The essential task of the philosophy of style is to uncover the irreducibility of the singular to any kind of universal, static structure or metalinguistic code. Style is not only a surplus element that exceeds propositional meaning, but also a clue of the ineradicable contingency of “intersubjective”‐communicational relationships. The receiver must respect the unique individuality of the sender's style as what demonstrates the cognitive inexhaustibility of the world. Consequently, philosophy can no longer regard literature as (...) foreign and incorrigible by asserting a radical difference of genre and thereby reserving truth exclusively for itself. Rather, I go on to argue, the difference is merely one of quantity. The picture of the world drawn by literature is simply fuller and richer than any comparatively monochromatic system of philosophical propositions. However, within the history of philosophy, there have been instances when the philosophical import of literature has been accorded its due. One example is the dialogical approach of early German Romanticism. The other example is a writer most frequently considered the purest thinker of philosophical sense and meaning – namely, Ludwig Wittgenstein. I conclude by reading Wittgenstein as a philosopher concerned, above all, with the ineffable that style reveals. (shrink)

Much of Arnold Hauser’s work on the social history of art and the philosophy of art history is informed by a concern for the cognitive dimension of art. The present paper offers a reconstruction of this aspect of Hauser’s project and identifies areas of overlap with the sociology of knowledge—where the latter is to be understood as both a separate discipline and a going intellectual concern. Following a discussion of Hauser’s personal and intellectual background, as well as (...) of the shifting political and academic setting of his work, the paper addresses one of Hauser’s central questions, viz. how best to square a thoroughgoing commitment to the social nature of art with the reality of successive artistic styles, given that the latter seem to be characterizable on purely formal grounds. This is followed by a discussion of Hauser’s conflicted views on the relation between art, science, and technology. This injects a tension into Hauser’s work, due to his initial reluctance to explain just how the aesthetic and the cognitive realms relate. The final part of the paper, through a closer examination of the analogies and disanalogies that Hauser sees between art history and the history of science, attempts to give a positive answer—“on Hauser’s behalf”, as it were—to the question of whether art may be credited with a specific cognitive dimension of its own, and if so, what its contribution to our cognitive enterprise may consist in. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Task of Criticism: Essays on Philosophy, History, and Community, and: The Active Life: Miller's Metaphysics of DemocracyShannon KincaidJoseph P. Fell, Vincent Colapietro, and Michael J. McGandy, editors The Task of Criticism: Essays on Philosophy, History, and CommunityNew York: W. W. Norton, 2005. 366 pp.Michael J. McGandy The Active Life: Miller's Metaphysics of Democracy Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. 231 pp.I (...) must admit that my first encounter with the philosophy of John William Miller was not a pretty one. I first read of him in these pages a decade or so ago, and even though I was thinking a lot about pragmatism and democratic theory, and shared many of his interests, I didn't much like his philosophy. While I liked his style, the vocabulary seemed awkward. His finite idealism confused me. I had problems with his ontology, and his tendency towards historicism seemed odd. I even wrote an essay critical of The Midworld (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), though I never made an aggressive effort to publish it. [End Page 289]This is a good thing, because I would have regretted publishing that essay. I say this because both Michael J. McGandy's The Active Life: Miller's Metaphysics of Democracy, and the new edited collection of Miller's writings entitled The Task of Criticism, do an excellent job of revealing the contemporary significance of Miller's work. Collectively, they have convinced this skeptic that the midworld and its ontology of functioning objects are an important contribution to contemporary American philosophy.The Task of Criticism faces several challenges. First, George P. Brockway supervised the publication of five volumes of Miller's collected works, and Fell himself edited a 1990 volume on Miller's philosophy (The Philosophy of John William Miller, Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press), followed by Stephen Tyman's Decrying the Ideal (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993). Colapietro published Fateful Shapes of Human Freedom: John William Miller and the Crises of Modernity (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press) in 2003. Do we really need another volume? Second, Miller's brand of idealism is not very fashionable these days. Is there any hope that pragmatic idealism can inform contemporary social theory, and make a contribution to the very real and concrete problems faced by modern democratic institutions?I believe that the answer to both of these questions is "yes." Recognizing the importance of previous volumes devoted to Miller's philosophy, the editors present The Task of Criticism as the first comprehensive introduction to Miller's philosophy, and it attempts to cut a middle ground between a complete collection of essays and a "best of" anthology. The editors want to provide a framework for understanding Miller's philosophy, and in this attempt they succeed admirably.Why? Because the editors have provided a structure for Miller's thought that was lacking in earlier collections, and by focusing on the issues of philosophical method, historiography, and community, they have provided a framework for understanding Miller's philosophy. In so doing, they have also firmly established the continuing relevance of Miller's work. The recent revival of pragmatic idealism (as evidenced by a recent surge in publications on idealists like Royce and Hocking) is an important development in contemporary American philosophy, and I think Miller deserves a significant role in this movement.One of the things I like about this collection is its presentation as a work of three generations of Miller's students, all indebted to the work of Brockway, and all dedicated to the task of demonstrating the fundamental importance of Miller's work. The text itself not only includes a variety of Miller's writing on a wide range of topics, but also a very effective introduction to Miller's philosophy, short introductory passages for each essay, and a comprehensive index, as well as a bibliography of works by and about Miller. This is, in short, the first textbook of Miller's philosophy, and it does a fine job of capturing the breadth and depth of his philosophy.The scope of Miller's philosophical interests is made even more remarkable by the fact that Miller himself showed little interest... (shrink)

Historians of science have long been intrigued by the impact of disparate cultural styles on the science of a given country and time period. Richard Olson’s book is a case study in the interaction between philosophy and science as well as an examination of a particular scientific movement. The author investigates the methodological arguments of the Common Sense philosophers Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, Thomas Brown, and William Hamilton and the possible transmission of their ideas to scientists from John Playfair (...) to James Clerk Maxwell. His findings point out the need for modifications to the Duhem-Poincaré interpretation of British scientific style and the reassessment of the extent of Kantian influence on British physics. Originally published in 1975. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

