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Showing 16521 - 16540 of 26186 items
By Sylvia Walsh. 2005
The pseudonymous works Kierkegaard wrote during the period 1843–46 have been responsible for establishing his reputation as an important philosophical…
thinker, but for Kierkegaard himself, they were merely preparatory for what he saw as the primary task of his authorship: to elucidate the meaning of what it is to live as a Christian and thus to show his readers how they could become truly Christian. The more overtly religious and specifically Christian works Kierkegaard produced in the period 1847–51 were devoted to this task. In this book Sylvia Walsh focuses on the writings of this later period and locates the key to Kierkegaard’s understanding of Christianity in the “inverse dialectic” that is involved in “living Christianly.” In the book’s four main chapters, Walsh examines in detail how this inverse dialectic operates in the complementary relationship of the negative qualifications of Christian existence—sin, the possibility of offense, self-denial, and suffering—to the positive qualifications—faith, forgiveness, new life/love/hope, and joy and consolation. It was Kierkegaard’s aim, she argues, “to bring the negative qualifications, which he believed had been virtually eliminated in Christendom, once again into view, to provide them with conceptual clarity, and to show their essential relation to, and necessity in, securing a correct understanding and expression of the positive qualifications of Christian existence.”By Gene Moriarty. 2008
We all live our daily lives surrounded by the products of technology that make what we do simpler, faster, and…
more efficient. These are benefits we often just take for granted. But at the same time, as these products disburden us of unwanted tasks that consumed much time and effort in earlier eras, many of them also leave us more disengaged from our natural and even human surroundings. It is the task of what Gene Moriarty calls focal engineering to create products that will achieve a balance between disburdenment and engagement: “How much disburdenment will be appropriate while still permitting an engagement that enriches one’s life, elevates the spirit, and calls forth a good life in a convivial society?”One of his examples of a focally engineered structure is the Golden Gate Bridge, which “draws people to it, enlivens and elevates the human spirit, and resonates with the world of its congenial setting. Humans, bridge, and world are in tune.” These values of engagement, enlivenment, and resonance are key to the normative approach Moriarty brings to the profession of engineering, which traditionally has focused mainly on technical measures of evaluation such as efficiency, productivity, objectivity, and precision. These measures, while important, look at the engineered product in a local and limited sense. But “from a broader perspective, what is locally benign may present serious moral problems,” undermining “social justice, environmental sustainability, and health and safety of affected parties.” It is this broader perspective that is championed by focal engineering, the subject of Part III of the book, which Moriarty contrasts with “modern” engineering in Part I and “pre-modern” engineering in Part II.By Jean, Daniela Ginsburg. 2018
One of Hegel s most controversial and confounding claims is that the real is rational…
and the rational is real In this book one of the world s leading scholars of Hegel Jean-Fran ois Kerv gan offers a thorough analysis and explanation of that claim along the way delivering a compelling account of modern social political and ethical life Kerv gan begins with Hegel s term objective spirit the public manifestation of our deepest commitments the binding norms that shape our existence as subjects and agents He examines objective spirit in three realms the notion of right the theory of society and the state In conversation with Tocqueville and other theorists of democracy whether in the Anglophone world or in Europe Kerv gan shows how Hegel often associated with grand metaphysical ideas actually had a specific conception of civil society and the state In Hegel s view public institutions represent the fulfillment of deep subjective needs and in that sense demonstrate that the real is the rational because what surrounds us is the product of our collective mindedness This groundbreaking analysis will guide the study of Hegel and nineteenth-century political thought for years to comeBy Stephen N. Dunning. 1997
Interpretation pervades human thinking. Whether perception or experience, spoken word or written theory, whatever enters our consciousness must be interpreted…
