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Appeals to need abound in everyday discussion. People make claims about their own needs all the time, and they do so in a way that suggests these should have a certain moral force. Needs also play an important role in contemporary popular discourse about social justice, climate change, obligations to future generations, dealing fairly with refugees, treating animals humanely, and critiques of consumerist lifestyles - to name just a few of the many examples. The idea of need is present in an increasing number of debates and domains. There is interest in need from several disciplines, not just philosophy, which also include psychology, economics, political science, social work and sociology. This volume, then, offers a fine introduction to an increasingly important concept in day-to-day life. In a new Foreword, Gillian Brock discusses the continuing significance of several innovative chapters in the book, indicating how they presaged new directions in philosophical conversation.

This is a comprehensive, up to date and concise guide to one of the most important branches of philosophy. It has entries on Hobbes, Marx, and Rorty, as well as entries which explain what 'contract theory' is, and gives an account of 'multi-culturalism.' This book guides the reader through the intricacies of political theory.

"No longer imminent, the End is immanent." "Ends are ends," Frank Kermode goes on to clarify, "only when they are not negative but frankly transfigure the events in which they were immanent." From its imminence to its immanence, not "negative," "no longer," but transformative, how is "the End" in turn "transfigured"? In what may ending be said then to consist? To "the end times" of apocalypse and eschatology Giorgio Agamben, following Gianni Carchia, opposes messianism and "messianic time"—to the end of time, in a formula, the time of the end. To the writings of those for whom to philosophize is to learn how to die—from Plato to Montaigne and beyond—one may oppose, in like manner, the writings of Spinoza, who "thinks of death least of all things"—"for nature is Messianic by reason of its eternal and total passing away," as Benjamin writes—and so in whose pages "wisdom," transfigured, "is a meditation on life."