Ideas in Context – serie
Visar alla böcker i serien Ideas in Context. Handla med fri frakt och snabb leverans.
281 produkter
281 produkter
557 kr
This book explores Friedrich Nietzsche's understanding of modern political culture and his position in the history of modern political thought. Surveying Nietzsche's entire intellectual career from his years as a student in Bonn and Leipzig during the 1860s to his genealogical project of the 1880s, Christian Emden contributes to a historically informed discussion of Nietzsche's response to the political predicaments of modernity, and sheds new light on the intellectual and political culture in Germany as the ideals of the Enlightenment gave way to the demands of the modern nation state. This is a distinguished addition to the series of Ideas in Context, and a major reassessment of a philosopher and aphorist whose stature among post-enlightenment European thinkers is now almost unrivalled.
Del 12 - Ideas in Context
The Empire of Chance
How Probability Changed Science and Everyday Life
Häftad, Engelska, 1990
345 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
The Empire of Chance tells how quantitative ideas of chance transformed the natural and social sciences, as well as daily life over the last three centuries. A continuous narrative connects the earliest application of probability and statistics in gambling and insurance to the most recent forays into law, medicine, polling and baseball. Separate chapters explore the theoretical and methodological impact in biology, physics and psychology. Themes recur - determinism, inference, causality, free will, evidence, the shifting meaning of probability - but in dramatically different disciplinary and historical contexts. In contrast to the literature on the mathematical development of probability and statistics, this book centres on how these technical innovations remade our conceptions of nature, mind and society. Written by an interdisciplinary team of historians and philosophers, this readable, lucid account keeps technical material to an absolute minimum. It is aimed not only at specialists in the history and philosophy of science, but also at the general reader and scholars in other disciplines.
Del 21 - Ideas in Context
Interpretation and Meaning in the Renaissance
The Case of Law
Häftad, Engelska, 2005
596 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
This book investigates theories of interpretation and meaning in Renaissance jurisprudence. How do they relate to the institutions of the law, especially pedagogical institutions? What characterizes the most commonly adopted theories of the legal profession? In what form were they published? How do they relate to modern canons of interpretation found in the trivium of grammar, dilaectics and rhetoric? In what ways, if any, do they mark a departure from medieval approaches? How do they relate to modern canons of interpretation? And how do they relate to similar issues in modern semantics and the philosophy of language, such as speech act theory or the 'logic of the supplement'? An answer to these questions is sought through an investigation of Renaissance problems concerning the authority of interpreters, the questions of signification, definition, verbal propriety and verbal extension, the problem of cavillation, the alternative interpretative strategies of ratio legis and mens legislatoris, the performative functions of language, and custom and equity as means of interpretation.
452 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
Peter Mack examines the impact of humanist training in rhetoric and argument on a range of Elizabethan prose texts, including political orations, histories, romances, conduct manuals, privy council debates and personal letters. Elizabethan Rhetoric reconstructs the knowledge, skills and approaches which an Elizabethan would have acquired in order to participate in the political and religious debates of the time: the approaches to an audience, analysis and replication of textual structures, organisation of arguments and tactics for disputation. Study of the rhetorical codes and conventions in terms of which debates were conducted is currently a major area of historical and literary enquiry, and Mack provides a wealth of new information about what was taught and how these conventions were exploited in personal memoranda, court depositions, sermons and political and religious pamphlets. This important book will be invaluable for all those interested in the culture, literature and political history of the period.
Del 53 - Ideas in Context
Measurement in Psychology
A Critical History of a Methodological Concept
Häftad, Engelska, 2005
325 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
This book traces how such a seemingly immutable idea as measurement proved so malleable when it collided with the subject matter of psychology. It locates philosophical and social influences (such as scientism, practicalism and Pythagoreanism) reshaping the concept and, at the core of this reshaping, identifies a fundamental problem: the issue of whether psychological attributes really are quantitative. It argues that the idea of measurement now endorsed within psychology actually subverts attempts to establish a genuinely quantitative science and it urges a new direction. It relates views on measurement by thinkers such as Holder, Russell, Campbell and Nagel to earlier views, like those of Euclid and Oresme. Within the history of psychology, it considers contributions by Fechner, Cattell, Thorndike, Stevens and Suppes, among others. It also contains a non-technical exposition of conjoint measurement theory and recent foundational work by leading measurement theorist R. Duncan Luce.
