Drawing on the work of popular American writers, American philosophers, and Continental thinkers, this book provides a new interpretation of pragmatism and American philosophy.
Pragmatism, Postmodernism and the Future of Philosophy is a vigorous and dynamic confrontation with the task and temperament of philosophy today. In this energetic and far-reaching new book, Stuhr draws persuasively on the resources of the pragmatist tradition of James and Dewey, and critically engages the work of Continental philosophers like Adorno, Foucault, and Deleuze, to explore fundamental questions of how we might think and live differently in the future. Along the way, the book addresses important issues in public policy, (...) university administration, spirituality, and the notion of community and its meaning in a global world of difference. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned with the future of philosophy, and the ways in which philosophical thinking can help us live better, more fulfilling lives. (shrink)
Here, in a single volume, is a comprehensive and definitive account of pragmatism and classical American philosophy. Pragmatism and Classical American Philosophy, now revised and expanded in this second edition, presents the essential writings of the major philosophers of this tradition: Charles S. Peirce, William James, Josiah Royce, George Santayana, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead. Illuminating introductory essays, written especially for this volume by distinguished scholars of American philosophy, provide biographical and cultural context as well as original critical and (...) interpretive perspectives. This edition also includes all new selections and interpretive essays that situate pragmatism and classical American philosophy in a wider American philosphical context, including: Ralph Waldo Emerson and transcendentalism; Jane Addams, feminism, and writings of American women; Borden Parker Bowne, personalism, and idealism; Alain Locke and Afro-American thought; and John Herman Randall, Jr., nationalism and realism. Up-to-date suggestions for further reading will benefit both introductory and advanced readers. This American intellectual tradition speaks insightfully, creatively, and critically to our contemporary global society and its pressing problems. In unmatched quality and quantity, Pragmatism and Classical American Philosophy provides the resources necessary to understand and act on these insights. (shrink)
John J. Stuhr, a leading voice in American philosophy, sets forth a view of pragmatism as a personal work of art or fashion. Stuhr develops his pragmatism by putting pluralism forward, setting aside absolutism and nihilism, opening new perspectives on democracy, and focusing on love. He creates a space for a philosophy that is liable to failure and that is experimental, pluralist, relativist, radically empirical, radically democratic, and absurd. Full color illustrations enhance this lyrical commitment to a new version of (...) pragmatism. (shrink)
Among the titles are democracy as cooperative inquiry, validating women's experiences pragmatically, and liberal irony and social reform. Paper edition (unseen), $19.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.
This article explores the place of values in economic theory and practical decision-making and policy. I argue that Arjo Klamer's pragmatism does not sufficiently distinguish what is valued from what is valuable, and does not sufficiently attend to the experimental inquiry needed to move from the former to the latter. I outline a more robust pragmatism, explaining how it avoids: treating values in isolation from facts; rendering claims about values subjective; and, identifying what is preferred or chosen or valued with (...) what is preferable or worthy of choice or valuable. From this perspective, I explain the severely limited value of rational choice theory, and describe its practical problems and the need for a more self-critical, pragmatic treatment of values in economics. (shrink)
Philosophy is shaped by life and life is shaped by philosophy. This is reflected in The Philosophical I, a collection of 16 autobiographical essays by prominent philosophers.
