Suchergebnisse

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- ABBREVIATIONS -- A NOTE ON THE TEXTS -- A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO AN ENDLESS TASK -- CHAPTER 1. HEGEL AND HIS PROJECT -- CHAPTER 2. HEGEL CONTRA KANT ON PHILOSOPHICAL CRITIQUE AND THE LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE -- CHAPTER 3. TRANSCENDENTAL VERSUS LINGUISTIC IDEALISM -- CHAPTER 4. THE NATURE AND DEVELOPMENT OF WILL -- CHAPTER 5. HEGEL'S CRITIQUE OF KANT'S MORAL THEORY -- NOTES -- REFERENCES -- INDEX

From the rise of formalist novels that championed the heroism of the individual to the proliferation of abstract art as a counter to socialist realism, the years of the Cold War had a profound impact on American intellectual life. As John McCumber shows in this fascinating account, philosophy, too, was hit hard by the Red Scare. Detailing the immense political pressures that reshaped philosophy departments in midcentury America, he shows just how radically politics can alter the course of intellectual history. McCumber begins with the story of Max Otto, whose appointment to the UCLA Philosophy Department in 1947 was met with widespread protest charging him as an atheist. Drawing on Otto's case, McCumber details the hugely successful conservative efforts that, by 1960, had all but banished the existentialist and pragmatist paradigms not to mention Marxism from philosophy departments all across the country, replacing them with an approach that valorized scientific objectivity and free markets and which downplayed the anti-theistic implications of modern thought. As he shows, while there have since been many instances of definitive and even explosive rejection of this conservative trend, its effects can still be seen at American universities today

This book re-examines important figures from the entire history of philosophy to show how and why philosophy must renew itself as a critical practice dedicated to dialogue with women, people of color, LGBTs, and others who seek liberation from age-old oppressions.

In Reshaping Reason, John McCumber advocates new life for American philosophy. At present, McCumber believes, American philosophy is ready to go in new directions, but American philosophers remain hopelessly divided between analytic or Continental approaches. There seems to be no middle ground, and the debate between the two traditions has created indifference to the field, both in wider intellectual culture and among philosophers themselves. Here, McCumber brings together aspects of analytic and Continen