The edited collection Rorty and Beyond assesses and moves beyond Rorty’s legacy, bringing together leading international philosophers. The collection covers diverse territory, from his views about what we may hope for to his personal character, and everything in between.

This essay intends to create a path forward for philosophical work in higher education that is sensitive to the discursive, organizational, economic, epistemic, and political cultures of the institution. This essay will therefore not provide a grand theory of higher education that might be overlaid onto university practice. Instead, as we will argue, any viable philosophy of higher education must not only recognize but also be prepared to account for and harness the heterogeneity of theoretical, organizational, economic, epistemic, and professional (...) perspectives that are the ground of institutions of higher learning. (shrink)

Richard Shusterman's Philosophy and the Art of Writing suggests something vital about the tension between philosophical discourses that cannot capture or be the full meaning of living a life in relation to wisdom, and lived philosophies that cannot do away with discourses to deepen a lived experience beyond them: that philosophy as “an embodied way of life” is a sub-creation that emerges from the tension between them. This paper uses several different moments and ideas from Philosophy and the Art of (...) Writing as points of departure for further inquiry. Some “memories,” repurposed, reorganized, and manipulated, take up these starting points to further the investigation. The present work was a spiritual exercise for the author and, one hopes, will be for the reader in what it means to practice philosophy as a way of life. By doing so, we may find more forgiveness and appreciation for our philosophical vocation that creates something more than what we say or are now. (shrink)

Preview: Philosophy has notably struggled in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to come to terms with how it participated in the erasure and invisibility of persons across the globe. Western philosophy over hundreds of years found itself immersed in the colonial project, in all its economic, social, political, legal, disciplinary, and aesthetic dimensions. Its logic of Western racial superiority, grounded in eugenics, social Darwinism, and deterministic accounts of racial realism, grew and deepened, especially in Europe and the Americas. No domain (...) was free, even Hugo Grotius’ grand work on international law and diplomacy, Mare Liberum (The Free Sea) was founded in justifying Dutch colonial seizures of ships and resources. The haunting of those shorn of their dignity besets us. We have forgotten, in a sense to go “backwards”; not just to “bracket” our stories of the world, but to see the persons we have continued to ignore through certain horizons of dominating meaning. It has been up to these people to find themselves even when under the erasure of the dominant mode of history, and in turn they have much to teach those of us willing to turn back to listen. (shrink)

The authors of this collection argue that all philosophy is really philosophy of culture and that through it we can live more meaningful, flourishing, and wisely guided lives.

Preview: At times, the COVID-19 Pandemic has spent words of their value. We academic philosophers have written many articles in relation to it, and plenty of social media posts, as well as other discourse on it. It all seems effete to stop the flames we have kindled that led to this global tragedy. Our civilizational unsustainability and instability have borne down on us the last year and a half, and at times it seems to reveal a dire fall. There is (...) a sense of failing to avoid a pandemic-onium all too visible and nearing as we descend to the depths. Like the Devil’s palace, this place is also of our own creation. Whether this zeitgeist is but the Calvinist vision of perennial despair reappearing its fantastical face or indeed a portent of the times to come, we cannot but at time see through the eyes of the rebel fallen angel, with smoldering sorrow and anger for our world, if not heaven, well lost. It becomes hard in such moments to have any hope that one’s own work at self and communal cultivation is anywhere near enough. It sometimes feels as if all we can do is fiddle as Rome burns. Are we participating in our own downfall? Even if not in the confines of academic philosophy, and doing broad based cultivation work in philosophy as a way of life, how can one not but feel helpless and wrathful about our own situation, for the countless dead by government inaction to the virus, corporate greed and entitlement to protect vaccine formulas, hubristic populace quests for superior conspiratorial knowledge, growing authoritarianism, unchecked white supremacist fascism, and biological devastation caused by an unsustainable late-capitalistic, hyper abstracted, global economy? Those feelings seem righteously luciferian. However, our global wisdom traditions, with nuance, challenge us against mere smoldering anger, or at least not without guidance. To go further, our PWL wisdom traditions have long exhorted us to strive for ataraxia, and even to amor fati, especially at the worst of times. (shrink)

Did Erasmus of Rotterdam reject all philosophy, or rather did he have a very special understanding of it as, at its best, a way of life? This study attempts to answer this question. The work reconstructs his concept of philosophy.

Until rather recently, philosophy, when practiced as a way of life, was, for most, a communal enterprise of mutually reinforced personal cultivation. It is time, yet again, to revitalize this lost, but vital, intercultural mode of philosophy.

