In this paper, I undertake an exploration of the similarities I find between the epistemological projects of John Dewey and Evelyn Fox Keller. These similarities, I suggest, warrant considering Dewey and Keller to share membership in an epistemological tradition, a tradition I label the "Coresponsible Option." In my examination, I focus on Dewey's and Keller's ontological assertion that we live in a world that is an inextricable mixture of certainty and chance, and on their resultant conception of (...) inquiry as a communal relationship. (shrink)

In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill argues that free speech possesses value because listening is valuable: it can advance one’s own thinking and action. However, listening becomes difficult when one finds the views of a speaker to be wrong, repellant, or even simply naïve. Everyday wisdom would have it that such cases present the greatest opportunities for growth. Is there substance to this claim? In particular, is there radical political value to be found in listening to others at the very (...) times one is most disinclined to do so? I contend that there is. This paper explores the political potential of what I call “radical listening.” What characterizes radical listening? How can it serve politically transformative purposes? To what extent are the powers of radical listening strategic, and to what extent is it valuablefor more conceptual reasons? Under what circumstances is it appropriate? What are the limits to, and dangers of, radical listening? (shrink)

This volume collects sixteen essays by contributors who chew on the diet from a number of philosophical angles and a variety of personal perspectives. Here, you can sample essays written by practitioners of the Atkins diet or one of its low-carb cousins; by people who are not on the diet; and by people who choose to keep mum about their own current relationships to carbohydrates. (We made an editorial decision to respect their right to remain silent on the matter of (...) whether or not sliced bread is the greatest thing since, well, since unsliced bread.) Not only do the writers collected here represent a range of personal eating practices; they also represent a considerable diversity of philosophical perspectives. Here you’ll find essays using the Atkins diet to illustrate ideas from such historically important philosophers as Kant, Hume, Nietzsche, Marx, and Dewey. But you’ll also find essays that examine the diet from the perspective of contemporary environmental philosophy, feminist philosophy, critical race theory, philosophy of science, and pragmatism (to mention just a few of the philosophical approaches employed). Some of the essays use Atkins to illuminate philosophy, others use philosophy to illuminate Atkins, and some do a little of both. All of the essays invite you to think—more carefully, perhaps, than you usually do—about why you eat what you choose to eat. They’re not here to tell you what to think—or what to eat, for that matter. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t going to give you plenty of ideas to digest—at least some of which might leave you feeling bit queasy. Hopefully some of them will also make you laugh—which, as we all know, is a great digestive aid. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a way to conceive of free speech that begins by redefining speech. My definition affirms the fact that speaking is an activity that goes on among people in a community. Speaking, I will suggest, is an activity that involves not only the present speaker, but also others who act as listeners and potential speakers. I contend that liberal conceptions of free speech have often proven ill equipped to address certain free speech issues, precisely because they (...) have tended to conceive of speech not as a collective activity in which participation involves both speaking and listening, but as an individualized activity in which only speakers and their utterances are relevant.Of course not all liberal notions of speech are radically individualistic; a useful distinction might be made between "solipsistic" liberal models, and "two-or-more-person" models. The latter sort do ascribe some sort of role to those who hear and respond to speech. John Stuart Mill's arguments for the value of free speech, for example, display a significant emphasis on the role of the community. Mill's model emphasizes the importance of free debate and discussion as a means by which to improve one's ideas. One of his chief arguments in support of free speech is that collecting others' responses to one's speech enables one to develop clearer, stronger ideas. But such a view only addresses others' roles as speakers--as producers of ideas. My position recognizes an even broader role for these others; I shall suggest that listening/potential speaking are themselves aspects of speaking. Thus, others' interests are do not become relevant (and eligible for protection) only when others themselves become speakers; the interests of listeners (and even "ignorers") as listeners must be taken into account in evaluating whether speech in a particular situation is free.¯ The conception I develop defines speaking as collective, thereby illuminating the role played in it by listeners/potential speakers. In the bulk of activities that go under the name "speech", a community of "others" (listeners, potential listeners, "ignorers") plays some sort of role. Those instances of speaking in which there are no relevant others may be defined in terms of their relation to speech-with-listeners. That is, they are exceptions to the general cases, and their presence in the category "speaking" can be understood by reference to one of these general cases. My original motivation for developing this conception of speech was to provide a way to illuminate those forms of sexual harassment that consist of sexist speech. I intend for the conception to characterize free speech in such a way that preventing someone from using sexist language does not (at least automatically) constitute a violation of their free speech rights, but in fact may increase the level of freedom of the community. I develop my account by first providing a critical outline of one version of a liberal conception of free speech.In the course of this outline, I examine two central liberal justifications for protecting speech; the argument from individual rights and the argument from utility. I conclude this section by making explicit my criticisms of this liberal conception. Following this, I turn to develop an alternative collective conception of speaking and of free speaking. I argue that this conception is preferable for two reasons; first, because speaking is a collective activity, and to treat it otherwise is to mask its powers and disguise the benefit or harm it may bring to users. Second, a collective conception of speaking preserves the values of free speech advanced in liberal views better than does a liberal conception. (shrink)

