Friday, April 30, 2010

Habermas on the eurozone debt crisis (interview)

In the Financial Times Weekend Magazine, Saturday May 1, 2010:

Excerpt of an interview with Jürgen Habermas, conducted by freelance writer Stuart Jeffries:

"The cost and challenge of the eurozone debt crisis"

Habermas on Angela Merkel's statements on the the debt crisis in Greece:

"Apart from Joschka Fischer, who ran out of steam too quickly, the generation of rulers in Germany since the chancellorship of Gerhard Schröder has pursued an inward-looking national policy. I don’t want to overestimate the role of Germany in Europe. But the breach in mentalities which set in after Helmut Kohl has major significance for Europe.Within the constellation following the second world war, the cautious pursuit of European unification was in the country’s interests because it wanted to return to the fold of civilised nations in the wake of the Holocaust. It looked like the West Germans would have to come to terms with the partition of the country in any case. Mindful of the consequences of their former nationalistic excesses, they had no difficulty in relinquishing the recovery of sovereignty rights and, if necessary, making concessions that would in any case pay off for the Federal Republic. This perspective has changed since the reunification. The German elites seem to be enjoying the comforts of self-satisfied national normalcy: “We can be like the others once again!” I don’t share Margaret Thatcher’s one-time fear that this “normalisation” of public consciousness entails the return of old dangers. But a total defeat connected with an inconceivable moral corruption also created an opportunity for the following generation to learn more quickly. Looking at our present political elite, this window of opportunity seems to be closed. The narcissistic mentality of a self-satisfied colossus in the middle of Europe is no longer even a guarantee that the unstable status quo in the EU will be preserved."

Update:

An article in the German weekly "Die Zeit": Habermas attackiert Merkel.

On The Economist's blog: Comments on the Habermas interview.

In Süddeutsche Zeitung May 4, a comment by Gustav Seibt: "Der Euro-Nationalismus".

Update II:

A German translation in "Cicero" June 2010: "Eine List der Vernunft".



Ronald Dworkin in Bruxelles May 6-7

Professor Ronald Dworkin gives a public lecture in Bruxelles on May 7, 2010, at the Université Libre de Bruxelles;

"Philosophy, Law and Justice"

The lecture is held as part of the Nobel’s Week at the Université Libre Bruxelles.

Dworkin also gives a seminar "Law and Morals" on May 6, 2010, at the Fondation Universitaire, Bruxelles, The seminar is fully booked.

Ronald Dworkin gives lecture in Frankfurt

Professor Ronald Dworkin (New York/London) gives a lecture at the University of Frankfurt on May 4, 2010:

"Political Justice and Human Rights" [poster]

The lecture marks the opening of "Justitia Amplificata: Rethinking Justice - Applied and Global" - a new centre for advanced studies funded by the the German Research Council. The centre is led by Professor Stefan Gosepath and Professor Rainer Forst and is meant to be a new forum for political theorists and philosophers interested in normative, applied and interdisciplinary questions of justice.

(Thanks to theorieblog.de for the pointer.)

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Habermas receives Ulysses Medal in Dublin

Jürgen Habermas will receive the UCD Ulysses Medal at a special ceremony on June 16, 2010, at the University College Dublin.

The UCD Ulysses Medal is the highest honour that University College Dublin can bestow. It was inaugurated in 2005, as part of the university’s sesquicentennial celebrations, to highlight the ‘creative brilliance’ of UCD alumnus James Joyce. It is awarded to individuals whose work has made an outstanding global contribution.

Habermas will give a lecture on June 15 at the UCD Clinton Institute for American Studies/Global Ireland Institute in Dublin. The title is: "‘The Political’: The Rational Meaning of a Questionable Inheritance of Political Theology".

Previous recipients of the Ulysses Medal include: Nobel economist, Professor James J. Heckman; Dr Phillip Sharp, Nobel Laureate; Professor Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum; US Philosopher, Professor Hilary Putnam; Stanford University’s 10th President, Professor John L Hennessy; and Professor Richard Ernst, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

"Why Democracy Needs the Humanities" by Martha Nussbaum


Not For Profit:
Why Democracy Needs the Humanities

by Martha C. Nussbaum

(Princeton University Press, May 2010)

178 pp.



