Steven Lukes

The second edition of this seminal work includes the original text, first published in 1974, alongside two major new chapters. Power: A Radical View assesses the main debates about how to conceptualize and study power, including the influential contributions of Michel Foucault. Power Revisited reconsiders Steven Lukes' own views in light of these debates and of criticisms of his original argument.With a new introduction and bibliographical essay, this book has consolidated its reputation as a classic work and a major reference point within Social and Political Theory. It can be used on modules across the Social and Political Sciences dealing with the concept of power and its manifestation in the world. It is also essential reading for all undergraduate and postgraduates interested in the history of Social and Political Thought.

By turns witty and profound, The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat is a novel in the spirit of Gulliver’s Travels or Animal Farm. Telling the story of the travels of a Professor Caritat, who is in search of the perfect world, Steven Lukes us on an irreverent romp through the history of western political philosophy. Doing for that discipline what Sophie’s World did for philosophy in general, The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat is both a refreshing humorous introduction to the clasing ideologies of our time, and a passionate defence of the much-abused Enlightenment and its core values of reason, freedom and tolerance.

Moral relativism attracts and repels. What is defensible in it and what is to be rejected? Do we as human beings have no shared standards by which we can understand one another? Can we abstain from judging one another's practices? Do we truly have divergent views about what constitutes good and evil, virtue and vice, harm and welfare, dignity and humiliation, or is there some underlying commonality that trumps it all?These questions turn up everywhere, from Montaigne's essay on cannibals, to the UN Declaration of Human Rights, to the debate over female genital mutilation. They become ever more urgent with the growth of mass immigration, the rise of religious extremism, the challenges of Islamist terrorism, the rise of identity politics, and the resentment at colonialism and the massive disparities of wealth and power between North and South. Are human rights and humanitarian interventions just the latest form of cultural imperialism? By what right do we judge particular practices as barbaric? Who are the real barbarians?In this provocative new book, the distinguished social theorist Steven Lukes takes an incisive and enlightening look at these and other challenging questions and considers the very foundations of what we believe, why we believe it, and whether there is a profound discord between "us" and "them."

It is reported that the moment anyone talked to Marx about morality, he would roar with laughter. Yet, plainly, he was fired by outrage and a burning desire for a better world. This paradox is the starting point for Marxism and Morality . Discussing the positions taken by Marx, Engels, andtheir descendants in relation to certain moral issues, Steven Lukes addresses the questions on which Marxist thinkers and actors have taken a number of characteristic stands as well as other questions--personal relations and the moral virtues of the individual, for example--on which Marxism fallssilent. A provocative exploration of the gray area where Marxism and morality meet, this book argues that Marxism makes a number of major moral claims and that its appeal has always been, in large part, a moral one.

Individualism embraces a wide diversity of meanings and is widely used by those who criticise and by those who praise Western societies and their culture, by historians and literary scholars in search of the emergence of 'the individual', by anthropologists claiming that there are different, culturally shaped conceptions of the individual or 'person', by philosophers debating what form social science explanations should take and by political theorists defending liberal principles. In this classic text, Steven Lukes discusses what 'individualism' has meant in various national traditions and across different provinces of thought, analysing it into its component unit-ideas and doctrines. He further argues that it now plays a malign ideological role, for it has come to evoke a socially-constructed body of ideas whose illusory unity is deployed to suggest that redistributive policies are neither feasible nor desirable and to deny that there are institutional alternatives to the market.

