Marxism is dialectical, Novack explains. It considers all phenomena in their development, in their transition from one state to another. And it is materialist, explaining the world as matter in motion that exists prior to and independently of human consciousness.

A defense of Marxism against the pragmatism of John Dewey, chief theoretical spokesman in the 1930s of the middle-class democratic movement in the United States.

Traces the evolution and contradictions of the philosophical outlook of empiricism as an ideological expression of the social system of capitalism.

THEIR MORALS AND OURS By Leon Trotsky MORAL EFFLUVIA During an epoch of triumphant reaction, Messrs. Democrats, Social-Democrats, Anarchists, ...

Major theories of history from the Greeks to Marxism.--The long view of history.--From Lenin to Castro; the role of individual in history making.--Uneven and combined development in world history.--The uneven development of the world revolutionary process.--Hybrid formations and the permanent revolution in Latin America.--Notes (bibliographical: p. 160).

In an underappreciated tract by George Novack, Pragmatism versus Marxism, the American Trotskyite and union organizer launched a vicious attack on John Dewey's career as a professional philosopher. He alleged that Deweys ideas were inaccessible to all but a small community of fellow academicians. While Novack concedes that Deweys philosophical inquiries had a cross-pollinating influence on other academic fields, he doubts that the beneficial products of those inquiries traveled far beyond the walls of the so-called ivory tower. (...) Larry Hickman understands Dewey's claim in Experience and Nature that philosophy serves as a liaison officer to mean that philosophers should provide a common lexicon that translates between distinct disciplinary discourses. Philosophy's role, in other words, is to facilitate interdisciplinarity. According to my thesis, both Novack and Hickman are mistaken, though in different degrees and for different reasons. The problem is that Novacks challenge is perfectly compatible with Hickmans interpretation of Deweys liaison officer claim. While Hickmans account is more warranted than Novacks, it still offers an interpretation of Dewey's expansive view of philosophy's function that is far too limited to overcome challenges resembling Novacks, or so I argue. (shrink)

In this paper, I evaluate three views of philosophical pragmatism’s practical implications for academic and non-academic or public discourses, as well as offer my own view of those implications. The first view is that of George Novack. In an underappreciated tract, Pragmatism versus Marxism, the American Trotskyite and union organizer launched a vicious attack on John Dewey’s career as a professional philosopher. He alleged that Dewey’s ideas were inaccessible to all but a small community of fellow academicians. While (...) Novack conceded that Dewey’s philosophical inquiries had a cross-pollinating influence on other academic fields, he doubted that the beneficial products of those inquiries traveled far beyond the walls of the so-called ‘ivory tower.’ Larry Hickman offers a second view. He understands Dewey’s claim in Experience and Nature that philosophy serves as a “liaison officer” to mean that philosophers should provide a common lexicon that translates between the languages of distinct disciplines. In other words, for Dewey, the role of philosophy, including philosophical pragmatism, is to facilitate interdisciplinarity. Since interdisciplinary sharing is usually confined to academic discourse, Novack’s challenge is perfectly compatible with Hickman’s interpretation of Dewey’s ‘liaison officer’ claim. Both Novack and Hickman are mistaken, though in different degrees and for different reasons. The third, and more promising, view is advanced by Robert Talisse. He cites the life and works of Sidney Hook, one of Dewey’s better-known students, as an exemplary case of a pragmatist who consistently realized his pragmatic commitments in public discourse. The most important reason for qualifying Hickman’s interpretation of Dewey’s ‘liaison officer’ claim is that the measure of pragmatism’s value is not solely the ability of pragmatists to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration, but their ability to also insert their ideas into public discourse. In my view, philosophical pragmatists, and philosophers generally, should both facilitate interdisciplinarity in academic discourse and introduce philosophical notions into public discourse—that is, serving in the dual capacity of interdisciplinary scholar and public intellectual. (shrink)

