Rousseau's Ghost

Rousseau's Ghost PDF Author: Terence Ball
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 079149568X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
A long-missing manuscript from a famous eighteenth-century philosopher with a dark secret, the late twentieth-century murder in Paris of a prominent Princeton professor—and the connection between the two—form the core of this fast-paced mystery novel. Set primarily in Paris and Oxford, Rousseau's Ghost weaves a riveting tale of scholarly intrigue and murder. An urgent but cryptic request from Professor Ted Porter summons his old friend and former Rhodes Scholar Jack Davis to Paris. Once there Jack finds his friend dead, apparently electrocuted by a faulty laptop computer. The Parisian police rule the death an accident and close the case. But Jack well knew his friend's deep aversion to modern technology, and to computers in particular, and believes the computer was not Ted's and his death no accident. Unable to convince the police, Jack begins his own investigation, aided by Danielle, a beautiful young French woman who claims to have been Ted's research assistant and sometime lover. Sifting through Ted's notes and an unfinished manuscript titled Rousseau's Ghost, he finds a mysterious entry: "Inst Pol??!!" Not knowing what this might mean, he travels to Oxford to see his old tutor, who surmises that Ted's shorthand query refers to the Institutions Politiques, a manuscript on which Rousseau worked in the 1750s but later abandoned and burned, except for the small section we now know as the Social Contract. Could the rest of the manuscript have survived? Could Ted have found it? If so, was he murdered for his discovery? Could Jack and Danielle be next?

Rousseau's Ghost

Rousseau's Ghost PDF Author: Terence Ball
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 079149568X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book Here

Book Description
A long-missing manuscript from a famous eighteenth-century philosopher with a dark secret, the late twentieth-century murder in Paris of a prominent Princeton professor—and the connection between the two—form the core of this fast-paced mystery novel. Set primarily in Paris and Oxford, Rousseau's Ghost weaves a riveting tale of scholarly intrigue and murder. An urgent but cryptic request from Professor Ted Porter summons his old friend and former Rhodes Scholar Jack Davis to Paris. Once there Jack finds his friend dead, apparently electrocuted by a faulty laptop computer. The Parisian police rule the death an accident and close the case. But Jack well knew his friend's deep aversion to modern technology, and to computers in particular, and believes the computer was not Ted's and his death no accident. Unable to convince the police, Jack begins his own investigation, aided by Danielle, a beautiful young French woman who claims to have been Ted's research assistant and sometime lover. Sifting through Ted's notes and an unfinished manuscript titled Rousseau's Ghost, he finds a mysterious entry: "Inst Pol??!!" Not knowing what this might mean, he travels to Oxford to see his old tutor, who surmises that Ted's shorthand query refers to the Institutions Politiques, a manuscript on which Rousseau worked in the 1750s but later abandoned and burned, except for the small section we now know as the Social Contract. Could the rest of the manuscript have survived? Could Ted have found it? If so, was he murdered for his discovery? Could Jack and Danielle be next?

The Legacy of Rousseau

The Legacy of Rousseau PDF Author: Clifford Orwin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226638561
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
Few thinkers have enjoyed so pervasive an influence as Rousseau, who originated dissatisfaction with modernity. By exploring polarities articulated by Rousseau—nature versus society, self versus other, community versus individual, and compassion versus competitiveness—these fourteen original essays show how his thought continues to shape our ways of talking, feeling, thinking, and complaining. The volume begins by taking up a central theme noted by the late Allan Bloom—Rousseau's critique of the bourgeois as the dominant modern human type and as a being fundamentally in contradiction, caught between the sentiments of nature and the demands of society. It then turns to Rousseau's crucial polarity of nature and society and to the later conceptions of history and culture it gave rise to. The third part surveys Rousseau's legacy in both domestic and international politics. Finally, the book examines Rousseau's contributions to the virtues that have become central to the current sensibility: community, sincerity, and compassion. Contributors include Allan Bloom, François Furet, Pierre Hassner, Christopher Kelly, Roger Masters, and Arthur Melzer.

Being After Rousseau

Being After Rousseau PDF Author: Richard L. Velkley
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226852560
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
In Being after Rousseau, Richard L. Velkley presents Jean-Jacques Rousseau as the founder of a modern European tradition of reflection on the relation of philosophy to culture—a reflection that calls both into question. Tracing this tradition from Rousseau to Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schelling, and Martin Heidegger, Velkley shows late modern philosophy as a series of ultimately unsuccessful attempts to resolve the dichotomies between nature and society, culture and civilization, and philosophy and society that Rousseau brought to the fore. The Rousseauian tradition begins, for Velkley, with Rousseau's criticism of modern political philosophy. Although the German Idealists such as Schelling accepted much of Rousseau's critique, they believed, unlike Rousseau, that human wholeness could be attained at the level of society and history. Heidegger and Nietzsche questioned this claim, but followed both Rousseau and the Idealists in their vision of the philosopher-poet striving to recover an original wholeness that the history of reason has distorted.

