MLA Commons | Peter Critchley | Activity https://mla.hcommons.org/members/petercritchley/activity/ Activity feed for Peter Critchley. Sat, 04 Apr 2026 18:43:54 -0400 https://buddypress.org/?v=10.6.0 en-US 30 hourly 2 299bc60ef63865f63de50edf85c4e7ba Peter Critchley deposited The Ecological Comedy : The Case for an Existential Literary Ecology https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1671522/ Fri, 06 Dec 2019 21:27:55 -0500 Human beings are story making animals. Before homo faber came homo symbolicus. Ecological restoration is a restorying. Transitioning to a new world is always a matter of being between stories. We may call these worldviews, standpoints or paradigms, articulating norms and values. We are moving from one view, the materialist, mechanistic and…[Read more]

]]> 0 20ded6046469badac28217e64ce3c99b Peter Critchley's profile was updated https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1627496/ Mon, 31 Dec 2018 15:40:10 -0500 0 ad651621ea30aeba614d269910314d9d Peter Critchley deposited From Green Principles to Politics https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1627471/ Mon, 31 Dec 2018 00:25:45 -0500 Arguing that a principled standpoint is a condition for any person or movement seeking to effect real social change, this book foregrounds social and environmental justice as against economic imperatives based on accumulation, profit and endless growth. This book argues that the reality of environmental crisis and the prospect of future social…[Read more]

]]> 0 f56146b9e50149bd4e080f5c8354f1a0 Peter Critchley deposited Industry and Europe vol 4 The Economics of Peace, Freedom, and Justice https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1627470/ Mon, 31 Dec 2018 00:16:58 -0500 Global economic activity has increased dramatically since the Second World War. The principal agents of this globalisation have been the TNCs. Most importantly, the TNCs have been major players in the growth industries and leading sectors of the long post-war boom and their central presence in what is now a global economy has fundamentally altered…[Read more]

]]> 0 09993078f6dcf71ef9e11d7ec2764c37 Peter Critchley deposited Industry and Europe vol 3 Transnational Monopoly Capital https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1627469/ Mon, 31 Dec 2018 00:14:50 -0500 Research for my Masters in economics

This volume re-engages with the theoretical debates broached in parts of the first two volumes with respect to the centralisation and concentration of capital. The critical focus is upon the transnational corporations and the transnationalisation of capital as the prime mechanisms of the inherent tendency to…[Read more]

]]> 0 5ed5931c6ca794be075ac16e72fbe9a4 Peter Critchley deposited Industry and Europe vol 2 The Social Market https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1627468/ Mon, 31 Dec 2018 00:11:50 -0500 This volume continues to develop the themes outlined in the previous volume concerning the way in which the necessity of an industrial policy is constrained by the emergence of supra-national economic forces.The argument demonstrates the extent to which E.C. competition policy and the SEM programme run in a contrary direction to the idea of an…[Read more]

]]> 0 0c3ee57a5ed6402d88429bc6a663c066 Peter Critchley deposited Industry and Europe: Problems and Uncertainties in a Global Economic Environment vol 1 The Integration of the European Community https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1627467/ Mon, 31 Dec 2018 00:09:26 -0500 This thesis concerns European and international economics and, although special effort has been made to avoid the use of technical jargon, presumes a degree of prior knowledge of economic theory. That said, this thesis recognises that economics proceeds within a political context. In contradistinction to academic economists, this thesis treats…[Read more]

]]> 0 ee4c364a50c738f764f3dbf5a142c40d Peter Critchley deposited Commune Democracy and the Associative Public https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1627466/ Mon, 31 Dec 2018 00:05:18 -0500 The argument of this book attempts to show the relevance of Marx’s work to the attempt to create a new politics of citizenship. This argues that Marx is engaged above all in an attempt to formulate a new politics – specifically, a communist politics based upon the reintegration of political and social relationships, the overcoming of the state and…[Read more]

]]> 0 464be270ed36c054b66f102c031ad641 Peter Critchley deposited Of Gods and Gaia https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1627465/ Mon, 31 Dec 2018 00:02:46 -0500 This book examines the case for planetary engineering and management that seeks to redefine and reorganise environmentalism around nuclear power, biotechnology, GM food and geoengineering. This amounts to moral and political disarmament of the environmental movement and can be resisted. This book examines what these proposals amount to and what…[Read more]

]]> 0 d7b0d656342cbcfdd08487c4fe28e04e Peter Critchley deposited Immanence, Transcendence, and Essence https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1627463/ Sun, 30 Dec 2018 23:56:32 -0500 The reconciliation of an ethics of immanence with the affirmation of transcendent standards.

