The Philosophy Of Fanaticism

Author : Leo Townsend,Ruth Rebecca Tietjen,Hans Bernhard Schmid,Michael Staudigl
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 327 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2022-07-26
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781000614251

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The Philosophy of Fanaticism by Leo Townsend,Ruth Rebecca Tietjen,Hans Bernhard Schmid,Michael Staudigl Pdf

The essays in this volume explore some of the disconcerting realities of fanaticism, by analyzing its unique dynamics, and considering how it can be productively confronted. The book features both analytic and continental philosophical approaches to fanaticism. Working at the intersections of epistemology, philosophy of emotions, political philosophy, and philosophy of religion, the contributors address a range of questions related to this increasingly relevant, yet widely neglected topic. What are the distinctive features of fanaticism? What are its causes, motivations, and reasons? In what ways, if at all, is fanaticism epistemically, ethically, and politically problematic? And how can fanaticism be combatted or curtailed? The Philosophy of Fanaticism will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in epistemology, philosophy of religion, philosophy of emotions, moral psychology, and political philosophy.

Author : Paul Katsafanas
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 476 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2023-11-07
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781000990744

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Fanaticism and the History of Philosophy by Paul Katsafanas Pdf

Voltaire called fanaticism the "monster that pretends to be the child of religion". Philosophers, politicians, and cultural critics have decried fanaticism and attempted to define the distinctive qualities of the fanatic, whom Winston Churchill described as "someone who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject". Yet despite fanaticism’s role in the long history of social discord, human conflict, and political violence, it remains a relatively neglected topic in the history of philosophy. In this outstanding inquiry into the philosophical history of fanaticism, a team of international contributors examine the topic from antiquity to the present day. Organized into four sections, topics covered include: Fanaticism in ancient Greek, Indian, and Chinese philosophy; Fanaticism and superstition from Hobbes to Hume, including chapters on Locke and Montesquieu, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson; Kant, Germaine de Stael, Hegel, Nietzsche, William James, and Jorge Portilla on fanaticism; Fanaticism and terrorism; and extremism and gender, including the philosophy and morality of the "manosphere"; Closed-mindedness and political and epistemological fanaticism. Spanning themes from superstition, enthusiasm, and misanthropy to the emotions, purity, and the need for certainty, Fanaticism and the History of Philosophy is a landmark volume for anyone researching and teaching the history of philosophy, particularly ethics and moral philosophy. It is also a valuable resource for those studying fanaticism in related fields such as religion, the history of political thought, sociology, and the history of ideas.

Author : Alberto Toscano
Publisher : Verso Books
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2017-08-29
Category : History
ISBN : 9781786630568

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Fanaticism by Alberto Toscano Pdf

A genealogy of fanaticism—unearthing its long history, before it became a tool in the Clash of Civilizations It is commonplace to hear fanaticism described as a deviant or extreme variant of an already irrational set of religious beliefs, an assertion that helps to demonize convictions outside political orthodoxy. Alberto Toscano’s compelling and erudite counter-history explodes this accepted convention by exploring the critical role fanaticism played in the formation of modern politics and the liberal state. Showing how fanaticism results from a failure to formulate an adequate emancipatory politics, this illuminating history sheds new light on an idea that continues to dominate debates about faith and secularism. This expanded edition includes new material that revisits the idea of fanaticism as it operates at the limits of the liberal political imaginary, highlighting its relation to fraternal violence, political purity and the refusal of compromise, as well as its centrality to times of social crisis and international conflict.

Author : Zachary R. Goldsmith
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 209 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2022-07-12
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780812298628

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Fanaticism by Zachary R. Goldsmith Pdf

