Download or read book Pluralism Pragmatism and American Democracy written by H.G. Callaway and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2017-06-23 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the author’s many and varied contributions to the revival and re-evaluation of American pragmatism. The assembled critical perspective on contemporary pragmatism in philosophy emphasizes the American tradition of cultural pluralism and the requirements of American democracy. Based partly on a survey of the literature on interest-group pluralism and critical perspectives on the politics of globalization, the monograph argues for reasoned caution concerning the practical effects of the revival. Undercurrents of “vulgar pragmatism” including both moral and epistemic relativism threaten the intellectual and moral integrity of American thought – and have contributed to the present sense of political crisis. The text chiefly contributes to the evaluation of the contemporary influence of the philosophy of John Dewey (1859–1952) and his late development of the classical pragmatist tradition. In comparison to Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), William James (1842–1910), and earlier currents of American thought, Dewey’s philosophy, dominated by its overall emphasis on unification, is weaker in its support for the pluralism of cultural and religious contributions which have lent moral self-restraint to American policy and politics, both foreign and domestic. With all due homage to Dewey’s conception of philosophy, centered on human problems and the need for our ameliorative efforts, the argument is that in the contemporary revival, Dewey’s thought has been too often captured by “post-modernist” bandwagons of self-promotion and institutional control. This work defends democratic individualism against more collectivist and corporatist tendencies in contemporary neo-pragmatism, and it draws upon up-to-date political analysis in defense of America’s long republican tradition. Pragmatism will not and cannot be removed from, or ignored, in American intellectual and moral history; and its influence on disciplines from law to politics, sociology and literary criticism has been immense. However, pragmatism has often been weak in commitment to cultural pluralism and in its accounts of truth.
Download or read book Pragmatic Fashions written by John J. Stuhr and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John J. Stuhr, a leading voice in American philosophy, sets forth a view of pragmatism as a personal work of art or fashion. Stuhr develops his pragmatism by putting pluralism forward, setting aside absolutism and nihilism, opening new perspectives on democracy, and focusing on love. He creates a space for a philosophy that is liable to failure and that is experimental, pluralist, relativist, radically empirical, radically democratic, and absurd. Full color illustrations enhance this lyrical commitment to a new version of pragmatism.
Download or read book Pragmatism Pluralism and the Nature of Philosophy written by Scott F. Aikin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-30 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the past fifteen years, Aikin and Talisse have been working collaboratively on a new vision of American pragmatism, one which sees pragmatism as a living and developing philosophical idiom that originates in the work of the "classical" pragmatisms of Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, uninterruptedly develops through the later 20th Century pragmatists (C. I. Lewis, Wilfrid Sellars, Nelson Goodman, W. V. O. Quine), and continues through the present day. According to Aikin and Talisse, pragmatism is fundamentally a metaphilosophical proposal – a methodological suggestion for carrying inquiry forward amidst ongoing deep disagreement over the aims, limitations, and possibilities of philosophy. This conception of pragmatism not only runs contrary to the dominant self-understanding among cotemporary philosophers who identify with the classical pragmatists, it also holds important implications for pragmatist philosophy. In particular, Aikin and Talisse show that their version of pragmatism involves distinctive claims about epistemic justification, moral disagreement, democratic citizenship, and the conduct of inquiry. The chapters combine detailed engagements with the history and development of pragmatism with original argumentation aimed at a philosophical audience beyond pragmatism.
Download or read book Toppling the Melting Pot written by José-Antonio Orosco and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-17 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The catalyst for much of classical pragmatist political thought was the great waves of migration to the United States in the early twentieth century. José-Antonio Orosco examines the work of several pragmatist social thinkers, including John Dewey, W. E. B. Du Bois, Josiah Royce, and Jane Addams, regarding the challenges large-scale immigration brings to American democracy. Orosco argues that the ideas of the classical pragmatists can help us understand the ways in which immigrants might strengthen the cultural foundations of the United States in order to achieve a more deliberative and participatory democracy. Like earlier pragmatists, Orosco begins with a critique of the melting pot in favor of finding new ways to imagine the civic role of our immigrant population. He concludes that by applying the insights of American pragmatism, we can find guidance through controversial contemporary issues such as undocumented immigration, multicultural education, and racialized conceptions of citizenship.