Until rather recently, philosophy, when practiced as a way of life, was, for most, a communal enterprise of mutually reinforced personal cultivation. In these times of social isolation, including in academic philosophy itself, it is time, yet again, to revitalize this lost, but vital, intercultural mode of philosophy. This volume characterizes a neglected communal mode of philosophy - the philosophical community - by describing the constellation of metaethical principles (general, axiological, cultural, and dialectical) that cultivates its values. The book draws (...) on examples from across the globe and history, including interviews of adherents of living philosophical communities. (shrink)

This introductory piece provides context for this symposium on Richard Shusterman's new book, Philosophy and the Art of Writing. The piece reflects on the symposium genre from Plato's classic dialogue to its form today. It claims that Shusterman's work asks us to take this kind of philosophical writing more seriously, and for that reason the symposium itself has taken on a different structure. The piece discusses how each of the contributors responding to the book (with Shusterman leading the way), Eli (...) Kramer, Randall Auxier, and Charles Johnson, have engaged in practicing, nurturing, and supporting broad modes of philosophical writing, and in turn why they have chosen to do so in this context. (shrink)

In 1870, Wilhelm Richard Wagner wrote an essay to celebrate the centennial of Beethoven’s birth. In this essay Wagner made the case that music is, unlike any other object we create or are attentive to in experience, in an immediate analogical relationship with the activity of the Schopenhauerian “will” and is always enlivened. By drawing on this idea, we can not only conceive of music as in an immediate analogical relationship with our personal experience, but as perhaps the only object (...) of cognition that is in a constant state of personal vitality. It is by that very continuous vitality that it can return us to our own personhood with deeper insight and perspective. The essay concludes by exploring how attending to the musical object as a spiritual exercise might reconnect us to our roots in sensus communis, educate us on our common personhood, and play an ethical role in our lives. (shrink)

Preview: It has been my observation that Poland is unique for having a philosophy of culture tradition that has theoretical depth and insight into the origins and role of philosophy, popular breadth throughout Polish philosophy in a variety of departments, institutes and programs, and for its cultural relevancy. Yet, this tradition is largely unknown in philosophy/philosophy of culture circles in the English-speaking world.

The ancient Western conception of philosophy as a way of life was eclipsed as philosophy became an academic discipline, a development that peaked under the influence of 13th-century scholasticism. Domański both traces this development and explores how some resisted it.

In this essay, I defend philosophical wandering not only as an approach to doing philosophy, but also as an important force to incite critical reflection in cultural life. I argue that philosophical wanderers have an embodied, errant praxis, supporting wisdom whenever they engage with others. For these philosophers reflection is not given in a series of systematic assertions, nor through phenomenological description, nor analytic dissection. Rather, reflective life is the force that enhances the performative element of philosophy as an exercise (...) in being obnoxious to bring people within a culture to particular kinds of critical awareness and action. I conclude by suggesting that this mode of philosophy has a correlate mode of truth, “incited reflectivism,” different from coherentism, foundationalism, warranted assertibility, and other theories that have been previously defended as the standard for “truth.”. (shrink)

This article reflects on the way the Covid-19 hecatomb has disclosed and unraveled the ongoing crisis of professional philosophy, and suggests some lessons that might be taken from the pandemic, urging academic philosophers to take action regarding the future of their work in philosophy departments and institutions. In the first section of the article, we highlight some lasting criticisms to academic philosophy and explore one particular nasty thorn in the side of philosophers doing the kind of work that might speak (...) to broad audiences facing a crisis of meaning and living: the rush to publish instead of “perishing” without a secure academic position. In the next section, we discuss philosophy as a way of life as an alternative nascent field in academic philosophy that, while garnering respect and recognition within the academy, has regained connections with a broader public desperate for ways to chart their own paths of meaningful living, especially when facing a deeply challenged and fractured world. PWL helps address the crises of meaning many in the academy face and the absence of rich philosophical reflection and communities in the broader public, which otherwise all too easily fall prey to hucksters, con-artists, and authoritarian and conspiratorial forces. We argue that this kind of wholistic critical development of PWL from the ancient world is designed to enact a prefigurative or eutopian politics. We conclude by situating our recommendations into a broader reconstruction of professional philosophy needed at this critical cultural moment. (shrink)

Cervical insufficiency is present in up to 1 percent of pregnancies and is involved in a significant portion of pregnancy losses in the second trimester. The first line of treatment for most women with this condition is transvaginal cerclage. However, for some this is not sufficient, and a transabdominal cerclage must be performed. In a subset of women who receive transabdominal cerclage, there has been documented concern about subfertility. To the lay person, this may raise concerns that this approaches a (...) contraceptive effect which would have implications on the liceity of the treatment; however, consideration of the current research on the procedure indicates that the subfertility is not a result of cerclage on its own, and ethical analysis through the principle of double effect further affirms the morality of this treatment. (shrink)

