In the contemporary domain of American legal thought there is a dominant way in which lawyers and judges craft their argumentative practice. More colloquially, this is a dominant conception of what it means to 'think like a lawyer'. Despite the widespread popularity of this conception, it is rarely described in detail or given a name. Justin Desautels-Stein tells the story of how and why this happened, and why it matters. Drawing upon and updating the work of Harvard Law School's first (...) generation of critical legal studies, Desautels-Stein develops what he calls a jurisprudence of style. In doing so, he uncovers the intellectual alliance, first emerging at the end of the nineteenth century and maturing in the last third of the twentieth century, between American pragmatism and liberal legal thought. Applying the tools of legal structuralism and phenomenology to real-world cases in areas of contemporary legal debate, this book develops a practice-oriented understanding of legal thought. (shrink)

Is moral responsibility essentially historical, or does an agent's moral responsibility for an action depend only on their psychological structure at that time? In previous work, I have argued that the two main (non‐skeptical) views on moral responsibility and agents’ histories—historicism and standard structuralism—are vulnerable to objections that are avoided by a third option, namely history‐sensitive structuralism. In this paper, I develop this view in greater detail and evaluate the view by comparing it with its three dialectical (...) rivals: skepticism about moral responsibility, historicism, and standard structuralism. Each comparison includes discussion of new work on moral responsibility and agents’ histories, and along the way I offer new arguments for preferring history‐sensitive structuralism, paying special attention to the view's explanatory power. (shrink)

Recent developments in literary theory, such as structuralism and deconstruction, have come under attack for neglecting history, while historically-based approaches have been criticized for failing to take account of the problems inherent in their methodological foundations. This collection of essays is unique in that it focuses on the relation between post-structuralism and historical (especially Marxist) literary theory and criticism. The volume includes a deconstructive reading of Marx, essays that relate history to the philosophical and institutional context, (...) and a number of studies of particular texts, literary and non-literary, which pose the question of history and literary theory with particular force. (shrink)

Content Description #Includes bibliographical references and index.

This edited volume explores the previously underacknowledged 'pre-history' of mathematical structuralism, showing that structuralism has deep roots in the history of modern mathematics. The contributors explore this history along two distinct but interconnected dimensions. First, they reconsider the methodological contributions of major figures in the history of mathematics. Second, they re-examine a range of philosophical reflections from mathematically-inclinded philosophers like Russell, Carnap, and Quine, whose work led to profound conclusions about logical, epistemological, and metaphysic.

Philosophy in the middle of the 20th Century, between 1920 and 1968, responded to the cataclysmic events of the time. Thinkers on the Right turned to authoritarian forms of nationalism in search of stable forms of collective identity, will, and purpose. Thinkers on the Left promoted egalitarian forms of humanism under the banner of international communism. Others saw these opposed tendencies as converging in the extinction of the individual and sought to retrieve the ideals of the Enlightenment in ways that (...) critically acknowledged the contradictions of a liberal democracy racked by class, cultural, and racial conflict. Key figures and movements discussed in this volume include Schmitt, Adorno and the Frankfurt School, Arendt, Benjamin, Bataille, French Marxism, Black Existentialism, Saussure and Structuralism, Levi Strauss, Lacan and Late Pragmatism. These individuals and schools of thought responded to this 'modernity crisis' in different ways, but largely focused on what they perceived to be liberal democracy's betrayal of its own rationalist ideals of freedom, equality, and fraternity. (shrink)

Structural realism has recently re-entered mainstream discussions in the philosophy of science. The central notion of structure, however, is contested by both advocates and critics. This paper briefly reviews currently prominent structuralist accounts en route to proposing a metaphysics of structure that is capable of supporting the epistemic aspirations of realists, and that is immune to the charge most commonly levelled against structuralism. This account provides an alternative to the existing epistemic and ontic forms of the position, incorporating elements (...) of both. Structures are here identified with relations between first order, causal properties: properties that confer specific dispositions for relations. This form of structuralism constitutes an explicit proposal for what seem implicit structuralist tendencies in sophisticated but more traditional characterizations of realism. An outline of the proposal's response to the anti-realist's pessimistic induction on the history of scientific theories is considered. (shrink)

Marx, K. Preface to A contribution to the critique of political economy. From Capital.--Freud, S. From The psychopathology of everyday life.--De Saussure, F. From Course in general linguistics.--Tynianov, Y. and Jakobson, R. Problems in the study of language and literature.--Jakobson, R. Linguistics and poetics.--Jakobson R. and Lévi-Strauss, C. Charles Baudelaire's "Les chats."--Barthes, R. The structuralist activity. To write: an intransitive verb?--Lévi-Strauss, C. The structural study of myth. Four winnebago myths. History and dialectic.--Althusser, L. Marx's immense theoretical revolution.--Foucault, M. The (...) human sciences.--Lacan, J. The insistence of the letter in the unconscious. (shrink)

Introduction 'Superstructuralism'. I coin the term to cover the whole field of Structuralists, Semioticians, Althusserian Marxists, ...

