The Limits Of Tradition

"CENTER FOR SOUTHEAST ASIAN STUDIES, KYOTO UNIVERSITY"--T.p.

Mitchell uses the philosophies of Oakeshott, MacIntyre, and Polanyi to demonstrate the need of a reconstructed view of tradition and freedom to counter false conceptions of the liberal self.

In The Limits of Liberalism, Mark T. Mitchell argues that a rejection of tradition is both philosophically incoherent and politically harmful. This false conception of tradition helps to facilitate both liberal cosmopolitanism and identity politics. The incoherencies are revealed through an investigation of the works of Michael Oakeshott, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Michael Polanyi. Mitchell demonstrates that the rejection of tradition as an epistemic necessity has produced a false conception of the human person—the liberal self—which in turn has produced a false conception of freedom. This book identifies why most modern thinkers have denied the essential role of tradition and explains how tradition can be restored to its proper place. Oakeshott, MacIntyre, and Polanyi all, in various ways, emphasize the necessity of tradition, and although these thinkers approach tradition in different ways, Mitchell finds useful elements within each to build an argument for a reconstructed view of tradition and, as a result, a reconstructed view of freedom. Mitchell argues that only by finding an alternative to the liberal self can we escape the incoherencies and pathologies inherent therein. This book will appeal to undergraduates, graduate students, professional scholars, and educated laypersons in the history of ideas and late modern culture.

Law and the Limits of Reason asks "what are the consequences of recognizing the limits of reason within the legal system?" In particular, what are the consequences for the allocation of lawmaking authority among judges, legislators, and administrative agencies or executive officials? Vermeule examines the conditions under which the limits of reason support a greater or lesser allocation of authority to one institution or another.

What are the limits of human rights, and what do these limits mean? This volume engages critically and constructively with this question to provide a distinct contribution to the contemporary discussion on human rights. Fassbender and Traisbach, along with a group of leading experts in the field, examine the issue from multiple disciplinary perspectives, analysing the limits of our current discourse of human rights. It does so in an original way, and without attempting to deconstruct, or deny, human rights. Each contribution is supplemented by an engaging comment which furthers this important discussion. This combination of perspectives paves the way for further thought for scholars, practitioners, students, and the wider public. Ultimately, this volume provides an exceptionally rich spectrum of viewpoints and arguments across disciplines to offer fresh insights into human rights and its limitations.

In a series of studies, Ian Moyer explores the ancient history and modern historiography of relations between Egypt and Greece from the fifth century BCE to the early Roman empire. Beginning with Herodotus, he analyzes key encounters between Greeks and Egyptian priests, the bearers of Egypt's ancient traditions. Four moments unfold as rich micro-histories of cross-cultural interaction: Herodotus' interviews with priests at Thebes; Manetho's composition of an Egyptian history in Greek; the struggles of Egyptian priests on Delos; and a Greek physician's quest for magic in Egypt. In writing these histories, the author moves beyond Orientalizing representations of the Other and colonial metanarratives of the civilizing process to reveal interactions between Greeks and Egyptians as transactional processes in which the traditions, discourses and pragmatic interests of both sides shaped the outcome. The result is a dialogical history of cultural and intellectual exchanges between the great civilizations of Greece and Egypt.

The Limits of Thought is a series of penetrating dialogues between the great spiritual leader, J. Krishnamurti and the renowned physicist, David Bohm. The starting point of their engaging exchange is the question: If truth is something different than reality, then what place has action in daily life in relation to truth and reality? We see Bohm and Krishnamurti explore the nature of consciousness and the condition of humanity. These enlightening dialogues address issues of truth, desire awareness, tradition, and love. Limits of Thought is an important book by two very respected and important thinkers. Anyone interested to see how Krishnamurti and Bohm probe some of the most essential questions of our very existence will be drawn to this great work.

This volume examines and critiques several of the classical theoretical foundations of domestic and international organization, concentrating on the contestable conceptions of community, order, justice, freedom, responsibility and wealth developed by the major political theorists of the modern epoch. Nelson argues that the accepted discourses of world politics are constructed by way of particular interpretive negotiations of what sovereign power is and what it must be made to accomplish in domestic and world politics. Providing a Foucaultian analysis of modern power and the liberal subject, the work traces the history of modern inquiries into sovereignty to a time when the state was being severed from a Christian eschatology, a time when political theorists sought ways of lending meaning and purpose to emerging conceptions of ‘the political.’ Modern theories of sovereignty, Nelson argues, embody the remainders of a deep worry over the precarious nature of legitimacy, the contingency of power, and the frailty of any political form. The theoretical traditions of liberalism and the Enlightenment dispense with anxiety over the politics of legitimacy by repressing the historical, constricting the political, and fashioning political rationalities suited to increasingly intimate and ever-expansive forms of liberal governance. This book aims to explore how modern theories of sovereignty elicit and effect governable subjects and forms of political community that have proven crucial to intensifying and expansive powers of the liberal state. An inquiry into modern theories of sovereignty and statecraft and a critical interrogation of how political theories are invoked by the traditions of international relations across the modern era, this volume will be of interest to all scholars of political theory, political philosophy and international relations.