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An Analysis of Clifford Geertz's The Interpretation of Cultures Selected Essays

An Analysis of Clifford Geertz's The Interpretation of Cultures Selected Essays

Clifford Geertz has been called ‘the most original anthropologist of his generation’ – and this reputation rests largely on the huge contributions to the methodology and approaches of anthropological interpretation that he outlined in The Interpretation of Cultures. The centrality of interpretative skills to anthropology is uncontested: in a subject that is all about understanding mankind and which seeks to outline the differences and the common ground that exists between cultures interpretation is the crucial skillset. For Geertz however standard interpretative approaches did not go deep enough and his life’s work concentrated on deepening and perfecting his subject’s interpretative skills. Geertz is best known for his definition of ‘culture ’ and his theory of ‘thick description ’ an influential technique that depends on fresh interpretative approaches. For Geertz ‘cultures’ are ‘webs of meaning’ in which everyone is suspended. Understanding culture therefore is not so much a matter of going in search of law but of setting out an interpretative framework for meaning that focuses directly on attempts to define the real meaning of things within a given culture. The best way to do this for Geertz is via ‘thick description:’ a way of recording things that explores context and surroundings and articulates meaning within the web of culture. Ambitious and bold Geertz’s greatest creation is a method all critical thinkers can learn from. | An Analysis of Clifford Geertz's The Interpretation of Cultures Selected Essays

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An Analysis of Theodore Levitt's Marketing Myopia

An Analysis of Theodore Levitt's Marketing Myopia

Theodore Levitt’s 1960 article “Marketing Myopia” is a business classic that earned its author the nickname “the father of modern marketing”. It is also a beautiful demonstration of the problem solving skills that are crucial in so many areas of life – in business and beyond. The problem facing Levitt was the same problem that has confronted business after business for hundreds of years: how best to deal with slowing growth and eventual decline. Levitt studied many business empires – the railroads for instance – that at a certain point simply shrivelled up and shrank to almost nothing. How he asked could businesses avoid such failures? His approach and his solution comprise a concise demonstration of high-level problem solving at its best. Good problem solvers first identify what the problem is then isolate the best methodology for solving it. And as Levitt showed a dose of creative thinking also helps. Levitt’s insight was that falling sales are all about marketing and marketing is about knowing your real business. The railroads misunderstood their real market: they weren’t selling rail they were selling transport. If they had understood that they could have successfully taken advantage of new growth areas – truck haulage for instance – rather than futilely scrabbling to sell rail to a saturated market. | An Analysis of Theodore Levitt's Marketing Myopia

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An Analysis of Elizabeth F. Loftus's Eyewitness Testimony

An Analysis of Elizabeth F. Loftus's Eyewitness Testimony

Understanding evidence is critical in a court of law – and it is just as important for critical thinking. Elizabeth Loftus a pioneering psychologist made a landmark contribution to both these areas in Eyewitness Testimony a trail-blazing work that undermines much of the decision-making made by judges and juries by pointing out how flawed eyewitness testimony actually is. Reporting the results of an eye-opening series of experiments and trials Loftus explores the ways in which – unbeknownst to the witnesses themselves – memory can be distorted and become highly unreliable. Much of Loftus’s work is based on expert use of the critical thinking skill of interpretation. Her work not only highlights multiple problems of definition with regard to courtroom testimony but also focuses throughout on how best we can understand the meaning of the available evidence. Eyewitness Testimony is arguably the best place in the Macat library to begin any investigation of how to use and understand interpretation. | An Analysis of Elizabeth F. Loftus's Eyewitness Testimony

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An Analysis of Eric Hoffer's The True Believer Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

An Analysis of Eric Hoffer's The True Believer Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements is one of the most widely read works of social psychology written in the 20th-century. It exemplifies the powers of creative thinking and critical analysis at their best providing an insight into two crucial elements of critical thinking. Hoffer is likely to go down in history as one of America’s great creative thinkers – a writer not bound by standard frameworks of thinking or academic conventions willing to beat his own path in framing the best possible answers to the questions he investigated. An impoverished largely unschooled manual laborer who had survived the worst effects of the Great Depression in the United States Hoffer was a passionate autodidact whose philosophical and psychological education came from omnivorous reading. Working without the help of any mentors he forged the fearsomely creative and individual approach to problems demonstrated in The True Believer. The book which earned him his reputation examines the different phenomena of fanaticism – religious or political – and applies Hoffer’s analytical skills to reveal that deep down all ‘true believers’ display the same needs and tendencies whatever their final choice of belief. Incisive and persuasive it remains a classic. | An Analysis of Eric Hoffer's The True Believer Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

