Peter Gratton

My hypothesis is that achieving adulthood has been Russon’s aim from the beginning—in life, yes, as perhaps with the rest of us—but also in and as his philosophical development. To set up this claim, I show how philosophy has traditionally conjoined its own development with narratives of adulthood. I turn to important moments in Plato, Descartes, and Kant to set out the outlines of a given structure of maturation as found in the Western tradition, all to bring home how Russon’s writing tries to achieve something of an event beyond maturity as it’s been envisaged previously in these works.

The essays in Fanon and the Decolonization of Philosophy all trace different aspects of the mutually supporting histories of philosophical thought and colonial politics in order to suggest ways that we might decolonize our thinking. From psychology to education, to economic and legal structures, the contributors interrogate the interrelation of colonization and philosophy in order to articulate a Fanon-inspired vision of social justice. This project is endorsed by his daughter, Mireille Fanon-Mendès France, in the book's preface

The first dictionary dedicated to the work of Jean-Luc Nancy.Jean-Luc Nancy is a key figure in the contemporary intellectual landscape. This dictionary will, for the first time, consider the full scope of his writing and will provide insights into the philosophical and theoretical background to his focus on community and aesthetics.Drawing on an internationally recognised expertise of a multidisciplinary team of contributors, the 70 entries explain all of his main concepts, contextualising these within his work as a whole and relating him to his contemporaries. It will appeal to students and scholars alike.Key Features:* comprehensive definitions which are contextualised* fully cross-referenced throughout* extensive list of secondary readingKeywords: politics, democracy, freedom, morality, aesthetics.

Hannah Arendt's (1906-1975) writings, both in public magazines and in her important books, are still widely studied today. She made original contributions in political thinking that still astound readers and critics alike. The subject of several films and numerous books, colloquia, and newspaper articles, Arendt remains a touchstone in innumerable debates about the use of violence in politics, the responsibility one has under dictatorships and totalitarianism, and how to combat the repetition of the horrors of the past. The Bloomsbury Companion to Arendt offers the definitive guide to her writings and ideas, her influences and commentators, as well as the reasons for her lasting significance, with 66 original essays taking up in accessible terms the myriad ways in which one can take up her work and her continuing importance. These essays, written by an international set of her best readers and commentators, provides a comprehensive coverage of her life and the contexts in which her works were written. Special sections take up chapters on each of her key writings, the reception of her work, and key ways she interpreted those who influenced her. If one has come to Arendt from one of her essays on freedom, or from yet another bombastic account of her writings on Adolph Eichmann, or as as student or professor working in the field of Arendt studies, this book provides the ideal tool for thinking with and rediscovering one of the most important intellectuals of the past century. But just as importantly, contributors advance the study of Arendt into neglected areas, such as on science and ecology, to demonstrate her importance not just to debates in which she was well known, but those touched off only after her death. Arendt's approaches as well as her concrete claims about the political have much to offer given the current ecological and refugee crises, among others. In sum, then, the Companion provides a tool for thinking with Arendt, but also for showing just where those thinking with her can take her work today.

This paper looks at the thread throughout Nancy’s work on the notion of the decision and judgment. In a period when we must rethink not only the sovereign decision but all manner of traditional jurisprudential and ethical modes of thinking the decision, Nancy’s considerations of freedom help us reflect on thinking the decision otherwise and thus could prove revolutionary for how we think crime and punishment and calculating with the incalculable of each and every trauma we dub a crime. At a time when the geographies of the prison–industrial complex overtake the West, perhaps no other thinking is more central to undoing its practices and sovereignty.

Most shoppers like bargains. Do bargains come at the expense of workers in sweatshops around the world? The authors argue that many large multinational corporations are running the moral equivalents of sweatshops and are not properly respecting the rights of persons. They list a set of minimum standards of safety and decency that they claim all corporations should meet (and that many are not). Finally, they defend their call for improved working conditions by replying to objections that meeting improved conditions will cause greater harm than good, even to the workers themselves. They consider many specifi c corporations and name names and point the finger at various forms of disrespect for persons, along the way.

Most shoppers like bargains. Do bargains come at the expense of workers in sweatshops around the world? The authors argue that many large multinational corporations are running the moral equivalents of sweatshops and are not properly respecting the rights of persons. They list a set of minimum standards of safety and decency that they claim all corporations should meet (and that many are not). Finally, they defend their call for improved working conditions by replying to objections that meeting improved conditions will cause greater harm than good, even to the workers themselves. They consider many specifi c corporations and name names and point the finger at various forms of disrespect for persons, along the way.

Much has been written about biopolitical sovereignty in the wake of Agamben's work, which relies, at least in the first volume of Homo Sacer, on Carl Schmitt's transcendental account of sovereignty. This article argues, however, that Foucault and Arendt rightly identify what Derrida once called the “changing shape and place of sovereignty” in modernity, which for them is horizontal and disseminated within a presupposed nation. For this reason, we will look to the source of modern philosophical immanentism, Spinoza, to show that he is not extrinsic to this modern biopolitics, and demonstrates how the sovereign exception and its nationalized version work hand-in-glove in the era of which he was a part – and thus is part of all thinking that would take this to form a new communitas. In this way, we argue that it is Spinoza's political theology, not Schmitt's, that is the better pass-key to what Foucault and Arendt identify as biopolitical. By doing so, we put in tension two trends in recent Continental philosophy: philosophical vitalism and the critique of biopolitics at the heart at any contemporary thinking of community.