This book explores numerous ways in which vulgar language, grotesque appearances, and horrific experiences affect us in our relationships with others and with ourselves. Its compelling case studies and revealing interviews bring together ideas and issues that are a lingering, but unexplored, focus in psychotherapy literature. The grotesque and the vulgar are major inhabitants of the vast unconscious. Their variations and haunting presence are anticipated and reflected in the transactions of everyday life. So too do they manifest themselves in our (...) social institutions, maintaining their presence in the seven lively arts as much as in mental hospitals, rehabilitation facilities, and psychotherapy practices. Most of all, the grotesque and vulgar challenge the contemporary search for meaning and sanity. This book will help the psychotherapist better deal with the rich soil of grotesqueness and vulgarity in the interplay between the psychotherapy patient and the experiential world. Reading it will open new vistas of treatment possibilities. As each contributing author explores the potentialities and obstacles inherent in the competing and complementing forces of the grotesque and socially condoned sensibilities, you will learn about the value of the grotesque in the consultation room. You will further learn how the flaunted and unconscious vulgarities of everyday life enrich the creative vision inherent in therapeutic conversations. Most important, you will be challenged by what it means to abide with the sometimes pesky vulgar and grotesque guises in each of your client's lives. Here's a sample of what you'll find in Inhabitants of the Unconscious: The Grotesque and the Vulgar in Everyday Life: Louis Fierman's recollection of his treatment of a Nazi soldier, which offers fascinating therapeutic possibilities when issues of the grotesqueare at hand an extraordinary analysis of the role of the grotesque in artwork, with special attention paid to the work of Hieronymus Bosch a fascinating look at Sigmund Freud's perspective on the grotesque&#; and what it says about Freud himself the remarkable formative experiences of children with craniofacial difference &#;an exposition that will enrich your therapeutic interventions with children and adolescents who face atypical challenges extraordinary case studies&#;by Robert Marchesani about his therapeutic endeavors with a Vietnam veteran caught in the aftermath of his incestuous past and by E. Mark Stern about a dying woman who was unable to detach from, but ultimately vivified by an unyielding masochistic fixation. (shrink)

In Overdoing Democracy, Robert B. Talisse turns the popular adage "the cure for democracy's ills is more democracy" on its head. Indeed, he argues, the widely recognized, crisis-level polarization within contemporary democracy stems from the tendency among citizens to overdo democracy. When we make everything--even where we shop, the teams we cheer for, and the coffee we drink--about our politics, we weaken our bonds to one another, and work against the fundamental goals of democracy. Talisse advocates civic friendship built (...) around shared endeavors that we must undertake with fellow citizens who do not necessarily share our political affinities as the best way we can obtain a healthier, more sustainable democracy. (shrink)

Among moral attributes true virtue alone is sublime. … [I]t is only by means of this idea [of virtue] that any judgment as to moral worth or its opposite is possible. … Everything good that is not based on a morally good disposition … is nothing but pretence and glittering misery. 1.

This is the first book-length study in any language to examine in detail and critically assess the second part of Kant's ethics- -an empirical, impure part, which determines how best to apply pure principles to the human situation. Drawing attention to Kant's under-explored impure ethics, this revealing investigation refutes the common and long-standing misperception that Kants ethics advocates empty formalism. Making detailed use of a variety of Kantian texts never before translated into English, author Robert B. Louden reassesses the (...) strengths and weaknesses of Kantian ethics as a whole, once the second part is re-admitted to its rightful place within Kant's practical philosophy. (shrink)

" In Democratic Hope, Robert B. Westbrook examines the varieties of classical pragmatist thought in the work of John Dewey, William James, and Charles Peirce, ...