Description


Historically, the humanities have been central to education because they have rightly been seen as essential for creating competent democratic citizens. But recently, Nussbaum argues, thinking about the aims of education has gone disturbingly awry both in the United States and abroad. Anxiously focused on national economic growth, we increasingly treat education as though its primary goal were to teach students to be economically productive rather than to think critically and become knowledgeable and empathetic citizens. This shortsighted focus on profitable skills has eroded our ability to criticize authority, reduced our sympathy with the marginalized and different, and damaged our competence to deal with complex global problems. And the loss of these basic capacities jeopardizes the health of democracies and the hope of a decent world.

In response to this dire situation, Nussbaum argues that we must resist efforts to reduce education to a tool of the gross national product. Rather, we must work to reconnect education to the humanities in order to give students the capacity to be true democratic citizens of their countries and the world.

Contents

Foreword by Ruth O'Brien

1. The Silent Crisis [pdf]
2. Education for Profit, Education for Democracy
3. Educating Citizens: The Moral (and Anti-Moral) Emotions
4. Socratic Pedagogy: The Importance of Argument
5. Citizens of the World
6. Cultivating Imagination: Literature and the Arts
7. Democratic Education on the Ropes

Book review by Troy Jollimore here.

Martha Nussbaum is Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago.

See also Nussbaum's wonderful book on "Poetic Justice. The Literary Imagination and Public Life" (Beacon Press, 1995). From the preface: "Very often in today's political life we lack the capacity to see one another as fully human, as more than "dreams and dots". (....) Without the participation of the literary imagination, said Whitman, "things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of their full returns". (....) The purpose of this book is to describe the ingredient of public discourse that Whitman found missing from his America and to show some roles it still might play in our own. It grows out of the conviction, which I share with Whitman, that storytelling and literary imagining are not opposed to rational argument, but can provide essential ingredients in a rational argument".

Monday, April 26, 2010

Forthcoming book by Mathias Risse: "The Grounds of Justice"

From Mathias Risse's website at Harvard University:

Book in Progress:
The Grounds of Justice

An Inquiry about the State in Global Perspective
(pdf, 6,5 MB)

678 pp.

Contents


(See Risse's own summary of the book on pp. 40-46).

Part 1: Reconsidering the State
1: Introduction - Inquiring about the State in Global Perspective
2: Pluralist Internationalism
3: Immediacy and Reciprocity – the Moral Relevance of Shared Membership in a State
4: What is Owed to Persons in Virtue of Being Human: the Institutional Stance, Human Rights, and Non-Relationism
5: “Imagine There’s No Countries:” A Reply to John Lennon
6: But does not the Global Order Harm the Poor?

Part 2: Common Ownership of the Earth
7: Hugo Grotius and Global Public Reason: Collective Ownership of the Earth as a Non-Parochial Standpoint
8: Original Ownership of the Earth: A Contemporary Approach
9: Immigration and Original Ownership of the Earth
10: Towards a Contingent Derivation of Human Rights
11: But the Earth Abideth For Ever: Common Ownership of the Earth
and Obligations towards Future Generations
12: Climate Change and Common Ownership of the Earth

Part 3: International Political and Economic Structures
13: Human Rights as Membership Rights in the Global Order
14: Arguing for Human Rights: Essential Pharmaceuticals
15: Obligations from Trading
16: Arguing for Human Rights: Labor Rights
17: Global Institutions: Justice, Accountability, and the WTO

Epilogue: The Grounds of Justice

Mathias Risse is Associate Professor of Public Policy and Philosophy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

New book: "Vital Democracy: A Theory of Democracy in Action"


Vital Democracy:
A Theory of Democracy in Action


by Frank Hendriks

(Oxford University Press, April 2010)

256 pp



Description


"Vital Democracy" outlines a theory of democracy in action, based on four elementary forms of democracy - pendulum, consensus, voter and participatory democracy - that are thoroughly analysed, compared and related to both the literature and the real world of democracy. Just like a few primary colours produce an array of shades, a few basic models of democracy appear, the author argues, to constitute a wide range of democratic variants in real life.
Focusing on tried and tested democratic institutions, Frank Hendriks shows that the four models of democracy - with their divergent patterns of leadership, citizenship and governance, their inherent strengths and weaknesses - are never purely instantiated. He argues that wherever democracy is practiced with some level of success, it is always as hybrid democracy, thereby challenging those democratic reformers and theorists that have inspired the quest for democratic purity.

