"One of the major works in the development of contemporary criticism and philosophy." -- J. Hillis Miller, Yale University Jacques Derrida's revolutionary theories about deconstruction, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and structuralism, first voiced in the 1960s, forever changed the face of European and American criticism. The ideas in De la grammatologie sparked lively debates in intellectual circles that included students of literature, philosophy, and the humanities, inspiring these students to ask questions of their disciplines that had previously been considered improper. Thirty (...) years later, the immense influence of Derrida's work is still igniting controversy, thanks in part to Gayatri Spivak's translation, which captures the richness and complexity of the original. This corrected edition adds a new index of the critics and philosophers cited in the text and makes one of contemporary criticism's most indispensable works even more accessible and usable. (shrink)

Compared to standard liberal approaches to public reason and justification, the asymmetric convergence model of public justification allows for the public justification of laws and policies based on a convergence of quite different and even publicly inaccessible reasons. The model is asymmetrical in the sense of identifying a broader range of reasons that may function as decisive defeaters of proposed laws and policies. This paper raises several critical questions about the asymmetric convergence model and its central but ambiguous presumption against (...) coercion. By drawing on the theory of structural coercion, a main conclusion of the paper is that the asymmetric convergence model ultimately encounters the very incompleteness problems that its proponents often associate with more familiar consensus models of public justification. The paper also develops an alternative, Rawlsian-inspired account of public justification that includes elements of both convergence and consensus but not asymmetry. The Rawlsian model enables us to understand how democratic decisions may possess a degree of procedural, but still morally significant, liberal legitimacy under conditions of pluralism even when citizens fail to agree fully about either the premises of or conclusions to their political arguments. (shrink)

The concept of reasonableness is essential to John Rawls’s political liberalism, and especially to its main ideas of public reason and liberal legitimacy. Yet the somewhat ambiguous account of reasonableness in Political Liberalism has led to concerns that the Rawlsian distinction between the reasonable and the unreasonable is arbitrary and ultimately indefensible. This paper attempts to advance a more convincing interpretation of reasonableness. I argue that the reasonable applies first to citizens, who then play an important role in determining which (...) comprehensive doctrines and political conceptions of justice are reasonable. In addition, while Rawls fails to specify explicitly the meaning of the reasonable in his standard of political justification (i.e. the liberal principle of legitimacy based on the criterion of reciprocity), I offer an interpretation of what it means for citizens to present reasonable claims and arguments to one another in public reason. (shrink)

A recent essay by Jürgen Habermas revisits political liberalism and takes up the question of the extent to which democratic citizens and officials should rely on their religious convictions in publicly deliberating about and deciding political issues. With his institutional translation proviso, a proposed alternative to Rawls' idea of public reason, Habermas hopes to dodge familiar (and often overstated) criticisms that liberal requirements of citizenship are unfair or disproportionately burdensome to religious believers. I argue that, due in part to its (...) sharp contrast between the obligations attributed to political officials and those attributed to ordinary citizens, Habermas' position is beset by additional, quite considerable difficulties. I conclude that Habermas' account of religion in the public sphere does not present a genuine alternative to the leading liberal theory of citizenship and public reasoning. (shrink)

Public reason liberals disagree about the relationship between public justification and deliberative democracy. My goal is to argue against the recent suggestion that public reason liberals seek a ‘divorce’ from deliberative democracy. Defending this thesis will involve discussing the benefits of deliberation for public justification as well as revisiting public reason’s standard Rawlisan restraint requirement. I criticize Kevin Vallier’s alternative convergence-based principle of restraint and respond to the worry that the standard Rawlsian restraint requirement reduces the likelihood of public justification (...) by limiting the diversity of inputs into the justificatory process. (shrink)