Why democracy? Most often this question is met with an appeal to some decidedly moral value, such as equality, liberty, dignity or even peace. But in contemporary democratic societies, there is deep disagreement and conflict about the precise nature and relative worth of these values. And when democracy votes, some of those who lose will see the prevailing outcome as not merely disappointing, but morally intolerable. How should citizens react when confronted with a democratic result that they regard as intolerable? (...) Should they revolt, or instead pursue democratic means of social change? In this book, Robert Talisse argues that each of us has reasons to uphold democracy - even when it makes serious moral errors - and that these reasons are rooted in our most fundamental epistemic commitments. His original and compelling study will be of interest to a wide range of readers in political philosophy and political theory. (shrink)

The Pragmatism Reader is the essential anthology of this important philosophical movement. Each selection featured here is a key writing by a leading pragmatist thinker, and represents a distinctively pragmatist approach to a core philosophical problem. The collection includes work by pragmatism's founders, Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, as well as seminal writings by mid-twentieth-century pragmatists such as Sidney Hook, C. I. Lewis, Nelson Goodman, Rudolf Carnap, Wilfrid Sellars, and W.V.O. Quine. This reader also includes the most important (...) work in contemporary pragmatism by philosophers like Susan Haack, Cornel West, Hilary Putnam, Richard Rorty, Cheryl Misak, and Robert Brandom. Each selection is a stand-alone piece--not an excerpt or book chapter--and each is presented fully unabridged. The Pragmatism Reader challenges the notion that pragmatism fell into a midcentury decline and was dormant until the advent of "neopragmatism" in the 1980s. This comprehensive anthology reveals a rich and highly influential tradition running unbroken through twentieth-century philosophy and continuing today. It shows how American pragmatist philosophers have contributed to leading philosophical debates about truth, meaning, knowledge, experience, belief, existence, justification, and freedom. Covers pragmatist philosophy from its origins to today Features key writings by the leading pragmatist thinkers Demonstrates the continuity and enduring influence of pragmatism Challenges prevailing notions about pragmatism Includes only stand-alone pieces, completely unabridged Reflects the full range of pragmatist themes, arguments, concerns, and commitments. (shrink)

In Kant's Human Being, Robert B. Louden continues and deepens avenues of research first initiated in his highly acclaimed book, Kant's Impure Ethics.

In Kant's Human Being, Robert B. Louden continues and deepens avenues of research first initiated in his highly acclaimed book, Kant's Impure Ethics.

Pragmatism's ambiguous legacy -- Can democracy be a way of life? -- Peirce, inquiry, and politics -- Pluralism and the Peircean view -- Posner's pragmatic realism -- The case of Sidney Hook -- Epilogue : the eclipse narrative revisited.

'Modernity' has come to refer both to a contested historical category and to an even more contested philosophical and civilisational ideal. In this important collection of essays Robert Pippin takes issue with some prominent assessments of what is or is not philosophically at stake in the idea of a modern revolution in Western civilisation, and presents an alternative view. Professor Pippin disputes many traditional characterisations of the distinctiveness of modern philosophy. In their place he defends claims about agency, freedom, (...) ethical life and modernity itself, all of which are central to the German idealist philosophical tradition, and in particular, to the writings of Hegel. Having considered the Hegelian version of these issues the author explores other accounts as found in Habermas, Strauss, Blumenberg, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. (shrink)

This fresh and original book argues that the central questions in Hegel's practical philosophy are the central questions in modern accounts of freedom: What is freedom, or what would it be to act freely? Is it possible so to act? And how important is leading a free life? Robert Pippin argues that the core of Hegel's answers is a social theory of agency, the view that agency is not exclusively a matter of the self-relation and self-determination of an individual (...) but requires the right sort of engagement with and recognition by others. Using a detailed analysis of key Hegelian texts, he develops this interpretation to reveal the bearing of Hegel's claims on many contemporary issues, including much-discussed core problems in the liberal democratic tradition. His important study will be valuable for all readers who are interested in Hegel's philosophy and in the modern problems of agency and freedom. (shrink)

The origins of pragmatism -- Pragmatism and epistemology -- Pragmatism and truth -- Pragmatism and metaphysics -- Pragmatism and ethics -- Pragmatism and politics -- Pragmatism and environmental ethics.

