such as global justice, inequality, poverty, political corruption, the value of democracy, governmental secrecy, and demands for transparency. Contributors open up fruitful dialogues with a variety of other realist approaches, such as feminist theory, democratic theory, and international relations. By exploring the nature and prospects of realist thought, Politics Recovered shows how political theory can affirm reality in order to provide meaningful and compelling answers to the fundamental questions of political life.

Degenerative Realism
Degenerative Realism

Author: Christy Wampole

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2020-06-23

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 0231546033

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A new strain of realism has emerged in France. The novels that embody it represent diverse fears—immigration and demographic change, radical Islam, feminism, new technologies, globalization, American capitalism, and the European Union—but these books, often best-sellers, share crucial affinities. In their dystopian visions, the collapse of France, Europe, and Western civilization is portrayed as all but certain and the literary mode of realism begins to break down. Above all, they depict a degenerative force whose effects on the nation and on reality itself can be felt. Examining key novels by Michel Houellebecq, Frédéric Beigbeder, Aurélien Bellanger, Yann Moix, and other French writers, Christy Wampole identifies and critiques this emergent tendency toward “degenerative realism.” She considers the ways these writers draw on social science, the New Journalism of the 1960s, political pamphlets, reportage, and social media to construct an atmosphere of disintegration and decline. Wampole maps how degenerative realist novels explore a world contaminated by conspiracy theories, mysticism, and misinformation, responding to the internet age’s confusion between fact and fiction with a lament for the loss of the real and an unrelenting emphasis on the role of the media in crafting reality. In a time of widespread populist anxieties over the perceived decline of the French nation, this book diagnoses the literary symptoms of today’s reactionary revival.

Beginning Drawing Atelier
Beginning Drawing Atelier

Author: Juliette Aristides

Publisher: The Monacelli Press, LLC

Published: 2019-04-16

Total Pages: 129

ISBN-13: 1580935125

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Written by a well-known artist and best-selling art-instruction author with almost rock-star popularity in the contemporary world of representational art, Beginning Drawing Atelier, with its unique workbook/sketchbook approach, and high-quality paper, offers a comprehensive and contemporary twist on traditional Atelier art instruction practices. Atelier education is centered on the belief that working in a studio, not sitting in the lecture hall, is the best place to learn about art. Every artist needs to learn basic drawing skills. In this elegant and inspiring workbook, master contemporary artist and best selling author Juliette Aristides breaks down the drawing process into small, manageable lessons; presents them progressively; introduces time-tested principles and techniques in the Atelier tradition that are easily accessible; and shares the language and context necessary to understand the artistic process and create superior, well-crafted drawings. What makes this approach unique is the fact that it includes blank pages for copying and practicing within each lesson, facilitating traditional Atelier methods. Ateliers have produced the greatest artists of all time--and now that educational model is experiencing a renaissance. These studios, in a return to classical art training, are based on the nineteenth-century model of teaching artists by pairing them with a master artist over a period of years. Students begin by copying masterworks, then gradually progress to painting as their skills develop. Beginning Drawing Atelier is like having an atelier in a book--and the master is Juliette Aristides, a classically trained artist. On every page, Aristides uses the works of Old Masters and today's most respected realist artists to demonstrate and teach the principles of realist drawing and painting, taking students step by step through the learning curve yet allowing them to work at their own pace. Unique and inspiring, the approach in this new book offers serious art courses for serious art students.

After the Enlightenment
After the Enlightenment

Author: Nicolas Guilhot

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-04-24

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1316764079

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

After the Enlightenment is the first attempt at understanding modern political realism as a historical phenomenon. Realism is not an eternal wisdom inherited from Thucydides, Machiavelli or Hobbes, but a twentieth-century phenomenon rooted in the interwar years, the collapse of the Weimar Republic, and the transfer of ideas between Continental Europe and the United States. The book provides the first intellectual history of the rise of realism in America, as it informed policy and academic circles after 1945. It breaks through the narrow confines of the discipline of international relations and resituates realism within the crisis of American liberalism. Realism provided a new framework for foreign policy thinking and transformed the nature of American democracy. This book sheds light on the emergence of 'rational choice' as a new paradigm for political decision-making and speaks to the current revival in realism in international affairs.

William Dean Howells and the Ends of Realism
William Dean Howells and the Ends of Realism

Author: Paul Abeln

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2005-02-18

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 1135876622

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Despite efforts at revival by John Updike and others, William Dean Howells still remains in the shadows of his close friends Mark Twain and Henry James. This book works against decades of unfavorable comparisons with these literary giants. William Dean Howells and the Ends ofRealism helps us to see him as a writer very much aware of his limitations and of his enormous importance in the development of an American literary tradition. A close look at his late works gives us a richer understanding of this powerful moment of transition in American literature, a moment when Howells and his venerable friends were inspiring and anointing a new generation of writers and taking a long, hard look at their own legacies and contributions.

