This paper develops the pragmatic “atheoreticism” of Quine and Rorty. A position I dub “postpragmatism”—paralleling the post phases of modernism and humanism—my purpose here is to bring to a culmination what Quine and Rorty started decades before. By doing so, I argue, it becomes possible for Quine, and more so Rorty, to avoid the most common critiques of their atheoretic form of pragmatism. Chief among them, that it is mired in self-contradiction. Rather than rely upon theory to justify atheoreticism—the very (...) stuff of their self-contradiction—I rely instead upon Rorty’s own insouciance, syncretism, and eclecticism to shift the ground of debate from concern with what is justified to concern with what is interesting. (shrink)

Reseña del libro La racionalidad de la creencia religiosa. Ángel Rivera Novoa & Andrés Buriticá (Eds), (2019). Universidad Nacional de Colombia. 185 pp.

Moral values in healthcare range widely between interest groups and are principally subjective. Disagreements diminish dialogue and marginalize alternative viewpoints. Extremely premature births exemplify how discord becomes unproductive when conflicts of interest, cultural misunderstanding, constrained evidence review, and peculiar hierarchy compete without the balance of objective standards of reason. Accepting uncertainty, distributing risk fairly, and humbly acknowledging therapeutic limits are honorable traits, not relativism, and especially crucial in our world of constrained resources. We think dialogics engender a mutual understanding that: (...) i) transitions beliefs beyond bias, ii) moves conflict toward pragmatism (i.e., the truth of any position is verified by subsequent experience), and iii) recognizes value pluralism (i.e., human values are irreducibly diverse, conflicting, and ultimately incommensurable). This article provides a clear and useful Point-Counterpoint of extreme prematurity controversies, an objective neurodevelopmental outcomes table, and a dialogics exemplar to cultivate shared empathetic comprehension, not to create sides from which to choose. It is our goal to bridge the understanding gap within and between physicians and bioethicists. Dialogics accept competing relational interests as human nature, recognizing that ultimate solutions satisfactory to all are illusory, because every choice has downside. Nurturing a collective consciousness via dialogics and pragmatism is congenial to integrating objective evidence review and subjective moral-cultural sentiments, and is that rarest of ethical constructs, a means and an end. (shrink)

Barry Allen defends a highly unorthodox and compact account of humans and their evolutionary adventure, which comprises inter alia epistemological, alethic, technological, and artistic aspects. His anthropocentric view distinguishes itself from traditional forms of realism and anti-realism by virtue of its dynamic and non-reductionist character. Allen adopts a certain perspective of techno-artistic and onto-epistemic construction, which we dub “panartifactualism,” claiming principally that nothing at all escapes the artifactualizing power of human beings. We maintain that, under closer scrutiny, various dimensions of (...) Allen’s account conflict and that his philosophical approach to “being” and “making” ultimately gives rise to a rather problematic ontological picture. Having pointed out its shortcomings and untenable results, we spell out the conceptual contours of a contemporary and far more attractive version of realism which suffers neither from the issues faced by views like panartifactualism nor from the obvious difficulties of noumenalist realism justifiably opposed by Allen. (shrink)

Political realism has been criticised for its methodological claims about normativity and for its criticisms of moralism. Realists themselves should be more concerned that for all its methodological wrangling, realists have struggled to produce much positive theorising, rendering realism barren. I argue that realism, in both its liberal and radical forms, is currently barren in the sense of being unproductive, and show how the two dominant forms of realism are barren in different ways. Bernard Williams’s liberal realism exclusively derives its (...) normative resources from existing political practices, values, and institutions, which leads it to replicate the status quo and precludes external criticism. Radical realism, represented here by Raymond Geuss, is barren because the fear of succumbing to moralism or ‘normativism’ leads radical realists to wrongly abjure normativity altogether. Having shown that both forms of realism are barren I argue that radical realists should adopt a method of political theory as story-telling as a way to avoid both moralism and barrenness. While realists are right to be wary of normative prescription, I argue that realists need to tell a story about which political transformations are desirable and why or else risk succumbing barrenness. I give a brief illustration of story-telling in practice then address some objections to story-telling as a productive method. (shrink)

