The New Pragmatism Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle version is available to download in english. Read online anytime anywhere directly from your device. Click on the download button below to get a free pdf file of The New Pragmatism book. This book definitely worth reading, it is an incredibly well-written.
Some hundred years after its inception, Pragmatism has reclaimed centre stage, not just within philosophy, but also within intellectual culture as a whole. This book sets out to explain what it is about Pragmatism that makes it such a distinctively attractive prospect to so many thinkers, even in previously hostile traditions. Alan Malachowski sets out in a clear and accessible manner the original guiding thoughts behind the Pragmatist approach to philosophy and examines how these thoughts have faired in the hands of those largely responsible for the present revival (Putnam and Rorty). The Pragmatism that emerges from this exploration of its "classic" and "new wave" forms is then assessed in terms of both its philosophical potential and its wider cultural contribution. Readers will emerge from the book with a more secure grip on what Pragmatism involves and a correspondingly clearer grasp of what it has to offer and what its current resurgence is all about.
Pragmatism is the view that our philosophical concepts must be connected to our practices - philosophy must stay connected to first-order inquiry, to real examples, to real-life expertise. Contemporary philosophers explore this and develop the pragmatist project, showing that pragmatism is a strong current in philosophy today.
The New Pragmatist Sociology by Neil L. Gross,Isaac Ariail Reed,Christopher Winship Pdf
Pragmatist thought is central to sociology. However, sociologists typically encounter pragmatism indirectly, as a philosophy of science or as an influence on canonical social scientists, rather than as a vital source of theory, research questions, and methodological reflection in sociology today. In The New Pragmatist Sociology, Neil Gross, Isaac Ariail Reed, and Christopher Winship assemble a range of sociologists to address essential ideas in the field and their historical and theoretical connection to classical pragmatism. The book examines questions of methodology, social interaction, and politics across the broad themes of inquiry, agency, and democracy. Essays engage widely and deeply with topics that motivate both pragmatist philosophy and sociology, including rationality, speech, truth, expertise, and methodological pluralism. Contributors include Natalie Aviles, Karida Brown, Daniel Cefaï, Mazen Elfakhani, Luis Flores, Daniel Huebner, Cayce C. Hughes, Paul Lichterman, John Levi Martin, Ann Mische, Vontrese D. Pamphile, Jeffrey N. Parker, Susan Sibley, Daniel Silver, Mario Small, Iddo Tavory, Stefan Timmermans, Luna White, and Joshua Whitford.
W. J. Thomas Mitchell,William John Thomas Mitchell
Author : W. J. Thomas Mitchell,William John Thomas Mitchell Publisher : Chicago : University of Chicago Press Page : 160 pages File Size : 52,6 Mb Release : 1985 Category : Literary Criticism ISBN : STANFORD:36105040133956
Against Theory by W. J. Thomas Mitchell,William John Thomas Mitchell Pdf
"Against Theory," the title essay in this volume, challenges the notion that literary theory has any real work to do, or any results to show. This challenge--issued by Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels in Critical Inquiry (8:4)--strikes some critics as scandalous, others as provocative and productive. The argument is directed against both sides of the current debates in literary theory, criticizing theoretical "objectivists" like E. D. Hirsch, Jr., on the one hand, and proponents of indeterminacy like Paul de Man on the other. The attack is not just on a particular way of doing theory but on the entire project of literary theory. The challenge is not only to a way of thinking and writing but to a way of making a living. The resulting controversy has drawn so much attention among literary critics that it has been collected in a single volume so that the debate can be followed from start to finish. This collection includes the essay "Against Theory," seven responses to it, and a rejoinder by Knapp and Michaels (originally published in Critical Inquiry 9:4); in addition, there are two new statements plus a final reply by Knapp and Michaels. The debate chronicled in this volume raises the most fundamental issues in the theory of meaning and the practice of interpretation. Are Knapp and Michaels confronting literary theory with a new "pragmatic" form of theory? Or are they (as some of their respondents suggest) arguing for a new form of nihilism? "If it is a nihilism," writes editor W. J. T. Mitchell, "it is one that demands an answer, not easy polemical dismissal, one that calls for theory to clarify its claims, not to mystify them and the easy assurance of intellectual fashion and institutional authority." It is the intention of Against Theory to aid in that clarification.