Some public reason liberals identify coercive law as the subject matter of public justification, while others claim that the justification of coercion plays no role in motivating public justification requirements. Both of these views are mistaken. I argue that the subject matter of public justification is not coercion or coercive law but political decision-making about the basic institutional structure. At the same time, part of what makes a public justification principle necessary in the first place is the inherent coerciveness of (...) a legally organized basic institutional structure. While most public reason liberals seem to presuppose that the meaning of “coercion” is sufficiently obvious so as not to warrant further analysis, my defense of the essay’s main thesis explicitly draws on an account of coercion as a powerful agent’s employment of enforceable constraints to determine the will of another agent. (shrink)

Abstract: Philosophers who have addressed the problems of enduring racial injustice have been suspicious of the role played by ideal theory in ethics and political philosophy generally, and in contemporary liberal political philosophy in particular. The theoretical marginalization of race in the work of Rawls has led some to charge that ideal theory is at the very least unhelpful in understanding one of the most significant forms of contemporary injustice, and is at worst ideological in the pejorative sense. To explore (...) these concerns, I formulate five related criticisms of ideal theory and examine each as it would be applied to Rawls's political philosophy. My thesis is that the strongest criticisms—namely, that ideal theory is essentially ideological and cannot provide adequate grounds for justifying race-conscious, equality-securing measures—ultimately miss the mark. But other criticisms of ideal theory are more plausible, and most plausibly directed to an area of Rawls's thought often ignored in discussions of liberalism and race, namely, his account of citizenship and public reasoning. (shrink)

Ryan Muldoon has recently advanced an interesting and original bargaining model of the social contract as an alternative to Rawlsian social contract theory and political liberalism. This model is s...

Spinoza, le spinozisme et les fondements de la sécularisation est un ouvrage dédié à la mémoire d’Emmanuel Levinas, dont l’auteur a été l’élève durant plusieurs années. Il vise, à travers une analyse d’ordre philosophique, historique, épistémologique et théologique, à mettre au jour les conditions d’émergence interrelatées du spinozisme et de la sécularisation. Pour ce faire, il souligne, entre autres, l’importance des polémiques anti-maimonidiennes, des débats sur les attributs divins, la substance, l’infini, du marranisme et de la Kabbale sur la formation (...) du spinozisme, ainsi que son rapport à la pensée contemporaine. Il mène une recherche interdisciplinaire devant permettre d’éclairer l’origine des difficultés théoriques que ce système philosophique présente. (shrink)

"In this densely imbricated volume Derrida pursues his devoted, relentless dismantling of the philosophical tradition, the tradition of Plato, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger--each dealt with in one or more of the essays. There are essays too on linguistics (Saussure, Benveniste, Austin) and on the nature of metaphor ("White Mythology"), the latter with important implications for literary theory. Derrida is fully in control of a dazzling stylistic register in this book--a source of true illumination for those prepared to follow his (...) arduous path. Bass is a superb translator and annotator. His notes on the multilingual allusions and puns are a great service."--Alexander Gelley, Library Journal. (shrink)

AbeBooks.com: The Technological Society.

This valuable resource provides academic and student affairs practitioners with the tools to make informed legal and ethical decisions in their college and university contexts. Law is constantly changing and is interpreted differently from campus to campus based on institutional culture and history. This text provides higher education practitioners with tools to anticipate practical and responsible action, engaging readers in anticipatory and reflective practice. In this text, Boettcher and Salinas introduce the Institutional Intelligence Model, a helpful framework that guides (...) practitioners in examining a wide variety of campus issues. Throughout the book, readers can explore perspectives from current practitioners and utilize case studies to examine specific topics including admissions, academics, student living, confidential resources, and graduate student experiences. By using the strategies in this book, practitioners will be equipped to successfully navigate legal and ethical issues on their campuses. This text is ideal for graduate students, student and academic affairs professionals, and those in leadership positions responsible for working with and supporting students and staff teams. (shrink)