675 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
Drawing on the kind of historicist perspective encouraged by Quentin Skinner and Richard Rorty, this book explores the development of Durkheim's social realism. Durkheim argued that social facts should be studied as real, concrete things but Professor Jones argues that his social realism was less a sociological method than a way of speaking and thinking about social phenomena through which Durkheim hoped to secure the allegiance of French citizens to the Third Republic. Professor Jones's book, based on many years' research in this area, takes advantage for the first time of newly discovered lecture notes from Durkheim's philosophy class of 1883-4 and explores the significance of German social science in Durkheim's thought. The Development of Durkheim's Social Realism will be of immense value to graduate students and scholars in sociology, social theory, social and political philosophy and history of ideas.
345 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
Set against the broad context of philosophical arguments about group and state personality, Pluralism and the Personality of the State tells, for the first time, the history of political pluralism. The pluralists believed that the state was simply one group among many, and could not therefore be sovereign. They also believed that groups, like individuals, might have personalities of their own. The book examines the philosophical background to political pluralist ideas with particular reference to the work of Thomas Hobbes and the German Otto von Gierke. It also traces the development of pluralist thought before, during and after the First World War. Part Three returns to Hobbes in order to see what conclusions can be drawn about the nature of his Leviathan and the nature of the state as it exists today.
383 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
The Greek Tradition in Republic Thought completely rewrites the standard history of republican political theory. It excavates an identifiably Greek strain of republican thought which attaches little importance to freedom as non-dependence and sees no intrinsic value in political participation. This tradition's central preoccupations are not honour and glory, but happiness (eudaimonia) and justice - defined, in Plato's terms, as the rule of the best men. This set of commitments yields as startling readiness to advocate the corrective redistribution of wealth, and even the outright abolition of private property. The Greek tradition was revived in England during the early sixteenth century and was broadly influential throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its exponents included Sir Thomas More, James Harrington, Montesquieu and Thomas Jefferson, and it contributed significantly to the ideological underpinnings of the American Founding as well as the English Civil Wars.
Del 32 - Ideas in Context
Englishness and the Study of Politics
The Social and Political Thought of Ernest Barker
Häftad, Engelska, 2006
452 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
The definition of 'Englishness' has become the subject of considerable debate, and in this important contribution to Ideas in Context, Julia Stapleton looks at the work of one of the most wide-ranging and influential theorists of the English nation, Ernest Barker. The first holder of the Chair of Political Science at Cambridge, Barker wrote prolifically on the history of political thought and contemporary political theory, and his writings are notable for fusing three of the dominant strands of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century political thought, Whiggism, Idealism and Pluralism. Infused with a strong cultural sense of nationhood, Barker's writings influenced a broad non academic audience, and their subsequent neglect graphically demonstrates the fate of a certain vision of Liberal England in the generation after World War One. With, however, the erosion of a particular sense of Englishness, Barker's ideas have begun to assume renewed resonance.
Del 37 - Ideas in Context
The Social and Political Thought of Bertrand Russell
The Development of an Aristocratic Liberalism
Häftad, Engelska, 2006
570 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
This pioneering study of Bertrand Russell's social and political thought deals with the years 1896 to 1938, and is the first book to embark on a thorough investigation of the intellectual and cultural context out of which Russell's ideas emerged. Maintaining a sympathetic but critical stance towards Russell's almost innumerable political postures, and focusing in particular on his concern with the intellectual elite, the author renders that thought both plausible and coherent by placing its development against a significant historical background. As well as giving attention to the aspects of Russell's private life which helped determine the direction of his thought, Dr Ironside undertakes an enlightening exploration of the individuals, groups and beliefs by which he was successively influenced. The result is a wide-ranging and highly original view of an important and enduring figure.
