Neer uncovers a key moment in the history of early modern art, when painting was understood to be a tool for self-transformation and for living a philosophical life. 
 
In this wide-ranging study, Richard Neer shows how French painters of the seventeenth century developed radically new ways to connect art, perception, and ethics. Cutting across traditional boundaries of classicism and realism, Neer addresses four case studies: Nicolas Poussin, renowned for marrying ancient philosophy and narrative painting; Louise Moillon, who pioneered French still life in the 1630s; Georges de La Tour, a painter of intense and introspective nocturnes; and the Brothers Le Nain, specialists in genre and portraiture who inspired Courbet, Manet, and other painters of modern life. Setting these artists in dialogue with Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal, and others, ranging from the studios of Rome to the streets of Paris, this book provides fresh accounts of essential artworks—some well-known, others neglected—and new ways to approach the relation of art, theory, and daily life. 
 

In contrast with other works on the history of language learning and teaching, this book is innovative in assigning a much more important role to practice and to the reciprocal relationship of policies and practice (rather than investigating top.down processes from policies to practice). The 14 contributions highlight various contexts of language education in the 20th century, combining inside.out (‘emic’) perspectives, drawing on teachers’/learners’ experience within the classroom, and outside.in (‘etic’) perspectives, looking at external factors such as the curriculum or education policies and considering how teachers and learners respond to these. Each chapter starts from one perspective, yet at the same time takes into account the reciprocal effects between the two directions of movement (inside.out / outside.in). This volume asks, how has the practice of language learning and teaching been influenced by policies and context – and vice versa?

In The Practice of Catholic Theology: A Modest Proposal, Paul J. Griffiths has written a how-to book for Catholic theologians that will both instruct beginners and challenge long-time practitioners to sharpen their understanding of their craft. He defines Catholic theology as the practice of thinking, speaking, and writing about the God of Christian confession; so understood, it's something that anyone can learn to do. Personal sanctity is not required, but as with any other practice, practitioners of this beautiful and elevated thought-performance need to know some things and to develop some skills in order to be able to perform it.

Based partly on unpublished documents and oral information obtained from monks who headed major monasteries on mainland China, Holmes Welch presents a detailed description of the modern practice of Chinese Buddhism. Focusing on the actual rather than the theoretical observances of the religion, he gives an exhaustive account of the monastic system and the style of life of both monk and layman. His study makes new information available for the Western reader and calls into question the whole concept of the moribund state of Chinese Buddhism.

A pathbreaking work of scholarship that will reshape our understanding of the Harlem Renaissance, The Practice of Diaspora revisits black transnational culture in the 1920s and 1930s, paying particular attention to links between intellectuals in New York and their Francophone counterparts in Paris. Brent Edwards suggests that diaspora is less a historical condition than a set of practices: the claims, correspondences, and collaborations through which black intellectuals pursue a variety of international alliances.

Edwards elucidates the workings of diaspora by tracking the wealth of black transnational print culture between the world wars, exploring the connections and exchanges among New York–based publications (such as Opportunity, The Negro World, and The Crisis) and newspapers in Paris (such as Les Continents, La Voix des Nègres, and L'Etudiant noir). In reading a remarkably diverse archive--the works of writers and editors from Langston Hughes, René Maran, and Claude McKay to Paulette Nardal, Alain Locke, W. E. B. Du Bois, George Padmore, and Tiemoko Garan Kouyaté--The Practice of Diaspora takes account of the highly divergent ways of imagining race beyond the barriers of nation and language. In doing so, it reveals the importance of translation, arguing that the politics of diaspora are legible above all in efforts at negotiating difference among populations of African descent throughout the world.

Should a lawyer keep a client's secrets even when disclosure would exculpate a person wrongly accused of a crime? To what extent should a lawyer exploit loopholes in ways that enable clients to gain unintended advantages? When can lawyers justifiably make procedural maneuvers that defeat substantive rights? The Practice of Justice is a fresh look at these and other traditional questions about the ethics of lawyering. William Simon, a legal theorist with extensive experience in practice, charges that the profession's standard approach to these questions is incoherent and implausible.

At the same time, Simon rejects the ethical approaches most frequently proposed by the profession's critics. The problem, he insists, does not lie in the profession's commitment to legal values over those of ordinary morality. Nor does it arise from the adversary system. Rather, Simon shows that the critical weakness of the standard approach is its reliance on a distinctive style of judgment--categorical, rule-bound, rigid--that is both ethically unattractive and rejected by most modern legal thought outside the realm of legal ethics. He develops an alternative approach based on a different, more contextual, style of judgment widely accepted in other areas of legal thought.

The author enlivens his argument with discussions of actual cases, including the Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal and the Leo Frank murder trial, as well as fictional accounts of lawyering, including Kafka's The Trial and the movie The Verdict.

Barbara Herman argues for a radical shift in the way we perceive Kant's ethics. She convincingly reinterprets the key texts, at once allowing Kant to mean what he says while showing that what Kant says makes good moral sense. She urges us to abandon the tradition that describes Kantian ethics as a deontology, a moral system of rules of duty. She finds the central idea of Kantian ethics not in duty but in practical rationality as a norm of unconditioned goodness. This book both clarifies Kant's own theory and adds programmatic vitality to modern moral philosophy.

