Kant's philosophy is often treated as a closed system, without reference to how it was written or how Kant arrived at its familiar form, the critique. In fact, the style of the critique seems so artless that readers think of it as an unfortunate by-product--a style of stylelessness. In Constituting Critique, Willi Goetschel shows how this apparent gracelessness was deliberately achieved by Kant through a series of writing experiments. By providing an account of the process that culminated in his three Critiques, this book offers a new perspective on Kant's philosophical thought and practice. Constituting Critique traces the stages in Kant's development to reveal how he redefined philosophy as a critical task. Following the philosopher through the experiments of his early essays, Goetschel demonstrates how Kant tests, challenges, and transforms the philosophical essay in his pursuit of a new self-reflective literary genre. From these experiments, critique emerges as the philosophical form for the critical project of the Enlightenment. The imperatives of its transcendental style, Goetschel contends, not only constitute and inform the critical moment of Kant's philosophical praxis, but also have an enduring place in post-Kantian philosophy and literature. By situating the Critiques within the context of Kant's early essays, this work will redirect the attention of Kant scholars to the origins of their form. It will also encourage contemporary critical theorists to reconsider their own practice through an engagement with its source in Kant.

Kathi Weeks suggests that one of the most important tasks for contemporary feminist theory is to develop theories of the subject that are adequate to feminist politics. Although the 1980s modernist-postmodernist debate put the problem of feminist subjectivity on the agenda, Weeks contends that limited debate now blocks the further development of feminist theory. Both modernists and postmodernists succeeded in making clear the problems of an already constituted, essentialist subject. What remains as an ongoing project, Weeks contends, is creating a theory of the constitution of subjects to account for the processes of social construction. This book presents one such account. Drawing on a number of different theoretical frameworks, including feminist standpoint theory, socialist feminism and poststructuralist thought, as well as theories of peformativity and self-valorisation, the author proposes a nonessential feminist subject, a theory of constituting subjects.

In the past, contingency and neo-Marxist theorists of culture reduced culture to an effect of something other than itself and, as they made culture metaphorical, they constituted its object of inquiry — a somewhat impossible pretension. This book extends the debate considerably. It does so through considering the work of Foucault in the context of the analysis of culture. While Foucault has had a considerable impact on organization studies, up to the present no text has systematically addressed what happens to organization culture when it encounter a Foucauldian gaze. Read this book and you will find out.Stewart Clegg, UTS, Sydney

This account of culture and society in the villages of West Sumatra, Indonesia, during the period of Dutch colonialism is based on materials collected from the colonial archives, local Indonesian newspapers and recent fieldwork in Malaysia and Indonesia. The author argues that the impact of colonial land-grabbing and political control led to the formation of a peasant economy in the period. At the same time, the author tackles issues in the recent anthropological debates about ethnography and culture to argue that this period also witnessed the construction of what we now call 'Minangkabau Culture' - a process that involved western ethnographers, colonial officials and Minangkabau intellectuals in an often conflicted process of modern cultural transformation.

In recent years, many philosophers of modern physics came to the conclusion that the problem of how objectivity is constituted (rather than merely given) can no longer be avoided, and therefore that a transcendental approach in the spirit of Kant is now philosophically relevant. The usual excuse for skipping this task is that the historical form given by Kant to transcendental epistemology has been challenged by Relativity and Quantum Physics. However, the true challenge is not to force modern physics into a rigidly construed static version of Kant’s philosophy, but to provide Kant’s method with flexibility and generality. In this book, the top specialists of the field pin down the methodological core of transcendental epistemology that must be used in order to throw light on the foundations of modern physics. First, the basic tools Kant used for his transcendental reading of Newtonian Mechanics are examined, and then early transcendental approaches of Relativistic and Quantum Physics are revisited. Transcendental procedures are also applied to contemporary physics, and this renewed transcendental interpretation is finally compared with structural realism and constructive empiricism. The book will be of interest to scientists, historians and philosophers who are involved in the foundational problems of modern physics.

"Constituting Americans" rethinks the way that certain writers of the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth century contributed to fixing the words precisely of what it means to be an American

Aus dem Inhalt: Derek Morgan and Gillian Douglas: The Constitution of the Family; Three Waves for Plato Michael Freeman: The Austin Lecture: The Private and the Public Katherine O'Donovan: Love's Law: Moral Reasoning in Family Law Ruth Chadwick: Moral Reasoning in Family Law: A Response to Katherine O'Donovan Bob Brecher: What is Wrong with the Family? John Eekelaar: Parenthood, Social Engineering and Rights Brenda Almond: Parenthood - Social Construct or Fact of Nature? Kenneth Norrie: Medical Treatment of Children and Young Persons John Haldane: Children, Families, Autonomy and the State Sandra Marshall: Whose Child is it Anyway ? Derek Morgan: Hope of Deliverance? The Metamorphosis of Surrogacy

From a cross-disciplinary and conceptual perspective this book discusses the political solutions of constitutional patriotism, republicanism and liberal nationalism to cultural conflict. It places these debates in the context of real national traditions, where all civic language inevitably also reflects 'culture'.

International political economy is both a discipline and a set of global practices and conditions. This volume explores how the two are related, illustrating the changing character of the global political economy, as well as changing perspectives on that character.

Food, water, health, housing, and education are as fundamental to human freedom and dignity as privacy, religion, or speech. Yet only recently have legal systems begun to secure these fundamental individual interests as rights. This book looks at the dynamic processes that render economic and social rights in legal form. It argues that processes of interpretation, enforcement, and contestation each reveal how economic and social interests can be protected as human and constitutional rights, and how their protection changes public law. Drawing on constitutional examples from South Africa, Colombia, Ghana, India, the United Kingdom, the United States and elsewhere, the book examines innovations in the design and role of institutions such as courts, legislatures, executives, and agencies in the organization of social movements and in the links established with market actors. This comparative study shows how legal systems protect economic and social rights by shifting the focus from minimum bundles of commodities or entitlements to processes of value-based, deliberative problem solving. Theories of constitutionalism and governance inform the potential of this approach to reconcile economic and social rights with both democratic and market principles, while addressing the material inequality, poverty and social conflict caused, in part, by law itself.