_A Brief History of Analytic Philosophy: From Russell to Rawls_ presents a comprehensive overview of the historical development of all major aspects of analytic philosophy, the dominant Anglo-American philosophical tradition in the twentieth century. Features coverage of all the major subject areas and figures in analytic philosophy - including Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore, Gottlob Frege, Carnap, Quine, Davidson, Kripke, Putnam, and many others Contains explanatory background material to help make clear technical philosophical concepts Includes listings (...) of suggested further readings Written in a clear, direct style that presupposes little previous knowledge of philosophy. (shrink)

The sixteen essays in this volume confront the current debate about the relationship between philosophy and its history. On the one hand intellectual historians commonly accuse philosophers of writing bad - anachronistic - history of philosophy, and on the other, philosophers have accused intellectual historians of writing bad - antiquarian - history of philosophy. The essays here address this controversy and ask what purpose the history of philosophy should serve. Part I contains (...) more purely theoretical and methodological discussion, of such questions as whether there are 'timeless' philosophical problems, whether the issues of one epoch are commensurable with those of another, and what style is appropriate to the historiography of the subject. The essays in Part II consider a number of case-histories. They present important revisionist scholarship and original contributions on topics drawn from ancient, early modern and more recent philosophy. All the essays have been specially commissioned, and the contributors include many of the leading figures in the field. The volume as a whole will be of vital interest to everyone concerned with the study of philosophy and of its history. (shrink)

A Brief History of Analytic Philosophy: From Russell to Rawls presents a comprehensive overview of the historical development of all major aspects of analytic philosophy, the dominant Anglo-American philosophical tradition in the twentieth century. Features coverage of all the major subject areas and figures in analytic philosophy - including Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore, Gottlob Frege, Carnap, Quine, Davidson, Kripke, Putnam, and many others Contains explanatory background material to help make clear technical philosophical concepts Includes listings (...) of suggested further readings Written in a clear, direct style that presupposes little previous knowledge of philosophy. (shrink)

Much of Arnold Hauser’s work on the social history of art and the philosophy of art history is informed by a concern for the cognitive dimension of art. The present paper offers a reconstruction of this aspect of Hauser’s project and identifies areas of overlap with the sociology of knowledge—where the latter is to be understood as both a separate discipline and a going intellectual concern. Following a discussion of Hauser’s personal and intellectual background, as well as (...) of the shifting political and academic setting of his work, the paper addresses one of Hauser’s central questions, viz. how best to square a thoroughgoing commitment to the social nature of art with the reality of successive artistic styles, given that the latter seem to be characterizable on purely formal grounds. This is followed by a discussion of Hauser’s conflicted views on the relation between art, science, and technology. This injects a tension into Hauser’s work, due to his initial reluctance to explain just how the aesthetic and the cognitive realms relate. The final part of the paper, through a closer examination of the analogies and disanalogies that Hauser sees between art history and the history of science, attempts to give a positive answer—“on Hauser’s behalf”, as it were—to the question of whether art may be credited with a specific cognitive dimension of its own, and if so, what its contribution to our cognitive enterprise may consist in. (shrink)

In 1998, the first edition of Anthony Kenny's comprehensive history of Western philosophy was published, to be met with immediate praise and critical acclaim. As the first book since Bertrand Russell's 1945 A History of Western Philosophy to offer a concise single-author review of the complete history of philosophy from the pre-Socratics to the modern masters of the 20th century, Kenny's work fills a critical gap in the modern philosophy reading list and offers (...) valuable guidance for the general reader of philosophy—an ideal starting point for anyone with an interest in great thinkers and the family lines of philosophical evolution. Widely considered to be one of the most thorough and accessible historical reviews in philosophy, An Illustrated Brief History of Western Philosophy has earned an estimable and distinctive reputation, both for the compelling writing style of Anthony Kenny, one of the most respected and accomplished living philosophers, and for the rich collection of paintings, illustrations, maps, and photos included with every chapter to complement this review of 2,500 years of philosophical thought. Newly revised and expanded for a special 20th anniversary publication, the latest edition of An Illustrated Brief History of Western Philosophy contains all of Kenny's original writings on the history of Western philosophy from ancient to modern, along with new writings on the philosophy of the mid-20th century, covering important contributions from continental philosophers and philosophers of the post-Wittgenstein anglophone tradition, including the work of many women who have too often been neglected by the historical record. (shrink)

