I discuss the roles of journalism in aspirational democracies, and argue that they generate set of pressures on attention that apply to people by virtue of the type of society they live in. These pressures, I argue, generate a problem of democratic attention: for journalism to play its roles in democracy, the attentional demands must be met, but there are numerous obstacles to meeting them. I propose a principle of salience to guide the selection and framing of news stories that (...) I argue may help address the puzzle: the public-as-protagonist principle. -/- . (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Democracy, Spirit, and RevitalizationWalter B. Gulick (bio)The assumptions of democracy as an associational ethos of vulnerable life are, first, that we don't already know how best to order our common life and, second, that we don't know what the abstract ideals of empathy, emancipation, and equity entail in the concrete.—Michael Hogue1In American Immanence: Democracy for an Uncertain World, Michael S. Hogue grounds his proposal for a political theology in (...) a critique of American exceptionalism and its supportive "redeemer symbolic."2 In the Anthropocene era, Hogue states, American exceptionalism "legitimates the extraction of diverse forms of value and justifies the externalization of diverse costs" (29) with unconscionable costs to the natural environment and international justice. As indicated in the passage quoted above, Hogue's reaction to the rigid assumptions supportive of American exceptionalism is to offer a humble acknowledgement of political fallibility coupled with what he terms "a theopolitics of resilient democracy" (184; see also 3–6).My concern in this essay is largely practical. I will focus on discerning what intellectual, emotional, and communal resources might be drawn upon to further develop and actually effect the needed changes that Hogue so ably points out. Relatedly, I will inquire into who the most likely candidates are to devote energy to the reconstruction of social structures and practices so that they express values that Americans at their best uphold. Finally, I will reflect upon the role that spiritual ideals and communal practices might play in energizing effective democratic action. [End Page 5]I. Hogue's Critical and Constructive TasksHogue's overriding interest is to outline an epistemic/axiological/environmental/political stance that does not give rise to the various sorts of injustices and dysfunctions that mark the Anthropocene era, especially our allegiance to policies that eventuate in what he calls "climate wickedness." The alternative vision he embraces develops pragmatic naturalism as a method of inquiry and exposition. His reflections are especially indebted to the thought of Dewey, James, and Whitehead (78–82). During a time when e-words are normally associated with forms of electronic communication, Hogue offers instead two trios of e-words with another sort of significance—one that signifies a stance he wishes to overcome and one that communicates what he hopes to achieve. Our current era is unfortunately in thrall, he says, to extraction, externalization, and exception, whereas what we should strive for is a society marked by empathy, emancipation, and equitability. Well put. He presupposes that democratic governance, deeply embedded in American history, ought to serve as the vehicle for achieving what the positive set of e-words promotes. To this end, Hogue quotes appreciatively from Dewey's article, "Democracy is Radical": Democracy "is radical because it requires great change in existing social institutions, economic, legal and cultural" (170). This understanding of democracy slumbers now; what might it take to reawaken it? And if reawakened, what changes might be made to establish the more nearly equitable political influence that is basic to the promise of democracy?Hogue, recognizing in good pragmatic fashion the importance of consequential change, states, "In contrast to foundationalist commitments to antecedents and precedents, pragmatic naturalism commits to a prospective concern with consequents" (80). Foundational commitments to antecedents may certainly impede needed change, but surely attention to the historical events and practices that gave rise to current problems is needed to avoid repeating previous errors. Hogue refers to Whitehead's vision of social symbolism, suggesting that "social change can be catalyzed by the improvised revision of existing symbolic repertoires or the innovative formation or subversive interjection of new symbols" (99). I'm not fully convinced by Whitehead's claim. I suspect that many of our social problems are rooted below the linguistic level in an array of affective issues that elude symbolic adjustment. New strategies are needed to counter the prevalence of fear and resentment in society as promoted for political and commercial reasons and tied to Hogue's strongly voiced recognition that we live in an uncertain world.Here is my understanding of how Hogue both frames our current social and cultural situation and what he says might begin to remediate these circumstances. [End Page... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Theories of Emotion: Expressing, Feeling, Acting by Pia CAMPEGGIANISabrina B. LittleCAMPEGGIANI, Pia. Theories of Emotion: Expressing, Feeling, Acting. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023. xiv + 199 pp. Cloth, $80.89; paper, $21.60In Theories of Emotion, Pia Campeggiani provides a philosophical introduction to the emotions. The book is multidisciplinary and empirically informed. It is organized around three “groundbreaking intuitions” of emotion theory—(1) expression, (2) subjectivity, and (3) action. Each section (...) corresponds to a different thinker—Charles Darwin, William James, and John Dewey, respectively—and each section concludes with a discussion of relevant debates. This book is outstanding. It is clearly written, well organized, and impressive in its scope. In what follows, I outline key ideas and raise questions generated by each section, then conclude with general reflections on the text.Campeggiani begins with the “scandal” of emotion research: There is no agreement about what an emotion is. In part, this lack of consensus is due to the imprecise ways we employ concepts like feelings, emotions, affect, and passions in ordinary discourse. In part, it is due to empirical difficulties. For example, Campeggiani describes how implicit assumptions and a forced-choice format compromised an experiment about expression universality.Additionally, Campeggiani points out that the category “emotions” has an internal structure that lacks clear-cut boundaries. There are paradigmatic examples of emotions, such as fear and anger, but there are also ambiguous phenomena, such as respect and modesty, which we may or may not recognize as such. Throughout the text, Campeggiani introduces and evaluates numerous accounts of emotions, drawing our attention to the strengths, limitations, and empirical adequacy of each.Part 1 begins with Charles Darwin’s contributions to emotion theory—an emphasis on the biological origins of emotions and a focus on expression. This section examines emotions in connection to adaptive fitness, exploring phenomena such as blushing when we are ashamed and the biological bases of emotions. A highlight of this section is an exploration of the social or communicative character of the emotions, which Darwin described as “only a secondary effect” of expression. Campeggiani examines emotional contagion and imitation, as well as the [End Page 141] phenomenon of feeling more pain when we express pain on our faces. There is also a rich discussion about constructionism as an alternative to basic emotions theory.Part 2 opens with William James on subjective experience. Campeggiani describes the limitations of James’s position—of understanding emotions to be reducible to feelings. For starters, this position is not empirically well supported. Campeggiani cites Walter Cannon’s observation that “many of the autonomic changes that are symptomatic of a given emotion can also occur in its absence.” Additionally, James fails to “properly flesh out the link between emotions and evaluations.” Campeggiani then describes the cognitive turn in emotion theory that emerged in response to the lack of attention paid to evaluation. Cognitive accounts of emotion deemphasize the bodily dimensions of emotional experiences in favor of the intentional properties, or “aboutness,” of emotions. Emotions see things as things.From my vantage, this was the best part of the book. Campeggiani highlights Damasio’s point that decision-making depends on having a “correct affective perception of the values at stake in a given situation.” For instance, feeling outsized or misdirected fear may undermine our decision-making. Campeggiani also introduces debates about whether emotions are appraisals, and whether emotions entail judgments or make judgments more likely. In the introduction, she mentions that “decision-making processes are always and inevitably underpinned by emotions, for good and for ill.” We see what she means in this section. Emotions participate in reason, impede reason, and have cognitive content themselves.That emotions involve or participate in our judgments raises two kinds of concerns—epistemic and normative. The epistemic worry is that inaccurate appraisals may undermine our understanding of the world. This is especially worrisome for the class of emotions Campeggiani calls “recalcitrant,” or closed off to other mental states, and for the emotions she says are “heavily influenced by our needs and goals.” Emotions are imperfectly truth-tracking, as was made clear earlier, in part 1, regarding their adaptive nature. The normative worry is that certain emotional... (shrink)

