Nishihira Tadashi, one of Japan's leading philosophers, introduces the deeply experiential philosophy of no-mind (mushin). In everyday Japanese, mushin is when one loses oneself in the reality of the present and becomes one with it, resulting in one's best performance. However, behind this everyday use is a concept that touches the core of Japanese spirituality.

This book explores no-mind in its dynamic complexity. It is both the letting go of the calculations of mind and at the same time the arising of a vibrant consciousness in unity with reality. This gives rise to various tensions: Is it about negating or affirming self? Is stillness or activity? How does it relate with social ethics, or religious transcendence? And what is stopping no-mind from descending into mere mindlessness?

These tensional facets are explored through philosophy and history of thought in Japan, from pre-Buddhist Japanese thought, to Zen Buddhism in D.T. Suzuki and Toshihiko Izutsu, to swordsmanship and Noh theater. These historical approaches are brought to the here-and-now, dialoguing with psychology, ethics, and the experiences of everyday life, and ending with two preliminary practical explorations-What does it mean to care for another and to educate from the point of view of no-mind?

This illuminating book explains how and why Russia's relations with the west have deteriorated to the point of initiating a new era of 'great power competition'. An updated version of the bestselling 2016 edition, it explores the decline in relations since the early 2000s, taking in the war in Syria and the 2022 escalation in Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Beyond geopolitical considerations, the book delves into the nature of power in Russia itself, providing an in-depth examination of the networks of influence that define the country's political landscape. In doing so it moves beyond the simplistic, Putin-centric narratives often found in western accounts, offering readers a fresh perspective on Russian politics.

Understanding Russia is crucial for western leaders seeking to establish stable and constructive relations in the future. The new politics of Russia serves as a key resource, challenging conventional wisdom and unpicking the complex dynamics at play in the relationship between Russia and the west.

This book explores the long-term origins of populist Euroscepticism.

Taking a historical perspective to move beyond explaining present-day expressions of opposition to the European Union in isolation, this book reveals the historical sedimentation of the several ways and forms taken over decades by opposition towards European integration. As such, this approach - with contributions from across disciplines - explains not just the past of Euroscepticism, but also its current nature and future prospects.

This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of European History, European Politics and Studies and more broadly to Political Science, International Relations, the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Handbook of Terrorist and Insurgent Groups: A Global Survey of Threats, Tactics, and Characteristics examines the most current and significant terrorist and insurgent groups around the world. The purpose is to create a descriptive mosaic of what is a pointedly global security challenge.

The volume brings together conceptual approaches to terrorism, insurgency, and cyberterrorism with substantive and empirical analyses of individual groups, organisations, and networks. By doing so, not only does the coverage highlight the past, present, and future orientations of the most prominent groups, but it also examines and illustrates their key characteristics and how they operate, including key leaders and ideologues. Highlighting specific, individual groups, the chapters collectively present a robust and comprehensive outlook on the current geography of terrorism and insurgency groups operating in the world today.

This comprehensive volume brings the collective expertise and knowledge of more than 50 academics, intelligence and security officials, and professionals together, all of whom are considered subject experts in their respective areas of research and practice. The volume is based on both desk-based and fieldwork conducted by experts in these areas, incorporating analyses of secondary literature but also the use of primary data including first-hand interviews on the various groups' regions of operation, their tactics, and how their ideologies motivate their actions.

This volume provides a holistic overview of the long peace process in Nepal following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2006.

The date of 21 November 2021 marked the 15th anniversary of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) which concluded the decade-long civil war that had ravaged Nepal. Despite avoiding a resurgence of statewide conflict, Nepal's post-conflict era has been far from perfect. This era has witnessed ethnic violence, rampant corruption, the politicisation of key public institutions and a failure to fully implement the provisions of the CPA. The resulting lack of socio-economic progress has led to large-scale dissatisfaction within the country and even given rise to elements within Nepal who reject the framework of the CPA and the 2015 constitution.

With a focus on the years following the 2015 constitution, this book offers an analysis of post-conflict Nepal and explores issues relating to ex-combatants, transitional justice, women, socio-economic affairs, and federal governance. The contributors are all scholar-practitioners, some of whom had direct involvement in the peace process, and are therefore able to offer unique insights into the processes and challenges of Nepal's long journey to addressing past grievances and promoting future peace in the country.

