Alan Ryan – författare

A prodigiously brilliant thinker who sharply challenged the beliefs of his age, the political and social radical John Stuart Mill was the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century. Regarded as one of the sacred texts of liberalism, his great work On Liberty argues lucidly that any democracy risks becoming a 'tyranny of opinion' in which minority views are suppressed if they do not conform with those of the majority. Written in the same period as On Liberty, shortly after the death of Mill's beloved wife and fellow-thinker Harriet, The Subjection of Women stresses the importance of equality for the sexes. Together, the works provide a fascinating testimony to the hopes and anxieties of mid-Victorian England, and offer a compelling consideration of what it truly means to be free.

One of the most important nineteenth-century schools of thought, Utilitarianism propounds the view that the value or rightness of an action rests in how well it promotes the welfare of those affected by it, aiming for 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number'. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was the movement's founder, as much a social reformer as a philosopher. His greatest interpreter, John Stuart Mill (1806-73), set out to humanize Bentham's pragmatic Utilitarianism by balancing the claims of reason and the imagination, individuality and social well-being in essays such as 'Bentham', 'Coleridge' and, above all, Utilitarianism. The works by Bentham and Mill collected in this volume show the creation and development of a system of ethics that has had an enduring influence on moral philosophy and legislative policy.

A magisterial, one-volume history of political thought from Herodotus to the present, Ancient Athens to modern democracy - from author and professor Alan RyanThis is a book about the answers that historians, philosophers, theologians, practising politicians and would-be revolutionaries have given to one question: how should human beings best govern themselves? Almost every modern government claims to be democratic; but is democracy really the best way of organising our political life? Can we manage our own affairs at all? Should we even try? In the west, do we actually live in democracies? In this extraordinary book Alan Ryan engages with the great thinkers of the past to show us how vividly their ideas speak to us in today's uncertain world.ALAN RYAN was born in London in 1940 and taught for many years at Oxford, where he was a Fellow of New College and Reader in Politics. He was Professor of Politics at Princeton from 1988 to 1996, when he returned to Oxford to become Warden of New College and Professor of Political Theory until his retirement in 2009. His previous books include The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell: A Political Life and John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism. He is a Fellow of the British Academy.Reviews of On Politics:'An engaging and smart survey of major political thinkers ... Through Ryan [they] speak directly to the present' Mark Mazower, Prospect'Ryan's book is a magnificent piece of work, clear (even when the ideas he's exploring are obscure) and engaging (even when the theory in the original is forbidding) ... anyone remotely interested in political theory will profit from reading or dipping into Ryan's On Politics, whether this is their first acquaintance with the canon of political theory or whether they have been "Hobbing and Locking" for decades ... It's a remarkable experience' Jeremy Waldron, New York Review of Books'Ambitiously and elegantly covers two and a half millennia of political thinking ... despite covering huge intellectual terrain, [On Politics] a delight both when it explores detail and also when it draws conclusions of a broader perspective' Justin Champion, BBC History Magazine'On Politics is crammed with smart observations and wise advice' John Keane, Financial Times'An impressive achievement' Economist

One of the most important nineteenth-century schools of thought, Utilitarianism propounds the view that the value or rightness of an action rests in how well it promotes the welfare of those affected by it, aiming for 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number'. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was the movement's founder, as much a social reformer as a philosopher. His greatest interpreter, John Stuart Mill (1806-73), set out to humanize Bentham's pragmatic Utilitarianism by balancing the claims of reason and the imagination, individuality and social well-being in essays such as 'Bentham', 'Coleridge' and, above all, Utilitarianism. The works by Bentham and Mill collected in this volume show the creation and development of a system of ethics that has had an enduring influence on moral philosophy and legislative policy.

The papers in this collection provide views on central aspects of Thomas Hobbes's (1588-1679) life and work. The collection testifies to his enduring importance as a major philosopher four hundred years after his birth, and helps to unravel aspects of his intellectual biography which are relevant to a proper appreciation of his philosophy. The contributors are: G. A. J. Rogers, Alan Ryan, David Gauthier, Noel Malcolm, Arrigo Pacchi, David Raphael, Tom Sorrell, François Tricaud, and Richard Tuck.This is the first volume in a new series sponsored by the Mind Association.

