Kategoria BISAC: Philosophy >> Criticism

In Reshaping Reason, John McCumber breathes new life into American philosophy. Moving past the tired divide between "analytic" and "continental" camps, he proposes new directions to unite a discipline which has become more unfocused and invisible. McCumber recommends a new set of rational tools to enable philosophers and then puts these tools to work to redefine epistemology, ontology, and ethics. Reshaping Reason explores philosophy's achievements and failures in a cold light and paves the way for the discipline to become more meaningful and relevant to society at large.

In Kierkegaard's Instant, David J. Kangas reads Kierkegaard to reveal his radical thinking about temporality. For Kierkegaard, the instant of becoming, in which everything changes in the blink of an eye, eludes recollection and anticipation. It constitutes a beginning always already at work. As Kangas shows, Kierkegaard's retrieval of the sudden quality of temporality allows him to stage a deep critique of the idealist projects of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. By linking Kierkegaard's thought to the tradition of Meister Eckhart, Kangas formulates the central problem of these early texts...

Countering the call by some "pro-Lacanians" for an end to the exegesis of Lacan's work -- and the dismissal by "anti-Lacanians" of Lacan as impossibly impenetrable -- Subjectivity and Otherness argues for Lacan as a "paradoxically systematic" thinker, and for the necessity of a close analysis of his texts. Lorenzo Chiesa examines, from a philosophical perspective, the evolution of the concept of subjectivity in Lacan's work, carrying out a detailed reading of the Lacanian subject in its necessary relation to otherness according to Lacan's orders of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and...

A book for everyone interested in learning how philosophy is done and what it can tell us about who we are.

Images of and references to women are so rare in the vast corpus of his published work that there seems to be no "woman question" for Hans-Georg Gadamer. Yet the authors of the fifteen essays included in this volume show that it is possible to read past Gadamer's silences about women and other Others to find rich resources for feminist theory and practice in his views of science, language, history, knowledge, medicine, and literature. While the essayists find much of value in Gadamer's work, he emerges from their discussion as a controversial figure. Some contributors see him as promoting...

Images of and references to women are so rare in the vast corpus of his published work that there seems to be no "woman question" for Hans-Georg Gadamer. Yet the authors of the fifteen essays included in this volume show that it is possible to read past Gadamer's silences about women and other Others to find rich resources for feminist theory and practice in his views of science, language, history, knowledge, medicine, and literature. While the essayists find much of value in Gadamer's work, he emerges from their discussion as a controversial figure. Some contributors see him as promoting...

As one of the preeminent philosophers of the twentieth century, W. V. Quine (1908-2000) made groundbreaking contributions to the philosophy of science, mathematical logic, and the philosophy of language. This collection of essays examines Quine's views, particularly his holism and naturalism, for their value (and their limitations) to feminist theorizing today.

Some contributors to this volume see Quine as severely challenging basic tenets of the logico-empiricist tradition in the philosophy of science--the analytic/synthetic distinction, verificationism, foundationalism--and accept...

This collection considers one of the most important figures of the modern canon of political philosophy, John Locke. A physician by training and profession, Locke not only wrote one of the most important and well-known treatises of the modern canon, but also made important contributions in the areas of seventeenth-century law and public policy, epistemology, philosophy of language, religion, and economics.

There has been a long-standing debate in feminist scholarship on Locke as to whether this early founder of modern liberal thought was a strong feminist or whether he ushered in a...

Because of his misogyny and disdain for the body, Kant has been a target of much feminist criticism. Moreover, as the epitome of eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosophy, his thought has been a focal point for feminist debate over the Enlightenment legacy--whether its conceptions of reason and progress offer tools for women's emancipation and empowerment or, rather, have contributed to the historical subordination of women in Western society.

This volume presents radically divergent interpretations of Kant from feminist perspectives. Some essays see Kant as having contributed...

A comprehensive discussion of Plato's treatment of techne (technical knowledge), which shows that the final goal of Platonic philosophy is nontechnical wisdom. The Greek word "techne," typically translated as "art," but also as "craft," "skill," "expertise," "technical knowledge," and even "science," has been decisive in shaping our "technological" culture. Here David Roochnik comprehensively analyzes Plato's treatment of this crucial word. Roochnik maintains that Plato's understanding of both the goodness of techne, as well as its severe limitations and consequent need to be supplemented...

Philosophical Romanticism is one of the first books to address the relationship between philosophy and romanticism, an area which is currently undergoing a major revival. This collection of specially-written articles by world-class philosophers explores the contribution of romantic thought to topics such as freedom, autonomy, and subjectivity; memory and imagination; pluralism and practical reasoning; modernism, scepticism and irony; art and ethics; and cosmology, time and technology.

While the roots of romanticism are to be found in early German idealism, Philosophical...

Material Falsity and Error in Descartes's Meditations approaches Descartes's Meditations as an intellectual journey, wherein Descartes's views develop and change as he makes new discoveries about self, God and matter. The first book to focus closely on Descartes's notion of material falsity, it shows how Descartes's account of material falsity - and correspondingly his account of crucial notions such as truth, falsehood and error - evolves according to the epistemic advances in the Meditations. It also offers important new insights on the crucial role of Descartes's Third...