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An Analysis of Thomas Paine's Common Sense

An Analysis of Thomas Paine's Common Sense

Thomas Paine’s 1776 Common Sense has secured an unshakeable place as one of history’s most explosive and revolutionary books. A slim pamphlet published at the beginning of the American Revolution it was so widely read that it remains the all-time best selling book in US history. An impassioned argument for American independence and for democratic government Common Sense can claim to have helped change the face of the world more than almost any other book. But Paine’s pamphlet is also a masterclass in critical thinking demonstrating how the reasoned construction of arguments can be reinforced by literary skill and passion. Paine is perhaps more famous as a stylist than as a constructor of arguments but Common Sense marries the best elements of good reasoning to its polemic. Moving systematically from the origins of government through a criticism of monarchy and on to the possibilities for future democratic government in an independent America Paine neatly lays out a series of persuasive reasons to fight for independence and a new form of government. Indeed as the pamphlet’s title suggested to do so was nothing more than ‘common sense. ’ | An Analysis of Thomas Paine's Common Sense

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An Analysis of Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind

An Analysis of Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind

Gilbert Ryle’s 1949 The Concept of Mind is now famous above all as the origin of the phrase “the ghost in the machine” – a phrase Ryle used to attack the popular idea that our bodies and minds are separate. His own position was that mental acts are not at all distinct from bodily actions. Indeed they are the same thing merely described in different ways – and if one cuts through the confusing language of the old philosophical debates he suggests that becomes clear. While in many ways modern philosophers of mind have moved on from or discarded Ryle’s actual arguments The Concept of Mind remains a classic example of two central critical thinking skills: interpretation and reasoning. Ryle was what is known as an “ordinary language” philosopher – a school who considered many philosophical problems to exist purely because of philosophical language. He therefore considered his task as a philosopher to be one of cutting through confusing language and clarifying matters – exemplifying the critical thinking skill of interpretation at its best. Rather than adding to philosophical knowledge as such moreover he saw his role as one of mapping it – giving it what he called a “logical geography. ” As such The Concept of Mind is also all about reasoning: laying out organizing and systematizing clear arguments. | An Analysis of Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind

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An Analysis of Henry Kissinger's World Order Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History

An Analysis of Henry Kissinger's World Order Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History

Henry Kissinger’s 2014 book World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History not only offers a summary of thinking developed throughout a long and highly influential career–it is also an intervention in international relations theory by one of the most famous statesmen of the twentieth century. Kissinger initially trained as a university professor before becoming Secretary of State to President Richard Nixon in 1973 – a position in which he both won the Nobel Peace Prize and was accused of war crimes by protesters against American military actions in Vietnam. While a controversial figure Kissinger is widely agreed to have a unique level of practical and theoretical expertise in politics and international relations – and World Order is the culmination of a lifetime’s experience of work in those fields. The product of a master of the critical thinking skill of interpretation World Order takes on the challenge of defining the worldviews at play in global politics today. Clarifying precisely what is meant by the different notions of ‘order’ imagined by nations across the world as Kissinger does highlights the challenges of world politics and sharpens the focus on efforts to make surmounting these divisions possible. While Kissinger’s own reputation will likely remain equivocal there is no doubting the interpretative skills he displays in this engaging and illuminating text. | An Analysis of Henry Kissinger's World Order Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History

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An Analysis of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman's Judgment under Uncertainty Heuristics and Biases

An Analysis of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman's Judgment under Uncertainty Heuristics and Biases

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman’s 1974 paper ‘Judgement Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases’ is a landmark in the history of psychology. Though a mere seven pages long it has helped reshape the study of human rationality and had a particular impact on economics – where Tversky and Kahneman’s work helped shape the entirely new sub discipline of ‘behavioral economics. ’ The paper investigates human decision-making specifically what human brains tend to do when we are forced to deal with uncertainty or complexity. Based on experiments carried out with volunteers Tversky and Kahneman discovered that humans make predictable errors of judgement when forced to deal with ambiguous evidence or make challenging decisions. These errors stem from ‘heuristics’ and ‘biases’ – mental shortcuts and assumptions that allow us to make swift automatic decisions often usefully and correctly but occasionally to our detriment. The paper’s huge influence is due in no small part to its masterful use of high-level interpretative and analytical skills – expressed in Tversky and Kahneman’s concise and clear definitions of the basic heuristics and biases they discovered. Still providing the foundations of new work in the field 40 years later the two psychologists’ definitions are a model of how good interpretation underpins incisive critical thinking. | An Analysis of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman's Judgment under Uncertainty Heuristics and Biases

