How Hitchens Can Save The Left Rediscovering Fearless Liberalism In An Age Of Counter Enlightenment

Author : Matt Johnson
Publisher : Pitchstone Publishing (US&CA)
ISBN 13 : 163431235X
Total Pages : 411 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book How Hitchens Can Save the Left written by Matt Johnson and published by Pitchstone Publishing (US&CA). This book was released on 2023-02-14 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christopher Hitchens was for many years considered one of the fiercest and most eloquent left-wing polemicists in the world. But on much of today's left, he's remembered as a defector, a warmonger, and a sellout—a supporter of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq who traded his left-wing principles for neoconservatism after the September 11 attacks. In How Hitchens Can Save the Left, Matt Johnson argues that this easy narrative gets Hitchens exactly wrong. Hitchens was a lifelong champion of free inquiry, humanism, and universal liberal values. He was an internationalist who believed all people should have the liberty to speak and write openly, to be free of authoritarian domination, and to escape the arbitrary constraints of tribe, faith, and nation. He was a figure of the Enlightenment and a man of the left until the very end, and his example has never been more important. Over the past several years, the liberal foundations of democratic societies have been showing signs of structural decay. On the right, nationalism and authoritarianism have been revived on both sides of the Atlantic. On the left, many activists and intellectuals have become obsessed with a reductive and censorious brand of identity politics, as well as the conviction that their own liberal democratic societies are institutionally racist, exploitative, and imperialistic. Across the democratic world, free speech, individual rights, and other basic liberal values are losing their power to inspire. Hitchens's case for universal Enlightenment principles won't just help genuine liberals mount a resistance to the emerging illiberal orthodoxies on the left and the right. It will also remind us how to think and speak fearlessly in defense of those principles.

Author : Simon Cottee
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 9780814716861
Total Pages : 378 pages
Book Rating : 4.65/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Christopher Hitchens and His Critics written by Simon Cottee and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2008-06 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brings together Hitchens' most incisive reflections on the 'war on terror', the war in Iraq and the state of the contemporary left. It also includes a selection of critical commentaries on his work from his former leftist comrades, a set of exchanges between Hitchens and various left-leaning interlocutors and more.

Author : John Rodden
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691228418
Total Pages : 376 pages
Book Rating : 4.19/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Becoming George Orwell written by John Rodden and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The remarkable transformation of Orwell from journeyman writer to towering icon Is George Orwell the most influential writer who ever lived? Yes, according to John Rodden’s provocative book about the transformation of a man into a myth. Rodden does not argue that Orwell was the most distinguished man of letters of the last century, nor even the leading novelist of his generation, let alone the greatest imaginative writer of English prose fiction. Yet his influence since his death at midcentury is incomparable. No other writer has aroused so much controversy or contributed so many incessantly quoted words and phrases to our cultural lexicon, from “Big Brother” and “doublethink” to “thoughtcrime” and “Newspeak.” Becoming George Orwell is a pathbreaking tour de force that charts the astonishing passage of a litterateur into a legend. Rodden presents the author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four in a new light, exploring how the man and writer Orwell, born Eric Arthur Blair, came to be overshadowed by the spectral figure associated with nightmare visions of our possible futures. Rodden opens with a discussion of the life and letters, chronicling Orwell’s eccentricities and emotional struggles, followed by an assessment of his chief literary achievements. The second half of the book examines the legend and legacy of Orwell, whom Rodden calls “England’s Prose Laureate,” looking at everything from cyberwarfare to “fake news.” The closing chapters address both Orwell’s enduring relevance to burning contemporary issues and the multiple ironies of his popular reputation, showing how he and his work have become confused with the very dreads and diseases that he fought against throughout his life.

Author : Tony Blair
Publisher : House of Anansi
ISBN 13 : 1770890203
Total Pages : 88 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Hitchens vs. Blair written by Tony Blair and published by House of Anansi. This book was released on 2011-03-04 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intellectual juggernaut and staunch atheist Christopher Hitchens goes head-to-head with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, one of the Western world’s most openly devout political leaders, on the highly charged topic of religion. Few world leaders have had a greater hand in shaping current events than Blair; few writers have been more outspoken and polarizing than Hitchens. In this edition of The Munk Debates -- Canada’s premier international debate series -- Hitchens and Blair square off on the contentious questions that continue to dog the topic of religion in our globalized world: How does faith influence our actions? What is the role of people of faith in the public sphere? Is religious doctrine rigid, or should we allow for flexibility in our interpretations? This exclusive debate, which played out to a sold-out audience, is now available in print form, along with candid interviews with Hitchens and Blair. Sharp, provocative, and thoroughly engrossing, Hitchens vs. Blair is a rigorous and electrifying intellectual sparring match on the oldest question: Is religion a force for good in the world?

