The Nature and Function of Dreaming presents a comprehensive theory of dreaming based on many years of psychological and biological research by Ernest Hartmann and others. Critical to this theory is the concept of a Central Image; in this volume, Hartmann describes his repeated finding that dreams of being swept away by a tidal wave are common among people who have recently experienced a trauma of some kind - a fire, an attack, or a rape. Dreams with these Central Images are not dreams of the traumatic experience itself, but rather the Central Image reveals the emotional response to the experience.
Challenging a modern culture of skepticism, this book recovers the core conviction of Victorian liberal theory that human beings, with the help of the state, can achieve an objective moral perfection. Exposing century-long interpretive habits in nineteenth-century studies and political theory that still blind us to the merits of both perfectionism and statism, the book portrays Victorian liberals like John Stuart Mill, Matthew Arnold, and the American Transcendentalists as comprising a forgotten episode in the history of liberalism of vital importance today
Collective Decision Making: Views from Social Choice and Game Theory
This book brings together interesting contributions in Social Choice Theory of important researchers in the field. To mention: Steven Brams, William Gehrlein, Wulf Gaertner, Michel Grabisch, Bernie Grofman, Herman Monsuur, Hannu Nurmi, Hans Peters, Ton Storcken, Martin Van Hees, Donald Saari and Maurice Salles. The contributions show actual research topics in social choice and bring the reader to the state of the art in the theory.
Argument and Authority in Early Modern England - The Presupposition of Oaths and Offices
Conal Condren offers a radical reappraisal of the character of moral and political theory in early modern England through an exploration of pervasive arguments about office. In this context he explores the significance of oath-taking and three of the major crises around oaths and offices in the seventeenth century. This fresh focus on office brings into serious question much of what has been taken for granted in the study of early modern political and moral theory concerning, for example, the interplay of ideologies, the emergence of a public sphere, of liberalism, reason of state, de facto theory, and perhaps even political theory and moral agency as we know it.
Making Citizens: Rousseau's Political Theory of CultureRousseau's theory of the effect of culture on politics is critical to his philosophy. In Making Citizens, Zev M. Trachtenberg takes Rousseau's theory as a model of how considerations of culture can be incorporated into a wider account of political life. He critically evaluates Rousseau's account and finds it inadequate. Using techniques from the theory of collective action to devise a new interpretation of Rousseau's concept of the general will, Trachtenberg identifies the ways culture conditions politics and examines the attitudes individuals can adopt that facilitate or impede social cooperation.
