In literary theory, the philosophy of law, and the sociology of knowledge, no issue has been more central to current debate than the status of our interpretations. Do they rest on a ground of rationality or are they subjective impositions of a merely personal point of view? In Doing What Comes Naturally, Stanley Fish refuses the dilemma posed by this question and argues that while we can never separate our judgments from the contexts in which they are made, those judgments are nevertheless authoritative and even, in the only way that matters, objective. He thus rejects both the demand for an ahistorical foundation, and the conclusion that in the absence of such a foundation we reside in an indeterminate world. In a succession of provocative and wide-ranging chapters, Fish explores the implications of his position for our understanding of legal, literary, and psychoanalytic interpretation, the nature of professional and institutional culture, and the place of reason in a world that is rhetorical through and through.

Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies

Literature & Fiction

Stanley Fish

History & Criticism

Clarendon Press/Oxford

More than any other work, the speech of Andokides, On the Mysteries, provides an intimate and vivid glimpse of Athenian political life during and directly after the Peloponnesian War. This new paperback version of MacDowell's standard edition (first published in hardcover in 1962) is intended for both undergraduates and scholars. It includes a full introduction surveying Andokides's life, trial, and literary style; a note on the basis of the text; and a detailed commentary and appendices that discuss Andokides' innocence or guilt, the chronology and political significance of events in 415 B.C., the legal revision ordered by the decree of Teisamenos, the date of the trial and speech, and aspects of the historical and stylistic background relevant to the work.

Andokides On the Mysteries (Clarendon Paperbacks)

Andokides

The Satyricon

The Satyricon is the most celebrated prose work to have survived from the ancient world. It can be described as the first realistic novel, the father of the picaresque genre. It recounts the sleazy progress of a pair of literate scholars as they wander through the cities of the southern Mediterranean in the age of Nero, encountering en route type-figures whom the author wishes to satirize--a professor, a libidinous priestess, a vulgar freedman turned millionaire, a manic poet, a superstitious sea-captain, and a femme fatale. P.G. Walsh captures the spirit of the original in this new and lively translation; his introduction and detailed notes provide the serious student with a comprehensive guide to the meanings and intentions of the story.

Petronius

Walsh, P.G.

Humor & Satire

Robert Grosseteste was one of the most independent and vigorous Englishmen of the Middle Ages--a medieval Dr. Johnson in his powers of mind and personality.  Of humble birth, he lived for many years in obscurity and emerged only late in life as a national figure, deeply conservative and profoundly critical of the contemporary world.  As a scientist, theologian, and pastoral leader, he was rooted in an English tradition going back beyond the Norman Conquest. This comprehensive study of one of England's great intellects by the late Sir Richard W. Southern of Oxford University  is an important contribution to the history of ideas.

Robert Grosseteste: The Growth of an English Mind in Medieval Europe

Southern, R. W.

Biographies & Memoirs

, xxi, 454 pages including index at the rear, SIGNED and DEDICATED by Author on front free endpaper

Suffolk and the Tudors: Politics and Religion in an English County 1500-1600

History

MacCulloch, Diarmaid

Europe

In these challenging pages, Unger argues for the extreme skeptical view that, not only can nothing ever be known, but no one can ever have any reason at all for anything. A consequence of this is that we cannot ever have any emotions about anything: no one can ever be happy or sad about anything. Finally, in this reduction to absurdity of virtually all our supposed thought, he argues that no one can ever believe, or even say, that anything is the case.

Ignorance: A Case for Scepticism (Clarendon Library of Logic and Philosophy)

Politics & Social Sciences

Unger, Peter

Philosophy

This is a study of Aristotle's moral philosophy as it is contained in the Nicomachean Ethics. Hardie examines the difficulties of the text; presents a map of inescapable philosophical questions; and brings out the ambiguities and critical disagreements on some central topics, inclduing happiness, the soul, the ethical mean, and the initiation of action.

Aristotle's Ethical Theory

W.F.R. Hardie

Policing Pollution: A Study of Regulation and Enforcement (Oxford Socio-Legal Studies)

Why do governments intervene in the affairs of business? Is the use of the criminal sanction an appropriate means of persuading industry to comply with governmental controls? This book first considers these questions at a general level and then examines them with a particular regard to government controls of the environment.

Science & Math

Genevra Richardson

Anthony Ogus

Paul Burrows

Biological Sciences

Deborah Posel's book aims to break new ground in exposing some of the crucial political processes and struggles which shaped the reciprocal development of Apartheid and capitalism in South Africa. Her analysis debunks the orthodoxy in the literature, which presents apartheid as the product of a single "grand plan" created by the state in response to the pressures of capital accumulation. Using as a case study influx control during the first phase of apartheid (1948-1961), Dr Posel shows that apartheid arose from complex patterns of conflict and compromise within the State, in which white capitalists, the black working class and popular movements exercised varying and uneven degrees of influence. Her book integrates an empirical analysis of the capitalist State and its relationship to class interests.

The Making of Apartheid, 1948-1961: Conflict and Compromise (Oxford Studies in African Affairs)

Posel, Deborah

An Introduction to the Theory of Dynamic Economics: A Theoretical Study in Long Run Disequilibrium Analysis

Business & Money

A.Ll. Wright

Economics

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