Ernest Gellner

Director of the Center for the Study of Nationalism Ernest Gellner

This thoughtful and penetrating book, addressed to political scientists, sociologists, historians, and anthropologists, interprets nationalism in terms of its social roots, which it locates in industrial social organization. Professor Gellner asserts here that a society's affluence and economic growth depend on innovation, occupational mobility, the effectiveness of the mass media, universal literacy, and an all-embracing educational system based on a shared, standard idiom. These factors, taken together, govern the relationship between culture and the state. Political units that do not conform to the principle, "one state, one culture" feel the strain in the form of nationalistic activity.

Nations and Nationalism

Elucidates and argues for the author's concept of human history from the past to the present

The Structure of Human History

Plough, Sword, and Book

The Psychoanalytic Movement explains how the language of psychoanalysis became the dominant way in which the middle classes of the industrialized West speak about their emotions. Explains how the language of psychoanalysis became the dominant way for the industrialized West to speak about emotion. Argues that although psychoanalysis offers an incisive picture of human nature, it provides untestable operational definitions and makes unsubstantiated claims concerning its therapeutic efficacy. Includes new foreword by Jose Brunner that expands on the central argument of the book and argues that Gellner and Freud might be seen as kindred spirits.

The Cunning of Unreason

The Psychoanalytic Movement

Ernest Gellner's final book, first published in 1998, is a synoptic interpretation of the thought of Wittgenstein and Malinowski.

Wittgenstein, Malinowski and the Habsburg Dilemma

Language and Solitude

Drawing upon a range of disciplines, including philosophy, anthropology, sociology, politics and history, this work argues that nationalism is an inescapable consequence of modernity.

Grazyna Kubica

Janusz Mucha

Roy F. Ellen

Roy Frank Ellen

The Polish Roots of an Anthropological Tradition

Malinowski Between Two Worlds

The essays in this volume gather together Gellner's thinking on the connection between philosophy and life and they approach the topic from a number of directions: philosophy of morals, history of ideas, a discussion of individuals including R. G. Collingwood, Noam Chomsky, Piaget and Eysenck and discussions on the setting of philosophy in the general culture of England and America.

The Devil in Modern Philosophy

An exploration of the relationship between culture and politics in the modern world through essays on such varied topics as the Ayatollah Khomeni, Czech dissidents, and Malinowski.

Culture, Identity, and Politics

Ernest Gellner explores here the links between anthropology and politics, and shows just how central these are. The recent postmodernist turn in anthropology has been linked to the expiation of colonial guilt. Traditional, functionalist anthropology is characteristically regarded as an accessory to the crime, and anyone critical of the relativistic claims of interpretative anthropology (as Ernest Gellner is) is likely to be charged (as he sometimes is) with being an ex post imperialist. Ernest Gellner argues that cultures are crucially important in human life as constraining systems of meaning. Cultural transition means that the required characteristics are transmitted from generation to generation, leading, he shows, to both greater diversity and to far more rapid change than is possible among species where transmission is primarily by genetic means. But the relative importance of semantic and physical compulsion needs to be explored rather than pre-judged. The weakness of idealism, which at present operates under the name of hermeneutics, is that it underplays the importance of coercion, and that it presents cultures as self-justifying and morally sovereign: this line of argument, the author demonstrates, is fundamentally flawed.

Revolutions in the Sacred Grove

Anthropology and Politics

These essays gather together Gellner's thinking on the connection between philosophy and life and they approach the topic from a number of directions including a discussion of individuals including Chomsky, Piaget and Eysenck.

Charles Antoine Micaud

From Tribe to Nation in North Africa

Arabs and Berbers

A collection of essays concerned with some key problems in the study of philosophy, politics and society.

Essays in Social Theory

Spectacles and Predicaments

Considers human diversity and change and rejects the usual solutions to problems of relativism. Presents a new mode of inquiry in its stead a mixture of philosophy, history, and anthropology that appears to be more meaningful.

Relativism and the Social Sciences

Saints of the Atlas

"The main aim of this thoughtful and thought-provoking book is to characterize and explain the difference between pre-scientific systems of belief within which science could, and did, emerge and develop. Using the armoury of both philosophy and anthropology, Ernest Gellner attacks his task with his customary sharp wit and polemical gusto."--Times Literary Supplement.

Legitimation of Belief

Why contemporary Islam is able to support austerely traditional and conservative regimes as well as revolutionary ones is the subject of this collection of essays. Professor Gellner's position is supported by a series of case studies and critical evaluations of rival interpretations.

Muslim Society

The aim of this book is the understanding of how psychoanalysis came to be so generally accepted by the public at large. The author, a sociologist, focuses on reconstructing the system of ideas upon which the theory and practice of psychoanalysis rests.

Gellner's political philosophy in these volumes combines the down-to-earth realism of political sociology with a rational treatment of the normative issues of traditional political thought. In these essays Gellner strives to understand the religions of nationalism, communism and democracy, returning again and again to the basic values of the liberal: social tolerance, rational criticism, human decency and justice.

Ernest Gellner

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