Thomas W. Smith – författare

This book is a major contribution to the debate about philosophy and method in history and international relations. The author analyses IR scholarship from classical realism to quantitative and postmodern work.

This book is a major contribution to the debate about philosophy and method in history and international relations. The author analyses IR scholarship from classical realism to quantitative and postmodern work.

Challenges influential interpretations of Aristotelian ethical and political philosophy.Revaluing Ethics criticizes the notion that the Nicomachean Ethics is a moral textbook written for an indeterminate audience. Rather, Smith argues that the Ethics is a pedagogy and so must be read in light of the demands imposed by teaching and learning about politics in a tradition. Smith claims that the Ethics initially seeks common ground with ambitious, virile young citizens of ancient city-states who valorize honorable action and competition. Their love of honor can be a spur to virtue, but the competitive character of its pursuit also leads to despotic and factional politics. The drama of the Ethics lies in the dialectical engagement and transformation of a valorization of prestige and power. Aristotle shows how these commitments are paradoxically sterile when pursued in practice. In turn, Aristotle's strategy for reforming political life is to argue for the reorientation of his audience's desires away from the non-shareable external goods of political power and honor to shareable good. His strategy for reforming personal life is to argue for the reorientation of his audience's desires away from honor to a love of contemplation.

Challenges influential interpretations of Aristotelian ethical and political philosophy.Revaluing Ethics criticizes the notion that the Nicomachean Ethics is a moral textbook written for an indeterminate audience. Rather, Smith argues that the Ethics is a pedagogy and so must be read in light of the demands imposed by teaching and learning about politics in a tradition. Smith claims that the Ethics initially seeks common ground with ambitious, virile young citizens of ancient city-states who valorize honorable action and competition. Their love of honor can be a spur to virtue, but the competitive character of its pursuit also leads to despotic and factional politics. The drama of the Ethics lies in the dialectical engagement and transformation of a valorization of prestige and power. Aristotle shows how these commitments are paradoxically sterile when pursued in practice. In turn, Aristotle's strategy for reforming political life is to argue for the reorientation of his audience's desires away from the non-shareable external goods of political power and honor to shareable good. His strategy for reforming personal life is to argue for the reorientation of his audience's desires away from honor to a love of contemplation.

International lawyers and ethicists have long judged wars from the perspective of the state and its actions, developing international humanitarian law by asking such questions as "Are the belligerents justified in entering the conflict?" and "How should they conduct themselves during the war's execution?" and "When civilian noncombatants are harmed, who is responsible for their suffering?" Human Rights and War Through Civilian Eyes reimagines the ethics of war from the standpoint of its collateral victims, focusing on the effects of war on individuals-on those who are terrorized, or killed, or whose lives are violently disrupted. Upholding a human rights analysis of war, Thomas W. Smith conveys vividly the depth of human loss and the narrowing of everyday life brought about by armed conflict.Through riveting case studies of the Iraq War and the recent Gaza conflicts, Smith shows how even combatants who profess to follow the laws of war often engage in appalling violence and brutality, cutting short civilian lives, ruining economies, rending social fabrics, and collapsing public infrastructure. A focus on the human dimension of warfare makes clear the limits of international humanitarian law, and underscores how human rights perspectives increase its efficacy. At a moment when liberal states are rethinking the ethics of war as they seek to extricate themselves from unjust or unwise conflicts and taking on the responsibility to intervene to protect vulnerable people from slaughter, Human Rights and War helps us see with bracing clarity the devastating impact of war on innocent people.

The Young Adult Playbook goes where other life design books refuse to go: it asks deep questions about what constitutes a happy life. After decades of listening to their students, Anna Moreland and Thomas Smith name the underlying desires in young adults: while searching for a lucrative career, they long for meaningful work; their social media and gaming practices point to a deeper yearning for intimacy; and their leisure habits have been crushed under the productivity machine. This book helps them unlock their deepest desires. It offers practical strategies to improve habits. And it leads them to recover activities lost from childhood. The book is threaded with the real voices of young adults who have found their way out of this rough terrain. These offer much needed models of hope, providing a concrete map through unprecedented challenges. Journal exercises throughout the chapters tailor the strategies for each individual reader.Plenty of books diagnose the ills of this digital age. Few offer a pathway out of these challenges. As caring and effective college professors, Moreland and Smith have spent decades rescuing students from this impoverished landscape. In this book they attempt to reach the students they can't teach.

