What, After All, Is a Work of Art? directs our attention toward historicity, the inherent historied nature of thinking, and the artifactual, culturally emergent nature of both art and human selves. While these are familiar themes in Margolis's well-known studies of art and culture, they are largely neglected in English-language aesthetics and even philosophy in general.
Margolis brings these primary themes to bear on a number of strategically selected issues: the modernism/postmodernism dispute; the treatment of modernist and "post-historical" painting in Clement Greenberg...
What, After All, Is a Work of Art? directs our attention toward historicity, the inherent historied nature of thinking, and the artifactua...
Rather than just offer background readings or a survey of views on a subject, as traditional anthologies do, this volume tries to engage the reader's active participation in understanding how philosophy came to be split between analytic and continental approaches and in finding ways to reconcile the two. It does so by tracing the history of philosophy as a perennial contest between two opposing world views: one that relates change to an underlying structure of invariance, and another that sees change itself ("flux") as the basic condition of existence.
The seven chapters cover the...
Rather than just offer background readings or a survey of views on a subject, as traditional anthologies do, this volume tries to engage the reader...
Rather than just offer background readings or a survey of views on a subject, as traditional anthologies do, this volume tries to engage the reader's active participation in understanding how philosophy came to be split between analytic and continental approaches and in finding ways to reconcile the two. It does so by tracing the history of philosophy as a perennial contest between two opposing world views: one that relates change to an underlying structure of invariance, and another that sees change itself ("flux") as the basic condition of existence.
The seven chapters cover the...
Rather than just offer background readings or a survey of views on a subject, as traditional anthologies do, this volume tries to engage the reader...
Extending his well-known investigations into the nature and logic of art and history in the cultural world, Joseph Margolis here offers a sustained account of how selves and the cultural phenomena they generate (language, history, action, art) can be viewed as just as "real" as the physical nature from which they are emergent, while not being reducible to it. The book starts off with a review of prominent philosophies of art over the past half-century, focusing especially on Beardsley, Goodman, and Danto, so as to highlight the need for carefully distinguishing between the metaphysical and...
Extending his well-known investigations into the nature and logic of art and history in the cultural world, Joseph Margolis here offers a sustained...
Were the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks courageous "freedom fighters" or despicable terrorist murderers? These opposing characterizations reveal in extreme form the incompatibility between different moral visions that underlie many conflicts in the world today, conflicts that challenge us to consider how moral disputes may be resolved. Eschewing the resort to universal moral principles favored by traditional Anglo-American analytic philosophy, Joseph Margolis sets out to sketch an alternative approach that accepts the lack of any neutral ground or privileged normative perspective for...
Were the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks courageous "freedom fighters" or despicable terrorist murderers? These opposing characterizations reveal ...
With this challenging work, Joseph Margolis continues the project begun in The Flux of History and the Flux of Science (California, 1993). Tackling one of philosophy's master themes, he develops the controversial thesis that the world is a flux. Here he applies this doctrine to Western theories of history and the interpretation of cultural phenomena--offering the first sustained analysis of the logic, methodology, and metaphysics of interpretation committed to a thoroughgoing relativism and the historicized structure of cultural phenomena. Versed in Anglo-American and Continental...
With this challenging work, Joseph Margolis continues the project begun in The Flux of History and the Flux of Science (California, 1993). Tack...
Questions about the nature of beauty and the relation between morality and art were among the earliest discussed by ancient philosophers. And today, a host of new issues has been prompted by recent developments in the arts and in philosophy, testifying to a great revival of interest in aesthetics and literary criticism. The nature of representation, the relation between art and truth, and the criteria for interpretation are among the most debated problems in contemporary philosophy.
This reference series, centred on analytic philosophy but also covering important...
Questions about the nature of beauty and the relation between morality and art were among the earliest discussed by ancient philosophers. And today, a...
In contemporary philosophical debates in the United States "redefining pragmatism" has become the conventional way to flag significant philosophical contests and to launch large conceptual and programmatic changes. This book analyzes the contributions of such developments in light of the classic formulations of Charles S. Peirce and John Dewey and the interaction between pragmatism and analytic philosophy. American pragmatism was revived quite unexpectedly in the 1970s by Richard Rorty's philosophical heterodoxy and his running dispute with Hilary Putnam, who, like Rorty, is a professed...
In contemporary philosophical debates in the United States "redefining pragmatism" has become the conventional way to flag significant philosophica...
The Unraveling of Scientism, a companion to Joseph Margolis's Reinventing Pragmatism, follows the thread of American analytic philosophy through the second half of the twentieth century, the period of its greatest influence and activity. Margolis finds that the distinctive features of analytic philosophy were effectively altered, at about mid-century, most pointedly by W. V. Quine. Surprisingly, this was a time of declining conceptual invention and originality among the leading strands of philosophy pragmatism, logical positivism and the unity of science program, and the principal continental...
The Unraveling of Scientism, a companion to Joseph Margolis's Reinventing Pragmatism, follows the thread of American analytic philosophy through the s...
Joseph Margolis is an extremely rare kind of author - a renowned, world-class philosopher who is prepared to write accessibly for the non-specialist reader. Here Margolis introduces the reader to all of the central questions of Western philosophy, showing not only philosophical arguments progress but also how the most fundamental questions relate to each other. This lucid introduction enables the reader to experience a first-rate philosophical intelligence at work.
"I have tried to keep the issues clean and bare and to presuppose as little as possible in addressing the...
Joseph Margolis is an extremely rare kind of author - a renowned, world-class philosopher who is prepared to write accessibly for the non-specialis...