This book will be of interest to students of peace studies, Asian politics, security studies and International Relations.

Embodied cognition is one of the foremost areas of study and research in philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, and cognitive science. The Routledge Handbook of Embodied Cognition is an outstanding guide and reference source to the key topics and debates in this exciting subject and essential reading for any student and scholar of philosophy of mind and cognitive science.

Extensively revised and enlarged for this second edition, the Handbook comprises 42 chapters by an international team of expert contributors and is divided into ten parts:

• Historical Underpinnings
• Perspectives on Embodied Cognition
• Embodied Cognition and Predictive Processing
• Perception
• Language
• Reasoning and Education
• Virtual Reality
• Social and Moral Cognition and Emotion
• Action and Memory
• Reflections on Embodied Cognition

The early chapters of the Handbook cover empirical and philosophical foundations of embodied cognition, focusing on Gibsonian and phenomenological approaches. Subsequent chapters cover additional, important themes common to work in embodied cognition, including embedded, extended, and enactive cognition as well as chapters on empirical research in perception, language, reasoning, social and moral cognition, emotion, consciousness, memory, and learning and development.

For the second edition many existing chapters have been revised and seven new chapters added on: AI and robotics, predictive processing, second-language learning, animal cognition, sport psychology, sense of self, and critiques of embodied cognition, bringing the Handbook fully up to date with current research and debate.

If we want to be true atheists, do we have to begin with a religious edifice and undermine it from within?

Slavoj Zizek has long been a commentator on, and critic of, Christian theology. His preoccupation with Badiou's concept of 'the event' alongside the Pauline thought of the New Testament has led to a decidedly theological turn in his thinking. Drawing on traditions and subjects as broad as Buddhist thought, dialectical materialism, political subjectivity, quantum physics, AI and chatbots, this book articulates Zizek's idea of a religious life for the first time.

Christian Atheism is a unique insight into Zizek's theological project and the first book-length exploration of his religious thinking. In his own words, "to become a true dialectical materialist, one should go through the Christian experience." Crucial to his whole conception of 'experience' is not some kind of spiritual revelation but rather the logic of materialistic thought. This affirmation of Christian theology whilst simultaneously deconstructing it is a familiar Zizekian move, but one that holds deep-seated political, philosophical and, in the end, personal import for him.

Here is Zizek's most extensive treatment of theology and religion to date.

Woke social justice warriors lurk around every corner, ready to cancel free speakers and police common sense. Muslims love nothing better than abolishing Christmas. FemiNazi's throw false accusations at the pillars of our society. Decried by right-wing pundits and politicians alike, the idea of 'political correctness' is often painted as a form of left-wing totalitarianism but in this pithy, clear-headed account, Tony McKenna explains how the concept itself is in fact one of the great conspiracy theories of our times.

From the fear of 'cancel culture' to the demonization of grassroots social movements, this is a searing dissection of how the exclusionary agendas for so long played out in our media and party politics have been successfully dressed up as campaigns for freedom and common sense. Tackling some of the favourite bogeymen of tabloids and scaremongers, McKenna dissects the language, rhetoric and ideology that turns refugees into insects, social justice into 'wokery', and makes predators out of anyone from dark skinned men to trans women. He provides a full analysis of historically important social liberation movements like BLM and #MeToo, giving the historical and cultural contexts for their emergence. As the tried-and-tested politics of stigmatization and exclusion shift from old targets to new, this an explanation of one of society's most insidious narratives, and how it allows dominant orthodox culture to cast the subjects of its oppressive tactics as the dreaded 'global liberal elite'.

Activism in Hard Times in Central and Eastern Europe elevates the voices of civic activists from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and analyzes a wealth of information to generate new insights into how activism in the region manages to be vibrant, diverse, and consequential.

Because of these countries' unique historical trajectory, CEE activists have, in important ways, leap-frogged their counterparts in the West. Giving special attention to activists in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine, the book focuses on responses to the recent "hard times" - the shrinking of public space for civil society, democratic backsliding, polarization, and Russia's war in Ukraine. The contributors contend that CEE activists provide important lessons for others confronting similar challenges around the world.

The book is well-suited for a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses, such as comparative politics, human rights, global governance, social movements, Central and East European politics, and contemporary world politics. This timely and readable book, co-created by academics and activists and written in a conversational tone, will also be of interest to the interested public and practitioners. The book encourages readers to think differently about the role of civil society and activism, as well as about how new tools and polarizing dynamics affect activism in this region.