As the post-WWII liberal democratic consensus comes under increasing assault around the globe, Zachary R. Goldsmith investigates a timely topic: the reemergence of fanaticism. His book demonstrates how the concept of fanaticism, so often flippantly invoked with little forethought, actually has a long history stretching back to ancient times. Tracing this history through the Reformation and the Enlightenment to our present moment of political extremism run amok, Goldsmith offers a novel account of fanaticism, detailing its transformation from a primarily religious to a political concept around the time of the French Revolution. He draws on the work of Immanuel Kant, Edmund Burke, and Fyodor Dostoevsky—all keen observers of fanaticism, and especially its political variant—in order to explore this crucial moment in the development of political fanaticism. Examining conceptualizations of fanaticism from different geographical, political, temporal, and contextual backgrounds, Goldsmith reveals how the concept has changed over time and resists easy definition. Nevertheless, his analysis of the writings of key figures from the tradition of political thought regarding fanaticism yields a complex and nuanced understanding of the concept that allows us to productively identify and observe its most salient characteristics: irrationality, messianism, the embrace of abstraction, the desire for novelty, the pursuit of perfection, a lack of limits in politics, the embrace of violence, certainty, passion, and its perennial attraction to intellectuals. Goldsmith’s political-philosophical history of fanaticism offers us an argument and warning against fanaticism itself, demonstrating that fanaticism is antidemocratic, illiberal, antipolitical, and never necessary.

Author : Alberto Toscano
Publisher : Verso Books
Page : 444 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2017-08-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9781786630551

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Fanaticism by Alberto Toscano Pdf

The idea of fanaticism as a deviant or extreme variant of an already irrational set of religious beliefs is today invoked by the West in order to demonize and psychologize any non-liberal politics. Alberto Toscano's compelling and erudite counter-history explodes this accepted interpretation in exploring the critical role fanaticism played in forming modern politics and the liberal state. Tracing its development from the traumatic Peasants' War of early sixteenth-century Germany to contemporary Islamism, Toscano tears apart the sterile opposition of 'reasonableness' and fanaticism. Instead, in a radical new interpretation, he places the fanatic at the very heart of politics, arguing that historical and revolutionary transformations require a new understanding of his role. Showing how fanaticism results from the failure to formulate an adequate emancipatory politics, this illuminating history sheds new light on an idea that continues to dominate debates about faith and secularism.

Author : Matthew Hughes,Gaynor Johnson
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 412 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2004-12-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9781135753634

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Fanaticism and Conflict in the Modern Age by Matthew Hughes,Gaynor Johnson Pdf

What is fanaticism? Is the term at all useful? After all, one person's fanatic is another's freedom fighter. This new book probves these key questions of the twenty first century.It details how throughout history there have been fanatics eager to pursue their religious, political or personal agendas.

Author : Ross Lerner
Publisher : Fordham Univ Press
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2019-04-02
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780823283897

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Unknowing Fanaticism by Ross Lerner Pdf

We may think we know what defines religious fanaticism: violent action undertaken with dogmatic certainty. But the term fanatic, from the European Reformation to today, has never been a stable one. Then and now it has been reductively defined to justify state violence and to delegitimize alternative sources of authority. Unknowing Fanaticism rejects the simplified binary of fanatical religion and rational politics, turning to Renaissance literature to demonstrate that fanaticism was integral to how both modern politics and poetics developed, from the German Peasants’ Revolt to the English Civil War. The book traces two entangled approaches to fanaticism in this long Reformation moment: the targeting of it as an extreme political threat and the engagement with it as a deep epistemological and poetic problem. In the first, thinkers of modernity from Martin Luther to Thomas Hobbes and John Locke positioned themselves against fanaticism to pathologize rebellion and abet theological and political control. In the second, which arose alongside and often in response to the first, the poets of fanaticism investigated the link between fanatical self-annihilation—the process by which one could become a vessel for divine violence—and the practices of writing poetry. Edmund Spenser, John Donne, and John Milton recognized in the fanatic’s claim to be a passive instrument of God their own incapacity to know and depict the origins of fanaticism. Yet this crisis of unknowing was a productive one. It led these writers to experiment with poetic techniques that would allow them to address fanaticism’s tendency to unsettle the boundaries between human and divine agency and between individual and collective bodies. These poets demand a new critical method, which this book attempts to model: a historically-minded and politicized formalism that can attend to the complexity of the poetic encounter with fanaticism.