New Perspectives on Pragmatism and Analytic Philosophy. by Rosa M. Calcaterra Pdf
The strong influence of pragmatism in the early 20th-century international debate, its subsequent and apparently inexorable decline, and its recent revival are intertwined with the fate of other currents of thought that have marked the development of contemporary philosophy. This volume clarifies the most recent events of this development focusing on key theoretical issues common both to American classic philosophical tradition and analytical thought. Many essays in this volume belong to what we can call “new” pragmatism, namely a pragmatist perspective that is different from the postmodernist “neo” pragmatism à la Rorty. The volume shows that both pragmatists and analytic thinkers stress the importance of logic and scientific method in order to deal with philosophical problems and seek for a clarification of the relation between our ethical values and our understanding of natural facts. Moreover, the anti-skeptic attitude that characterizes pragmatism as well as most part of analytic philosophy, and their common attention to the problems of language and communication are emphasized. The more sophisticated tools for addressing both theoretical and methodological problems developed by analytic philosophy are pointed out, and the essays show the possible integration of these two forms of speculation that, for too a long time, mutually disregarded one another.
Author : Robert W. Preucel,Stephen A. Mrozowski Publisher : John Wiley & Sons Page : 665 pages File Size : 50,7 Mb Release : 2011-10-04 Category : Social Science ISBN : 9781444358513
Contemporary Archaeology in Theory by Robert W. Preucel,Stephen A. Mrozowski Pdf
The second edition of Contemporary Archaeology in Theory: The New Pragmatism, has been thoroughly updated and revised, and features top scholars who redefine the theoretical and political agendas of the field, and challenge the usual distinctions between time, space, processes, and people. Defines the relevance of archaeology and the social sciences more generally to the modern world Challenges the traditional boundaries between prehistoric and historical archaeologies Discusses how archaeology articulates such contemporary topics and issues as landscape and natures; agency, meaning and practice; sexuality, embodiment and personhood; race, class, and ethnicity; materiality, memory, and historical silence; colonialism, nationalism, and empire; heritage, patrimony, and social justice; media, museums, and publics Examines the influence of American pragmatism on archaeology Offers 32 new chapters by leading archaeologists and cultural anthropologists
Richard Rorty's New Pragmatism by Edward Grippe Pdf
A critique of one of America's most influential living thinkers: Grippe takes Rorty at his word, applying Rorty's standards to his own writings, and finds an incoherence at the heart of them.
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 Deweyan.Reinventing Pragmatism examines the force of the new pragmatisms, from the emergence of Rorty's and Putnam's basic disagreements of the 1970s until the turn of the century. Joseph Margolis considers the revival of a movement generally thought to have ended by the 1950s as both a surprise and a turn of great importance. The quarrel between Rorty and Putnam obliged American philosophers, and eventually Eurocentric philosophy as a whole, to reconsider the direction of American and European philosophy, for instance in terms of competing accounts of realism and naturalism.
Historical Biblical Archaeology and the Future by Thomas Evan Levy Pdf
Joint winner of the 2011 Biblical Archaeology Society Publication Award in the category "Best Scholarly Book on Archaeology" The archaeology of the Holy Land is undergoing major change. 'Historical Biblical Archaeology and the Future' describes the paradigm shift brought about by objective science-based dating methods, geographic information systems, anthropological models, and digital technology tools. The book serves as a model for how researchers can investigate the relationship between ancient texts (both sacred and profane) and the archaeological record. Influential archaeologists and biblical scholars examine a range of texts, materials and cultures: the Vedas and India; the Homeric legends and Greek Classical Archaeology; the Sagas and Icelandic archaeology; Islamic Archaeology; and the Umayyad, Abbasid, and Ayyubid periods. The groundbreaking essays offer a foundation for future research in biblical archaeology, ancient Jewish history and biblical studies.
Author : Richard J. Bernstein Publisher : John Wiley & Sons Page : 267 pages File Size : 45,8 Mb Release : 2013-04-26 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines ISBN : 9780745659459
In this major new work, Richard J. Bernstein argues that many of the most important themes in philosophy during the past one hundred and fifty years are variations and developments of ideas that were prominent in the classical American pragmatists: Charles S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey and George H Mead. Pragmatism begins with a thoroughgoing critique of the Cartesianism that dominated so much of modern philosophy. The pragmatic thinkers reject a sharp dichotomy between subject and object, mind-body dualism, the quest for certainty and the spectator theory of knowledge. They seek to bring about a sea change in philosophy that highlights the social character of human experience and normative social practices, the self-correcting nature of all inquiry, and the continuity of theory and practice. And they-especially James, Dewey, and Mead-emphasize the democratic ethical-political consequences of a pragmatic orientation. Many of the themes developed by the pragmatic thinkers were also central to the work of major twentieth century philosophers like Wittgenstein and Heidegger, but the so-called analytic-continental split obscures this underlying continuity. Bernstein develops an alternative reading of contemporary philosophy that brings out the persistence and continuity of pragmatic themes. He critically examines the work of leading contemporary philosophers who have been deeply influenced by pragmatism, including Hilary Putnam, Jürgen Habermas, Richard Rorty, and Robert Brandom, and he explains why the discussion of pragmatism is so alive, varied and widespread. This lucid, wide-ranging book by one of America's leading philosophers will be compulsory reading for anyone who wants to understand the state of philosophy today.
