This thoughtful and penetrating book, addressed to political scientists, sociologists, historians, and anthropologists, interprets nationalism in terms of its social roots, which it locates in industrial social organization. Professor Gellner asserts here that a society's affluence and economic growth depend on innovation, occupational...
The essays in this volume gather together Gellner's thinking on the connection between philosophy and life and they approach the topic from a number of directions: philosophy of morals, history of ideas, a discussion of individuals including R. G. Collingwood, Noam Chomsky, Piaget and Eysenck and discussions on the setting of philosophy in the general culture of England and America.
Includes essays which gather Gellner's thinking on the connection between philosophy and life. This book approaches the topic from various directions such as philosophy of morals, history of ideas, a discussion of individuals including Noam Chomsky, and discussions on the setting of philosophy in the culture of England and America.
Ernest Gellner (1925 1995) has been described as 'one of the last great central European polymath intellectuals'. His last book throws new light on two leading thinkers of their time. Wittgenstein, arguably the most influential and the most cited philosopher of the twentieth century, is famous for having propounded two radically different philosophical positions. Malinowski, the founder of modern British social anthropology, is usually credite...
The Psychoanalytic Movement" explains how the language of psychoanalysis became the dominant way in which the middle classes of the industrialized West speak about their emotions. Explains how the language of psychoanalysis became the dominant way for the industrialized West to speak about emotion. Argues that although psychoanalysis offers an incisive picture of human nature, it provides untestable operational definitions and makes unsubstant...
This updated edition of Ernest Gellner's classic exploration of the roots of nationalism includes an extended introduction from John Breuilly, tracing the way the field has changed over the past two decades. * As pertinent today as it was when it was first published in 1983.
aeo The biggest name in contemporary anthropology. aeo One of the worlda s leading philosophers -- addresses the key issues in the subject: relativism and unique truth, the post--colonial crisis of confidence, the anthropology of the west, including the anthropology of war.
How did psychoanalysis become so accepted by the public? This provocative book reconstructs the system of ideas upon which the theory and practice of psychoanalysis rests, describing a modern culture that has created a psychic or a spiritual void that psychoanalysis seems custom-made to fill. Gellner approaches the question as a sociologist and attains a broad perspective on the ideas of the psychoanalytic movement as a system of cultural beli...
This volume of essays deals with the problem of relativism, in particular cultural relativism. These essays reach towards a new style and mode of enquiry--a mixture of philosophy, history and anthropology--that promises to prove more revealing and fruitful.
How can we account for the extraordinary strength of Islam in the modern world? Are the views of the Enlightenment still an acceptable basis for social order? In "Postmodernism, Reason and Religion, Ernest Gellner suggests that we face three ideological options at the present time: a return to the genuine and firm faith of religious tradition, the pursuit of a form of relativism which abandons the notion of truth and resigns itself to treating...