Introduction -- Defining pluralism : Simon Pokagon, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Thomas fortune -- Evolution and American Indian philosophy -- Feminist resistance : Anna Julia Cooper, Jane Addams, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman -- Labor, empire and the social gospel : Washington Gladden, Walter Rauschenbusch, and Jane Addams -- A new name for an old way of thinking : William James -- Making ideas clear : Charles Sanders Peirce -- The beloved community and its discontents : Josiah Royce and (...) the realists -- War, anarchism, and sex : Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger -- Democracy and social ethics : John Dewey -- Naturalism and idealism, fear, and conventionality : Mary Whiton Calkins and Elsie Clews Parsons -- Race riots and the color line : W. E. B. du Bois -- Philosophy reacts : Hartley Burr Alexander and Morris R. Cohen -- Creative experience : Mary Parker Follett -- Cultural pluralism : Horace Kallen and Alain Locke -- War and the rise of logical positivism : Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap -- Mccarthyism and American empiricism : Jacob Loewenberg, Henry Sheffer, C. I. Lewis, and Charles Morris -- The linguistic turn : Gustav Bergmann, May Brodbeck, and W. V. O. Quine -- Resisting the turn : Donald Davidson, Wilfrid Sellars, and the pluralist rebellion -- Philosophy outside : John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Joseph Wood Krutch, and Rachel Carson -- Economics and technology : Lewis Mumford, C. Wright Mills and John Kenneth Galbraith -- Politics : John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Michael Sandel, Martha Nussbaum, and Noam Chomsky -- Civil rights : Martin Luther King, Jr., Richard Wright and James Baldwin -- Black power : Malcolm X, James Cone, Audre Lorde, Bell Hooks, Angela Davis, and Cornel West -- Latin American American philosophy -- Red power, indigenous philosophy : Vine Deloria, Jr. and contemporary American Indian thought -- Feminism -- Engaged philosophy and the environment -- American philosophy today -- Recovering and sustaining the American tradition -- American philosophy revitalized -- The spirit of American philosophy in the new century. (shrink)

The origin and the development of scientific disciplines has been a topic of reflection for several decades. The few extensive case studies support the thesis that scientific disciplines are not monolithic structures but can be characterized by distinct social, organizational and scientific–technical practices. Nonetheless, most disciplinary histories of genetics confine themselves largely to an uncontested account of the content of the discipline or occasionally institutional factors. Little attention is paid to the large number of researchers who, by their joint efforts, (...) ultimately shaped the discipline. We contribute to this aspect of disciplinary historiography by discussing the role of women researchers at the Institute for Heredity Research, founded in 1914 in Berlin under the directorship of Erwin Baur, and the sister of the John Innes Institute at Cambridge. This paper investigates how and why Baur built a highly successful research programme that relied on the efforts of his female staff, whose careers, notably Elisabeth Schiemann's, are also assessedin toto. These women undertook the necessary ‘technoscience’ and in some cases innovative work and helped increase the prestige of the institute and its director. Together they played a pivotal role in the establishment of genetics in Germany. Without them the discipline would have developed much more slowly and along a divergent path. (shrink)

In our current social landscape, moral questions—about economic disparity, disadvantaging biases, and scarcity—are rightly receiving attention with a sense of urgency. This book argues that classical pragmatism offers a compelling and useful account of our engagement with moral life. The key arguments are first, that a broader reading of the pragmatist tradition than is usually attempted within the context of ethical theory is necessary; and second, that this broad reading offers resources that enable us to move forward in contemporary debates (...) about truth and principles in moral life. The first argument is made by demonstrating that there is an arc of theoretical unity that stretches from two key founders of pragmatism—Charles Sanders Peirce and William James—through the work of John Dewey and Clarence Irving Lewis. The second argument is made by engaging with contemporary debates concerning the truth-status of the judgments and assertions made in ordinary moral discourse, as well as the role and nature of moral principles. _Toward a Pragmatist Metaethics_ will be of interest to scholars of American philosophy, American intellectual history, and moral and political theorists, as well as anyone interested in the contours and demands of shared moral discourse. (shrink)

