Download or read book Stanley Fish on Philosophy Politics and Law written by Michael Robertson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-08-07 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores Fish's unconventional positions on politics and law, explaining how they flow from his positions on three philosophical issues.
Download or read book Stanley Fish on Philosophy Politics and Law written by Michael Spencer Robertson and published by . This book was released on 2014-09-03 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores Fish's unconventional positions on politics and law, explaining how they flow from his positions on three philosophical issues.
Download or read book Stanley Fish on Philosophy Politics and Law written by Michael Spencer Robertson and published by . This book was released on 2015-03-02 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores Fish's unconventional positions on politics and law, explaining how they flow from his positions on three philosophical issues.
Download or read book The Trouble with Principle written by Stanley Fish and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2001-03-02 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stanley Fish is an equal opportunity antagonist. A theorist who has taken on theorists, an academician who has riled the academy, a legal scholar and political pundit who has ruffled feathers left and right, Fish here turns with customary gusto to the trouble with principle. Specifically, Fish has a quarrel with neutral principles. The trouble? They operate by sacrificing everything people care about to their own purity. And they are deployed with equal highmindedness and equally absurd results by liberals and conservatives alike. In this bracing book, Fish argues that there is no realm of higher order impartiality--no neutral or fair territory on which to stake a claim--and that those who invoke one are always making a rhetorical and political gesture. In the end, it is history and context, the very substance against which a purportedly abstract principle defines itself, that determines a principle's content and power. In the course of making this argument, Fish takes up questions about academic freedom and hate speech, affirmative action and multiculturalism, the boundaries between church and state, and much more. Sparing no one, he shows how our notions of intellectual and religious liberty--cherished by those at both ends of the political spectrum--are artifacts of the very partisan politics they supposedly transcend. The Trouble with Principle offers a provocative challenge to the debates of our day that no intellectually honest citizen can afford to ignore.
Download or read book There s No Such Thing As Free Speech written by Stanley Fish and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1994-12-15 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an era when much of what passes for debate is merely moral posturing--traditional family values versus the cultural elite, free speech versus censorship--or reflexive name-calling--the terms "liberal" and "politically correct," are used with as much dismissive scorn by the right as "reactionary" and "fascist" are by the left--Stanley Fish would seem an unlikely lightning rod for controversy. A renowned scholar of Milton, head of the English Department of Duke University, Fish has emerged as a brilliantly original critic of the culture at large, praised and pilloried as a vigorous debunker of the pieties of both the left and right. His mission is not to win the cultural wars that preoccupy the nation's attention, but rather to redefine the terms of battle. In There's No Such Thing as Free Speech, Fish takes aim at the ideological gridlock paralyzing academic and political exchange in the nineties. In his witty, accessible dissections of the swirling controversies over multiculturalism, affirmative action, canon revision, hate speech, and legal reform, he neatly eviscerates both the conservatives' claim to possession of timeless, transcendent values (the timeless transcendence of which they themselves have conveniently identified), and the intellectual left's icons of equality, tolerance, and non-discrimination. He argues that while conservative ideologues and liberal stalwarts might disagree vehemently on what is essential to a culture, or to a curriculum, both mistakenly believe that what is essential can be identified apart from the accidental circumstances (of time and history) to which the essential is ritually opposed. In the book's first section, which includes the five essays written for Fish's celebrated debates with Dinesh D'Souza (the author and former Reagan White House policy analyst), Fish turns his attention to the neoconservative backlash. In his introduction, Fish writes, "Terms that come to us wearing the label 'apolitical'--'common values', 'fairness', 'merit', 'color blind', 'free speech', 'reason'--are in fact the ideologically charged constructions of a decidedly political agenda. I make the point not in order to level an accusation, but to remove the sting of accusation from the world 'politics' and redefine it as a synonym for what everyone inevitably does." Fish maintains that the debate over political correctness is an artificial one, because it is simply not possible for any party or individual to occupy a position above or beyond politics. Regarding the controversy over the revision of the college curriculum, Fish argues that the point is not to try to insist that inclusion of ethnic and gender studies is not a political decision, but "to point out that any alternative curriculum--say a diet of exclusively Western or European texts--would be no less politically invested." In Part Two, Fish follows the implications of his arguments to a surprising rejection of the optimistic claims of the intellectual left that awareness of the historical roots of our beliefs and biases can allow us, as individuals or as a society, to escape or transcend them. Specifically, he turns to the movement for reform of legal studies, and insists that a dream of a legal culture in which no one's values are slighted or declared peripheral can no more be realized than the dream of a concept of fairness that answers to everyone's notions of equality and jsutice, or a yardstick of merit that is true to everyone's notions of worth and substance. Similarly, he argues that attempts to politicize the study of literature are ultimately misguided, because recharacterizations of literary works have absolutely no impact on the mainstream of political life. He concludes his critique of the academy with "The Unbearable Ugliness of Volvos," an extraordinary look at some of the more puzzing, if not out-and-out masochistic, characteristics of a life in academia. Penetrating, fearless, and brilliantly argued, There's No Such Thing as Free Speech captures the essential Fish. It is must reading for anyone who cares about the outcome of America's cultural wars.