This collection of extracts from works by philosophers, political theorists, and social critics ranges over two millennia, from the ideas of Plato and Aristotle to those of contemporary thinkers such as John Rawls and Robert Nozick, and examines the nature of justice, its importance in human life, and its place among the other virtues. The scope of the collection gives a clear picture of the differences and continuities that have marked the debate: Plato's emphasis on the ideal of `sticking to one's task' contrasts with the modern emphasis on individual rights, while the account of justice as part of the law of nature offered by Aristotle and Cicero contrasts with Hume's analysis of justice as an artificial virtue. Alan Ryan's introductory essay emphasizes the stringency of justice, showing how its demands can conflict with considerations of the general welfare. The book concludes with a discussion of Marx's view that justice is perhaps merely a concession to a world of scarcity and selfishness created by capitalist necessities. This is an essential guide to interpretations of one of the central values of political life and thought.

Are the Social Sciences in principle a different and more dubious undertaking than the Natural Sciences? This book is an introduction to the major problems of the philosophy of social science. It covers most of the important, and sometimes controversial, topics in the present debate but demands no previous knowledge of philosophy or the social sciences. A model of explanation is developed from current philosophical analysis of the natural sciences that can with care be made applicable to the work of the social scientist.The book begins by explaining the point of asking specifically philosophical questions - an issue on which many social scientists have come to grief. Summarising the concern of the philosopher of social science as the desire to explain rationally the scientific standing of social enquiry, it leads into an account of the nature of scientific explanation, paying special attention to the role of theories in science. The applicability of the dominant account of scientific explanation to human behaviour is shown to raise conceptual problems of an intractable kind - some of them traditional problems concerning 'free will', others contemporary problems with a bearing on social policies about crime, mental health and the enlargement of personal liberty. The intractability of these problems sets the book off on exploring the claim that social understanding is essentially non-scientific, because it involves the analysis of social meanings rather than casual regularities. This claim is seen to contain a good deal of sense - much of it well enshrined in sociological and anthropological practice - but to be misleadingly expressed. Next, the discussion turns to the argument that the proper explanation of social phenomena is 'functionalist' in character; functionalism is seen to do justice to the often-defended view that social phenomena are frequently holistically explained, but is rejected as involving anything peculiar to the explanation of social phenomena - and several self-ascribed functionalists are shown to be offering non-functionalist explanations. In the concluding chapters the role of the social sciences as ideologies is discussed, first in the context of social theorists' ambitions for a science which offers long-range predictions of social phenomena, and finally in the context of doubts about the possibility of objectivity in the description and analysis of social facts. Throughout the book every effort is made to represent conflicting views as fairly as possible; the differences within social science are emphasised in the attempt to show how no single simple account can do justice to the diversity of explanations offered by social scientists.

When John Dewey died in 1952, he was memorialized as America's most famous philosopher, revered by liberal educators and deplored by conservatives, but universally acknowledged as his country's intellectual voice. Many things conspired to give Dewey an extraordinary intellectual eminence: He was immensely long-lived and immensely prolific; he died in his ninety-third year, and his intellectual productivity hardly slackened until his eighties. Professor Alan Ryan offers new insights into Dewey's many achievements, his character, and the era in which his scholarship had a remarkable impact. He investigates the question of what an American audience wanted from a public philosopher - from an intellectual figure whose credentials came from his academic standing as a philosopher, but whose audience was much wider than an academic one. Ran argues that Dewey's "religious" outlook illuminates his politics much more vividly than it does the politics of religion as ordinarily conceived. He examines how Dewey fit into the American radical tradition, how he was and was not like his transatlantic contemporaries, why he could for so long practice a form of philosophical inquiry that became unfashionable in England after 1914 at the latest.

The Making of Modern Liberalism is a deep and wide-ranging exploration of the origins and nature of liberalism from the Enlightenment through its triumphs and setbacks in the twentieth century and beyond. The book is the fruit of the more than four decades during which Alan Ryan, one of the world's leading political thinkers, reflected on the past of the liberal tradition--and worried about its future. This is essential reading for anyone interested in political theory or the history of liberalism.