Chapters 2, 3, 6 and 8 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

At a time when far, radical, and extreme-right politics are becoming increasingly mainstream globally - sometimes with deadly consequences - research in these fields is essential to understand the most effective ways to combat these dangerous ideologies. Yet engaging with texts and movements that do physical and verbal violence raises a number of urgent ethical issues. Until recently, this has remained understudied, as scholarship on the far right rarely delves explicitly and critically into the ethics of research.

This book seeks to remedy this significant gap in an otherwise extensive and growing literature. Originating from a workshop series in 2020, in which an international group of academics at various career stages shared the ethical challenges and best practices they had developed in their research, this edited collection draws together insights from these ongoing conversations, offering urgent critical reflections on key ethical issues.

In Democratic Failures and the Ethics of Democracy, political philosopher Adam Lovett argues that when it comes to democratic ideals, the United States is a failed democracy. Specifically, he contends that American democracy has failed to advance equality and self-rule for its citizens-qualities he identifies as essential components of democracy's intrinsic value. Drawing on rich empirical research, Lovett applies original philosophical analysis to reveal real-world democratic failures and evaluate their philosophical and ethical consequences.
His research locates democratic failures at both the level of political elites and at the level of the masses. At the elite level, elected officials shape policy to prioritize the interests of their supporters, where wealthy individuals and corporations are the most influential. At the mass level, ordinary citizens are motivated to vote not to introduce specific policies but by party identification. By mapping how these failures erode equality and self-rule, he demonstrates that they in fact undermine the ethics of democracy itself. After all, Lovett argues, when a state fails to represent ordinary citizens, those ordinary citizens are not morally obligated to follow the laws of the state.
Because the state fails to achieve democratic values in any meaningful way, its claim to political authority and legitimacy is diminished. However, Lovett does not conclude that American democracy is doomed-he instead proposes solutions from voting only on referendums to delegating aspects of public policy to unelected experts without partisan obligation. These reforms are vital for compelling the state to act on behalf of all citizens, not just the partisan or the powerful. Of interest to political scientists and political philosophers alike, Democratic Failures and the Ethics of Democracy sheds light on an increasingly troubled democratic ethos and proposes solutions for how ordinary citizens can work to save it.

Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) was a Spanish philosopher and essayist best known for The Revolt of the Masses, first translated into English in 1932. In it, Ortega critiques a populist deformation of democracy by the rise of a "mass mentality" characterized by selfishness, a lack of curiosity, and a general indifference to the opinions and attitudes of others. However, as Brendon Westler makes clear, we need to look beyond Ortega's arguments about populism and democracy in his most famous work to recover the philosopher's expansive political outlook and to identify his valuable contributions to the history and advancement of liberalism.
Westler's book reconstructs Ortega's political theory, underscoring its distinctive historical origins as well as the ways in which it might be instructive to us today. Through an exploration of works less familiar to an English-speaking audience, such as Concord and Liberty, "Vieja y nueva politica," "De Europa meditatio Quaedam," and "Democracia morbosa," combined with a sensitivity to larger social and political ideas circulating within Spain, The Revolting Masses traces the contours of Ortega's approach to politics. Westler argues that reading texts written over the course of the philosopher's entire career, in combination with The Revolt of the Masses, offers a more complete picture of Ortega's political thought-one that advocates for a liberal ethos as an answer to populism and promotes both individual freedom and the preservation of community bonds.
As The Revolting Masses shows, Ortega was, above all, a philosopher who reflected on what it would take for people of differing beliefs to live together. His unique conception of liberalism, grounded in the Spanish tradition, not only emphasizes pluralism and diversity of thought and institutions but also serves as a potential antidote to the populism of our present moment.

