In this 1989 book Rorty argues that thinkers such as Nietzsche, Freud, and Wittgenstein have enabled societies to see themselves as historical contingencies, rather than as expressions of underlying, ahistorical human nature or as realizations of suprahistorical goals. This ironic perspective on the human condition is valuable on a private level, although it cannot advance the social or political goals of liberalism. In fact Rorty believes that it is literature not philosophy that can do this, by promoting a genuine sense (...) of human solidarity. A truly liberal culture, acutely aware of its own historical contingency, would fuse the private, individual freedom of the ironic, philosophical perspective with the public project of human solidarity as it is engendered through the insights and sensibilities of great writers. The book has a characteristically wide range of reference from philosophy through social theory to literary criticism. It confirms Rorty's status as a uniquely subtle theorist, whose writing will prove absorbing to academic and nonacademic readers alike. (shrink)

First published in 1946, History of Western Philosophy went on to become the best-selling philosophy book of the twentieth century. A dazzlingly ambitious project, it remains unchallenged to this day as the ultimate introduction to Western philosophy. Providing a sophisticated overview of the ideas that have perplexed people from time immemorial, it is 'long on wit, intelligence and curmudgeonly scepticism', as the New York Times noted, and it is this, coupled with the sheer brilliance of its scholarship, that has made (...) Russell's History of Western Philosophy one of the most important philosophical works of all time. (shrink)

In this clear and provocative account of the epistemology of religious experience, William P. Alston argues that the perception of God—his term for direct experiential awareness of God—makes a major contribution to the grounds of religious belief. Surveying the variety of reported direct experiences of God, Alston demonstrates that a person can be justified in holding certain beliefs about God on the basis of mystical experience.

In this paper, William Alston's argument from religious experience in Perceiving God is characterized and assessed as an indirect analogy-argument. Such arguments, I propose, should establish two similarities between sense perception (SP) and religious experience (CMP): a structural and a functional. I argue that Alston neglects functional similarity, and that SP and CMP actually perform different functions within the practices they belong to. Alston's argument is therefore significantly weaker than generally assumed. Finally, I argue that regardless of whether an increased (...) emphasis on fruits could strengthen indirect analogy-arguments or not, this is not a strategy available to Alston as long as he retains his commitments to religious exclusivism and a religious metaphysical realism. (Published Online July 10 2006). (shrink)

The world in which we find ourselves is religiously ambiguous. It is possible for different people to experience it both religiously and non-religiously; and to hold beliefs which arise from and feed into each of these ways of experiencing. A religious man may report that in moments of prayer he is conscious of existing in the unseen presence of God, and is aware - sometimes at least - that his whole life and the entire history of the world is taking (...) place within the ambience of the divine purpose. But on the other hand the majority of people in our modern world do not participate in that form of experience and are instead conscious of their own and others' lives as purely natural phenomena, so that their own experience leads them at least implicitly to reject the idea of a transcendent divine presence and purpose. If they are philosophically minded, they may well think that the believer's talk is the expression of what Richard Hare has called a blik , a way of feeling and thinking about the world which expresses itself in pseudo-assertions, pseudo because they are neither verifiable nor falsifiable and are therefore factually empty. 1 The religious man speaks of God as a living reality in whose presence we are, and of a divine purpose which gives ultimate meaning to our lives. But is not the world the same whether or not we suppose it to exist in God's presence; and is not the course of history the same whether or not we describe it as fulfilling God's purposes? Is not the religious description thus merely a gratuitous embellishment, a logical fifth wheel, an optional language-game which may assuage some psychological need of the speaker but which involves no claims of substance concerning the objective nature or structure of the universe? Must not the central religious use of language then be accounted a non-cognitive use, whose function is not to assert alleged facts but to express a speaker's, or a community of speakers', emotions within the framework of a factually contentless blik , ‘slant’, or ‘onlook’? (shrink)

This book offers a new interpretation of William James's ethical and religious thought. Michael Slater shows that James's conception of morality, or what it means to lead a moral and flourishing life, is intimately tied to his conception of religious faith, and argues that James's views on these matters are worthy of our consideration. He offers a reassessment of James's 'will to believe' or 'right to believe' doctrine, his moral theory, and his neglected moral arguments for religious faith. And he (...) argues that James's pragmatic account of religion is based on an ethical view of the function of religion and a realist view of the objects of religious belief and experience, and is compatible with his larger conception of pragmatism. The book will appeal to readers interested in the history of modern philosophy, especially pragmatism, as well as those interested in moral philosophy, religion, and the history of ideas. (shrink)

In this book Gary Gutting offers a powerful account of the nature of human reason in modern times. The fundamental question addressed by the book is what authority human reason can still claim once it is acknowledged that our fundamental metaphysical and religious pictures of the world no longer command allegiance. If ethics and science remain sources of authority what is the basis of that authority? Gutting develops answers to these questions through critical analysis of the work of three dominant (...) philosophical voices in our time: Richard Rorty, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Charles Taylor. His own position is defined as 'pragmatic liberalism'. (shrink)

John Dewey's Experience and Nature has been considered the fullest expression of his mature philosophy since its eagerly awaited publication in 1925. Irwin Edman wrote at that time that "with monumental care, detail and completeness, Professor Dewey has in this volume revealed the metaphysical heart that beats its unvarying alert tempo through all his writings, whatever their explicit themes." In his introduction to this volume, Sidney Hook points out that "Dewey's Experience and Nature is both the most suggestive and most (...) difficult of his writings." The meticulously edited text published here as the first volume in the series The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925-1953 spans that entire period in Dewey's thought by including two important and previously unpublished documents from the book's history: Dewey's unfinished new introduction written between 1947 and 1949, edited by the late Joseph Ratner, and Dewey's unedited final draft of that introduction written the year before his death. In the intervening years Dewey realized the impossibility of making his use of the word 'experience' understood. He wrote in his 1951 draft for a new introduction: "Were I to write (or rewrite) Experience and Nature today I would entitle the book Culture and Nature and the treatment of specific subject-matters would be correspondingly modified. I would abandon the term 'experience' because of my growing realization that the historical obstacles which prevented understanding of my use of 'experience' are, for all practical purposes, insurmountable. I would substitute the term 'culture' because with its meanings as now firmly established it can fully and freely carry my philosophy of experience.". (shrink)