Middle East Studies

A Philosophy of Beauty: Shaftesbury on Nature, Virtue, and Art

Michael B. Gill

Popular Politics and the Path to Durable Democracy

Mohammad Ali Kadivar

An engaging account of how Shaftesbury revolutionized Western philosophy

At the turn of the eighteenth century, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713), developed the first comprehensive philosophy of beauty to be written in English. It revolutionized Western philosophy. In A Philosophy of Beauty, Michael Gill presents an engaging account of how Shaftesbury’s thought profoundly shaped modern ideas of nature, religion, morality, and art—and why, despite its long neglect, it remains compelling today.

Before Shaftesbury’s magnum opus, Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711), it was common to see wilderness as ugly, to associate religion with fear and morality with unpleasant restriction, and to dismiss art as trivial or even corrupting. But Shaftesbury argued that nature, religion, virtue, and art can all be truly beautiful, and that cherishing and cultivating beauty is what makes life worth living. And, as Gill shows, this view had a huge impact on the development of natural religion, moral sense theory, aesthetics, and environmentalism.

Combining captivating historical details and flashes of humor, A Philosophy of Beauty not only rediscovers and illuminates a fascinating philosopher but also offers an inspiring reflection about the role beauty can play in our lives.

Michael B. Gill is professor of philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of Humean Moral Pluralism and The British Moralists on Human Nature and the Birth of Secular Ethics. A groundbreaking account of how prolonged grassroots mobilization lays the foundations for durable democratization

When protest swept through the Middle East at the height of the Arab Spring, the world appeared to be on the verge of a wave of democratization. Yet with the failure of many of these uprisings, it has become clearer than ever that the path to democracy is strewn with obstacles. Mohammad Ali Kadivar examines the conditions leading to the success or failure of democratization, shedding vital new light on how prodemocracy mobilization affects the fate of new democracies.

Drawing on a wealth of new evidence, Kadivar shows how the longest episodes of prodemocracy protest give rise to the most durable new democracies. He analyzes more than one hundred democratic transitions in eighty countries between 1950 and 2010, showing how more robust democracies emerge from lengthier periods of unarmed mobilization. Kadivar then analyzes five case studies—South Africa, Poland, Pakistan, Egypt, and Tunisia—to investigate the underlying mechanisms. He finds that organization building during the years of struggle develops the leadership needed for lasting democratization and strengthens after dictatorship civil society.

Popular Politics and the Path to Durable Democracy challenges the prevailing wisdom in American foreign policy that democratization can be achieved through military or coercive interventions, revealing how lasting change arises from sustained, nonviolent grassroots mobilization.

Mohammad Ali Kadivar is assistant professor of sociology and international studies at Boston College.

November 9780691226613 Hardback $39.95 | £30.00

240 pages. 19 b/w illus. 156 × 235 mm. ebook 9780691226699 Philosophy Princeton Studies in Global and Comparative Sociology

December 9780691229126 Paperback $35.00 | £28.00 9780691229133 Hardback $120.00 | £94.00