Author : Kenneth W. Daniels
Publisher : Kenneth W Daniels
ISBN 13 : 0578003880
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.87/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Why I Believed written by Kenneth W. Daniels and published by Kenneth W Daniels. This book was released on 2008-06-28 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part auto-biography and part exposé of Ken Daniels' experience and long time belief in Christianity and the questions and answers he's had to ask about with regard to the validity of Christian theories.

Author : J. Arvid Ågren
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198862261
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.60/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Gene's-Eye View of Evolution written by J. Arvid Ågren and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-21 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "To many evolutionary biologists, the central challenge of their discipline is to explain adaptation, the appearance of design in the living world. With the theory of evolution by natural selection, Charles Darwin elegantly showed how a purely mechanistic process can achieve this striking feature of nature. Since then, the way many biologists have thought about evolution and natural selection is as a theory about individual organisms. Over a century later, a subtle but radical shift in perspective emerged with the gene's-eye view of evolution in which natural selection was conceptualized as a struggle between genes for replication and transmission to the next generation. This viewpoint culminated with the publication of The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (Oxford University Press, 1976) and is now commonly referred to as selfish gene thinking. The gene's-eye view has subsequently played a central role in evolutionary biology, although it continues to attract controversy. The central aim of this accessible book is to show how the gene's-eye view differs from the traditional organismal account of evolution, trace its historical origins, clarify typical misunderstandings and, by using examples from contemporary experimental work, show why so many evolutionary biologists still consider it an indispensable heuristic. The book concludes by discussing how selfish gene thinking fits into ongoing debates in evolutionary biology, and what they tell us about the future of the gene's-eye view of evolution."--

Author : Sal Restivo
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1349951609
Total Pages : 377 pages
Book Rating : 4.04/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Sociology, Science, and the End of Philosophy written by Sal Restivo and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-07-06 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a unique analysis of how ideas about science and technology in the public and scientific imaginations (in particular about maths, logic, the gene, the brain, god, and robots) perpetuate the false reality that values and politics are separate from scientific knowledge and its applications. These ideas are reinforced by cultural myths about free will and individualism. Restivo makes a compelling case for a synchronistic approach in the study of these notoriously 'hard' cases, arguing that their significance reaches far beyond the realms of science and technology, and that their sociological and political ramifications are of paramount importance in our global society. This innovative work deals with perennial problems in the social sciences, philosophy, and the history of science and religion, and will be of special interest to professionals in these fields, as well as scholars of science and technology studies.

Author : Rob Wilson
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674033436
Total Pages : 340 pages
Book Rating : 4.34/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Be Always Converting, be Always Converted written by Rob Wilson and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wilson's reconceptualization of the American project of conversion begins with the story of Henry 'Ōpūkaha'ia, the first Hawaiian convert to Christianity, torn from his Native Pacific homeland and transplanted to New England. Wilson argues that 'Ōpūkaha'ia's conversion is both remarkable and prototypically American.

Author : D. J. Taylor
Publisher : Open Road Media
ISBN 13 : 1504015193
Total Pages : 517 pages
Book Rating : 4.96/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Orwell written by D. J. Taylor and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-07-28 with total page 517 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Whitbread Biography Award: A “profoundly moving [and] definitive” portrait of George Orwell, author of 1984 and larger-than-life literary genius (The Daily Telegraph). It was not easy to bury George Orwell. After a lifetime of iconoclasm, during which he professed no interest in religion and no affiliation with any church, he asked to be buried in an Anglican churchyard—but none would have him. Orwell’s friends fought for him to have a proper grave, however, and the author of 1984, Animal Farm, and Homage to Catalonia, among other brilliant works of prose, poetry, and journalism, was laid to rest in a quiet country cemetery. Almost immediately, his legacy was in dispute. Orwell did not want any biographies written of him, but that has not stopped scholars from trying. Of all those published since the author’s death in 1950, D. J. Taylor’s prize-winning book is considered the most definitive. Born in India, Orwell spent his forty-six years of life traveling the British Empire and confronting the world head on. From the trenches of Spain to the top of bestseller lists, Taylor presents Orwell fully—as a writer, social critic, and human being.

Author : Julie Webber
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.42/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Cultural Set Up of Comedy written by Julie Webber and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do various forms of comedy - including stand-up, satire, and film and television - transform contemporary invocations of nationalism and citizenship in youth cultures? And how are attitudes about gender, race, and sexuality transformed through comedic performances on social media? This book seeks to answer these questions by examining comedic performances by Chris Rock and Louis C.K., news parodies like the 'The Daily Show' and 'The Colbert Report', the role of satire in the Arab Spring, and the groundbreaking performances by women in 'Bridesmaids'. Breaking with the usual cultural studies debates over how to conceptualize youth, the book instead focuses on the comedic cultural and political scripts that frame affective strategies post-9/11.