{"title":"Raymond Geuss","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRaymond Geuss\u003c\/strong\u003e offers readers a profound exploration of contemporary philosophy and political thought. His writing challenges conventional frameworks, inviting critical reflection on the intersections between political theory, ethics, and real-world dynamics.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWith works spanning \u003cem\u003ePhilosophy \u0026amp; Psychology\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003ePolitics \u0026amp; Current Affairs\u003c\/em\u003e, Geuss probes the assumptions underpinning liberal ideologies and examines the complexities of public and private goods. His nuanced perspectives appeal to those seeking thoughtful, rigorous analyses of power, reality, and social change.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"public-goods-private-goods-by-raymond-geuss-9780691117201","title":"Public Goods, Private Goods","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMuch political thinking today, particularly that influenced by liberalism, assumes a clear distinction between the public and the private, and holds that the correct understanding of this should weigh heavily in our attitude to human goods. It is, for instance, widely held that the state may address human action in the \"public\" realm but not in the \"private.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003ePublic Goods, Private Goods\u003c\/em\u003e, Raymond Geuss exposes the profound flaws of such thinking and calls for a more nuanced approach. Drawing on a series of colourful examples from the ancient world, he illustrates some of the many ways in which actions can in fact be understood as public or private.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe first chapter discusses Diogenes the Cynic, who flouted conventions about what should be public and what should be private by, among other things, masturbating in the Athenian marketplace. Next comes an analysis of Julius Caesar's decision to defy the Senate by crossing the Rubicon with his army; in doing so, Caesar asserted his dignity as a private person while acting in a public capacity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe third chapter considers St. Augustine's retreat from public life to contemplate his own, private spiritual condition. In the fourth, Geuss goes on to examine recent liberal views, questioning, in particular, common assumptions about the importance of public dialogue and the purportedly unlimited possibilities humans have for reaching consensus.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHe suggests that the liberal concern to maintain and protect, even at a very high cost, an inviolable \"private sphere\" for each individual is confused. Geuss concludes that a view of politics and morality derived from Hobbes and Nietzsche is a more realistic and enlightening way than modern liberalism to think about human goods. Ultimately, he cautions, a simplistic understanding of privacy leads to simplistic ideas about what the state is and is not justified in doing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"NewSouth Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46849913979116,"sku":"9780691117201","price":77.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/1159153482434.jpg?v=1759061995"},{"product_id":"not-thinking-like-a-liberal-by-raymond-geuss-9780674297319","title":"Not Thinking like a Liberal","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIn a compelling meditation on the ideas that shape our lives, one of the world's most provocative and creative philosophers explains how his eccentric early years influenced his lifelong critique of liberalism.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eLiberalism is so amorphous and pervasive that for most people in the West it is background noise, the natural state of affairs. But there are nooks and crannies in every society where the prevailing winds don't blow. Raymond Geuss grew up some distance from the cultural mainstream and recounts here the unusual perspective he absorbed: one in which liberal capitalism was synonymous with moral emptiness and political complacency.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eNot Thinking like a Liberal\u003c\/em\u003e is a concise tour of diverse intellectual currents—from the Counter-Reformation and communism to pragmatism and critical theory—that shaped Geuss's skeptical stance toward liberalism. The bright young son of a deeply Catholic steelworker, Geuss was recruited in 1959 to an unusual boarding school on the outskirts of Philadelphia. Outside was Eisenhower's America. Inside, Geuss was schooled by Hungarian priests who tried to immunize students against the twin dangers of oppressive communism and vapid liberal capitalism. From there, Geuss went on to university in New York in the early days of the Vietnam War and to West Germany, where critical theory was experiencing a major revival.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is not a repeatable journey. In tracing it, Geuss reminds us of the futility of abstracting lessons from context and of seeking a universal view from nowhere. At the same time, he examines the rise and fall of major political theories of the past sixty years. An incisive thinker attuned to both the history and the future of ideas, Geuss looks beyond the horrors of authoritarianism and the shallow freedom of liberalism to glimpse a world of genuinely new possibilities.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46855815430380,"sku":"9780674297319","price":47.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/1475073482428.jpg?v=1759279262"},{"product_id":"changing-the-subject-by-raymond-geuss-9780674248359","title":"Changing the Subject","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAsk a question, and it is reasonable to expect an answer or a confession of ignorance. But a philosopher may defy expectations. Confronted by a standard question arising from a normal way of viewing the world, a philosopher may reply that the question is misguided, that to continue asking it is, at the extreme, to get trapped in a delusive hall of mirrors.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAccording to Raymond Geuss, this attempt to bypass or undercut conventional ways of thinking, to escape from the hall of mirrors, represents philosophy at its best and most characteristic.