La question des rapports du spinozisme à l’axiologie a fait l’objet de nombreux débats. Certains commentateurs considèrent Spinoza comme étant profondément immoraliste, alors que pour d’autres, il maintient l'ensemble des valeurs humaines. Spinoza a cherché à dépasser l’utilitarisme propre au conatus de chacun, afin de fonder un altruisme rationnel. Il souligne que le bien auquel l’homme aspire lorsqu’il suit la vertu, il le désirera aussi pour tous les autres hommes. Cependant, les moyens mis en œuvre pour démontrer cette thèse semblent (...) problématiques. Cet article analyse la logique de la coopération interhumaine élaborée par Spinoza, ainsi que son idéal de l’homme libre, montrant, qu'en fait, il n'a pas réussi à surmonter la nature profondément égoïste du conatus. -/- The question of the relationship between Spinozism and axiology has been the subject of much debate. Some commentators consider Spinoza to be profoundly immoralist, while for others he upholds the set of human values. Spinoza sought to go beyond the utilitarianism proper to the conatus of each person, in order to establish a rational altruism. He emphasizes that the good to which man aspires when he follows virtue, he will also desire for all other men. However, the means used to demonstrate this thesis seem problematic. This article analyzes Spinoza's logic of interhuman cooperation, as well as his ideal of the free man, showing that, in fact, he failed to overcome the profoundly egoistic nature of conatus. -/- . (shrink)

This paper looks at recent efforts within the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma to expel descendants of the freedmen, persons of African descent held as slaves until their emancipation and subsequent adoption as tribal citizens according to the terms of an 1866 treaty. The unavoidable racial dimensions of this controversy lead me to examine it as an example of the internal minorities problem, i.e., the problem of minorities within minority cultures, familiar from the literature on liberal multiculturalism. I argue that while (...) no single approach to the internal minorities problem is fully adequate for resolving the controversy, the balance of reasons drawn from these approaches shows expulsion of the freedmen descendants to be unjust. Furthermore, in contrast to leading theoretical approaches, a deliberative approach to multiculturalism can best account for the need to encourage critical public dialogue about underlying notions of blood, race and Cherokee identity. (shrink)

Is it permissible for a citizen or political official to exercise coercive political power on the basis of a political justification associated with a religiously motivatedconception of justice? In this paper I accept John Rawls’s general approach to this question, but attempt to show how the Rawlsian approach is more inclusive ofreligious reasoning than many have supposed. My paper focuses specifically on the 1986 Catholic bishops’ pastoral letter on the U.S. economy. The bishops’ letter is certainly part of what Rawls (...) calls a “comprehensive doctrine.” But, as I argue in the paper, the letter is also consistent with political liberalism’s core idea of reasonableness, supports a reasonable political conception of justice and satisfies the Rawlsian “proviso” concerning the public-political use of religious argument. From the standpoint of political liberalism, the bishops’ letter may be interpreted as a form of public reason. (shrink)

The question of Spinozist determinism and necessitarianism have been extensively studied by commentators, while the relationship between the notions of divine will and free will still requires elaborate studies. Our article seeks to contribute to such research, by clarifying the analyses of these questions by authors that Spinoza has confronted: Maimonides, as well as other Jewish philosophers, and Leibniz who criticized Spinozist determinism. We will study the consequences of these analyses on two examples that Spinoza gave to refute free will, (...) namely the dream and the situation of Buridan's ass. -/- Résumé: La question du déterminisme spinoziste et du nécessitarisme a été largement étu-diée par les commentateurs, tandis que la relation entre les notions de volonté divine et de libre arbitre nécessite encore des études plus élaborées. Notre article cherche à contribuer à ces recherches, en clarifiant les analyses de ces questions par des auteurs auxquels Spinoza s’est confronté : Maïmonide, ainsi que d’autres philosophes juifs, et Leibniz qui a lui-même critiqué le déterminisme spinoziste. Nous étudierons les conséquences de ces analyses sur deux exemples que Spinoza a donnés pour réfuter le libre arbitre, à savoir le rêve et la situa-tion de l’âne de Buridan. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to bring to light some of the factors that allowed the emergence of secularization, and to understand to what extent and in what ways these factors contributed to the formation of the main lines of Spinozism. I will first examine the issues of secularization, emphasizing the importance of the transformations in the status of the Hebrew language during the Renaissance. I will then analyze the role that the Tractatus theologico-politicus may have had in European (...) culture. Finally, I will clarify Spinoza’s relationship to deism and atheism, specifying the nature of the controversies related to his religious attitude. (shrink)