Download or read book Think Again written by Stanley Fish and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-27 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of America's most important cultural critics comes this collection of the best of his provocative New York Times essays, pieces that have generated passionate discussion and debate.
Download or read book Save the World on Your Own Time written by Stanley Fish and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-19 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Save the World on Your Own Time is invariably smart, stimulating, and provocative. It is filled with insights and crackles with verve. It is a joy to take in." - Texas Law Review
Download or read book Versions of Academic Freedom written by Stanley Fish and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-10-23 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Advocates of academic freedom often view it as a variation of the right to free speech and an essential feature of democracy. Stanley Fish argues here for a narrower conception of academic freedom, one that does not grant academics a legal status different from other professionals. Providing a blueprint for the study of academic freedom, Fish breaks down the schools of thought on the subject, which range from the idea that academic freedom is justified by the common good or by academic exceptionalism, to its potential for critique or indeed revolution. Fish himself belongs to what he calls the It s Just a Job school: while academics need the latitude call it freedom if you like necessary to perform their professional activities, they are not free in any special sense to do anything but their jobs. Academic freedom, Fish argues, should be justified only by the specific educational good that academics offer. Defending the university in all its glorious narrowness as a place of disinterested inquiry, Fish offers a bracing corrective to academic orthodoxy."
Download or read book Doing What Comes Naturally written by Stanley Fish and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In literary theory, the philosophy of law, and the sociology of knowledge, no issue has been more central to current debate than the status of our interpretations. Do they rest on a ground of rationality or are they subjective impositions of a merely personal point of view? In Doing What Comes Naturally, Stanley Fish refuses the dilemma posed by this question and argues that while we can never separate our judgments from the contexts in which they are made, those judgments are nevertheless authoritative and even, in the only way that matters, objective. He thus rejects both the demand for an ahistorical foundation, and the conclusion that in the absence of such a foundation we reside in an indeterminate world. In a succession of provocative and wide-ranging chapters, Fish explores the implications of his position for our understanding of legal, literary, and psychoanalytic interpretation, the nature of professional and institutional culture, and the place of reason in a world that is rhetorical through and through."--Publisher description.
Download or read book The First written by Stanley Fish and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From celebrated public intellectual, New York Times bestselling author, and “America’s most famous professor” (BookPage) comes an urgent and sharply observed look at freedom of speech and the First Amendment offering a “nonpartisan take on what it does and doesn’t protect and what kind of speech it should and shouldn’t regulate” (Publishers Weekly). How does the First Amendment really work? Is it a principle or a value? What is hate speech and should it always be banned? Are we free to declare our religious beliefs in the public square? What role, if any, should companies like Facebook play in policing the exchange of thoughts, ideas, and opinions? With clarity and power, Stanley Fish explores these complex questions in The First. From the rise of fake news, to the role of tech companies in monitoring content (including the President’s tweets), to Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling protest, First Amendment controversies continue to dominate the news cycle. Across America, college campus administrators are being forced to balance free speech against demands for safe spaces and trigger warnings. With “thoughtful, dense provocations that will require close attention” (Kirkus Reviews), Fish ultimately argues that freedom of speech is a double-edged concept; it frees us from constraints, but it also frees us to say and do terrible things. Urgent and controversial, The First is sure to ruffle feathers, spark dialogue, and shine new light on one of America’s most cherished—and debated—constitutional rights.
