Recent theorists of cultural studies have noticed the emergence of metamodernity as an ideal type, categorized by an oscillation between postmodern deconstructivism and modern idealism, into a form of transcendentalism. I argue in this chapter that this type of transcendentalism, informed by the historical American Transcendentalist Movement, is the emerging ideal called “Transhumanism.” I use a case study of five Japanese anime to demonstrate how transhumanist, metamodernist, and transcendental thinking often recur in key core plot points and narratives found within. (...) I further suggest that meditation on the major themes in these anime, especially those of metamodernity and transhumanism, is necessary if we are to understand our place in the world today and into the future. -/- The final version of this paper can be found in Anime, Philosophy, and Religion, Ed. Hayashi and Anderson, by Vernon Press. See "external links" for how to order the whole volume, the final version is also available on google books (see link). -/- A previous version of this paper was awarded the Outstanding Doctoral Paper Award 2023, Southwestern Sociological Association. (shrink)

A highly accessible reading of Whitehead's writings on education and their connection to his metaphysics.

This chapter contains sections titled: History, Historicism, and Context Impartialism and Universalism Within the Limits of Reason Alone You Can't See Nothing from Nowhere Sociopoiesis: Justice Means Competition Is Cooperation Reverence from the Inside Out References.

"Before the Voice of Reason is a phenomenological critique of reason grounded in our experience of the voices that already address us and summon us prior to the ...

Explores overlapping concerns and themes in African and continental philosophy. In Existence and Heritage, Tsenay Serequeberhan examines what the European philosophical tradition has to offer when encountered from the outsider perspective of postcolonial African thought. He reads Kant in the context of contemporary international relations, finds in Gadamer’s work a way of conceiving relations among differing traditions, and explores Heidegger’s analysis of existence as it converges with Marx’s critique of alienation. In the confluence of these different assessments, Serequeberhan articulates both (...) a need and example of responding to Fanon’s call for a new kind of thinking in philosophy. He demonstrates both how continental philosophy can be a useful resource for theorizing Africa’s postcolonial condition and how postcolonial thought and African philosophy can provide a new way of approaching and understanding the Western tradition. (shrink)

_A highly accessible reading of Whitehead's writings on education and their connection to his metaphysics._.

_Provides a critique of reason, demanding that we take greater responsibility for nature and other people._.

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.

Ambivalence is a form of inner volitional conflict that we experience as being irresolvable without significant cost. Because of this, very few of us relish feelings of ambivalence. Yet for many in the Western philosophical tradition, ambivalence is not simply an unappealing experience that's hard to manage. According to Unificationists--whose view finds its historical roots in Plato and Augustine and is ably defended by contemporary philosophers such as Harry Frankfurt and Christine Korsgaard--ambivalence is a failure of well-functioning agency. The reasons (...) for this, we're told, are threefold. First, it precludes agents from resolving their wills in a way that is necessary for autonomy. Second, it precludes agents from fully affirming their live and, in particular, from fully affirming the choices they make. As a result, ambivalence robs them of an important source of meaning. Finally, ambivalence causes agents to act in self-defeating ways. In so doing, they act without integrity. Ambivalence is thus seen as a threat to a trio of important agential goods, and as a result, it imperils the best forms of human agency. -/- Against the Unificationists, D. Justin Coates argues that ambivalence does not preclude volitional resolution or normatively significant forms of affirmation. Nor does it guarantee self-defeat. Consequently, ambivalence as such is no threat to autonomy, meaning, or integrity. In assessing these arguments, ambivalence is also revealed to have an important role in securing the very goods that unificationists contend it undermines. The reason for this is that each of these goods requires the agent to be normatively competent. But normative competence itself, Coates argues, often leads agents to be ambivalent. The best forms of human agency are therefore shown to be not only compatible with ambivalence but as regularly requiring it. Ambivalence is thus not a volitional defect, but a crucial constituent of well-functioning agency. (shrink)

