Thomas Osborne
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 176591 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Thomas Osborne |
| NOMBRES | Thomas |
| APELLIDO | Osborne |
| FIRMA | OSBORNE T |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Bristol |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3225-203X |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 67 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 1236 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 66 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1992 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 14 |
Populism, Counter-Liberalism and Charisma
This paper attempts to deploy - and adapt - the classical concept of charisma in the context of contemporary populism. The current wave of populisms of various kinds in Western representative democracies throws up challenges for political sociology in understanding how leaders seek to legitimize themselves; for instance through eccentric, often loud-mouthed, highly-opinionated behaviour, or what has been called ‘bad manners’. In deploying and ext…
Bereaved Carers Need Support at Home in the Last 90 Days of Life
This study investigates bereaved carers’ experiences with end-of-life care and the factors associated with increased emergency department presentation, hospital admission and rates of hospital death in the last 90 days of life. Bereaved carers completed a modified Views of Informal Carers – Evaluation of Services – Short Form, and their responses were linked to the medical records of the decedents. The survey was sent to 1,546 people, and 246 sur…
Questioning Humanity
This visionary book questions what it means to be human today and in the future. Drawing on the natural, human and life sciences, Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose encourage us to reconsider the human condition and the ways in which humans are affected by their animality, technology and the prospect of their annihilation.
Against Posthumanism
Are we humans destined to become 'posthuman'? In this paper, we question the claims of posthumanism, accepting some of its broader insights whilst proposing a more empirically and ethically appropriate 'vitalist' response. We argue that despite recent changes in styles of thought that question the uniqueness of 'the human', and despite novel technological developments for augmenting human bodies, we remain - fundamentally - persons. Humans, as pe…
Improving Palliative and End of Life Care on the Central Coast, Australia
In 2019, New South Wales Regional Health Partners commissioned the Central Coast Local Health District to undertake clinician-driven research that would lead to the implementation of new service models designed to improve palliative and end-of-life care to the Central Coast community. During 2020, a series of five stakeholder workshops with clinicians, healthcare managers, consumers and other local stakeholders involved in palliative and end of l…
Moderation as Government
The principle of moderation can be regarded as an ethical principle of virtue or as a principle of government. On the basis of the former, moderation has a personal, ethical sense-not to go towards extremes. The latter model is more generalized and impersonal: moderation as the limitation of power by power. Both conceptions actually meet, though with the latter model more salient, in the work of Montesquieu. This article outlines Montesquieu's vi…
Power degree zero
This paper considers the applicability and history of the concept of despotism as a critical model of political power. In spite of its 'Orientalist' pedigree, critical perusal of the work of Montesquieu (and, secondarily, Tocqueville) reveals that the concept has also functioned as a critical ‘pure type’ that is feasibly applicable not just to all societies but perhaps especially to the West. As such, despotism has arguably been more of a satiric…
Tragedy, Modernity and Political Life
What are the links between tragedy, politics and modernity? Diverse currents in social and critical theory have tackled this question; some arguing that modernity has itself a tragic structure insofar as its promises are undermined by their own realisation, others that the diversity of worldviews (the 'warring Gods' referred to by Max Weber) has tragic-because un-reconcilable-form. After briefly reviewing some of these issues, the paper looks mor…
On the Ethics of Truthfulness
Professor Thomas Osborne (SPAIS, University of Bristol, author of Aspects of Enlightenment: Social Theory and The Ethics of Truth (1998) and The Structure of Modern Cultural Theory (2008) visited Prague in mid-2018 and presented a paper On Montesquieu, Markets and the Liberalism of Fear. The interview was conducted online by Dr. Filip Vostal (CSTSS, Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences) in autumn 2020
Civil Society, Populism and Liberalism
This paper considers the threats that various kinds of populism might be said to pose to the ideal of a civil society that mediates between ‘private’ and family life and the state. Although it is difficult to generalise about populisms, just about all—whether on left or right—share a hostility to ‘intermediate’ powers. Of course civil society is exactly what could be called a forum for intermediate powers. In contrast, populists often tend to emp…
Machiavelli and the liberalism of fear