As conceived by founders Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp, Philosophy for Children is a humanistic practice with roots in the Hellenistic tradition of philosophy as a way of life given to the search for meaning, in American pragmatism with its emphasis on qualitative experience, collaborative inquiry and democratic society, and in American and Soviet social learning theory. The programme has attracted overlapping and conflicting criticism from religious and social conservatives who don’t want children to question traditional values, from educational (...) psychologists who believe certain kinds of thinking are beyond children of certain ages, from philosophers who define their discipline as theoretical and exegetical, from critical theorists who see the programme as politically compliant, and from postmodernists who see it as scientistic and imperialist. The paper is written as a dialogue in order to illustrate the complex interactions among these normative positions. Rather than respond to particular criticisms in depth, I indicate the general nature of my position regarding them and provide references to published material where they have been made and responded to over the past 40 years. (shrink)

Relatively little contemporary philosophy of education employs economic concepts directly. Even where issues such as marketisation of education are discussed there may be little clarification of underlying concepts. The paper argues that while much contemporary economic thinking on education may be philosophically naive, it is also the case that philosophy of education can productively engage with particular economic insights and perspectives. The paper examines particular conceptualisations of 'economics' and 'the market', drawing upon these to consider aspects of an issue that (...) is significant for the philosophy of education: human becoming. An example, the notion of 'wellbeing' is briefly discussed. (shrink)

In recent work, Cheryl Misak has developed a novel justification of deliberative democracy rooted in Peircean epistemology. In this article, the author expands Misak's arguments to show that not only does Peircean pragmatism provide a justification for deliberative democracy that is more compelling than the justifications offered by competing liberal and discursivist views, but also fixes a specific conception of deliberative politics that is perfectionist rather than neutralist. The article concludes with a discussion of whether the `epistemic perfectionism' implied by (...) the pragmatist argument could be endorsed by liberal democrats. Key Words: deliberative democracy • epistemology • liberalism • Cheryl Misak • Charles Peirce • perfectionism • pragmatism • truth. (shrink)

We re-examine the construct of Moral Hypocrisy from the perspective of normative self-interest. Arguing that some degree of self-interest is culturally acceptable and indeed expected, we postulate that a pattern of behavior is more indicative of moral hypocrisy than a single action. Contrary to previous findings, our results indicate that a significant majority of subjects (N = 136) exhibited fair behavior, and that ideals of caring and fairness, when measured in context of the scenario, were predictive of those behaviors. Moreover, (...) measures of Individualism/Collectivism appear more predictive of self-interested behavior than out-of-context responses to moral ideals. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Instrumental Stakeholder Theory has begun to suffer from what might be termed “mission drift.” Despite its initial success in creating a foothold for ethics in managerial decision-making, the efficiency arguments which now dominate this research stream have become counterproductive to the original goal of connecting ethics and capitalism. We argue in this paper that the way forward is by re-centering contingency, conversation, and inefficiency in stakeholder theory. To start this process, there needs to be a reckoning of some unintended impacts (...) of the success of the instrumental stream of stakeholder research. For a contrasting approach, we draw on Richard Rorty’s pragmatism and its foundation of ethical “irony,” a state of continuous doubts about the utility of one’s moral vocabulary. We offer a Rortian approach to stakeholder theory, unearthing the possibility for new corporate target functions in the goals of harm reduction, solidarity, and social mobility, the foundational building blocks of an ironist ethical perspective. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Historically, philosophers have understood hope in relation to an individual's character and have questioned whether or not hope is rational. American pragmatists, however, have tended to characterize hope as fundamentally social and have been concerned with the problems that arise when different hopes for a better future conflict with one another. Pragmatism's philosophy of social hope is often referred to as meliorism, the idea that the world can be made better with human effort. But in a democratic, open society, what (...) makes the world “better” is debatable given the fact that sometimes the attainment of what is hoped for disallows others to flourish. In this article, I reconstruct the radically democratic and inclusive ideal of social hope first by making a distinction between expectant hope and hope in action. I then introduce a historically informed and pluralistic idea of empathy, what I call relational empathy, and suggest that the practice of relational empathy can serve as a vehicle for hope in action and affords us the opportunity to widen the windows of our perception, challenge our biases, and practice democracy as a way of life. (shrink)

