Debating The State Of Philosophy

Download or read book Debating the State of Philosophy written by Jürgen Habermas and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1996-10-21 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do we still need philosophical discourse as part of communication within our culture? Is philosophical endeavor still valid? This book offers the views of some of the most popular, distinguished contemporary philosophers who have placed their mark on philosophy. Durgen Habermas, Richard Rorty, Leszek Kolakowski, and Ernest Gellner bring their ideas into confrontation in a unique debate devoted to the present state of philosophy. Habermas begins with a comprehensive account of contextualism. According to him, contextualism is a new form of historicism. What are the merits of an approach that takes into account both a historical and a cultural context? Is the pragmatism promoted by Richard Rorty an acceptable criticism of our platonic heritage? If so, does this mean the end of rationality as a regulative ideal of the human universe? Rorty's answer is Yes. This world-renowned American thinker recommends putting a full stop at the end of a narrative which was useful in pursuit of our ancestors' purposes but is no longer useful for ours. Leszek Ko^D/lakowski attempts to undermine the alleged pragmatic merits of pragmatism from the position of an analytic philosopher who continues to value classical elements of philosophical tradition. Ernest Gellner also turns against Rorty's pragmatism, which he denounces as a product of the Enlightenment roots of American culture and its centuries of political and economic stability. The future of Western culture may depend on the answers to the questions asked by these authors.

Download or read book Debates in Indian Philosophy written by A. Raghuramaraju and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-08-10 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume traces the impact of colonialism and Western philosophy on the dialogical structure of Indian thought and highlights the general tendency in contemporary Indian philosophy to avoid direct dialogue as opposed to the rich and elaborate debates that formed the pivot of the classical Indian tradition. It defines three possible areas of debate: between Swami Vivekanand and Mahatama Gandhi; V.D. Savarkar and Mahatama Gandhi; and Sri Aurobindo and Krishna Chandra Bhattacharyya—on state and pre-modern society, religion and politics, and science and spiritualism respectively. This book will be of considerable interest not only to students and scholars of Indian philosophy and religious studies but to scholars of politics and sociology as well.

Download or read book Debating Climate Ethics written by Stephen M. Gardiner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-01 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, Stephen M. Gardiner and David A. Weisbach present arguments for and against the relevance of ethics to global climate policy. Gardiner argues that climate change is fundamentally an ethical issue, since it is an early instance of a distinctive challenge to ethical action (the perfect moral storm), and ethical concerns (such as with justice, rights, political legitimacy, community and humanity's relationship to nature) are at the heart of many of the decisions that need to be made. Consequently, climate policy that ignores ethics is at risk of "solving" the wrong problem, perhaps even to the extreme of endorsing forms of climate extortion. This is especially true of policy based on narrow forms of economic self-interest. By contrast, Weisbach argues that existing ethical theories are not well suited to addressing climate change. As applied to climate change, existing ethical theories suffer from internal logical problems and suggest infeasible strategies. Rather than following failed theories or waiting indefinitely for new and better ones, Weisbach argues that central motivation for climate policy is straightforward: it is in their common interest for people and nations to agree to policies that dramatically reduce emissions to prevent terrible harms.

Download or read book Debating the Ethics of Immigration written by Christopher Heath Wellman and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2011-09-30 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do states have the right to prevent potential immigrants from crossing their borders, or should people have the freedom to migrate and settle wherever they wish? Christopher Heath Wellman and Phillip Cole develop and defend opposing answers to this timely and important question. Appealing to the right to freedom of association, Wellman contends that legitimate states have broad discretion to exclude potential immigrants, even those who desperately seek to enter. Against this, Cole argues that the commitment to the moral equality of all human beings - which legitimate states can be expected to hold - means national borders must be open: equal respect requires equal access, both to territory and membership; and that the idea of open borders is less radical than it seems when we consider how many territorial and community boundaries have this open nature. In addition to engaging with each other's arguments, Wellman and Cole address a range of central questions and prominent positions on this topic. The authors therefore provide a critical overview of the major contributions to the ethics of migration, as well as developing original, provocative positions of their own.

Download or read book Debating the Political Philosophy of Hegel written by Walter Kaufmann and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 2009-12-01 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few philosophers have had as much influence as Hegel. When he died in 1831, he not only dominated German philosophy, but also left his mark on the study of religion and art, on historical studies, and on political thought. Much later, Lenin insisted that no one could completely comprehend Karl Marx unless he had first made a thorough study of Hegel. Later, it became fashionable to link Hegel with Nazism and communism. There is today broad agreement that knowledge of Hegel's thought adds a critical dimension to our understanding of recent cultural and political history. This volume, first published in 1970, focuses on Hegel's political philosophy. It brings together ten essays by six authors who present sharply conflicting interpretations. Here are point-by-point discussions, from differing perspectives, on Hegel's philosophy of the state and his ideas about history and war, nationalism and liberty. Never before have these issues been joined in comparable fashion in a single volume. Sidney Hook sees Hegel as "the very model of a small - minded, timid Continental conservative" and accuses him of "the most specious reasoning that ever disgraced a philosopher," and E. F. Carritt argues for a "totalitarian" reading of Hegel, while T. M. Knox and Shlomo Avineri defend Hegel against these and other charges. The book also contains a short contribution by Z. A. Pelczynski and Walter Kaufmann's "The Hegel Myth and Its Method." Walter Kaufmann, an outstanding historian of European ideas in philosophy, furnished an introduction as well as footnotes that help to clarify perplexing issues and in some cases seek to put an end to long-lived errors. His analysis is itself a major contribution to Hegel's political theories.

Download or read book Richard Rorty written by Richard Rumana and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2002 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demonstrating Richard Rorty's breadth of scholarship and his influence on diverse issues across the social sciences and humanities, this comprehensive bibliography contains 1,165 citations. A unique reference work on neo-pragmatism, this bibliography is essential for anyone researching Rorty's work and its impact on philosophy, literature, the arts, religion, the social sciences, politics, and education.

Download or read book Debating and Defining Borders written by Søren Tinning and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together insights from border scholars and philosophers to ask how we are to define and understand concepts of borders today. Borders have a defining role in contemporary societies. Take, for example, the 2016 US election and the UK Brexit referendum, and subsequent debate, where the rhetoric and symbolism of border controls proved fundamental to the outcomes. However, borders are also becoming ever more multifaceted and complex, representing intersections of political, economical, social, and cultural interests. For some, borders are tangible, situated in time and place; for others, the nature of borders can be abstracted and discussed in general terms. By discussing borders philosophically and theoretically, this edited collection tackles head on the most defi ning and challenging questions within the fi eld of border studies regarding the defi nition of its very object of study. Part 1 of the book consists of theoretical contributions from border scholars, Part 2 takes a philosophical approach, and Part 3 brings together chapters where philosophy and border studies are directly related. Borders intersect with the key issues of our time, from migration, climate change vulnerability, terror, globalization, inequality, and nationalism, to intertwining questions of culture, identity, ideology, and religion. This book will be of interest to those studying in these fields, and most especially to researchers of border studies and philosophy.