This article revisits the long-standing question of the relations between ethics and politics in Machiavelli's work, assessing its relevance to the 'liberalism of fear' in particular in the work of Judith Shklar, Bernard Williams and also John Dunn. The article considers ways in which Machiavelli has been a 'negative' resource for liberalism - for instance, as a presumed proponent of tyranny; but also ways in which even for the liberalism of fear…
Populism
This paper takes a critical, synoptic view of the current upsurge of populism. Populism, it is argued, has long been a feature of liberal democracies in so far as claims are made for democracy to be as directly expressive as possible of the will of its subjects. Yet populisms are hybrid in form and parasitic on existing political arrangements. What unites them is more to do with what they oppose than what they espouse. Above all, it is the norms …
Benjamin Constant's question
Wilfried Nippel’s study of the critical reception of classical political arrangements – above all of ancient Athenian democracy – in early and then modern European political culture demonstrates tw
Between cynicism and idiocy
This article is intended as a deflationary contribution to the well-known debate on politics and dirty hands. Drawing on the work of Bernard Williams, the paper argues that representative and democratic kinds of politics typically impose particular kinds of ethical demands and challenges on those agents who pursue them. Rather than over-dramatising this situation, however, this political predicament might be regarded as being in some continuity w…
Desperate equilibrium
This paper is about the role of guilt in relation to practical reason. It analyses guilt not as a passive emotion but as a particular kind of strategy at the level of subjective rationality. The concept of guilt occupies a complex and contested semantic space with other concepts, most notably shame. There have been many attempts – philosophical, psychological, sociological – to define these concepts in relation to each other. This paper suggests …
Foucault and Political Reason
The structure of modern cultural theory
Concentrating on four of the most influential thinkers in cultural theory - Adorno, Bourdieu, Foucault and Jameson, this book views cultural theory as ethical, even educational work as opposed to political or 'scientific', providing an interesting companion for students of cultural theory.
Structure of Modern Cultural Theory
Foucault And Political Reason
Liberal government and techniques of the self, Graham Burchell governing advanced liberal democracies, Nikolas Rose liberalism, socialism and democracy - variations on a governmental theme, Barry Hindess the promise of liberalism and the performance of freedom, Vikki Bell security and vitality - drains, liberalism and power in the 19th century, Thomas Osborne lines of communication and spaces of rule, Andrew Barry assembling the school, Ian Hunte…
Authority, convention and political community
These remarks explore a few of the consequences of the conventional nature of authority relations especially with regard to the field of politics, and the field of law and justice. The argument is that although authority is conventional through and through, this fact does not necessarily have the dramatic, relativist consequences sometimes ascribed to it. More of a problem is that of finding stable and agreed rules of recognition for particular f…
Practical Reasoning
Aquinas argued that practical reason is distinct but not entirely insulated from speculative reason. Practical reason is distinct from speculative reason because it is ordered to some work or end. The difference between the practical and speculative intellects is that the speculative is concerned only with the truth, whereas the practical apprehends the truth for the sake of some further end. The rectitude of the speculative intellect consists so…
Practical Reasoning
Foucault contra Habermas
Foucault and Political Reason
Power, ethics, truth
Foucault and Political Reason
Governing Cities
This paper represents a series of speculations concerning the imagination of the city as a space of government, authority, and ‘the conduct of conduct’ . The authors argue that it is possible to understand the myriad ways in which various authorities have sought to govern the city through an interrogation of the series of means through which the city has been ‘diagrammed’ as a space of power, regulation, ethics, and citizenship. These speculation…
Do the social sciences create phenomena
This paper is an investigation into the philosophy and the history of the social sciences. Some philosophers of the social sciences have suggested that a key feature of the natural sciences is their capacity to create phenomena, and that the social sciences do not meet this criterion. We suggest, to the contrary, that the social sciences can and do create phenomena, in the sense of new ways of describing and acting that have been used to produce …
History of the human sciences
This paper seeks to do three things. First, to consider the field of medicine as an arena of government. How has medicine been problematized as such an arena? What does the history of medical organization in Britain look like when posed within the context of government? Second, to consider the impact of specifically Liberal political rationalities of government of medicine. What does it mean to organize medicine in a ‘liberal’ way? What do we mea…
On mediators
This paper aims to provide some broad outlines of a model of intellectual practice that is arguably gaining increasing salience today: the model of the intellectual as mediator. The paper begins by drawing briefly upon some empirical data from a recent study in order to suggest that, although institutions such as universities and think tanks do seem to be embracing practices of intellectual production that are at some remove from 'traditional' mo…
