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Taking Plato’s allegory of the cave as its starting-point, this book demonstrates how later European thinkers can be read as a reaction and a response to key aspects of this allegory and its discourse of enchainment and liberation. Focusing on key thinkers in the tradition of European (and specifically German) political thought including Kant, Marx, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Frankfurt School, it relates them back to such foundational figures as Rousseau, Aristotle, and in particular Plato. All these thinkers are considered in relation to key passages from their major works, accompanied by an explanatory commentary which seeks to follow a conceptual and imagistic thread through the labyrinth of these complex, yet fascinating, texts. This book will appeal in particular to scholars of political theory, philosophy, and German language and culture.
In the centre of Glasgow it is a short distance from Central Station to
the River Clyde and the several bridges that span it for the use of traffic,
for trains, or for pedestrians. Glasgow Bridge (or Jamaica Street Bridge)
was built between 1895 and 1899, replacing an earlier seven-arched
bridge that had been built in classical style by Thomas Telford in 1833
(itself a replacement for a yet earlier bridge built in 1772) but had subse-
quently proved to be too narrow and too shallow. From Glasgow Bridge
one can see the remains of another bridge, since disappeared: the first
Caledonian Railway Bridge, built between 1876 and 1878. This wrought
iron bridge carried four tracks, supported on giant cast iron cylinders
sunk to the bedrock—all filled with concrete, and extended above the
riverbed with great pillars of Dalbeattie granite. |