Based on the author's ethnographic research in India, the book explores the psychology of Hinduism, and offers an innovative synthesis of psychoanylsis with modern anthropological theories of cultural difference. Stanley N. Kurtz offers a new interpretation of the multiple "mother goddesses" of Hinduism, and explores how this multiplicity is key to understanding early childhood experience in which a child is raised by many "mothers" in the Hindu joint family. Arguing that traditional psychoanalytic approaches to Indian culture have applied Western (...) models without regard to differing cultural circumstances, Kurtz suggests that immersion in a joint family plays a central role in the development of feelings and needs which are carried over into adult life. The book concludes with a briefr comparison of mothering in India and contemporary America. _All the Mothers Are One_ makes a significant contribution to the growing debate concerning the role of psychoanalysis in the interpretation of culture and the study of cross-cultural human development. (shrink)

This book's thirty essays explore philosophically the nature and morality of sexual perversion, cybersex, masturbation, homosexuality, contraception, same-sex marriage, promiscuity, pedophilia, date rape, sexual objectification, teacher-student relationships, pornography, and prostitution. Authors include Martha Nussbaum, Thomas Nagel, Alan Goldman, John Finnis, Sallie Tisdale, Robin West, Alan Wertheimer, John Corvino, Cheshire Calhoun, Jerome Neu, and Alan Soble, among others. A valuable resource for sex researchers as well as undergraduate courses in the philosophy of sex.

This topically organized, interdisciplinary anthology provides competing perspective on the claim that western culture faces a moral crisis. Using clearly written, accessible essays by well-known authors in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities, the book introduces students to a variety of perspectives on the current cultural debate about values that percolates beneath the surface of most of our social and political controversies.

This reissue of an American philosophical classic includes a new preface by Cavell, in which he discusses the work's reception and influence. The work fosters a fascinating relationship between philosophy and literature both by augmenting his philosophical discussions with examples from literature and by applying philosophical theories to literary texts. Cavell also succeeds in drawing some very important parallels between the British analytic tradition and the continental tradition, by comparing skepticism as understood in Descartes, Hume, and Kant with philosophy of (...) language as practiced by Wittgenstein and Austin. (shrink)

In these three lectures, Cavell situates Emerson at an intersection of three crossroads: a place where both philosophy and literature pass; where the two traditions of English and German philosophy shun one another; where the cultures of America and Europe unsettle one another. "Cavell’s ’readings’ of Wittgenstein and Heidegger and Emerson and other thinkers surely deepen our understanding of them, but they do much more: they offer a vision of what life can be and what culture can mean.... These profound (...) lectures are a wonderful place to make [Cavell’s] acquaintance."—Hilary Putnam. (shrink)

This book offers philosophy in the key of life.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:CONRAD'S REPLY TO KIERKEGAARD by Jerry S. Clegg Varied answers to a fixed question have often guided interpretations of Conrad's novella, Heart ofDarkness. Who, that question has been, was Conrad's model for the enigmatic colonial official he calls Kurtz? Hannah Arendt has speculated that it was Carl Peters, an early explorer of east Africa.1 Norman Sherry has picked Arthur Hodister, a Belgian officer, as his candidate.2 Ian Watt has (...) likewise suggested historical figures: Henry M. Stanley and King Leopold of Belgium.3 Since all these men had a reputation for cruelty, those thinking that Conrad had them in mind when describing Kurtz have stressed the political message of his story; for them it is basically an indictment of colonialism. Stephen Reid has argued for a mythic model. Kurtz, he holds, was meant to be seen as one of the man-gods of Frazer's Golden Bough—a primitive king who is obliged to maintain his political position by engaging in certain bestial rites.4 Kenneth Bruffee has recendy cast Kurtz as Conrad's version of Byron's Childe Harold, arguing that the eventualjudgment on him by the character Marlow represents the effort of a squire-narrator to free himself from the pernicious influence of his knight-hero.5 For Bruffee Heart of Darkness is the prototype of a genre oftwentieth-century literature thatrejects the values ofaristocratic romance in favor of democratic norms. There may be truth in all these associations of Kurtz with known colonizers, mythical kings, and fictional knights, but they share a pair of deficiencies. They do not clarify the argument of Heart ofDarkness and so do not dojustice to its copious philosophical content. They also 280 Jerrys. Clegg281 fail to note those features ofKurtz that identify his model most precisely. The prototype of Conrad's famous character is biblical. He is a modern version of Abraham, and the work most intimately related to Heart of Darkness is Kierkegaard's panegyric on Abraham: Fear and Trembling. Conrad's story is, in fact, an addendum to Fear and Trembling written from the point of view of a poet-narrator—Marlow—who has accepted some, but not all, of the tenets of Kierkegaard's own poet-narrator, Johannes de Silentio. It is Marlow's quarrel with de Silentio that explains the structure of Heart ofDarkness, that constitutes its deepest message, and that tells the reader who the model for Kurtz was. An appreciation of that quarrel also helps clarify other matters. It makes plain, for example, the symbolism of light and dark that Conrad uses as an accompaniment to his argument.6 Heart of Darkness is, unarguably, a meditation on several subjects. It is about the Belgian Congo under the administration of King Leopold. It is also about European colonialism in general. It may be about other matters as well. Its primary subject, however, is the relationship of the religious to the ethical and the aesthetic. Since for Conrad the ethical and the aesthetic were allied, this subject may be best cast as the relationship ofreligion to art. It is introduced at the very start ofthe novella. Conrad's primary narrator there offers a theme for his seafaring friend, Marlow, to meditate on aloud: the great English knights-errant of the sea who, like "jewels flashing in the night of time," have born the torch of civilization into the mystery of an unknown earth.7 As this theme is announced, what was a mournful gloom that had hung over London becomes a lurid glare under the stars, and Marlow begins to talk of these, and still other, kinds of light and their relationship to the dark. The primary narrator has already identified what the dark stands for: time. Marlow does not challenge that equation. He only asks who, and with the aid of what kind of light, effectively combats "the night of time." During his meditation he considers four answers to his question, three of which are of primary importance. Certain "redeeming facts," illustrated by the restraint shown by hungry cannibals, quietly dazzle with reassurance, and so what mightbe called the person ofethical conduct— when stripped bare of pretense and the opaque "cloak of time... (shrink)