Jesus Christ may be regarded as the chief spirit of agitation and innovation. He himself declared, “I come not to bring peace, but a sword.” One cannot delve seriously into the centuries of activism and scholarship against racism, Jim Crowism, and the terrorism of lynching without encountering the legacies of Timothy Thomas Fortune and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Black scholars from the 19th century to the present have been inspired by the sociological and economic works of Fortune and Wells. (...) Scholars of American philosophy, however, continue to ignore their writings, their theoretical contributions and their ethical aspirations, preferring instead the insipid declarations of white turn of the century.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 85 scientious search for principles of method (and of peace) may have been one of the reasons why he was suspect in England, as were the Ramist "methodists." In any case, it is quite clear now that Hobbes was not a materialist, not even when he was writing De Corpore. HERBERT W. SCHNEIDER Claremont, CallJornia Pierre Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary selections. Translated with an Introduction and (...) notes by Richard H. Popkin. (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co. Pp. xliv q- 456.) This new edition of selections from Pierre Bayle's famous Dictionnaire will be welcomed by historians and philosophers alike. In it we find a representative sample from the book that was both the inspiration and despair of much of eighteenth-century thought, and that still presents modem man with both questions and methodological acid that makes it difficult to find or accept "truth." The young readers who will meet Pierre Bayle for the first time in these pages will find him to be the skeptical philosopher, the ribald, sometimes lewd, even pornographic storyteller, the detached scholar who prowled through the history and the ideas of men, dissolving all certainty by analyses that peeled off layer after layer of belief until the core itself was exposed as naive or ridiculous. Had Professor Popkin done nothing more than provide us with these excellently chosen selections from the Dictionnaire, we would all be in his debt, for he gives us a chance easily to bring this important work to the attention of our students. But this volume is considerably more than simply a selection. Professor Popkin's Introduction is an important statement in the controversy over Bayle's personal beliefs and involvemeat. For more than two decades a large literature has portrayed Bayle in many different guises: for some he was still the skeptic who intentionally forged the weapons with which Voltaire and his colleagues assaulted the Judeo-Christian traditions of European men; at the other extreme he was a devout Huguenot who merely wanted to do for the Calvinist world what Bishop Huet and other Catholic skeptics did for the Catholic one, namely to prove the necessity of accepting the Christian beliefs on faith since absolute knowledge was impossible. Professor Popkin has learned Bayle's methodology too well to allow himself to be trapped by a simple explanation. He refuses to identify Bayle with a Kierkegaard or a Lamennais whose ideas would dissolve under Bayle's pen just as did Pascal's and Jurieu's. But where are we to find the secret of this man who lived out his life as a member of the French Reformed Church in Amsterdam while he unfolded the absurdity or naivet~ of every intelligible Christian theology? The problem becomes more perplexing when we note his obvious sympathy for both Manicheanism and Judaism. Could he have been the last of the Cathars or a secretly converted Jew? Popkin calls attention to Bayle's interest in and affection for Maimonides' work which he translates "Guide for the perplexed", but which could be translated "Guide for those who have lost their way" or in our parlance, "the derailed." In a way Bayle's Dictionnaire was itself a "Guide" for men in trouble with their beliefs. But Bayle's approach to this problem must be understood in light of his own discussion of religion "of the heart" and religion "of reason." Like Madame Labrousse, Popkin is much impressed by the simplicity of Bayle's last words, written on the day he died, in which he described himself as "a Christian philosopher convinced of and pierced with the mercies of God.... " The statement omits all the im~ portant theological propositions of Christian theology as well as any emotional feeling. We must see Pierre Bayle as an erudite, unemotional man whose "religion had no expressed or expressible content.., but was only in the heart in some quiet unemotional way.... " Popkin sees him as "a quite Erasmian scholar, living out his days in the city of Erasmus, examining man's intellectual heritage and intellectual world.., by patient erudition [undermining] man's intellectual frame of reference while remaining secure and tranquil in his unemotional religion of the heart." Since... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 85 scientious search for principles of method (and of peace) may have been one of the reasons why he was suspect in England, as were the Ramist "methodists." In any case, it is quite clear now that Hobbes was not a materialist, not even when he was writing De Corpore. HERBERT W. SCHNEIDER Claremont, CallJornia Pierre Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary selections. Translated with an Introduction and (...) notes by Richard H. Popkin. (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co. Pp. xliv q- 456.) This new edition of selections from Pierre Bayle's famous Dictionnaire will be welcomed by historians and philosophers alike. In it we find a representative sample from the book that was both the inspiration and despair of much of eighteenth-century thought, and that still presents modem man with both questions and methodological acid that makes it difficult to find or accept "truth." The young readers who will meet Pierre Bayle for the first time in these pages will find him to be the skeptical philosopher, the ribald, sometimes lewd, even pornographic storyteller, the detached scholar who prowled through the history and the ideas of men, dissolving all certainty by analyses that peeled off layer after layer of belief until the core itself was exposed as naive or ridiculous. Had Professor Popkin done nothing more than provide us with these excellently chosen selections from the Dictionnaire, we would all be in his debt, for he gives us a chance easily to bring this important work to the attention of our students. But this volume is considerably more than simply a selection. Professor Popkin's Introduction is an important statement in the controversy over Bayle's personal beliefs and involvemeat. For more than two decades a large literature has portrayed Bayle in many different guises: for some he was still the skeptic who intentionally forged the weapons with which Voltaire and his colleagues assaulted the Judeo-Christian traditions of European men; at the other extreme he was a devout Huguenot who merely wanted to do for the Calvinist world what Bishop Huet and other Catholic skeptics did for the Catholic one, namely to prove the necessity of accepting the Christian beliefs on faith since absolute knowledge was impossible. Professor Popkin has learned Bayle's methodology too well to allow himself to be trapped by a simple explanation. He refuses to identify Bayle with a Kierkegaard or a Lamennais whose ideas would dissolve under Bayle's pen just as did Pascal's and Jurieu's. But where are we to find the secret of this man who lived out his life as a member of the French Reformed Church in Amsterdam while he unfolded the absurdity or naivet~ of every intelligible Christian theology? The problem becomes more perplexing when we note his obvious sympathy for both Manicheanism and Judaism. Could he have been the last of the Cathars or a secretly converted Jew? Popkin calls attention to Bayle's interest in and affection for Maimonides' work which he translates "Guide for the perplexed", but which could be translated "Guide for those who have lost their way" or in our parlance, "the derailed." In a way Bayle's Dictionnaire was itself a "Guide" for men in trouble with their beliefs. But Bayle's approach to this problem must be understood in light of his own discussion of religion "of the heart" and religion "of reason." Like Madame Labrousse, Popkin is much impressed by the simplicity of Bayle's last words, written on the day he died, in which he described himself as "a Christian philosopher convinced of and pierced with the mercies of God.... " The statement omits all the im~ portant theological propositions of Christian theology as well as any emotional feeling. We must see Pierre Bayle as an erudite, unemotional man whose "religion had no expressed or expressible content.., but was only in the heart in some quiet unemotional way.... " Popkin sees him as "a quite Erasmian scholar, living out his days in the city of Erasmus, examining man's intellectual heritage and intellectual world.., by patient erudition [undermining] man's intellectual frame of reference while remaining secure and tranquil in his unemotional religion of the heart." Since... (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)

ABSTRACTThe present study examined relationships between attention to negative words and daily rumination and daily adjustment in a sample of clinically depressed individuals. We recorded eye movements of 43 individuals diagnosed with major depression while they were freely viewing dysphoric, threat-related, neutral, and positive words. Then, each day for one week, participants provided measures of their daily rumination and psychological adjustment. Multilevel analyses found that attention to dysphoric and threat-related words was positively related to daily rumination and attention to threat-related (...) words was negatively related to daily adjustment. These findings suggest that the impaired ability to disengage from negative words is positively related to rumination in daily life and is negatively related to well-being, as defined in terms of Beck’s Triad. (shrink)