According to the 'incompatibility thesis,' tenets of Marxist and Pragmatist ethics are incompatible at a very basic level. An opening move in the strategy of defending the incompatibility thesis is to summon the ghosts of Pragmatists and Marxists past, such as John Dewey and Leon Trotsky, and recount how their positions in a debate concerning ethics proved to be fundamentally at odds. The central claim of the paper is that despite the initial promise of this strategy, scholars should be wary (...) of citing the 1930s debate between Dewey and Trotsky and the differences revealed in this exchange as evidence in support of the incompatibility thesis. Significant areas of agreement between the two thinkers, both in their exchange and in the events surrounding it, ought to make us question the claimed incompatibility between Marxist and Pragmatist ethics. After presenting its standard interpretation, the ethical dimension of the debate is brought to the fore. Two versions of the debate - one offered by a Trotskyite and contemporary of Dewey and Trotsky's (George Novack) and the other by a recent Dewey biographer (Alan Ryan) - are reviewed. Both, it is argued, exaggerate Dewey and Trotsky's differences. Next, four areas of agreement between the two thinkers' ethical views are identified, each drawing support from the content of their debate as well from select events in the years preceding and following it. By way of reconstructing the Trotsky-Dewey debate, it is possible to trace a vital thread between Pragmatist and Marxist ethics - or so it is argued. (shrink)

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Poverty is a complex, embodied reality comprising the existential, social, material, and spiritual. This paper draws from liberation theologies from North and South America, defining poverty as a religio-historical realidad. Martin Luther King Jr. observed a disembodied spirituality in many American churches who remained apathetic or antagonistic during the Civil Rights Movement. Conversely, James Cone reversed the issue by providing a theological system which utilizes hyper-materialistic presuppositions. By examining the broader Liberation tradition, a more robust theological definition of poverty can (...) be construed. Systems of poverty are systems of death, whereas enrichment are processes of life. Embodiment was used during colonial Christianity as a market identity in order to justify conquest. Liberation theologians reclaim creatureliness in their fight against poverty, and fight for restored identity. Each section of the paper addresses major trajectories within the broad Liberation tradition. North American liberationists analyze poverty from the perspective of racial oppression enforced through visible bodies. South American liberationists created a systematic, biblical definition of poverty while primarily addressing economic exploitation. Feminists addressed their male-dominated worlds addressing quality and quantity of life issues. Both North American and South American theologians agree that Christ identifies with the poor and understands their plight. In the end, Christ is understood as a liberator who is Lord over the material, spiritual, personal, and social. (shrink)

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Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race understands Black embodiment within the context of white hegemony within the context of a racist, anti-Black world. Yancy demonstrates that the Black body is a historically lived text on which whites have inscribed their projections which speak equally forcefully to whites' own self-conceptualizations.

I argue that rationally persuading another to do something for their own good is sometimes (objectionably) paternalistic. Rational persuasion may express, and be guided by, the motive of distrust in the other’s capacity to gather or weigh evidence, and may intrude on the other’s deliberative activities in ways that conflict with respecting their agency and autonomy. I also examine factors that make a difference to whether (and when) the provision of reasons is respectful.

_Plato's Thought_ offers an excellent introduction to Plato, guiding the reader through Plato's Theory of Forms, and examining his views on art, education and statecraft. This edition includes an introduction, bibliographic essay, and bibliography by Donald Zeyl.

This article argues, first, that the fundamental structure of the skeptical argument in Kripke's book on Wittgenstein has been seriously misunderstood by recent commentators. Although it focuses particularly on recent commentary by John McDowell, it emphasizes that the basic misunderstandings are widely shared by other commentators. In particular, it argues that, properly construed, Kripke offers a fully coherent reading of PI #201 and related passages. This is commonly denied, and given as a reason for rejecting Kripke's reading of Wittgenstein's text. (...) Second, it is pretty universally accepted that Kripke's Wittgenstein is a `non-factualist' about ascriptions of meaning. The article argues that, when Kripke's discussion is rightly understood and the content of `non-factualism' is clarified, there is an important sense in which the skeptical solution is not committed to non-factualism. (shrink)

African-American Philosophers brings into conversation seventeen of the foremost thinkers of color to discuss issues such as Black existentialism, racism, Black women philosophers within the academy, affirmative action and the conceptual parameters of African-American philosophy.

