Political Theory and Praxis

New Perspectives

•

Terence Ball, editor

Part I: Origins
On the History of “Theory” and “Praxis” by Nicholas Lobkowicz
Creatures of a Day: Thought and Action in Thucydides by J. Peter Euben
Plato and Aristotle: The Unity Versus the Autonomy of Theory and Practice by Terence Ball

Part II: Developments
Kant on Theory and Practice by Carl Raschke
Theory and Practice in Hegel and Marx: An Unfinished Dialogue by Peter Fuss
The Unity of Theory and Practice: The Science of Marx and Nietzsche by Edward Andrew

Part II: Dilemmas and New Directions
Hannah Arendt: The Ambiguities of Theory and Practice by Richard J. Bernstein
Rebels, Beginners, and Buffoons: Politics as Action by Raymond L. Nichols
How People Change Themselves: The Relationship between Critical Theory and Its Audience by Brian Fay


Nine distinguished contributors - philosophers and political scientists at universities and colleges in the United States, Europe, Canada, and Australia - write essays for this volume in political philosophy. The book is dedicated to the memory of Hannah Arendt, the writer and philosopher who died in 1975. The contributors discuss various aspects of the concepts of theory and practice and their interrelationship. All of the essays were written expressly for this volume. In an introduction, Professor Ball, the volume editor, notes that the essays reflect the diversity of conceptions of theory, of practice, and of their conceptual and practical interrelations, and that the contributors explore various ways and byways of approaching the age-old questions of theory and its relation to practice.

Terence moved to Arizona State University in 1998 after 26 years at the University of Minnesota. Professor Ball holds a B.A. degree from the University of California at Santa Cruz and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. He has held visiting professorships at the University of California - San Diego and Oxford University. In addition to many articles in scholarly journals and books, he is the author of Civil Disobedience and Civil Deviance, Transforming Political Discourse, Reappraising Political Theory, Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal (with Richard Dagger), and a mystery novel, Rousseau's Ghost. Among the books he has edited or co-edited are Political Theory and Praxis, After Marx, Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, Idioms of Inquiry, Conceptual Change and the Constitution, Environmental Encyclopedia, The Federalist, and the Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Political Thought.

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