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)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Bergsonism and the History of Analytic Philosophy by Andreas VrahimisLeonard LawlorAndreas Vrahimis. Bergsonism and the History of Analytic Philosophy. History of Analytic Philosophy. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. Pp. xix + 395. Hardback, $139.99.Bergsonism and the History of Analytic Philosophy is a great achievement in the history of ideas in general. The wealth of historical details that Andreas Vrahimis musters (...) indicates that he has a profound understanding of twentieth-century philosophy. More importantly, this book overflows with philosophical insights. The wealth of insights indicates that Bergsonism and the History of Analytic Philosophy is also a great achievement in philosophy as such. Andreas Vrahimis has written a remarkable book.Bergsonism and the History of Analytic Philosophy presents the origins of the division between analytic philosophy and continental philosophy. This story is familiar, with analytic philosophy siding with science and continental with poetry; with analytic philosophy being a kind of rationalism and continental a kind of irrationalism; with analytic philosophy using a writing style of dry, logical argumentation and continental using a writing style of images and emotions; and finally, with analytic philosophy writing only of what can be expressed and continental writing of the ineffable. Yet, Bergsonism and the History of Analytic Philosophy tells a story that is unfamiliar and even novel. The genealogy Vrahimis lays out is not of the rift between analytic philosophy and phenomenology (although this rift appears in the book's final chapters) but between analytic philosophy and Bergson. As Vrahimis clearly shows, the popularity of Bergson's thought at the beginning of the twentieth century caused the split, and even the hostility, between analytic and continental [End Page 332] philosophy. Therefore, Vrahimis does not title his book Bergson and the History of Analytic Philosophy, but Bergsonism and the History of Analytic Philosophy (2). Bergsonism is the popular view of Bergson's thought. It turned Bergson's thought into a "fad" (263). But Bergsonism contained many misunderstandings of Bergson. In the early twentieth century, Bergson was, in short, "a misunderstood celebrity." Unfortunately for Bergson's legacy, Bergson himself allowed Bergsonism to flourish as a cultural movement. Until The Creative Mind (published in 1934 in France as La pensée et le mouvant, after "the demise of Bergsonism"), Bergson never attempted to correct the misinterpretations of his thought that Bergsonism presented. Chapter by chapter, Vrahimis shows how the analytic philosophy criticisms leveled against Bergson are based in Bergsonism's distortions of Bergson's thought. The founding members of analytic philosophy aimed their attacks at a strawman Bergson.Bergsonism and the History of Analytic Philosophy's first three chapters set the stage for the analytic philosophers' attacks on Bergson. In fact, chapter 3 contains one of the clearest summaries of Bergson's thought I have ever read. Then, the book is arranged chronologically, starting with William James's 1905 "The Experience of Activity" in chapter 4 and ending with Ryle's 1958 "Phenomenology versus The Concept of Mind" in chapter 12. William James is not one of Bergson's critics. Chapter 4 shows how James praised Bergson's thought because of its similarity with pragmatism. This praise popularized Bergson's thought and thus led to Bergsonism. Chapters 4 through 12 (there is also a chapter 13 that serves as the book's conclusion) concern specific philosophers' criticisms of Bergson and then, in the final chapters, specific philosophers' criticisms of Lebensphilosophie and continental philosophy. There are chapters on Russell, Karin Costelloe-Stephen, L. Susan Stebbing, Neurath and the Vienna Circle (against Lebensphilosophie), Schlick (against Bergson as the originator of Lebensphilosophie), Carnap and Ayer (against Heidegger and Sartre), and Ryle (against Husserl). Most of the chapters concern the criticisms that resulted from Bergson's valorization of intuition as a source of knowledge. Bergson's definitions of intuition contribute to the belief that he is antiscience and an anti-intellectualist. Because intuition is introspection, it even suggests that Bergson's own philosophy is a kind of individualism. Because intuition is inexpressible, it also raises the problem that Bergson's own intuition of time as duration cannot be verified; rather, it can be challenged only by someone else's own intuition. Chapter 11 then shows how Heideggerian Angst challenges... (shrink)

As the author mentions in the preface to the English edition, this History of Philosophy is the fruit of ideas and research efforts shared in common by the Madrid School of Ortega y Gasset, 1931-1936. Most of these men were educated in Germany, and, besides being original authors in their own right, carried out remarkable efforts of historical research in philosophy, practicing the best techniques of German historical investigation. Marias benefited from these efforts and complemented them with (...) meritorious personal studies. Given the circumstances of its composition, the book is an introduction to, and a dictionary of, philosophy. Because of this, the properly historical side of it is strongly interpretative and somewhat unbalanced. Although Anglo-American philosophy is given some attention, it is not, sufficiently or intimately appreciated. It gives certain authors-the Stoics, Leibniz, Kant, Brentano, the philosophers of life of recent time—a special emphasis that is necessary for a good understanding of our philosophical present. The translation is adequate in preserving the author's elegant and suggestive style.—A. M. (shrink)

Volume 1 of the _Routledge History of Philosophy_ covers one of the most remarkable periods in human thought. In the space of two and a half centuries, philosophy developed from quasi-mythological speculation to a state in which many of the most fundamental questions about the universe, the mind and human conduct had been vigorously pursued, and some of the most enduring masterworks of Western thought had been written. The essays present the fundamental approaches and thinkers of Greek (...) class='Hi'>philosophy in chronological order. Each is written by a recognised authority in the particular field, and takes account of the large amount of high-quality work done in the last few decades on Platonic and pre-Platonic philosophy. All write in an accessible style, meeting the needs of the non-specialist without loss of scholarly precision. Topics covered range from early Greek speculative thought, its cultural and social setting, to the Sophists, Socrates and culminate in three chapters on Plato's lasting contribution to all central areas of philosophy. Supplemented with a chronology, a glossary of technical terms and an extensive bibliography, this volume will prove an invaluable and comprehensive guide to the beginnings of philosophy. (shrink)

The philosopher G.W.F. Hegel (1771-1831) is now recognized to be one of the most important modern thinkers. His influence is to be found in Marx's conception of historical dialectic, Kierkegaard's existentialism, Dewey's pragmatism and Gadamer's hermeneutics and Derrida's deconstruction. Until now, however, it has been difficult for the non-specialist to find a reasonably comprehensive introduction to this important, yet at times almost impenetrable philosopher. With this book Stephen Houlgate offers just such an introduction. His book is written in an accessible (...) style and covers a range of topics: the philosophy of history, logic and phenomenology, political philosophy, aesthetics and the philosophy of religion. In the course of the book the author relates Hegel's ideas to those of many other thinkers, including Luther, Descartes, Kant and Thomas Kuhn. (shrink)

The paper is devoted to an overview of Cassirer’s work both as historian of philosophy and historian of science. Indeed, the “intelletcual cooperation” between history of philosophy and history of science represents an essential feature of Cassirer’s style of philosophizing: while the roots of a wide exploration stretching from Renaissance thought to modern physics go back to the Neo-Kantianism of the Marburg School, the results of a similar cross-fertilization of research fields have deeply contributed to (...) shaping new standards of inquiry. Cassirer’s relationship with the Warburg milieu in Hamburg and late in his life with the American intellectual scenario are surely worthy of closer investigation. Distinguished scholars such as Meyerson, Brunschvicg, Burtt, Koyré, Metzger, Lovejoy, Kristeller, have disussed, appreciated, critizised Cassirer’s still today fascinating studies devoted to Pico della Mirandola, Galileo, Newton, Leibniz, to mention but a few. To explore some of these aspects focusing both on affinities and differences within a cosmpolitian intellectual community can provide a better understanding of philosophy and history of science in the first half of 20th century. Cassirer’s legacy requires, therefore, a new assessment. (shrink)