in order to be understood. Every area of inquiry—art and literature, philosophy and religion, history and the social sciences, even many aspects of the natural sciences—involves countless opportunities to interpret the object of inquiry according to very different paradigms. These paradigms may derive from the language we speak, the nature of our education, or personal preferences. The abundance and diversity of paradigms make interpretation both fascinating in its complexity and often frustrating for the conflicts it generates. In Dialectical Readings, Dunning distinguishes three types of interpretation, each defined in terms of a distinctive dialectical way of thinking: theoretical interpretation, which assumes binary oppositions; transactional interpretation, which seeks reciprocal relations; and transformational interpretation, which discerns paradoxical meanings. Dunning offers new and insightful readings of familiar texts by B. F. Skinner, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Lee Benson, Roland Barthes, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Michel Foucault and sheds new light on works by Thomas Kuhn, Joseph Campbell, Reinhold Niebuhr, Søren Kierkegaard, Paul Tillich, and Paul Ricoeur. Dialectical Readings enables readers to recognize diverse dialectical approaches to understanding—their own as well as those of others—in a way that provides new and helpful insights into a wide variety of subjects in which conflicting interpretations abound.By Arabella Lyon. 1998
The relationship between an author's and an audience's intentions is complex but need not preclude mutual engagement. This philosophical investigation…
challenges existing literary and rhetorical perspectives on intention and offers a new framework for understanding the negotiation of meaning. It describes how an audience's intentions affect their interpretations, shows how audiences negotiate meaning when faced with a writer's undecipherable intentions, and defines the scope of understanding within rhetorical situations.Introducing a concept of intention into literary analysis that supersedes existing rhetorical theory, Arabella Lyon shows how the rhetorics of I. A. Richards, Wayne Booth, and Stanley Fish, as well as the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, fail to account for the complex interactions of author and audience. Using Kenneth Burke's concepts of form, motive, and purpose, she builds a more complex notion of intention than those usually found in literary studies, then employs her theory to describe how philosophers read Wittgenstein's narratives, metaphors, and reversals in argument.Lyon argues that our differences in intention prevent consistency in interpretations but do not stop our discussions, deliberations, and actions. She seeks to acknowledge difference and the communicative problems it creates while demonstrating that difference is normal and does not end our engagement with each other.Intentions combines recent work in philosophy, literary criticism, hermeneutics, and rhetoric in a highly imaginative way to construct a theory of intention for a postmodern rhetoric. It recovers and renovates central concepts in rhetorical theory—not only intention but also deliberation, politics, and judgment.By Sylvia Walsh. 1994
Living Poetically is the first book to focus primarily on Kierkegaard's existential aesthetics as opposed to traditional aesthetic features of…
his writings such as the use of pseudonyms, literary techniques and figures, and literary criticism. Living Poetically traces the development of the concept of the poetic in Kierkegaard's writings as that concept is worked out in an ethical-religious perspective in contrast to the aesthetics of early German romanticism and Hegelian idealism. Sylvia Walsh seeks to elucidate what it means, in Kierkegaard's view, to be an authentic poet in the form of a poetic writer and to clarify his own role as a Christian poet and writer as he understood it. Walsh shows that, in spite of strong criticisms made of the poetic in some of his writings, Kierkegaard maintained a fundamentally positive understanding of the poetic as an essential ingredient in ethical and religious forms of life. Walsh thus reclaims Kierkegaard as a poetic thinker and writer from those who would interpret him as an ironic practitioner of an aestheticism devoid of and detached from the ethical-religious as well as from those who view him as rejecting the poetic and aesthetic on ethical or religious grounds.Viewing contemporary postmodern feminism and deconstruction as advocating a romantic mode of living poetically, Walsh concludes with a feminist reading of Kierkegaard that affirms both individuality and relatedness, commonalities and differences between the self and others, men and women, for the fashioning of an authentic mode of living poetically in the present age.By Thomas Mcnally. 2017
Throughout his philosophical development, Wittgenstein was more concerned with language than with any other topic. No other philosopher has been…