This is not another "law-and-econ" bashing symposium. Nor is the symposium's title intended to denigrate Chicago School law and economics any more than the term "Post-Keynesian economics" was intended to denigrate the work of John Maynard Keynes. Instead, this symposium marks the fact that many practitioners of law and economics have moved well beyond the stereotypes familiar to most legal academics. Rather than designating an entirely new school of thought, the term "Post-Chicago law and economics" refers to a new (...) era in which a variety of new questions about law and lawmaking is being asked and a variety of promising economic techniques is being used to answer them. Yet most legal academics who, like me, are not part of the law and economics movement are generally unaware of these changes. The purpose of this "Symposium on Post-Chicago Law and Economics" is to bring some of these new methods and questions to the attention of mainstream legal academics and others. The hope is that those who have shunned the economic analysis of law in the past may wish to reconsider their stance in light of what Post-Chicago law and economics has to offer. To facilitate this, the author uses this Foreword to summarize the new directions suggested by each of the symposium contributors, most of whom are practitioners of law and economics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In different yet resonating ways both William Morris and John Dewey turned their attention to utopian experience as everyday making and doing. Dewey developed a holistic analysis of human action that contains intimations of utopia as well as a critique of fractured experience. Morris is well known for his vivid picture of utopia as life lived artfully. Comparisons have been noted between Morris and Dewey but not explored in detail. This article looks at Morris’s view of utopian experience (...) from the perspective of Dewey’s pragmatist understanding of action, habit, and artful experience. It is argued that the craft of experience is an idea central to the utopian thinking of Morris and Dewey. (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)

Despite increased interest in pragmatic theories of truth, Dewey’s approach has not received the same degree of attention as other pragmatists such as Peirce and James. This may seem rather surprising given the sheer quantity Dewey published in his lifetime, much of it focused on issues of epistemology and scientific inquiry. On the other hand, this might seem not surprising at all, since Dewey often went to some effort, especially near the end of his career, to avoid the concept of (...) truth and its associated baggage.1A natural question to ask is whether Dewey even had a theory of truth: that is, a well worked-out position on this crucial philosophical concept. Here, the usual answers—where we can find them—are not... (shrink)

After an eloquent and moving analysis of what he sees as the disillusion of themodern age, Lippmann posits as the central dilemma of liberalism its inability to find an appropriate substitute for the older forms of authority - church, state, class, family, law, custom - that it has denied. Lippmann attempts to find a way out of this chaos through the acceptance of a higher humanism and a way of life inspired by the ideal of "disinterestedness" in all (...) things.In his new introduction to the Transaction edition, John Patrick Diggins marks A Preface to Morals, originally published in 1929, as a critical turning point in Lippmann's intellectual career. He also provides an excellent discussion of the enduring value of this major twentieth-century work by situating it within the context of other intellectual movements. (shrink)

After an eloquent and moving analysis of what he sees as the disillusion of themodern age, Lippmann posits as the central dilemma of liberalism its inability to find an appropriate substitute for the older forms of authority-- church, state, class, family, law, custom--that it has denied. Lippmann attempts to find a way out of this chaos through the acceptance of a higher humanism and a way of life inspired by the ideal of "disinterestedness" in all things. In his (...) new introduction to the Transaction edition, John Patrick Diggins marks "A Preface "to "Morals, "originally published in 1929, as a critical turning point in Lippmann's intellectual career. He also provides an excellent discussion of the enduring value of this major twentieth-century work by situating it within the context of other intellectual movements. (shrink)

After an eloquent and moving analysis of what he sees as the disillusion of themodern age, Lippmann posits as the central dilemma of liberalism its inability to find an appropriate substitute for the older forms of authority-- church, state, class, family, law, custom--that it has denied. Lippmann attempts to find a way out of this chaos through the acceptance of a higher humanism and a way of life inspired by the ideal of "disinterestedness" in all things. In his (...) new introduction to the Transaction edition, John Patrick Diggins marks "A Preface "to "Morals, "originally published in 1929, as a critical turning point in Lippmann's intellectual career. He also provides an excellent discussion of the enduring value of this major twentieth-century work by situating it within the context of other intellectual movements. (shrink)

_Offering a new edition of Dewey’s 1916 collection of essays_ This critical edition of John Dewey’s 1916 collection of writings on logic, _Essays in Experimental Logic—_in which Dewey presents his concept of logic as the theory of inquiry and his unique and innovative development of the relationship of inquiry to experience—is the first scholarly reprint of the work in one volume since 1954. _Essays in Experimental Logic, _edited by D. Micah Hester and Robert B. Talisse, uses the authoritative texts (...) from the _Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882–1953_ and includes as well articles from leading journals representing various contemporary schools of philosophy that criticized Dewey’s experimentalism. Culling materials from six volumes of the chronologically arranged _Collected Works_, this single-volume edition of _Essays_ marks a crucial point in Dewey’s intellectual development: one in which Dewey critically engages idealistic and intuitionist theorists and lays the groundwork for his mature theory of inquiry. The text includes a new introduction by renowned Dewey scholar Tom Burke that places _Essays_ in philosophical and historical context. In addition to the original essays, _Essays in Experimental Logic_ also features five critical essays by Dewey’s contemporaries, including Bertrand Russell, Wendell T. Bush, R. F. Alfred Hoernlé, H. T. Costello, and C. S. Peirce. (shrink)

During active vision, the eyes continually scan the visual environment using saccadic scanning movements. This target article presents an information processing model for the control of these movements, with some close parallels to established physiological processes in the oculomotor system. Two separate pathways are concerned with the spatial and the temporal programming of the movement. In the temporal pathway there is spatially distributed coding and the saccade target is selected from a Both pathways descend through a hierarchy of levels, the (...) lower ones operating automatically. Visual onsets have automatic access to the eye control system via the lower levels. Various centres in each pathway are interconnected via reciprocal inhibition. The model accounts for a number of well-established phenomena in target-elicited saccades: the gap effect, express saccades, the remote distractor effect, and the global effect. High-level control of the pathways in tasks such as visual search and reading is discussed; it operates through spatial selection and search selection, which generally combine in an automated way. The model is examined in relation to data from patients with unilateral neglect. (shrink)