In *Here and There*, Stanley Cavell suggests that music, like speech, implicates the listener, so that our descriptions of music "are to be thought of not as discoveries but as impressions and assignments of meaning." Such impressions express what "makes an impression upon us," "what truly matters to us." Moreover, this aspect of music "is itself more revolutionary than ... any political event of which it could be said to form a part." I offer one indication of that significance by (...) considering a recent challenge to an old claim about the relation between jazz and democracy. Stanley Crouch claims that jazz practice is an emblem of democracy, while Benjamin Givan observes the undemocratic, hierarchical way that jazz musicians work together. But both positions rest on a limited notion of "democracy." I contrast it to the tradition in political thought that requires each citizen to find their own voice if they're to acquire the ability to govern themselves. Consequently, a better emblem of jazz's democratic advance lies in the challenge it presents to the attentive listener. Jazz listening is increasingly characterized by a learned culture of hearing what isn't played, hearing allusions, hearing unspoken interplay. The nature of this "hearing between the lines" parallels the tradition of esoteric writing in the history of political thought. It suggests that jazz's democratic importance is found in the listener's willingness to give voice to what she hears, not knowing whether her experience is shared by others or whether it singles her out, possibly for skepticism or ridicule. (shrink)

Does the self exist? If so, what is its nature? How long do selves last? Galen Strawson draws on literature and psychology as well as philosophy to discuss various ways we experience having or being a self. He argues that it is legitimate to say that there is such a thing as the self, distinct from the human being.

In the 17th century, ‘reflexivity’ was coined as a new term for introspection and self-awareness. It thus was poised to serve the instrumental function of combating skepticism by asserting a knowing self. In this Cartesian paradigm, introspection ends in an entity of self-identity. An alternate interpretation recognized how an infinite regress of reflexivity would render ‘the self’ elusive, if not unknowable. Reflexivity in this latter mode was rediscovered by post-Kantian philosophers, most notably Hegel, who defined the self in its self-reflective (...) encounter with an other, and whose full articulation would occur at the final culmination of Reason's evolution. In the rising tide of 19th-century individualism, Emerson and Kierkegaard formulated constructions both in debt to, and in opposition against, Hegelian metaphysics. For each, although employing distinct strategies of self-consciousness, ‘the self’ reached its apogee through divine encounter. Characterized by personal responsibility and individual choice, their philosophies would later be subsumed by secular existentialists committed to defining moral individualism and asserting the possibilities for human freedom and selfauthentication. (shrink)

My essay begins by providing a broad vision of how William James’s psychology and philosophy were a two-pronged attempt to revive the self whose foundations had collapsed after the Civil War. Next, I explain how this revival was all too successful insofar as James inadvertently resurrected the imperial self, so that he was forced to adjust and develop his philosophy of religion in keeping with his anti-imperialism. James’s mature philosophy of religion therefore articulates a vision of the radically ethical saint (...) religiously bound to a decidedly pluralistic universe. I evaluate James’s philosophy of religion by comparing it to Enrique Dussel’s psychological portrait of the imperialist ego, Dussel’s attempt to religiously bind this ego, and the more radical philosophy that results. I suggest that Dussel’s philosophy of liberation: 1) better theorizes the religious contraction of the self as a necessary part of ethical and political life and 2) offers a more concrete and radically democratic philosophy. My overarching aim is to show how Dussel’s liberation philosophy can help critically develop James’s pragmatist claim that religion might provide a force for widely and positively transforming our ethical and political lives. (shrink)

This article begins by clarifying the notion of what Stanley Cavell has called ‘Emersonian moral perfectionism.’ It goes on to explore this through close analysis of aspects of Emerson’s essay ‘Experience,’ in which ideas of trying or attempting or experimenting bring out the intimate relation between perfectionism and styles of writing. ‘Where do we find ourselves?’ Emerson asks, and the answer is to be found in part in what we write and what we say, injecting a new sense of possibility (...) and responsibility into our relation to our words. But the language we speak and the lives that go with it are at the same time burdened with a past, and in the case of English, and in the American context especially, it is marked with a kind of repression relating to questions of slavery and race. These matters are implicated in questions of constitution, in both general and specifically political senses. Hence, inheritance and appropriation become causes of critical sensitivity, as do the forms of praise and acknowledgment that should meet them. The article explores ways of thinking through Emerson’s relation to these aspects of experience and seeks to find responses pertinent to today. (shrink)