Contents

Opening Debate

Part I: Concepts
1: Plural Democracy [preview]
2: Layered Democracy

Part II: Practices
3: Pendulum Democracy
4: Consensus Democracy
5: Voter Democracy
6: Participatory Democracy

Part III: Lessons
7: Mixing Democracy
8: Reforming Democracy

Closing Debate

Frank Hendriks is Professor of Public Administration/Comparative Governance at Tilburg University, the Netherlands.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Michael Walzer: "Not a good time for philosophy"

In "Tehran Times" April 21, 2010, a short interview with Michael Walzer:

Q: Was the 20th century the best century in the history of philosophy? Why?

A: The century of Heidegger and Sartre? A century of willful obscurity and political idiocy. John Rawls is the towering exception, but he can’t save the century. Compare the era of Plato and Aristotle, or the era of Descartes and Spinoza, or the era of Hume and Kant. I don’t know how the relation of politics and philosophy works, but the 20th century was a time of tyranny, world war, and mass murder, and I would guess that that’s not a good time for philosophy. Certainly the response of philosophers was not anything to be proud of.

See the interview here.

Michael Walzer is Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. His latest book is "Thinking Politically. Essays in Political Theory" (Yale University Press, 2007).

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Habermas at Princeton University May 7

Jürgen Habermas will be giving a talk on May 7, 2010, at the Center for Human Values, Princeton University, entitled

"The Utopian Surplus of Human Rights"

101 McCormick Hall, 5:00pm - 6:30pm. Free.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Niklas Luhmann - "Politische Soziologie"


Politische Soziologie

von Niklas Luhmann

(Suhrkamp Verlag, April 2010)

499 Seiten




Kurzbeschreibung


Der Band bietet eines der spektakulärsten Stücke aus Niklas Luhmanns Nachlaß: eine umfassende Darstellung seiner politischen Soziologie aus den späten sechziger Jahren. Er zeigt, wie Luhmann zu der Zeit, als er Adornos Lehrstuhl in Frankfurt vertritt, unbeeindruckt durch die Konjunkturen der zeitgenössischen Ideologiekritik eine Theorie der Politik formuliert, an deren Grundzügen er auch später festhalten wird. Denn anders als seine allgemeine Theorie sozialer Systeme, die er mehrfach revidierte, blieben seine Auffassungen über das politische Teilsystem der modernen Gesellschaft weitgehend unverändert. Der Band bietet so thematisch Neues, ohne methodisch hinter den Stand der späteren Schriften zurückzufallen. Zu den Themen, über die systematische Beiträge von Luhmann bisher nicht bekannt waren, zählen die Bedeutung des Publikums für Verwaltung und Politik sowie die politischen Systeme in den sozialistisch regierten Ländern. Noch ganz im Stil des mündlichen Vortrags, argumentiert Luhmann hier weit deutlicher soziologisch als in seinen späteren Schriften und läßt Anregungen aus anderen wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen zurücktreten. Die beste verfügbare Einführung in Luhmanns politische Soziologie.

Inhalt

I. Teil: Der soziologische Aspekt der Politik
1. Kapitel: Fachliche Abgrenzung der soziologischen Perspektive [pdf]
2. Kapitel: Theoretischer Bezugsrahmen: Systemtheorie

3. Kapitel: Soziale Komplexität
4. Kapitel: Die Funktion und Stellung des politischen Systems
5. Kapitel: Politik in der Gesellschaft und in anderen Sozialsystemen

II. Teil: Das politische System der Gesellschaft
6. Kapitel: Vertikale Ausdifferenzierung des politischen Systems: Herrschaft
7. Kapitel: Horizontale Ausdifferenzierung des politischen Systems: Funktionale Spezifizierung
8. Kapitel: Begleitende Interpretationen
9. Kapitel: Legitimität
10. Kapitel: Autonomie und interne Differenzierung
11. Kapitel: Politik und Verwaltung
12. Kapitel: Analytisches Modell des politischen Systems

III. Teil: Verwaltung
13. Kapitel: Funktion und Ausdifferenzierung des Verwaltungssystems
14. Kapitel: Umweltlage und Autonomie des Verwaltungssystems
15. Kapitel: Kommunikationspotential
16. Kapitel: Rationalität der Verwaltungsentscheidung
17. Kapitel: Programmatik und Opportunismus

