Simone de Beauvoir, novelist, dramatist, and philosopher, was the most distinguished woman writer in modern France. A leading exponent of French existentialism, her work complements, though it is independent of, that of Jean-Paul Sartre. In "The Ethics of Ambiguity," Madame de Beauvoir penetrates at once to the central ethical problems of modern man: what shall he do, how shall he go about making values, in the face of this awareness of the absurdity of his existence? She forces the reader to face the absurdity of the human condition and then, having done so, proceeds to develop a dialectic of ambiguity which will enable him not to master the chaos, but to create with it.

From the groundbreaking author of The Second Sex comes a radical argument for ethical responsibility and freedom. In this classic introduction to existentialist thought, French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity simultaneously pays homage to and grapples with her French contemporaries, philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, by arguing that the freedoms in existentialism carry with them certain ethical responsibilities. De Beauvoir outlines a series of “ways of being” (the adventurer, the passionate person, the lover, the artist, and the intellectual), each of which overcomes the former’s deficiencies, and therefore can live up to the responsibilities of freedom. Ultimately, de Beauvoir argues that in order to achieve true freedom, one must battle against the choices and activities of those who suppress it. The Ethics of Ambiguity is the book that launched Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist and existential philosophy. It remains a concise yet thorough examination of existence and what it means to be human.

Reading a text is an ethical activity for Emmanuel Levinas. His moral philosophy considers written texts to be natural places to discover relations of responsibility in Western philosophical systems which are marked by extreme violence and totalizing hatred. While ethics is understood to mean a relationship with the other and reading is the appropriation of the other to the self, readings according to Levinas naturally entail relationships with the other. Levinas's own writings are often frought with the struggle between his own maleness, the concerns of feminism, and the Judaism that marks his contributions to the debates of the Talmud. This book uses male feminism as its perspective in presenting the applications of Levinas's ethical vision to texts whose readings have presented moral dilemmas for women readers. Levinas's philosophical theories can provide keys to unlock the difficulties of these texts whose readings will provide models of reading as ethical acts beginning with the ethical contract in Song of Songs where the assumption of a woman writer begins the elaboration of issues that sets a male reader as her other. From the reader's vantage point of seeing the self as other, other issues of male feminism become increasingly poignant, ranging from the solicitude of listening to Céline (Chapter 2), the responsibility for noise in Nizan (Chapter 3), the asymmetrical pattern of face-to-face relationships in Maupassant (Chapter 4), the sovereignty of laughter in Bataille and Zola (Chapter 5), the call of the other in Italo Svevo (Chapter 6), the Woman as Other in Breton (Chapter 7), the ethical self in Drieu la Rochelle (Chapter 8), the response to Hannah Arendt (Chapter 9), and the vulnerability of Bernard-Henri Lévy (Chapter 10). The male feminist reader is thus the incarnation of the struggle at the core of the issues outlined by Levinas for the act of reading as an ethical endeavor.

A political philosophy classic from one of the foremost political thinkers of the twentieth century After Utopia was Judith Shklar’s first book, a harbinger of her renowned career in political philosophy. Throughout the many changes in political thought during the last half century, this important work has withstood the test of time. In After Utopia, Shklar explores the decline of political philosophy, from Enlightenment optimism to modern cultural despair, and she offers a critical, creative analysis of this downward trend. She looks at Romantic and Christian social thought, and she shows that while the present political fatalism may be unavoidable, the prophets of despair have failed to explain the world they so dislike, leaving the possibility of a new and vigorous political philosophy. With a foreword by Samuel Moyn, examining After Utopia’s continued relevance, this current edition introduces a remarkable synthesis of ideas to a new generation of readers.

We proudly present the proceedings of 1st International Seminar on Cultural Sciences 2020 (ISCS 2020). It focuses on the relation of gender, indigenous people, environment, religion, etc. The issue of culture and development is important today, especially in the time of Covid-19, not only globally, but also Indonesia nationally to the local level. There are several important issues relating to this, both institutionally and the relationships between individuals and groups in supporting the agenda of sustainable development. More than 75 manuscripts were presented at this conference with around 33 of them selected to be published in proceedings. We hope by this conference, discussions on the importance of culture and development will increasingly become an important concern together and bring better response from the government and social relations for development.

This book focusses on the interaction between different kinds of violence and radicalization. Current research criticizes linear models of radicalization and assumes that individuals are involved in radical actions even without extremist preferences. In recent years, the research on radicalization and the use of violence has increasingly been focused on this phenomenon of individual radicalization. However, radicalization is a manifold phenomenon on various levels and exists in miscellaneous variations. The book provides an impetus for analysing social situations that contain the potential for the emergence of conflict. This is done through new outlooks on the role of emotions, the influence of narratives and representations, the connection between (non)violence and emancipation and, lastly, new approaches and perspectives on deradicalization.

What seems to be happening throughout the last decade is the gradual invalidation and dissolution of what we used to call ‘Truth’, and hence the disruption and gradual dissolution of what Foucault had called the existing hierarchical “Regime of Truth”. What remains is not what Marx had hoped to be a more egalitarian regime in which “the educator{s themselves are also] educated”, but rather a ‘Humpty Dumpty Regime’, where ‘Truth’ is whatever the Humpty-Dumpty in power wants it to be. This book argues that this is an unmediated outcome of the profound social, cultural and economic crisis of neoliberal capitalism, and its political corollary, the meteoric rise of populism and authoritarianism, not only in the so-called ‘developing’ countries, but throughout the entire globe. CONTENTS PREFACE INTRODUCTION: AFTER NEOLIBERALISM, THE FLOOD? CHAPTER 1. ON RADICAL AMBIGUITY CHAPTER 2. THE MIDAS BLESSING: TURNING COMMODITIES INTO GIFTS CHAPTER 3. THE END OF TRUTH AS WE KNOW IT – THE DISINTEGRATION OF THE UNIVERSITY DISCOURSE CHAPTER 4. THE GAME OF THRONES AS A FAILED ATTEMPT AT UNIVERSAL POPULISM CHAPTER 5. THE PSYCHOPOLITICS OF THE ENTITLED VICTIM – THE COMING OF AGE OF CONTEMPORARY POPULISM