The Netherlands have a long and important tradition in scholarly philology. For instance in the early days of Leiden University 'philology', or the critical examination of classical texts, was regarded as a 'cutting-edge science'. This field of scholarship had far reaching implications on disciplines such as theology, chronology, astronomy, history, law and other demarcated bodies of knowledge identified as a separate science. Regardless of the exact field of inquiry, philologists as protectors and teachers of the written heritage always played a pivotal role in the formation of the cultural repertoire of the educated public. As men of learning and high esteem, philologists also exerted influence outside the cultural sphere, especially in politics and religion. The ever-changing composition of the philological frame of reference made no difference in this respect. But in the nineteenth century, the practice of philology was passing a crucial phase of change. In both its object of study and in its methods, several fundamental modifications occurred. Texts in the vernacular and national philologies attracted more and more attention of the public, and 'neo-philology' succeeded in taking over the central position traditionally occupied by classical philology. Subfields such as 'linguistics', 'edition technique' and 'history' grew into new, more-or-less independent (sub-)disciplines, whereas scientific methods such as stemmatology and comparative approaches were introduced in the humanities. This redesigned the landscape of philology radically. New boundaries became apparent and existing ones were questioned or drawn sharper. At the time, philology underwent an accelerated process of differentiation and professionalization. Philology demarcated its own more or less independent sphere, with a specific authority. The establishment of a branch of 'national philology' can be regarded as an example of discipline formation in the humanities. This fascinating process of change and the search for new boundaries in Dutch philology is highlighted in this book The Practice of Philology in the Netherlands in the Nineteenth Century, the first book on this topic in the English language.

Philosopher Terry Pinkard revisits Sartre’s later work, illuminating a pivotal stance in Sartre’s understanding of freedom and communal action.

Jean-Paul Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason, released to great fanfare in 1960, has since then receded in philosophical visibility. As Sartre’s reputation is now making a comeback, it is time for a reappraisal of his later work. In Practice, Power, and Forms of Life, philosopher Terry Pinkard interprets Sartre’s late work as a fundamental reworking of his earlier ideas, especially in terms of his understanding of the possibility of communal action as genuinely free, which the French philosopher had previously argued was impossible.

Pinkard reveals how Sartre was drawn back to Hegel, a move that was itself incited by Sartre’s newfound interest in Marxism. Pinkard argues that Sartre constructed a novel position on freedom that has yet to be adequately taken up and analyzed within philosophy and political theory. Through Sartre, Pinkard advances an argument that contributes to the history of philosophy as well as key debates on action and freedom.

Any woman who has been examined by a gynecologist could tell Descartes a thing or two about the mind/body problem. Is her body an object? Is it the self? Is it both, and if so, how? Katharine Young takes up this problem in a book that looks at medicine's means of separating self and body--and at the body's ways of resisting.

Disembodiment--rendering the body an object and the self bodyless--is the foundational gesture of medicine. How, then, does medical practice acknowledge the presence of the person in the objectified body? Young considers in detail the "choreography" such a maneuver requires--and the different turns it takes during a routine exam, or surgery, or even an autopsy. Distinctions between public and private, inside and outside, assume new meanings as medical practice proceeds from one venue to the next--waiting room to examining table, anteroom to operating theater, from the body's exterior to its internal organs. Young inspects the management of these and other "boundaries"--as a physician adds layers of clothing and a patient removes layers, as the rules of objective and subjective discourse shift, as notions of intimacy determine the etiquette of exchanges between doctor and patient.

From embodied positions within the realm of medicine and disembodied positions outside it, Young richly conveys the complexity of presence in the flesh.

Kokugaku, or nativism, was one of the most important intellectual movements from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century in Japan, and its worldview continues to be influential today. This scholarly endeavor represented an attempt to use Japanese antiquity to revitalize what many saw as a society in decline. One important figure in this movement was Hirata Atsutane (1776-1843), a center of controversy in his own lifetime. Even though Atsutane's version of nativism came to be the standard form, many modern scholars dismiss him because of his scholarly shortcomings.

The primary goal of this book is to restore historicity to the study of nativism by recognizing Atsutane's role in the creation and perpetuation of an intellectual tradition that remains a significant part of Japanese history and culture. Arguing that conflict among scholars and intellectuals begets ideas, Mark McNally shows that nativism was rife with internal competition. The mid-nineteenth-century suppression of this multiplicity of views led to the emergence of what we now think of as "nativism." By focusing on the competition among the rival strands of nativism, McNally demonstrates that nativism resulted not from Atsutane's conscious attempt to formulate a new intellectual tradition but from his greater political skills at putting his views across.

Can the ethos of punk bring educational change?

As teachers, administrators, and policymakers continue to examine how best to approach pedagogical practice, the exploration of new, innovative approaches becomes ever more important. Punk Pedagogies in Practice builds on existing research to connect theory and practice while disrupting current approaches to the post-16 sector. Contributors share insights that apply to a wide range of disciplines, settings, teaching, and learning styles, drawing on experiences in further education, higher education, migrant education, zine workshops, community education, and instruction for speakers of other languages. Taken together, the essays collected here affirm the importance of creativity, resistance, critical mindsets, and do-it-yourself philosophy in contemporary education.

Contributions by: Ipsita Chatterjea, Mike Dines, Asya Draganova, Jon Evans, Muhammad Fakhran al Ramadhan, Michael Gratzke, Matt Grimes, Craig Hamilton, Michael Hepworth, Adam Hounslow-Eyre, Dave Kane, Nathan Kerrigan, Marco Milano, Ces Pearson, Sarah Raine, Katie Shaw, Francis Stewart, Iain Taylor, Dean Thiele, Elke Van dermijnsbrugge, L. Viner, and Laura Way.