The Making of Modern Liberalism is a deep and wide-ranging exploration of the origins and nature of liberalism from the Enlightenment through its triumphs and setbacks in the twentieth century and beyond. The book is the fruit of the more than four decades during which Alan Ryan, one of the world's leading political thinkers, reflected on the past of the liberal tradition--and worried about its future. This is essential reading for anyone interested in political theory or the history of liberalism.

In On Tocqueville, Alan Ryan brilliantly illuminates the observations of the French philosopher who first journeyed to the United States in 1831 and went on to catalogue the unique features of the American social contract. Tocqueville’s prescient analyses of American life remain as relevant today as when they were first written.On Tocqueville features a chronology, biography and excerpts from Tocqueville’s major works.

In On Machiavelli: The Search for Glory, Alan Ryan illuminates the political and philosophical complexities of the often-reviled godfather of realpolitik. Thought by some to be the founder of Italian nationalism, regarded by others to be a reviver of the Roman Republic as a model for the modern Western world, Machiavelli remains a contentious figure. Often outraging popular opinion with his insistence on the amoral nature of power, Machiavelli eschewed the world as it ought to be in favor of a forthright appraisal of the one that is. Perhaps more than any other thinker, Machiavelli has suffered from being taken out of context, and Ryan places him squarely within his own time and the politics of a Renaissance Italy riven by near-constant warfare among rival city-states and the papacy.A well-educated son of Florence, Machiavelli was originally in charge of the Florentine Republic’s militia, but in 1512 the city fell to papal forces led by Cardinal Giovanni de Medici, who thus restored the Medici family to power. Machiavelli was accused of conspiracy, imprisoned, tortured, and eventually exiled from his beloved Florence, and it was during this period that he produced his most famous works. While attempting to ingratiate himself to the Medicis, the historically minded Machiavelli looked to the imperial ambitions and past glories of the Roman Republic as a contrast to the perceived failures of his contemporaries.For Machiavelli, the hunger for power and glory was inextricable from human nature, and any serious attempt to rule must take this into account. In his revolutionary The Prince and Discourses—both excerpted here—Machiavelli created the first truly modern analysis of power.

In On Aristotle: Saving Politics from Philosophy, Alan Ryan examines Plato's most famous student and sharpest critic, whose writing has helped shape over two millennia of Western philosophy, science, and religion. The first thinker to posit that a society should be ruled by laws and not men, Aristotle was born in Stagira, Macedon, in 384 BCE. He would go on to join Plato's Academy and eventually become tutor to Alexander the Great. During his lifetime he would see the revival of Athens following its destruction in the Peloponnesian War, before the ultimate extinction of its radical form of democracy after the Macedonian conquest. Aristotle’s strongly empirical cast of mind was brought to bear on a stunning range of subjects, from rhetoric to physics, from the history of political institutions and mathematics to zoology and botany. The resulting system dominated European thought from the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries.In Nicomachean Ethics and Politics—both excerpted here—Aristotle attempted to delineate the ideal virtues of a both public and private life as well as critique the utopian antipolitics of his former teacher, Plato. For Aristotle, life in a polis was the natural state of man and provided the greatest opportunity for human beings to fulfill their potential. Unlike his scientific theories, which would eventually be displaced by Galileo, Newton, and Darwin, Aristotle’s meticulous thinking on the nature of human affairs, ethics, politics, citizenship, and virtue in a civil society remains as vital today as it was in his own time.

Augustine’s political philosophy is pregnant with arguments that racked not only Christian Europe but also much of the modern world. In On Augustine Alan Ryan carefully lays out the complicated political, philosophical and religious context of Augustine and traces the history of his impact on Western thought both within and beyond the Christian tradition.

In Leviathan, Hobbes created the idea of a “social contract” and set out to explicate a doctrine for the foundation of states and legitimate forms of government. In On Hobbes, Ryan explains how he created the secular conception of the state and politics in one of the first truly modern works of political philosophy. Ryan explicates how current notions of individual rights, sovereignty, representative government and almost all liberal political theory find their foundation in Hobbes.