Spatial Phenomenotechnics
There are many ways in which humans articulate themselves through their 'spatiality'. One neglected aspect of a historical anthropology of spatial relations and modes of existence concerns the role of the human and social sciences. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's multifaceted distinction between 'smooth' space and 'striated' space, we propose some ways to analyse the logics of spatialisation at work in the social sciences. We take …
The ordinariness of the archive
This article argues that the notion of the archive is of some value for those interested in the history of the human sciences. Above all, the archive is a means of generating ethical and epistemological credibility. The article goes on to suggest that there are three aspects to modern archival reason: a principle of publicity whereby archival information is made available to some or other kind of public; a principle of singularity according to wh…
Against 'creativity
The aspiration to be creative seems today to be more or less compulsory in an increasing number of areas of life. In psychological vocabularies, in economic life, in education and beyond, the values of creativity have taken on the force of a moral agenda. Yet creativity is a value which, though we may believe we choose it ourselves, may in fact make us complicit with what today might be seen as the most conservative of norms: compulsory individua…
Bureaucracy as a Vocation
This paper focuses upon ethical conduct and liberal mentalities of government in the context of the historical sociology of administrative expertise in nineteenth century Britain. After a brief consideration of theories of moral regulation, the paper pursues, by way of a discussion of the government of India and of the famous Northcote-Trevelyan Report on the Civil Service, the issue of the establishment of an appropriate bureaucratic persona in …
Liberalism, neo-liberalism and governmentality
Liberalism, neo-liberalism and governmentality: introduction." Economy and Society, 22(3), pp. 265–266
Populism
This paper takes a critical, synoptic view of the current upsurge of populism. Populism, it is argued, has long been a feature of liberal democracies in so far as claims are made for democracy to be as directly expressive as possible of the will of its subjects. Yet populisms are hybrid in form and parasitic on existing political arrangements. What unites them is more to do with what they oppose than what they espouse. Above all, it is the norms …
Populating Sociology
Research programmes in the social sciences and elsewhere can be seen as 'set-ups' which combine inscription devices and thought styles. The history of inscription devices without consideration of changing and often discontinuous thought styles effectively takes the historical dimension out of the history of thought. Perhaps thought styles are actually more important than the techniques of inscription that arise from them. The social sciences have…
In the name of society, or three theses on the history of social thought
Who is speaking in the history of social thought? The question of the authentic voice of social thought is typically posed in terms that tend to be either ambitiously theoretical or carefully methodological. Thus histories of social thought frequently offer either a résumé of general ideas about society (say from Montesquieu to Parsons) or a survey which gets bogged down in a rather tedious, nit-picking debate about empirical methodology. This pa…
What is a Problem
By way of a selective comparison of the work of Georges Canguilhem and Henri Bergson on their respective conceptions of ‘problematology’, this article argues that the centrality of the notion of the ‘problem’ in each can be found in their differing conceptions of the philosophy of life and the living being. Canguilhem’s model, however, ultimately moves beyond or away from (legislative) philosophy and epistemology towards the question of ethics in…
Medicine and epistemology
Against Posthumanism
Are we humans destined to become 'posthuman'? In this paper, we question the claims of posthumanism, accepting some of its broader insights whilst proposing a more empirically and ethically appropriate 'vitalist' response. We argue that despite recent changes in styles of thought that question the uniqueness of 'the human', and despite novel technological developments for augmenting human bodies, we remain - fundamentally - persons. Humans, as pe…
Power and persons
This paper focuses on the relation of systems of ethics to the fabrication of medical power. After a brief consideration of the role of ethical cultivation in clinical medicine, the main body of the paper presents a case-study of the influential 'person-centred' medical rationality developed at the Royal College of General Practitioners in the 1960s and 1970s, and concludes-partially by way of a brief discussion of the work of David Armstrong - w…
Civil Society, Populism and Liberalism
This paper considers the threats that various kinds of populism might be said to pose to the ideal of a civil society that mediates between ‘private’ and family life and the state. Although it is difficult to generalise about populisms, just about all—whether on left or right—share a hostility to ‘intermediate’ powers. Of course civil society is exactly what could be called a forum for intermediate powers. In contrast, populists often tend to emp…