]]> 0 22dabab86cf0783fc0bb82e1b7089303 Peter Critchley deposited Aquinas, Morality and Modernity: The Search for the Natural Moral Law and the Common Good https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1627462/ Sun, 30 Dec 2018 23:52:15 -0500 This book charts the dissipation of an authoritative moral framework from the intersubjectivism and universalism of Immanuel Kant to the nihilism of Nietzsche. Weber’s much vaunted polytheism is shown to be an heterogeneity of values, the reduction of morality to value judgements. The book proceeds to argue the case for the importance of St T…[Read more]

]]> 0 8580c5b0a273c629eec8028ad7b03b14 Peter Critchley deposited Dante's Enamoured Mind https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1627461/ Sun, 30 Dec 2018 23:43:33 -0500 Dante as the poet-philosopher of living hope.

]]> 0 961e70d33c708fffdf53b71e2963ff90 Peter Critchley deposited In Search of Ecopolis https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1627460/ Sun, 30 Dec 2018 23:41:02 -0500 This book identifies the contemporary environmental crisis as a call to create a new biocentric civilisation. Proceeding from the identification of the constants of civilized life, the argument seeks to build constructive ecological models by relating Green politics to philosophy and ethics. This approach seeks to develop a practical, institution…[Read more]

]]> 0 65da09aeb522bb2f7a15b8e5bb4b23c6 Peter Critchley deposited Philosophizing Through the Eye of the Mind: Philosophy as Ethos and Praxis https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1627459/ Sun, 30 Dec 2018 23:34:51 -0500 This book conceives philosophy in terms of philosophising as an active process. The intention of the argument is to restore philosophy to its origins as an ethos, a practice, a way of living for rational beings. Philosophy is therefore presented more as a practice or an activity than as an intellectual exercise or subject discipline. Philosophy is…[Read more]

]]> 0 bcdf71235530f305ae5b005aa292c9e2 Peter Critchley deposited The City of Reason: The City as Human Habitus https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1627458/ Sun, 30 Dec 2018 22:50:46 -0500 Pt1 Cities and Citizenship This part makes the case for expanding ‘the political’ as a public life at the expense of centralised abstract state politics through making available extensive public spaces for the exercise of local citizen power at the level of the neighbourhood, town, and city confederation.
Pt2 The Philosophical Idea of the City…[Read more]

]]> 0 bc2d6431c2c0272e3366b838a8cd7a35 Peter Critchley's profile was updated https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1611942/ Thu, 28 Jun 2018 02:52:21 -0400 0 479b6bbb26882211c09150387b544e5a Peter Critchley deposited Recovering the Meta-Narrative of the Good City: Manchester as a Post-Industrial City https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1611941/ Thu, 28 Jun 2018 02:50:07 -0400 This book is motivated by a concern that the city is in danger of losing its traditional functions as a place of human interaction and reciprocity, as meeting place and associational space. The quality of individual interaction establishes the content of civic, political and cultural life in the city. The problem is that these precious resources…[Read more]

]]> 0 e4c84d3fce38a87fc6cac5a6790ebe9f Peter Critchley deposited The Proletarian Public: The Practice of Proletarian Self-Emancipation https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1611940/ Thu, 28 Jun 2018 02:47:20 -0400 This book covers the period of working class socialism between the final years of the nineteenth century up to the 1930s. The book contains chapters on Industrial Unionism, Revolutionary Syndicalism and Council Communism. There are substantial chapters on Tom Mann, James Connolly, Antonio Gramsci and Rosa Luxemburg. The principal concern of the…[Read more]

]]> 0 91ed01a0934777a42bda3cbf9e7518bc Peter Critchley deposited Marx, Praxis and Socialism from Below https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1611939/ Thu, 28 Jun 2018 02:44:48 -0400 This thesis distinguishes between a scientistic-deterministic Marxism and a critical-emancipatory Marxism in order to establish Marx within the tradition of socialism from below, a conception which affirms the principle of self-emancipation. The thesis argues that Marx developed the most powerful practical critique of the capital system that…[Read more]

