In this bracing book, Fish argues that there is no realm of higher order impartiality--no neutral or fair territory on which to stake a claim--and that those ...

Something out of the ordinary -- The interminable Shakespearean text -- Fred Astaire asserts the right to praise -- Henry James returns to America and to Shakespeare -- Philosophy the day after tomorrow -- What is the scandal of skepticism? -- Performative and passionate utterance -- The Wittgensteinian event -- Thoreau thinks of ponds, Heidegger of rivers -- The world as things.

A philosophical study of popular movies uses the viewer as a point of reference.

My purposes in this paper are to explain the constitutive-regulative distinction as set out by Kant in the Dialectic and Methodology, and to note its reappearance in contemporary philosophy.

“A great story, full of twists and turns.... Careers made and ruined, departments torn apart, writing programs turned into sensitivity seminars, political witch hunts, public opprobrium, ignorant media attacks, the whole ball of wax. Read it and laugh or read it and weep. I can hardly wait for the movie.” —Stanley Fish, _Think Again, New York Times_ “In such a difficult genre, full of traps and obstacles, French Theory is a success and a remarkable book in every respect: it (...) is fair, balanced, and informed. I am sure this book will become the reference on both sides of the Atlantic.” —Jacques Derrida “The Atlantic Ocean has two sides, and so does French Theory. Reinvented in America and betrayed in its own country, it has become the most radical intellectual movement in the West with global reach, rewriting Marx in light of late capitalism. Breathtakingly moving back and forth between the two cultures, Francois Cusset takes us through a dazzling intellectual adventure that illuminates the past thirty years, and many more decades to come.” —Sylvere Lotringer During the last three decades of the twentieth century, a disparate group of radical French thinkers achieved an improbable level of influence and fame in the United States. Compared by at least one journalist to the British rock ‘n’ roll invasion, the arrival of works by Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari on American shores in the late 1970s and 1980s caused a sensation. Outside the academy, “French theory” had a profound impact on the era’s emerging identity politics while also becoming, in the 1980s, the target of right-wing propagandists. At the same time in academic departments across the country, their poststructuralist form of radical suspicion transformed disciplines from literature to anthropology to architecture. By the 1990s, French theory was woven deeply into America’s cultural and intellectual fabric. French Theory is the first comprehensive account of the American fortunes of these unlikely philosophical celebrities. François Cusset looks at why America proved to be such fertile ground for French theory, how such demanding writings could become so widely influential, and the peculiarly American readings of these works. Reveling in the gossipy history, Cusset also provides a lively exploration of the many provocative critical practices inspired by French theory. Ultimately, he dares to shine a bright light on the exultation of these thinkers to assess the relevance of critical theory to social and political activism today-showing, finally, how French theory has become inextricably bound with American life. François Cusset, a writer and intellectual historian, teaches contemporary French thought in Paris at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques and at Columbia University’s Reid Hall. His books include Queer Critics and La Décennie. Jeff Fort is assistant professor of French at the University of California, Davis. He has translated works by Maurice Blanchot, Jean Genet, and Jean-Luc Nancy. (shrink)

This collection of essays explores Thoreau's Walden, and discusses the importance of Thoreau and Emerson on American thought.

This work investigates the distinctiveness of virtues as illuminated by Christian practise using a discussion of Aristotle's ethics with contemporary scholars. It contrasts non-Christian accounts of virtue with Christian accounts of key virtues, including obedience, hope, courage, and patience.

This book evaluates traditional musical performance and asks where its unique value lies.

In this book, controversial and world-renowned theologian, Stanley Hauerwas, tackles the issue of theology being sidelined as a necessary discipline in the modern university. It is an attempt to reclaim the knowledge of God as just that – knowledge. Questions why theology is no longer considered a necessary subject in the modern university, and explores the role it should play in the development of our “knowledge” Considers how theology is often excluded from the knowledges of the modern university because (...) these are constituted by an understanding of time necessary to make economic and state realities seem inevitable Argues that it is precisely this difference that makes Christian theology an essential resource for the university to achieve its task - that is, to form people who are able to imagine a different world through critical and disciplined reflection Challenges the domesticated character of much recent theology by suggesting how prayer and the love of the poor are essential practices that should shape the theological task Converses with figures as diverse as Luigi Giussani, David Burrell, Stanley Fish, Wendell Berry, Jeff Stout, Rowan Williams and Sheldon Wolin Published in the new and prestigious Illuminations series. (shrink)

The concepts of rationality that are used by social scientists in the formation of hypotheses, models and explanations are explored in this collection of original papers by a number of distinguished philosophers and social scientists. The aim of the book is to display the variety of the concepts used, to show the different roles they play in theories of very different kinds over a wide range of disciplines, including economics, sociology, psychology, political science and anthropology, and to assess the explanatory (...) and predictive power that a theory can draw from such concepts. (shrink)