Something out of the ordinary -- The interminable Shakespearean text -- Fred Astaire asserts the right to praise -- Henry James returns to America and to Shakespeare -- Philosophy the day after tomorrow -- What is the scandal of skepticism? -- Performative and passionate utterance -- The Wittgensteinian event -- Thoreau thinks of ponds, Heidegger of rivers -- The world as things.

Reissued with a new preface, this famous collection of essays covers a remarkably wide range of philosophical issues, including essays on Wittgenstein, Austin, Kierkegaard, and the philosophy of language, and extending beyond philosophy into discussions of music and drama. Previous edition hb ISBN (1976): 0-521-21116-6 Previous edition pb ISBN (1976): 0-521-29048-1.

A philosophical study of popular movies uses the viewer as a point of reference.

In this book an eminent scholar presents a rich and penetrating analysis of the _Statesman_, perhaps Plato's most challenging work. Stanley Rosen contends that the main theme of this dialogue is a definition of the art of politics and the degree to which political experience is subject either to the rule of sound judgment or to technical construction. The _Statesman_, like Plato's earlier _Sophist_, features a Stranger who tries to refute Socrates. Much of his conversation is devoted to a (...) minute analysis of the art of weaving, selected by the Stranger as a paradigm of the royal art of politics, for he conceives of the city as an artifact. But the Stranger's successive efforts to find a method for defining the art of politics are failures, because there is no fitting model or technique of measurement by which to grasp politics that includes within its scope the totality of human existence—there is, suggests Plato, no technical construction of politics. Rosen reflects on the relevance of Plato to contemporary debates about political reconstruction on the one hand and about the deeper issue of the supposed end of modernity on the other. He argues that, far from being the father of essentialism and the reification of human nature, as others have suggested, Plato elaborates a rhetoric of politics as self-defense against nature. Just as weaving produces clothing to protect the body against the elements, so the statesman must produce myths or local models to protect the soul against the body. (shrink)

"This is a timely collection of important papers.

Combining exemplary scholarship and analytic precision, Stanley Rosen illuminates the underpinnings of post-modernist thought, providing valuable insight as he pursues two arguments: first, that post-modernism, which regards itself as an attack upon the Enlightenment, is in fact the penultimate stage of the Enlightenment itself; and second, that the extraordinary contemporary emphasis upon hermeneutics is the latest consequence of the triumph of history over mathematics within the unstable essence of the Enlightenment. Hermeneutics is consequently at bottom a political phenomenon. In (...) developing these arguments, Rosen demonstrates the paradigmatic status of Kant for a proper understanding of post-modernism, analyzes Derrida's influential critique of Platonism as well as his defense of writing, explains the political dimension of the quarrel between the ancients and moderns by studying the hermeneutics of Leo Strauss and Alexander Kojhve, and shows how the modern notion of "theory" is intrinsically relativized by the triumph of history over mathematics into the notion of interpretation. A wide-ranging exploration into current critical thinking, Hermeneutics as Politics will generate considerable debate among scholars interested in post-modernism, the Enlightenment, hermeneutics, the relation of philosophy and politics, deconstruction, and the history of philosophy. (shrink)

This collection of essays explores Thoreau's Walden, and discusses the importance of Thoreau and Emerson on American thought.