Download or read book American Democratic Theory written by William Kelso and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1978-01-19 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Pragmatic Encounters written by Richard J. Bernstein and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-16 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard J. Bernstein is a leading exponent of American pragmatism and one of the foremost philosophers of the twentieth century. In this collection he takes a pragmatic approach to specific problems and issues to demonstrate the ongoing importance of this philosophical tradition. Topics under discussion include multiculturalism, political public life, evil and religion. Individual philosophers studied are Kant, Arendt, Rorty, Habermas, Dewey and Trotsky. Each of the sixteen essays, many of which are published here for the first time, offers a way of bridging contemporary philosophical differences. This book will be of interest to scholars of philosophy and those researching social and political theory.
Download or read book A Pluralistic Universe written by William James and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Pragmatism Democracy and the Necessity of Rhetoric written by Robert Danisch and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Pragmatism, Democracy, and the Necessity of Rhetoric, Robert Danisch examines the search by America's first generation of pragmatists for a unique set of rhetorics that would serve the needs of a developing democracy. Digging deep into pragmatism's historical development, Danisch sheds light on its association with an alternative but significant and often overlooked tradition. He draws parallels between the rhetorics of such American pragmatists as John Dewey and Jane Addams and those of the ancient Greek tradition. Danisch contends that, while building upon a classical foundation, pragmatism sought to determine rhetorical responses to contemporary irresolutions. rhetoric, including pragmatism's rejection of philosophy with its traditional assumptions and practices. Grounding his argument on an
Download or read book Pragmatism Rights and Democracy written by Beth J. Singer and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2018-09-18 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Singer's theory of rights, an impressive development of social accounts by pragmatists George Herbert Mead and John Dewey, was developed in Operative Rights (1993). This successor volume includes applications, lectures, replies to critics, and clarifications. For Singer, Dewey, and Mead, rights exist only if they are embedded in the operative practices of a community. People have a right in a community if their claim is acknowledged, and if they would acknowledge similar claims by others. Singer's account contrasts with theories of natural rights, which state that humans have rights by virtue of being human. Singer's account also differs from Kantian attempts to derive rights from the necessary conditions of rationality. While denying that rights exist independently of a community's practices, Singer maintains that rights to personal autonomy and authority ought to exist in all communities. Group rights, an anathema among individualistic theories, are from Singer's pragmatist perspective a valuable institution. Singer's discussion of rights appropriate for minority communities (e.g., the Bosnian Muslims and the Canadian Quebecois) is particularly illuminating. Her book is a model of careful reasoning. General libraries, and certainly academic libraries, should have Singer's Operative Rights. The volume under review is a good addition for research libraries and recommended for graduate students and above."[Singer] examines the views of Rousseau, Mill, and T. H. Green on human rights and those of Dewey and G. H. Mead on the relationship between rights and the democratic process...Recommended."--Choice
Download or read book Knowledge from a Human Point of View written by Ana-Maria Crețu and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-11-29 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book – as the title suggests – explores some of the historical roots and epistemological ramifications of perspectivism. Perspectivism has recently emerged in philosophy of science as an interesting new position in the debate between scientific realism and anti-realism. But there is a lot more to perspectivism than discussions in philosophy of science so far have suggested. Perspectivism is a much broader view that emphasizes how our knowledge (in particular our scientific knowledge of nature) is situated; it is always from a human vantage point (as opposed to some Nagelian "view from nowhere"). This edited collection brings together a diverse team of established and early career scholars across a variety of fields (from the history of philosophy to epistemology and philosophy of science). The resulting nine essays trace some of the seminal ideas of perspectivism back to Kant, Nietzsche, the American Pragmatists, and Putnam, while the second part of the book tackles issues concerning the relation between perspectivism, relativism, and standpoint theories, and the implications of perspectivism for epistemological debates about veritism, epistemic normativity and the foundations of human knowledge.
