SYNOPSIS The thesis of this book is that autonomous behavior in the human being has now been securely anchored as a stage in the development of human person-ality. It has been recognized and described as a valid form of adult human behavior from the evidence supplied by a number of prominent clinicians and experimenters in the area of personality psychology. Furthermore, self-actualizing behavior has been shown to emerge as the more dominant form of expression in people after they have tried to get help with personal problems from the advocates of some of the newer psychotherapies. Autonomy has also been independently established as a necessary expression of life forces on the psychological level by General Systems Theory. Hence Autonomy is an important characteristic of the living organisms in their tendency to achieve a condi-tion of minimal disorganization or "negentropy". We can furthermore understand the lack of awareness in history of this human process for the following reasons: 1. Technological and scientific development did not allow men to develop long enough for it to emerge except for a few; 2. Pre-industrial technology further prevented Man from developing the physical security or the leisure that is needed for its exercise; 3. Religion and other ideologies forced Man to put his faith and trust in an all-powerful and warmly concerned deity rather than in himself; 4. Confusions about the real working of the human mind embroiled the philosophers over the ages to debate on the so-called faculties of Man and their interrelationships which effectively hid autonomous functioning under a number of other categories; 5. Men so organized their society that they preferred dependency on a King or on an aristocracy. It took the development of machines to do Man's work, knowledge of medicine to keep him alive long enough, an acceptance of a democratic ideology and government, and the scientific investigations of mental processes and personality to see autonomy as a legitimate human form of expression. The exercise of human autonomy has also led to some serious problems for Mankind. We can attribute a sense of irresponsibility and lack of consideration, alienation, apathy, and even forms of anarchy to this. These difficulties have pushed whole societies to experimental solutions in which autonomy is subjugated either to irrational leaders or to a pseudo-scientific dictatorship called communism. If we recognize that autonomy is a stage in adult life, after the person has learned and accepted conformity and a sense of responsibility, we can distinguish between true exercise of autonomy and pseudo autonomy. Recent psychological observations about the development of morality also equate the development of the highest stage, namely considera-tion of the common good, with the exercise of autonomy. It therefore becomes possible for Man to take another look at the possible application of autonomous functioning to the solution of problems in our society, rather than magnify the latter with the slogan: "Let each person do his or her own thing." We can begin here by carefully separating the use of rational thinking available in the autonomy stage from the irrational behavior found in all of us, including moments in the lives of self-actualizing people. Armed with this dichotomy we could then heavily lean on the rational thinking processes for solving problems. For instance, we could increase the utilization of mediation practices on all levels of society to settle the inevitable disputes that arise when the self-expressions of people clash with those of others. We could also organize and legitimate various institutions and practices which would allow people to freely express their irrational impulses. In this way these expressions would be isolated from the mainstream and would not hurt others except the participants who are willing to take the risk. We are, therefore, at the choice point in history where we can accept autonomou

The Ethics of Bankruptcy is the first comprehensive study that employs the tools of ethics to examine the controversies surrounding insolvency.

The principal aim of this volume is to elucidate what freedom, sovereignty, and autonomy mean for Nietzsche and what philosophical resources he gives us to re-think these crucial concepts. A related aim is to examine how Nietzsche connects these concepts to his thoughts about life-affirmation, self-love, promise-making, agency, the 'will to nothingness', and the 'eternal recurrence', as well as to his search for a 'genealogical' understanding of morality. These twelve essays by leading Nietzsche scholars ask such key questions as: Can we reconcile his rejection of free will with his positive invocations of the notion of free will? How does Nietzsche's celebration of freedom and free spirits sit with his claim that we all have an unchangeable fate? What is the relation between his concepts of freedom and self-overcoming? The depth in which these and related issues are explored gives this volume its value, not only to those interested in Nietzsche, but to all who are concerned with the free will debate, ethics, theory of action, and the history of philosophy.