A. Fyrigos, professor of Patristic and Byzantine Philosophy at the «Universitas Gregoriana» and specialist on Barlaam the Calabrian (ca. 1290–1348), has recently edited B.'s anti-Latin works —twenty one works in number—written on the occasion of the ecclesiastical-political negotiations he held in Constantinople with the legates Francesco da Camerino and Richard of England during 1334 and 1335, focused on the Filioque and intended to promote some sort of union between the Eastern and Western Church. This edition, which is prefaced by a (...) highly erudite philological and historical «Introduction», has been unanimously received by the scientific community as «an excellent, exemplary work» and «un contributo so stanziale alla storia degli studi barlaamiti» and the study of the first half of the Byzantine 14th century in general; and rightly so, because, at long last, due to the la borious and succes sful efforts of its author —who devotedly concentrated himself during the past three decades upon the famous Calabrian—, it enables us to approach and appraise B.'s Orthodox thought through his own writings, by putting aside the distorting exposition of it by Gregory Palamas. As far as I know, F.'s masterpiece has been reviewed no fewer than eight times. On my own part, I shall try to shed more light on B.'s texts by focus ing my attention on an aspect of great interest to philologists as well as historians of theological and philosophical ideas, namely, the question of the sources and literary patterns of B.'s Κατά Λατίνων. F. prudently notes (vol. I, p. VII) that in editing the texts «ha volutamente con centrato la sua attenzione sull'aspetto filologico e storico di essi», by putting aside the philoso phicotheological one, which, albeit closely related with the former, represents a clearly distinct aspect of any text. The parallels (marked by «cf.») as well as the cases of dependence (noted by «see») and imitations of various ancient, Patristic and Byzantine Greek texts noted here have primarily to do with the latter aspects, although it goes without saying that they often reveal hidden sides of the former. Let it be said in advance that B.'s texts are so rich in explicit or implicit encapsulations of ancient Greek as well as Patristic expression modes and ideas that a reader who is eager to scrutinize them more than F. and I have will certainly find many others. (shrink)

Whatever specific beliefs pragmatists share concerning experience, knowledge, value, and meaning, they generally agree that a central part of the business of life is to make life better. James speaks of the ideal of meeting all needs, Royce of defeating evil, and Dewey of making experience richer and more secure. They are at one in thinking that human intelligence can make a vast difference to how well we live, and they extol the possibility of improving our circumstances. They tend to (...) be dissatisfied with the status quo and see indefinitely sustained amelioration as the solution to our problems. Stoics, in sharp contrast, are quick to call attention to the limits of our powers and recommend accepting them without complaint. They tend to think that only our beliefs and attitudes fall securely in our control. Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius agree that anything we would consider an improvement of the human condition is temporary and that, in any case, fulfilling our desires accomplishes little. The key to living well, they maintain, is control over self, not over circumstance, and they embrace inner calm in the face of whatever misfortune befalls us. Even such a brief characterization of these two great philosophical traditions makes it clear that pragmatic ambition and... (shrink)

In this paper, we show that the question of the relative importance of innate characteristics and institutional arrangements in explaining human difference was vehemently contested in Britain during the first half of the nineteenth century. Thus Sir Francis Galton’s work of the 1860s should be seen as an intervention in a pre-existing controversy. The central figure in these earlier debates—as well as many later ones—was the philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill. In Mill’s view, human nature was fundamentally shaped (...) by history and culture, factors that accounted for most mental and behavioral differences between men and women and among people of different classes, nationalities, and races. Indeed, Mill’s whole program of social reform depended on the assumption that human differences were not fixed by nature. To identify the leading figures in these disputes about difference and the concrete context in which they occurred, we explore three debates in which Mill played a key role: over the capacities and rights of women, the viability of peasant proprietorship in India and Ireland, and the status of black labor in Jamaica. The last two draw our attention to the important colonial context of the nature–nurture debate. We also show that ideas that for us seem of a piece were not always linked for these earlier thinkers, nor did views on innateness necessarily have the political correlates that we now take for granted. (shrink)

Philip Kitcher is a leading figure in the philosophy of science, and he is part of a growing community of scholars who have turned their attention from the field’s long-time focus on questions of logic and epistemology to the relation between science and society. Kitcher’s book Science, Truth, and Democracy (2001) charted a course between relativism and realism, arguing that the aims of science emerge from not only scientific curiosity but also practical and public concerns. The book also drew on (...) John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (1999) to develop an ideal of “well-ordered science,” and then applied the ideal to various aspects of the scientific research agenda. Ten years later, complex public issues like climate change have grown more urgent, and with many people questioning mainstream science on climate change, evolutionary biology, vaccines, stem cell research, and other topics, the tensions between science and democracy seem more pronounced than ever. Kitcher’s Science in a Democrat. (shrink)

With this work, the author terminates his trilogy on nationally prominent philosophers in Germany, France, and the United States, respectively. In all three works a deliberate attempt is made to counter the current trend towards linguistic analysis and deal with philosophy in its classical meaning as a body of general truths about the universe as a whole, which the author believes leads to some important consequences of present day relevance. The style of the work, to say the least, is unusual (...) in that it is cast in the form of a series of letters, fourteen in number, of a father to his daughter. Since he admits there are no German, French, or American "philosophies," properly speaking, each letter deals with a particular North American philosopher, beginning with Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine in Revolutionary days, continuing with Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, Josiah Royce, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead as 19th century representatives, and Whitehead, Santayana, and Carnap for the first half of the twentieth. The work concludes with Hans Kelsen and Marcuse, who like Carnap, came to the United States as the result of Hitler’s antisemitism. The tenor of the work lays stress on problems of cultural and political life and, thereby, on the ties of this sort that bind the United States and Europe. The work reads well, and although its tone is more biographical than philosophical, more expository than critical, it could well serve as supplementary reading for a seminar on American philosophy.—A.B.W. (shrink)

The arguments of the fourth chapter of 'utilitarianism' have been given considerable attention in recent years. the present article suggests that the major (and most controversial) part of the chapter is concerned not so much with the proof as with the kind of proof to which the principle of utility is susceptible. it is argued that the chapter progresses in an orderly manner to outline the kinds of considerations which would be necessary to show (a) that happiness is desirable as (...) an end; (b) that the general happiness is desirable as an end; and (c) that the general happiness alone is desirable as an end. as well it is maintained that mill's arguments are not susceptible to the traditional objections raised against them (the naturalistic fallacy; arguing from verbal to logical similarities; fallacy of composition.). (shrink)

The present article is a continuation of the debate two sets of authors have been engaging in regarding one type of maturity mismatching: borrowing short and lending long. All four authors had agreed that this practice can set up the Austrian Business Cycle; the present author denies that BSLL would be a legitimate commercial interaction in the free society; Bagus and Howden continue to maintain that it would be licit. Our main criticism of Bagus and Howden is a reductio ad (...) absurdum: that this opens them up to the charge of embracing the doctrine of market failure; this is something highly problematic for the two of them, since all four contributors to this debate are well-known supporters of laissez faire capitalism. (shrink)