At issue in this paper is the question of the appropriate relationship between the philosophy and history of science. The discussion starts with a brief sketch of Kuhn's approach, followed by an analysis of the so-called ‘testing-theories-of-scientific-change programme’. This programme is an attempt at a more rigorous approach to the historical philosophy of science. Since my conclusion is that, by and large, this attempt has failed, I proceed to examine some more promising approaches. First, I deal with (...) Hacking's recent views on the issues in question, particularly his notion of a ‘style of reasoning’. Next, Nickles's reconstructionist interpretation of the development of science and his views on Whig history are addressed. Finally, I propose an account of philosophy as a theoretical, an interpretative and explanatory, enterprise. Thus, three alternatives to the Kuhnian paradigm are discussed, alternatives that share a recognition of the relative autonomy of philosophy from history. Hence, they assume a less tight relationship between philosophy and history of science than is the case within the Kuhnian paradigm. (shrink)

__ _Philosophy and Rabbinic Culture_ is a study of the great, and curiously underappreciated, engagement of a Medieval European Jewish community with the philosophic tradition. This lucid description of the Languedocian Jewish community's multigenerational cultivation of - and acculturation to - scientific and philosophic teachings into Judaism fulfils a major desideratum in Jewish cultural history. In the first detailed account of this long-forgotten Jewish community and its cultural ideal, the author gives an expansive reappraisal of the role of the (...) philosophic interpretation in rabbinic culture and medieval Judaism. Looking at how the cultural ideal of Languedocian Jewry continued to develop and flourish throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, with particular reference to the literary style and religious teaching of the great Talmudist, Menahem ha-Meiri, Stern explores issues such as Meiri’s theory of "civilized religions", including Christianity and Islam, controversy over philosophy and philosophic allegory in Languedoc and Catalonia, and the cultural significance of the medical use of astrological images. This book will be of great interest to scholars and students of Religion, of Judaism in particular, and of Philosophy, History and Medieval Europe, as well as those interested in Jewish-Christian relations. (shrink)

This paper aims to map out the links between style and science. Two moments mark the migration of style from the discursive field of the arts to that of the history and philosophy of science: the first occurred in the German-speaking world during the first decades of the twentieth century; the second appeared in an Anglo-American context between the late 1970s and the early 1990s, when the category of style became involved in the so-called “pluralist (...) turn” in the history and philosophy of science. Taking this framework as its point of departure, the paper uncovers neglected contributions to the epistemology of style in order to foreground the concept of style as both a vector of inclusion (highlighting the plurality, historicity, and locality of scientific ways of knowing) and of exclusion (by generalizing the most correct ways of doing science and side-lining alternative ways of knowing). (shrink)

We take into account two areas of the logical research of the Lvov-Warsaw School. First, we consider a new approach to research in the history of logic introduced and practiced by Łukasiewicz and some of his followers. In this style of doing history of logic, the knowledge of original philosophical and logical texts was combined with competence in modern logic. This method resulted in many important discoveries both in history and in logic and philosophy. At (...) the same time, we pay attention to contemporary historical research devoted to the logic created by the School itself. In this context, we present an overview of the six papers included in the special issue ‘Logic and its History in the Lvov-Warsaw School’. These papers were presented at an international symposium, ‘History in/of the Lvov-Warsaw School’, held in October 2022 in Warsaw, and they cover various aspects of historical-logical and logical achievements of the School. They concern topics from history of ancient logic, history of modern proof theory, and the issues of applying logic to philosophy and theology in the same way as the one implemented at the Lvov-Warsaw School. (shrink)