Deep Democracy draws upon the insights of American thinkers whose work has received less attention than the "holy trinity" of Peierce, James and Dewey, in order to investigate current philosophical problems and questions. The work does carry out a sustained interaction with the work of Dewey, in the course of exploring the nature of, obstacles to, and prospects for strengthening the fabric of democracy in the contemporary world. But Green also puts Dewey in conversation with Jane Addams, (...) Alain Locke, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Cornel West. Green draws these thinkers together—and draws out the links between them—in order to develop her notion of “deep democracy.”. (shrink)

This is the first collection of essays to evaluate John Dewey's pragmatist philosophy from a feminist perspective. The variety of feminist interpretations offered here ranges from Jane Addams's praise for his collegial efforts to resolve the problems of the inner city to contemporary comparisons of his approach with Addams's own critique of capitalism as patriarchal. In between are essays assessing Dewey's contributions to feminist theory and practice both in his lifetime and in regard to contemporary feminist approaches to (...) education, subjectivity, objectivity and truth, and social and political philosophy. At a time when feminists are questioning and developing alternatives to the scientistic value-free inquiry advocated by logical positivism, the myth of detached observation informing the epistemological turn, rationalistic ethics, and the model of an unattached, nonrelational subject, this book reminds us of Dewey's early and passionate opposition to the same assumptions and his reconstruction of philosophy as a "method of moral and political diagnoses and prognosis." It has often been remarked that Dewey's pragmatism provides a genuine alternative to the usual masculinist biases of Western philosophy, and the various essays in this book develop this claim more extensively. Contributors, besides the editor, are Jane Addams, Ana M. Martínez Alemán, Paula Droege, Marilyn Fischer, Eugenie Gatens-Robinson, Judith M. Green, Lisa Heldke, Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, Erin McKenna, Marjorie C. Miller, Elizabeth Kamarck Minnich, and Shannon Sullivan. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

This essay is an examination of stupid knowing, an attempt to catalog a particular species of knowing, and to understand when, how, and why the label "stupid" gets applied to marginalized groups of knowers. Heldke examines the ways the defining processes work and the conditions that make them possible, by considering one group of people who get defined as stupid: rural people. In part, the author intends her identification and categorization of stupid knowing to support the work of theorists (...) of resistance who have identified ways that those marginalized as stupid knowers use the cloak of their purported stupidity in the aid of their resistance. Heldke also hopes to add to the existing critique of the hierarchies of knowing an understanding of one particular way one form of knowledge is devalued: stupidification. Why are some forms of knowledge actually regarded as leaving one incapable of other forms of rational thought? (shrink)

This is an extensive anthology of the writings of John Dewey, edited by John J. McDermott.

