Pragmatist Egalitarianism

Download or read book Pragmatist Egalitarianism written by David Rondel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pragmatist Egalitarianism argues that a deep impasse plagues philosophical egalitarianism. It sets forth a conception of equality rooted in American pragmatist thought--specifically William James, John Dewey, and Richard Rorty--that successfully mediates that impasse.

Download or read book Pragmatist Egalitarianism written by David Rondel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-12-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pragmatist Egalitarianism argues that a deep impasse plagues philosophical egalitarianism, and sets forth a novel conception of equality rooted in American pragmatist thought that successfully mediates it. There is a division within egalitarianism between those who regard equality as a fundamentally distributive ideal and those who construe it as a normative conception of human relationships. Despite their close connection, these different ideals may come apart. And yet, so much philosophical writing on equality is marked by what looks like a zero-sum competition for the same conceptual turf, as if the whole truth about equality must be captured by a single idea or an exclusive set of principles. One of the core arguments in Pragmatist Egalitarianism is that we should reject the central premises upon which such disagreement turns: that equality is a single idea, that it has a fundamental locus, and that there is a singular or primary route to the achievement of a genuinely egalitarian society. David Rondel argues for a recasting of egalitarianism in light of three mutually reinforcing variables--the Institutional, the Personal, and the Cultural--each of which is best accentuated in one of a trio of pragmatists. If the three variables are mutually complicit in promoting inequality, an egalitarianism that takes this seriously will treat all three as equally (albeit differently) important in making things better. Infused with the thought of leading American pragmatists, including William James, John Dewey, and Richard Rorty, Pragmatist Egalitarianism puts pragmatist philosophy to work in new and profoundly illuminating ways.

Download or read book Pragmatism and Justice written by Susan Dieleman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume answer to anxieties that the pragmatist tradition has had little to say about justice. While both the classical and neo-pragmatist traditions have produced a conspicuously small body of writing about the idea of justice, a common subtext of the essays in this volume is that there is in pragmatist thought a set of valuable resources for developing pragmatist theories of justice, for responding profitably to concrete injustices, and for engaging with contemporary, prevailing, liberal theories of justice. Despite the absence of conventionally philosophical theories of justice in the pragmatist canon, the writings of many pragmatists demonstrate an obvious sensitivity and responsiveness to injustice. Many pragmatists were and are moved by a deep sense of justice-by an awareness of the suffering of people, by the need to build just institutions, and a search for a tolerant and non-discriminatory culture that regards all people as equals. Three related and mutually reinforcing ideas to which virtually all pragmatists are committed can be discerned: a prioritization of concrete problems and real-world injustices ahead of abstract precepts; a distrust of a priori theorizing (along with a corresponding fallibilism and methodological experimentalism); and a deep and persistent pluralism, both in respect to what justice is and requires, and in respect to how real-world injustices are best recognized and remedied. Ultimately, Pragmatism and Justice asserts that pragmatism gives us powerful resources for understanding the idea of justice more clearly and responding more efficaciously to a world rife with injustice.

Download or read book Pragmatist Philosophy and Dance written by Eric Mullis and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-11-29 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates how Pragmatist philosophy as a philosophical method contributes to the understanding and practice of interdisciplinary dance research. It uses the author's own practice-based research project, Later Rain, to illustrate this. Later Rain is a post-dramatic dance theater work that engages primarily with issues in the philosophy of religion and socio-political philosophy. It focuses on ecstatic states that arise in Appalachian charismatic Pentecostal church services, states characterized by dancing, paroxysms, shouting, and speaking in tongues (glossolalia). Research for this work is interdisciplinary as it draws on studio practice, ethnographic field work, cultural history, Pentecostal history and theology, folk aesthetics, anthropological understandings of ecstatic religious rituals, and dance history regarding acclaimed works that have sought to present aspects of religious ecstasy on stage; Doris Humphrey's The Shakers (1931), Mark Godden’s Angels in the Architecture (2012), Martha Clarke’s Angel Reapers (2015) and Ralph Lemon’s Geography trilogy (2005). The project thereby demonstrates a process model of dance philosophy, showing how philosophy and dance artistry intertwine in a specific creative process.

Download or read book Pragmatism, Pluralism, and the Nature of Philosophy written by Scott F. Aikin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-30 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the past fifteen years, Aikin and Talisse have been working collaboratively on a new vision of American pragmatism, one which sees pragmatism as a living and developing philosophical idiom that originates in the work of the "classical" pragmatisms of Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, uninterruptedly develops through the later 20th Century pragmatists (C. I. Lewis, Wilfrid Sellars, Nelson Goodman, W. V. O. Quine), and continues through the present day. According to Aikin and Talisse, pragmatism is fundamentally a metaphilosophical proposal – a methodological suggestion for carrying inquiry forward amidst ongoing deep disagreement over the aims, limitations, and possibilities of philosophy. This conception of pragmatism not only runs contrary to the dominant self-understanding among cotemporary philosophers who identify with the classical pragmatists, it also holds important implications for pragmatist philosophy. In particular, Aikin and Talisse show that their version of pragmatism involves distinctive claims about epistemic justification, moral disagreement, democratic citizenship, and the conduct of inquiry. The chapters combine detailed engagements with the history and development of pragmatism with original argumentation aimed at a philosophical audience beyond pragmatism.

Download or read book Richard Rorty written by Alexander Gröschner and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-06-06 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first complete posthumous reflection on the work of Richard Rorty, one of the most important and influential American philosophers of recent times.

Download or read book Knowing Democracy – A Pragmatist Account of the Epistemic Dimension in Democratic Politics written by Michael I. Räber and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can we justify democracy’s trust in the political judgments of ordinary people? In Knowing Democracy, Michael Räber situates this question between two dominant alternative paradigms of thinking about the reflective qualities of democratic life: on the one hand, recent epistemic theories of democracy, which are based on the assumption that political participation promotes truth, and, on the other hand, theories of political judgment that are indebted to Hannah Arendt’s aesthetic conception of political judgment. By foregrounding the concept of political judgment in democracies, the book shows that a democratic theory of political judgments based on John Dewey’s pragmatism can navigate the shortcomings of both these paradigms. While epistemic theories are overly and narrowly rationalistic and Arendtian theories are overly aesthetic, the neo-Deweyan conception of political judgment proposed in this book suggests a third path that combines the rationalist and the aesthetic elements of political conduct in a way that goes beyond a merely epistemic or a merely aesthetic conception of political judgment in democracy. The justification for democracy’s trust in ordinary people’s political judgments, Räber argues, resides in an egalitarian conception of democratic inquiry that blends the epistemic and the aesthetic aspects of the making of political judgments. By offering a rigorous scholarly analysis of the epistemic and aesthetic foundations of democracy from a pragmatist perspective, Knowing Democracy contributes to the current debates in political epistemology and aesthetics and politics, both of which ask about the appropriate reflective and experiential circumstances of democratic politics. The book brings together for the first time debates on epistemic democracy, aesthetic judgment and those on pragmatist social epistemology, and establishes an original pragmatist conception of epistemic democracy.