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An Analysis of Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

An Analysis of Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

The end of the Cold War which occurred early in the 1990s brought joy and freedom to millions. But it posed a difficult question to the world's governments and to the academics who studied them: how would world order be remade in an age no longer dominated by the competing ideologies of capitalism and communism? Samuel P. Huntington was one of the many political scientists who responded to this challenge by conceiving works that attempted to predict the ways in which conflict might play out in the 21st century and in The Clash of Civilizations he suggested that a new kind of conflict one centred on cultural identity would become the new focus of international relations. Huntington's theories greeted with scepticism when his book first appeared in the 1990s acquired new resonance after 9/11. The Clash of Civilizations is now one of the most widely-set and read works of political theory in US universities; Huntington's theories have also had a measurable impact on American policy. In large part this is a product of his problem-solving skills. Clash is a monument to its author's ability to generate and evaluate alternative possibilities and to make sound decisions between them. Huntington's view that international politics after the Cold War would be neither peaceful nor liberal nor cooperative ran counter to the predictions of almost all of his peers yet his position – the product of an unusual ability to redefine an issue so as to see it in new ways – has been largely vindicated by events ever since. | An Analysis of Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

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An Analysis of Franz Boas's Race Language and Culture

An Analysis of Franz Boas's Race Language and Culture

Franz Boas’s 1940 Race Language and Culture is a monumentally important text in the history of its discipline collecting the articles and essays that helped make Boas known as the ‘father of American anthropology. ’ An encapsulation of a career dedicated to fighting against the false theories of so-called ‘scientific racism’ that abounded in the first half of the 20th-century Race Language and Culture is one of the most historically significant texts in its field – and central to its arguments and impact are Boas’s formidable interpretative skills. It could be said indeed that Race Language and Culture is all about the centrality of interpretation in questioning our assumptions about the world. In critical thinking interpretation is the ability to clarify and posit definitions for the terms and ideas that make up an argument. Boas’s work demonstrates the importance of another vital element: context. For Boas who argued passionately for ‘cultural relativism ’ it was vital to interpret individual cultures by their own standards and context – not by ours. Only through comparing and contrasting the two can we reach he suggested a better understanding of humankind. Though our own questions might be smaller it is always worth considering the crucial element Boas brought to interpretation: how does context change definition? | An Analysis of Franz Boas's Race Language and Culture

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An Analysis of St. Augustine's Confessions

An Analysis of St. Augustine's Confessions

St. Augustine’s Confessions is one of the most important works in the history of literature and Christian thought. Written around 397 when Augustine was the Christian bishop of Hippo (in modern-day Algeria) the Confessions were designed both to spiritually educate those who already shared Augustine’s faith and to convert those who did not. Augustine did this through the original maneuver of writing what is now recognized as being the first Western autobiography – letting readers share in his own experiences of youth sin and eventual conversion. The Confessions are a perfect example of using reasoning to subtly bring readers around to a particular point of view – with Augustine inviting them to accompany him on his own spiritual journey towards God so they could make their own conversion. Carefully structured the Confessions run from describing the first 43 years of Augustine’s life in North Africa and Italy to discussing the nature of memory before moving on to analyzing the Bible itself. In order the sections form a carefully structured argument moving from the personal to the philosophical to the contemplative. In the hundreds of years since they were first published they have persuaded hundreds of thousands of readers to recognize towards the same God that Augustine himself worshipped. | An Analysis of St. Augustine's Confessions

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An Analysis of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations

An Analysis of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations

Despite being written between 170 and 180 Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations often resonates with modern readers because of its remarkable resemblance to a self-help book. Written as a series of personal notes in the last decade of his reign as Roman emperor the meditations were never intended for circulation. But they remain today among the classics of stoic philosophy – and as exquisite examples of problem-solving. Meditations sees a great leader engaged in solving one of the central problems of all philosophy: how to live a good life. Marcus Aurelius is quick to ask questions and generate solutions all of which lead him to a greater understanding of what a good life really is. He makes the decision that philosophy is an important tool we can use every day to help us understand and deal with the world. The best way to get to the bottom of a problem he records is to analyze its different aspects with care – this will help to ‘dissolve’ the issue. To keep our minds well balanced it is vital to keep our desire for the material and the sensual in check to avoid falling prey to negative behaviors like jealousy quarrelling and indulgence. Philosophy the Meditations show can also help us to understand other people’s problems and difficulties – acting as a continual spur to the consideration and resolution of problems wherever they arise. | An Analysis of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations

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An Analysis of Hanna Batatu's The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq

An Analysis of Hanna Batatu's The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq

How do you solve a problem like understanding Iraq? For Hanna Batatu the solution to this conundrum lay in generating alternative possibilities that effectively side-stepped the conventional wisdom of the time. Historians had long held that Iraq – like other artificial creations of ex-colonial European powers who drew lines onto the world map that ignored longstanding tribal ethnic and religious ties – was best understood by delving into its political and religious history. Batatu used the problem solving skills of asking productive questions and generating alternative possibilities to argue that Iraq’s history was better understood through the lens of a Marxist analysis focused on socio-economic history. The Old Social Classes concludes that the divisions present in Iraq – and exposed by the revolutionary movements of the 1950s – are those characterized by the struggle for control over property and the means of production. Additionally Batatu sought to establish that the most important political movements of the time notably the nationalist Ba'athists and the pan-Arab Free Officers Movement had their origins in a homegrown communist ideology inspired by local conditions and local inequality. By posing new questions – and by undertaking a vast amount of research in primary sources a rarity in the history of this region – Batatu was able to produce a strong new solution to a longstanding historiographical puzzle. | An Analysis of Hanna Batatu's The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq

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An Analysis of Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom

An Analysis of Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom

Amartya Sen uses his 1999 work Development as Freedom to evaluate the processes and outcomes of economic development. Having come to the conclusion that development is best summed up as the expansion of freedom Sen examines traditional definitions and understandings of the term. He says people tend to think of freedoms as economic (the freedom to enter into market exchanges) or political (the freedom to vote and be an active citizen) and tries to understand why the definition has been so narrow hitherto. He concludes that an evaluation of true freedom must necessarily include the freedom to access social services such as healthcare sanitation and nutrition just as much as it must acknowledge economic and political freedoms. Evaluating the relevance of the current thinking behind development Sen concludes that the term ‘freedom’ cannot simply be about income. In many ways measuring income does not account for various “unfreedoms” (manmade or natural bars to wellbeing) that hinder development. Sen’s evaluation is all the more powerful for its clarity: The freedom-centered perspective has a generic similarity to the common concern with quality of life. | An Analysis of Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom

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An Analysis of Chris Argyris's Integrating the Individual and the Organization

An Analysis of Chris Argyris's Integrating the Individual and the Organization

A critical analysis of Argyris’s Integrating The Individual and the Organization which forms part of a series of essays and books considering how organisations should be run. The essay explores the lack of congruence between the needs and expectations of individual employees and the organisations that employ them. The impact of the work depends heavily on reasoning skills. Chris Argyris used strong well-structured arguments to make his point. His reasoning has strong implications for solving a problem that many organizations experience: disengaged and disloyal employees. Grounding his argument in studies on human nature Argyris highlighted that demands of greater independence an expansion of interests and re-orientation of goals usually accompany maturation which is at odds with higher control stemming from formal organisations. This frustration he contends is detrimental to productivity increases the chance of failure and causes conflict. | An Analysis of Chris Argyris's Integrating the Individual and the Organization

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An Analysis of Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks

An Analysis of Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks

Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks is a remarkable work not only because it was written in jail as the Italian Marxist thinker fell victim to political oppression in his home country but also because it shows his impressive analytical ability. First published in 1948 11 years after Gramsci’s death Prison Notebooks ably demonstrates that the writer has an innate ability to understand the relationship between different parts of an argument. This is how Gramsci manages to analyze such wide-ranging topics – capitalism economics and culture – to explain historical developments. He introduces the idea of “hegemony ” the means by which ruling classes in a society gain keep hold of and manage their power and by carefully looking at how society operates he reveals the manner in which the powerful deploy a combination of force and manipulation to convince most people that the existing social arrangement is logical and in their best interests ­– even when it isn’t. Gramsci shows exactly how the ruling class maintains power by influencing both political institutions like the courts and the police and civil institutions such as churches family and schools. His powerful analysis led him to the conclusion that change can only take place in two ways either through revolution or through a slow but constant struggle to transform the belief system of the ruling classes. | An Analysis of Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks

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An Analysis of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique

An Analysis of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique

Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique is possibly the best-selling of all the titles analysed in the Macat library and arguably one of the most important. Yet it was the product of an apparently minor meaningless assignment. Undertaking to approach former classmates who had attended Smith College with her 10 years after their graduation the high-achieving Friedan was astonished to discover that the survey she had undertaken for a magazine feature revealed a high proportion of her contemporaries were suffering from a malaise she had thought was unique to her: profound dissatisfaction at the ‘ideal’ lives they had been living as wives mothers and homemakers. For Friedan this discovery stimulated a remarkable burst of creative thinking as she began to connect the elements of her own life together in new ways. The popular idea that men and women were equal but different – that men found their greatest fulfilment through work while women were most fulfilled in the home – stood revealed as a fallacy and the depression and even despair she and so many other women felt as a result was recast not as a failure to adapt to a role that was the truest expression of femininity but as the natural product of undertaking repetitive unfulfilling and unremunerated labor. Friedan's seminal expression of these new ideas redefined an issue central to many women's lives so successfully that it fuelled a movement – the ‘second wave’ feminism of the 1960s and 1970s that fundamentally challenged the legal and social framework underpinning an entire society. | An Analysis of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique

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An Analysis of Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France

An Analysis of Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France

Edmund Burke’s 1791 Reflections on the Revolution in France is a strong example of how the thinking skills of analysis and reasoning can support even the most rhetorical of arguments. Often cited as the foundational work of modern conservative political thought Burke’s Reflections is a sustained argument against the French Revolution. Though Burke is in many ways not interested in rational close analysis of the arguments in favour of the revolution he points out a crucial flaw in revolutionary thought upon which he builds his argument. For Burke that flaw was the sheer threat that revolution poses to life property and society. Sceptical about the utopian urge to utterly reconstruct society in line with rational principles Burke argued strongly for conservative progress: a continual slow refinement of government and political theory which could move forward without completely overturning the old structures of state and society. Old state institutions he reasoned might not be perfect but they work well enough to keep things ticking along. Any change made to improve them therefore should be slow not revolutionary. While Burke’s arguments are deliberately not reasoned in the ‘rational’ style of those who supported the revolution they show persuasive reasoning at its very best. | An Analysis of Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France

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An Analysis of Frantz Fanon's Black Skin White Masks

An Analysis of Frantz Fanon's Black Skin White Masks

Frantz Fanon’s explosive Black Skin White Masks is a merciless exposé of the psychological damage done by colonial rule across the world. Using Fanon’s incisive analytical abilities to expose the consequences of colonialism on the psyches of colonized peoples it is both a crucial text in post-colonial theory and a lesson in the power of analytical skills to reveal the realities that hide beneath the surface of things. Fanon was himself part of a colonized nation – Martinique – and grew up with the values and beliefs of French culture imposed upon him while remaining relegated to an inferior status in society. Qualifying as a psychiatrist in France before working in Algeria (a French colony subject to brutal repression) his own experiences granted him a sharp insight into the psychological problems associated with colonial rule. Like any good analytical thinker Fanon’s particular skill was in breaking things down and joining dots. His analysis of colonial rule exposed its implicit assumptions – and how they were replicated in colonised populations – allowing Fanon to unpick the hidden reasons behind his own conflicted psychological make up and those of his patients. Unflinchingly clear-sighted in doing so Black Skin White Masks remains a shocking read today. | An Analysis of Frantz Fanon's Black Skin White Masks

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An Analysis of Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

An Analysis of Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction combats traditional art criticism’s treatment of artworks as fixed unchanging mystical objects. For Walter Benjamin the consequences of addressing a work of art in this manner have a wider resonance: closed off from any active visual or tactile engagement the work of art becomes an object of passive contemplation and a potential tool of oppression. Benjamin argues that technology has fundamentally altered the way art is experienced. Potentially open to interpretation and accessible to many art in the age of mechanical reproduction has the potential to be mobilized for radical purposes. While ostensibly addressing the artistic consequences of technical reproducibility on art Benjamin also addresses the wider political consequences of this shift. | An Analysis of Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

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An Analysis of John Berger's Ways of Seeing

An Analysis of John Berger's Ways of Seeing

Ways of Seeing is a key art-historical work that continues to provoke widespread debate. It is comprised of seven different essays three of which are pictorial and the other containing texts and images. Berger first examines the relationship between seeing and knowing discussing how our assumptions affect how we see a painting. He moves on to consider the role of women in artwork particularly regarding the female nude. The third essay deals with oil painting looking at the relationship between subjects and ownership. Finally Berger addresses the idea of ownership in a consumerist society discussing the power of imagery in advertising with particular regards to photography. | An Analysis of John Berger's Ways of Seeing