as influential on our understanding of the deep problems surrounding language, and yet the true significance of his writing on the subject is difficult to assess, since most of the current debates regarding language tend to overlook his work. In this book, Thomas McNally shows that philosophers of language still have much to learn from Wittgenstein's later writings. The book examines the finer details of his arguments while also clarifying their importance for debates outside the field of Wittgenstein studies. Presenting the issues thematically (as they relate to questions of reference, scepticism about meaning, and the social dimension of language, among others), the book explores how the arguments in the Philosophical Investigations remain relevant, compelling us to reflect in novel and challenging ways on the nature of language.By Reynolds, Steven L.. 2017
Standard philosophical explanations of the concept of knowledge invoke a personal goal of having true beliefs, and explain the other…
requirements for knowledge as indicating the best way to achieve that goal. In this highly original book, Steven L. Reynolds argues instead that the concept of knowledge functions to express a naturally developing kind of social control, a complex social norm, and that the main purpose of our practice of saying and thinking that people 'know' is to improve our system for exchanging information, which is testimony. He makes illuminating comparisons of the knowledge norm of testimony with other complex social norms - such as those requiring proper clothing, respectful conversation, and the complementary virtues of tact and frankness - and shows how this account fits with our concept of knowledge as studied in recent analytic epistemology. His book will interest a range of readers in epistemology, psychology, and sociology.By Max Statkiewicz. 2009
This book proposes to rethink the relationship between philosophy and literature through an engagement with Plato’s dialogues. The dialogues have…
been seen as the source of a long tradition that subordinates poetry to philosophy, but they may also be approached as a medium for understanding how to overcome this opposition. Paradoxically, Plato then becomes an ally in the attempt “to overturn Platonism,” which Gilles Deleuze famously defined as the task of modern philosophy. Max Statkiewicz identifies a “rhapsodic mode” initiated by Plato in the dialogues and pursued by many of his modern European commentators, including Nietzsche, Heidegger, Irigaray, Derrida, and Nancy. The book articulates this rhapsodic mode as a way of entering into true dialogue (dia-logos), which splits any univocal meaning and opens up a serious play of signification both within and between texts. This mode, he asserts, employs a reading of Plato that is distinguished from interpretations emphasizing the dialogues as a form of dogmatic treatise, as well as from the dramatic interpretations that have been explored in recent Plato scholarship—both of which take for granted the modern notion of the subject. Statkiewicz emphasizes the importance of the dialogic nature of the rhapsodic mode in the play of philosophy and poetry, of Platonic and modern thought—and, indeed, of seriousness and play. This highly original study of Plato explores the inherent possibilities of Platonic thought to rebound upon itself and engender further dialogues.By J. Budziszewski. 2009
The suicidal proclivity of our time, writes the acclaimed philosopher J. Budziszewski, is to deny the obvious. Our hearts are…
riddled with desires that oppose their deepest longings, because we demand to have happiness on terms that make happiness impossible. Why? And what can we do about it?Budziszewski addresses these vital questions in his brilliantly persuasive new book, The Line Through the Heart. The answers can be discovered in an exploration of natural law--a venture that, with Budziszewski as our expert guide, takes us through politics, religion, ethics, law, philosophy, and more.Natural law, the author states plainly but provocatively, is a fact about human beings; as surely as we have hands and feet, we have the foundational principles of good and evil woven into the fabric of our minds. From this elemental fact emerges a natural law theory that unfolds as part of a careful study of the human person. Thus, Budziszewski shows, natural law forms a common ground for humanity.But this common ground is slippery. While natural law is truly an observable part of human nature, human beings are hell-bent--quite literally--on ignoring it. The mere mention of the obligations imposed on man by his nature will send him into a rage. In this sense, The Line Through the Heart explores natural law as not simply a fact and a theory but also a sign of contradiction.While investigating the natural law and its implications, Budziszewski boldly confronts--and offers a newly integrated view of--a wide range of contemporary issues, including abortion, evolution, euthanasia, capital punishment, the courts, and the ersatz state religion being built in the name of religious toleration.Written in Budziszewski's usual crystalline style, The Line Through the Heart makes clear that natural law is a matter of concern not merely to scholars; it touches how each of us lives, and how all of us live together. His profoundly important examination of this subject helps us make sense of why habits that run against our nature have become second nature, and why our world seems to be going mad.By Bryan S. Turner. 2006