Republicans hold that freedom is non-domination rather than non-interference. This entails that any instance of interference that does not involve domination is not freedom-lessening. The case for thinking of freedom as non-domination proceeds mostly by way of a handful of highly compelling cases in which it seems intuitive to say of some person that he or she is unfree despite being in fact free from interference. In this essay, I call attention to a kind of case which directs attention to (...) what seems to me to be a highly counterintuitive element of the republican conception of freedom. (shrink)

Over a career spanning American history from the 1880s to the 1950s, John Dewey sought not only to forge a persuasive argument for his conviction that "democracy is freedom" but also to realize his democratic ideals through political activism. Widely considered modern America's most important philosopher, Dewey made his views known both through his writings and through such controversial episodes as his leadership of educational reform at the turn of the century; his support of American intervention in World War I (...) and his leading role in the Outlawry of War movement after the war; and his participation in both radical and anti-communist politics in the 1930s and 40s. Robert B. Westbrook reconstructs the evolution of Dewey's thought and practice in this masterful intellectual biography, combining readings of his major works with an engaging account of key chapters in his activism. Westbrook pays particular attention to the impact upon Dewey of conversations and debates with contemporaries from William James and Reinhold Niebuhr to Jane Addams and Leon Trotsky. Countering prevailing interpretations of Dewey's contribution to the ideology of American liberalism, he discovers a more unorthodox Dewey—a deviant within the liberal community who was steadily radicalized by his profound faith in participatory democracy. Anyone concerned with the nature of democracy and the future of liberalism in America—including educators, moral and social philosophers, social scientists, political theorists, and intellectual and cultural historians—will find John Dewey and American Democracy indispensable reading. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis essay covers two criticisms of Brennan’s Against Democracy. The first charges that the public political ignorance findings upon which Brennan relies are not epistemically nuanced to th...

PART ONE ALEXANDER OF APHRODISIAS— AN INTRODUCTION A study of a work by Alexander of Aphrodisias must be prefaced by some general introduction to the author ...

This book critically evaluates liberalism, the dominant attempt in the tradition of political philosophy to provide a philosophical foundation for democracy, and argues for a conception of deliberative democracy to meet this need.

This is the most important book on Hegel to have appeared in the past ten years. Robert Pippin offers a completely new interpretation of Hegel's idealism, which focuses on Hegel's appropriation and development of kant's theoretical project. Hegel is presented neither as a precritical metaphysician nor as a social theorist, but as a critical philosopher whose disagreements with Kant, especially on the issue of intuitions, enrich the idealist arguments against empiricism, realism and naturalism. In the face of the dismissal (...) of absolute idealism as either unintelligible or implausible, Pippin explains and defends an original account of the philosophical basis for Hegel's claims about the historical and social nature of selfconsciousness, and so of knowledge itself. (shrink)

Democracy is not only a form of government. It is also the moral aspiration for a society of self-governing political equals who disagree about politics. Citizens are called on to be active democratic participants, but they must also acknowledge one another's political equality. Democracy thus involves an ethic of civility among opposed citizens. Upholding this ethic is more difficult than it may look. When the political stakes are high, the opposition seems to us tobe advocating injustice. Sustaining Democracy poses the (...) question: why should we uphold democratic relations with those whose politics we despise? (shrink)

It is argued that at the center of Hegel’s phenomenology of consciousness is the notion that experience is shaped by identification and sacrifice. Experience is the process of self - constitution and self -transformation of a self -conscious being that risks its own being. The transition from desire to recognition is explicated as a transition from the tripartite structure of want and fulfillment of biological desire to a socially structured recognition that is achieved only in reciprocal recognition, or reflexive recognition. (...) At the center of the Hegelian notion of selfhood is thus the realization that selves are the locus of accountatibility. To be a self, it is concluded, is to be the subject of normative statuses that refer to commitments; it means to be able to take a normative stand on things, to commit oneself and undertake responsibilities. Key Words: commitments • desire • experience • G.W.F.Hegel • identity • recognition • risk • sacrifice • self -consciousness • self - constitution. (shrink)