ABSTRACTLeo Strauss argues that the “theologico-political” problem arose from the competing claims of rationalist philosophy and theology. Although he urges others to take sides in this debate, most theorists see it as insoluble, since it is rooted in competing traditions and different, non-demonstrable, epistemic principles. Strauss, however, argues that there is a common ground capable of sustaining a contest between the two: their appeal to the pre-philosophic understanding of justice as moral virtue. The contest between the Bible and Socratic-Platonic philosophy (...) centers on which of the two better understands what justice is, what completes it, and in what respect it is good. Strauss enables us to see why Plato’s Socratic dialogues became indispensable models for classical and medieval philosophers who sought to meet the challenge of theology on the vital common ground of philosophy and theology. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that Christian political participation as envisioned by those I term “Augustinian democrats”—a group of Protestant ethicists following a path cleared by Jeffrey Stout’s 2004 Democracy and Tradition—is founded upon an elegantly rendered political ontology, but leaves incomplete a description of the practical task and place of the church. My contention is that this incompletely developed practical task is not accidental to the manner in which these Augustinians complete the speculative, ontological task. The completion of the (...) speculative task combined with the incompletion of the practical task, I conclude, nevertheless results in a hybrid and especially interesting picture of personhood that points to an understanding of Protestantism as the attempt to recover human individuality within Christianity. (shrink)

Over the last 20 years, there has been an increase in philosophical inquiries of hope both in philosophy of mind and of virtue as well as in the philosophy of education. This paper wishes to add to this discussion by presenting the analysis of hope by French existentialist philosopher and theologian Gabriel Marcel and examining its possible contribution to educational practices and beliefs. As one of the very few modern, systematic accounts of hope, Marcel’s provocative conception of it and his (...) critique of its common “technical” use could prove promising when applied to educational theory and practice. Following Marcel, I argue that in hope we find a complex and possibly contradictory view of the future: as a result of planning and technical problem-solving on one hand, and on the other, as an inclination towards the mysterious and radically unexpected. I suggest that maintaining educational hope within the tension between the planned and the unexpected, and specifically rejecting a complete disenchantment of the educational act, could help in securing education from being reduced to instrumental training and socializing, opening it up to new and unimaginable possibilities. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss Richard Rorty’s views on intercultural hermeneutics as presented in his essay “Heidegger, Kundera, and Dickens” and in his correspondence with the Indian philosopher Anindita Niyogi Balslev. In doing so, I focus primarily on Rorty’s presumption that instead of providing an “authentic” picture of another culture, the goal of intercultural studies or hermeneutics should be to look if there is anything “of use” that a given culture offers and that is not offered by ours.

Liberals who want to support multiculturalism need to be able to justify the parental authority to instill cultural value systems or worldviews into children. However, such authority may be at odds with liberal demands that citizens be autonomous. This paper argues that parents do not have the legitimate authority to instill in their children a specific value system, contrary to the complex and intriguing arguments of Robert Noggle (2002). Noggle’s argument, which draws heavily on key ideas in Rawls’ theory of (...) justice, is that children are not moral agents and that parents are in a special kind of fiduciary relationship vis-à-vis their children. Noggle’s position is contrasted with the more limited conception of parental authority advanced by David Archard (2002). I argue that we can accept that parents are agents of their children, but contra Noggle, this does not entitle them to impose their parochial value systems onto their children. I argue that while children have an interest in acquiring values, they do not have an interest in acquiring a value system. (shrink)

Pragmatism and Social Hope: Deepening Democracy in Global Contexts.Judith M. Green. New York, Columbia University Press, 2008. Pp. x + 292.Hbk. $34.50, £24.00.