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An Analysis of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust

An Analysis of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust

Daniel Goldhagen's study of the Holocaust offers conclusions that run directly counter to those reached by Christopher Browning whose book Ordinary Men is also the subject of a Macat analysis. As such the two analyses make possible some interesting critical thinking exercises focused on evaluation of the evidence used by the two historians. For Goldhagen a chief reason for German actions was not the mundane good comradeship stressed by Browning but a longstanding hatred of Jews and Judaism specific to Germany that dated back well into the previous century. Debating which historian is right which has made better use of the available evidence which has most successfully written objectively – and which advances the most secure interpretation of contested documents – forces students to think critically about one of the most important and (on the surface at least) incomprehensible events of the past century. | An Analysis of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust

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An Analysis of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

An Analysis of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is one of the most influential works in the history of philosophy – not to mention one of the most challenging. Its topic is the nature of human knowledge and the question of whether or not it is possible to have knowledge of the world at all. Over two centuries later Kant’s treatise remains a subject of fierce debate among philosophers who continue to offer new interpretations of his meaning. What is not in doubt is the work’s originality and brilliance – nor its mastery of creative thinking. Creative thinkers are able to bring a new perspective to questions and problems look at things from a different angle and show them in a fresh light. Kant achieved this by mediating between the two major schools of philosophical thought concerning knowledge – empiricism and rationalism – to create a complex third way. Where empiricists believed all knowledge is founded on experience and rationalists believed true knowledge is founded on reason alone Kant evaluated their arguments and proposed a third position – one incorporating elements of both but within specific limits. As infamously dense as it is profound Kant’s Critique shows creative thinking operating at a level few can aspire to reach. | An Analysis of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

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An Analysis of Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics

An Analysis of Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics

Kenneth Waltz’s 1979 Theory of International Politics is credited with bringing about a “scientific revolution” in the study of international relations – bringing the field into a new era of systematic study. The book is also a lesson in reasoning carefully and critically. Good reasoning is exemplified by arguments that move systematically through carefully organised stages taking into account opposing stances and ideas as they move towards a logical conclusion. Theory of International Politics might be a textbook example of how to go about structuring an argument in this way to produce a watertight case for a particular point of view. Waltz’s book begins by testing and critiquing earlier theories of international relations showing their strengths and weaknesses before moving on to argue for his own stance – what has since become known as “neorealism”. His aim was “to construct a theory of international politics that remedies the defects of present theories. ” And this is precisely what he did; by showing the shortcomings of the prevalent theories of international relations Waltz was then able to import insights from sociology to create a more comprehensive and realistic theory that took full account of the strengths of old schemas while also remedying their weaknesses – reasoning out a new theory in the process. | An Analysis of Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics

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An Analysis of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's Can the Subaltern Speak?

An Analysis of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's Can the Subaltern Speak?

A critical analysis of Spivak's classic 1988 postcolonial studies essay in which she argues that a core problem for the poorest and most marginalized in society (the subalterns) is that they have no platform to express their concerns and no voice to affect policy debates or demand a fairer share of society’s goods. A key theme of Gayatri Spivak's work is agency: the ability of the individual to make their own decisions. While Spivak's main aim is to consider ways in which subalterns – her term for the indigenous dispossessed in colonial societies – were able to achieve agency this paper concentrates specifically on describing the ways in which western scholars inadvertently reproduce hegemonic structures in their work. Spivak is herself a scholar and she remains acutely aware of the difficulty and dangers of presuming to speak for the subalterns she writes about. As such her work can be seen as predominantly a delicate exercise in the critical thinking skill of interpretation; she looks in detail at issues of meaning specifically at the real meaning of the available evidence and her paper is an attempt not only to highlight problems of definition but to clarify them. What makes this one of the key works of interpretation in the Macat library is of course the underlying significance of this work. Interpretation in this case is a matter of the difference between allowing subalterns to speak for themselves and of imposing a mode of speaking on them that – however well-intentioned – can be as damaging in the postcolonial world as the agency-stifling political structures of the colonial world itself. By clearing away the detritus of scholarly attempts at interpretation Spivak takes a stand against a specifically intellectual form of oppression and marginalization. | An Analysis of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's Can the Subaltern Speak?

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