Del 56 - Ideas in Context
Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I
Queen and Commonwealth 1558-1585
Häftad, Engelska, 2006
583 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
In this major contribution to the Ideas in Context series Anne McLaren explores the consequences for English political culture when, with the accession of Elizabeth I, imperial 'kingship' came to be invested in the person of a female ruler. She looks at how Elizabeth managed to be queen, in the face of considerable male opposition, and demonstrates how that opposition was enacted. Dr McLaren argues that during Elizabeth's reign men were able to accept the rule of a woman partly by inventing a new definition of 'citizen', one that made it an exclusively male identity, and she emphasizes the continuities between Elizabeth's reign and the outbreak of the English civil wars in the seventeenth century. A significant work of cultural history informed by political thought, Political Culture in the Reign of Elizabeth I offers a wholesale reinterpretation of the political dynamics of the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
Del 65 - Ideas in Context
The Duel in Early Modern England
Civility, Politeness and Honour
Häftad, Engelska, 2006
531 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
Arguments about the place and practice of the duel in early modern England were widespread. The distinguished intellectual historian Markku Peltonen examines this debate, and show how the moral and ideological status of duelling was discussed within a much larger cultural context of courtesy, civility and politeness. The advocates of the duel, following Italian and French examples, contended that it maintained and enhanced politeness; its critics by contrast increasingly severed duelling from civility, and this separation became part of a vigorous attempt in the late seventeenth century and beyond to redefine civility, politeness and indeed the nature and evolution of Englishness. To understand the duel is to understand much more fully some crucial issues in the cultural and ideological history of Stuart England, and Markku Peltonen's study will thus engage the attention of a very wide audience of historians and cultural and literary scholars.
Del 60 - Ideas in Context
Rival Enlightenments
Civil and Metaphysical Philosophy in Early Modern Germany
Häftad, Engelska, 2006
387 kr
Rival Enlightenments, first published in 2001, is a major reinterpretation of early modern German intellectual history. Ian Hunter approaches philosophical doctrines as ways of fashioning personae for envisaged historical circumstances, here of confessional conflict and political desacralization. He treats the civil philosophy of Pufendorf and Thomasius and the metaphysical philosophy of Leibniz and Kant as rival intellectual cultures or paideiai, thereby challenging all histories premised on Kant's supposed reconciliation and transcendence of the field. This study reveals the extraordinary historical self-consciousness of the civil philosophers, who repudiated university metaphysics as inimical to the intellectual formation of those administering desacralized territorial states. The book argues that the marginalization of civil philosophy in post-Kantian philosophical history may itself be seen as a continuation of the struggle between the rival enlightenments. Combining careful and well-documented scholarship with vivid polemic, Hunter presents penetrating insights for philosophers and historians alike.
452 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
Early Modern Liberalism rediscovers an important phase in the development of liberal thought. Despite the fact that 'liberalism' as a term was not applied to political thought or political parties in England until late in the eighteenth century, Annabel Patterson argues that its central ideas were formulated by seventeenth-century English writers in defiance of their society's norms, and then transmitted to the American colonies. The author is particularly concerned with the means and agents of transmission, with those who ensured that the liberal canon would be preserved, expanded, republished and dispersed; for example, the eighteenth-century philanthropist Thomas Hollis, among whose heroes were Milton, Marvell, Locke and Algernon Sidney. Framed by chapters on Hollis and Adams, this book shows what early modern liberals had in common and reopens the transatlantic conversation that began in the seventeenth century.
Del 49 - Ideas in Context
Equal Freedom and Utility
Herbert Spencer's Liberal Utilitarianism
Häftad, Engelska, 2006
596 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
This rich and provocative study assesses Herbert Spencer's pivotal contribution to the emergence of liberal utilitarianism and shows that Spencer, as much as J. S. Mill, provided liberal utilitarianism with its formative contours. Like Mill, Spencer tried to reconcile a principle of liberty and strong moral rights with a utilitarian, maximizing theory of good. In this powerful and sympathetic account, David Weinstein argues that Spencer's moral and political thought exhibits greater systematic integrity than received views of his thought acknowledge. However, Weinstein also examines the problems and flaws in Spencer's version of liberal utilitarianism, and shows that, precisely because of these flaws, it is engaging and deserving of our critical attention. This challenging study will be of interest to graduates and scholars in the fields of political theory, moral and political philosophy, and the history of political thought.
