An introduction to communism in the political thought of William Morris.

Spinoza is the rationalist philosopher par excellence, making every conceivable emancipatory claim for reason in delineating the connection of reason to freedom and power. This kind of philosophy has been challenged in recent times by postmodernist modes of thought. Whereas Spinoza affirms knowledge as power in a positive sense, the likes of…[Read more]

This book approaches the contemporary environmental crisis as a crisis of civilisation and as a call to generate a new way of life. The purpose of the book is to bring philosophical perspectives concerning reason and freedom to bear upon the moral, economic and ecological crisis of modernity with a view to constituting the good life. The book…[Read more]

This paper examines Kant’s philosophy in three parts. Part I concerns knowledge and looks at reason, its limits and extent. This part shows how Kant went beyond the empiricism and rationalism debate by incorporating the key elements of both in his transcendental idealism. I proceed to examine the constructive and critical theories contained in t…[Read more]

This book divides into four sections. Section one examines Kant’s Copernican revolution in philosophy, showing how Kant altered the basis of cognition. Kant is shown to affirm creative human agency in the shaping and understanding of the world. The implications of this emphasis on human agency for ethics and politics are examined in the second and…[Read more]

This book argues that what makes Rousseau’s philosophy so vibrant and meaningful is its grounding in the most profound questions of being. Although Rousseau valued rational understanding as much as any philosopher, he was aware that reason was thin and misleading if it was concerned solely with pure intellect detached from human being. Hence R…[Read more]

This book traces the connection of ecology, regionalism and civilisation in the life’s work of Lewis Mumford. The argument demonstrates Mumford’s ecological regionalism as being grounded in a moral sense of place, Mumford offering an ecological civilisation as an alternative to the false imperatives of the megamachine. Mumford is shown to offer an…[Read more]

Part 1 The Emerging Ecological Consciousness The environmental crisis is considered to be the product of a wider system failure. The emergence of an ecological consciousness is shown to be part of the process of revolutionizing society, restructuring power, changing culture and emphasising the quality of individual lives over the quantity of…[Read more]

This thesis approaches ‘Marx’s politics’ from its ‘rational’ origins in ancient Greek thought. Stated briefly, ‘rational freedom’ affirms a socio-relational and ethical conception of freedom in which individual liberty depends upon and is constituted by the quality of relations with other individuals. The argument of this thesis is that Marx bot…[Read more]

In this book I shall develop the urban regional thought of Lewis Mumford in terms of a civic environmentalism concerned with the achievement of a public life fitted to the contours of an ecological civilization. I shall examine Mumford’s conception of ecological regionalism, democratic planning and the regional garden city as giving us both the i…[Read more]

Tolkien’s words on ‘fighting the long defeat’ are wonderful and endlessly inspiring – he gives us a ‘hope without guarantees.’ And a long defeat that, in acts of love and kindness and solidarity, gives ‘glimpses of final victory.’ There’s a lot of discussion on what it takes to motivate people to act at the moment. Tolkien’s environmental conce…[Read more]

In this book I argue for a concept of ecological virtue as a condition for constituting a flourishing earthly commonwealth. I establish the virtues as qualities for successful living within specific social relations, putting character formation and social formation together to deliver a common control of collective forces that is based upon…[Read more]

Volume 3 of Marx’s Socialism from Within. Here I examine the necessity for transcendent standards vs conventionalism, checking relativism, subjectivism and scepticism. I address Nietzsche’s ‘death of God’ and its moral implications with respect to politics. I close with a substantial chapter on Alasdair MacIntyre’s virtuous communities of…[Read more]

Volume Two of Marx’s Socialism from Within. Here I locate Marx within a concept of rational freedom which holds that the freedom of each individual is conditional upon and co-existent with the freedom of all individuals. I, in turn, ground that concept in Marx’s normative essentialist anthropology. I show that an essentialist metaphysics is…[Read more]

Volume One of Marx’s Socialism from Within. In this work I recover the ecological dimension of Marx’s critique of political economy. Within the triadic framework of humanity-labour/production-nature, I demonstrate that Marx goes beyond the abstractions of ‘Man,’ ‘Reason,’ and ‘Nature’ to place the emphasis upon mediation. Focusing upon the…[Read more]