The mass violence of the twentieth century’s two world wars—followed more recently by decentralized and privatized warfare, manifested in terrorism,…
ethnic cleansing, and other localized forms of killing—has led to a heightened awareness of human beings’ vulnerability and the precarious nature of the institutions they create to protect themselves from violence and exploitation. This vulnerability, something humans share amid the diversity of cultural beliefs and values that mark their differences, provides solid ground on which to construct a framework of human rights.Bryan Turner undertakes this task here, developing a sociology of rights from a sociology of the human body. His blending of empirical research with normative analysis constitutes an important step forward for the discipline of sociology. Like anthropology, sociology has traditionally eschewed the study of justice as beyond the limits of a discipline that pays homage to cultural relativism and the “value neutrality” of positivistic science. Turner’s expanded approach accordingly involves a truly interdisciplinary dialogue with the literature of economics, law, medicine, philosophy, political science, and religion.By Kevin Corrigan, Elena Glazov-Corrigan. 2004
The Symposium is one of Plato’s most accessible dialogues, an engrossing historical document as well as an entertaining literary masterpiece.…
By uncovering the structural design of the dialogue, Plato’s Dialectic at Play aims at revealing a Plato for whom the dialogical form was not merely ornamentation or philosophical methodology but the essence of philosophical exploration. His dialectic is not only argument; it is also play. Careful analysis of each layer of the text leads cumulatively to a picture of the dialogue’s underlying structure, related to both argument and myth, and shows that a dynamic link exists between Diotima’s higher mysteries and the organization of the dialogue as a whole. On this basis the authors argue that the Symposium, with its positive theory of art contained in the ascent to the Beautiful, may be viewed as a companion piece to the Republic, with its negative critique of the role of art in the context of the Good. Following Nietzsche’s suggestion and applying criteria developed by Mikhail Bakhtin, they further argue for seeing the Symposium as the first novel. The book concludes with a comprehensive reevaluation of the significance of the Symposium and its place in Plato’s thought generally, touching on major issues in Platonic scholarship: the nature of art, the body-soul connection, the problem of identity, the relationship between mythos and logos, Platonic love, and the question of authorial writing and the vanishing signature of the absent Plato himself.By Diana Quarantotto. 2018
This book provides a comprehensive and in-depth study of Physics I, the first book of Aristotle's foundational treatise on natural…
philosophy. While the text has inspired a rich scholarly literature, this is the first volume devoted solely to it to have been published for many years, and it includes a new translation of the Greek text. Book I introduces Aristotle's approach to topics such as matter and form, and discusses the fundamental problems of the study of natural science, examining the theories of previous thinkers including Parmenides. Leading experts provide fresh interpretations of key passages and raise new problems. The volume will appeal to scholars and students of ancient philosophy as well as to specialists working in the fields of philosophy and the history of science.By Erich Fromm. 1950
Social psychologist Erich Fromm probes deep into the roots of religion to find its humanistic essenceIn 1950, Erich Fromm attempted…
to free religion from its social function and to develop a new understanding of religious phenomena. Rather than analyzing what people believe in--whether they're monotheistic, polytheistic, or atheistic--Fromm presents an idea of what religion means in secular terms. In his timeless and straightforward style, Fromm unmasks the alienating effects of any authoritarian religion. He reveals how a humanistic religion is conducive to one's own humanity, and explains why psychoanalysis does not threaten religion. Whether you're a believer or a long-time atheist, Fromm's erudite analysis of religion is sure to reshape your concept of spirituality. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erich Fromm including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author's estate.By Alan Brudner. 2017
Since 1945, there have been two waves of Anglo-American writing on Hegel's political thought. The first defended it against works…
