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)

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)

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)

ABSTRACT In this article I argue that contemporary philosophy is lost in several important senses and that its recovery requires that we understand philosophy as a fundamentally creative endeavor; an expressive, evocative, imaginative, and visionary art; an art of life, like poetry and theater, music and painting, films and sculpture, installations and architecture, graffiti and graphic novels, ballet and basketball; a province of meaning rather than, more than, fact. I show how this changed self-understanding in turn would change the questions (...) philosophers ask. And I argue that this view of philosophy requires a commitment to pluralism in both theory and practice. (shrink)

Santayana claims that animal life inevitably requires the “posit” of an external and independent environment, but the claim is shown to be both a mistake and a move from empirical science to metaphysics. Such a move originates in a quest for permanence and a plea for humility.

Abstract:This essay places the writings of John Lachs in the tradition of classical American philosophy through an appreciative and critical analysis of several central ideas: pluralism, individualism, mediation, meddling, the cost of comfort, and Stoic pragmatism. I focus on the need to move pluralism from the conceptual to practical realm, and on the need for a less self-contained, libertarian, and ultimately Romantic form of individualism. I also stress the importance of viewing philosophies as personal expressions of temperament.

Both William James and Gilles Deleuze labeled their philosophies "radical empiricism." In this context, this essay explores the similarities and differences between James's radical empiricism and Deleuze's "transcendental empiricism". These accounts then inform a view of philosophy understood as a creative art. This art demands flexible habits--what James termed "genius"--in a changing world. Accordingly, radically empirical accounts of creativity and genius are sketched.

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.

ABSTRACT Beginning with the observation that “freedom” has many meanings, this article explains that freedom is typically understood in one of three ways: as self-determination (in terms of its origin), as choice (in terms of its experience), or as power (in terms of its outcome). These accounts render freedom essentially a feature or characteristic of individuals. Against such views, this article argues that freedom is a feature of institutions and the practices those institutions make possible. In this context, it is (...) clear that only some freedoms are compatible with the institutions of democracy. Democratic freedom requires democratic institutions (now under attack from authoritarian and market forces), democratic personal ways of life (now under attack by forces that foster non-democratic habits), and a democratic, inclusive understanding of selves and their powers to love others and attend to their suffering and well-being. (shrink)

This article, with those published here by Robert Innis and Richard Shusterman, is part of a symposium devoted to exploring critically new directions in, and for, pragmatism. Each symposiast takes up this task in the context of new books by the other two. Accordingly, I examine the ways in which _Pragmatism and the Forms of Sense by Innis and _Surface and Depth by Shusterman may advance commitments to pluralism (such that the books that speak to one person may not address (...) or be alive or be instrumental for another person); time and finitude (such that change, precariousness, and difference are ineliminable, and that theorizing is always situated and provincial); and, practice (such that beliefs are habits of meaning-full, meaning-giving, embodied action). I argue, following the lines of thought set forth in my _Pragmatism, Postmodernism, and the Future of Philosophy, that these commitments as well as the practice of philosophy are thoroughly political in two specified senses -- a point that signals the deflation of theory and marks the limit of philosophy -- the enabling limit of philosophy that is honest and self-critically political and politically critical. (shrink)

This essay explores the resources and limits of pragmatism in a world marked by violence, war, and terrorism. After explicating major strengths of pragmatic social philosophy as developed in the work of John Dewey, I consider two important criticisms of this view as formulated by Randolph Bourne in the face of Dewey's support for American entry into World War I. Bourne first charged that pragmatism is a fair‐weather philosophy ineffective in deliberations among persons who do not already share its principal (...) values of freedom, individuality, education, community, and democracy. I argue that Bourne is correct, but that this does not mark a theoretical weakness or failure of pragmatism: Pragmatism has a real but limited practical value or sphere of effectiveness; it cannot do certain kinds of work in times of war (which it should oppose) and it cannot do certain kinds of work in the face of a certain kind of pluralism (which it should more fully embrace). Bourne's second charge against pragmatists is that too often they miss opportunities and waste time. Here I claim that Bourne is correct, and that his point directs pragmatists to turn away from efforts to make pragmatism better in theory and instead to engage in efforts to make practice more intelligent—something Bourne characterized as a “new Americanism” of “federated ethnic groups and traditions,” a genuine alternative to military coalition, “war in the service of democracy.” I close by outlining four such projects. (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.

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)

ABSTRACT I begin by considering the nature of philosophy understood as a genre of writing. I claim that genres are impure, porous, changing sites of inclusion and exclusion that are anything but natural kinds. Furthermore, I suggest that works of poetry, drama, painting, dance, and other arts may profitably be understood as works of philosophy and that philosophy itself may profitably be understood as an art, as performance work. I support this claim by an analysis of philosophy's canon as historicist, (...) expressivist, and self-consciously hybrid. I explicate the notion of hybridity in terms of crossings understood as encounters, resistance and opposition, and passing borders. I conclude by drawing parallels between philosophical notions of hybridity and political issues of identity, community, and outsiders. Throughout this article, I am concerned to do philosophy in a way or style consistent with the expressivist view of philosophy I present. (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)

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.

No Professor's Lectures Can Save Us: William James's Pragmatism, Radical Empiricism, and Pluralism draws critically on the full range of the writings of William James--his psychology, theory of belief and truth, radical empiricism, pluralism, and his accounts of religion, ethics, politics, and society-to develop a powerful case for an original pragmatic world view and temperament resonant with James's philosophy. In a manner that avoids the "vicious intellectualism" that James criticized, the book engages more than a century of scholarship on James, (...) and places him in conversation with both his contemporaries and more recent writers. Throughout the book's seven interwoven chapters, the author moves both with James and at times against James to address and illuminate central issues about the nature of the self, freedom, morality, community, truth, reality, and possibility. The chapters take up, in turn, James's views on: faith and freedom; habit, attention, and flourishing; inclusive and ethical lives; democratic politics; the temperament of pragmatism; a radically empirical ontology of relations; and, a pluralistic and unfinished universe. The focus throughout is practical: the book aims to show the differences in concrete lives that it makes to take up a broadly Jamesian pragmatic, radically empirical, and pluralistic personal perspective across the fallible and "ever not quite" endeavours of our finite lives. "From this unsparing practical ordeal," James noted, "no professor's lectures and no array of books can save us." In this spirit, this book does not pretend to provide, by itself, salvation. Instead, it effectively develops insights in the writings of William James that continue to constitute invaluable resources for new problems, new possibilities, and new forms of personal and social life. (shrink)

At present, the market for books about resilience appears to be immense1—and resilient. There are books about everyday resilience, resilience in response to unusual opportunities and special challenges, and resilience in the face of trauma, suffering, disease, and pandemics. These books about resilience often are addressed to persons in particular careers: government office holders and politicians; military leaders and warriors; students and teachers; doctors, lawyers, engineers, fund-raisers and philanthropists, farmers, business leaders and their organizations and supply chains, or writers. And (...) some of these books are addressed to people in specific family... (shrink)