This paper defends a conceptualistic version of structuralism as the most convincing way of elaborating a philosophical understanding of structuralism in line with the classical tradition. The argument begins with a revision of the tradition of “conceptual mathematics”, incarnated in key figures of the period 1850 to 1940 like Riemann, Dedekind, Hilbert or Noether, showing how it led to a structuralist methodology. Then the tension between the ‘presuppositionless’ approach of those authors, and the platonism of some recent versions (...) of philosophical structuralism, is presented. In order to resolve this tension, we argue for the idea of ‘logical objects’ as a form of minimalist realism, again in the tradition of classical authors including Peirce and Cassirer, and we introduce the basic tenets of conceptual structuralism. The remainder of the paper is devoted to an open discussion of the assumptions behind conceptual structuralism, and—most importantly—an argument to show how the objectivity of mathematics can be explained from the adopted standpoint. This includes the idea that advanced mathematics builds on hypothetical assumptions (Riemann, Peirce, and others), which is presented and discussed in some detail. Finally, the ensuing notion of objectivity is interpreted as a form of particularly robust intersubjectivity, and it is distinguished from fictional or social ontology. (shrink)

Structuralism provides useful resources for advancing our understanding of the intertheoretic reduction relation and its place in the history of science. This paper begins by surveying these resources and assessing their metascientific significance. Nevertheless, important challenges remain. I close by arguing that the reductionism implicit in current scientific practice in a paradigmatic reductionistic scientific field –“molecular and cellular cognition”– is better understood on an “intervene and track” model rather than as any kind of intertheoretic relation. I illustrate my (...) alternative model by describing briefly a recent reductionistic result from the field. It appears doubtful that any structuralist resources will illuminate this newly-recognized type of reduction-in-actual-scientific-practice. (shrink)

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Poincaré is well known for his conventionalism and structuralism. However, the relationship between these two theses and their place in Poincaré׳s epistemology of science remain puzzling. In this paper I show the scope of Poincaré׳s conventionalism and its position in Poincaré׳s hierarchical approach to scientific theories. I argue that for Poincaré scientific knowledge is relational and made possible by synthetic a priori, empirical and conventional elements, which, however, are not chosen arbitrarily. By examining his geometric conventionalism, his hierarchical account (...) of science and defence of continuity in theory change, I argue that Poincaré defends a complex structuralist position based on synthetic a priori and conventional elements, the mind-dependence of which precludes epistemic access to mind-independent structures. (shrink)

The scientific transformation of the hermeneutic art has been the common goal for the various formalist-structuralist programs of interpretation that have dominated human studies in our century - such as New Criticism in literary analysis, the formalist programs in art history and musicology, the Gestalt and Freudian psychology, structuralism in linguistics and anthropology, etc. In this volume, these formalist-structuralist programs shall be called structural programs of interpretation in Europe and America.

This book includes chapters on the most representative structuralists (in anthropology, Marxism, psychoanalysis, literature, and history) as well as on their opponents (in Marxism, hermeneutics, and sociology), so that this book about structuralism also put structuralism in its intellectual and political milieu.

The structuralist approach represents the relation between a model and physical system as a relation between two mathematical structures. However, since a physical system is _prima facie_ _not_ a mathematical structure, the structuralist approach seemingly fails to represent the fact that science is about concrete, physical reality. In this paper, I take up this _problem of lost reality_ and suggest how it may be solved in a purely structuralist fashion. I start by briefly introducing both the structuralist approach and the (...) problem of lost reality and discussing the various (non-structuralist) solutions that have been proposed in the literature. Following this, I decompose the problem into the _ontological mismatch_ and _specification_ problems. In response to the former, I present a _metascientific dissolution argument_, according to which the difference in kind between mathematical structures and physical systems poses no deep obstacle to the structuralist approach, and consider some upshots of this argument for our views on representation. By way of conclusion, I argue that the metascientific dissolution argument paves the way for a solution to the specification problem as well. (shrink)

In this paper, we look at Bourbaki’s work as a case study for the notion of mathematical style. We argue that indeed Bourbaki exemplifies a mathematical style, namely the structuralist style.