IV. Teil: Politik
18. Kapitel: Funktion der Politik
19. Kapitel: Umweltlage, Sprache und Eigenstandigkeit der Politik
20. Kapitel: Rationalität der Politik
21. Kapitel: Grenzen der Ausdifferenzierung

V. Teil: Publikum
22. Kapitel: Ausdifferenzierung von Publikumsrollen
23. Kapitel: Innendifferenzierung der Publikumsrollen
24. Kapitel: Verwaltungspublikum
25. Kapitel: Politische Publikumsrollen
26. Kapitel: Rekrutierung
27. Kapitel: Öffentliche Meinung

Anhang:
Editorische Notiz
Notizen zur Vorlesung Politische Soziologie

Review by Martin Bauer in "Süddeutsche Zeitung", April 19, 2010 (via bücher.de).

Review by Niels Werber in "Merkur", August 2010.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

New book by Dummett: "The Nature & Future of Philosophy"


The Nature and Future of Philosophy

by Michael Dummett

(Columbia University Press, April 2010)

160 pp.




Description


Having spent decades teaching in American, Asian, African, and European universities, Michael Dummett has felt firsthand the fractured state of contemporary practice and the urgent need for reconciliation. Setting forth a proposal for renewal and reengagement, Dummett begins with the nature of philosophical inquiry as it has developed for centuries, especially its exceptional openness and perspective-which has, ironically, led to our present crisis. He discusses philosophy in relation to science, religion, morality, language, and meaning and recommends avenues for healing around a renewed investigation of mind, language, and thought. Employing his trademark frankness and accessibility, Dummett asks philosophers to resolve theoretical difference and reclaim the vital work of their practice.

Contents

1. Philosophy as an Academic Subject [excerpt]
2. What Is a Philosophical Question?
3. Philosophy as the Grammar of Thought
4. Science
5. Psychology and Scientism
6. Religion and Philosophy
7. Religion and Morality
8. The Influence of Gottlob Frege
9. Frege’s Analysis of Sentences
10. Frege’s Theory of Meaning
11. Gadamer on Language
12. The Paradox of Analysis
13. Thought and Language
14. Realism
15. Relativism
16. The Future of Philosophy

Michael Dummett was Professor of Logic at Oxford University until his retirement in 1992.

Review in Publishers Weekly.

Review in Library Journal.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Stanley Fish reviews Habermas on religion

On New York Times' "Opinionator blog":

Stanley Fish reviews Jürgen Habermas et.al. (eds.) - "An Awareness of What is Missing: Faith and Reason in a Post-secular Age" (Polity Press, 2010):

Review: "Does Reason Know What It Is Missing?"

Excerpts:

"Habermas does not want to embrace religion wholesale for he does not want to give up the “cognitive achievements of modernity” — which include tolerance, equality, individual freedom, freedom of thought, cosmopolitanism and scientific advancement — and risk surrendering to the fundamentalisms that, he says, willfully “cut themselves off” from everything that is good about the Enlightenment project. (......) As Norbert Brieskorn, one of Habermas’s interlocutors, points out, in Habermas’s bargain “reason addresses demands to the religious communities” but “there is no mention of demands from the opposite direction.” Religion must give up the spheres of law, government, morality and knowledge; reason is asked only to be nice and not dismiss religion as irrational, retrograde and irrelevant. (.....)

The result, as Michael Reder, another of Habermas’s interlocutors, observes, is a religion that has been “instrumentalized,” made into something useful for a secular reason that still has no use for its teleological and eschatological underpinnings. Religions, explains Reder, are brought in only “to help to prevent or overcome social disruptions.” Once they have performed this service they go back in their box and don’t trouble us with uncomfortable cosmic demands. At best (and at most), according to Habermas, “the encounter with theology,” like an encounter at a cocktail party, “can remind a self-forgetful secular reason of its origins” in the same “revolutions in worldviews” that gave us monotheism. (One God and one reason stem from the same historical source.)

Stanley Fish is Professor of Law at Florida International University.

Monday, April 12, 2010

New book: Thomas Pogge on Poverty and Pro-Poor Rhetoric


Politics as Usual
What Lies Behind The Pro-Poor Rhetoric


By Thomas Pogge

(Polity Press, April 2010)

224 pp.