The present book is devoted to "European connections of Richard Rorty’s neopragmatism". Rorty can be connected to numerous controversies, polemics and discussions with European philosophy and within its framework, from Plato to Kant to Hegel to Habermas to Derrida. Rorty gets into European discussions with American freshness and intellectual breadth and therefore he was listened to carefully and read with great interest. His connections with European philosophical tradition are manifold, complicated and diversified; with a part of it he remains in a serious, deep controversy (Plato, Kant), with another part of it he remains in a cheerful agreement (young Hegel from Phenomenology, Nietzsche, the early Heidegger, the late Wittgenstein). It is also the case with his connections with contemporary European philosophy - apart from favorites (Derrida, Habermas) there are those he dislikes (the late Heidegger, Foucault). Rorty as a philosopher of the unprecedented erudition, in his philosophizing takes a stance towards the whole philosophy which, from our perspective of more than twenty five hundred years and Greek origins of philosophical conceptuality is European first and foremost. We refer here to a polemical context of Rorty’s writing; it gives us the possibility of showing him from the perspective of others and in comparison with others. The present book never had monographic intentions, it does not want to tell a complete story of its philosophical protagonist in the manner of a German Bildungsroman that presents its hero from the perspective of passing time, nor does it want to present the whole of Rorty’s work from a unifying viewpoint or to present particular stages of Rorty’s development (particular books), starting with the "early" Rorty, with the "medium" one to the "late" Rorty, if the first would be supposed to be Rorty until Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, the second - Rorty from this book, and the latest - Rorty from Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity onwards. The book presented here intentionally is not a monograph, hence its poetics and architecture are different. Rorty is a philosopher who is still writing, and we intended to provide his past writings with a new dimension, presenting recontextualizations and redescriptions of them in the light of what he is thinking at the moment. We have assumed here the following principle: the work consists of chapters followed by "philosophical excursuses". The former are focused on Rorty’s philosophy, the latter show his philosophy in struggles with other contemporary and past philosophers, providing a more general philosophical background. Philosophers from "excursuses" as well as Rorty’s polemics with them throw as much light to his philosophy as chapters themselves. But they show it in a slightly different, wider perspective, necessary in my view for a more general and culturally significant understanding of importance of his philosophy. Thus, heroes of the excursuses presented here are Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Jürgen Habermas and Zygmunt Bauman, as well as such great past philosophical figures as G.W.F. Hegel and Plato. Why these philosophers rather than others? First of all, due to their importance to the development of Rorty’s philosophy - by means of defining its position with reference to their philosophical settlements or by means of philosophical tensions born between them. Two factors were decisive: the role played in Rorty’s philosophy as he can see it and the role played in it as we can see it. It is rather excursuses that provide most contextual material to Rorty’s work, it is them that trace in detail his European connections. The picture that emerges from them is fascinating due to Rorty’s versatility because it is something totally different that is at stake in Rorty’s struggles for fame and immortality with Derrida (as I am trying to outline the debate here), something else it at stake in his political discussions with Lyotard, and something still else in "merely philosophical", as he calls them, debates with Habermas. Without these contextual pieces I might be afraid that the book would be dry and devoid of the cultural surrounding of postmodernity in which Rorty’s work has been written. If Rorty’s philosophy takes its life juice from controversies with European philosophy, it is hard to imagine for me to cut them off in the present work; and they are essential in my view to show the significance of Rorty’s neopragmatism, they are in tune, I hope, with the Rortyan way of practising philosophy. CONTENTS Acknowledgments (5); Introduction (7); Chapter I. Philosophy of recontextualization, recontextualization of philosophy. General remarks (37); Philosophical Excursus I. Seriousness, play, and fame (on Rorty’s Derrida) (59); Chapter II. The question of self-creation (86); Philosophical Excursus II Rorty and Lyotard, or about conversation and tragedy (104); Chapter III Anti-Platonism of Rorty’s thought (133); Philosophical Excursus III Hegel’s presence in Rorty (159); Chapter IV Rorty and literature, or about the priority of the "wisdom of the novel” to the "wisdom of philosophy" (185); Philosophical Excursus IV The picture of an ironist who is unwilling to be a liberal, and of a liberal who is unwilling to be an ironist (Foucault and Habermas) (211); Chapter V Philosophy and politics, or about a romantic and a pragmatist (238); Philosophical Excursus V Rorty, Bauman, contingency, and solidarity (257); Bibliography (289).
