In The Public and Its Problems, a classic of social and political philosophy, John Dewey exhibits his strong faith in the potential of human intelligence to solve the public's problems. In his characteristic provocative style, Dewey clarifies the meaning and implications of such concepts as "the public," "the state," "government," and "political democracy." He distinguishes his a posterior reasoning from a priori reasoning, which, he argues permeates less meaningful discussion of basic concepts. Dewey repeatedly demonstrates the interrelationships between fact and (...) theory. (shrink)

This is an important intervention in debates on the family and sexuality, exploring clashes over sexual values and contemporary sexual dilemmas such as AIDS.

This book will do a great deal to make Dewey more available and plausible, and to help his writings shape the imagination of a new generation of Americans.

This essay introduces some of the many interests, methodologies, and goals that the philosophical tradition of classical American philosophy, usually referred to as pragmatism, shares with feminist theories. Because pragmatism developed along with the emergence of departments of philosophy in the United States, it also begins recovering the shared history of some of the first women to receive philosophy degrees. It claims that women in and out of the academy influenced pragmatism and shows how contemporary feminist philosophers continue to challenge (...) and appropriate it. (shrink)

The author argues that the contributions of Jane Addams and the women of theHull House Settlement to pragmatist theory, particularly as formulated by JohnDewey, are largely responsible for its emancipatory emphasis. By recoveringAddams's own pragmatist theory, a version of pragmatist feminism is developedthat speaks to such contemporary feminist issues as the manner of inclusionin society of diverse persons, marginalized by gender, ethnicity, race, andsexual orientation; the strengths and limitations of standpoint theory; and theneed for feminist ethics to embrace the social (...) nature of morality. The model ofsocial democracy that informs the pragmatist shift from a detached theory ofknowing to an engaged theory of understanding differentiates it from both liberalindividualism and communitarianism. Dewey's repeated attacks on theincoherence of the model of classical liberal individualism, for example, areeven more persuasive when seen in the context of the model of the intersubjectiveconstitution of the individual that Addams develops from examining therelation of personal development to social interaction among the women residentsof Hull House. (shrink)

Though many pioneering feminists were deeply influenced by American pragmatism, their contemporary followers have generally ignored that tradition because of its marginalization by a philosophical mainstream intent on neutral analyses devoid of subjectivity. In this revealing work, Charlene Haddock Seigfried effectively reunites two major social and philosophical movements, arguing that pragmatism, because of its focus on the emancipatory potential of everyday experiences, offers feminism its most viable and powerful philosophical foundation. With careful attention to their interwoven histories and contemporary concerns, (...) _Pragmatism and Feminism_ effectively invigorates both traditions, opening them to new interpretations and appropriations and asserting their timely philosophical relevance. This foundational work in feminist theory simultaneously invites and guides future scholarship in an area of rapidly emerging significance. (shrink)

An official letter reporting the unauthorized Ph.D. examination at Harvard University of Mary Whiton Calkins records the anomalous position which women have occupied in philosophy from the beginning.

Bertrand Russell always claimed that he took part in politics not as a philosopher, but as an outraged citizen and a suffering member of the human race. This essay takes Russell at his own word and explores his untheoretical radicalism. The essay thus treats him as a latter-day Thomas Paine and engages with his views on power, property, and warfare. The implausibility of Russell's reliance on moral outrage as the fuel for radical politics is examined in a short coda on (...) the contrast between Russell and Dewey as representatives of individualist and communitarian radicalism. (shrink)

Neither philosophy in general, nor deconstruction in particular, should be thought of as a pioneering, path-breaking, tool for feminist politics. Recent philosophy, including Derrida's, helps us see practices and ideas as neither natural nor inevitable—but that is all it does. When philosophy has finished showing that everything is a social construct, it does not help us decide which social constructs to retain and which to replace.

Rockefeller (religion and philosophy, Middlebury College) combines biography and intellectual history in an introduction to the philosophy of Dewey (1859-1952) which emphasizes the evolution of the religious faith and moral vision at the heart of his thought. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Po.

This is an important book precisely because there is none other quite like it.

In Science as Social Knowledge, Helen Longino offers a contextual analysis of evidential relevance. She claims that this "contextual empiricism" reconciles the objectivity of science with the claim that science is socially constructed. I argue that while her account does offer key insights into the role that values play in science, her claim that science is nonetheless objective is problematic.

This essay argues that "the family" should be understood in functional terms:whatever functions as a family should have the legal status of a family. Theauthor's argument thus avoids two extreme positions. The first is the position ofthe hard-line "platonic" essentialists who, on grounds of nature, supernature, orcultural history, argue that a family unit must comprise heterosexual partners.The second is the position of the radical relativist, who argues that there are noessences whatsoever or that essences are purely arbitrary. Treating the family (...) infunctionalist terms, the author argues, would have positive consequences thatwould strengthen the social fabric. (shrink)

This volume of new essays brings together leading philosophers, historians, legal scholars, social thinkers, and literary critics to examine the far-reaching ...