Download or read book How Milton Works written by Stanley Eugene Fish and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stanley Fish's Surprised by Sin, first published in 1967, set a new standard for Milton criticism and established its author as one of the world's preeminent Milton scholars. The lifelong engagement begun in that work culminates in this book, the magnum opus of a formidable critic and the definitive statement on Milton for our time. How Milton works "from the inside out" is the foremost concern of Fish's book, which explores the radical effect of Milton's theological convictions on his poetry and prose. For Milton the value of a poem or of any other production derives from the inner worth of its author and not from any external measure of excellence or heroism. Milton's aesthetic, says Fish, is an "aesthetic of testimony": every action, whether verbal or physical, is or should be the action of holding fast to a single saving commitment against the allure of plot, narrative, representation, signs, drama--anything that might be construed as an illegitimate supplement to divine truth. Much of the energy of Milton's writing, according to Fish, comes from the effort to maintain his faith against these temptations, temptations which in any other aesthetic would be seen as the very essence of poetic value. Encountering the great poet on his own terms, engaging his equally distinguished admirers and detractors, this book moves a 300-year debate about the significance of Milton's verse to a new level.
Download or read book Liberalism s Religion written by Cécile Laborde and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-25 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cécile Laborde argues that religion is more than a statement of belief or a moral code. It refers to comprehensive ways of life, theories of justice, modes of association, and vulnerable collective identities. By disaggregating these dimensions, she addresses questions about whether Western secularism and religion can be applied more universally.
Download or read book Professional Correctness written by Stanley Eugene Fish and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, the world of literary and cultural studies has been riven by a fierce debate between those who would transform interpretative work and those who fear that their work would destroy the very essence of literary criticism.
Download or read book Surprised by Sin written by Stanley Eugene Fish and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1967 Milton studies was divided into two camps: one claiming (per Blake and Shelley) that Milton was of the devil's party, the other claiming (per Addison and C. S. Lewis) that the poet's sympathies were obviously with God and his loyal angels. Fish has reconciled the two camps by subsuming their claims in a single overarching thesis.
Download or read book Stanley Fish America s Enfant Terrible written by Gary A. Olson and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2016-03-21 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the twentieth century’s most original and influential literary theorists, Stanley Fish is also known as a fascinatingly atypical, polarizing public intellectual; a loud, cigar-smoking contrarian; and a lightning rod for both the political right and left. The truth and the limitations of this reputation are explored in Stanley Fish, America’s Enfant Terrible by Gary A. Olson. At once a literary biography and a traditional life story, this engrossing volume details Fish’s vibrant personal life and his remarkably versatile career. Born into a tumultuous family, Fish survived life with an emotionally absent father and a headstrong mother through street sports and troublemaking as much as through his success at a rigorous prep school. As Olson shows, Fish’s escape from the working-class neighborhoods of 1940s and 1950s Providence, Rhode Island, came with his departure for the university life at the University of Pennsylvania and then Yale. His meteoric rise through the academic ranks at a troubled Vietnam-era UC-Berkeley was complemented by a 1966 romp through Europe that included drag racing through the streets of Seville in his Alfa Romeo. He went on to become an internationally prominent scholar at Johns Hopkins before moving to Duke, where he built a star-studded academic department that became a key site in the culture and theory wars of the 1980s and 1990s. Olson discusses Fish’s tenure as a highly visible dean at the University of Illinois at Chicago who clashed publicly with the state legislature. He also covers Fish’s most remarkable and controversial books, including Fish’s masterpiece, Surprised by Sin: The Reader in "Paradise Lost," which was a critical sensation and forever changed the craft of literary criticism, as well as Professional Correctness and Save the World on Your Own Time, two books that alienated Fish from most liberal-minded professors in English studies. Olson concludes his biography of Fish with an in-depth analysis of the contradictions between Fish’s public persona and his private personality, examining how impulses and events from Fish’s childhood shaped his lifelong practices and personality traits. Also included are a chronology of the major events of Fish’s life and never-before-published photos. Based on hundreds of hours of recorded interviews with friends, enemies, colleagues, former students, family members, and Fish himself, along with material from the Stanley Fish archive, Stanley Fish, America’s Enfant Terrible is a clearly written narrative of the life of an important and controversial scholar.
Download or read book Is There a Text in This Class written by Stanley Fish and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1980 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays concerning language, literature, reading, writing and the reader.
Download or read book The Last Professors written by Frank Donoghue and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking a clear-eyed look at American higher education over the last twenty years, Donoghue outlines a web of forces--social, political, and institutional--dismantling the professoriate. Today, fewer than 30 percent of college and university teachers are tenured or on tenure tracks, and signs point to a future where professors will disappear. --from publisher description.