J.M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello is an overtly philosophical novel, at the heart of which are questions concerning the relation of human beings to animals and the discussion of animal rights. The nature of its subject matter and the prominence it gives to dialogue, sometimes of an almost Platonic kind, make it a rich potential resource for moral education. This article begins by imagining a course based on extracts from the novel, intended for teenage students or older people. It goes on (...) to make suggestions for further reading. There is now a rich secondary literature that has developed in response to central elements in Coetzee's text, involving the work of Peter Singer, Tom Regan, Cora Diamond, Stanley Cavell, John McDowell, Cary Wolfe, and Ian Hacking, amongst others. This literature raises questions about the nature of moral philosophy, and it has implications for moral education. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article articulates the idea of a disclosing critique of society. It starts from the assumption that the curiously organicistic undertones of Adorno’s negative social ontology is part and parcel of a disclosing gesture in his social criticism. It then traces Adorno’s debate with social organicists to the point where the critical theorist’s own concept of society emerges with a claim to be critical in itself. It is argued that this critical claim is enforced by a disclosing gesture. To (...) articulate what is at stake in this gesture of critical disclosure a parallel is drawn, and contrast made, to Emerson’s conception of disclosure as “drawing a circle around a circle”. The relationship between Adorno’s and Emerson’s conceptions of critical disclosure is complex. However, their juxtaposition allows for a distinction between two directions of critical disclosure. It will be argued that disclosing critique of society can be understood as an exemplary dissociation from alienated society by means of a creative association of empirical knowledge, poetic description and philosophical speculation by a critic standing, as it were, with one foot inside and the other outside our form of life. (shrink)

A critical examination of Carol Gilligan's study of “psychological theory and women's development,” this essay begins by exploring her concerns about malebiased developmental theorizing. I consider in detail Gilligan's criticisms of Sigmund Freud and her own empirical studies of moral development, as they relate to the work of L. Kohlberg. After defending Freud to some degree, I propose various alternative interpretations of her data-interviews with males and females about hypothetical ethical dilemmas and with females about actual abortion decisions. I contend (...) that Gilligan is too willing to concede the adequacy of Kohlberg's categories for fathoming the moral reasoning of males and that she may, in consequence, exaggerate differences between males and females. Noting the ironic similarities between Gilligan's claims and Schopenhauer's misogyny, I suggest that there may be something undesirably self-limiting about the ‘different’ course of development she sketches. To move toward a morally preferable, feminism-compatible version of an “ethic of care,” I recommend that it be extended — by the imagination — beyond the ‘here and now’ and that it not be restricted to existing webs of personal relationships. (shrink)

Unequal treatment of human research subjects is a significant ethical concern, because justice in research involving human subjects requires equal protection of rights and equal protection from harm and exploitation. Disputes sometimes arise concerning the issue of unequal treatment of research subjects. Allegedly unequal treatment occurs when subjects are treated differently and there is a genuine dispute concerning the appropriateness of equal treatment. Patently unequal treatment occurs when subjects are treated differently and there is not a genuine dispute about the (...) appropriateness of equal treatment. Allegedly unequal treatment will probably always occur in research with human subjects due to disagreements about fundamental questions of justice. The best way to deal with allegedly unequal treatment is to promote honest and open discussions of the issues at stake. Research regulations can help to minimize patently unequal treatment by providing rules for investigators, ethical review boards, institutions, and sponsors to follow. However, patently unequal treatment may still occur because the regulations are subject to interpretation. Federal agencies have provided interpretive guidance that can help promote consistent review and oversight of human subjects research. Additional direction may be needed on topics that are not adequately covered by current guidance or regulations. International guidelines can help promote equal treatment of human subjects around the globe. While minor variations in the treatment of research subjects should be tolerated and even welcomed, major ones (i.e. those that significantly impact human rights or welfare) should be avoided or minimized. (shrink)