Introduction -- Marx and postwar French philosophy -- A writer full of affects : Marx through Lyotard -- Messianic without messianism : Marx through Derrida -- The history of the present : Marx through Foucault -- Becoming revolutionary : Marx through Deleuze -- Marx through post-structuralism.

In History After Lacan, Teresa Brennan argues that Jacques Lacan was not an ahistorical post-structuralist. She tells the story of a social psychosis, beginning with a discussion of Lacan's neglected theory of history which argued that we are in the grip of a psychotic's era which began in the seventeenth century and climaxes in the present. By extending and elaborating on Lacan's theory, Brennan develops a general theory of modernity. Contrary to postmodern assumptions, she argues, we need a (...) general historical explanation. An understanding of historical dynamics is essential if we are to make the connections between the outstanding facts of modernity--ethnocentrism, the relation between the sexes, and ecological catastrophe. A challenging feminist, interdisciplinary study, History After Lacan will be essential reading for social, cultural, and political theorists, historians, psychoanalysts, and literary theorists. (shrink)

That Jean Gayon never paid attention to Darwin’sDarwin, CharlespangenesisPangenesis might seem like an oddity given that natural selectionSelection and biological heredity were his primary focuses for decades. This lack of interest reveals Gayon’s specific methodological orientation: he aimed at producing rational reconstructionsRational reconstruction of the way a scientific hypothesisHypothesis entered experimentation and subsequently evolved within a specific theoretical pattern. Gayon’s most important achievements, Darwinism’sDarwinismStruggle for Survival (1998) in the first place, were all based on this “structuralist approachStructuralist approach (to (...) class='Hi'>history of science)”, where philosophy of science provides a strong problematization and even shapes the historical narrative. I argue that LakatosLakatos, Imreand DuhemDuhem, Pierre were Gayon’s main inspirations, and that his work is thereby substantially different from both philosophy of biology andHistorical epistemology French historical epistemologyGayon, JeanOn historical epistemology. (shrink)

Key arguments and claims in Steven French's The Structure of the World are articulated and assessed. Differences between different forms of ontic structural realism are articulated, and some problems raised for some aspects of French's version.

Dedekind’s structuralism is a crucial source for the structuralism of mathematical practice—with its focus on abstract concepts like groups and fields. It plays an equally central role for the structuralism of philosophical analysis—with its focus on particular mathematical objects like natural and real numbers. Tensions between these structuralisms are palpable in Dedekind’s work, but are resolved in his essay Was sind und was sollen die Zahlen? In a radical shift, Dedekind extends his mathematical approach to “the” natural (...) numbers. He creates the abstract concept of a simply infinite system, proves the existence of a “model”, insists on the stepwise derivation of theorems, and defines structure-preserving mappings between different systems that fall under the abstract concept. Crucial parts of these considerations were added, however, only to the penultimate manuscript, for example, the very concept of a simply infinite system. The methodological consequences of this radical shift are elucidated by an analysis of Dedekind’s metamathematics. Our analysis provides a deeper understanding of the essay and, in addition, illuminates its impact on the evolution of the axiomatic method and of “semantics” before Tarski. This understanding allows us to make connections to contemporary issues in the philosophy of mathematics and science. (shrink)

Anthropology is a discipline very conscious of its history. Alan Barnard has written a clear, detailed overview of anthropological theory that brings out the historical contexts of the great debates, tracing the genealogies of theories and schools of thought. His book covers the precursors of anthropology; evolutionism in all its guises; diffusionism and culture area theories, functionalism and structural-functionalism; action-centered theories; processual and Marxist perspectives; the many faces of relativism, structuralism and poststructuralism; and recent interpretive and postmodernist viewpoints. (...) This is a balanced and judicious survey, which also considers the problems involved in assessing anthropological theories. (shrink)

French post-structuralism theory was transformed when taken up in England by the native Marxist tradition; it thus came to intervene across the whole field of the human sciences. Through this fresh exploration of the relation between Marxism, post-structuralism and the theory of the subject, Antony Easthope contrasts the degree to which post-structuralism has made a radical impact on English and American national cultures. The book reprints for the first time an important 1980 interview in which Jacques Derrida (...) discusses the relations between Marxism and deconstruction. -- Back cover. (shrink)