We present a case for defining objectivity as responsibility. We do not attempt to offer new arguments on epistemological issues such as relativism or the fact-value distinction. Instead, we construct a conception of objectivity utilizing analyses from Deweyan pragmatism, feminist theory, and science studies, organizing them around the concept of responsibility. This conception of objectivity can serve as a tool to guide the process of inquiry; by suggesting that participants reflect on the question "how can this inquiry be made more (...) responsible?" it provides a guide for those struggling with the question of how to be more objective. (shrink)

This is a paper about philosophical inquiry and cooking. In it, I suggest that thinking about cooking can illuminate our understanding of other forms of inquiry. Specifically, I think it provides us with one way to circumvent the dilemma of absolutism and relativism. The paper is divided into two sections. In the first, I sketch the background against which my project is situated. In the second, I develop an account of cooking as inquiry, by exploring five aspects of recipe creation (...) and use. (shrink)

Dewey's book on Democracy and Education established his credentials in the field of education and once counted as his most important book. It has been re-published in many editions and continuously in print ever since the original publication in 1916.

Philosophy has often been criticized for privileging the abstract; this volume attempts to remedy that situation. Focusing on one of the most concrete of human concerns, food, the editors argue for the existence of a philosophy of food.

This paper explores the question: what happens to the ontology of the human individual if we take seriously the degree to which all life on this planet, including human life, is threaded through with relationships in which one creature sinks its ‘teeth’ into another and hangs on for dear life, deriving vital sustenance from that second creature, but sometimes imperiling the life of it as well? Or, to put the matter less colorfully, how ought we reconceptualize the human individual in (...) light of research into the complex relationships between humans and our resident colonies—relationships that run the gamut from mutualistic to parasitic? The relational conception of the human individual that emerges from my exploration is distinguished by two characteristics: its prioritizing of eating relationships, and its insistence on the role played by relationships that are harmful or destructive to the individual. (shrink)

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

What would it look like for a college, white in its history and predominantly white in its present reality, to create a program that responds to, and works in support of, the agenda Du Bois proposes for the “Negro university” of the 1930’s? How can a white college cease to be an obstacle to the liberation of African Americans? That is, how can a persistently white college become actively antiracist and pursue a goal of educating antiracist white students—students who could (...) work in solidarity with Black students educated in the ways Du Bois envisions? This essay sketches a project for white institutions that genuinely seek to address white racism, a system that still manifests “the determination…to keep the black world poor and make [whites] rich” (99, EBP), even now, seventy years after Du Bois published his essay. (shrink)

Bisexuality challenges familiar assumptions about love, family, and sexual desire that are shared by both heterosexual and homosexual communities. In particular, it challenges the assumption that a person's desire can and should run in only one direction. Furthermore, bisexuality questions the legitimacy, rigidity, and presumed ontological priority of the categories "heterosexual" and "homosexual." Bisexuals are often assumed to be dishonest and unreliable. I suggest that dishonesty and unreliability can be resources for undermining normative sexualities.

This paper explores two apparently-unrelated forms of authenticity. One, “restaurant authenticity,” is a subcategory of the larger category of authentic objects, focused specifically on food and especially on ethnic cuisines. “Personal authenticity” refers to a set of traits or qualities in oneself. Contrary to appearances, I argue that the two forms of authenticity intertwine in ways that merit thoughtful attentiveness. I suggest that approaching the question of the authenticity of a cuisine with an attitude of flexibility and responsiveness can, in (...) turn, constitute an activity that cultivates personal authenticity, understood as “wholehearted living.” As Diana Meyers might put it, it is itself a practice of authenticity. (shrink)

This paper explores two apparently-unrelated forms of authenticity. One, “restaurant authenticity,” is a subcategory of the larger category of authentic objects, focused specifically on food and especially on ethnic cuisines. “Personal authenticity” refers to a set of traits or qualities in oneself. Contrary to appearances, I argue that the two forms of authenticity intertwine in ways that merit thoughtful attentiveness. I suggest that approaching the question of the authenticity of a cuisine with an attitude of flexibility and responsiveness can, in (...) turn, constitute an activity that cultivates personal authenticity, understood as “wholehearted living.” As Diana Meyers might put it, it is itself a practice of authenticity. (shrink)