Que valga la pena llega donde los demás libros de este tipo no se atreven a llegar: plantea preguntas de fondo sobre lo que hace que una vida sea verdaderamente feliz. Anna Moreland y Thomas Smith han dedicado décadas a escuchar a sus estudiantes y han identificado los deseos más profundos de los jóvenes. Tras la búsqueda de una carrera lucrativa hay un anhelo por un trabajo significativo; tras el tiempo que le dedican a las redes sociales y a los videojuegos hay un anhelo más profundo de intimidad; y bajo el afán de productividad hay un deseo de recuperar el tiempo libre que les ha sido arrebatado.Este libro está diseñado para ayudar a que los jóvenes entren en contacto con sus deseos más hondos. Ofrece estrategias prácticas para cultivar mejores hábitos y ayuda al lector a redescubrir las actividades y pasiones de su infancia. El libro incorpora las voces de jóvenes que han logrado superar con éxito las dificultades de esta época. Estas voces son modelos de esperanza en tiempos inciertos y sirven como una guía clara para atravesar retos sin precedentes. Los ejercicios de reflexión a lo largo de los capítulos ayudarán al lector a adaptar las estrategias a su propia vida.Son muchos los libros que diagnostican los males de esta era digital, pero pocos los que ofrecen una salida ante estos desafíos. Moreland y Smith, profesores atentos y comprometidos, han dedicado décadas a rescatar a sus estudiantes de este paisaje empobrecido. Con este libro quieren llegar también a los estudiantes a los que no han tenido el privilegio de enseñar.

This book bridges Japanese and European scholarly approaches to ecclesiastical history to provide new insights into how the papacy conceptualised its authority and attempted to realise and communicate that authority in ecclesiastical and secular spheres across Christendom. Adopting a broad, yet cohesive, temporal and geographical approach that spans the Early to the Late Middle Ages, from Europe to Asia, the book focuses on the different media used to represent authority, the structures through which authority was channelled and the restrictions that popes faced in so doing, and the less certain expression of papal authority on the edges of Christendom. Through twelve chapters that encompass key topics such as anti-popes, artistic representations, preaching, heresy, the crusades, and mission and the East, this interdisciplinary volume brings new perspectives to bear on the medieval papacy. The book demonstrates that the communication of papal authority was a two-way process effected by the popes and their supporters, but also by their enemies who helped to shape concepts of ecclesiastical power.Communicating Papal Authority in the Middle Ages will appeal to researchers and students alike interested in the relationships between the papacy and medieval society and the ways in which the papacy negotiated and expressed its authority in Europe and beyond.

This book bridges Japanese and European scholarly approaches to ecclesiastical history to provide new insights into how the papacy conceptualised its authority and attempted to realise and communicate that authority in ecclesiastical and secular spheres across Christendom. Adopting a broad, yet cohesive, temporal and geographical approach that spans the Early to the Late Middle Ages, from Europe to Asia, the book focuses on the different media used to represent authority, the structures through which authority was channelled and the restrictions that popes faced in so doing, and the less certain expression of papal authority on the edges of Christendom. Through twelve chapters that encompass key topics such as anti-popes, artistic representations, preaching, heresy, the crusades, and mission and the East, this interdisciplinary volume brings new perspectives to bear on the medieval papacy. The book demonstrates that the communication of papal authority was a two-way process effected by the popes and their supporters, but also by their enemies who helped to shape concepts of ecclesiastical power.Communicating Papal Authority in the Middle Ages will appeal to researchers and students alike interested in the relationships between the papacy and medieval society and the ways in which the papacy negotiated and expressed its authority in Europe and beyond.

This special issue of The Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture comprises some of the papers delivered at the ‘George Whitefield after Three Hundred Years’ International Conference held in June 2014 at Pembroke College, Oxford, commemorating the tercentenary of George Whitefield’s birth in 1714.The Revd George Whitefield (1714–70) was a very important early Methodist leader, clergyman and writer, who has not attracted as much scholarly attention as John and Charles Wesley. This interdisciplinary volume contains articles on ‘George Whitefield and the Secession Movement’s Reaction to the Cambuslang Revival’ by Kenneth B. E. Roxburgh; ‘George Whitefield and Anti-Methodist Allegations of Popery, c.1738–c.1750’ by Simon Lewis; ‘Latitudinarian responses to Whitefield, c.1740–1790’ by G. M. Ditchfield; ‘Preachers, prints and portraits: Methodists and image in Georgian Britain’ by Peter S. Forsaith, with eight attractive images; ‘George Whitefield’s Journals: A Publishing Phenomenon’ by Digby James; and ‘George Whitefield’s Reception in Twentieth-Century German-Speaking Theology’ by Maximilian J. Hölzl.