The revised edition of Subject to Ourselves, a lively and provocative book that was a leader on its topic in England, uses psychoanalytic theory as the basis for a fresh reassessment of the nature of modernity and postmodernism. Analyzing changing experiences of selfhood, desire, interpersonal relations, culture and globalization, the author develops a novel account of postmodernity that supplants current understandings of "fragmented selves." Subject to Ourselves includes a diverse set of case studies, including the power of fantasy in military violence and war, the debate over sexual seduction in psychoanalysis, and the cultural uses of media and new information technologies. The book will be essential reading for students and professionals of social and political theory, psychoanalytic studies, psychology and cultural studies, as well as those with an interest in the modernity/postmodernity debate. Praise for the First Edition: 'This book not only fills an important gap in the literature, for it summarises a debate that is scattered across a decade of rather difficult texts, but also offers a resolution that is sensible and grounded in the best current thinking. It will be widely read by graduate students, faculty, and professionals in the humanities and social sciences.' Choice 'This is an informative and enjoyable book, which will be of use to students and academics...It is accessibly written and provides useful summaries of the different theories and debates in cultural and psychoanalytic theory. Recommended.' Radical Philosophy

In this compelling book, Anthony Elliott traces the rise of psychoanalysis from the Frankfurt School to postmodernism. Examining how pathbreaking theorists such as Adorno, Marcuse, Lacan and Lyotard have deployed psychoanalysis to politicise issues such as desire, sexuality, repression and identity, Elliott assesses the gains and losses arising from this appropriation of psychoanalysis in social theory and cultural studies. Moving from the impact of the Culture Wars and recent Freud-bashing to contemporary debates in social theory, feminism and postmodernism, Elliott argues for a new alliance between sociological and psychoanalytic perspectives.

Shows the inseparability of textuality, materiality, and history in discussions of the body.

This book examines issues raised by feminist theory and contemporary political theory around questions of identity and autonomy. Drawing on Hegel, Wollstonecraft, Mill and de Beauvoir, it also features illustrative examples of real-world issues and dilemmas.

At a time when social and political reality seems to move away from the practice of cosmopolitanism, whilst being in serious need of a new international framework to regulate global interaction, what are the new definitions and practices of cosmopolitanism? Including contributions from leading figures across the humanities and social sciences, After Cosmopolitanism takes up this question as its central challenge. Its core argument is the idea that our globalised condition forms the heart of contemporary cosmopolitan claims, which do not refer to a transcendental ideal, but are rather immanent to the material conditions of global interdependence. But to what extent do emerging definitions of cosmopolitanism contribute to new representative democratic models of governance? The present volume argues that a radical transformation of cosmopolitanism is already ongoing and that more effort is needed to take stock of transformations which are both necessary and possible. To this end, After Cosmopolitanism calls for an understanding of cosmopolitanism that is more attentive to the material reality of our social and political situation and less focused on linguistic analyses of its metaphorical implications. It is the call for a cosmopolitanism that is also a cosmopolitics.

In this classic study, Alan Brudner investigates the basic structure of the common law of transactions. For decades, that structure has been the subject of intense debate between formalists, who say that transactional law is a private law for interacting parties, and functionalists, who say that it is a public law serving the collective ends of society. Against both camps, Brudner proposes a synthesis of formalism and functionalism in which private law is modified by a common good without being subservient to it. Drawing on Hegel's legal philosophy, the author exhibits this synthesis in each of transactional law's main divisions: property, contract, unjust enrichment, and tort. Each is a whole composed of private-law and public-law parts that complement each other, and the idea connecting the parts to each other is also latently present in each. Moreover, Brudner argues, a single narrative thread connects the divisions of transactional law to each other. Not a row of disconnected fields, transactional law is rather a story about the realization in law of the agent's claim to be a dignified end-master of its body, its acquisitions, and the shape of its life. Transactional law's divisions are stages in the progress toward that goal, each generating a potential developed by the next. Thus, contract law fulfils what is incompletely realized in property law, negligence law what is germinal in contract law, public insurance what is seminal in negligence law, and transactional law as a whole what is underdeveloped in public insurance. The end point is the limit of what a transactional law can contribute to a life sufficient for dignity. Reconfigured and expanded with a contribution by Jennifer Nadler, The Unity of the Common Law stands out among contemporary theories of private law in that it depicts private law as purposive without being instrumental and as autonomous without being emptily formal.