This anthology contains selections from the writings of early American thinkers, the pragmatists, and many later twentieth-century philosophers in America. Accordingly, the book is divided into three major parts: the first deals with Edwards, Franklin, Jefferson, Emerson, and Thoreau; the second includes Fiske, Wright, Peirce, James, Dewey, and Royce; and the long third section contains selections from the early realists, Thomists, process philosophers, systematic metaphysicians, phenomenologists, new empiricists, language philosophers, and moral philosophers. Each chapter in each of the three parts (...) begins with a brief introduction by the editor, and concludes with “study questions” and a bibliography. Finally, there is a brief epilogue, “Is There an American Philosophy?”, which reviews some of the literature concerning the defining characteristics, if any, of philosophical thought in America. (shrink)
This anthology contains selections from the writings of early American thinkers, the pragmatists, and many later twentieth-century philosophers in America. Accordingly, the book is divided into three major parts: the first deals with Edwards, Franklin, Jefferson, Emerson, and Thoreau; the second includes Fiske, Wright, Peirce, James, Dewey, and Royce; and the long third section contains selections from the early realists, Thomists, process philosophers, systematic metaphysicians, phenomenologists, new empiricists, language philosophers, and moral philosophers. Each chapter in each of the three parts (...) begins with a brief introduction by the editor, and concludes with “study questions” and a bibliography. Finally, there is a brief epilogue, “Is There an American Philosophy?”, which reviews some of the literature concerning the defining characteristics, if any, of philosophical thought in America. (shrink)
Charles S. Peirce, William James, Josiah Royce, George Santayana, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead: each of these individuals is an original and historically important thinker; each is an essential contributor to the period, perspective, and tradition of classical American philosophy; and each speaks directly, imaginatively, critically, and wisely to our contemporary global society, its distant possibilities for improvement, and its massive, pressing problems. From the initiative of pragmatism in approximately 1870 to Dewey's final work after World War II, classical (...) American philosophy has come to represent the critical articulation of attitudes, outlooks, and forms of life imbedded in the culture from which it arose. John Stuhr brings together the works of these foremost thinkers to present a comprehensive collection in American philosophy. Extensive introductory essays, written especially for this volume by leading scholars of the subject, provide not only the bibliographical and cultural contexts necessary to a full appreciation of each thinker, but also original critical and interpretive philosophical observations. (shrink)
The articles in this issue of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy address a cluster of related philosophical themes: crossings, hybrids, and genres. These themes have many related aspects. Some of them are metaphilosophical. They concern the nature of philosophy itself and the nature of philosophical transgression and transformation; the relation of philosophy to other disciplines, genres, and practices; the value of philosophy at both individual and societal levels; the multiple forms of different philosophies; the conditions that make possible originality and (...) new forms of expression; and the roles within philosophy of narrative and fact, imagination and experiment, and personal modes of .. (shrink)
In April 2010, the American Philosophies Forum held a symposium called "The Future of Ethics" at Emory University. Many of the twenty-four presentations, revised in light of significant discussion at the symposium, now are published in this and the subsequent issue of this journal.The notion of "the future of ethics" is intentionally multivocal. It includes, but is not limited to, attention to the nature of ethics and ethical life; the relation of ethics to aesthetics, politics, logic, sciences, and other fields; (...) the appropriate methods or attunements for thinking about ethics; the roles and relations of reasoning, intuitions, feelings and desires, hopes, and habits in ethics and ethical life; the personal and .. (shrink)
Truth is a perennial topic in philosophy. Even so, some philosophers seem always eager and ready to take up this topic anew, alive, and ever-optimistic about possessing the truth about truth and ever-dedicated to converting others to their own view. On the other hand, other philosophers appear exhausted or annoyed by a topic that apparently won't go away and hope to inhabit—or imagine themselves already living in—some post-truth paradise from which they periodically mail "wish you were here" postcards. Still others (...) seem simply otherwise and elsewhere occupied, very busy, without time for truth. The overall result of all this is clear enough: Truth is a site of perennial difference, disagreement, and contestation.... (shrink)
This essay explores four questions: Is there an indifferent dimension to our lives?; what is the relation of indifference to our everyday differentiated meanings, interpretations, preferences, and values?; is it possible to develop an attunement to an indifferent dimension of life and, if so, how?; and, is a life marked by or attuned to indifference better than a life without it? In response, through a concrete example and analysis of a novel and a poem, I characterize indifference as both negation (...) and as a kind of power, engaging the views developed by Charles Scott. I conclude by linking indifference to a project of description, and show the limits to this project, whether it is labeled phenomenological or pragmatic. (shrink)
More than one hundred years ago in a 1917 essay titled "The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy," American philosopher John Dewey wrote: I believe that philosophy in America will be lost between chewing a historic cud long since reduced to woody fibre, or an apologetics for lost causes, or a scholastic, schematic formalism, unless it can somehow bring to consciousness America's own needs and its own implicit principle of successful action. This need and principle, I am convinced, is the (...) necessity of a deliberate control of policies by the method of intelligence, an intelligence which is not the faculty of intellect honored in text-books and neglected elsewhere, but which is the sum-total of... (shrink)
Examines Nietzsche's complex attitudes toward religion and his understanding of how particular religions and deities affect the intellectual, moral, and spiritual lives of their various proselytes and adherents.