Author : Pascal Bruckner
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 153 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2013-04-25
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780745670140

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The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse by Pascal Bruckner Pdf

The planet is sick. Human beings are guilty of damaging it. We have to pay. Today, that is the orthodoxy throughout the Western world. Distrust of progress and science, calls for individual and collective self-sacrifice to ‘save the planet’ and cultivation of fear: behind the carbon commissars, a dangerous and counterproductive ecological catastrophism is gaining ground. Modern society’s susceptibility to this kind of thinking derives from what Bruckner calls “the seductive attraction of disaster,” as exemplified by the popular appeal of disaster movies. But ecological catastrophism is harmful in that it draws attention away from other, more solvable problems and injustices in the world in order to focus on something that is portrayed as an Apocalypse. Rather than preaching catastrophe and pessimism, we need to develop a democratic and generous ecology that addresses specific problems in a practical way.

Author : Isaac Taylor,Harry Houdini Collection (Library of Con,Joseph Meredith Toner Collection (Librar
Publisher : Palala Press
Page : 376 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2015-12-14
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1348204249

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Fanaticism by Isaac Taylor,Harry Houdini Collection (Library of Con,Joseph Meredith Toner Collection (Librar Pdf

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Author : Isaac Taylor
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 462 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2020-04-16
Category : History
ISBN : 0461735857

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Fanaticism by Isaac Taylor Pdf

Author : Jay Newman
Publisher : Buffalo, N.Y. : Prometheus Books
Page : 160 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 1986
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : UCAL:B4249939

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Fanatics & Hypocrites by Jay Newman Pdf

In an age of terrorism, religious skirmishing, global revolution and counterrevolution, political assassinations, moral conflict, and unceasing turmoil, there are many ideas and concepts that remain in desperate need of clarificationnot the least of these are fanaticism and hypocrisy. Newman's fascinating investigation sheds much-needed light on these concepts.

Author : Paul Katsafanas
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 245 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2022-11-24
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780192693501

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Philosophy of Devotion by Paul Katsafanas Pdf

Why do people persist in commitments that threaten their happiness, security, and comfort? Why do some of our most central, identity-defining commitments seem to resist the effects of reasoning and critical reflection? Drawing on real-life examples, empirical psychology, and philosophical reflection, Paul Katsafanas argues that these commitments involve an ethical stance called devotion, which plays a pervasive—but often hidden—role in human life. Devotion typically involves sacralizing certain values, goals, or relationships. To sacralize a value is to treat it as inviolable (trade-offs with ordinary values are forbidden), incontestable (even contemplating such trade-offs is prohibited), and dialectically invulnerable (no rational considerations can disrupt the agent's commitment to the value). Philosophy of Devotion offers a detailed philosophical account and defense of these features. Devotion and the sacralization of values can be reasonable; indeed, a life involving meaningful, sustained commitment depends on these stances. Without devotion, we risk an existential condition that Katsafanas describes as normative dissipation, in which all of our commitments become etiolated. Yet devotion can easily go wrong, deforming into the individual and group fanaticism that have become pervasive features of modern social life. Katsafanas provides an alternative to fanaticism, investigating the way in which we can express non-pathological forms of devotion. We can be devoted through affirmation and through what Katsafanas calls the deepening move, which treats the agent's central commitments as systematically inchoate. Each of these stances enables a wholehearted form of devotion that nevertheless preserves flexibility and openness, avoiding the dangers of fanaticism on the one hand and normative dissipation on the other. But this is inevitably a fragile and precarious achievement: affirmation can slide into a focus on rejecting what isn't affirmed, and the deepening move can ossify into rigidity. Only the perpetual quest to maintain a form of existential flexibility, which may require oscillation between affirmation and deepening, can stave off these dangers

Author : Matthew Hughes,Gaynor Johnson
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 196 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2005-01-01
Category : History
ISBN : 0714685844

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Fanaticism and Conflict in the Modern Age by Matthew Hughes,Gaynor Johnson Pdf

The volume covers the nature and philosophy of fanaticism, the connection between political ideology and fanaticism, and the relationship between fanaticism and war in the contemporary era."--Jacket.

Author : Voltaire
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 398 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 1802
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : UCAL:B3627008

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The Philosophical Dictionary by Voltaire Pdf

Author : Eric Hoffer
Publisher : Time Life Medical
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 1980
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0809436027

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The True Believer by Eric Hoffer Pdf