Suchergebnisse

Murdoch had lifelong interests in politics, just as she did in literature and philosophy. She saw historical experience as the foundation upon which the inter-linked activities of literature, philosophy and politics are based. From an early political radicalism to a later anti-utopianism, Murdoch reacted to the great political events of the 20th century, notably the Holocaust, the rise and fall of ideologies, sexual repression, and the realities of totalitarianism. Her political philosophy conceptualized relations between moral and political spheres, and her novels deal imaginatively with questions of migration, refugees, sexuality and freedom. This book presents a lively discussion of Iris Murdoch and her political thought, taking in the nature of socialist thought, the New Left and liberalism in the UK in the latter part of the 20th century.

How are we to understand past political thinkers? Is it a matter simply of reading their texts again and again? Do we have to relate past texts of political thought to the contexts in which ideas were composed and in which the aims of past thinkers were formulated? Or should past political theories be deconstructed so as to uncover not what their authors maintain, but what the texts reveal? In this book, theories of interpreting past political thinkers are examined and the interpretive methods of a range of theories are reviewed, including those of Hegel, Marx, Oakeshott, Collingwood, the Cambridge School, Foucault, Derrida and Gadamer.

In the 21st Century, global theory provides an influential and popular way of understanding contemporary social and political phenomena. This book observes the links between contemporary global ideas and preceding modern theories. Contemporary perspectives are shown to reflect distinctive and shared aspects of the ideas of Kant, Hegel and Marx