Atmospheric Violence grapples with the afterlife of environmental disasters and armed conflict and examines how people attempt to flourish despite and alongside continuing violence. Departing from conventional approaches to the study of disaster and conflict that have dominated academic studies of Kashmir, Omer Aijazi's ethnography of life in the borderlands instead explores possibilities for imagining life otherwise, in an environment where violence is everywhere, or atmospheric.
Drawing on extensive fieldwork in the portion of Kashmir under Pakistan's control and its surrounding mountainscapes, the book takes us to two remote mountainous valleys that have been shaped by recurring environmental disasters, as well as by the landscape of no-go zones, army barracks, and security checkpoints of the contested India/Pakistan border. Through a series of interconnected scenes from the lives of five protagonists, all of whom are precariously situated within their families or societies and rarely enjoy the expected protections of state or community, Aijazi reveals the movements, flows, and intimacies sustained by a landscape that enables alternative modes of life. Blurring the distinctions between story, theory, and activism, he explores what emerges when theory becomes a project of seeing and feeling from the non-normative standpoint of those who, like the book's protagonists, do not subscribe to the rules by which most others have come to know the world.
Bringing the critical study of disaster into conversation with a radical humanist anthropology and the capaciousness of affect theory, held accountable to Black studies and Indigenous studies, Aijazi offers a decolonial approach to disaster studies centering not on trauma and rupture but rather on repair-the social labor through which communities living with disaster refuse the conditions of death imposed upon them and create viable lives for themselves, even amidst constant diminishment and world-annihilation.

Japan is a place where powerful earthquakes have occurred more frequently and have caused more harm in the modern era than they have in all but a handful of other locations on the planet. In the twentieth century alone, earthquake disasters in Japan took almost as many lives as they had in all of the country's recorded history up to that point. Predicting Disasters is the first English-language book to explore how scientists convinced policy makers and the public in postwar Japan that catastrophic earthquakes were coming, and the first to show why earthquake prediction has played such a central role in Japan's efforts to prepare for a dangerous future ever since.
Kerry Smith shows how, in the twentieth century, scientists struggled to make large-scale earthquake disasters legible to the public and to policy makers as significant threats to Japan's future and as phenomena that could be anticipated and prepared for. Smith also explains why understanding those struggles matters. Disasters, Smith contends, belong alongside more familiar topics of analysis in modern Japanese history-such as economic growth and its impacts, political crises and popular protest, and even the legacies of the war-for the work they do in helping us better understand how the past has influenced beliefs about Japan's possible futures, and how beliefs about the future shape the present.
Predicting Disasters makes relevant elements of Japan's past more accessible to readers interested in the histories of disaster and scientific communities, as well as to those who want to gain a better understanding of the risk and uncertainty surrounding natural phenomena.

Nishida Kitaro is widely considered as the first original philosopher in modern Japan. Addressing this claim, Richard Stone critically examines Nishida's relation to his contemporary philosophers in the Meiji era (1868-1912), highlighting the continuity, difference and relationships between them.

Stone reassesses the notion that Nishida's An Inquiry into the Good (1911) was substantially more philosophically worthwhile than any preceding attempts at philosophy in Japan, whilst demonstrating how his early ideas were heavily influenced by the work of thinkers such as Inoue Enryo, Onishi Hajime and Miyake Setsurei. He argues that original philosophy in Japan did not suddenly start with Nishida. Instead, it developed within a process of methodological refinement, wherein ideas starting from early Meiji philosophers were gradually given more rigorous treatment over the course of the era, eventually culminating in Nishida's early philosophy.

Providing an in-depth analysis of Nishida's work that brings it into dialogue with his predecessors, The Origins of Modern Japanese Philosophy offers both an engaging insight into the Meiji Period as the background of Nishida's philosophical formation and also a clear account of how several core themes in modern Japanese philosophy evolved over the course of an era.

This book looks at the regional policies of two 'middle powers' in the Indo-Pacific region, Taiwan and South Korea, and provides critical reflections on the ways both have sought to broaden their options for strategic manoeuvres with their southern neighbours.

The chapters in this edited volume carefully examine the 'New Southbound Policy' (NSP-T), introduced by Taiwan (2016-present), and the 'New Southern Policy' (NSP-K), by South Korea (2017-2022). Both policies are aimed at important neighbours, namely Southeast Asia and India, who are major recipients of Taiwanese and South Korean capital, technology, cultural influence, and educational aid, and seek to improve diplomatic and foreign relations of these two countries with the region.

Southward Bound: Examining the Regional Policies of Taiwan and South Korea will be of great value to students and scholars interested in Asian Studies, foreign policies of Asian countries, politics and international security. The chapters in this book were originally published in Asian Affairs.