The field of physical anthropology deals with issues that everyone thinks about and cares about: our origins, our evolutionary history, and why we look and act the way we do. The field has benefited greatly by increased attention from the media, from popular books, and from several television series. There is a multitude of topics considered by physical anthropologists, including human and primate origins, primate societies, growth and development, genetics, forensic science, and nutrition. Most physical anthropology graduate students have traditionally aspired to research and/or teaching careers at a university. However, during the last decade there has been an increased interest in non-traditional careers outside the ivory tower, primarily because the number of new physical anthropology Ph.D.s exceeds the number of jobs available in anthropology departments.Because physical anthropology encompasses a variety of research interests, students are broadly trained and have a wealth of talents and skills that make them competitive for non-academic careers. However, pursuing opportunities outside the academy requires thoughtful planning and training. This collection serves as a reference for students contemplating a career in physical anthropology within or outside the academy. Several rewarding career paths that physical anthropologists have chosen are described. Students will understand how anthropological theory, methods, and training are applicable to job responsibilities and career development. This book will also help departments of anthropology design coursework and training programs that will make their students more competitive. In sum, the future of anthropology seems promising given the discipline's broad scope and concern for issues faced by contemporary society, and physical anthropologists will be playing an increased role in many arenas.

First published in 1974. As logician, economist, political theorist, practical politician and active champion of social freedom, John Stuart Mill is a figure of continuing importance. In this book the author does full justice to the range of Mill’s achievements, providing an introductory guide to his most important and best known writings including Autobiography, A System of Logic, Utilitarianism, Liberty, and The Subjugation of Women. In their treatment of his works, the author seeks to emphasise Mill’s approach to those issues — education, the conflict between social order and individual freedom, the unresolved state of the social sciences, rights and duties of citizens in a democratic state — which remain most alive to us today. At the same time Mill is seen as part of his own age, responding to the anxieties that beset his contemporaries. This book will be of interest to students of politics and philosophy.

First published in 1974. As logician, economist, political theorist, practical politician and active champion of social freedom, John Stuart Mill is a figure of continuing importance. In this book the author does full justice to the range of Mill’s achievements, providing an introductory guide to his most important and best known writings including Autobiography, A System of Logic, Utilitarianism, Liberty, and The Subjugation of Women. In their treatment of his works, the author seeks to emphasise Mill’s approach to those issues — education, the conflict between social order and individual freedom, the unresolved state of the social sciences, rights and duties of citizens in a democratic state — which remain most alive to us today. At the same time Mill is seen as part of his own age, responding to the anxieties that beset his contemporaries. This book will be of interest to students of politics and philosophy.

In On Aristotle, Alan Ryan examines Plato’s most famous student and sharpest critic. Aristotle was the first thinker to posit that a society should be ruled by laws and not men. His strongly empirical cast of mind was brought to bear on a stunning range of subjects and the resulting system dominated European thought from the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries. Aristotle’s meticulous thinking on the nature of human affairs, ethics, politics, citizenship and virtue in a civil society remains as vital today as it was in his own time. Including key sections from Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, Aristotle’s only surviving works, with a new introduction by Alan Ryan and a chronology of the philosopher’s life and works, On Aristotle contextualises Aristotle’s views of government and the political community within the Ancient World.

For his insistence on the amoral character of successful government, Machiavelli remains a contentious figure. Often reviled as a teacher of evil, Machiavelli’s influence on the modern state is explored in this book.In On Machiavelli, Alan Ryan illuminates the political and philosophical complexities of the godfather of realpolitik. Often outraging popular opinion, Machiavelli eschewed the world as it ought to be in favour of a forthright appraisal of the one that is. Thought by some to be the founder of Italian nationalism, regarded by others to be a reviver of the Roman Republic, Machiavelli has suffered from being taken out of context. Placing him squareley in his own time, this essential, comprehensive and accessible guide to Machiavelli’s life and works includes a new introduction by Ryan.

In On Tocqueville, Alan Ryan brilliantly illuminates the observations of the French philosopher who first journeyed to the United States in 1831 and went on to catalogue the unique features of the American social contract. Tocqueville’s prescient analyses of American life remain as relevant today as when they were first written.On Tocqueville features a chronology, biography and excerpts from Tocqueville’s major works.