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eTo illustrate, Geuss explores the ideas of twelve philosophers who broke dramatically with prevailing wisdom, from Socrates and Plato in the ancient world to Wittgenstein and Adorno in our own. The result is a striking account of some of the most innovative and important philosophers in Western history and an indirect manifesto for how to pursue philosophy today.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eGeuss cautions that philosophers' attempts to break from convention do not necessarily make the world a better place. Montaigne's ideas may have been benign, but the fate of the views developed by, for instance, Augustine, Hobbes, and Nietzsche has been more varied. However, in the act of provoking people to think differently, philosophers make clear that we are not fated to live within the often stifling systems of thought that we inherit. We can change the subject.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA work of exceptional range, power, and originality, \u003ci\u003eChanging the Subject\u003c\/i\u003e manifests the precise virtues of philosophy that it identifies and defends.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47000569020652,"sku":"9780674248359","price":72.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/985473482428.jpg?v=1763285396"},{"product_id":"philosophy-and-real-politics-by-raymond-geuss-9780691258690","title":"Philosophy and Real Politics","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMany contemporary political thinkers are gripped by the belief that their task is to develop an ideal theory of rights or justice for guiding and judging political actions. But in \u003ci\u003ePhilosophy and Real Politics\u003c\/i\u003e, Raymond Geuss argues that philosophers should first try to understand why real political actors behave as they actually do. Far from being applied ethics, politics is a skill that allows people to survive and pursue their goals.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eTo understand politics is to understand the powers, motives, and concepts that people have and that shape how they deal with the problems they face in their particular historical situations. \u003ci\u003ePhilosophy and Real Politics\u003c\/i\u003e both outlines a historically oriented, realistic political philosophy and criticises liberal political philosophies based on abstract conceptions of rights and justice.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe book is a trenchant critique of established ways of thought and a provocative call for change.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'A discipline-altering book.' Glen Newey,\u003c\/b\u003e \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eLondon Review of Books\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'[Geuss's] intention in \u003ci\u003ePhilosophy and Real Politics\u003c\/i\u003e, his short, sharp new book, is . . . to introduce a note of realism into contemporary philosophical debates about justice, by force if necessary.' Adam Kirsch,\u003c\/b\u003e \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eCity Journal\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"NewSouth Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47000704647404,"sku":"9780691258690","price":34.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9780691258690.jpg?v=1763298884"},{"product_id":"reality-and-its-dreams-by-raymond-geuss-9780674504950","title":"Reality and Its Dreams","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRaymond Geuss is one of the most inventive and distinctive voices in contemporary political philosophy and a trenchant critic of the field's dominant assumptions. In \u003cem\u003eReality and Its Dreams\u003c\/em\u003e, he challenges the \"normative turn\" in political philosophy—the idea that the right approach to politics is to start from thinking abstractly about our own normative views and then, when they have been clarified and systematised, apply them to judging political structures, decisions, and events. Rather, the study of politics should be focused on the sphere of real politics, not least because normative judgments always arise from concrete historical configurations of power, including ideological power.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt is possible to do this without succumbing to a numbing or toxic form of relativism or abandoning utopianism, although utopianism needs to be reunderstood. The utopian impulse is not an attempt to describe a perfect society but an impulse to think the impossible in politics, to articulate deep-seated desires that cannot be realised under current conditions, and to imagine how conditions that seem invariant can be changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eGeuss ranges widely across philosophy, literature, and art, exploring past and present ideas about such subjects as envy, love, satire, and evil, and the work of figures as diverse as John Rawls, St. Augustine, Rabelais, and Russell Brand. His essays provide a bracing critique of ideas, too often unexamined, that shape and misshape our intellectual and political worlds.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47000723652844,"sku":"9780674504950","price":85.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/3551383482428.jpg?v=1763300582"},{"product_id":"who-needs-a-world-view-by-raymond-geuss-9780674245938","title":"Who Needs a World View?","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOne of the world's most provocative philosophers attacks the obsession with comprehensive intellectual systems—the perceived need for a world view.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWe live in a unitary cosmos created and cared for in all its details by a benevolent god. That, for centuries, was the starting point for much philosophical and religious thinking in the West. The task was to accommodate ourselves to that view and restrict ourselves to working out how the pieces fit together within a rigidly determined framework. In this collection of essays, one of our most creative contemporary philosophers explores the problems and pathologies of the habit of overly systematic thinking that we have inherited from this past.