In this essay, I explore Cassirer’s brief discussion of utopia in An Essay on Man, as likely built upon Kant’s theory of genius as from the Critique of Judgment. This exploration of Cassirer’s theory of utopia lays the groundwork to argue that a utopia is the dynamic product of the “ethical genius,” a work that advances culture by luring it, via ideal imaginaries, to new realms of possibility for ethical advancement. Utopias have their dangers and limits, but nevertheless have a (...) critical role to play in improving our ethical life. (shrink)

Philodemus’s On Frank Criticism offers a unique conception of friendship that relies on frank speech, or truth-telling. The ability to have frank conversations with one another is the heart of a conception of friendship in which we are seen, heard, and acknowledged. This is the friendship through which we become better citizens and better selves. In particular, Philodemus is offering this truth-based friendship to students and their mentors. Yet, one would be hard put to find such trust and deep friendship (...) in the university philosophy classrooms of today. Our professionalized and content acquisition focused culture in the academy all too often inhibits fostering these kinds of relationships with our students. We begin the essay by tracing the roots of this kind of frank friendship in Plato’s Lysis, and then contextualize its emerging role in the ancient philosophical classroom by exploring its place in Philodemus’ Epicurean philosophical community at Herculaneum. We do so to see how such friendship moves beyond discourse and into practice. Next, we use Arendt and Foucault to unpack the public and private dimensions of frank friendship in the philosophical learning environment and its role in a good life and good politics. Finally, we show how the classroom practice of Modern Socratic Dialogue (MSD) can re-enliven frank friendship as a spiritual exercise in the contemporary university-philosophy classroom. Specifically, we argue that MSD is a particular method of dialogue suited for the public realm of friendship and that it contributes to the care of one’s soul, thus modeling in our classrooms a method of dialogue for both the public and private dimensions of life. (shrink)

Preview: 2020, the year the coronavirus pandemic spread globally, marked the twenty-fifth year since the publication of Pierre Hadot’s work Philosophy as a Way of Life. In that time, what began as the research specialization of just a few scholars has become a growing area of philosophical and metaphilosophical inquiry, bringing together researchers from around the globe. Hadot’s key ideas of spiritual exercises, and the very idea of PWL, have been applied to a host of individual thinkers from across the (...) history of philosophy: from the Hellenistic and Roman-era philosophers of direct concern to Hadot, through renaissance thinkers like Petrarch, Lipsius, Montaigne, Descartes, or Bacon, into nineteenth-century thinkers led by Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche.In more recent years, more global reflections on the “very idea” of PWL have begun to emerge, as well as dedicated journal editions. In these more recent PWL studies, some of the manifold research questions have begun to be explored, which were opened up by the studies of Pierre and Ilsetraut Hadot, as well as its reception in Michel Foucault’s later work. What implications, after all, does understanding the history of PWL, and the predominance of this metaphilosophical conception in the history of Western thought, have for how we understand the practice of philosophy today? Does recovering the alternative understandings of philosophy as a practice in history necessarily lead to a criticism of contemporary, solely academic or theoretical modes of philosophizing, or is the idea of PWL one which has only historiographical force? (shrink)

This edited collection brings together a robust range of philosophers who offer theoretically and critically informed proposals regarding the aims, policies, and structures of the university. The collection fills a major gap in the landscape of higher education theory and practice while concurrently reviving a long and often forgotten discourse within the discipline of philosophy. It includes philosophers from across the globe representing disparate philosophical schools, as well as various career stages, statuses, and standpoints within the university. There is also (...) a diversity in method, approach and style, which varies from personal narratives and case studies, to philosophical genealogies, to traditional philosophical essays, and to systematic theories. The collection can serve as a theoretical resource for critically minded administrators and faculty who wish to analyze and change policies and structures at their home institutions. It will introduce them to a wide range of possible educational imaginaries, as well as provide them with productive suggestions for pragmatic change on campuses. (shrink)

In this essay we explore whether and how we should use bibliometrics in hiring, promoting, and granting in the academy. We suggest a Deweyan-Hickmanian pragmatist approach to reflecting on the technology of bibliometrics as a resource for inherently qualitative judgements in these deliberations. We begin with a literature review of current work evaluating the role and use of bibliometrics in the academy, from advocating for them to questioning their construct validity and assessing their limitations and/or dangerous consequences. In the next (...) section, we take a step back and provide a Deweyan philosophical analysis of the validity and practical use of qualitative assessment. In our conclusion we reflect on what pragmatism can teach about recent algorithmic tools used for faculty evaluation. (shrink)