Russia’s war against Ukraine has grave consequences in several political categories. These include: a reassessment of the school of ‘political realism’, one of whose proponents claims to have predicted the war. Was the West partly ‘responsible’ for the war? Second, to what extent does the war of aggression, as an undeniable violation of law, damage the status of international law and justice? Third, the war is embedded in political developments that stretch back a century. It is examined in its context (...) within American foreign policy since the Wilsonian peace programme, in relation to the dangerous reluctance of the EU to pursue a decisive geopolitical policy towards Russia, and interpreted in the light of Stalinist echoes within Russian politics. (shrink)

While most people may initially agree that justice is fairness, as an evangelical Protestant I argue that, for many religious comprehensive doctrines, the Rawlsean model does not possess the resources necessary to sustain tolerance in moral decision making. The weakness of Rawls's model centers on the reasonable priority of convictions that arise from private comprehensive doctrines. To attain a free and pluralistic society, people need resources sufficient to provide reasons to tolerate actions that are otherwise intolerable. In addition to arguing (...) for the deficiency of the Rawlsean political model, I sketch out a preliminary model of ambassadorship that offers religious communities, and in particular Protestant evangelicals, the necessary resources to engage the broader society tolerantly while maintaining their religious convictions. As a citizen of the church and a member of another kingdom, Christians serve as ambassadors to those who are not of the heavenly kingdom. I take this model to be more ambitious than that of a sojourner who lives in the land but is isolated as much as possible from society, while more modest than that of reconstructionists who seek to implement their own sacred law on all others. (shrink)

Widespread and lasting consensus has not been philosophy's fate. Indeed, one of philosophy's most striking features is its ability to accommodate “not only different answers to philosophical questions” but also “total disagreement on what questions are philosophical” (Rorty 1995, 58). It is therefore hardly surprising that philosophers' responses to this metaphilosophical predicament have been similarly varied. This article considers two recent diagnoses of philosophical diversity: Kornblith and Rescher (respectively) claim that taking philosophical disagreement seriously does not lead to metaphilosophical scepticism. (...) The article argues that their confidence is misplaced in so far as both wrongly assume that ordinary, first-order philosophical practice and second-order metaphilosophical reflection are separate enterprises. We can say that the universe consists of a substance, and this substance we will call “atoms,” or else we will call it “monads.” Democritus called it atoms. Leibniz called it monads. Fortunately, the two men never met, or there would have been a very dull argument. (Allen 1997, 171) When will philosophers learn to be less pretentious and arrogant in their claims? One would imagine that the philosophic experiences of twenty-five centuries would have taught them the fallacy of self-esteem! (Schilpp 1935, 233). (shrink)

This paper discusses Jeffrey Stout's thesis that modern societies are "secular," not in the sense that religion has disappeared from them, but in a procedural sense having to do with what can properly be assumed by participants in moral or political discussion. I endorse this thesis, but argue that Stout employs a notion of justification (with regard to moral belief), which leans too far toward descriptivism or relativism. As an alternative account of the status of religion within "the hypercontext, modernity," (...) I commend Kant's view of the religious attitude as a fundamentally ethical one, destined eventually to dispense with any "historical vehicle" in the form of revealed doctrine or supernaturalism. Stout's discussion is weakened by its retreat from commitment to the unity of practical reason, though it does pay illuminating tribute to the democratic values of civility and attentiveness. (shrink)

as covid-19 set in, many people struggled to find or hold onto hope. TIME magazine devoted its entire annual TIME 100 Most Influential People issue to the very topic, offering up suggestions on how to find hope, from religious leaders, politicians, and celebrities. While some presented helpful ideas, I found myself seeking more satisfying and sustaining answers. I turned to pragmatist philosophers, both old and new, to help me understand what hope is, why it matters, and how to foster it.Intriguingly, (...) classic American pragmatists seem to have much to contribute to discussions of hope and yet have actually said very little explicitly about it. Even as pragmatism complemented the late nineteenth- and... (shrink)