Disruptive societal changes following from emerging science and technology have recently led to a growing interest in developing ethical frameworks. Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is such a framework that aims to improve the relationship between science and society. Now a decade after its conceptualization, it still seems to suffer from conceptual unclarity and lack of implementation. Since responsibility in research and innovation practice remains as important as ever, we propose to revive the normative potential of RRI by approaching it (...) as a matter of collective democratic experimentation. To further develop this approach, we propose a pragmatist conceptualization inspired by John Dewey, his work on democracy as an ethical way of life and his attention to the contextual nature of responsibility. Furthermore, we show how his interest in social inquiring publics provides a particularly apt foothold from which to operationalize collective democratic experimentation with RRI. We will illustrate the utility of this approach, with specific attention to the social, experimental and public character of social inquiry, by connecting it to the recent call to use social labs methodology to experiment with RRI. From this we draw lessons for future collective democratic experimentation with responsibility in research and innovation practice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Postmodern Theory and Biblical Theology: Vanquishing God’s ShadowWalter L. ReedPostmodern Theory and Biblical Theology: Vanquishing God’s Shadow, by Brian D. Ingraffia; xvi & 284 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, $59.95 cloth, $17.95 paper.At the beginning of John Updike’s new novel In the Beauty of the Lilies, a Presbyterian minister, trained by the Princeton Fundamentalists in the early years of the 20th century, is reading a book (...) by the popular agnostic Robert Ingersoll when he suddenly loses his faith. Brian Ingraffia’s Postmodern Theory and Biblical Theology puts secular clerics at the end of the century, secure in their atheism or agnosticism, in danger of the opposite fate. Postmodern theorists are at risk here of losing their doubt. At least they are in danger of losing their confidence that Christianity need not be taken seriously since Nietzsche announced its demise and Heidegger and Derrida elaborated its obituary.Ingraffia is straightforward about his intentions. “In this study I seek to analyze critically the antipathy exhibited in postmodern theory toward theology,” he begins. “Whereas modernism tried to elevate man into God’s place, postmodern theory seeks to destroy or deconstruct the very place and attributes of God” (p. 1). Ingraffia focuses on Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida, arguably the three most rigorous and original philosophers of what has come to be known more loosely as postmodern theory. He analyzes the development of each writer’s critique of Western metaphysics in its own right, but he also attends to the genealogy of subversive genealogies among them—in Heidegger’s critique of the residual metaphysics of Nietzsche, for example, [End Page 184] and Derrida’s attempt to deconstruct, at times by appealing to concepts from Nietzsche, the residual ontotheology of Heidegger. “By deconstructing the metaphysics of presence, these thinkers all claim to have deconstructed ontotheology, [that is,] both Greek metaphysics and Christian theology,” Ingraffia concludes. But as he has argued in different specific contexts throughout his persuasive book, “the logos of biblical theology is radically different from the logos of Greek philosophy and modern rationalism,” these being the real sources or substance of the ontotheology that postmoderism is so dead set against (p. 237). In planting a headstone over Christian theology, in other words, postmodern theory has got the wrong grave.The genuine “biblical theology” Ingraffia counterposes to the misrepresentations of Christianity by Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida is found first and foremost in the New Testament letters of Paul. It is one of the striking features of the book that it brings a powerful voice from the first century into conversation and controversy with these powerful voices from the modern era. “The inventor of Christianity,” as Nietzsche labeled Paul in one of his many bitter aphorisms, is the central spokesman for the Christian understanding of truth that postmodernism has, deliberately as well as misadvertently, according to Ingraffia, misconstrued. Thus Paul’s doctrine of “the redemptive-eschatological separation between the present world and the world to come” (pp. 62 ff.), especially in the Letter to the Philippians, is set against Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence; Paul’s discrimination of “flesh and spirit,” with a salutary attention to the koiné Greek meanings of these terms and their cognates in the Letter to the Romans, is opposed to Heidegger’s doctrine of the authentic self. And in the most original of Ingraffia’s Pauline probes, Paul’s distinction between the “letter” (gramma) foolishly grasped and the “Scripture” (graphe) spiritually apprehended in the Second Letter to the Corinthians is counterposed to Derrida’s grammatology, where arche-writing effectively levels all hierarchies and distinctions.The strength of Ingraffia’s argument lies in his clear and, on one level, sympathetic exposition of the different but related projects of these three thinkers. This is not the kind of defensive dismissal of “secular humanism” or “godless philosophy” that evangelical Christianity has sometimes made from behind the barricades of its antimodernist revolt. With lucid expositions of crucial turns of their arguments and judicious appeals to current scholarship on each figure, Ingraffia shows how Nietzsche and Heidegger, “theology students turned philosopher” (p. 47), derive important concepts by borrowing from Christian theology on the one hand... (shrink)

In this interview, professor Davis discusses the evolution of his career and research interests as a philosopher-economist and gives his perspective on a number of important issues in the field. He argues that historians and methodologists of economics should be engaged in the practice of economics, and that historians should be more open to philosophical analysis of the content of economic ideas. He suggests that the history of recent economics is a particularly fruitful and important area for research exactly because (...) it is an open-ended story that is very relevant to understanding the underlying concerns and concepts of contemporary economics. He discusses his engagement with heterodox economics schools, and their engagement with a rapidly changing mainstream economics. He argues that the theory of the individual is “the central philosophical issue in economics” and discusses his extensive contributions to the issue. (shrink)

Human development is meant to be transformational in that it aims to improve people's lives by enhancing their capabilities. But who does it target: people as they are or the people they will become? This paper argues that the human development approach relies on an understanding of personal identity as dynamic rather than as static collections of preferences, and that this distinguishes human development from conventional approaches to development. Nevertheless, this dynamic understanding of personal identity is presently poorly conceptualized and (...) this has implications for development practice. We identify a danger of paternalism and propose institutionalizing two procedural principles as side constraints on development policies and projects: the principle of free prior informed consent and the principle of democratic development. -/- . (shrink)