In the 1960s a radical concept emerged from the great French thinker Jacques Derrida. Read the book that changed the way we think; read "Writing and Difference," the classic introduction.

Speech and phenomena.--Form and meaning.--Differance.

" "Positions brings together three interviews with Derrida, outlining his central concerns and ideas.

This paper looks at recent efforts within the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma to expel descendants of the freedmen, persons of African descent held as slaves until their emancipation and subsequent adoption as tribal citizens according to the terms of an 1866 treaty. The unavoidable racial dimensions of this controversy lead me to examine it as an example of the internal minorities problem, i.e., the problem of minorities within minority cultures, familiar from the literature on liberal multiculturalism. I argue that while (...) no single approach to the internal minorities problem is fully adequate for resolving the controversy, the balance of reasons drawn from these approaches shows expulsion of the freedmen descendants to be unjust. Furthermore, in contrast to leading theoretical approaches, a deliberative approach to multiculturalism can best account for the need to encourage critical public dialogue about underlying notions of blood, race and Cherokee identity. (shrink)

Is it permissible for a citizen or political official to exercise coercive political power on the basis of a political justification associated with a religiously motivatedconception of justice? In this paper I accept John Rawls’s general approach to this question, but attempt to show how the Rawlsian approach is more inclusive ofreligious reasoning than many have supposed. My paper focuses specifically on the 1986 Catholic bishops’ pastoral letter on the U.S. economy. The bishops’ letter is certainly part of what Rawls (...) calls a “comprehensive doctrine.” But, as I argue in the paper, the letter is also consistent with political liberalism’s core idea of reasonableness, supports a reasonable political conception of justice and satisfies the Rawlsian “proviso” concerning the public-political use of religious argument. From the standpoint of political liberalism, the bishops’ letter may be interpreted as a form of public reason. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida is probably the most famous European philosopher alive today. The University of Nebraska Press makes available for the first English translation of his most important work to date, Glas. Its appearance will assist Derrida's readers pro and con in coming to terms with a complex and controversial book. Glas extensively reworks the problems of reading and writing in philosophy and literature; questions the possibility of linear reading and its consequent notions of theme, author, narrative, and discursive demonstration; (...) and ingeniously disrupts the positions of reader and writer in the text. Glas is extraordinary in many ways, most obviously in its typography. Arranged in two columns, with inserted sections within these, the book simultaneously discusses Hegel’s philosophy and Jean Genet’s fiction, and shows how two such seemingly distinct kinds of criticism can reflect and influence one another. The customary segregation of philosophy, rhetoric, psychoanalysis, linguistics, history, and poetics is systematically subverted. In design and content, the books calls into question “types” of literature (history, philosophy, literary criticism), the ownership of ideas and styles, the glorification of literary heroes, and the limits of literary representation. (shrink)

A penetrating analysis of our technical civilization and of the effect of an increasingly standardized culture on the future of man.