The volume starts with the paper of Lynn Maurice Ferguson Arnold, former Premier of South Australia and former Minister of Education of Australia, concerning the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (International Exposition of Art and Technology in Modern Life) that was held from 25 May to 25 November 1937 in Paris, France. The organization of the world exhibition had placed the Nazi German and the Soviet pavilions directly across from each other. Many papers are devoted (...) to the interpretation of this opposition. Arnold’s paper considers the differences in the two totalitarian states’ architectural and design discourse styles. Although each of them communicated a totalitarian language of purposes, permissions, and boundaries, they essentially differed in the styles of discourse represented by the architecture and design of their respective pavilions. They were opposites of each other and the liberal ideals they contested. The internationalist viewpoint reflecting the multi-ethnic mix of the USSR is contrasted to the ein Volk homogeneity represented in the German pavilion. The Soviet pavilion opted for a utopian future to be arrived at by “benign” leadership, whereas the German pavilion anchored itself in the myth of Teutonic history with the nostalgic pride protected by the swastika-bearing eagle. Jean-Yves Béziau is best known as a logician and founder of Universal Logic. However, in this paper, he poses a new philosophical question: why philosophical discourse does not use images? The paper begins with a general analysis of different types of philosophical discourses. Then, he focuses on why images have been and are still rejected in philosophical discourse. He explains various ways to use images in a fruitful way to develop philosophical thinking and discourse and illustrates his view by providing several examples. He concludes with a promising programmatic declaration about founding a new journal entitled World Journal of Pictorial Philosophy to stimulate the usage of images for developing philosophical thinking. Although complaints about the obscurity of many philosophers’ discourse are widespread, Tatiana Denisova, ex-professor of the Surgut University and a research associate of the University of the Aegean undertakes a positive attitude to this problem. She explains that the reasons for the obscurity of philosophical texts, the subsequent complexity in communicating philosophers’ meanings and their eventual incomplete understanding is not a sign of their inferiority. On the contrary, it is a sign of the fruitfulness of philosophical discourse, which can generate new meanings. Thus, the darkness of philosophical discourse is like the life-giving chaos, and the obscurity that it inevitably contains can be the keeper of implicit meanings and even their generator. Katarzyna Gan-Krzywoszyńska and Piotr Leśniewski, authors of a monograph on Polish philosopher Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (1890 – 1963), make a comparative analysis of his educational style with that of Paulo Reglus Neves Freire (1921 – 1997). The authors highlight that these scholars have distinctly different backgrounds. The former was an educator, philosopher and a leading advocate of critical pedagogy connected with the dialogical Latin-American tradition. The latter was a philosopher and logician, a notable representative of the Lwów–Warsaw school of logic with significant contributions to semantics, model theory and the philosophy of science. Despite their apparent difference, the authors identify some striking similarities regarding their attitudes towards education; notably, their approaches are essentially dialogical. Gilah Yelin Hirsch is a multidisciplinary artist who works as a painter, writer, curator, educator, and filmmaker. In her experiential paper, he explains how and why she uses four channels of communication in her creative expression: writing, painting, filmmaking, and teaching, as dialogic inquiry. She considers that these channels compose a continuum of discourse styles, each reaching a different facet of kaleidoscopic consciousness. She claims that her choice of medium is prompted by a need to communicate her insights profoundly. Thus, for instance, she created painted allegories to express narratives based on dreams and visions emerging from her subconscious. Art and healing is another Tibetan-rooted type of discourse practised by the author. Creating and observing a healing image produces a positive psychophysiological change in both the artist and the viewer. The discourse here is tripartite between creator, image, and viewer. Filmmaking is another type of discourse she practices between the filmmaker/artist as shaman or healer and the viewer as respondent or participant. These films are meant to be experienced frame by frame, physically and emotionally in both the body and mind. Jocelyn Ireson-Paine is a cartoonist and programmer. His paper offers an original attempt to use category theory in cartooning. Category theory is a branch of mathematics that provides concepts and methods to describe general abstract structures in terms of a labelled directed graph called category, whose nodes are called objects, and whose labelled directed edges are called arrows (or morphisms or transformations or mappings). The author explores different ways to define “style” in art using category theory and a relational view of art. Moreover, he examines how “translation” (transformation) between styles could be defined and reveals the difficulties of how it could be implemented in a computer using special software. Jens Lemanski is a philosopher who has revived research in Arthur Schopenhauer’s legacy by exploring his work on mathematical evidence, logic diagrams, and problems of semantics. In this paper, he advances a new approach to eristic as an art of protecting oneself from the one who deliberately violates norms of discourse ethics to win an argument. The author attributes the origins of this view to Schopenhauer, suggesting a new reading of his work. According to the author, eristic is a prohibitive technique that takes effect when the norms of discourse ethics are transgressed and violated. Thus, eristic is viewed as a discipline of Enlightenment philosophy and a correlate of discourse ethics. Roshdi Rashed is an authority on the history of Arabic mathematical sciences. Proceeding from Gilles-Gaston Granger’s definition of mathematical style, he studies the question of whether a mathematical work can be characterized by a single style or by a multitude of styles. This question is explored within the style of a single work, namely Menelaus’s Sphaerica, and through the study of the development of a single problem over time, namely the isoperimetric problem. He indicates Menelaus’s divergence from the Euclidean style of (plane and stereometric) geometry caused by the drop of the Parallel Postulate, which associated it with hyperbolic geometry. Hence, the author concludes that Menelaus’s Sphaerica incorporates the well-known Euclidean style with a variation of the non-Euclidean one. On the other hand, examining the isoperimetric problem reveals another interesting historical picture. A succession of different styles (cosmological, geometric, infinitesimalistic, style of the calculus of variations, of synthetic geometry) can be observed due to the transformation of the research object over time. Boris Shalyutin, a Russian social philosopher, and Ombudsman for Human Rights in the Kurgan Region, explores the origins of discourse in combination with the birth of society and law. He claims that legal discourse marks the historical emergence of discourse in general. Homo Juridicus generated Homo Sapiens, which have created new spheres of discourse, notably moral discourse and further philosophical, political, and scientific discourse. Petros Stefaneas, a logician, computer scientist and novelist, suggests an alternative to the traditional narratology approach for studying (interactive) social media discourse. He claims that style describes how the parts of a narrative are blended into a whole. The author relies upon Goguen’s and Harrel’s concept of style as a choice of blending principles and transfers to the study of the social media narratives elements from the methodology of studying Web-based collaborative search for mathematical proofs like those implemented within the Polymath project. The last paper belongs to Ghil‘ad Zuckermann, a linguist, language revivalist, and proponent of a model of the emergence of Israeli Hebrew, according to which Hebrew and Yiddish were the primary sources of Modern Hebrew. This paper explores the fascinating and multifaceted Yiddish language and its survival in Israeli. Yiddish is characterized by a unique style that embeds psycho-ostensive expressions throughout its discourse. The author highlights the cross-fertilization between Hebrew and Yiddish as it manifests itself in any aspect of the Israeli language. He claims that Yiddish survives beneath Israeli phonetics, phonology, discourse, syntax, semantics, lexis, and even morphology, although traditional and institutional linguists have been most reluctant to admit it. (shrink)

"This volume assembles twelve texts published between 1892 and 1915.... The editors allow one to see the genesis of the ideas of Duhem, philosopher and historian, of the variety of his styles, and sometimes also the limits of his work.... A useful index, probably unique in the field of Duhemian studies, completes the book.... The English-language public may be assured an exemplary translation and a reliable critical apparatus." --Jean Gayon, _Revue d'Histoire des Sciences_.

Many decades after the publication of Genesis and development of a scientific fact, Fleck’s collective Denkstil remains a very important notion for analyzing the history of the biological and medical sciences. Following Fleck’s perspective this paper argues that the history of the sex hormones was critically shaped by our representation of the sexes, and our perceptions of the division of reproductive labor. Emerging at the boundary between physiological laboratories and consultation room, a molecular/endocrine style of thought stabilized (...) during the early decades of the twentieth century around the manipulation of sex hormones. This not only proved important in normalizing the sexual body, but also in defining sterility, menstrual disorders or menopause as pathological events to be treated ‘causally’.Analyzing the role played by industrial companies like the German firm Schering which produced these drugs, the paper suggests that the idea of a work style may be a convenient way to complement Fleck’s style of thought. First, the idea of work style is a reminder that science involves material action, which has strong links with industrial production. Second, it draws our attention to a deeply entrenched goal of the modern biosciences, the search for means to control the variability of the living, and standardize its uses. (shrink)

The Editors’ vision for this volume is that it should be a selection of essays, contributed by the academics who have worked, studied, collaborated and disagreed with Göran Sundholm; engaging in debated issues and exploring untouched areas maybe only suggested or hinted at in Sundholm’s own work. "Acts of Knowledge" characterizes the papers contained in this volume as bringing something scientifically valuable in their respective fields: all the papers present cutting-edge research in their own style, contributing to very lively (...) debates occurring in the literature in logic, philosophical logic and history of logic. But it also hints at Göran’s constructivist background, which has been an influence or a challenge for many of the contributors. "History, Philosophy and Logic" refers directly to Göran's broad interests into the various aspects of the Philosophy of Logic, Mathematics, and Language, their origins and development, especially with the focus on the Modern History of Logic and the philosophical implications thereof. The readers will find scattered all along this volume pieces of -- and reflections on -- all these themes. (shrink)