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eRaymond Geuss begins by making a general case for flexible and sceptical thinking with room for doubt and unresolved complexity. He examines the ideas of two of his most influential teachers—one systematic, the other pragmatic—in light of Nietzsche's ideas about appearance and reality. The chapters that follow concern related moral, psychological, and philosophical subjects. These include the idea that one should make one's life a work of art, the importance of games, the concept of need, and the nature of manifestoes. Along the way, Geuss ranges widely, from ancient philosophy to modern art, with his characteristic combination of clarity, acuity, and wit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWho Needs a World View?\u003c\/em\u003e is a provocative and enlightening demonstration of what philosophy can achieve when it abandons its ambitions for completeness, consistency, and unity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47000844173548,"sku":"9780674245938","price":75.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/961263482428.jpg?v=1763309613"},{"product_id":"seeing-double-by-raymond-geuss-9781509560882","title":"Seeing Double","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe world is never going to make complete sense to us, yet we find that conclusion almost impossible to accept. Can we live, and feel at home, in a world composed at best of incompatible fragments of meaning?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the theme that runs through this collection of essays by Raymond Geuss. Drawing on a characteristically wide range of insights from moral and political philosophy, history, and aesthetics, he addresses topics such as knowledge (of self, the world, and others), language, the visual and the auditory, authority, hope, and the success and failure of life projects. He argues that, to get by in our bewildering world, we must embrace the virtue of ‘double vision’: that is, immersing ourselves in and learning the ways of the culture surrounding us, even as we feel alienated from it. Together the essays explore some of the consequences of abandoning the idea of a unitary view of the world, while at the same time trying to avoid quietism.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSeeing Double\u003c\/i\u003e is a compelling collection of work by one of the world’s most versatile and creative philosophers.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47471522119916,"sku":"9781509560882","price":37.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781509560882-seeing-double.jpg?v=1775245751"},{"product_id":"not-thinking-like-a-liberal-by-raymond-geuss-9780674270343","title":"Not Thinking like a Liberal","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIn a compelling meditation on the ideas that shape our lives, one of the world's most provocative and creative philosophers explains how his eccentric early years influenced his lifelong critique of liberalism.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eLiberalism is so amorphous and pervasive that for most people in the West, it is background noise, the natural state of affairs. However, there are nooks and crannies in every society where the prevailing winds don't blow. Raymond Geuss grew up some distance from the cultural mainstream and recounts here the unusual perspective he absorbed: one in which liberal capitalism was synonymous with moral emptiness and political complacency.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eNot Thinking like a Liberal\u003c\/em\u003e is a concise tour of diverse intellectual currents—from the Counter-Reformation and communism to pragmatism and critical theory—that shaped Geuss's sceptical stance toward liberalism. The bright young son of a deeply Catholic steelworker, Geuss was recruited in 1959 to an unusual boarding school on the outskirts of Philadelphia. Outside was Eisenhower's America. Inside, Geuss was schooled by Hungarian priests who tried to immunise students against the twin dangers of oppressive communism and vapid liberal capitalism. From there, Geuss went on to university in New York in the early days of the Vietnam War and to West Germany, where critical theory was experiencing a major revival.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is not a repeatable journey. In tracing it, Geuss reminds us of the futility of abstracting lessons from context and of seeking a universal view from nowhere. At the same time, he examines the rise and fall of major political theories of the past sixty years. An incisive thinker attuned to both the history and the future of ideas, Geuss looks beyond the horrors of authoritarianism and the shallow freedom of liberalism to glimpse a world of genuinely new possibilities.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47487429509356,"sku":"9780674270343","price":61.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/ceb98bcf29946d5e918c08d170442331.jpg?v=1775777489"},{"product_id":"tracks-in-chaos-by-raymond-geuss-9781509573448","title":"Tracks in Chaos","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen political action is imperative, we can be tempted to look to philosophy for guiding principles. This project, however, historically has been doomed to fail. Throughout \u003cem\u003eTracks in Chaos\u003c\/em\u003e, philosopher Raymond Geuss examines closely the consequences of this failure.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn crisp and lucid prose, he ranges over topics that include political realism, reflection in politics, universalism, solidarity, our utopian aspirations, and the role of fear in motivating censorship. Geuss ultimately paints a picture that is both rich and uncompromising, as is his conclusion: that we must learn to accept incompleteness, contingency and pluralism in our search for orientation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is an incisive and elegant new collection of essays by one of our finest moral and political philosophers.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47562877010156,"sku":"9781509573448","price":42.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781509573448-tracks-in-chaos.jpg?v=1776989503"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.pro\/collections\/raymond-geuss.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}