727 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
This major addition to Ideas in Context examines the development of natural law theories in the early stages of the Enlightenment in Germany and France. T. J. Hochstrasser investigates the influence exercised by theories of natural law from Grotius to Kant, with a comparative analysis of the important intellectual innovations in ethics and political philosophy of the time. Hochstrasser includes the writings of Samuel Pufendorf and his followers who evolved a natural law theory based on human sociability and reason, fostering a new methodology in German philosophy. This book assesses the first histories of political thought since ancient times, giving insights into the nature and influence of debate within eighteenth-century natural jurisprudence. Ambitious in range and conceptually sophisticated, Natural Law Theories in the Early Enlightenment will be of great interest to scholars in history, political thought, law and philosophy.
Del 41 - Ideas in Context
Enlightenment and Religion
Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Häftad, Engelska, 2006
531 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
This book makes a comprehensive reassessment of the relationship between Enlightenment and religion in England. The debate about an 'English' Enlightenment has centred on the role of religion, especially the relationship between the established Anglican Church and the dissenting confessions. It has long been accepted that liberal, rational dissenters developed an Enlightenment agenda, but most literature on this topic is quite out of date. These interdisciplinary essays provide a fresh analysis of rational dissent within English Enlightenment culture. Equally, they contribute to the debate over eighteenth-century religion and its social, political and intellectual meaning, focusing on the Irish and Scottish contributions to English dissent. Its wide perspective and research make Enlightenment and Religion an important and original contribution to eighteenth-century studies.
Del 34 - Ideas in Context
The Transformation of Natural Philosophy
The Case of Philip Melanchthon
Häftad, Engelska, 2006
452 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
This book proposes that Philip Melanchthon was responsible for transforming traditional university natural philosophy into a specifically Lutheran one. Motivated by desire to check civil disobedience and promote a Lutheran orthodoxy, he created a natural philosophy based on Aristotle, Galen and Plato, incorporating contemporary findings of Copernicus and Vesalius. The fields of astrology, anatomy, botany and mathematics all constituted a natural philosophy in which Melanchthon wished to demonstrate God's Providential design in the physical world. Rather than dichotomizing or synthesizing the two distinct areas of 'science' and 'religion', Kusukawa advocates the need to look at 'Natural philosophy' as a discipline quite different from either 'modern science' or 'religion': a contextual assessment of the implication of the Lutheran Reformation on university education, particularly on natural philosophy.
Del 46 - Ideas in Context
Rousseau and Geneva
From the First Discourse to The Social Contract, 1749-1762
Häftad, Engelska, 2007
583 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
Rousseau and Geneva reconstructs the main aspects of Genevan socio-economic, political and religious thought in the first half of the eighteenth century. In this way Dr Rosenblatt effectively contextualizes the development of Rousseau's thought from the First Discourse through to the Social Contract. Over time Rousseau has been adopted as a French thinker, but this adoption obscures his Genevan origin. Dr Rosenblatt points out that he is, in fact, a Genevan thinker and illustrates that Rousseau's classical republicanism, his version of natural law theory, his civil religion and his hostility to the arguments of doux commerce theorists are all responses to the political use of such arguments in Geneva. The author also points out that it was this relationship with Geneva that played an integral part in his development into an original political thinker.
Del 73 - Ideas in Context
The Case for The Enlightenment
Scotland and Naples 1680-1760
Häftad, Engelska, 2007
439 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
The Case for the Enlightenment is a comparative study of the emergence of Enlightenment in Scotland and in Naples. Challenging the tendency to fragment the Enlightenment in eighteenth-century Europe into multiple Enlightenments, the distinguished intellectual historian John Robertson demonstrates the extent to which thinkers in two societies at the opposite ends of Europe shared common intellectual preoccupations. Before 1700, Scotland and Naples faced a bleak future as backward, provincial kingdoms in a Europe of aggressive commercial states. Yet by 1760, Scottish and Neapolitan thinkers were in the van of those advocating the cause of Enlightenment by means of political economy. By studying the social and institutional contexts of intellectual life in the two countries, and the currents of thought promoted within them, The Case for the Enlightenment explains this transformation. John Robertson pays particular attention to the greatest thinkers in each country, David Hume and Giambattista Vico.