Although he did not invent the term, Jürgen Habermas has popularised “constitutional patriotism” as a form of political unity that avoids excessive nationalism. This paper attempts to examine the link between emotivism and normativity that has otherwise been excluded from Habermas’s notion of constitutional patriotism. Beyond Habermas, political theory as a whole has not yet taken emotivism as a serious component of normativity. Rather than developing it in isolation, this paper attempts to reconcile emotivism with cognitive-normative practices found within rational (...) deliberation. Reconciling the two not only provides a better normative steering component for judging good from bad practices, but also depicts contemporary political practices more accurately. In sum, constitutional patriotism’s normativity must be sourced from a complex integration of emotion and cognition, or put another way, from the interplay between citizens’ moral sentiments and rational judgements. (shrink)

Traditional (especially religious) education draws on a received vision of the good life to guide its educational efforts. But rich traditions have multiple visions of the good life. Educators who aspire to openness as well as rootedness seek canonical stories that raise for discussion these multiple visions. Such discussions negotiate a relationship with outside, majority culture, but also foster rich internal discussion on the meaning of life. They allow for the growth of tradition in the light of changing reality, as (...) well as its preservation. As an illustration, the paper considers an ancient Jewish religious tale as a means of ‘pulling students up short’ and thereby making actual and vivid within the curriculum issues concerning the good life and the nature of tolerance. The discussion raises questions concerning communitarianism, liberalism and religious education, as well as considering possibilities of autonomy in conditions of pluralism. (shrink)

In order to explain some of the paradoxes and mysteries of the artist's cross cultural experience in Kiribati, he constructed an Artist's Book depicting through visuality, anecdote and reflection, his research process, engaging with current visual perceptions through negotiation with the past. In Kiribati previous encounters with Europeans and Islanders was dominated by English and I Kiribati with significant contributions by French missionaries. Each viewed the other through cultural filters of identity, which were informed by concepts of myth-historical, often heroic (...) pasts, modified by contemporary purpose such as power, trade, evangelism or personal gain. The method of transmission of beliefs about the past differed fundamentally as the Europeans were predominately informed by writing and the I-Kiribati by orality and performance. The non-literary epistemology of the I Kiribati contributed to a cosmology of non-iconic symbols that defined belief systems and social structures. These symbols connected place and space with time, self and group identities. The research found that the all surrounding visual symbol system of sacred meeting house, dwelling and canoe ) could be partly understood as an ongoing struggle since Deep Time, between the forces of the Ocea n represented by Bakoa, The Shark, and that of the triumph of the coming onto the Land and its people represented by Tabakea, The Turtle. The performative outcome of this triumph and the spirit of identity it engenders is expressed primarily in the ubiquitous I Kiribati Dance. The Artists Book is inspired by the creative classic I Kiribati form of oratory known as Te Kuna, using a structure analogous to the symbolic forms of narrative of Oceanic Voyaging traditionally employed by the I Kiribati. Differences in visual perceptions across cultural interface are understood not only as having the potential for conflict but also as providing positive dynamic force by the interchange of understood differences. The project contributes specifically to the ethnography of English and I Kiribati, semiotic systems and visual epistemologies, indicating directions towards positive outcomes in cross-cultural encounters. (shrink)

