The attempt to connect philosophy and social hope has been one of the key distinguishing features of critical theory as a tradition of enquiry. This connection has been questioned forcefully from the perspective of a post-philosophical pragmatism, as articulated by Rorty. In this article I consider two strategies that have been adopted by critical theorists in seeking to reject Rorty's suggestion that we should abandon the attempt to ground social hope in philosophical reason. We consider argumentative strategies of the philosophical (...) anthropologist and of the rational proceduralist. Once the exchanges between Rorty and these two strands of critical theory have been reconstructed and assessed, an alternative perspective emerges. It is argued that philosophical reasoning best helps to sustain social hope in a rapidly changing world when we consider it in terms of the practice of democratic criticism. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe article investigates which epistemological considerations justify how religious life fits into the school life, and examines the debate on the participation of religiosity in the education system. I do this, first, by addressing the pedagogical implications of the distinction between public and private as maintained by Richard Rorty and, second, by reconsidering the pluralist metaphysics held by William James as an alternative path to understanding and re-addressing the question of religious life in school life. The article analyzes how the (...) strict separation of projects of individual self-creation and the public sphere, as defended by Rorty, poses problems in implementing pluralism in democratic societies and their educational institutions. (shrink)

Vladimir Nabokov, Russian-American novelist and lepidopterist, was neither a didactician nor a moralist. His images, which he painted with his words, are deceptive and contradictory. But the strangest thing happens. It turns out that Nabokov disliked Freud and painted images of the psychoanalyst that seem to become stale and mechanical. Literary critics, philosophers, and others have had a tendency to criticize Nabokov for suffering from influence-anxiety when it comes to Freud, hence making Nabokov into a dull paternalist with strong and (...) prejudiced convictions. My suggestion is that we go beyond the ‘anxiety of influence’ viewpoint and address the issue through a phenomenological study and base our judgments on the experiences of the phenomena that shine through different texts of Nabokov. Thus it will be possible to see, I argue, that Nabokov’s rhetorical caricature may evoke experiences that are educative. At the same time, Nabokov’s treatment of Freud can be cast in a new light. (shrink)

What seems clear from the experiences of researchers in CogNovo is that the concept of cognitive innovation offered a new vocabulary, and thus a clear space, within which creativity could be explored free from the baggage of prior conflicting definitions. The concept was, from its inception, intrinsically ironic in the sense that Rich⁠ard Rorty developed the term. Although initially we did not fully appreciate the potential this offered, approaching creativity under the rubric of cognitive innova⁠tion led to novel ideas that (...) would not have emerged if we had taken a more con⁠ven⁠tional discipline-led approach. One example was expressing creativity as a mathematical function and as a media form in a parallel text. The absurdity of describing a process of such complexity in this form did not pass us by. However, this self-conscious irony, not a common rhetorical strategy in the sciences, clarified our understanding of cognitive innovation as a recursive function that allowed us to express a continuity between the basic life processes of exploration, innovation and the construction of the self, and the social and cultural ramifications of these processes; creativity. It led us to conclude that cognitive innovation furnishes a view of the self as a dynamic entity, for whom reality and novelty are contingent on one’s current state, both of which can change and be changed, and offers a means for enhancing the rigor of the current debate on what counts as creative. It also reveals the value of irony in not disavowing the inevitability of multiple perspectives and prospectives on reality, and consequently offers a way to avoid unnecessary reductivism. In this paper, we will argue, as we take the insights of CogNovo forward, that irony offers a hitherto unappreciated strategy for collaborative research. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: Richard Rorty est souvent vu comme une sorte de clone américain de Derrida et considéré, en tant que tel, comme irresponsable à la fois au plan philosophique et au plan politique. Je soutiens que c’est là une caricature. Rorty propose à la fois une version unifiée, pénétrante et raisonnée du pragmatisme, et une métaphilosophie originale et stimulante, imprégnée de la tradition analytique et qui, tout en lui adressant un défi de taille, lui reste néanmoins tout à fait accessible. Tel (...) est mon propos principal. J’ai deux sous-thèmes: 1) que Rorty a été caricaturé par la gauche; et 2) qu’une position comme celle de Rorty et celle du marxisme analytique peuvent être compatibles. (shrink)

RésuméRichard Rorty est souvent vu comme une sorte de clone américain de Derrida et considéré, en tant que tel, comme irresponsable à la fois au plan philosophique et au plan politique. Je soutiens que c'est là une caricature. Rorty propose à la fois une version unifiée, pénétrante et raisonnée du pragmatisme, et une métaphilosophie originale et stimulante, imprégnée de la tradition analytique et qui, tout en lui adressant un défi de taille, lui reste néanmoins tout à fait accessible. Tel est (...) mon propos principal. J'ai deux sous-thèmes: 1) que Rorty a été caricaturé par la gauche; et 2) qu'une position comme celle de Rorty et celle du marxisme analytique peuvent être compatibles. (shrink)