Supercommunity

Supercommunity PDF Author: E-Flux
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1786633574
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 477

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Book Description
Leading artists, theorists, and writers exhume the dystopian and utopian futures contained within the present “I am the supercommunity, and you are only starting to recognize me. I grew out of something that used to be humanity. Some have compared me to angry crowds in public squares; others compare me to wind and atmosphere, or to software.” Invited to exhibit at the 56th Venice Biennale, e-flux journal produced a single issue over a four-month span, publishing an article a day both online and on site from Venice. In essays, poems, short stories, and plays, artists and theorists trace the negative collective that is the subject of contemporary life, in which art, the internet, and globalization have shed their utopian guises but persist as naked power, in the face of apocalyptic ecological disaster and against the claims of the social commons. “I convert care to cruelty, and cruelty back to care. I convert political desires to economic flows and data, and then I convert them back again. I convert revolutions to revelations. I don’t want security, I want to leave, and then disperse myself everywhere and all the time.”

Social Contract, Masochist Contract

Social Contract, Masochist Contract PDF Author: Fayçal Falaky
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438449917
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Theorization of sensual desire was not uncommon in the eighteenth century; like many materialists of the French Enlightenment, Jean-Jacques Rousseau rejected imperatives founded on metaphysical suppositions and viewed the senses as the only valid source of philosophical knowledge. In Social Contract, Masochist Contract, Fayçal Falaky demonstrates that what distinguishes Rousseau is that the foundational measure on which he bases his materialist philosophy is a sexual instinct endowed, paradoxically, with the same sublime, self-abnegating attributes historically associated with Christian, metaphysical desire. To understand the aesthetics of Rousseau's masochism is, Falaky argues, to understand how ideals of Christian morality and spiritual ennoblement survived the Enlightenment, and how God died, only to be repackaged in new fetishes. Whether it is the imperious mistress of his erotic fantasies, the Arcadian nature of his philosophical reveries, or the sublime Law designed to elevate the citizen from enslaving appetite, Rousseau's fetishes herald the new regulative Ideals of the modern secular state.

The Insatiables

The Insatiables PDF Author: Brittany Terwilliger
Publisher: Amberjack Publishing
ISBN: 1944995609
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
“A young woman hustles to climb the corporate ladder in this darkly comedic, deeply insightful workplace drama . . . A humorous and thought-provoking tale about searching for the ever elusive brass ring.” —Kirkus Reviews Since she was a child, Halley has been desperate to escape her simple Midwestern town and reinvent herself. In Middleville, Ohio, the only way to do that is by landing a top-tier position at Findlay Global Manufacturing, Inc. Spending her days as a lowly assistant in a shared cubicle, Halley is ecstatic when a new job opening presents an extraordinary opportunity: a chance to relocate to Europe to launch a new product. For Halley Faust, this job is the epitome of the American dream, and she will do anything to get it. She soon begins to understand that ruthless guile is the only path to success, and the harder she chases after her dangerously decadent American dream, the more her dreams seem to elude her. Ultimately, Halley must decide how much she is willing to sacrifice in pursuit of a life that may very well be a fantasy. The Insatiables details a young woman’s climb up the corporate ladder and the irrevocable choices she must make to survive.

Political Theory and the Environment

Political Theory and the Environment PDF Author: Matthew Humphrey
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113528217X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
This collection offers a sympathetic but critical perspective on contemporary ecological political theory, and gives proposals for a reorientation of some of its key aspects.

Political Thinkers

Political Thinkers PDF Author: David Boucher
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198708920
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 691

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Book Description
The most comprehensive introduction to the greatest political thinkers written by a team of international experts.

Never Say I

Never Say I PDF Author: Michael Lucey
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822338970
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
Rereads the works of Colette, Gide, and Proust to show how central representations of sexuality were to the evolution of literary prose forms in twentieth-century France.

Count Cagliostro: Or, The Charlatan. A Tale of the Reign of Louis XVI

Count Cagliostro: Or, The Charlatan. A Tale of the Reign of Louis XVI PDF Author: Thomas Andrew James
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Freemasonry
Languages : en
Pages : 852

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Book Description