portraying Hegel as an apologist of Prussian reaction and a theorist of totalitarian nationalism. The second presented Hegel as a civic humanist critic of liberalism in the tradition of Rousseau. The first suppressed elements of Hegel's thought that challenge liberalism's individualistic premises; the second downplayed Hegel's theism. This book recovers what was lost in each wave. It restores aspects of Hegel's political thought unsettling to liberal beliefs, yet that lead to a state more liberal than Locke's and Kant's, which retain authoritarian elements. It also scrutinizes Hegel's claim to have justified theism to rational insight, hence to have made it conformable to Enlightenment standards of admissible public discourse. And it seeks to show how, for Hegel, the wholeness unique to divinity is realizable among humans without concession or compromise and what role philosophy must play in its final achievement. Lastly, we are shown what form Hegel's philosophy can take in a world not yet prepared for his science. Here is Hegel's political thought undistorted.Who was the real Karl Marx?In the Western world, and especially in the United States, Karl Marx is perceived as…
the spiritual godfather of Lenin and Stalin--someone bent on creating a state where everyone worships a centralized bureaucracy. Social philosopher Erich Fromm argues that Marx has been entirely misrepresented and misunderstood, and that Marx's ideas have been misappropriated to further causes antithetical to his true intentions. Fromm's study presents Marx as a humanist and social scientist. Painstakingly traveling through Marx's oeuvre, Fromm shows how Marx's real goal was to eliminate man's alienation, and allow individuals to live and appreciate a life of freedom. Furthermore, Fromm believes, Marx would have considered the Communist governments of Russia and Cuba as wrong-headed. Marx's Concept of Man also includes a selection of Marx's Early Writings, brought to English-speaking readers for the first time in 1961. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erich Fromm, with rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author's estate.By Pascal Bruckner. 2017
Money is an evil that does good, and a good that does evil. It is wise to have money, says…
Pascal Bruckner, and wise to think and talk about it critically. One of the world’s great essayists guides us through the commentary that money has generated since ancient times, as he builds an unfashionable defense of the worldly wisdom of the bourgeoisie.By Yuliya Komska, Michelle Moyd, David Gramling. 2019
This book asks how we as citizens immigrants activists teachers can counter the…
abuse of language in our midst How can we take back the power of language from those who flaunt that power to silence or erase us and our fellows In search of answers Linguistic Disobedience recalls ages and situations that made critiquing correcting and caring for language essential for survival From turn-of-the-twentieth-century Central Europe to the miseries of the Third Reich from the Movement for Black Lives to the ongoing effort to decolonize African languages the study and practice of linguistic disobedience have been crucial But what are we to do today when reactionary supremacists and authoritarians are screen-testing their own forms of so-called disobedience to quash oppositional social justice movements and their languages Blending lyric essay with cultural criticism historical analysis and applied linguistics Linguistic Disobedience offers suggestions for a hopeful pathway forward in violent timesBy Edmund Sullivan, Clive M. Beck, Brian S. Crittenden. 1971
This volume, based on an interdisciplinary conference of psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, and social scientists, explores a topic of vital importance…
today---moral education. The book is organized around four questions: the nature and scope of moral education, the problem of ethical pluralism, psychological considerations in a program of moral education, and the social structure of the school as it relates to moral education. This volume will interest philosophers and social scientists concerned with human behaviour and values. It will be of special interest to those engaged in educational research, to curriculum planners, and teachers.By David Duarte, Jorge Sampaio. 2018
This book addresses the principle of proportionality which is currently one of the most important instruments of judicial review…
from both analytical and theory of law perspectives As such the analysis provided is far more comprehensive and can be applied to all areas of law not just constitutional law On the one hand the volume offers a broad perspective on several aspects related to proportionality such as its structure the balancing methodology and the distinction between rules and principles On the other it provides an innovative normativist and analytical approach to proportionality helping readers understand its structure and behaviour