Based on public lectures given by Timothy Williamson, this book proposes a theory on the nature and methodology of philosophy and rejects the ideology of the 'linguistic turn', one of the most distinctive trends of the 20th century.
This collection of essays from the Royal Institute of Philosophy, first published in 2007, looks at a wide range of topics in political philosophy ranging from issues such as terrorism, egalitarianism and the just war to considerations of the political philosophy of Edmund Burke, of philosophical liberalism and of the current state of utilitarianism in political thought. There are also treatments of the role of innocence and of emotion in political discourse
800x600Normal0falsefalsefalseEN-USX-NONEX-NONEMicrosoftInternetExplorer4 In 1947 America's premier philosopher, educator, and public intellectual John Dewey purportedly lost his last manuscript on modern philosophy in the back of a taxicab. Now, sixty-five years later, Dewey's fresh and unpretentious take on the history and theory of knowledge is finally available. Editor Phillip Deen has taken on the task of editing Dewey's unfinished work, carefully compiling the fragments and multiple drafts of each chapter that he discovered in the folders of the Dewey Papers at the Special Collections Research Center at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He has used Dewey's last known outline for the manuscript, aiming to create a finished product that faithfully represents Dewey's original intent. An introduction and editor's notes by Deen and a foreword by Larry A. Hickman, director of the Center for Dewey Studies, frame this previously lost work. In Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy, Dewey argues that modern philosophy is anything but; instead, it retains the baggage of outdated and misguided philosophical traditions and dualisms carried forward from Greek and medieval traditions. Drawing on cultural anthropology, Dewey moves past the philosophical themes of the past, instead proposing a functional model of humanity as emotional, inquiring, purposive organisms embedded in a natural and cultural environment. Dewey begins by tracing the problematic history of philosophy, demonstrating how, from the time of the Greeks to the Empiricists and Rationalists, the subject has been mired in the search for immutable absolutes outside human experience and has relied on dualisms between mind and body, theory and practice, and the material and the ideal, ultimately dividing humanity from nature. The result, he posits, is the epistemological problem of how
This encyclopedia covers all topics in the philosophy of law and social philosophy, including the history, theory, and leading theorists of the philosophy of law and social philosophy. Featuring specially commissioned entries by an international team of the world's best scholars, including 2000-plus entries ensuring its place as the definitive reference work on the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy for the foreseeable future. The encyclopedia provides: 1) a clear concise expert definition and explanation of the key concepts in the field, written by leading scholars; 2) an essential reference for experts and newcomers alike, with entries ranging from short definitions of key terms to extended explorations of major topics; 3) an investigation of questions that have traditionally defined the field, but also more recent developments, significantly updating the fields of the philosophy of law and social philosophy; 4) introductions to theories and research that have developed globally
Intro -- Contents -- 1: The Medieval Philosophers -- 2: The Birth of Modern Philosophy: The Renaissance Period -- 3: The British Empiricists: Locke, Berkeley, and Hume -- 4: Critical Philosophy: Immanuel Kant -- 5: Idealism and Materialism: Hegel and Marx -- Notes -- Glossary -- Bibliography -- Further Reading -- Picture Credits -- Index -- About the Author.
This collection of essays aims to mark a place for American philosophy as it moves into the twenty-first century. Taking their cue from the work of Peirce, James, Santayana, Dewey, Mead, Buchler, and others, the contributors assess and employ philosophy as an activity taking place within experience and culture. Within the broad background of the American tradition, the essays reveal a variety of approaches to the transition in which American philosophy is currently engaged. Some of the pieces argue from an historical dialogue with the tradition, some are more polemically involved with American philosophy's current status among the contemporary philosophical "schools," and still others seek to reveal the possibilities for the future of American philosophy. In thus addressing past, present, and future, the pieces, taken together, outline a trajectory for American philosophy that reinvents its importance from a new angle of vision
Cover -- Contents -- Contributors -- Foreword -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction to the Volume -- I: Political Philosophy -- Philosophy as Politics: Some Guesses as to the Future of Political Philosophy -- Philosophy as Logo: The Thought of Branding and the Branding of Thought -- II: Philosophy and Science -- Philosophy as Biology: Evolutionary Explanations in Philosophy -- Philosophy as Intensive Science -- Philosophy as Dynamic Reason: The Idea of a Scientific Philosophy -- III: Philosophizing from Different Places -- Philosophy as if Place Mattered: The Situation of African Philosophy -- Philosophy as a Problem in Latin America -- IV: Philosophical Method -- Philosophy as Bricolage -- Philosophy as Judgement -- Philosophy as Nomadism -- Philosophy as an 'As' -- V: Philosophy and Literature -- Philosophy as Poetry: The Intricate Evasions of As -- Philosophy as Sideshadowing: The Philosophical, the Literary, and the Fantastic -- VI: Therapeutic Philosophy -- Philosophy as Therapy -- Philosophy as Listening: The Lessons of Psychoanalysis -- VII: Professional Philosophy -- Philosophy as Profession -- Philosophy as Deep and Shallow Wisdom -- Epilogue: The Limits of Philosophy? -- Philosophy as Saying the Unsayable -- Glossary -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- W -- Notes -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y
"Every written work," Giorgio Agamben opens the preface to Infancy and History, "can be regarded as the prologue (or rather, the broken cast) of a work never penned, and destined to remain so." Although that observation applies to any work of writing, the exemplary case is that of a work of philosophy. While every written work is put to work in its nonexistent successor, a work of philosophy is bereft of even that recourse: philosophy is written in the breakdown of destiny, so that every work of philosophy must first and foremost confront the absolute abandonment of its writing. At work in each and every work of philosophy is the question, "What is a work of philosophy?" More concretely, although well-formed and rigorously structured, What is Philosophy? abstains from work. On even a quick reading that fact must be palpable. A seminar paper? An article, or book chapter? Not in the least. Nor, essentially, may the individual pieces that compose it be so developed. Fragments unrecognizable as at one time a cast, inconceivable at a future time as anything else, the position of each piece with respect to the others thwarts development in order to preserve, in its place, the tension of its absence. As such, the articulations internal to each of the three divisions, and between them, are essential. The first division — What is Philosophy? — takes seriously Deleuze and Guattari's contention in their book of the same title that "The nonphilosophical is perhaps closer to the heart of philosophy than philosophy itself, and this means that philosophy cannot be content to be understood only philosophically or conceptually, but is essentially addressed to nonphilosophers as well" — including the nonphilosopher in every philosopher. The second division — On Argument — interrogates the status and value of evidence, and self-evidence. The third division — On Not Knowing — generalizes a parenthetical observation of Agamben's on Heidegger, "If we may attempt to identify something like the characteristic Stimmung of every thinker, perhaps it is precisely this being delivered over to something that refuses itself that defines the specific emotional tonality of Heidegger's thought": Might not philosophy be defined, the phil of sophia, precisely, as what it is to be delivered over to something that refuses itself?