Author : Yong Huang Publisher : State University of New York Press Page : 335 pages File Size : 53,9 Mb Release : 2009-05-04 Category : Philosophy ISBN : 9780791477199
Rorty, Pragmatism, and Confucianism by Yong Huang Pdf
Rorty, Pragmatism, and Confucianism offers a fascinating conversation between Confucianism, historically the dominant tradition in Chinese thought and society, and the contemporary philosophy of Richard Rorty. Well aware that his philosophical hero, John Dewey, has had a lasting influence among Chinese intellectuals, Rorty expressed a wish that his own books, which have been rapidly translated into Chinese, be read as an updated version of Dewey's philosophy. In this book, twelve authors engage Rorty's thought in a hermeneutic dialogue with Confucianism, using Confucianism to interpret and reconstruct Rorty while exploring such topics as human nature, moral psychology, moral relativism, moral progress, democracy, tradition, moral metaphysics, and religiosity. Rorty himself provides a detailed reply to each author.
Although long considered the most distinctive American contribution to philosophy, pragmatism—with its problem-solving emphasis and its contingent view of truth—lost popularity in mid-century after the advent of World War II, the horror of the Holocaust, and the dawning of the Cold War. Since the 1960s, however, pragmatism in many guises has again gained prominence, finding congenial places to flourish within growing intellectual movements. This volume of new essays brings together leading philosophers, historians, legal scholars, social thinkers, and literary critics to examine the far-reaching effects of this revival. As the twenty-five intellectuals who take part in this discussion show, pragmatism has become a complex terrain on which a rich variety of contemporary debates have been played out. Contributors such as Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, Nancy Fraser, Robert Westbrook, Hilary Putnam, and Morris Dickstein trace pragmatism’s cultural and intellectual evolution, consider its connection to democracy, and discuss its complex relationship to the work of Emerson, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein. They show the influence of pragmatism on black intellectuals such as W. E. B. Du Bois, explore its view of poetic language, and debate its effects on social science, history, and jurisprudence. Also including essays by critics of the revival such as Alan Wolfe and John Patrick Diggins, the volume concludes with a response to the whole collection from Stanley Fish. Including an extensive bibliography, this interdisciplinary work provides an in-depth and broadly gauged introduction to pragmatism, one that will be crucial for understanding the shape of the transformations taking place in the American social and philosophical scene at the end of the twentieth century. Contributors. Richard Bernstein, David Bromwich, Ray Carney, Stanley Cavell, Morris Dickstein, John Patrick Diggins, Stanley Fish, Nancy Fraser, Thomas C. Grey, Giles Gunn, Hans Joas, James T. Kloppenberg, David Luban, Louis Menand, Sidney Morgenbesser, Richard Poirier, Richard A. Posner, Ross Posnock, Hilary Putnam, Ruth Anna Putnam, Richard Rorty, Michel Rosenfeld, Richard H. Weisberg, Robert B. Westbrook, Alan Wolfe
Morris R. Cohen once described pragmatism as "a philosophy for people who cannot think"; and Bertrand Russell feared that pragmatism would lead philosophy into "cosmic impiety." Nothing could be further from the truth. Pragmatism was one of the most fruitful philosophical movements of the late nineteenth century, and has continued to be a significant influence on some of the major figures in philosophy - F. P. Ramsey, W. V. Quine, Sidney Hook, Nelson Goodman, Hilary Putnam, and many others.Today some even speak of a remarkable renaissance of pragmatism. Very often, though, what they have in mind is not the rich heritage of the classical pragmatist tradition, but a radical self-styled neo-pragmatism that has of late transmuted the reformist aspirations of classical pragmatism into a kind of revolutionary anti-intellectualism - a radical neo-pragmatism that seems to confirm Russell''s worst fears.Asking what we can learn from the older pragmatist tradition, and what we can salvage from the intellectual shipwreck of the new, Susan Haack, with the assistance of Robert Lane, has put together a wide-ranging anthology that tells the story of the evolution of pragmatism from its origins in C. S. Peirce''s hopes of making philosophy more scientific and William James''s of "unstiffening our theories," to the radical literary-political neo-pragmatism recently popularized by Richard Rorty. Opening with a history of pragmatism from its inception to the present day, and closing with Haack''s famous "interview" with Peirce and Rorty, the book presents a broad and diverse selection of pragmatist writings - classical and contemporary, reformist and revolutionary - on logic, metaphysics, theory of inquiry, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, aesthetics, philosophy of education, and moral, social, and political philosophy.
