Sometimes Always True: Undogmatic Pluralism in Politics, Metaphysics, and Epistemology

Jeremy Barris

Published by Fordham University Press 2015

Sometimes Always True

Undogmatic Pluralism in Politics, Metaphysics, and Epistemology

Jeremy Barris

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823262168

Overview
Contents

About this book

Sometimes Always True aims to resolve, through a re-understanding of the nature of sense, three connected problems central to philosophical thought: that genuine pluralism must make room for outlooks that exclude pluralism, that philosophy ultimately explores sense as a whole and so must in some way step outside of sense, and that our experience of the deep questions of life therefore similarly involves suspensions of sense itself.

Author / Editor information

Barris Jeremy :

JEREMY BARRIS is Professor of Philosophy at Marshall University and author, most recently, of The Crane’s Walk: Plato, Pluralism, and the Inconstancy of Truth (Fordham).

Reviews

—Nicholas Rescher:
“Students of philosophy and its history have long wondered how any useful knowledge can be obtained in a field where there is little but disagreement and discord. Jeremy Barris’s Sometimes Always True proposes a novel, insightful, and widely informed response to this conundrum.”

—Irene Klaver:
A remarkably ambitious, challenging and thoroughly engaging book. Barris’s mastery of a great variety of writings, including literary texts, takes the reader on a fascinating journey through metaphysics, humor, dreams, politics and epistemology. Although he deals with these themes on the highest level, the read never turns into a rough ride. Arguing with stunning clarity, Barris stays solidly at the wheel and brings his readers along in a fearless and cogent narrative, rife with innovative and original thought.

—Paul Livingston:
“Jeremy Barris analyzes the philosophical paradoxes of commitment and belief with a view to extracting their general structure and offering real ideas about how to live with them, as we must in order to live together successfully in contemporary societies. This is a topical and timely analysis that moves beyond considering the philosophical problems of pluralism and relativism in the abstract to show how we might begin to deal with them here and now.”

—Matthew Moore:
Sometimes Always Never is an exceptionally well-written and clear argument about why logical contradictions can be both permissible and unavoidable, and about how experiencing such a contradiction can help us simultaneously reaffirm the rightness of our beliefs while also recognizing that there may be other beliefs with an equally good claim to being right. Barris persuasively argues that this is neither nonsense nor merely playing with words, and shows how this experience of recognizing the relative correctness of one's views is both very common and extremely important.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction: Sometimes Always True Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Comparing Different Cultural or Theoretical Frameworks: Davidson, Rorty, and the Nature of Truth Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	32
2. An Internal Connection between Logic and Rhetoric, between Frameworks, and a Legitimate Foundation for Knowledge Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	54
3. Pluralism, Legitimate Self- Contradiction, and a Proposed Solution to Some Shared Fundamental Problems of Political and Mainstream Epistemology Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	78
4. The Logic of Genuine Political Pluralism and Oscar Wilde’s Artificiality of Wit and Style Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	102
5. Foucault’s Pluralism and the Possibility of Truth and of Ideology Critique Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	129
6. How to Be Properly Unnatural: The Metaphysics of Heterosexual Normativity and the Importance of the Concepts of Essence and Nature for Pluralism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	150
7. The Necessary Inconclusiveness of Heideggerian Interpretation of Metaphysics and the Undecided Nature of Essential or Logical Connection Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	179
8. The Formal Structure of Metaphysics and The Importance of Being Earnest Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	202
9. The Logical Structure of Dreams and Their Relation to Reality Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	231
Coda: Overviews Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	259
References Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	281
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	293

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Pages
- Main content: 320
Keywords: pluralism; metaphysics; epistemology; political theory; queer theory; feminism; logic; contradiction

eBook

Published: January 2, 2015
ISBN: 9780823262168