I think that restaurant authenticity and personal authenticity are deeply intertwined. More specifically, I think that the ways in which we define – and seek – authenticity in things, be they table setting styles, or cooking vessels or ingredients, directly shape, and are shaped by, the ways in which we understand – and cultivate – authenticity in ourselves. To the extent to which we define culinary authenticity as slavish adherence to the methods, ingredients and utensils of the source culture, we (...) not only freeze those cultures in time and ignoring their temporality, but also reinforce in ourselves a sense that we, too, must be unambiguous and unchanging in our identity, clear and complete. On the other hand, if we wish to cultivate an authentic self that is willing to be laughed at by our friends because we believe in a being they do not, well, then we should consider cultivating an understanding of restaurant authenticity that is likewise flexible, spacious and undogmatic. (shrink)

This essay explores some well-traveled territory—the area in which eating and suffering come together. I undertake two projects. First, I scrutinize some foods that are often portrayed as unambiguously either good (homegrown organic vegetables) or bad (foie gras), in an effort to complicate the stories we tell about them. What violence has been heretofore invisible in them? What compassion has been occluded? This project informs a second: an answer to the question “how should we eat?” My answer takes up Kelly (...) Oliver’s call for an ethics of “sustaining relationships.” I ground it in an alternative ontology of food, one that views foods not as substances, but as loci of relations. (shrink)

George Yancy writes that he edited White on White/Black on Black in order “to get white and Black philosophers to name and theorize their own raciated identities within the same philosophical text. … My aim was to create a teachable text, that is, to create a text whereby readers will be able to compare and engage critically the similarities and differences found within and between the critical cadre of both white philosophers and Black philosophers” (7-8). White on White/Black on Black (...) collects together essays by fourteen philosophers—seven identified as white, seven Black—who explore, by turns, their identities, the natures of whiteness and Blackness, and conceptualizations of race more generally. (shrink)

back in about 1984 or 1985, when I'd been in graduate school for a couple of years at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, I started hanging around with three chemists who shared a house. They were colleagues of my roommate, a chemistry grad student. One of them, no kidding, was named Lloyd A. Bumm, who would always introduce himself by saying, "My name is the best joke I know." Lloyd was a quirky, curious guy who often explored unusual places around (...) the City, unlike the typical chemistry grad student. For instance, he frequently would head into Chicago on Sunday mornings to go to this crazy street market he knew about. He invited me to go with him one weekend; he was looking for a power supply, whatever... (shrink)

In this collection, Reginald D. Archambault has assembled John Dewey's major writings on education. He has also included basic statements of Dewey's philosophic position that are relevant to understanding his educational views. These selections are useful not only for understanding Dewey's pedagogical principles, but for illustrating the important relation between his educational theory and the principles of his general philosophy.

This essay examines the public debate about the agricultural biotechnologies known as genetically modified organisms, as that debate is being carried out in its most dichotomizing forms in the United States. It attempts to reveal the power of sharply dichotomous thinking, as well as its limits. The essay draws on the work of Michel Serres, who uses the concept of the parasite to reconstruct or reframe fundamental dichotomies in western philosophy; it attempts a similar reframing of the public debates about (...) GMOs. The purpose of such a reframing is to create possibilities for dialogue among participants that will move beyond the polarization that characterizes much of the current debate in the U.S. (shrink)