These two lectures by Jacques Derrida, 'Foreigner Question: Come from Abroad' and 'Step of Hospitality/No Hospitality', derive from a series of seminars on 'hospitality' conducted by Derrida in Paris, January 1996. The book consists of two texts on facing pages. 'Invitation' by Anne Dufourmantelle appears on the left clarifying and inflecting Derrida's 'response' on the right. The interaction between them not only enacts the 'hospitality' under discussion, but preserves something of the rhythms of teaching. The book also characteristically combines (...) careful readings of canonical texts and philosophical topics with attention to the most salient events in the contemporary world, using 'hospitality' as a means of rethinking a range of political and ethical situations. For example, Antigone is revisited in light of the question of impossible mourning; the trial of Socrates is brought into conjunction with the televised funeral of François Mitterrand. (shrink)

Ce livre est donc voué à la bizarrerie. Mais c'est qu'à accorder tout son soin à l'écriture, il la soumet à une réévaluation radicale. Et les voies sont nécessairement extravagantes lorsqu'il importe d'excéder, pour en penser la possibilité, ce qui se donne pour la logique elle-même - celle qui doit déterminer les rapports de la parole et de l'écriture en se rassurant dans l'évidence du sens commun, dans les catégories de 'représentation' ou 'd'image', dans l'opposition du dedans et du dehors, (...) du plus et du moins, de l'essence et de l'apparence, de l'originaire et du dérivé. Analysant les investissements dont notre culture a chargé le signe écrit, Jacques Derrida en démontre aussi les effets les plus actuels et parfois les plus inaperçus. Cela n'est possible que par un déplacement systématique des concepts - on ne saurait en effet répondre à la question 'qu'est-ce que l'écriture?' par un appel de style 'phénoménologique' à quelque expérience sauvage, immédiate, spontanée. L'interprétation occidentale de l'écriture commande tous les champs de l'expérience, de la pratique et du savoir, et jusqu'à la forme ultime de la question ('qu'est-ce que?') qu'on croit pouvoir libérer de cette prise. L'histoire de cette interprétation n'est pas celle d'un préjugé déterminé, d'une erreur localisée, d'une limite accidentelle. Elle forme une structure finie mais nécessaire dans le mouvement qui se trouve ici reconnu sous le nom de différance. (shrink)

Prodigiously influential, Jacques Derrida gave rise to a comprehensive rethinking of the basic concepts and categories of Western philosophy in the latter part of the twentieth century, with writings central to our understanding of language, meaning, identity, ethics and values. In 1993, a conference was organized around the question, 'Whither Marxism?’, and Derrida was invited to open the proceedings. His plenary address, 'Specters of Marx', delivered in two parts, forms the basis of this book. Hotly debated when it was (...) first published, a rapidly changing world and world politics have scarcely dented the relevance of this book. (shrink)

Prodigiously influential, Jacques Derrida gave rise to a comprehensive rethinking of the basic concepts and categories of Western philosophy in the latter part of the twentieth century, with writings central to our understanding of language, meaning, identity, ethics and values. In 1993, a conference was organized around the question, 'Whither Marxism?’, and Derrida was invited to open the proceedings. His plenary address, 'Specters of Marx', delivered in two parts, forms the basis of this book. Hotly debated when it was (...) first published, a rapidly changing world and world politics have scarcely dented the relevance of this book. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida argues that the feminist and intellectual Hélène Cixous is the most important writer working within the French idiom today. To prove this, he elucidates the epistemological and historical interconnectedness of four terms: genesis, genealogy, genre, and genius, and how they pertain to or are implicated in Cixous's work. Derrida explores Cixous's genius (a masculine term in French, he is quick to point out) and the inspiration that guides and informs her writing. He marvels at her skillful working (...) within multiple genres. He focuses on a number of her works, including her extraordinary novel _Manhattan_ and her lyrical and evocative _Dream I Tell You_, a book addressed to Derrida himself and one in which Cixous presents a series of her dreams. Derrida also delves into the nature of the literary archive, the production of literature, and the importance of the poetic and sexual difference to the entirety of his own work. For forty years, Derrida had a close personal and intellectual relationship with Hélène Cixous. Clever, playful, and eloquent, _Geneses, Genealogies, Genres, and Genius_ charts the influence these two critical giants had on each other and is the most vital work to address Cixous's contribution to French thought. (shrink)