This study of Durkheim seeks to help the reader to achieve a historical understanding of his ideas and to form critical judgments about their value. To some extent these tow aims are contradictory. On the one hand, one seeks to understand: what did Durkheim really mean, how did he see the world, how did his ideas related to one another and how did they develop, how did they related to their biographical and historical context, how were they received, what influence did they have and to what criticism were they subjected, what was it like not to make certain distinctions, not to see certain errors, of fact or of logic, not to know what has subsequently become known? On the other hand, one seeks to assess: how valuable and how valid are the ideas, to what fruitful insights and explanations do they lead, how do they stand up to analysis and to the evidence, what is their present value? Yet it seems that it is only by inducing oneself not to see and only by seeing them that one can make a critical assessment. The only solution is to pursue both aims―seeing and not seeing―simultaneously. More particularly, this book has the primary object of achieving that sympathetic understanding without which no adequate critical assessment is possible. It is a study in intellectual history which is also intended as a contribution to sociological theory.

The essays in this collection focus on the perennial but newly urgent questions of how the tension between relativism and the moral universalism current in contemporary politics can be resolved within the framework of liberalism. How is liberal society to interpret the diversity of morals? Is pluralism the appropriate response? How does pluralism differ from the widely condemned relativism – more specifically, the double bind of ethnocentric universalism, or ‘liberalism for the Liberals, cannibalism for the cannibals.’Taking as his starting point Robert Frost’s accusation that a liberal is someone who can’t take his own side in an argument, Steven Lukes confronts liberal thought with its own limitations. While recognizing the dangers of moral imperialism, Lukes argues that a relativist position based on identifying clearly distinct cultural and moral communities is incoherent. Drawing on work in anthropology and philosophy, he examines the nature of social justice, the politics of identity and human rights theory, as well as discussing how ideas drawn from the work of Isaiah Berlin can shed light on these debates.

Gathers jokes from around the world concerning politics, trust, ethnic differences, bureaucracy, elections, the economy, revolution, repression, corruption, war, and peace

This fascinating study, Steven Lukes, one of the foremost political theorists writing in English today, examines value pluralism and moral conflict and their implications for political thinking and practice. In Parts I and II he discusses them directly and their consequences for how we are to think about equality, liberty, power, and authority. In Part III he focuses on the non-obvious role of morality in Marxist theory and practice, and in Part IV he examines the contributions of contemporary political thinkers, including Vaclav Havel. In the final section he puts theory to the test, looking at important political issues and showing how political moralities influence the world we live in. This book will be of particular interest to teachers and students of political theory, political philosophy, and moral philosophy.

Shipped from UK, please allow 10 to 21 business days for arrival. Steven Lukes. x, 227 p. Very light edge wear.Sunned spine and left side of front cover nearest the spine sunned to yellow-orange. Spine faded to yellow.There is a name inscribed in blue ink inside the front cover. Pages slightly creased/grubby/turned upwards.Contents clean and unmarked.

The law was central to Durkheim's sociological theory and to his efforts to establish sociology as a distinctive discipline. This revised and updated second edition of Durkheim and the Law brings together key texts which demonstrate the development of Durkheim's thinking on the sociology of law, several of them newly translated here.The editors, both world-renowned Durkheim scholars, provide a comprehensive analysis of the intellectual significance and distinctiveness of Durkheim's work on the subject. They show how his ideas evolved over time; how they contributed to the development of a distinctively Durkheimian vision of a science of society; and they provide a comprehensive assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of his theorizing about law, as well as its continuing relevance for contemporary sociology.Enriched with a new introduction and useful learning features, this book remains a major reference for students of socio-legal theory.