Exploring Latin texts, as well as Old French, Castilian and Occitan songs and lyrics, Remembering the Crusades in Medieval Texts and Songs takes inspiration from the new ways scholars are looking to trace the dissemination and influence of the memories and narratives surrounding the crusading past in medieval Europe. It contributes to these new directions in crusade studies by offering a more nuanced understanding of the diverse ways in which medieval authors presented events, people and places central to the crusading movement. This volume investigates how the transmission of stories related to suffering, heroism, the miraculous and ideals of masculinity helped to shape ideas of crusading presented in narratives produced in both the Latin East and the West, as well as the importance of Jerusalem in the lyric cultures of southern France, and how the narrative arc of the First Crusade developed from the earliest written and oral responses to the venture.

An exploration of the letters from the First Crusade, yielding evidence for a number of reinterpretations of the movement.The letters stemming from the First Crusade are premier sources for understanding the launch, campaign, and aftermath of the expedition. Between 1095 and 1100, epistles sustained social relationships across the Mediterranean and within Europe, as a mixture of historical writing, literary invention, news, and theological interpretation. They served ecclesiastical administration, projected authority, and formed focal points for spiritual commemoration and para-liturgical campaigns.This volume, grounded on extensive research into the original manuscripts, and presenting numerous new manuscript witnesses, argues that some of the letters are post hoc "inventions", composed by generations of scribe-readers who visited crusading sites from the twelfth century on, adding new layers of meaning in the form of interpolations and post-scripts. Drawing upon this new understanding, and blurring the distinction of epistolary "reality", it rewrites central aspects of the history of the First Crusade, considering the documents in a new way: as markers of enthusiasm and support for the crusade movement among monastic clergy, who copied and consumed them as a form of scribal crusading. Whether authentic letters or literary "confections", they functioned as communal sites for the celebration, commemoration and memorialisation of the expedition.

An exploration of the letters from the First Crusade, yielding evidence for a number of reinterpretations of the movement.The letters stemming from the First Crusade are premier sources for understanding the launch, campaign, and aftermath of the expedition. Between 1095 and 1100, epistles sustained social relationships across the Mediterranean and within Europe, as a mixture of historical writing, literary invention, news, and theological interpretation. They served ecclesiastical administration, projected authority, and formed focal points for spiritual commemoration and para-liturgical campaigns.This volume, grounded on extensive research into the original manuscripts, and presenting numerous new manuscript witnesses, argues that some of the letters are post hoc "inventions", composed by generations of scribe-readers who visited crusading sites from the twelfth century on, adding new layers of meaning in the form of interpolations and post-scripts. Drawing upon this new understanding, and blurring the distinction of epistolary "reality", it rewrites central aspects of the history of the First Crusade, considering the documents in a new way: as markers of enthusiasm and support for the crusade movement among monastic clergy, who copied and consumed them as a form of scribal crusading. Whether authentic letters or literary "confections", they functioned as communal sites for the celebration, commemoration and memorialisation of the expedition.

An important new contribution to the emerging field of late medieval supplicatory cultures.Late medieval petitions, providing unique insights into medieval social and legal history, have attracted increasing scholarly attention in recent years. This wide-ranging collection brings two approaches into dialogue with each other: the study of royal justice and secular petitions presented to the English crown, and the study of papal justice, canon law and ecclesiastical petitions (emphasising the international dimension of petitioning as a legal device exercising authority across Latin Christendom). In so doing, it crosses the traditional demarcation lines between secular and ecclesiastical systems of justice, of particular importance, given the participation by many litigantsand legislators in both of those legal spheres.A major focus is the mechanics of petitioning - who were the intermediaries in this process, and what were the "strategies of persuasion" they employed? The essays also re-examine the relationship between petitioners and their advisors, and the specific legal, rhetorical and linguistic choices they made in the composition of these texts. In so doing, the volume makes an important new contribution to theemerging field of late medieval supplicatory cultures. THOMAS W. SMITH is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Leeds; HELEN KILLICK is a post-doctoral researcher at the ICMA Centre, University of Reading.