Del 67 - Ideas in Context
Humanism and America
An Intellectual History of English Colonisation, 1500-1625
Häftad, Engelska, 2007
636 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
Humanism and America provides a major study of the impact of the Renaissance and Renaissance humanism upon the English colonization of America. The analysis is conducted through an interdisciplinary examination of a broad spectrum of writings on colonization, ranging from the works of Thomas More to those of the Virginia Company. Andrew Fitzmaurice shows that English expansion was profoundly neo-classical in inspiration, and he excavates the distinctively humanist tradition that informed some central issues of colonization: the motivations of wealth and profit, honour and glory; the nature of and possibilities for liberty; and the problems of just title, including the dispossession of native Americans. Dr Fitzmaurice presents a colonial tradition which, counter to received wisdom, is often hostile to profit, nervous of dispossession and desirous of liberty. Only in the final chapters does he chart the rise of an aggressive, acquisitive and possessive colonial ideology.
Del 68 - Ideas in Context
Self-Interest before Adam Smith
A Genealogy of Economic Science
Häftad, Engelska, 2007
452 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
Self-Interest before Adam Smith inquires into the foundations of economic theory. It is generally assumed that the birth of modern economic science, marked by the publication of The Wealth of Nations in 1776, was the triumph of the 'selfish hypothesis' (the idea that self-interest is the motive of human action). Yet, as a neo-Epicurean idea, this hypothesis had been a matter of controversy for over a century and Smith opposed it from a neo-Stoic point of view. But how can the Epicurean principles of orthodox economic theory be reconciled with the Stoic principles of Adam Smith's philosophy? Pierre Force shows how Smith's theory refutes the 'selfish hypothesis' and integrates it at the same time. He also explains how Smith appropriated Rousseau's 'republican' critique of modern commercial society, and makes the case that the autonomy of economic science is an unintended consequence of Smith's 'republican' principles.
Del 62 - Ideas in Context
Logic, Signs and Nature in the Renaissance
The Case of Learned Medicine
Häftad, Engelska, 2007
668 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
How or what were doctors in the Renaissance trained to think, and how did they interpret the evidence at their disposal for making diagnoses and prognoses? This 2001 book addresses these questions in the broad context of the world of learning: its institutions, its means of conveying and disseminating information, and the relationship between university faculties. The uptake by doctors from the university arts course - the foundation for medical studies - is examined in detail, as are the theoretical and empirical bases for medical knowledge, including its concepts of nature, health, disease and normality. Logic, Signs and Nature in the Renaissance ends with a detailed investigation of semiotic, which was one of the five parts of the discipline of medicine, in the context of the various versions of semiology available to scholars. From this survey, Maclean makes an interesting assessment of the relationship of Renaissance medicine to the new science of the seventeenth century.
716 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
Pedagogy and Power is a volume of interdisciplinary essays which explores the political dimensions of Graeco-Roman education and of its subsequent models. Seeking to make the various structures and discourses of intellectual authority more apparent, the essays argue that there is a social context for the knowledge imparted by classical models of pedagogy. They examine how such pedagogues instruct their pupils to function as citizens who rule or are ruled, privileging certain knowledge over others, and including some individuals while excluding others. Overall the book shows that the complex and plural authorities and power that have been associated with classical learning and knowledge are not part of a legacy to be unproblematically inherited or reproduced.
649 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
An international team of four authors, led by distinguished philosopher of science, Nancy Cartwright, and leading scholar of the Vienna Circle, Thomas E. Uebel, have produced this lucid and elegant study of a much-neglected figure. The book, which depicts Neurath's science in the political, economic and intellectual milieu in which it was practised, is divided into three sections: Neurath's biographical background and the socio-political context of his economic ideas; the development of his theory of science; and his legacy as illustrated by his contemporaneous involvement in academic and political debates. Coinciding with the renewal of interest in logical positivism, this is a timely publication which will redress a current imbalance in the history and philosophy of science, as well as making a major contribution to our understanding of the intellectual life of Austro-Germany in the inter-war years.