Download or read book Pragmatism and Democracy written by Dmitri N. Shalin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 643 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the roots of pragmatist imagination and traces the influence of American pragmatism in diverse areas of politics, law, sociology, political science, and transitional studies. The work explores the interfaces between the Progressive movement in politics and American pragmatism. Shalin shows how early 20th century progressivism influenced pragmatism's philosophical agenda and how pragmatists helped articulate a theory of progressive reform. The work addresses pragmatism and interactionist sociology and illuminates the cross-fertilization between these two fields of studies. Special emphasis is placed on the interactionists' search for a logic of inquiry sensitive to the objective indeterminacy of the situation. The challenge that contemporary interactionist studies face is to illuminate the issues of power and inequality central to the political commitments of pragmatist philosophers. Shalin explores the vital link between democracy, civility, and affect. His central thesis is that democracy is an embodied process that binds affectively as well as rhetorically and that flourishes in places where civic discourse is an end in itself, a source of vitality and social creativity sustaining a democratic community. The author shows why civic discourse is hobbled by the civic body that has been misshapen by past abuses. Drawing on the studies of the civilizing process, Shalin speculates about the emotion, demeanor, and body language of democracy and explores from this angle the prospects for democratic transformation in countries struggling to shake their totalitarian past. View Table of Contents
Download or read book Confines of Democracy written by Ramón del Castillo and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The topics addressed by Richard J. Bernstein in his extensive and illuminating work span the stream of contemporary thought in several directions: ethics, politics, epistemology, philosophy of history, and social theory. In reflecting on them Bernstein has played an intermediary role between the most recognizable product of American philosophical tradition, i.e. Pragmatism, and such central trends in European 20th century thought as Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Critical Theory, and Hermeneutics. In this volume a host of prominent scholars from the United States, Europe, and Latin America pays tribute to Bernstein’s lifelong reflection on such present human problems as: the achievements and the dilemmas of modern societies, the legitimation crisis of democracy, the uses and abuses of public space, the role of scientific knowledge and technology in shaping the modern life, the ethical and political interplay between identity and community, and the preconditions and limits of understanding in multicultural contexts. The fifteen essays in this book, accompanied by separate replies by Bernstein, are organized in four sections: “Bernstein, Rorty and American Pragmatism,” “Epistemology and Hermeneutics,” “Good, Evil and Judgment,” and “Democratic Vistas.” As Prof. Bernstein declares in his Preface, these “contributions are expressions of my own commitment to engaged fallibilistic pluralism.”
Download or read book The Revival of Pragmatism written by Morris Dickstein and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1998-11-23 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although long considered the most distinctive American contribution to philosophy, pragmatism—with its problem-solving emphasis and its contingent view of truth—lost popularity in mid-century after the advent of World War II, the horror of the Holocaust, and the dawning of the Cold War. Since the 1960s, however, pragmatism in many guises has again gained prominence, finding congenial places to flourish within growing intellectual movements. This volume of new essays brings together leading philosophers, historians, legal scholars, social thinkers, and literary critics to examine the far-reaching effects of this revival. As the twenty-five intellectuals who take part in this discussion show, pragmatism has become a complex terrain on which a rich variety of contemporary debates have been played out. Contributors such as Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, Nancy Fraser, Robert Westbrook, Hilary Putnam, and Morris Dickstein trace pragmatism’s cultural and intellectual evolution, consider its connection to democracy, and discuss its complex relationship to the work of Emerson, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein. They show the influence of pragmatism on black intellectuals such as W. E. B. Du Bois, explore its view of poetic language, and debate its effects on social science, history, and jurisprudence. Also including essays by critics of the revival such as Alan Wolfe and John Patrick Diggins, the volume concludes with a response to the whole collection from Stanley Fish. Including an extensive bibliography, this interdisciplinary work provides an in-depth and broadly gauged introduction to pragmatism, one that will be crucial for understanding the shape of the transformations taking place in the American social and philosophical scene at the end of the twentieth century. Contributors. Richard Bernstein, David Bromwich, Ray Carney, Stanley Cavell, Morris Dickstein, John Patrick Diggins, Stanley Fish, Nancy Fraser, Thomas C. Grey, Giles Gunn, Hans Joas, James T. Kloppenberg, David Luban, Louis Menand, Sidney Morgenbesser, Richard Poirier, Richard A. Posner, Ross Posnock, Hilary Putnam, Ruth Anna Putnam, Richard Rorty, Michel Rosenfeld, Richard H. Weisberg, Robert B. Westbrook, Alan Wolfe