The article suggests the philosophical pragmatist approach to the notions as to the components of social practices in the historical process. The question of their contents and interrelations shifts from the epistemic level to the practical one, in this way indicating the dimension of pragmatic intellectuality. It is pointed out that in various times the agents of pragmatic intellectuality used to employ in their practices the notions in perspective of the improving effect on the human’s life. From the angle of (...) the history of philosophy, the pragmatic intellectuality means an attitude of critical choice, comparison, and holistic arrangement of the notions in view of close grasping the novel practices which might be advantageous for the community. The history of philosophy justifies the fact that the pragmatic intellectuality has been generated by the tensions between various divisions of the social practices and set a locus of their transformation. The notion of the culture of democracy is interpreted not as a fixed theoretical criterion but as a changing through history vision of the community’s future, as well as the notion of practically possible social-cultural changes and the ways to make human life better. The features of pragmatic intellectuality are as follow: the priority of the future before the past, social hope, self-reliance, flexible and dynamic correction of notions, ideas, images on account of the humane interests, changes in the culture of thinking and senses, self-realization as self-transformation. The article relies on the works of the classics of American philosophical pragmatism and the writings by the authors on the akin topic. Manuscript received 01.03.2020. (shrink)

(2003). U¨bermenschen, mestizas, nomads The onotology of becoming and the scene of transnational citizenship in anzaldu´a and nietzsche. Angelaki: Vol. 8, No. 3, pp. 41-57.

Understanding spirituality may serve as a foundation for developing new approaches to managerial action, organizational learning, social change and leadership. This article explores this phenomenon by hermeneutically tracing the demise and reawakening of spiritual entrepreneurship in Western life over the past 200 years. Spiritual aspects of entrepreneurial organizations are also framed via the lens of critical management theory as reflected in literature spanning four social epochs: federalist reality, the Industrial Revolution, disciplinary society, and the post-industrial milieu. The resulting themes highlight (...) the interconnectedness and reciprocal influences between social reality and spiritual leadership in Western entrepreneurial enterprises. Drawn from the author's doctoral research (Jue 2004), the article suggests a need for reintegrating spiritual leadership among post-modern organizations and entrepreneurial firms in the achievement of more sustainable futures. (shrink)

This paper aims to show how Emerson provides a reworking of Kantian understandings of moral education in young children’s Bildung. The article begins and ends by thinking of Emersonian self-cultivation as a form of improvisatory or wild Bildung. It explores the role of Bildung and self-cultivation in preschools through a philosophy that accounts for children’s ‘Wild wisdom’ by letting Emerson speak to Kant. The paper argues that Kant’s vision of Bildung essentially involves reason’s turn upon itself and that Emerson, particularly (...) in how he is taken up by Cavell, shows that such a turn is already present in the processes of children inheriting, learning, and improvising with language. This improvisatory outlook on moral education is contrasted with common goals of moral education prescribed in early childhood education where the Swedish Curriculum for the Preschool Lpfö 98 is used as an example. (shrink)

In 1880, when Oliver Wendell Holmes (later to be a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court) criticized the logical theology of law articulated by Christopher Columbus Langdell (the first Dean of Harvard Law School), neither Holmes nor Langdell was aware of the revolution in logic that had begun, the year before, with Frege's Begriffsschrift. But there is an important element of truth in Holmes's insistence that a legal system cannot be adequately understood as a system of axioms and corollaries; and (...) this element of truth is not obviated by the more powerful logical techniques that are now available. (shrink)

Moral theories, such as the variations on virtue ethics, deontological ethics, contractualism, and consequentialism, are expected – inter alia – to explain the basic orientation of morality, give us principles and directives, justify those, and thereby guide our actions. I examine some functions and characteristics of the extant moral theories from a moral metatheoretical point of view, in order to clarify the generally assumed rivalry between them. By thinking of moral theories in analogy to languages it is argued that different (...) moral theories are neither simply competing nor simply complementary; their respective orientations justify using them, in virtue of the problems they help to solve. But even if considerations about the functionality of a theory and the context in which it is created play an important role, they can neither be sufficient to determine these theories’ relations to one other nor for choosing between them. The challenge is to set criteria for the quality of a moral theory on a moral metatheoretical level and, in particular, to make room for future views on morality. (shrink)

This is a collective writing project that is part of the larger design of Infantologies, Infanticides and Infantilizations; a quartet that explores the philosophy of infants from thematic perspectives, that puts infants at the centre of our reflections, and that encourages a different academic style of thinking.