Description


Worldwide, human lives are rapidly improving. Education, health-care, technology, and political participation are becoming ever more universal, empowering human beings everywhere to enjoy security, economic sufficiency, equal citizenship, and a life in dignity. To be sure, there are some specially difficult areas disfavoured by climate, geography, local diseases, unenlightened cultures or political tyranny. Here progress is slow, and there may be set-backs. But the affluent states and many international organizations are working steadily to extend the blessings of modernity through trade and generous development assistance, and it won't be long until the last pockets of severe oppression and poverty are gone. Heavily promoted by Western governments and media, this comforting view of the world is widely shared, at least among the affluent. Pogge's new book presents an alternative view: Poverty and oppression persist on a massive scale; political and economic inequalities are rising dramatically both intra-nationally and globally. The affluent states and the international organizations they control knowingly contribute greatly to these evils - selfishly promoting rules and policies harmful to the poor while hypocritically pretending to set and promote ambitious development goals.

Contents

General Introduction [preview]

1. What is global justice [paper] (MS-Word)
2. Recognized and violated by international law: The human rights of the global poor
3. The first UN Millennium Development Goal: A cause for celebration? [paper] (MS-Word)
4. Developing morally plausible indices of poverty and gender equity
5. Growth and inequality: Understanding recent trends and political choices
6. Dworkin, the abortion battle, and global poverty
7. Making war on terrorists: Reflections on harming the innocent
8. Moralizing humanitarian intervention: Why jurying fails and how law can work
9. Creating supranational institutions democratically: Reflections on the European Union’s “democratic deficit”

Thomas Pogge is Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale University. His books include "World Poverty and Human Rights" (Polity Press, 2002) and "John Rawls: His Life and Theory of Justice" (Oxford University Press, 2007).

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Video: Martha Nussbaum on "Creating Capabilities"

Now available online:

Martha Nussbaum:
"Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach"

Lecture at Chicago Law School, University of Chicago, March 2, 2010.

Martha Nussbaum is Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. Her books include "The Quality of Life".(edited together with Amartya Sen) (Clarendon Press, 1993), "Women, Culture, and Development: A Study of Human Capabilities" (edited together with Jonathan Glover) (Oxford University Press, 1005), and "Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach" (Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Friday, April 09, 2010

New book by Honneth: The Pathologies of Individual Freedom


The Pathologies of Individual Freedom:
Hegel's Social Theory

by Axel Honneth

(Princeton University Press, March 2010)

96 pp.



Description


This is a penetrating reinterpretation and defense of Hegel's social theory as an alternative to reigning liberal notions of social justice. The eminent German philosopher Axel Honneth rereads Hegel's "Philosophy of Right" to show how it diagnoses the pathologies of the overcommitment to individual freedom that Honneth says underlies the ideas of Rawls and Habermas alike. Honneth argues that Hegel's theory contains an account of the psychological damage caused by placing too much emphasis on personal and moral freedom. Although these freedoms are crucial to the achievement of justice, they are insufficient and in themselves leave people vulnerable to loneliness, emptiness, and depression. Hegel argues that people must also find their freedom or "self-realization" through shared projects. Such projects involve the three institutions of ethical life - family, civil society, and the state - and provide the arena of a crucial third kind of freedom, which Honneth calls "communicative" freedom. A society is just only if it gives all of its members sufficient and equal opportunity to realize communicative freedom as well as personal and moral freedom.

Contents

I: Hegel's Philosophy of Right as a Theory of Justice [pdf]
The Idea of Individual Freedom: Intersubjective Conditions of Autonomy
"Right" in the Philosophy of Right: Necessary Spheres of Self-Realization

II: The Connection between the Theory of Justice and the Diagnosis of the Age
Suffering from Indeterminacy: Pathologies of Individual Freedom
"Liberation" from Suffering: The Therapeutic Significance of "Ethical Life"

III: The Theory of Ethical Life as a Normative Theory of Modernity
Self-Realization and Recognition: Conditions of "Ethical Life"
The Over-Institutionalization of "Ethical Life": Problems of the Hegelian Approach

Axel Honneth is Professor of Social Philosophy at Goethe University and Director of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main.

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

New book: "The Philosophy of International Law"


The Philosophy of International Law

Ed. by Samantha Besson and John Tasioulas

(Oxford University Press, April 2010)

632 pp.



