"[Wilshire] establishes a phenomenology of theatre, a theory of enactment, and a theory of appearance, none of which American theatre... has ever had." —Performing Arts Journal "... Wilshire makes unique contributions to understanding major aspects of the human condition in its necessary search for selfhood." —Process Studies "It is one of the American classics." —Human Studies.

Continuing his quest to bring American philosophy back to its roots, Bruce Wilshire connects the work of such thinkers as Thoreau, Emerson, Dewey, and James with Native American beliefs and practices. His search is not for exact parallels, but rather for fundamental affinities between the equally "organismic" thought systems of indigenous peoples and classic American philosophers. Wilshire gives particular emphasis to the affinities between Black Elk’s view of the hoop of the world and Emerson’s notion of horizon, and also between (...) a shaman’s healing practices and James’s ideas of pure experience, willingness to believe, and a pluralistic universe. As these connections come into focus, the book shows how European phenomenology was inspired and influenced by the classic American philosophers, whose own work reveals the inspiration and influence of indigenous thought. Wilshire’s book also reveals how artificial are the walls that separate the sciences and the humanities in academia, and that separate Continental from Anglo-American thought within the single discipline of philosophy. (shrink)

One of America's foremost philosophers reflects on the discipline and its relation to everyday life.

The importance of this collection of writings of William James lies in the fact that it has been arranged to provide a systematic introduction to his major philosophical discoveries, and precisely to those doctrines and theories that are of most burning current interest. William James: The Essential Writings is a series of philosophical arguments on some of the most “obscure and head-cracking problems” in contemporary philosophy; the relation of thought to its object; the interrelationships between meaning and truth; the levels (...) and structures of experience; the degrees of reality; the nature of the embodied self; the relation of ethics, aesthetics, and religious experience to man’s strenuously and “heroically” active nature; and, above all, the structurization of the experienced life-world as the validating ground and origin of all theory; Bruce Wilshire has provided an introduction to William James’s thought on these and other related points which is at once both substantial and subtle. (shrink)

One of the greatest and oldest of images for expressing living change is that of the movement of waters. Rivers particularly, in their relentless motion, in the constant searching direction of their travel, in the confluence of tributaries and the division into channels by which identity is constituted and dispersed and once more reestablished, have stood as metaphors for movements in a variety of realms-politics, religion, literature, thought. Among philosophic movements, phenomenology and existential ism are discernible as one such movement (...) of ideas analogous in configuration to the flow of a river in its channel or network of channels. The course taken by the stream of phenomenology and existential philosophy in North America is easily seen from the contents of the six volumes of collected papers from the annual meetings of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philo sophy that have preceded the present selection. What soon becomes clear in general, and is evident as well in the present volume, is that phenomenological and existential philosophies are far from being homogeneous, are far from showing an identity as to the sources from which they derive their energy, or the themes that they carry forward toward clarification. And yet there is a con fluence, a convergence of orientation, sympathy, and conceptuality, INTRODUCTION 4 SO that problematics harmonize and complement and mutually enrich. (shrink)

The connecting of issues that have been heretofore largely kept separate is the thrust of the articles assembled here. From an article by a noted Continental thinker on the interrelation of phenomenology and pragmatism to articles on the phenomenological powers of theater, this book features such established thinkers as Paul Ricoeur, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Otto Pöggeler, Don Ihde, James Edie, Marjorie Grene, Eugene Gendlin, and Karl-Otto Apel speaking in innovative ways. There is extensive discussion of the life and thought of Martin (...) Heidegger, an examination of the connection between phenomenology and the thought of Meinong, and an exposition of several of Merleau-Ponty’s central issues. A section of the book deals with the problems of the connections between phenomenology and the theory of natural science. This volume advances the interchange between American and Continental thinkers through novel and provocative dialogue. (shrink)

The connecting of issues that have been heretofore largely kept separate is the thrust of the articles assembled here. From an article by a noted Continental thinker on the interrelation of phenomenology and pragmatism to articles on the phenomenological powers of theater, this book features such established thinkers as Paul Ricoeur, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Otto Pöggeler, Don Ihde, James Edie, Marjorie Grene, Eugene Gendlin, and Karl-Otto Apel speaking in innovative ways. There is extensive discussion of the life and thought of Martin (...) Heidegger, an examination of the connection between phenomenology and the thought of Meinong, and an exposition of several of Merleau-Ponty’s central issues. A section of the book deals with the problems of the connections between phenomenology and the theory of natural science. This volume advances the interchange between American and Continental thinkers through novel and provocative dialogue. (shrink)

Why do groups become genocidal and try to incapacitate all members of an alien group, even sometimes killing fetuses? Prematurely alluding to evil or to the Devil blocks the possibility for further inquiry. Get 'Em All! Kill 'Em! is the first systematic attempt to explain what, up until now, has seemed to be inexplicable phenomena.

Why do groups become genocidal and try to incapacitate all members of an alien group, even sometimes killing fetuses? Prematurely alluding to evil or to the Devil blocks the possibility for further inquiry. Get 'Em All! Kill 'Em! is the first systematic attempt to explain what, up until now, has seemed to be inexplicable phenomena.