Granted a certain depth of accuracy in citing an aspect of Spengler as an enactment of an aspect of Wittgenstein's thought, Wittgenstein's difference from Spengler should have depth. One difference can be characterized by saying that in the Investigations Wittgenstein diurnalizes Spengler's vision of the destiny toward exhausted forms, toward nomadism, toward loss of culture, or of home, or community: he depicts our everyday encounters with philosophy, with our ideals, as brushes with skepticism, wherein the ancient task of philosophy, to (...) awaken us, or bring us to our senses, takes the form of returning us to the everyday, the ordinary, every day, diurnally. (shrink)

Reissued with a new preface and a new essay on Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, Coriolanius, Hamlet and The Winter's Tale, this famous collection of essays on Shakespeare's tragedies considers the plays as responses to the crisis of knowledge and the emergence of modern skepticism.

In this insightful and controversial book, the eminent philosopher Stanley Rosen takes a new look at the famous 'quarrel' that the moderns have with the ancients, analyzing and comparing ancient philosophers and modern Continental and analytical thinkers from Plato, Descartes, and Kant to Fichte, Nietzsche, and Rorty. He urges that we do not dismiss the classical heritage but appropriate it, for this appropriation is an indispensable step in the process of legitimizing our historical experience.

A collection of 17 important readings provide those unfamiliar with Cavell's work with an overview of its strategic purpose, its central themes, and its argumentative development. The readings are taken from every one of the major fields in which Cavell has been involved--aesthetics, philosophy of religion, philosophy of Wittgenstein, Austin, Emerson, literary criticism, film theory, and psychoanalysis. Brief editorial introductions to each piece are included. A previously unpublished essay on Wittgenstein serves as an epilogue. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., (...) Portland, OR. (shrink)

In the aftermath of emotivism and behaviourism, cognitivist theories of emotion became current in both philosophy and psychology. These theories, though varied, have in common that emotions require propositional attitudes such as beliefs or evaluations. Accordingly, cognitivist theories characterize emotions themselves with features of such attitudes, including syntax, semantic meaning, and justifiability.

The Mask of Enlightenment is the most detailed textual and thematic study of Nietzsche's most important but least understood works: Thus Spake Zarathustra. In this book Nietzsche was laying the groundwork for a fundamental philosophical and political revolution on a global scale. One of the difficulties that the text poses is Nietzsche's prophetic style; Stanley Rosen unweaves the complex threads that form the rhetorical voices of the work, and so explains the style in an accessible manner. He rejects recent (...) sceptical, deconstructionist interpretations of Nietzsche, and reveals a coherence underlying the multiple and apparently incompatible intentions embedded in the text. Nietzsche is a figure whose influence on contemporary thought in the humanities and social sciences continues to be enormous. This book is sure to become the definitive study of Zarathustra, and will have a broad appeal to philosophers and students of modern philosophy, intellectual historians, political scientists, and literary theorists. (shrink)

Throughout the literature on Cultural Evolutionary Theory attention is drawn to the existence and significance of an analogy between biological phenomena and socio-cultural phenomena. Mesoudi seems to argue that it is the accuracy of the analogy, and the magnitude of accurate instances of this analogy at work, which provides warrant for an evolutionary approach to the study of socio-cultural phenomena, and, thus, for CET. An implication of this is that if there is evidence to suggest that the analogy is not (...) accurate, or that there aren’t many cases where it is accurate, this would constitute evidence to reject an evolutionary approach to the study of socio-cultural phenomena. As such, opponents of CET raise objections highlighting the weakness of the biology-culture analogy. These objections, in turn, have standard replies in the literature that serve to reinforce the realism of the biology-culture analogy. Curiously, this situation would appear to support a position in the philosophy of social science called “Ontology Matters”. It is the view that social ontology can contribute to the empirical success of the social sciences by providing an accurate account of what there is in the domain of the social world which can be used to generate better explanations and/or predictions of social phenomena. If ontology matters, in this sense, perhaps this can help to clarify and resolve the dispute regarding the realism of the biology-culture analogy. In turn, perhaps this can help us determine what warrant there is for CET. However, I think this situation is indicative of severe confusion and misunderstanding as to the significance of the biology-culture analogy. This confusion is caused by inattention to two things. First, the useful distinction between it’s methodological, epistemological, and ontological significance. Second, the abstract nature of Darwinian evolution by natural selection. By drawing attention to these two things, I hope to take the sting out of, and deflate the significance of, disputes regarding the accuracy of the analogy, for both proponents and opponents of CET, as well as to bring into contact a classical dispute in the philosophy of social science with some relevant aspects of theoretical biology. (shrink)