452 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
William Robertson (1721-1793) was a leading historical figure of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and one of the triumvirate of historians, along with David Hume and Edward Gibbon, who profoundly shaped the European consciousness. His great histories of Scotland, Europe, America and India represented a steadily expanding vision of European and world history. It was a 'grand narrative' comprising the emergence of Britain, the development of the European system of independent nation states, the growth of the European empire in the Americas, and the beginnings of the European empire in India. This book, William Robertson and the Expansion of Empire, contains contributions from a number of distinguished historians and literary scholars who explore aspects of Robertson's intellectual achievements. However, particular attention is paid to Robertson's treatment of the theme of empire and European expansion.
Del 70 - Ideas in Context
Jesuit Political Thought
The Society of Jesus and the State, c.1540-1630
Häftad, Engelska, 2008
387 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
Harro Höpfl presents here a full-length study of the single most influential organized group of scholars and pamphleteers in early modern Europe (1540-1630), namely the Jesuits. He explores the academic and political controversies in which they were engaged in and their contribution to academic discourse around ideas of 'the state' and 'politics'. He pays particular attention to their actual teaching concerning doctrines for whose menacing practical implications Jesuits generally were vilified: notably tyrannicide, the papal power to depose rulers, the legitimacy of 'Machiavellian' policies in dealing with heretics and the justifiability of breaking faith with heretics. Höpfl further explores the paradox of the Jesuits' political activities being at once the subject of conspiratorial fantasies but at the same time being widely acknowledged as among the foremost intellects of their time, with their thought freely cited and appropriated. This is an important work of scholarship.
583 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
Mikael Hörnqvist challenges us to rethink the overall meaning and importance of Machiavelli's political thinking. Machiavelli and Empire combines close textual analysis of The Prince and The Discourses with a broad historical approach, to establish the importance of empire-building and imperial strategy in Machiavelli's thought. The primary context of Machiavelli's work, Hörnqvist argues, is not the mirror-for-princes genre or medieval and Renaissance republicanism in general, but a tradition of Florentine imperialist republicanism dating back to the late thirteenth-century, based on the twin notions of liberty at home and empire abroad. Weaving together themes and topics drawn from contemporary Florentine political debate, Medicean ritual and Renaissance triumphalism, this study explores how Machiavelli in his chancery writings and theoretical works promoted the long standing aspirations of Florence to become a great and expanding empire, modelled on the example of the ancient Roman republic. This is a distinctive and important work.
Del 74 - Ideas in Context
Locke, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson
Contesting Diversity in the Enlightenment and Beyond
Häftad, Engelska, 2009
570 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
Daniel Carey examines afresh the fundamental debate within the Enlightenment about human diversity. Three central figures - Locke, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson - questioned whether human nature was fragmented by diverse and incommensurable customs and beliefs or unified by shared moral and religious principles. Locke's critique of innate ideas initiated the argument, claiming that no consensus existed in the world about morality or God's existence. Testimony of human difference established this point. His position was disputed by the third Earl of Shaftesbury who reinstated a Stoic account of mankind as inspired by common ethical convictions and an impulse toward the divine. Hutcheson attempted a difficult synthesis of these two opposing figures, respecting Locke's critique while articulating a moral sense that structured human nature. Daniel Carey concludes with an investigation of the relationship between these arguments and contemporary theories, and shows that current conflicting positions reflect long-standing differences that first emerged during the Enlightenment.
Del 81 - Ideas in Context
The Young Karl Marx
German Philosophy, Modern Politics, and Human Flourishing
Häftad, Engelska, 2009
334 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
The Young Karl Marx is an innovative and important study of Marx's early writings. These writings provide the fascinating spectacle of a powerful and imaginative intellect wrestling with complex and significant issues, but they also present formidable interpretative obstacles to modern readers. David Leopold shows how an understanding of their intellectual and cultural context can illuminate the political dimension of these works. An erudite yet accessible discussion of Marx's influences and targets frames the author's critical engagement with Marx's account of the emergence, character, and (future) replacement of the modern state. This combination of historical and analytical approaches results in a sympathetic, but not uncritical, exploration of such fundamental themes as alienation, citizenship, community, anti-semitism, and utopianism. The Young Karl Marx is a scholarly and original work which provides a radical and persuasive reinterpretation of Marx's complex and often misunderstood views of German philosophy, modern politics, and human flourishing.