This paper explores how whiteness as the transcendental norm shapes the meaning structure of Black-being-in-the-world. If home is a place, a site, a dwelling of acceptance, where one is allowed to feel safe, to relax, to let one’s guard down, then being Black in white supremacist America is anathema to being at home for Black people. Indeed, to be Black is to be a stranger, something “strange,” “scary,” “dangerous,” an “outsider.” To be Black within white America belies what it means (...) to dwell, to reside, to rest. In other words, one’s sense of racialized Black embodiment remains on guard, unsettled, hyperalert. Phenomenologically, there is a profound sense of alienation, where one’s racialized body is ostracized and shunned. On this score, I examine, within the mundane context of an elevator, how the dynamics of intersubjectivity and sociality are strained through the dynamics of the white gaze. The white gaze, among other things, functions to police the meaning of the Black body and attempts to de-subjectify Black embodiment. In this way, the only real perspective is white. Black bodies are deemed devoid of a perspective on the world as there is no subjectivity, no sense of agential meaning making. One might say that Black people, on this view, constitute an essence, a typified mode of being. Unlike the existentialist thesis where existence precedes essence, Black people are locked into an objecthood, a fungible and fixed essence. This racial and racist myth is what, for Schutz, would collapse the importance that he places on intersubjectivity and sociality. Indeed, within this paper, I delineate the threatening, necro-political dimensions of whiteness that I experienced after writing the well-known article “Dear White America.” That experience cemented, for me, and for many other readers, what it means to occupy the residence of whiteness, an abode that can take one’s life in the blink of an eye. The experience of the racialized stranger means walking a tightrope, a precarious situation where one flirts with death, where one’s body is deemed hypersexual, inferior, frightening, and monstrous. Based upon this construction, the white body is deemed the site of virtue, safety, deliverer, protector of all things white and pure. Think here of “the white man’s burden” or the idea of “white manifest destiny.” Stain, blemish, taint, and defilement are indelible markers of the stranger. And based upon the logics of racial purity, one must extinguish the “vermin,” the “criminals,” the “rapists.” While I don’t explore this within the paper, Schutz scholars will immediately recognize the genocidal implications of what would have been at stake for Schutz had he not escaped Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitic gaze and his Anschluss of Austria. My sense is that Schutz would have understood not just the horrors of white racism but would appreciate the necessity of theorizing the need to rethink home as existentially capacious and intersubjectively vibrant. I conclude this paper by thinking through the concept of “breakdown”, delineating its spatial, phenomenological, and subjectively embodied implications. Breakdown, as I use the term, upends forms of white racialized habituation, creating possible embodied psychic space for what I term un-suturing, which involves undoing the machinations of white safety in the face of alterity, where the stranger invokes wonder and self-critique. (shrink)

If a person's head moves, she may or may not have moved her head, and, if she did move it, she may have actively performed the movement of her head or merely, by doing something else, caused a passive movement. And, if she performed the movement, she might have done so intentionally or not. This short array of contrasts (and others like them) has motivated questions about the nature, variety, and identity of action. Beyond the matter of her moving, when (...) the person moves her head, she may be indicating agreement or shaking an insect off her ear. Should we think of the consequences, conventional or causal, of physical behavior as constituents of an action distinct from but ‘generated by’ the movement? Or should we think that there is a single action describable in a host of ways? Also, actions, in even the most minimal sense, seem to be essentially ‘active’. But, how can we explain what this property amounts to and defend our wavering intuitions about which events fall in the category of the ‘active’ and which do not? (shrink)

This article argues, first, that the fundamental structure of the skeptical argument in Kripke’s book on Wittgenstein has been seriously misunderstood by recent commentators. Although it focuses particularly on recent commentary by John McDowell, it emphasizes that the basic misunderstandings are widely shared by other commentators. In particular, it argues that, properly construed, Kripke offers a fully coherent reading of PI #201 and related passages. This is commonly denied, and given as a reason for rejecting Kripke’s reading of Wittgenstein’s text. (...) Second, it is pretty universally accepted that Kripke’s Wittgenstein is a ‘non-factualist’ about ascriptions of meaning. The article argues that, when Kripke’s discussion is rightly understood and the content of ‘non-factualism’ is clarified, there is an important sense in which the skeptical solution is not committed to non-factualism. (shrink)