How is one to navigate between a thinking grounded in the individual and a claim for communality? In Emerson, this kind of difficulty comes into view in familiar sentences such as Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense.’ How does the relationship between the personal and the universal look and function? In this paper, it is argued that Emerson may bring us clarity regarding the difficulties we are facing when it comes to questions about how we (...) are to frame human personality, morality, and knowledge in the field of tension created by distinctions such as private/public, original/conventional, and particular/universal. A crucial thought in this line of reasoning is that that the critical philosophy Emerson pursues is also self-critical. The idea that true critique is self-criticism is then used as a tool to make clear that there’s no fundamental gap to be bridged here. The self-critical dimension makes clear the ways in which coming to share a world—learning from one’s teachers for example—is a matter of earning (shared) words. Therefore, Emersonian self-cultivation does not stand apart from the cultivation of something shared, but should be seen as a form of path towards a shared world. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article examines Oscar Wilde’s liberal socialist tract, ‘The Soul of Man Under Socialism’. It posits three discrete arguments. It argues, firstly, that in ‘The Soul of Man’ Wilde was deeply engaged with the socialist theory of William Morris. It claims that Wilde not only repudiated Morris’s aesthetic philosophy, rejecting Morris’s views about co-operation, usefulness, and tradition, and pouring scorn on the notion of dignity in manual labour, but that Wilde also echoed Morris’s utopian romance, News from Nowhere, in (...) two important respects: namely, in his account of crime and punishment on the one hand, and in his treatment of the notion of human nature on the other. Secondly, this article argues that, in ‘The Soul of Man’, Wilde drew on both Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Stuart Mill. It shows how Wilde plagiarised and repurposed ideas drawn from Emerson’s essay, ‘Self-Reliance’. But, in addition, it demonstrates how Wilde duplicated Mill’s view of democracy, individuality, and progress as set out in On Liberty. Finally, then, this article argues that, in his treatment of thrift, gratitude, discontent, and rebellion, Wilde was strongly influenced by Charles Baudelaire’s dramatisation of ‘true philanthropy’ in the narrative prose poem, ‘Let’s Beat Up The Poor!’. (shrink)

The first two thirds or so of this book is a thorough, severe, and at times somewhat difficult, philosophical analysis and critique of atheistic naturalistic answers to “What caused the Big Bang?” Most contemporary astrophysicists accept one of the following non-theistic accounts of the origin of the Big Bang: Steady State, Plasma, Oscillationist, Big Fizz, Big Divide, Quantum Observership, Big Accident, Atheistic Anthropic, and Plenitude cosmologies. The last third or so of the book develops a highly plausible theistic process cosmology (...) which includes creation ex nihilo. This book critically explores answers to the big question, What produced our universe around fifteen billion years ago in a Big Bang? It defends and revises Process Theology and develops contemporary arguments for God's existence based on the universe's life-supporting order and contingent existence. (shrink)

In this article, I claim that Sam Mendes' Revolutionary Road is a recent version of the film genre that Stanley Cavell calls the “melodrama of the unknown woman”. Accordingly, my discussion focuses on two key elements of that identification: the film's overriding dramatic and thematic emphasis on conversation; and the central characters’ relation to the wider social and political concerns of America.

The politics of precarity have emerged on the contemporary scene of critical theory with great social force in recent years. This paper looks at the risks and obstacles of positing precariousness and vulnerability as the basis of a universal ethics while also arguing for the socially transformative potential of such a model. More broadly, it considers the crucial question of what stands in the way of human relation and ethical life in an age of neoliberalism and biopolitics, and posits an (...) ethics of resemblance grounded in the commonality of flesh and in the at once singular and universal experience of loss. (shrink)

Intellectual autonomy has long been identified as an epistemic virtue, one that has been championed influentially by Kant, Hume and Emerson. Manifesting intellectual autonomy, at least, in a virtuous way, does not require that we form our beliefs in cognitive isolation. Rather, as Roberts and Wood note, intellectually virtuous autonomy involves reliance and outsourcing to an appropriate extent, while at the same time maintaining intellectual self-direction. In this essay, I want to investigate the ramifications for intellectual autonomy of a particular (...) kind of epistemic dependence: cognitive enhancement. Cognitive enhancements involve the use of technology and medicine to improve cognitive capacities in healthy individuals, through mechanisms ranging from smart drugs to brain-computer interfaces. With reference to case studies in bioethics, as well as the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, it is shown that epistemic dependence, in this extreme form, poses a prima facie threat to the retention of intellectual autonomy, specifically, by threatening to undermine our intellectual self-direction. My aim will be to show why certain kinds of cognitive enhancements are subject to this objection from self-direction, while others are not. Once this is established, we’ll see that even some extreme kinds of cognitive enhancement might be not merely compatible with, but constitutive of, virtuous intellectual autonomy. (shrink)