Critical theorist Aronowitz (sociology, CUNY) contends that the centrality of cultural categories, as raised by the feminist, ecology, and racial freedom movements, among others, provides the crucial difference for the late industrial world, demanding a break from the dominant tendencies of Marxism to reduce causality to its economic features. Acidic paper. Paper edition (unseen), $14.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Liberal/conservative and modern/postmodern concepts define contemporary theological debate. Yet what if these categories are grounded in a set of assumptions about what it means to be the church in the world, presuming we must live as though God's existence does not matter? What if our theological discussion distracts us from the fact that the church is no longer able to shape the desires and habits of Christians? Hauerwas wrestles with these and similar questions constructing a theological politics necessary for the (...) church to be the church in the world. In so doing, he challenges liberal notions of justice and freedom. (shrink)

Doing Science + Culture is a groundbreaking book on the cultural study of science, technology and medicine. Outstanding contributors including life and physical scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, literature/communication scholars and historians of science who focus on the analysis of science and scientific discourses within culture: what it means to "do" science. The essays are organized into three broad topics: transnational science and globalization (the movements of people, material resources and knowledges that underwrite scientific practices within and across borders of nation-states and (...) regions); emerging subjects and subjectivities (of research and researchers); and postdisciplinary pedagogies and curricula (the institutional settings of classroom, laboratory, department and academic division). Contributors: Itty Abraham, Anne Balsamo, Karen Barad, Michael M.J. Fischer, Joan H. Fujimura, Scott F. Gilbert, Emily Martin, Jackie Orr, Roddey Reid, Molly Rhodes and Sharon Traweek. (shrink)

The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics presents a comprehensive and systematic exposition of Christian ethics, seen through the lens of Christian worship.

By focusing on questions concerning what kind of training graduate students in theology and ethics and religious ethics should receive, I try to initiate a conversation we need to have about the kind of work the JRE should foster.

To set medicine within the context of a good or faithful life requires virtues that give physicians and patients the skills to understand and practice the kind of care medicine is capable of giving. We begin with a prayer that names some of these virtues. We then show how the language of medicine impedes these virtues by fostering the illusion that medicine will free us from illness and mortality. While Aristotle’s account of virtue and happiness seems capable of telling us (...) how to live with finitude, Jonathan Lear shows how it involves another fantasy of escape from it. We then show how Karl Barth’s account of health offers physicians and patients a language by which both the capabilities and the limitations of medicine may serve rather than undermine a good life. 1. (shrink)

6. Jürgen Habermas's Critical Hermeneutics Introduction Habermas and Critical Hermeneutics Life and Influences 132 Habermas's Place in Contemporary Thought ...

This paper argues that it is part of the concept of the positive integers that they are for the sake of numbering things (what Benacerraf calls transitive counting). Numbers are necessarily associated with standard, conventionally established counting sets constituted by the Peano axioms; they cannot be specified independently of a paradigm counting stock, any more than lengths can be part of a system of assessment without appeal to some standard object. Scepticism deriving from Kripke and Salmon is countered by acknowledgement (...) that the paradigms themselves are among the means by which the terms of the system get applied and adjudicated. (shrink)

The Supper is indeed the memorial of a childless man, Jesus of Nazareth, who still today gives life to countless sons and daughters.

Essays by 13 contributors on the philosophical writings of Hume, Comenius, Kant, & Spinoza.

This is the first full-length study of the Symposium to be published in English, and one of the first English works on Plato to take its bearings by the dramatic form of the Platonic dialogue, a thesis that was regarded as heterodox at the time but which today is widely accepted by scholars of the most diverse standpoint. Rosen was also one of the first to study in detail the philosophical significance of the phenomenon of concrete human sexuality, as it (...) is presented by Plato in the diverse characters of the main speakers in the dialogue. His analysis of the theoretical significance of pederasty in the dialogue was highly controversial at the time, but is today accepted as central to Plato's dramatic phenomenology of human existence. Rosen discusses a variety of topics that had previously been neglected in the secondary literature, including the problem of the hybristic nature of the philosopher, the poetical dimension of Plato's conception of philosophy, and the theoretical implication of the difference between Platonic writing and Socratic conversation. (shrink)

In Good Company is a book about the politics and practices that constitute the salvation made possible by God through the church. By exposing a different account of politics - the church as polis and "counter-story" to the world's politics - Hauerwas helps Christians see that in fact God has given them the means to escape the destructive practices of the world by placing them "in good company" with one another, Catholic and Protestant alike. Hauerwas explains: "What we Christians have (...) lost is [the sense of] just how radical our practices are, since they are meant to free us from the... lies so characteristic of the world. The difficulty is that the church... is constantly tempted to imitate the false politics of the world for its own life". He thus urges Christians to discover the narratives, skills, and practices that they share and how these elements of the faith are crucial for confronting the false politics of the present-day world. The animating conviction underlying this volume is that the church and the Christian faith offer resources not available to the world at large, and by turning political theology into theological politics, Hauerwas helps all Christians to recognize how these resources empower them to discover and build a stronger religious and political identity. (shrink)