Aiming to transcend the outdated conflict between Left and Right, the Third Way was welcomed by leading figures on the world stage. Its programme of modernisation, flexibility and community regeneration indicated a way forward for the New Age. Within a firm market emphasis, equality of opportunity and social inclusion were given a prominent place. However, its lack of direction and disinclination to face hard decisions, have left its promise unfulfilled. This book puts forward a rigorous rethinking towards making the Third Way an effective instrument of progress for Britain as well as abroad.

This book explores human possibility at the end of the twentieth century. It takes the form of discussion between an eminent philosopher and a skilled journalist about “the human measure” as it engages false absolutes and their accompanying utopias. The book proposes a “third way” between capitalism and socialism, and it concludes with comments on end-of-century phenomena, including democracy, intellectuals, and terrorism.

No single work is more responsible for the heightened interest in argumentation and informal reasoning—and their relation to ethics and jurisprudence in the late twentieth century—than Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca’s monumental study of argumentation, La Nouvelle Rhétorique: Traité de l'Argumentation. Published in 1958 and translated into English as The New Rhetoric in 1969, this influential volume returned the study of reason to classical concepts of rhetoric. In The Promise of Reason: Studies in The New Rhetoric, leading scholars of rhetoric Barbara Warnick, Jeanne Fahnestock, Alan G. Gross, Ray D. Dearin, and James Crosswhite are joined by prominent and emerging European and American scholars from different disciplines to demonstrate the broad scope and continued relevance of The New Rhetoric more than fifty years after its initial publication. Divided into four sections—Conceptual Understandings of The New Rhetoric, Extensions of The New Rhetoric, The Ethical Turn in Perelman and The New Rhetoric, and Uses of The New Rhetoric—this insightful volume covers a wide variety of topics. It includes general assessments of The New Rhetoric and its central concepts, as well as applications of those concepts to innovative areas in which argumentation is being studied, such as scientific reasoning, visual media, and literary texts. Additional essays compare Perelman’s ideas with those of other significant thinkers like Kenneth Burke and Richard McKeon, explore his career as a philosopher and activist, and shed new light on Perelman and Olbrechts- Tyteca’s collaboration. Two contributions present new scholarship based on recent access to letters, interviews, and archival materials housed in the Université Libre de Bruxelles. Among the volume’s unique gifts is a personal memoir from Perelman’s daughter, Noémi Perelman Mattis, published here for the first time. The Promise of Reason, expertly compiled and edited by John T. Gage, is the first to investigate the pedagogical implications of Perelman and Olbrechts- Tyteca’s groundbreaking work and will lead the way to the next generation of argumentation studies.

A postmodern critique of sociology’s presuppositions.

Publisher description

The Promise of Phenomenology: Posthumous Papers of John Wild includes articles that remained unpublished during Wild's lifetime, a journal, wherein he recorded conversations with major British and Continental philosophers during 1957-8, as well as a masterful exposition and commentary on Emmanuel Levinas's book Totality and Infinity. It also contains a complete bibliography of all of Wild's unpublished writings open for research at the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale University. More personal and less reserved than Wild's published scholarship, yet containing Wild's characteristic clarity and rigor, the writings in this book cover such subjects as a phenomenological approach to moral relativism, an exploration of lived time, and reflections on the other and religious transcendence. The Promise of Phenomenology gives a lively picture of a master philosopher at work conveying the vitality and importance of philosophy to everyday life.

Barack Obama’s inauguration as president on January 20, 2009, inspired the world. But the great promise of "Change We Can Believe In" was immediately tested by the threat of another Great Depression, a worsening war in Afghanistan, and an entrenched and deeply partisan system of business as usual in Washington. Despite all the coverage, the backstory of Obama’s historic first year in office has until now remained a mystery. In The Promise: President Obama, Year One, Jonathan Alter, one of the country’s most respected journalists and historians, uses his unique access to the White House to produce the first inside look at Obama’s difficult debut. What happened in 2009 inside the Oval Office? What worked and what failed? What is the president really like on the job and off-hours, using what his best friend called "a Rubik’s Cube in his brain"? These questions are answered here for the first time. We see how a surprisingly cunning Obama took effective charge in Washington several weeks before his election, made trillion-dollar decisions on the stimulus and budget before he was inaugurated, engineered colossally unpopular bailouts of the banking and auto sectors, and escalated a treacherous war not long after settling into office. The Promise is a fast-paced and incisive narrative of a young risk-taking president carving his own path amid sky-high expectations and surging joblessness. Alter reveals that it was Obama alone—"feeling lucky"—who insisted on pushing major health care reform over the objections of his vice president and top advisors, including his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who admitted that "I begged him not to do this." Alter takes the reader inside the room as Obama prevents a fistfight involving a congressman, coldly reprimands the military brass for insubordination, crashes the key meeting at the Copenhagen Climate Change conference, and realizes that a Senate candidate’s gaffe about baseball in a Massachusetts special election will dash the big dream of his first year. In Alter’s telling, the real Obama is an authentic, demanding, unsentimental, and sometimes overconfident leader. He adapted to the presidency with ease and put more "points on the board" than he is given credit for, but neglected to use his leverage over the banks and failed to connect well with an angry public. We see the famously calm president cursing leaks, playfully trash-talking his advisors, and joking about even the most taboo subjects, still intent on redeeming more of his promise as the problems mount. This brilliant blend of journalism and history offers the freshest reporting and most acute perspective on the biggest story of our time. It will shape impressions of the Obama presidency and of the man himself for years to come.

Find out how—and why—legislation has made economic rights more important than human rights Since 1996, politicians and public officials in the United States have celebrated the “success” of welfare reform legislation despite little, if any, evidence to support their claims. The Promise of Welfare Reform: Political

Presents a theoretical framework for analysing the dialogic turn in the production and communication of knowledge that builds bridges across three research traditions - dialogic communication theory, action research, and science and technology studies. This title provides an account of the dialogic turn through case studies.