_Beyond Solidarity_ is an impassioned argument for a sharable morality in a world increasingly fractured along lines of difference. Giles Gunn asks how human solidarity can be reconceived when its expressions have become increasingly exceptionalist and outmoded, and when the pressures of globalization divide as much as they unify. He finds the terms for answering these questions in a more inclusive, cosmopolitan pragmatism—one willing to explore fundamental values without recourse to absolutist arguments. Drawing on the work of William and Henry (...) James, John Dewey, Primo Levi, Richard Rorty, and many others, as well as postcolonial writing, Jewish literature of the Holocaust, and the cultural and religious experience of African Americans in slavery, Gunn points pragmatism in a transnational direction and shows how it can better account for the consequences of diversity. _Beyond Solidarity_, then, is a study of the difference that difference makes in a globalized world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bioethics in the Twenty-First Century: Why We Should Pay Attention to Eighteenth-Century Medical EthicsLaurence B. McCullough (bio)Those of us who work in the field of bioethics tend to think that, because the word “bioethics” is new, so too the field is new in all respects, but we are not the first to do bioethics. John Gregory (1724–1773) did bioethics just as we do it, at least two centuries (...) before we thought to do it (Gregory 1772). He deployed philosophical methods as sophisticated as our own. Indeed, Gregory took up the very best moral philosophy available to thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, namely, David Hume’s moral philosophy and its core concept of sympathy. Gregory also responded in a conceptually powerful and clinically applicable way to the problems of his time, just as we do. I want here to outline Gregory’s accomplishment and to identify some aspects of its importance for bioethics in the twenty-first century.Gregory’s “Problem List”Gregory wrote his medical ethics as a response to the then current state of medicine in Britain. We now follow Gregory in our writing of bioethics and clinical ethics in response to the problems of our time. A great deal that we now take for granted did not then exist. 1There was not, as there is now, any uniform pathway into medicine. Nor did there exist universal licensure. The Royal Colleges did attempt to assert, but failed to achieve, monopoly control of medical practice. The concepts of health and disease were themselves contested and therefore competed for their success in the market place. There was a marked oversupply of practitioners who competed fiercely—very fiercely indeed—in the medical market place for their concepts of health and disease, their treatments, and therefore their livelihoods. Patients had their own concepts of health and disease, engaged in “self-physicking” or self-care, and often traded physician’s prescriptions.Medicine exhibited little scientific discipline in its accounts of disease and in determining the efficacy of treatments, a fact that Gregory (1743) laments as a [End Page 329] medical student. There was no marked improvement when he began to give his medical ethics lectures nearly a quarter of a century later. Treatments failed as often, perhaps more often, than they succeeded in benefiting patients. The sick usually sought out the help of a physician after trying self-physicking.Physicians, Gregory taught, could not hope to control human biology, though they could aim to manage its processes well. When nature underresponds to disease the physician should assist her processes; when nature overresponds, the physician should tamp down nature’s responses, to lessen their “violence”—in both cases always attentive to the limits of medicine’s capacities in treating disease.Physicians attended the well-to-do sick at home, and the sick person summoned and dismissed physicians, surgeons, or apothecaries at will. A physician therefore might find himself—no women had yet been admitted to the ranks of university-trained physicians—summoned before, after, or simultaneously with a competitor, with his concepts and diagnosis and treatment put to the acid test. In this setting, there existed only a patient-physician relationship, not a physician-patient relationship.Physicians left off the care of dying patients, a practice that was made a matter of duty by Friederich Hoffmann (1749). One would suffer punishing economic consequences if one had a high mortality rate. Better, then, to label the patient incurable, withdraw, and turn matters over to clergy. Gregory attacks this practice as intellectual fraud and calls for the physician to continue to attend the dying. Indeed, he says, “It is as much the business of a physician to alleviate pain, and to smooth the avenues of death, when unavoidable, as to cure diseases” (Gregory 1772, p. 35). He does not explicitly address what we now call physician-assisted suicide; neither does he condemn it, and he is quick to condemn some things—e.g., sexual abuse of female patients or “sporting” with patients in the Royal Infirmary by using experiments as the first line of treatment.The Royal Infirmary was established to care for the deserving, working poor, who received free care... (shrink)

In contrast to the views put forth by Stein & Glasier, we support the use of inbred strains of rodents in studies of the immunobiology of neural transplants. Inbred strains demonstrate homology of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). Virtually all experimental work in transplantation immunology is performed using inbred strains, yet very few published studies of immune rejection in intracerebral grafts have used inbred animals.

Kuklick traces the history of philosophic thought in the United States "as typified and dominated by Harvard" from 1860 to 1930. He provides an analysis both of the thought of this period and of the development of Harvard University and its philosophy department. These two types of analyses are interwoven throughout the book, for Kuklick finds that the second type provides an important key to the interpretation that unfolds within the first type. Among the philosophers included are Francis Bowen, Chauncey (...) Wright, John Fiske, F. E. Abbot, C. S. Peirce, William James, Josiah Royce, Hugo Munsterberg, George Palmer, George Santayana, Ralph B. Perry, E. B. Holt, Ernest Hocking, Alfred N. Whitehead, and C. I. Lewis. Royce and James receive the most lengthy examination, and while there is a surprisingly unappreciative discussion of Whitehead’s position, it is followed by an unusually enthusiastic analysis of the philosophy of C. I. Lewis, whom Kuklick considers to be, "with the exception of Peirce... the most capable philosopher in the school we have studied." Though such a counterbalance to the more common tendency to slight the enduring achievements of Lewis’s philosophical insights is refreshing, even his most avid supporters might well hesitate to affirm such a view. Kuklick’s attitude toward Lewis, as well as his focus of attention on James and Royce, may be guided by a dominant theme of the book in general. One of the major philosophic threads which Kuklick uses to weave a unifying bond among many of the philosophers of this period is idealism, while the realistic strains of the philosophers involved are at best slighted, at worst distorted. James as well, of course, as Royce, is interpreted within the framework of idealism. Lewis, as heir to the debate between neo-realism and idealism as carried on by Perry and Royce, is seen by Kuklick as unsuccessfully attempting to repudiate the idealism bequeathed to him by Royce, thus representing the ultimate triumph of idealism over realism. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper is exploratory in a sense: I explore the possibility of feminist pragmatism as a pedagogical position compatible with online education. I argue in this paper that feminist pragmatism (FP) can be an important philosophic resource to continually challenge and change the online educational conversation. Contemporary feminist pragmatism is a conscious effort of women philosophers who took inspiration from the works of major women pragmatist thinkers, as well as others, especially John Dewey. Early women pragmatists developed a fruitful (...) collegial relationship with John Dewey and collaborated on studies and issues that shaped Dewey's pragmatism. FP's main tenets include an emphasis on context and experience, pluralism, diversity, and commitment to transformation. My aim in this paper is twofold: first, I seek to discuss online education and remote learning as experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic; and second, drawing from FP's philosophical tenets, I explore feminist-pragmatist perspectives on online education. Furthermore, I wish to contribute to the expansion and depth of Deweyan approaches through feminist consciousness and sensibilities. (shrink)

This paper considers some sources, mostly within the pragmatist tradition, for the full-fledged pragmatism that Putnam set out in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly in The Many Faces of Realism and Realism with a Human Face. In considering Putnam's views about metaphysics, I pay particular attention to his pluralism , which I trace back through Nelson Goodman to William James. In considering Putnam's idea that facts and values are intertwined, I discuss both John Dewey and that neglected middle-generation pragmatist, (...) C. I. Lewis. I briefly consider James's essay "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings," where metaphysical pluralism and a pluralistic ethics of toleration come together, and I conclude with some suggestions about the relation of Putnam's pragmatism to the very different American philosophy developed by his Harvard colleague Stanley Cavell. (shrink)

