Hercules Bantas: 36 books

Computer communication technologies, such as the Internet, are now integral to many democratic public spheres throughout the world. The often-asked question is how they impact upon the democratic process. Using several real world examples and the deliberative democracy theories of Rawls, Habermas,...

Jurgen Habermas is one of the most influential thinkers of our time. This detailed, article length guide examines his theory of deliberative democracy and covers many of the central concepts such as communicative reason, communicative power, and the ideal speech community.

John Dryzek argues for a transnational deliberative democracy that moves beyond the nation state. This detailed, article length guide outlines Dryzek's radical concept of citizenship, his arguments about de-traditionalisation of societies through globalisation, and a transnational public sphere.

The Internet makes it difficult for people to tell exactly whom they are communicating with because online identity can often rely totally upon communicative interactions. Mark Poster argues that this uncertainty- the postmodern identity- can cause difficulties for some democratic public spheres. This guide examines Poster's arguments and then applies them to three democratic theories.

This essay length guide examines Habermas's theory of the Ideal Speech Community, which is a combination of speech act theory and Kantian moral theory. Topics covered include a brief examination of critical theory and its origins, different types of speech acts and the validity claims they make, the world creation criteria that validate speech acts, and the principle of universalisation.

This guide examines Plato's discussion of love in The Symposium. It covers all the speeches, culminating in Alcibiades's drunken homage to Socrates, and explores the moral dimensions Plato attaches to love, as well as key concepts such as Common and Heavenly love.

The rise of interactive online games has challenged traditional notions of storytelling, where author tells and audience listens. This ebook uses Ricoeur's concept of a 'hermeneutic arc' to demonstrate how narratives in online games such as World of Warcraft differ from those presented through traditional...

All writers want to create stories in which readers can lose themselves, and the flow of time in a story is an important element of reader immersion. This article length book explains how time works in fiction, its relationship to time in the real world, and looks at concepts such as order and duration,...

This guide covers Book 2 of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics in which he discusses the virtues. It explains the difference between moral and intellectual virtues, what Aristotle means by 'happiness', what he considers vices, and his 'doctrine of the mean'.

The rapid proliferation of technologies like the Internet has raised the question of whether they have had a positive or a negative effect upon democratic citizenship. This guide uses Steven Lukes' three-dimensional analysis of power to examine arguments of technological determinism that cast a negative light on the technology, and Castells' positive analysis of mass self-communication.

This guide examines Kant's theory of knowledge, specifically his arguments for separating human thought into concepts and intuitions. Based on the Critique of Pure Reason, this guide covers his critique of empirical and rational thought, and explains key concepts such as a priori judgements, analytic and synthetic judgements, and the difference between pure and empirical concepts.

This guide explains Rawls's concept of 'justice as fairness'. It covers such topics as the two principles of justice, the principle of fairness, the original position and the veil of ignorance, and the difference principle, as well as examining some of the criticisms levelled at Rawls's arguments.

John Rawls is a giant of modern political and democratic thought, but much of his important work is buried deep in weighty tomes, or hidden behind academic jargon that few people have the strength of will to decipher. This book is a concise and clearly written article length guide that covers important...

Many of Karl Marx's social and economic theories have the concept of class struggle at their core. This essay length guide examines Marx's concept of class struggle, and explains its role in the revolutionary process. Topics covered include a definition of class, the dialectic development of society, and the formation of the capitalist state, and the classless society.