A division has arisen within the naturalist school of moral philosophy, with the contenders being "the emotive theorists vs. the cognitive theorists." the author suggests that the fundamental agreements between the groups far outweigh the peripheral and sometimes illusory disagreements. the article establishes the areas of agreement, deals with illusory disagreements, and indicates the peripheral disagreements can be considered disagreements in emphasis. (staff).

Writing in continuous gratitude to Gary Matthews's wonderful project of rescuing childhood from its disregard, not to say banishment, in professional philosophy, I relate here certain moments in his considerations of early childhood to moments in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, which opens with a scene of childhood from Augustine's Confessions, and also to moments in later stages of childhood (as Matthews also significantly indicates) and, beyond that, to adolescent crises and to what I have called philosophy as "the education of grown-ups." (...) I raise the issue of whether we are to see the "odd" questions of early childhood as proto-science, which will eventually graduate into better science, or as proto-philosophy, which will be continuously elaborated in philosophical investigation. This raises the question of whether philosophy is to be regarded, early or late, as inseparable from science or, as the later Wittgenstein urges, autonomous with respect to science's glamorous advances. (shrink)

Proceeding on the assumption that confusion in Renaissance criticism arises from the way we talk and the vocabularies we use, Stewart investigates typical assertions in recent criticism of Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, and Herbert, using a Wittgensteinian method of investigation. This involves taking a thing, usually a statement, apart. If a statement, under such scrutiny, seems to make no sense, or to lead critics into blind alleys, then we must try to clarify the expression. As Stewart asserts, if we are to (...) go on together in critical conversation, then we must find a way to sort out the confusion that arises from our language. While Wittgenstein's thought has long been utilized by literary critics, this study represents the first sustained application of ordinary language philosophy to the vocabulary and assumptions of current criticism. This study is an original and important book⎯one likely to be of great interest to philosophers as well as literary theorists. While Renaissance Talk is primarily concerned with Renaissance and early modern studies, its patient but relentless exposure of what sometimes passes for scholarly criticism, along with its exemplary corrective explication of misinterpreted passages from the writings of major authors, makes it useful reading for a wide range of Literary Studies students and scholars. (shrink)

Touching on the work of philosophers including Richardson, Kant, Hume, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and Dewey, this study examines the history of what philosophers have had to say about "Shakespeare" as a subject of philosophy, from the seventeenth-century to the present. Stewart's volume will be of interest to Shakespeareans, literary critics, and philosophers.

Philosophy in the twentieth century has been dominated by the urge for analysis, a methodology that is supposed to be comparable in clarity and correctness to scientific thought. In this brilliant and devastating attack on such exaggerated claims, Stanley Rosen demonstrates how analysis alone lacks the power to approach the deepest and most important philosophical questions. He thus provides us with a new and deeper understanding of the nature and limits of analytic thinking.

In this book a philosopher enters into a debate with Heidegger in order to provide a justification of metaphysics. Stanley Rosen presents a fresh interpretation of metaphysics that opposes the traditional doctrines attached by Heidegger, on the one hand, and by contemporary philosophers influenced by Heidegger, on the other. Rosen refutes Heidegger's claim that metaphysics (or what Heidegger calls Platonism) is derived from the Aristotelian science of being as being. He argues instead that metaphysics is simply a commonsensical reflection (...) on the nature of ordinary experience and on standards for living a better life. (shrink)

Albert and the career of virtue theory -- Modern virtue theory as foreground to Albert's moral philosophy -- Albert's ethical treatises -- The significance of Albert's moral treatises in early-thirteenth-century moral philosophy -- Approaching the moral order -- Meta-ethical reflections on "moral science" and its procedures -- The metaphysics of the good -- The architecture of moral goodness -- The genesis of virtue : intrinsic causes -- The genesis of virtue : extrinsic causes -- The concept of virtue -- The (...) organization of the virtues -- The passions -- Morality, obligation, and law -- Natural law -- Virtue's rewards -- Friendship -- Last ends and happiness -- Conclusion: Albertus redux. (shrink)