The article aims to present the study of Aristotle’s teaching on consciousness and soul conducted by the well-known contemporary scholar of ancient philosophy, Jonathan Barnes, as an example of a certain historical-philosophical style that emerged within British analytic philosophy as a whole and within the Aristotelian Society in particular during 1970-1980s. It is shown that the development of the historical-philosophical style within the Aristotelian Society at this time continues the tradition of slow reception of ideas from (...) continental philosophy, which was noted already in the early period of Society emergence and development. This is explained by certain theoretical isolation that had developed by this time in British philosophy, which had its imprint on historical-philosophical studies and is expressed in the application of conceptual analysis and the inclusion of its results into the modern philosophical context. Although Barnes considers Aristotle’s teaching on consciousness and soul through the prism of contemporary versions of physicalism and dualism, the question of what role the Aristotelian teaching plays for them remains unanswered. The author puts forward the thesis that in this case, J. Barnes’s analysis of the Aristotelian problem of consciousness and soul appears less productive than the previously developed approaches in scholasticism and phenomenology in the continental history of philosophy. (shrink)

The central theme of this book concerns the structure of narratives and the analysis of a special class of narrative sentences. This seemingly specialized technical job has surprisingly broad and fruitful application. In the course of a single connected argument the author manages to throw light on a wide range of problems that have puzzled philosophical students of history including the relation between speculative philosophy of history and history proper, the verification of statements about the past, (...) the alleged relativism of historical interpretation, the distinction between "history" and "chronicle," the nature of historical explanation, and the debate about methodological individualism. The argument also draws upon and contributes to discussions dealing with some broader issues generally carried on outside the context of the philosophy of history such as the logic of temporal language and the problem of future contingencies. The approach is fresh and exciting, the style both clear and lively.—R. C. S. (shrink)

At first glance there seem to be many similarities between Thomas S. Kuhn’s and Ludwik Fleck’s accounts of the development of scientific knowledge. Notably, both pay attention to the role played by the scientific community in the development of scientific knowledge. But putting first impressions aside, one can criticise some philosophers for being too hasty in their attempt to find supposed similarities in the works of the two men. Having acknowledged that Fleck anticipated some of Kuhn’s later theses, there seems (...) to be a temptation in more recent research to equate both theories in important respects. Because of this approach, one has to deal with the problem of comparing the most notable technical terms of both philosophers, namely ‘‘thought style’’ and ‘‘paradigm’’. This paper aims at a more thorough comparison between Ludwik Fleck’s concept of thought style and Thomas Kuhn’s concept of paradigm. Although some philosophers suggest that these two concepts are essentially equal in content, a closer examination reveals that this is not the case. This thesis of inequality will be defended in detail, also taking into account some of the alleged similarities which may be responsible for losing sight of the differences between these theories. (shrink)

The continental drift controversy has been deeply analysed in terms of rationalist notions, which seem to find there a unique topic to describe the weight of evidence for reaching consensus. In that sense, many authors suggest that Alfred Wegener’s theory of the original supercontinent Pangea and the subsequent continental displacements finally reached a consensus when irrefutable evidence became available. Therefore, rationalist approaches suggest that evidence can be enough by itself to close scientific controversies. In this article I analyse continental drift (...) debates from a different perspective which is based on styles of thought. I’ll argue that continental drift debate took much longer than it was usually recognized with two styles of thought coexisting for hundreds of years. These were fixism and mobilism and they were always confronting their own evidence and interpretations and functioning as general frameworks for the acceptability of a specific theory. Therefore, this text aims to bring much broader sociological elements than usually involved in the analysis of the continental drift theory. (shrink)

This two volume series introduces the fascinating story of philosophy in a lucid, readable style students enjoy reading. Incorporating the most current scholarship, Matson integrates philosophy into the scientific, political, religious, and social context of different periods. The two volumes can be used as a core text or as a supplement to primary source readings.

Newly updated study surveys concept of space from standpoint of historical development. Space in antiquity, Judeo-Christian ideas about space, Newton’s concept of absolute space, space from 18th century to present. Extensive new chapter (6) reviews changes in philosophy of space since publication of second edition (1969). Numerous original quotations and bibliographical references. "...admirably compact and swiftly paced style."—Philosophy of Science. Foreword by Albert Einstein. Bibliography.

There are at least two ways of writing the history of philosophy: the first and most common among those self−identified as "philosophers" treats philosophers of the past as if they were in live dialogue with the present. Only the text is dissected, studied, and analyzed as the interpreter attempts to reconstruct, examine, and occasionally challenge the arguments under consideration. Practitioners of this first way assume that systematic and seemingly internally coherent styles of thought are most worthy of the (...) name "philosophy." These thinkers believe that the term "philosophy," as Richard Rorty pointed out long ago, has an "honorific" sense: philosophy as such stands above other forms of thought, it is regulative in scope, and it serves as something that examines the conclusions of other, necessarily less rigorous fields. The second way is more explicitly contextualist, seeking to understand what a past thinker may have meant in his own time, what outside factors may have shaped his arguments, and how his thought may be part of broader historical currents that are none the less worthy of being remembered and studied now. Practitioners of this way are more likely to believe that ambiguities or seeming deficiencies of clarity that we find in the work of a past thinker are unlikely to be resolved by hypothetical, propositional reconstruction; rather the ambiguities are apparent to us because we are differently situated, so that the study of history is a more powerful tool in helping us satisfactorily access the work ofa past thinker than rationalistic reconstruction. (Full disclosure: I am an advocate of the second way.) This volume presents studies that fall into both of the two camps, as Jerome.. (shrink)