Pragmatism has enjoyed a considerable revival in the latter part of the twentieth century, but what precisely constitutes pragmatism remains a matter of dispute. In reconstructing the pragmatic tradition in political philosophy, Matthew Festenstein rejects the idea that it is a single, cohesive doctrine. His incisive analysis brings out the commonalities and shared concerns among contemporary pragmatists while making clear their differences in how they would resolve those concerns. His study begins with the work of John Dewey and the moral (...) and psychological conceptions that shaped his philosophy. Here Festenstein lays out the major philosophic issues with which first Dewey, and then his heirs, would grapple. The book's second part traces how Dewey's approach has been differently developed, especially in the work of three contemporary pragmatic thinkers: Richard Rorty, Jurgen Habermas, and Hilary Putnam. This first full-length critical study of the relationship between the pragmatist tradition and political philosophy fills a significant gap in contemporary thought. (shrink)

This volume complements two highly successful previously published volumes of Richard Rorty's philosophical papers: Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, and Essays on Heidegger and Others. The essays in the volume engage with the work of many of today's most innovative thinkers including Robert Brandom, Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett, Jacques Derrida, Jürgen Habermas, John McDowell, Hilary Putnam, John Searle, and Charles Taylor. The collection also touches on problems in contemporary feminism raised by Annette Baier, Marilyn Frye, and Catherine MacKinnon, and considers issues (...) connected with human rights and cultural differences. Anyone with a serious interest in contemporary philosophy and what it can do for us in the modern world will enjoy this invaluable collection. (shrink)

In this book, John Dryzek criticizes the dominance of instrumental rationality and objectivism in political institutions and public policy and in the practice of political science. He argues that the reliance on these kinds of politics and to technocracies of expert cultures that are not only repressive, but surprisingly ill-equipped for dealing with complex social problems. Drawing on critical theory, he outlines an alternative program for the organization of political institutions advocating a form of communicatively rational democracy, which he terms (...) discursive democracy, that stresses the importance of active citizenship and public discourse. He draws out the limitations of instrumental rationality and investigates how policy analysis and political science may be reformed to help constitute and comprehend democracy. Discursive Democracy examines how the political process can be made more vital and meaningful. At the same time it shows how such an invigorated process will serve as a more effective agent for social problem solving. (shrink)

In this remarkable study, David A. J. Richards combines an interpretive history of culture and law, political philosophy, and constitutional analysis to explain the background, development, and growing impact of two of the most important and challenging human rights movements of our time, feminism and gay rights. Richards argues that both movements are extensions of rights-based dissent, rooted in antebellum abolitionist feminism that condemned both American racism and sexism. He sees the progressive role of such radical dissent as an emancipated (...) moral voice in the American constitutional tradition. He examines the role of dissident African Americans, Jews, women, and homosexuals in forging alternative visions of rights-based democracy. He also draws special attention to Walt Whitman's visionary poetry, showing how it made space for the silenced and subjugated voices of homosexuals in public and private culture. According to Richards, contemporary feminism rediscovers and elaborates this earlier tradition. And, similarly, the movement for gay rights builds upon an interpretation of abolitionist feminism developed by Whitman in his defense, both in poetry and prose, of love between men. Richards explores Whitman's impact on pro-gay advocates, including John Addington Symonds, Havelock Ellis, Edward Carpenter, Oscar Wilde, and André Gide. He also discusses other diverse writers and reformers such as Margaret Sanger, Franz Boas, Elizabeth Stanton, W. E. B. DuBois, and Adrienne Rich. Richards addresses current controversies such as the exclusion of homosexuals from the military and from the right to marriage and concludes with a powerful defense of the struggle for such constitutional rights in terms of the principles of rights-based feminism. (shrink)

Difference Troubles, first published in 1997, examines the implications for social theory and sexual politics of taking difference seriously. It explores the trouble difference makes not only for the social sciences, but also for the people - feminists, queer theorists, postmodernists - who champion difference. Seidman asks how social thinkers should conceptualize differences such as gender, race, and sexuality, without reducing them to an inferior status. This is a wide-ranging and sophisticated discussion of contemporary social theory and sexual politics, presented (...) with Seidman's familiar imagination and clarity. In addition, it argues persuasively for a pragmatic approach to difference troubles in theory and politics. (shrink)

Between the '60s and the '80s he argues, there transpired neither a sexual revolution nor counter-revolution but a heightened conflict over the meaning of sex, its relation to pleasure, romance, and self-identity, its proper moral role in private and public life. In part two Seidman's primary purpose is to analyze moral arguments over sexual norms and practices. He chooses the sex debates that occurred within feminism and the gay male community in the late '70s through the '80s as his sites (...) for moral engagement, as it is here that the debate over sexual ethics has been given its fullest elaboration. In conclusion, Seidman offers a pragmatic ethic that revolves around the concept of sexual and social responsibility as a bridge between libertarians and romanticists. (shrink)

One of America's foremost philosophers challenges the lost generation of the American Left to understand the role it might play in the great tradition of democratic intellectual labor that started with writers such as Walt Whitman and John Dewey.