Aspects of Enlightenment
Aspects of Enlightenment is an attempt to reconfigure the terrain of contemporary social theory. Critical of sociologistic approaches in that discipline and of vague concepts such as modernity and postmodernity, the book argues that the proper subject matter of social theory is enlightenment itself. Dismissing for the most part the conflicts in social and critical theory between realist and relativist approaches, the book argues for the merits of…
Medicine and ideology
This paper is an excursion on some of the views that Canguilhem expressed about ideology. The paper argues that there are senses in which modern medical rationality is driven by impulses that might – so long as we modify some of our traditional preconceptions about the concept – be described as ideological. Not least of the merits of Canguilhem's thought in this area was that he made the attempt to create an opening for a rethinking of the concep…
Utopia, Counter-Utopia
This article addresses the question of utopia through some reflections on the work of the Russian writer Andrei Platonov (1899-1951). Platonov's work represents an inspirational series of investigations into the circumstances of utopia: not so much utopia as fantasy, nor utopia as actualized in failure, nor even dystopia, but what is here termed `actually existing utopia'. As such his work captures aspects of utopianism that may have been largely…
Contemporary ‘vehicularity’ and ‘romanticism’
This essay considers the changing nature of ideas work and the role of intellectuals in contemporary informational capitalism, or, to use that ubiquitous phrase, ‘knowledge society’. It is worth re
Mobilizing Psychoanalysis
This paper seeks to gain a sociological purchase on contemporary forms of psychoanalytically-derived expertise. Through a case study of Michael Balint's influential work with general medical practitioners in post-war Britain, it is argued that psychoanalytic forms of intervention actually bear some striking resemblances to various aspects of the more conventionally `scientific' disciplines. Finally, the paper considers the status of psychoanalysi…
Universities in ‘the condition of publicity’
This article analyses how one institution, the London School of Economics under Anthony Giddens’s directorship, sought to occupy the ‘condition of publicity’ that is increasingly a prerequisite for university success in ‘knowledge‐society’ contexts. In particular, we illustrate how the LSE has sought to develop a brand and practice that is policy‐relevant, close to society, media‐savvy and think‐tank‐like, whilst at the same time remaining impecc…
Fascinated dispossession
The topic of this paper turns upon the relevance of suicide studies for moral and ethical questions of agency and autonomy. The paper - for sociological reasons - focuses upon literary and artistic suicides, arguing that these afford some insight into the notion of the aesthetic problematic of suicide more generally, in other words those suicides that are held to be something like pure acts of autonomous will. Arguing against any too one-dimensio…
Medicine and epistemology
Short Notices
Short Notices Get access Mike Featherstone, Mike Hepworth and Bryan S. Turner (eds.) The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory, London: Sage Publications, 1991. Pp. 408. N.p. ISBN 0-98039-8142-X. T.S.D. OSBORNE T.S.D. OSBORNE Brunel University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social History of Medicine, Volume 6, Issue 2, August 1993, Page 307, https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/6.2.307 Published: 01 Aug…
Mobilizing Psychoanalysis
This paper seeks to gain a sociological purchase on contemporary forms of psychoanalytically-derived expertise. Through a case study of Michael Balint's influential work with general medical practitioners in post-war Britain, it is argued that psychoanalytic forms of intervention actually bear some striking resemblances to various aspects of the more conventionally `scientific' disciplines. Finally, the paper considers the status of psychoanalysi…
James Mackenzie, General Practitioner
This paper focuses on the work of the influential general practitioner and heart specialist, James Mackenzie (1853-1925), and seeks to reconstruct - using some of the perspectives broadly associated with actor-network theory as well as Michel Foucault's work on clinical medicine - the epistemological rationality of his medical programme as a particular kind of network of knowledge. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of some of the implic…
History of the human sciences
This paper seeks to do three things. First, to consider the field of medicine as an arena of government. How has medicine been problematized as such an arena? What does the history of medical organization in Britain look like when posed within the context of government? Second, to consider the impact of specifically Liberal political rationalities of government of medicine. What does it mean to organize medicine in a ‘liberal’ way? What do we mea…
Liberalism, neo-liberalism and governmentality
Liberalism, neo-liberalism and governmentality: introduction." Economy and Society, 22(3), pp. 265–266
Epidemiology as an investigative paradigm
Bureaucracy as a Vocation