How to make sense of the divergence between philosophers’ quest for a single morality and social scientists’ assumption that there are multiple moralitiesWhen we speak of morals, what are we speaking of? Is morality singular (as many philosophers tend to assume, even if they don’t agree on what it is) or are there multiple moralities (which social scientists, notably anthropologists, study)? In The Diversity of Morals, Steven Lukes brings together these differing perspectives. Drawing on philosophy, sociology, social anthropology, psychology, and political theory, Lukes considers what the moral domain includes and what it excludes; how what is moral differs from what is conventional or customary in different contexts; whether morality is unified or a series of fragments; and, if there is a diversity of morals, what that diversity consists of.Lukes looks both ways—toward philosophers’ quest for a single best answer to the question of morality and toward sociologists’ and anthropologists’ assumption that there are several, even many, even very many, answers—to make sense of their divergence. He traces the two approaches back to their beginnings, linking them to the differences between the ideas of David Hume, Johann Gottfried Herder and Adam Smith. Lukes examines how we went from viewing the social world as “us” versus “them” to thinking of morality as universal, envisioning shared humanity and the sacredness of the human person, and what prevents this vision from being realized. Considering the breakdown of moral constraints in the perpetration of mass atrocities, Lukes asks if there are phenomena that are beyond moral justification. And he raises this crucial in light of the vast variation that history and the ethnographic record display, how wide and how deep is the diversity of morals?

Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso

Émile Durkheim, aceptado generalmente como uno de los fundadores de la Sociología y de la Antropología social, dominó durante las décadas que precedieron a la primera guerra mundial el campo del pensamiento sociológico en Francia. En esta biografía crítica. Steven Lukes analiza en profundidad las ideas de Durkheim y sus teorías; estudia con amplitud sus aportaciones sobre la división del trabajo social, sobre el suicidio, la educación, la familia y el parentesco, sobre el crimen y el castigo, el Derecho y la Política, sobre la historia del Socialismo, la metodología de la Historia y la Sociología, y sobre la Sociología del conocimiento, de la moral y de la religión. presenta de manera histórica la obra de Durkheim, en el contexto de su vida y de la sociedad en que vivió, tomando igualmente en consideración el clima intelectual y político de su época. Ofrece también una valoración crítica de su permanente interés para la moderna Sociología.

Le professeur Caritat [de Condorcet] - notre héros, plus proche du Usbek des Lettres persanes que de Candide - parvient à s'évader des geôles de la Militarie sous la fausse identité du professeur Pangloss. Ces deux noms devraient suffire à donner le ton de cette " comédie philosophique ". C'est sur le mode d'un récit que Steven Lukes (1941) - politologue et sociologue britannique, professeur de sociologie à la New York University -, a choisi de décrire les principales idéologies politiques qui ont été appliquées en Occident, des Lumières à aujourd'hui. Chaque pays (Libertarie, Utilitarie, Communautarie, etc.) que visite Caritat est gouverné sous un régime unique. L'absence de pluralisme fait que toutes les idéologies décrites tournent à la dystopie, entraînant la fuite de notre héros en quête d'un régime meilleur. L'évocation précise des différents régimes donne à de ce livre " d'aventures " - au-delà le plaisir de la lecture - l'utilité d'un memento de science politique.

Tout au long de lhistoire, les rcits des explorateurs, des marchands et des missionnaires ont contribu remettre en question lide que lhumanit entire partage un noyau de normes et de valeurs morales communes. Alors que les membres de chaque groupe culturel partagent certains jugements moraux, ceux-ci varient dun groupe lautre. Pis, ce qui est moralement approuv dans un groupe est parfois proscrit dans un autre. Devrions-nous alors accepter le relativisme moral la thse selon laquelle nous manquons de critres objectifs pour valuer les jugements moraux de diffrents groupes culturels Les enjeux de cette question sont de taille. Le mlange de cultures diffrentes est plus que jamais une ralit et provoque inluctablement des conflits moraux. Peut-on exiger le respect des droits de lhomme auprs de personnes issues de cultures communautaires ou patriarcales La condamnation morale des punitions cruelles infliges pour adultre ou pour apostasie nest-elle quune expression de limprialisme culturel occidental Dans cet ouvrage, Steven Lukes nous introduit aux concepts et aux rsultats de recherche en anthropologie, en psychologie et en philosophie qui caractrisent ce dbat depuis Montaigne. Il montre pourquoi la simple observation du comportement social ne suffit pas trancher la question, et comment les jugements moraux sont relis non seulement aux contextes culturels mais galement la rationalit humaine.