Vesalius wrote nothing about the aesthetics of the anatomical illustrations found in his De humani corporis fabrica (1543). There are, however, two passages in this work that offer a starting point for an investigation into the illustration’s idealised style. In discussing the body that is best for a public dissection Vesalius says that it must be one that resembles the ‘Canon of Polycleitus’, and later, he refers to his pursuit of the historia absoluti hominis or historia of the perfect (...) man. These two passage lie at the heart of a solution to questions concerning the style of Vesalius’s illustrations. -/- This thesis seeks to investigate the role that visual material (art) played in determining the visual character of Vesalius’s natural philosophical illustrations. In antiquity art and nature were generally thought to be opposed. This distinction was undermined in the sixteenth century as images came to play a role in acquiring and conveying knowledge about the natural world. The role that art played in determining the visual character of Vesalius’s illustrations, I argue, constitutes another facet of the undermining of the ancient opposition between art and nature that occurred in the sixteenth century. The relationship between art and nature forms the basis of my investigation into the style of Vesalius’s illustrations. -/- I examine three separate but interrelated avenues which, I suggest, played a role in determining the style of the Fabrica illustrations. The first derives from the history of natural philosophy and medicine. I suggest that the concepts art, nature, teleology, form and beauty as they are found in Plato’s Timaeus, and Marsilio Ficino’s sixteenth­century commentary on that work, provide an epistemology and account of the body that is also found in Galen’s On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body, and subsequently reflected in both the text and illustrations of the Fabrica. This epistemological underpinning is entirely in keeping with the method of proportional representation of the body and associated aesthetic advocated in Polycleitus’s Canon. -/- The second avenue concerns the role that both ancient and Renaissance artworks played in determining the style of the Fabrica illustrations. While the illustrations embody the ideal and typical form advocated in the Canon they also embellish this, and contain stylistic features derived from Hellenistic sculpture and found in High Renaissance art. I argue for specific parallels between Hellenistic sculpture, Michelangelo’s nudes in his Sistine Chapel frescos and Vesalius’s illustrations. -/- Thirdly, I consider Renaissance artwriting and aesthetics as a source for understanding the idealised style of the Vesalian illustrations. In particular I examine Leon Battista Alberti’s tabulation of the ideal man and his aesthetic principle concinnitas. This offers a Renaissance account of beauty and the ideal that is analogous to the Canon of Polycleitus, is central to an understanding of Italian Renaissance art and aesthetics, and has a particular application to Vesalius’s illustrations and their teleological underpinnings. I suggest that contrapposto as the expression of antithesis in art offers a theoretic parallel for the augmentation of the austere classical style found in Vesalius’s own use of contrapposto and his interest in musculature and movement. -/- Throughout, this thesis is concerned with relationships between visual materials. I elaborate on this theme through an investigation of the influence that Vesalius’s illustrations had on a selection of anatomical illustrations that came in its wake. I construe the relationships that obtain between these illustrations as analogous to those which occur in what are termed art historical ‘movements’. (shrink)

In letter 37 to Johannes Bouwmeester, Spinoza identifies a historiola mentis à la Bacon as an important tool for distinguishing more easily between adequate and inadequate ideas. This paper contends that Spinoza's advice is to take into account Baconian-style ‘Civil History’ as providing instructive material for contemplating the variety, complexity, and persistency of human passionate behaviour. Specifically, it argues that Baconian civil history forms an integral part of Spinoza's reflections on provisional morality. Although for Spinoza, philosophical beatitude (...) ultimately demands understanding affects through their first causes – the intuitive perception of things sub specie aeternitatis – in the realm of everyday Spinoza allows for a different, more pragmatic approach to morality. This paper argues at this stage that a philosophical understanding of the mind and its affections is not needed. Spinoza, following Bacon, holds that conduct of practical affairs is particularly improved when those so engage.. (shrink)

The article begins with a brief history of aesthetic theory. Particular attention is given to the postructuralist ‘aesthetic return’: the resurgence of interest in aesthetics as an ontological foundation for human being-in-the-world. The disordered individual-as-emergent-artist-and-artifact, who is at the centre of this ‘aesthetic return’, is then translated into the ‘dis’-organization that is the firm. The firm is thus defined in terms of its primal sensory impact on the world. It invokes a myriad of aesthetic relations between its disorganized self (...) and others: its essence resides within these relations; its power of being is determined by its ability to project a unified aesthetic ideal – a ‘mirror fantasy’. The firm thus emerges as a style: where style is defined as an organizing – a sculpting – of aesthetic chaos. In order to achieve a grand style, the firm projects itself through time as a unified aesthetic ideal; as an ongoing work of art. The article concludes with a discussion of how this aesthetic theory of the firm relates to other accepted theories of the nature and purpose of business organizations. (shrink)

Rights and Civilizations, translated from the Italian original, traces a history of international law to illustrate the origins of the Western colonial project and its attempts to civilize the non-European world. The book, ranging from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first, explains how the West sought to justify its own colonial conquests through an ideology that revolved around the idea of its own assumed superiority, variously attributed to Christian peoples, Western 'civil' peoples, and 'developed' peoples, and now to democratic (...) Western peoples. In outlining this history and discourse, the book shows that, while the Western conception may style itself as universal, it is in fact relative. This comes out by bringing the Western civilization into comparison with others, mainly the Islamic one, suggesting the need for an 'intercivilizational' approach to international law. (shrink)

There is no more central issue to education than thinking and reasoning. Certainly, such an emphasis chimes with the rationalist and cognitive deep structure of the Western educational tradition. The contemporary tendency reinforced by cognitive science is to treat thinking ahistorically and aculturally as though physiology, brain structure and human evolution are all there is to say about thinking that is worthwhile or educationally significant. The movement of critical thinking also tends to treat thinking ahistorically, focusing on universal processes of (...) logic and reasoning. Against this trend and against the scientific spirit of the age this paper presents a historical and philosophical picture of thinking. By contrast with dominant cognitive and logical models the paper emphasizes kinds of thinking and styles of reasoning. The paper grows out of interests primarily in the work of Nietzsche, Heidegger and Wittgenstein, and in the extension and development of their work in Critical Theory and French poststructuralist philosophy. The paper draws directly on some of this work to argue for the recognition of different kinds of thinking, which are explored by reference to Heidegger, and also the significance of styles of reasoning, which are explored by reference to Wittgenstein and to Ian Hacking. (shrink)