Anthropology, History, and Education, first published in 2007, contains all of Kant's major writings on human nature. Some of these works, which were published over a thirty-nine year period between 1764 and 1803, had never before been translated into English. Kant's question 'What is the human being?' is approached indirectly in his famous works on metaphysics, epistemology, moral and legal philosophy, aesthetics and the philosophy of religion, but it is approached directly in his extensive but less well-known writings on physical (...) and cultural anthropology, the philosophy of history, and education which are gathered in the present volume. Kant repeatedly claimed that the question 'What is the human being?' should be philosophy's most fundamental concern, and Anthropology, History, and Education can be seen as effectively presenting his philosophy as a whole in a popular guise. (shrink)

In a recent article, Iris Marion Young raises several challenges to deliberative democracy on behalf of political activists. In this paper, the author defends a version of deliberative democracy against the activist challenges raised by Young and devises challenges to activism on behalf of the deliberative democrat. Key Words: activism • deliberative democracy • Discourse • Ideology • public sphere • I. M. Young.

Contemporary philosophers have grown increasingly skeptical toward both morality and moral theory. Some argue that moral theory is a radically misguided enterprise that does not illuminate moral practice, while others simply deny the value of morality in human life. In this important new book, Louden responds to the arguments of both "anti-morality" and "anti-theory" skeptics. In Part One, he develops and defends an alternative conception of morality, which, he argues, captures more of the central features of both Aristotelian and Kantian (...) ethics than do other contemporary models, and enables the central importance of morality to be convincingly reaffirmed. In Louden's model, morality is primarily a matter of what one does to oneself, rather than what one does or does not do to others. This model eliminates the gulf that many anti-morality critics say exists between morality's demands and the personal point of view. Louden further argues that morality's primary focus should be on agents and their lives, rather than on right actions, and that it is always better to be morally better--i.e. it is impossible to be "too moral." Part Two presents Louden's alternative conception of moral theory. Here again he draws on the work of Aristotle and Kant, showing that their moral theories have far more in common than is usually thought, and that those features that they share can be the basis for a viable moral theory that is immune to the standard anti-theory objections. Louden reaffirms the necessity and importance of moral theory in human life, and shows that moral theories fulfill a variety of genuine and indispensable human needs. (shrink)

Important features of the self-concept can be located outside of the individual and inside close or related others. The authors use this insight to reinterpret data previously said to support the empathy-altruism model of helping, which asserts that empathic concern for another results in selflessness and true altruism. That is, they argue that the conditions that lead to empathic concern also lead to a greater sense of self-other overlap, raising the possibility that helping under these conditions is not selfless but (...) is also directed toward the self. In 3 studies, the impact of empathic concern on willingness to help was eliminated when oneness--a measure of perceived self-other overlap--was considered. Path analyses revealed further that empathic concern increased helping only through its relation to perceived oneness, thereby throwing the empathy-altruism model into question. The authors suggest that empathic concern affects helping primarily as an emotional signal of oneness. (shrink)

Hegel frequently claimed that the heart of his entire system was a book widely regarded as among the most difficult in the history of philosophy, The Science of Logic. This is the book that presents his metaphysics, an enterprise that he insists can only be properly understood as a “logic,” or a “science of pure thinking.” Since he also wrote that the proper object of any such logic is pure thinking itself, it has always been unclear in just what sense (...) such a science could be a “metaphysics.” -/- Robert B. Pippin offers here a bold, original interpretation of Hegel’s claim that only now, after Kant’s critical breakthrough in philosophy, can we understand how logic can be a metaphysics. Pippin addresses Hegel’s deep, constant reliance on Aristotle’s conception of metaphysics, the difference between Hegel’s project and modern rationalist metaphysics, and the links between the “logic as metaphysics” claim and modern developments in the philosophy of logic. Pippin goes on to explore many other facets of Hegel’s thought, including the significance for a philosophical logic of the self-conscious character of thought, the dynamism of reason in Kant and Hegel, life as a logical category, and what Hegel might mean by the unity of the idea of the true and the idea of the good in the “Absolute Idea.” The culmination of Pippin’s work on Hegel and German idealism, no Hegel scholar or historian of philosophy will want to miss this book. (shrink)

Contiene: Email and ethics -- Causation and laws of nature -- Internalism and epistemology -- Einstein, relativity, and absolute simultaneity -- Epistemology modalized -- Truth and speech acts -- Fiction, narrative, and knowledge -- A pragmatist philosophy of democracy.