Download or read book Pragmatism written by John R. Shook and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-05-02 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A concise, reader-friendly overview of pragmatism, the most influential school of American philosophical thought. Pragmatism, America’s homegrown philosophy, has been a major intellectual movement for over a century. Unlike its rivals, it reaches well beyond the confines of philosophy into concerns and disciplines as diverse as religion, politics, science, and culture. In this concise, engagingly written overview, John R. Shook describes pragmatism’s origins, concepts, and continuing global relevance and appeal. With attention to the movement’s original thinkers—Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead—as well as its contemporary proponents, he explains how pragmatism thinks about what is real, what can be known, and what minds are doing. And because of pragmatism’s far-reaching impact, Shook shows how its views on reality, truth, knowledge, and cognition coordinate with its approaches to agency, sociality, human nature, and personhood.
Download or read book Damn Great Empires written by Alexander Livingston and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Damn Great Empires offers a new perspective on the works of William James by placing his encounter with American imperialism at the center of his philosophical vision. This book reconstructs James's overlooked political thought by treating his anti-imperialist Nachlass -- his speeches, essays, notes, and correspondence on the United States' annexation of the Philippines -- as the key to unlocking the political significance of his celebrated writings on psychology, religion, and philosophy. It shows how James located a craving for authority at the heart of empire as a way of life, a craving he diagnosed and unsettled through his insistence on a modern world without ultimate foundations. Livingston explores the persistence of political questions in James's major works, from his writings on the self in The Principles of Psychology to the method of Pragmatism, the study of faith and conversion in The Varieties of Religious Experience, and the metaphysical inquiries in A Pluralistic Universe. Against the conventional view of James as a thinker who remained silent on questions of politics, this book places him in dialogue with a transatlantic critique of modernity, as well as with champions and critics of American imperialism, from Theodore Roosevelt to W. E. B. Du Bois, in order to excavate James's anarchistic political vision. Bringing the history of political thought into conversation with contemporary debates in political theory, Damn Great Empires offers a fresh and original reexamination of the political consequences of pragmatism as a public philosophy.
Download or read book The Public and Its Problems written by John Dewey and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An annotated edition of John Dewey's work of democratic theory, first published in 1927. Includes a substantive introduction and bibliographical essay"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book The New Pragmatist Sociology written by Neil L. Gross and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-05 with total page 793 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pragmatist thought is central to sociology. However, sociologists typically encounter pragmatism indirectly, as a philosophy of science or as an influence on canonical social scientists, rather than as a vital source of theory, research questions, and methodological reflection in sociology today. In The New Pragmatist Sociology, Neil Gross, Isaac Ariail Reed, and Christopher Winship assemble a range of sociologists to address essential ideas in the field and their historical and theoretical connection to classical pragmatism. The book examines questions of methodology, social interaction, and politics across the broad themes of inquiry, agency, and democracy. Essays engage widely and deeply with topics that motivate both pragmatist philosophy and sociology, including rationality, speech, truth, expertise, and methodological pluralism. Contributors include Natalie Aviles, Karida Brown, Daniel Cefaï, Mazen Elfakhani, Luis Flores, Daniel Huebner, Cayce C. Hughes, Paul Lichterman, John Levi Martin, Ann Mische, Vontrese D. Pamphile, Jeffrey N. Parker, Susan Sibley, Daniel Silver, Mario Small, Iddo Tavory, Stefan Timmermans, Luna White, and Joshua Whitford.