Realism in the Age of Impressionism
Realism in the Age of Impressionism

Author: Marnin Young

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2015-01-01

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0300208324

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The late 1870s and early 1880s were watershed years in the history of French painting. As outgoing economic and social structures were being replaced by a capitalist, measured time, Impressionist artists sought to create works that could be perceived in an instant, capturing the sensations of rapidly transforming modern life. Yet a generation of artists pushed back against these changes, spearheading a short-lived revival of the Realist practices that had dominated at mid-century and advocating slowness in practice, subject matter, and beholding. In this illuminating book, Marnin Young looks closely at five works by Jules Bastien-Lepage, Gustave Caillebotte, Alfred-Philippe Roll, Jean-Franocois Raffaeelli, and James Ensor, artists who shared a concern with painting and temporality that is all but forgotten today, having been eclipsed by the ideals of Impressionism. Young's highly original study situates later Realism for the first time within the larger social, political, and economic framework and argues for its centrality in understanding the development of modern art.

Political Development and the New Realism in Sub-Saharan Africa
Political Development and the New Realism in Sub-Saharan Africa

Author: David Ernest Apter

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 9780813914800

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Since the 1950s David Apter and Carl Rosenberg have been among the leading American scholars in African Studies. In this volume they, along with other major specialists in the field, explore the new configurations of African politics. With tentative efforts at a revival of democracy now taking place, it seems appropriate to reasses the theoretical debates ad empirical themes that have characterized postwar Sub-Saharan African politics. Focusing on "new realism" that has emerged among Africanists since the dismantling of colonial rule, the essays are presented as a corrective both to the initial euphoria informing African studies and to the later tendency to place blame for all Africa's political and economic difficulties on the receding specter of colonial oppression.

Realism in Political Theory
Realism in Political Theory

Author: Rahul Sagar

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-10-08

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 1351168754

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Over the past decade, an intellectual movement known as "realism" has challenged the reigning orthodoxy in political theory and political philosophy. Realists take issue with what they see as the excessive moralism and utopianism associated with prominent philosophers like John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and G.A. Cohen; but what they would put in its place has not always been clear. The contributors to this volume seek to bring realism into a new phase, constructive rather than merely combative. To this end they examine three distinct kinds of realism. The first seeks to place questions of feasibility at the center of political theory and philosophy; the second seeks to reorient our interpretations of key works in the canon; the third seeks new interpretations or specifications of prominent ideologies such as liberalism, radicalism, and republicanism such that they no longer rely on abstract or systematic philosophic systems. Contributors include: David Estlund, Edward Hall, Alison McQueen, Terry Nardin, Philip Pettit, Janosch Prinz, Enzo Rossi, Andrew Sabl, Rahul Sagar, and Matt Sleat. The chapters originally published as a special issue of Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

Elites, Non-Elites, and Political Realism
Elites, Non-Elites, and Political Realism

Author: John Higley

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-10-29

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 153816289X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This provocative and groundbreaking book challenges accepted wisdom about the role of elites in both maintaining and undermining democracy in an increasingly authoritarian world. John Higley traces patterns of elite political behavior and the political orientations of non-elite populations throughout modern history to show what is and is not possible in contemporary politics. He situates these patterns and orientations in a range of regimes, showing how they have played out in revolutions, populist nationalism, Arab Spring failures to democratize, the conflation of ultimate and instrumental values in today’s liberal democracies, and American political thinkers’ misguided assumption that non-elites are the principal determinants of politics. Critiquing the optimistic outlooks prevalent among educated Westerners, Higley considers them out of touch with reality because of spreading employment insecurity, demoralization, and millennial pursuits in their societies. Attacks by domestic and foreign terrorists, effects of climate change, mass migrations from countries outside the West, and disease pandemics exacerbate insecurity and further highlight the flaws in the belief that democracy can thrive and spread worldwide. Higley concludes that these threats to the well-being of Western societies are here to stay. They leave elites with no realistic alternative to a holding operation until at least mid-century that husbands the power and political practices of Western societies. Drawing on decades of research, Higley’s analysis is historically and comparatively informed, bold, and in some places dark—and will be sure to foster debate.

A Prospectus for the Triumph of Realism
A Prospectus for the Triumph of Realism

Author: Thomas A. Russman

Publisher: Mercer University Press

Published: 1987

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 9780865542327

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Thomas A. Russman argues forcefully that it is now possible to return in a new way to the once familiar ground of epistemological realism-the pre-Cartesian view that things themselves are knowable through perception and that such knowledge is foundational. This view has been rejected by most contemporary philosophers, who follow the path outlined convincingly by the likes of Wilfrid Sellers, Willard Quine, Thomas Kuhn, and Richard Rorty. Recognizing that any return to philosophical realism must deal with the criticisms raised by these prominent philosophers, Professor Russmanoffers his own incisive critique of a contemporary myth-what Karl Popper called "the myth of the framework," which replaced the earlier "myth of the given," as Wilfrid Sellars named it in his attack on realism. The battle between theses two myths is, according to Professor Russman, "a battle to the death." he believes that the observation framework is the abode of permanent truths about the world. He proceeds to explain why the current assumption to the contrary arose and why it is wrong. Then he shows how the "informal foundationalism" that he proposes can avoid the philosophical pitfalls of the earlier formal foundationalism in allowing for political toleration and artistic freedom: it works better than pragmatism as a general epistemology: and it supports a dynamic, nonreductive view of human nature. Thomas Russman earned an M.A. in Philosophy from The Catholic University of America and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Princeton University. He teaches philosophy at the University of St. Thomas in Houston.