This paper focuses upon ethical conduct and liberal mentalities of government in the context of the historical sociology of administrative expertise in nineteenth century Britain. After a brief consideration of theories of moral regulation, the paper pursues, by way of a discussion of the government of India and of the famous Northcote-Trevelyan Report on the Civil Service, the issue of the establishment of an appropriate bureaucratic persona in …
Power and persons
This paper focuses on the relation of systems of ethics to the fabrication of medical power. After a brief consideration of the role of ethical cultivation in clinical medicine, the main body of the paper presents a case-study of the influential 'person-centred' medical rationality developed at the Royal College of General Practitioners in the 1960s and 1970s, and concludes-partially by way of a brief discussion of the work of David Armstrong - w…
Sociology, liberalism andthe historicity of conduct
The paper considers the bearing that Foucault's philosophical researches might have upon the discipline of historical sociology. It is argued that Foucault's contribution is indeed wide-ranging and fecund, but does not reduce to a clear set of methodological or substantive directives. His work can br used better in thede-dramatization of existing concerns rather than in the construction of new dogmas. These matters are considered in relation to t…
The citizen-patient in revolutionary and imperial Paris
The Limits of Ontology
In the name of society, or three theses on the history of social thought
Who is speaking in the history of social thought? The question of the authentic voice of social thought is typically posed in terms that tend to be either ambitiously theoretical or carefully methodological. Thus histories of social thought frequently offer either a résumé of general ideas about society (say from Montesquieu to Parsons) or a survey which gets bogged down in a rather tedious, nit-picking debate about empirical methodology. This pa…
Foucault and Political Reason
Tales of Hoffman
Aspects of Enlightenment
Aspects of Enlightenment is an attempt to reconfigure the terrain of contemporary social theory. Critical of sociologistic approaches in that discipline and of vague concepts such as modernity and postmodernity, the book argues that the proper subject matter of social theory is enlightenment itself. Dismissing for the most part the conflicts in social and critical theory between realist and relativist approaches, the book argues for the merits of…
Medicine and ideology
This paper is an excursion on some of the views that Canguilhem expressed about ideology. The paper argues that there are senses in which modern medical rationality is driven by impulses that might – so long as we modify some of our traditional preconceptions about the concept – be described as ideological. Not least of the merits of Canguilhem's thought in this area was that he made the attempt to create an opening for a rethinking of the concep…
Critical Spirituality
The ordinariness of the archive
This article argues that the notion of the archive is of some value for those interested in the history of the human sciences. Above all, the archive is a means of generating ethical and epistemological credibility. The article goes on to suggest that there are three aspects to modern archival reason: a principle of publicity whereby archival information is made available to some or other kind of public; a principle of singularity according to wh…
Governing Cities
This paper represents a series of speculations concerning the imagination of the city as a space of government, authority, and ‘the conduct of conduct’ . The authors argue that it is possible to understand the myriad ways in which various authorities have sought to govern the city through an interrogation of the series of means through which the city has been ‘diagrammed’ as a space of power, regulation, ethics, and citizenship. These speculation…
Do the social sciences create phenomena
This paper is an investigation into the philosophy and the history of the social sciences. Some philosophers of the social sciences have suggested that a key feature of the natural sciences is their capacity to create phenomena, and that the social sciences do not meet this criterion. We suggest, to the contrary, that the social sciences can and do create phenomena, in the sense of new ways of describing and acting that have been used to produce …
Pierre Bourdieu
Faith, Philosophy, and the Nominalist Background to Luther's Defense of the Real Presence
Recent scholarship has brought into question the traditional interpretation of Luther as being hostile towards philosophy. 1 Graham White claims that Luther holds a place in the history of logic as a member of the Nominalist tradition. 2 Bruce D. Marshall argues that Luther and Thomas Aquinas fundamentally agree on the relationship between faith and reason. 3 Both scholars recognize that Luther himself stressed the importance of logic and used la…
What is neo-Enlightenment? Human rights culture and juridical reason
(2003). What is neo-Enlightenment? Human rights culture and juridical reason. Journal of Human Rights: Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 523-530
Contemporary ‘vehicularity’ and ‘romanticism’
This essay considers the changing nature of ideas work and the role of intellectuals in contemporary informational capitalism, or, to use that ubiquitous phrase, ‘knowledge society’. It is worth re
Sociology (48 obras) · Philosophy (43 obras) · Epistemology (42 obras) · Political science (40 obras) · Philosophy (34 obras) · Law (33 obras) · Law (30 obras) · Politics (30 obras) · Foucault, Power, and Ethics (17 obras) · Social science (15 obras)