]]> 0 ecab650405848eee7ed799158730c40d Peter Critchley deposited Marx, Reason and Freedom: Communism, Rational Freedom, and Socialized Humanity https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1611938/ Thu, 28 Jun 2018 02:37:24 -0400 This thesis examines the idea of freedom in the thought of Karl Marx in relation to a philosophical tradition concerning the appropriate regimen for creative human self-realisation dating from Plato and Aristotle. The thesis consists of nine parts. Part One examines the work of a number of postmarxist democratic theorists in order to demonstrate…[Read more]

]]> 0 15126d36fa1b33fdb3c35fb24fbbc129 Peter Critchley deposited The Ecological Communism of William Morris https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1611937/ Thu, 28 Jun 2018 02:30:24 -0400 An introduction to communism in the political thought of William Morris.

]]> 0 76baa75092f366e0d37080033486a604 Peter Critchley deposited Spinoza and the Rule of Reason https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1611936/ Thu, 28 Jun 2018 02:24:17 -0400 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]

]]> 0 a3b756b84a8d9f583a704b7c2b0b3d99 Peter Critchley deposited Reason as the Realization of Nature: An Excursus on Philosophy, Natural Law and Ecology https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1611935/ Thu, 28 Jun 2018 02:20:19 -0400 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]

]]> 0 b0884559756334303574743f1466766b Peter Critchley deposited Kant's Natural Teleology and Moral Praxis https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1611934/ Thu, 28 Jun 2018 02:13:43 -0400 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]

]]> 0 d15a3ea3961f6803b4fb89eb3efbaa05 Peter Critchley deposited Kant and the Ethics of Rational Nature https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1611933/ Thu, 28 Jun 2018 02:09:34 -0400 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]

]]> 0 f7342fc5575d9c134ee86812ec4f1b47 Peter Critchley deposited Autonomy, Authenticity and Authority: The Rational Freedom of Jean-Jacques Rousseau https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1611932/ Thu, 28 Jun 2018 02:07:11 -0400 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]

]]> 0 a23a0e4e071a883f38f6e8390a96100a Peter Critchley deposited Lewis Mumford and the Architectonics of Ecological Civilisation https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1611931/ Thu, 28 Jun 2018 02:03:50 -0400 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]

]]> 0 4a338f681f5c8969436163888d12eed3 Peter Critchley deposited The Coming Ecological Revolution: The Principles and Politics of a Social and Moral Ecology https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1611928/ Thu, 28 Jun 2018 01:02:45 -0400 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]

]]> 0 60c1c45e7fe361859ecf39dfd0525602 Peter Critchley deposited Critical Studies in Rational Freedom: The Radical Transfiguration of the Greco-Germanic Principle of Rational Freedom https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1611927/ Thu, 28 Jun 2018 00:52:34 -0400 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]

]]> 0 fe0c70ac0547978a693a80a43cf47671 Peter Critchley deposited Lewis Mumford, Civic Environmentalism and Ecological Regionalism https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1611926/ Thu, 28 Jun 2018 00:42:20 -0400 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]

]]> 0 2e20ecfb3d45decdc3f80643c2127baf Peter Critchley deposited Tolkien and the Fellowship of all Living Things: The Politics of Proximity, Person and Place https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1611925/ Thu, 28 Jun 2018 00:32:50 -0400 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]

]]> 0 37fd015205110d447c06b57ebfe4da09 Peter Critchley deposited BEING AT ONE: MAKING A HOME IN EARTH’S COMMONWEALTH OF VIRTUE https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1611918/ Wed, 27 Jun 2018 21:55:32 -0400 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]

]]> 0 5895fed09422dd003856c22e5c606b69 Peter Critchley deposited A Home and a Resting Place Homo Religiosus: The Reality of Religious Truth and Experience https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1611917/ Wed, 27 Jun 2018 21:49:17 -0400 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]

]]> 0 591b22b172c64b19ec9d7cbf8f7ff102 Peter Critchley deposited Ethics, Essence and Immanence: Marx's Normative Essentialism https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1611912/ Wed, 27 Jun 2018 21:45:04 -0400 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]

]]> 0 4e402ac24fe44e00d7202bb960db466e Peter Critchley deposited Social Restitution and Metabolic Restoration in the Thought of Karl Marx https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1611911/ Wed, 27 Jun 2018 21:40:34 -0400 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]

]]> 0 8a6f565ae274a80040e10a0733592d90 Peter Critchley's profile was updated https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1611910/ Wed, 27 Jun 2018 21:26:45 -0400 0