Description


International law has recently emerged as the subject-matter of an exciting new field of philosophical investigation. "The Philosophy of International Law" contains 29 cutting-edge essays by leading philosophers and international lawyers, all published here in English for the first time, that address the central philosophical questions about international law. The volume's overarching theme is the moral and political values that should guide the assessment and development of international law and institutions. Some of the essays tackle general topics such as the sources and legitimacy of international law, the nature of international legal adjudication, whether international law can or should aspire to be 'democratic', and the significance of state sovereignty. The other contributions address philosophical problems arising in specific domains of international law, such as human rights law, international economic law, international criminal law, international environmental law, and the laws of war. This volume is the most up-to-date and comprehensive treatment of the philosophy of international law in existence. It is also distinguished by its 'dialogical' methodology: there are two essays on each topic, with the second author engaging with the arguments of the first.

Contents

Samantha Besson and John Tasioulas: Introduction [preview]

History of the Philosophy of International Law
1. Benedict Kingsbury and Benjamin Straumann: State of Nature versus Commercial Sociability as the Basis of International Law
2. Amanda Perreau-Saussine: Immanuel Kant on International Law [paper]

Legitimacy of International Law
3. Allen Buchanan: The Legitimacy of International Law
4. John Tasioulas: The Legitimacy of International Law

International Democracy
5. Thomas Christiano: Democratic Legitimacy and International Institutions
6. Philip Pettit: Legitimate International Institutions: A Neo-Republican Perspective [paper]

Sources of International Law
7. Samantha Besson: Theorizing the Sources of International Law
8. David Lefkowitz: The Sources of International Law: Some Philosophical Reflections

International Adjudication
9. Andreas Paulus: International Adjudication
10. Donald Regan: International Adjudication: A Response to Paulus

Sovereignty
11. Timothy Endicott: The Logic of Freedom and Power
12. Jean Cohen: Sovereignty in the Context of Globalization

International Responsibility
13. James Crawford and Jeremy Watkins: International Responsibility
14. Liam Murphy: International Responsibility

Human Rights
15. Joseph Raz: Human Rights without Foundations [paper]
16. James Griffin: Human Rights and the Autonomy of International Law
17. John Skorupski: Human Rights

Self-Determination and Minority Rights
18. Will Kymlicka: Minority Rights in Political Philosophy and International Law
19. Jeremy Waldron: Two Conception of Self Determination

International Economic Law
20. Thomas Pogge: The Role of International Law in Reproducing Massive Poverty
21. Robert Howse and Ruti Teitel: Global Justice, Poverty and the International Economic Order

International Environmental Law
22. James Nickel and Daniel Magraw: Philosophical Issues in International Environmental Law
23. Roger Crisp: Ethics and International Environmental Law

Laws of War
24. Jeff McMahan: The Laws of War
25. Henry Shue: Laws of War

Humanitarian Intervention
26. Thomas Franck: Humanitarian Intervention
27. Danilo Zolo: Humanitarian Militarism?

International Criminal Law
28. David Luban: Fairness to Rightness [paper]
29. Antony Duff: Authority and Responsibility in International Criminal Law

Samantha Besson is Professor of Public International Law and European Law at the University of Fribourg.

John Tasioulas is a Reader in Moral and Legal Philosophy at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Most cited authors of books in the humanities

From the Times Higher Education:

Most cited authors of books in the humanities, 2007

1. Michel Foucault (2,521)
2. Pierre Bourdieu (2,465)
3. Jacques Derrida (1,874)
4. Albert Bandura (1,536)
5. Anthony Giddens (1,303)
6. Erving Goffman (1,066)
7. Jürgen Habermas (1,049)
8. Max Weber (971)
9. Judith Butler (960)
10. Bruno Latour (944)
11. Sigmund Freud (903)
12. Gilles Deleuze (897)
13. Immanuel Kant (882)
14. Martin Heidegger (874)
15. Noam Chomsky (812)
16. Ulrich Beck (733)
17. Jean Piaget (725)
18. David Harvey (723)
19. John Rawls (708)
20. Geert Hofstede (700)

Data provided by Thomson Reuters’ ISI Web of Science, 2007.

Thomson Reuters recently collected citations from the journal literature it indexed in 2007 to books and their authors. In the sciences, the journal is the main vehicle for scholarly communication, whereas in the social sciences and especially in the arts and humanities, the book holds a more important position in conveying and influencing research. The table above lists those authors whose books, collectively, were cited 700 or more times in 2007.

(Thanks to Brian Leiter for the pointer).