The strange thing about Dick Pels' claim about the conventional view of knowledge in “Strange Standpoints” is that, in order for knowledge to be true, it must be “value-free, disinterested and universal.” Allegedly, the challenge to this conventional view comes from “standpoint epistemologies” which, to use the opposite terms descriptive of “true knowledge,” are value-laden, interested, and particular. In short, “standpoint epistemologies” is an inflated term for what used to be and still is called subjectivism. Standpoint epistemologies are theories about (...) knowledge claims. According to these epistemologies, any knowledge claim is always made from the perspective of the speaker (the view from somewhere in contrast to the view from everywhere or nowhere), whereby time, place, gender, race and class count as determinative of its truth-value. (shrink)

In this systematic historical analysis, Nino Langiulli focuses on a key philosophical issue, possibility, as it is refracted through the thought of the Italian ...

This book explores human possibility at the end of the twentieth century. It takes the form of discussion between an eminent philosopher and a skilled journalist about “the human measure” as it engages false absolutes and their accompanying utopias. The book proposes a “third way” between capitalism and socialism, and it concludes with comments on end-of-century phenomena, including democracy, intellectuals, and terrorism.