Dewey, kućni prijatelj i politički istomišljenik njegova oca, inspirirao je Rortyja od malih nogu, ostajući uzor kojemu bi se na svakom spoznajnom raskrižju uvijek vraćao. Njegov pragmatizam poslužio mu je u odbacivanju filozofskih, društvenih i kulturnih dogmi, a njegov demokratizam poticao na oduševljenje američkim patriotizmom, koji je obojici važio za esencijalnu komponentu građanstva, što su im kritičari predbacivali kao crtu naiviteta. No i ta se »naivistička« Deweyjeva načela Rortyjevog zagovaranja slobode pravednije jednakosti, temelje na baštini njegove prosvjetiteljski katarzične socijalne etike, (...) kojom se je Rorty, s velikim povjerenjem u društveno dobro, izvlačio iz kreativnog nihilizma svog ironičnog »antiizma«.Dewey inspired Rorty in the first place as his father’s friend and political mate. Whenever the younger man was at some kind of a cognitive crossroads Dewey would act as his philosophical anchor. Dewey’s pragmatism and democratism helped him in casting off philosophical, social and cultural dogmas, at the same time encouraging him to turn towards the enthusiasm of America’s patriotism that was for both of them an essential component of citizenry. Their critics described this component and the principles of Dewey’s and Rorty’s social ethics as some kind of naïveté. Rorty followed the so-called naïveté of Dewey pleading for liberty as some kind of fundamental fairer equality. Rorty applied Dewey’s heritage of enlightened cathartic social ethics using it with great belief in public good, and as a means of saving himself from the creative nihilism of his own ironic “antiism”. (shrink)

This essay offers an account of Rorty's version of pragmatism after the so-called linguistic turn, including his attack on epistemology and metaphysics, his metaphilosophy, his theory of morality, and his political philosophy. Woven into this account of Rorty are some of the most important criticisms made of Rorty, and considerations about how Rorty has responded or could have responded.

As the leading contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium “Whatever Happened to Richard Rorty?,” this essay asks why Rorty was so often taken to be saying things that he claimed he was not. The argument is that Rorty's rhetorical approach and jargon engendered this confusion and undermined his effectiveness as a philosopher and public intellectual. The focus here is on two points: first, on how, in his eagerness to shut down attempts to claim a privileged path to Reality, he gave (...) the impression of dismissing not only hierarchies but also distinctions; and second, on how his separation of causes and reasons retained a dualism of the “one world, many perspectives” model that elsewhere he rejected. This essay concludes that leading figures of science studies at the present time, notably Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, and Donna Haraway, better equip readers to move past the feeling of deprivation that comes from shedding centuries-old philosophical assumptions and that their explicit rejection of the nature/culture binary makes their work better suited to addressing the great problem of our time — climate change. (shrink)

Clayton Chin provides a helpful reconstruction of Rorty’s philosophy that aims to show its usefulness for political thought, while also shedding light on its relationships with Continental philosophy and on Rorty’s reading strategy employed in relation to some Continental thinkers. In relation to the first aim, Chin argues convincingly that Rorty’s primary contribution to political thought is located at the meta-theoretical level, by which he means the level at which questions may be asked about the nature and purpose of political (...) theorizing. I agree with much of Chin’s account of the nature and value of Rorty’s meta-theoretical approach. I am less convinced by Chin’s account of Rorty’s relations with Continental philosophy and the reading strategies employed in his discussions of those with whom he engaged. There are a number of reasons for this. First, he confines his discussion to a handful of figures that he groups under the heading of ontological approaches to politics and political theory: primarily Martin Heidegger and William Connolly, but also Foucault and Jürgen Habermas. Second, This is the asymmetry in the way in which Rorty is treated compared to the discussion of these interlocutors. (shrink)

In this paper, I will establish a conversation between Rorty and the recent proposal of post-critical pedagogy. The assumption is that through this dialogue some tenets of the latter could find a Rortyan redescription that avoids the risk of ‘metaphysical’ formulations, whereas Rorty’s ideas can increase in their relevance with respect to education thanks to the post-critical perspective. In particular, the conversation will develop by focusing on the shared attitude towards the critical-negative attitude of poststructuralist thought, the significance of the (...) subject-matter in education and an interpretation of pedagogical hermeneutics (a key notion of post-critical pedagogy) through the lens of the Rortyan idea of edification. In the conclusion, by distinguishing two views of hope – an eventist and a transitionalist – it is argued that it is precisely in this theme, which seems to be a privileged meeting ground for Rorty and post-critical pedagogy, that there may lie a major fault line. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe paper is a response to the articles published in the current issue analysing Rorty’s philosophy of hope. In these articles, Bianca Thoilliez, Stefano Oliverio and Kai Wortmann highlight the pragmatist characteristics of post-critical pedagogy. Taking a poststructuralist perspective, I propose to examine some limits of the association between Rorty’s philosophy of hope and post-critical pedagogy. I will discuss, in turn, their take on the definition of hope, on the place of critique in post-critical pedagogy and on the affirmative ethos (...) of post-critical pedagogy. (shrink)