The leading question of this article is whether an examination of the complex relations between individuality and strangeness can help us to understand the essence of tolerance, viz. bearing the unbearable. The first section concludes, from a historical survey of the opposition between freedom of religion and tolerance, that the former relates to a neutral kind of tolerance, whereas the idea of tolerance in the strict sense presupposes a person, who is committed to the truth of his faith. This leads (...) to the idea of a committed kind of tolerance. Because in contemporary society, man is aware that this committed tolerance runs the risk of deteriorating into a militant intolerance, he prefers a neutral kind of tolerance. A critical analysis the kind of person, who adopts this attitude of neutral tolerance, shows a closed ‘self’, who wants to be left alone with his own convictions. The philosophy of Rorty, which I discuss in the third section, presents an excellent illustration of this idea of the self. It is shown, that this postmodern concept of the self is untenable, since nobody finally wants to be left alone with his own convictions, but necessarily strives for their social recognition. Thus, a completely neutral kind of tolerance ignores the fact that people always are committed to their own convictions, and dependent on recognition by others. As I show in the forth section, Charles Taylor develops another way to solve the problem of tolerance, viz. a dialogue between diverging ideas of the self, leading to the recognition of specific ways of life. However, this way of dealing with the problem of tolerance underestimates the importance of the incarnated character of our convictions, and overrates our capacity to accept and integrate patterns of life that are repugnant to us. In the last section, I show through a critical analysis of Kristeva’s essay The stranger within us what committed tolerance means. It means not yielding to our tendency to consider and treat the stranger as someone diabolical, but to recognize the fact that what frightens us in him, is often the strangeness within ourselves, with which we haven’t come to terms. (shrink)

Straipsnis skiriamas metaetikos kritikai. Tai bandymas pagilinti Ronaldo Dworkino kritiką, kuri kai kuriais atžvilgiais yra ribota ir nenuosekli. Šis autorius mano, kad metaetika yra tam tikras etikos variantas, tačiau neatskleidžia jos turinio. Dworkinas teisus sakydamas, kad metaetiką formuoja Apšvietos epistemologinės prielaidos, tačiau jis nemato, kad už to stovi ir romantizmas. Metaetika gali būti aiškinama kaip romantinio mąstymo forma. Pagal nusistovėjusį požiūrį, ši disciplina dažniausiai siejama su Apšvieta. Straipsnio tikslas – įrodyti romantiškas metaetinio mąstymo prielaidas.

My concern in this thesis is with the transcendental question concerning the condition of possibility for social science. I argue that for social scientific knowledge to obtain one must: have a conception of knowledge formation as theoretically mediated and fallible; and, social scientific knowledge claims must be about an object of study which conceptualises social structure as an enablement as well as an external constraint upon agency. This means: arguing for an anti-foundational epistemology, which avoids becoming truth-relativism, by being complemented (...) with a metaphysical realist ontology ; and, using a social realist meta-theory of emergent properties to explain how methodology has a conceptually mediated and fallible access to social reality. Developing a critical examination of the presuppositions of social scientific knowledge also means, afortiori, using realism as an underlabourer. The negative underlabouring role is to proscribe theories based on some form of epistemic immediacy, or being-knowing identity. It therefore means rejecting positivist, empiricist and essentialist versions of social science. The form of essentialism dealt with is called the sociological logic of immediacy, and this pertains to definitive ontologies of social structures or human being. Whereas the use of positivist and empiricist epistemology as a positive underlabourer produces a methodology that conflates the real into the 'actual', the use of an essentialist ontology makes methodology either redundant, or an exercise in arbitrary verificationism. Against this, realist anti-foundationalism can act as apositive underlabourer for the social sciences if it is complemented by a social realist ontology of emergent properties, to act as a metatheory which guides methodology. In developing this argument my chief concern is to show that realism is a more adequate position than post-Wittgensteinian positions which focus on 'practices' and how people 'go on' in 'forms of life'. 'Adequacy' in this sense pertains to epistemological discussions about the status of knowledge, together with ramifications of post-Wittgensteinianism for knowledge of the socio-political realm. This means providing a critique of Rorty and Giddens, after dealing with the issue of empiricism. Although Rorty's critique of 'postmodernism' as essentialist is accepted. Whereas realism can explain how we have a conceptually mediated and fallible knowledge of reality, including social reality, post-Wittgensteinian positions fall into truth-relativism and essentialist conceptions of human being and social structures. (shrink)