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Main description: This work manages to present a complete and informative overview of Nicholas Rescher's philosphy. A prominent representative of contemporary pragmatism and of 20th century's thought at large, Rescher wrote an impressive amount of volumes and essays on a wide variety of philosophical topics. The present book purports to make his theses and theories accessible in one single volume. Moreover, it provides an apparatus of references to the relevant literature produced by Rescher's critics, and positions his work in the wider setting of its links with various contemporary American and European philosophers. The mixture of pragmatism and idealism, typical of Rescher's stance, is carefully taken into account, along with his contributions to logic, philosophy of science, metaphysics, theory of knowledge, ethics, social and political philosophy.

Globalization entails the increasing volume, velocity and importance of flows within and across borders of people, ideas, goods, money, and much else, thus challenging one of sovereignty's basic principles: the ability to control what crosses borders in either direction. Sovereign States increasingly measure their vulnerability not to one another, but to forces beyond their control. Necessity may also lead to reducing or even eliminating sovereignty when a government, whether from a lack of capacity or conscious policy, is unable to provide for the basic needs of its citizens. This reflects a view that state failure and genocide can lead to destabilizing refugee flows and create openings for terrorists to take root. Globalization is frequently discussed as a counterpoint to national sovereignty. It is commonly asserted that globalization has eroded national sovereignty or that it has rendered borders obsolete. In particular, it is asserted that, in a globalized world economy, governments have no alternative but to adopt neoliberal economic policies of privatization, deregulation and reductions in public expenditure. However, in the contest between social democracy and neoliberal globalization, the nation—state per se is only marginally relevant. The crucial issue is whether policy will respond to the wishes of a democratic electorate, or be tightly constrained by the 'Golden Straightjacket' of international financial markets.

A pragmatist thinker like Nicholas Rescher deems the idea that social harmony must be predicated in consensus to be both dangerous and misleading. An essential problem of our time is the creation of political and social institutions that enable people to live together in peaceful and productive ways, despite the presence of not eliminable disagreements about theoretical and practical issues. Such remarks, in turn, strictly recall the "practical" impossibility of settling philosophical disputes by having recourse to abstract and aprioristic principles. In the circumstances, the social model of team members cooperating for a common purpose is unrealistic. A more adequate model is, instead, that of a classical capitalism where - in a sufficiently well developed system - both competition and rivalry manage somehow to foster the benefit of the entire community (theory of the "hidden hand"). Certainly the scientific community is one of the best examples of this that we have, although even in this case we must be careful not to give too idealized a picture of scientific research. Consensus, however, in the Western tradition is an ideal worth being pursued. At this point we are faced with two basic positions. On the one side (a) "consensualists" maintain that disagreement should be averted no matter what, while, on the other, (b) "pluralists" accept disagreement because they take dissensus to be an inevitable feature of the imperfect world in which we live. A pluralistic vision, therefore, tries to make dissensus tolerable, and not to eliminate it. All theories of idealized consensus present us with serious setbacks. This is the case, for instance, with Charles S. Peirce. As is well known, Peirce takes truth to be "the limit of inquiry," i.e. either what science will discover in the (idealized) long run, or what it would discover if the human efforts were so extended. By taking this path, thus, truth is nothing but the ultimate consensus reached within the scientific community. We can be sure that, once a "final" answer to a question has been found which is thereafter maintained without change, that one is the truth we were looking for. This fascinating theory, however, has various unfortunate consequences. In our day the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has in a way revived these Peircean insights, putting forward an influential theory to the effect that consensus indeed plays a key role in human praxis, so that the primary task of philosophy is to foster it by eliminating the disagreement which we constantly have to face in the course of our daily life. In his "communicative theory of consensus," furthermore, he claims that human communication rests on an implicit commitment to a sort of "ideal speech situation" which is the normative foundation of agreement in linguistic matters. Consequently, the quest for consensus is a constitutive feature of our nature of (rational) human beings: rationality and consensus are tied together. A very strong consequence derives from Habermas' premises: were we to abandon the search for consensus we would lose rationality, too, and this makes us understand that he views the pursuit of consensus as a regulative principle (rather than as a merely practical objective). Rescher opposes both Peirce's eschatological view and Habermas' regulative and idealized one.

It is often said today that the agreement on the possibility of greater mutual understanding among human beings has failed. Would have led to the resurgence of long-suppressed hatreds, hatreds that have their source in the differences linked to national identities, ethnic and religious. We would be short before the end of universalistic concepts that have permeated the last centuries. In addition, the skepticism resulting from the growing success of postmodern ideas on the philosophical and political. In fact, if we look at history, the decline of universalistic concepts is not specific to our age. The reassertion of national identities, ethnic and religious is a recurrent phenomenon, which occurs every time some supranational empire, more or less tyrannical, collapses. Neither seems safe to regard the resurgence of identity as a sign of abandonment of cosmopolitanism. Such events have happened in cyclic rhythm in the past and should not cause us to be pessimistic about a renewed success in the future of ideals that point to unite rather than divide, to enhance the factors that unite us as human beings rather than to emphasize the elements that separate us from each other. The loss of confidence in the sophistication, the current decline of universalist ideas are not phenomena whose origin can be traced to intellectual circles. They reflect, rather, the widespread perception that the future can not be better The problem, in short, is not to fight the global society, but to create a just global society. The term "globalization" in recent years has been loaded with negative meanings, has become a sort of fetish which gathers into one the world's ills. All this is symptomatic of much confusion. You do not ever stress enough the positive aspects of globalization properly understood. Globalization means not necessarily homogenizing force. Globalize not necessarily equivalent to eliminate differences and identities. On the contrary. It may mean, however, give rise to a global society where respect for differences and identity becomes a matter of course. It is often said today that the agreement on the possibility of greater mutual understanding among human beings has failed. Would have led to the resurgence of long-suppressed hatreds, hatreds that have their source in the differences linked to national identities, ethnic and religious. We would be short before the end of universalistic concepts that have permeated the last centuries. In addition, the skepticism resulting from the growing success of postmodern ideas on the philosophical and political.

This volume, Applied Social Sciences: Philosophy and Theology, provides the reader with an important set of essays related to the two aforementioned fields of study. Aesthetics plays a key role in contemporary philosophy and several authors examine its various aspects, such as the question of identification of works of art; the concept of "social aesthetics"; the social therapeutic function that art can have; and the relationships among hermeneutics, aesthetics and communication sciences. Oth...