In a previous essay we demonstrated that quantum mechanical formalism is incompatible with some necessary principles of the mechanism conception still dominant in the physicist’s community. In this paper we show, based on recent empirical evidence in quantum physics, the inevitability of abandoning the old mechanism conception and to construct a new one in which physical reality is seen as a representation which refers to relations established through operations made by us in a world that we are determining. This change (...) is profound and radical, with immediate consequences on both Ontology and Epistemology. This work is our contribution to try to make more concrete how this new conception of the world might be. (shrink)

The paper provides an account of the pragmatist philosophical conception of reciprocity and altruism based on the ontology of “panrelationalism”. The Deweyan concepts of transaction and cooperation are also outlined in some detail as well as the pragmatist (Rortyan) idea of justice. The author attempts to show that altruism is not necessarily just reciprocal but demands as its supplement (at least) altruism without reciprocation.

In this essay, I attempt to interpret the educational philosophy of John Dewey in a way that accomplishes two goals. The first of these is to avoid any reference to Dewey as a propagator of a particular scientific method or to any of the individualist and cognitivist ideas that is sometimes associated with him. Secondly, I want to overcome the tendency to interpret Dewey as a naturalist by looking at his concept of intelligence. It is argued that ‘intelligent experience’ is (...) the basic concept of education. I suggest how this concept should be understood. I propose to look at it as an interplay between the faculties of imagination and judgment. (shrink)

In A Philosophical Defense of Culture, Shuchen Xiang draws on the Confucian philosophy of "culture" and Ernst Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms to argue for the importance of "culture" as a philosophic paradigm. A defining ideal of Confucian-Chinese civilization, culture (wen) spans everything from natural patterns and the individual units that make up Chinese writing to literature and other refining vocations of the human being. Wen is thus the soul of Confucian-Chinese philosophy. Similarly, as a philosopher who bridged the classical (...) age of German humanism and postwar modernity, Cassirer implored his and future generations to think of humankind in terms of their culture and to think of the human being as a "symbolic animal." The philosophies of culture of these two traditions, very much compatible, are of urgent relevance to our contemporary epoch. Xiang describes the similarity of their projects by way of their conception of the human being, her relationship to nature, the relationship of human culture to nature, the importance of cultural pluralism, and the role of the arts in human life, as well as the metaphysical frameworks that gave rise to such conceptions. Combining textual exegesis in classical Chinese texts and an exposition of Cassirer's most important insights against the backdrop of post-Kantian philosophy, this book is philosophy written in a cosmopolitan mode, arguing for the contemporary philosophical relevance of "culture" by drawing on and bringing together two different but strikingly similar streams in our world tradition. (shrink)

Although the first ‘pragmatist aesthetics’ was devised by John Dewey in his Art as Experience, Richard Shusterman has been the only scholar to use the notion of “pragmatist aesthetics” in his Pragmatist Aesthetics. In this paper, I show that Dewey already refuses the gap between the practices of the ‘artworld’ and that of everyday life. In Art as Experience, he criticizes the ‘museum conception’ of art to argue that some aesthetic experiences in our daily life have the same essential structure (...) as the experience of art. While Rorty has revised Dewey’s basic premises, Shusterman has rather restated them. Since the end of the 1980s, he has started developing his own philosophical project, named ‘somaesthetics’. Shusterman’s somaesthetics does not simply incorporate many Deweyan views, but also develops them further. Accepting a Deweyan framework, Shusterman rejects the sharp dualism of the so-called “lower and higher levels of art”. What is more, he considers philosophy as an art of the living, embracing in somaesthetics the ancient Greek and Asian traditions. (shrink)