Dementia is a growing issue at the end of life that presents unique challenges for advance care planning. Advance directives are a useful and important component of end-of-life planning, but standard advance directives have less utility in cases of loss of capacity due to dementia. An advance directive designed to specifically address end-of-life issues in the setting of dementia can provide patients with increased autonomy and caregivers with improved information about the desires of the individual in question. The Dartmouth Dementia (...) Directive is a dementia-specific advance directive, available online, that seeks to address common concerns of individuals who are planning for dementia-related end-of-life care. This directive was piloted in a community-based workshop, which provided important details and perspective on the best use of dementia-specific advance directives in the greater population. (shrink)

This text combines discussions of major classical Western philosophical ethical systems (primarily Greek and Judeo-Christian) and, in equal depth, discussions of three non-Western ethical traditions (Indian Buddhist, Chinese Confucian, and Chinese Taoist) in a multi-cultural historical framework.

In this book, Robert Talisse critically examines the moral and political implications of pluralism, the view that our best moral thinking is indeterminate and that moral conflict is an inescapable feature of the human condition. Through a careful engagement with the work of William James, Isaiah Berlin, John Rawls, and their contemporary followers, Talisse distinguishes two broad types of moral pluralism: metaphysical and epistemic. After arguing that metaphysical pluralism does not offer a compelling account of value and thus cannot (...) ground a viable conception of liberal politics, Talisse proposes and defends a distinctive variety of epistemic pluralism. According to this view, certain value conflicts are at present undecidable rather than intrinsic. Consequently, epistemic pluralism countenances the possibility that further argumentation, enhanced reflection, or the acquisition of more information could yield rational resolutions to the kinds of value conflicts that metaphysical pluralists deem irresolvable as such. Talisse’s epistemic pluralism hence prescribes a politics in which deep value conflicts are to be addressed by ongoing argumentation and free engagement among citizens; the epistemic pluralist thus sees liberal democracy is the proper political response to ongoing moral disagreement. (shrink)

Folk epistemology—the idea that one can't help believing that one's beliefs are true—provides an alternative to political theorists' inadequate defenses of democracy. It implicitly suggests a dialectical, truth-seeking norm for dealing with people who do not share one's own beliefs. Folk epistemology takes us beyond Mill's consequentialist claim for democracy (that the free array of opinions in a deliberative democracy leads us to the truth); instead, the epistemic freedom of the democratic process itself makes citizens confident that evidence for one's (...) beliefs have not been distorted by a corrupt system. Since the starting point of folk epistemology is the meta-conviction that people believe that what they believe is true, it should also serve as a starting point for more rigorous scholarship that seeks to understand why people believe what they believe, instead of dismissing them as “irrational” if one disagrees with their beliefs. (shrink)

This essay surveys three prominent trends in current pragmatist political philosophy: Deweyan Democratic Perfectionism, Rortyan Ironism, and Pragmatist Epistemic Deliberativism. After articulating the main commitments of each view, the author raises philosophical problems each must confront. The essay closes with the more general criticism that pragmatist political theory has been nearly exclusively focused on democracy, but needs to address additional topics.

In recent work, Cheryl Misak has developed a novel justification of deliberative democracy rooted in Peircean epistemology. In this article, the author expands Misak's arguments to show that not only does Peircean pragmatism provide a justification for deliberative democracy that is more compelling than the justifications offered by competing liberal and discursivist views, but also fixes a specific conception of deliberative politics that is perfectionist rather than neutralist. The article concludes with a discussion of whether the `epistemic perfectionism' implied by (...) the pragmatist argument could be endorsed by liberal democrats. Key Words: deliberative democracy • epistemology • liberalism • Cheryl Misak • Charles Peirce • perfectionism • pragmatism • truth. (shrink)