The article focuses on the socially transforming aspect of American pragmatism. In particular, the article highlights the relevance and significance of Ralph Emerson’s transcendentalism and self-reliance for the information society. The key problem of the information society is defined as the general distrust about the truth. The culture of criticism displaces trust in others as seekers of the truth and, ultimately, eliminates self-trust.Based on Ralph Emerson’s essays and William James’ “Pragmatism”, the article distinguishes between two conceptions of truth: optimistic and (...) pessimistic. The first one is grounded on the pragmatist understanding of truth as the “theory that works”. The truth in the pragmatist understanding is not an ultimate and finished truth but the truth in making. Therefore, the truth is subject to amendments. However, this does not mean that uncompleted truth is not true, since it can already work and help us with our self-understanding and orientation in the world. Contrary to this, informational society is the society of spectatorship and criticism, left without the power of individuals to distinguish personally between true and false and take responsibility for such decisions. Informational society, in general, perceives truth as something absolute, unreachable and at the same time impossible to exist.The article considers Emerson’s idea of Man Thinking and the concept of Oversoul, addressing the problem of an autonomous individual in its relation to society and truth. Personality, being central for Emerson, cannot be understood separately at the same time, since an individual is a part of Nature and Society. In addition, in Emerson’s transcendental terminology, personality is the embodiment of the Oversoul of humanity while Oversoul in the world can act only through the actions of persons. Therefore, true self-reliance cannot be separated from the aspirations of an individual to reach Man Thinking through truth, and personally implement it in life. In such a way, self-reliance is also the basis for inter-subjective trust.Manuscript received 25.04.2020. (shrink)

This essay builds from an analysis of the philosophical underpinnings of Bruce Lee’s jeet kune do to an analysis of the current state of academic scholarship generally and martial arts studies scholarship specifically. For the sake of a more comprehensive understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of jeet kune do, and in particular its affinities with a philosophical tradition traced by Stanley Cavell under the heading of perfectionism, this essay brings the philosophical writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Ayn Rand into (...) contact with Lee’s writings during the time that he spent formulating his martial arts philosophy. Additionally, this essay uses the philosophical insights of Emerson, Rand, and Lee to challenge longstanding academic dogma vis-à-vis poststructuralist philosophy, the methods of academic intervention, and the nature of philosophical argumentation. Though pitched as a debate regarding the content and the status of Bruce Lee and his combative philosophy, this essay endeavors to inspire scholars to (re)examine their conceptions of Bruce Lee, martial arts, and martial arts studies. (shrink)

This article examines spiritual growth and the business career. Rather than a certain decline into workaholism or materialism, the world of business becomes a necessary step on the path of enlightenment, through the transcendant philosophical models of the Hindu householder and the Native American Medicine Wheel.The householder concept, including mastering the material world and the resulting spiritual growth, stresses the importance of action, also a criterion for success in business. Current views, based on studies of modern life, Judaic thought, and (...) Christian beliefs, add further dimension to this executive's model of enlightenment. (shrink)

ExcerptModern government is essentially economic, disposing of its subjects by exposing them to the supposedly natural exigencies of capitalist exchange. To survive, the individual must “earn a living”—in other words, pay for the space that his life takes up. The payment is work, or tangibly effective action—action that proves, on an abstract and universal scale, the value of the subject's continued existence. The sheer necessity, for each individual, of such measurably valuable work is what forces his regular participation in the (...) economy that is the liberal market-state. In order to challenge this system, it seems, one must challenge the hegemony…. (shrink)