Technology is increasingly subject of attention from philosophers. Philosophical reflection on technology exhibits a wide and at times bewildering array of approaches and modes of thought. This volume brings to light the development of three schools in the philosophy of technology. Based on thorough introductions to Karl Marx', Martin Heidegger's and John Dewey's thought about technology, the volume offers an in-depth account of the way thinkers in the critical, the phenomenological and the pragmatic schools have respond to issues and (...) challenges raised by the works of the founders of these schools. Technologies in almost any aspect of human life is potentially subject of philosophical treatment. To offer a focused demonstration of key arguments and insights, the presentation of each school is concluded with a contribution to discussions of educational technologies. In addition to philosophers seeking a valuable and clear structuring of a still burgeoning field, the volume is of interest to those working with educational philosophy and value sensitive design. „Stig Børsen Hansen’s book is a must for all interested in understanding the development of the philosophy of technology and the relation of thoughts of thinkers that have shaped the area. The author presents a new and refreshing take on the ideas from Marx to Marcuse, from Dewey to Latour, and Heidegger to Borgmann. It will engage and hopefully provoke." Dr. Jan Kyrre Berg Friis, University of Copenhagen. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Virtues of the Will: The Transformation of Ethics in the Late Thirteenth Century by Bonnie KentTimothy B. NooneBonnie Kent. Virtues of the Will: The Transformation of Ethics in the Late Thirteenth Century. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1995. Pp. viii + 270. Cloth, $44.95.In this admirably written study, Bonnie Kent presents researchers on medieval philosophy with a survey of moral psychology during the crucial period (...) between the death of Thomas Aquinas and the summit of Duns Scotus’s career in the first decade of the fourteenth century. Although there have been many studies of particular issues in particular thinkers during this period and a generous presentation of texts with commentary by the great Dom Lottin (Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles, 7 vols. Louvain, 1942–1954), there has not been any lengthy study to date devoted to the period of the late thirteenth century that focused on moral psychology and the will. Simply in drawing attention to this period in the history of moral psychology, Professor Kent has made a tremendous contribution to the study of medieval philosophy, since she has rendered accessible authors that are more often than not neglected and overlooked. Kent, in fact, attempts something more: she places her study in the framework of the general historiography of Scholastic thought and the more recent interest in medieval ethics prompted by those championing virtue ethics.In order to highlight the distinguishing features of recent studies on medieval ethical thought, Kent reviews the established interpretation of philosophy in the thirteenth century. In the opening chapter, entitled “Heroes and Histories,” she points out the features common to the scholarly approaches of Gilson, Van Steenberghen, and even Copleston: (1) a prominent role is assigned to schools and movements, especially Aristotelianism and Augustinianism; (2) metaphysics and epistemology are the primary objects of study along with the relation between philosophy and theology; and (3) the Thomistic point of view is the organizing principle for telling the drama of the period. The last feature means that the history of the period is fundamentally told as streams of influence leading to Aquinas, followed by the golden age of Aquinas and his contemporaries and succeeded by a gradual decline after Aquinas, leading to the demise of Scholastic thought. In the context of the established historiography, accordingly, the approach of Alasdair MacIntyre represents a restatement of the common view, but one more radical in form. Instead of being merely different schools or movements, Augustinianism and Aristotelianism are different worldviews with their own paradigmatic conceptions of rationality, each of which is subsumed into the higher synthesis of Thomism. According to MacIntyre, the passage to modernity is begun by Scotus whose innovative theses in moral psychology and ethics are considered revolutionary.Kent’s stated aim is to challenge the “standard story” found in Gilson and others as well as its revised version in MacIntyre’s writings by providing a detailed study of the [End Page 462] period just prior to Scotus and establishing precisely how revolutionary Scotus’s teachings were when compared to his immediate predecessors. She accomplishes this aim masterfully in a series of chapters dedicated to the sources of medieval thought and elements of moral psychology. Beginning with late thirteenth-century thinkers’ attitude toward Aristotle in her second chapter, she shows in considerable detail that there is little evidence for any serious anti-Aristotelianism in the vast majority of late thirteenth-century authors. Indeed, the posture of these thinkers was to separate Aristotle from radical Aristotelianism and Thomism in order to claim that ancient wisdom was on the side of Christian ethics and psychology. The only exception that Kent finds to this widespread attitude is in the writings of Peter John Olivi whose hostility to pagan philosophy is clearly evident.The focus in the next chapter is on ethical voluntarism, a position characterized by the endorsement of the superiority of will over reason, the claim that human freedom resides primarily in the faculty of the will, that the will can act contrary to reason’s judgment, and that the will, not the intellect, commands the lower powers of the soul. In detailing the advent of... (shrink)

First published in 1899, The School and Society describes John Dewey’s experiences with his own famous Laboratory School, started in 1896. Dewey’s experiments at the Labora­tory School reflected his original social and educational philosophy based on American experience and concepts of democracy, not on European education models then in vogue. This forerunner of the major works shows Dewey’s per­vasive concern with the need for a rich, dynamic, and viable society. In his introduction to this volume, Joe R. Burnett states (...) Dewey’s theme. Industrialization, urbanization, science, and technology have created a revolution the schools cannot ignore. Dewey carries this theme through eight chapters: The School and Social Progress; The School and the Life of the Child; Waste in Education; Three Years of the University Elementary School; The Psychology of Elementary Education; Froebel’s Educa­tional Principles; The Psychology of Occupations; and the Development of Attention. (shrink)

Although there are distinctly American artists-Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Grandma Moses, Thomas Hart Benton, and Andy Warhol, for example-very little attention has been devoted to formulating any distinctively American characteristics of aesthetic judgment and practice. This volume takes a step in this direction, presenting an introductory essay on the possibility of such a distinctly American tradition, and a collection of essays exploring particular examples from a variety of angles. Some of the essays in this collection extend pragmatist and process insights (...) about the important place aesthetics has in molding and assessing experience. Other essays examine the place of American aesthetics in relation to such particular forms of art as painting, literature, music, and film. Three essays attend to the aesthetic aspects of a flourishing life. In each of the essays, American aesthetics is understood to arise out of deeply felt personal, historical, and cultural backgrounds. Consequently, not only are such relatively abstract notions as harmony, fit, elegance, proportion, and the like involved in aesthetic judgment, but also religious, political, and social factors become embroiled in aesthetic discernment. Thus the ongoing pattern of American aesthetics is shown to be distinguishable from such other varieties of aesthetic thought as analytic aesthetics, New Criticism, and postmodern approaches to aesthetics. (shrink)