In the Gorgias, Plato contrasts pastry cooking unfavorably with medicine, in order to illustrate the difference he believes exists between a mere knack and a genuine art. I attempt to show that Plato’s treatment of cooking distorts or misconceives that activity, and does so in order to shore up his arguments about the distinction between arts and knacks, and about the separation and hierarchy between minds and bodies. Plato’s treatment of cookery seems to be informed not by the activity of (...) cookery itself, but by medicine, the activity against which it is set. In contrast, I shall suggest that attending to foodmaking directly can challenge Plato’s art/knack and soul/body dichotomies in several important ways. My method combines close examination of the passage with more speculative reflections on the significance and consequences of Plato’s ideas about cooking. (shrink)

In this brief paper, I want to begin to explore the possibility that bi-trans dialogue can challenge those forms of oppression that are grounded in sex, gender, and sexuality. I am particularly interested in pursuing the possibility that bi-trans dialogue might result in additional critiques of the sex-gender-sexuality triad. Despite multiple challenges, and myriad historical transmogri-fications (including, it must be noted, the very late addition of gender), that triad maintains its foundationality and posits deep causal links among its three parts. (...) The effect of this causal chain is to render untenable or incomprehensi-ble the lives of all sorts of actual, living persons—lives that are anything but incomprehensible to those living them, but that are made to be so on a system in which there is still a strong tendency to hold that sex causes gender and sexuality. The resilience of this presumed causal connection contributes to ensuring the continued dominance of a two-sex, two-gender, two-sexuality system. (shrink)

This paper addresses Koch's concern about whether a coresponsible theorist can engage in inquiry with a theorist who is “beyond the pale.” On what grounds, he ash, can a coresponsible inquirer argue against one who uses a racist, sexist, or classist model for inquiry? 1 argue that, in such situations, the coresponsible inquirer brings to inquiry both a theoretical framework, or “attitude,” and a set of practical concerns which manifest that attitude.

This essay addresses Paul Thompson’s claim (made in two pieces separated by 20 years) that “you are not what you eat”; that is, that dietetics is not an ethical matter. I issue a series of challenges to Thompson’s position, all of which have a common underpinning, namely that his critiques of dietetics sound more like the sort I’d expect from an analytic philosopher than from a pragmatist. They are rooted not only in a tightly drawn (if widely philosophically accepted) definition (...) of ethics, but also in a very tightly drawn definition of diet, a definition that doesn’t take much account of context. That the stream from producer to consumer is continuous argues for not forgetting that eating is one link in a chain of activities—a link that literally cannot exist without those that come before it. Resting on this common underpinning are three specific complaints. The first two address what I take to be his implicit definitions of eating and of personhood, challenging his claims that it is possible in principle to separate self-regarding from other-regarding claims, and that purely self-regarding claims are not ethically relevant. The third pushes back on the matter of whether ethics must concern itself all and only with actions that have an impact on others. (shrink)

The notion that "nature" comes equipped with its own set of categories, enabling us to divide up everything that exists without overlap or leftovers, has considerable explanatory and prescriptive power. I examine two apparently unrelated arenas in which this notion is at work; namely, in the alleged discovery and subsequent physical "improvement" of the headwaters of the Mississippi River, and in the surgical alteration of intersex infants. In both cases, reconstruction is undertaken as a means of eliminating an ambiguity regarded (...) as "unnatural" —an "error" in nature that culture must correct. Elilminating ambiguity, in turn, enables accessibility. Fixing a person or a river firmly in a category allows us to have various kinds of access to them. For a river, the access is in part physical; it means being able to walk up to its headwaters without wearing hip waders. For a person, the access is both intellectual and social; only once I know what sex a person, is do I know how to treat them, and only then do I know whether they are an "appropriate" object of my erotic attention. (shrink)

Based on John Dewey's lectures on esthetics, delivered as the first William James Lecturer at Harvard in 1932, Art as Experience has grown to be considered internationally as the most distinguished work ever written by an American on the formal structure and characteristic effects of all the arts: architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature.

This is a classic volume in the "library of Living Philosophers" and includes a collection of essays on Dewey's work by his contemporaries at the time of the volume's publication. It also includes a biographical essay on Dewey and his replies to the assembled essays.