Uyghur Identity and Culture brings together the work of scholars, activists, and native Uyghurs to explore the history and growing challenges that the Uyghur diaspora face across the globe in response to shifting government policies forbidding many forms of cultural expression in their homeland.

The collection examines how and why the Uyghur diaspora, dispersed from their homeland to communities across Australia, Central Asia, Europe, Japan, Tuerkiye, and North America, now has the responsibility to preserve their language and cultural traditions so that these can be shared with future generations. The book critically investigates the government censorship of Uyghur literatures and Western media coverage of the Uyghurs, while centralizing real reflections of those who grew up in the Uyghur homeland. It considers the geographical and psychological pressures that the Uyghur diaspora endure and highlights the resilience and creativity of their relentless battle against cultural erosion.

Uyghur Identity and Culture is a key contribution to diaspora literature and calls to attention the urgent need for global action on the ongoing human rights violations against the Uyghur people. It is essential reading for those interested in the history and struggles of the Uyghur diaspora as well as anyone studying sociology, race, migration, culture, and human rights studies.

Miller examines Britain and Japan's involvement in the Middle East peace process after the October War of 1973 and how it contributed to the resolution of the oil crisis of 1973-74.

Using important primary sources from Japan, Britain, and the United States-including recently declassified Japanese documents that had not previously been examined-this book contends that previous literature failed to address the important role of Britain and Japan and their political impact on the development in the historical events of 1973 and 1974. The two countries threw their support behind the United States, backing its policies regarding not only oil but also the Arab-Israeli conflict. This enabled the United States to take the lead in the peace process as well as in discussions to resolve the energy crisis, which eventually led to the establishment of the International Energy Agency (IEA). Accordingly, this book challenges the accepted view that neither Anglo-American nor US-Japanese relations were important factors in the development of the abovementioned processes.

An insightful and illuminating read for scholars of the diplomatic history of the 1970s, and especially the complex web of tensions spanning from the Arab-Israeli conflict and between Arab oil-producing countries and developed consumer countries.

The Art of the Eurasian Steppe is a contextual analysis which traces the stylistic transformation of artefacts depicting animals from various cultures of the Eurasian steppe, and investigates its possible influence on Central and Northern European art. A wide range of individual cultures are "visited" and their historic, cultural, and geographic specifics are explored. The survey in this book is based on a chronological structure, including an East-West geographic direction. This accommodates to position described artefacts of certain styles within time periods, cultures, and locations.

Most of the existing literature related to cultures of the Eurasian steppe is specialised on one particular culture or one archaeological excavation. The book is written as a hypothetical journey through time and space, structured in an east to west direction. It provides a wide-reaching overview by placing the discussed artefacts into a cultural, geographic, and chronologic frame, particularly the thousand years between 500 BC and 500 AD. Artistic expression and style are a central theme to explore possible relationships between civilisations of the Eurasian steppe and their influence on medieval Central and Northern European creation of artefacts.

Academics in the fields of art history, archaeology, history, and fine arts will find this book compelling/useful.

This magisterial volume draws on the expertise of leading scholars, practitioners and policy makers to chart the EU's participation in six key international organisations: the UN, the WTO, the ILO, the WHO, the ITU and the FAO.

Each is explored from a unique dual perspective: firstly from that of the EU, and secondly from that of the organisation itself. This collection offers a truly innovative approach to ensure a better understanding of the EU's role as a global diplomatic power.

What becomes of the sublime today, in a philosophy that discards the old oppositions between body and mind and embeds human reason in the creative evolution of life? In this book, Louis Schreel shows how Gilles Deleuze's life-long engagement with the Kantian sublime grappled with just this question. Its core argument centres on Deleuze's understanding of the sublime in terms of psychic individuation - a creative, self-organizing process that animates cognitive systems from within.

Exploring Deleuze's transcendental philosophy through central concepts of self-organization, psychic individuation, passibility and infinity, this book shows how a new notion of the sublime emerges in a timely and novel way. In this way, Deleuze and the Immanent Sublime opens up an innovative perspective on transcendental philosophy, shedding new light on Deleuze's transcendental empiricism both in relation to Kant and to contemporary cognitive science. Engagement with previously untranslated writings from thinkers including Jean Petitot, Gilbert Simondon, Henri Maldiney and Erwin Straus adds further breadth to the development of Deleuze's ideas on the sublime in this systematic study.