In Memories and Portraits: Explorations in American Thought, H. G. Callaway embeds his distinctive contextualism and philosophical pluralism within strands of history and autobiography, spanning three continents. Starting in Philadelphia, and reflecting on the meaning of home in American thought, he offers a philosophically inspired narrative of travel and explorations, in Europe and Africa, illuminating central elements of American thought—partly out of diverse foreign and domestic reactions and fascinating cultural contrasts. -/- This book is of interest for the contemporary interplay (...) of analytic philosophy with American pragmatism and for those focused on the interaction of European and Anglo-American thought and society. In this book, the formalism of analytic philosophy encounters a logically articulate version of the contextualism implicit in the pragmatist tradition; and a deep and abiding interest in natural science is augmented by a more literary account of the social and cultural contexts of inquiry—encountered in many years of travel and life abroad. The final chapter, employing a methodological naturalism, brings the perspectives and lessons, from near and far, back home for renewed reflection. (shrink)

Preparing the journey -- Consciousness -- Self-consciousness -- Reason -- Spirit -- Religion -- Absolute knowing.

Dissonant Voices has a twofold aspiration. First, it is a philosophical treatment of everyday pedagogical interactions between children and their elders, between teachers and pupils. More specifically it is an exploration of the possibilities to go on with dissonant voices that interrupt established practices – our attunement – in behaviour, practice and thinking. Voices that are incomprehensible or expressions that are unacceptable, morally or otherwise. The text works on a tension between two inclinations: an inclination to wave off, discourage, or (...) change an expression that is unacceptable or unintelligible; and an inclination to be tolerant and accept the dissonant expression as doing something worthwhile, but different. The second aspiration is a philosophical engagement with children’s literature. Reading children’s literature becomes a form of philosophising, a way to explore the complexity of a range of philosophical issues. This turn to literature marks a dissatisfaction with what philosophy can accomplish through argumentation and what philosophy can do with a particular and limited set of concepts for a subject, such as ethics. It is a way to go beyond philosophising as the founding of theories that justify particular responses. The philosophy of dissonance and children’s literature becomes a way to destabilise justifications of our established practices and ways of interacting. The philosophical investigations of dissonance are meant to make manifest the possibilities and risks of engaging in interactions beyond established agreement or attunements. Thinking of the dissonant voice as an expression beyond established practices calls for improvisation. Such improvisations become a perfectionist education where both the child and the elder, the teacher and the student, search for as yet unattained forms of interaction and take responsibility for every word and action of the interaction. The investigation goes through a number of picture books and novels for children such as Harry Potter, Garmann’s Summer, and books by Shaun Tan, Astrid Lindgren and Dr. Seuss as well narratives by J.R.R. Tolkien, Henrik Ibsen, Jane Austen and Henry David Thoreau. These works of fiction are read in conversation with philosophical works of, and inspired by, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Stanley Cavell, their moral perfectionism and ordinary language philosophy. (shrink)

What is one doing when one improvises music, as one does in jazz? There are two sorts of account prominent in jazz literature. The traditional answer is that one is organizing sound materials in the only way they can be organized if they are to be musical. This implies that jazz solos are to be interpreted with the procedures of written music in mind. A second, more controversial answer is offered in David Sudnow's pioneering account of the phenomenology of improvisation, (...) Ways of the Hand. Sudnow claims that learning to improvise at the piano is concerned centrally with copying the bodily ways of one's mentors and finding how one's instructable hands and the keyboard come to answer to one another, so that "to define jazz ... is to describe the body's ways." But despite its greater sensitivity over the traditional account, Sudnow's account is flawed both as a description of how improvisatory skill is acquired and as a model for describing the interest of jazz. My critique of Sudnow compares his account to Augustine's account of learning language, and finds that Wittgenstein's criticisms of Augustine extend to Sudnow. I offer a third approach to understanding improvised music, one which treats the procedures of improvisation as derived from, and importantly at play in, our everyday actions. (shrink)

In this panel, we explore the future of value sensitive design (VSD). The stakes are high. Many in public and private sectors and in civil society are gradually realizing that taking our values seriously implies that we have to ensure that values effectively inform the design of technology which, in turn, shapes people’s lives. Value sensitive design offers a highly developed set of theory, tools, and methods to systematically do so.

This paper is the expository and evaluative introduction to my new edition of Emerson's Society and Solitude, Twelve Chapters.