Social studies of science have often treated natural field sites as extensions of the laboratory. But this overlooks the unique specificities of field sites. While lab sites are usually private spaces with carefully controlled borders, field sites are more typically public spaces with fluid boundaries and diverse inhabitants. Field scientists must therefore often adapt their work to the demands and interests of local agents. I propose to address the difference between lab and field in sociological terms, as a difference in (...) style. A field style treats epistemic alterity as a resource rather than an obstacle for objective knowledge production. A sociological stylistics of the field should thus explain how objective science can co-exist with radical conceptual difference. I discuss examples from the Canadian North, focussing on collaborations between state wildlife biologists and managers, on the one hand, and local Aboriginal Elders and hunters, on the other. I argue that a sociological stylistics of the field can help us to better understand how radically diverse agents may collaborate across cultures in the successful production of reliable natural knowledge. (shrink)

Nicholas Jardine offers here an edition and the first translation into English of Johannes Kepler's A Defence of Tycho against Ursus. He accompanies this with essays on the provenance of the treatise - the circumstances which provoked Kepler to write it, an analysis of its strategy, style and historical sources and of the contents of Ursus' Treatise on Astronomical Hypotheses to which Kepler was replying. Dr Jardine also provides three extended interpretive essays on the intrinsic interest and historical significance (...) of the work. (shrink)

LIKE POETS, painters, sculptors, and composers, philosophers occupy a present burgeoning with the past. From Plato to Rawls, philosophical thinking is explicitly or implicitly the outcome of encounters with imposing predecessors. The history of philosophy is, to use an expression that Gombrich applies to the history of art, a history of style, a tradition of texts that repeat, revise, and reject the conceptual tropes and argumentative patterns of precedent texts.

The design of Hindu temple follows the design of vastupurusha-mandala as described in several Hindu texts on architecture. The design of temple is divided into ground plan and vertical alignment, the superstructure. Herein the present study, our focus is on architecture of the superstructure, especially Shikhara style of superstmcture, in the temple of Nepal. Shikhara style architecture came into Nepal from Lidia over a millennium ago. The purpose of this research is to understand the significance of Shikhara (...) class='Hi'>Style temples in the capital of Nepal, the Kathmandu valley. The first segment of the study reports the overall architecture of Hindu temple and then the common styles of architecture of superstructure (vertical alignment/tower) applied in building the temples in Nepal, which involves the Shikhara Style, the Pagoda Style, and the Stupa Style. The Shikhara style architecture is described in detail while other two are briefly discussed. The second segment of the study introduces some of the recognized temples of the Kathmandu valley that have Shikhara style architecture. And finally summing up everything, the conclusion of this research tries to recognize, acknowledge and bring to the fore the significance of Shikhara style temples in Nepal and also wrap the research by understanding the concept of architecture through pre-ancient perspective. (shrink)

Models of global governance abound: expert governance, networked governance, algorithmic governance, and old-fashioned juridico-political governance vie for explanatory power. This article takes up style as a way of analysing configurations of governance that do not readily fit a particular model of governance. Style is particularly revealing when it comes to deliberately unspecified or over-specified, genre-busting, and bet-hedging ways of imagining governance. The UN’s use of the phrase ‘convening power’ is a case in point. This article looks at how (...) the UN has styled itself as a convening power in the area of counter-terrorism governance. A visual analysis of promotional materials for the UN’s Counter-Terrorism Week suggests that the UN’s self-styling as a convening power is shaped by anxieties as well as aspirations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.3 (2002) 223-243 [Access article in PDF] Style, Rhetoric, and Postmodern Culture Bradford Vivian Modern rhetoricians habitually avoid the canon of style. The reasons for this avoidance should be familiar to those versed in the disciplinary lore of rhetoric. Since the fifth and fourth centuries B. C. E., when oratorical virtuosos like Gorgias proclaimed that "Speech is a powerful lord, which by means (...) of the finest and most invisible body effects the divinest works" (41), the suspicion that rhetorical style amounts to irrational verbal excess has dogged those who would argue for the moral integrity of the art. Most recently, twentieth-century rhetoricians, Toulmin (1958) and Perelman (1969, 1979, 1982) in particular, realigned rhetoric with the study of argumentation after its apparent reduction, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to innocuous matters of form and taste by the elocutionist and belletristic movements. Consequently, the aesthetic capacities of rhetoric have received scant attention from modern rhetoricians, who resign considerations of style largely to supposedly regrettable episodes in the history of the discipline. For better or worse, then, modern rhetorical theory lacks a contemporary rationale and methodology for the study of style. 1Beyond unfortunate equations of rhetoric with grandiloquence, this scarcity in recent rhetorical scholarship corresponds to general humanistic and social scientific prejudices against the topic of style. Robert Hariman posits, "Established academic conceptions of style hardly prepare one to take seriously the aesthetic dimension of political experience" (7). As evidence for this claim, he cites Stuart Ewen's reflections on the "frustration" peculiar to research on style: "It seemed to be a universal category," Ewen writes, "transcending topical boundaries, an accolade applied to people, places, attitudes and things... a subject that was, at best, amorphous" (quoted in Hariman, 7-8). Yet the social ubiquity of style—"[o]n news magazines, sports magazines, music-oriented magazines, magazines about [End Page 223] fashion, architecture and interior design, automobiles, and sex"—indicates that it offers "a key to understanding the contours of contemporary culture" (qtd. in Hariman, 7-8). Hence, the paradox of style as a scholarly topic: that which exhibits its cultural importance makes it seem intellectually vacuous.Hariman's treatise on political style offers the most noteworthy attempt in rhetorical studies to remedy these trends; brief consideration of his insights will suggest further objectives for the study of rhetoric and style. 2 In Hariman's estimation, "style ultimately is a significant dimension of every human experience" because "relations of control and autonomy are negotiated through the artful composition of speech, gesture, ornament, decor, and any other means for modulating perception and shaping response. In a word, our political experience is styled" (3, 2). The distinctive contribution of rhetorical inquiry into political style involves "understanding the dynamics of our social experience or the relationship between rhetorical appeals and political decisions" rather than merely "cataloging discursive forms in the artistic text alone" (Hariman, 8).Accordingly, Hariman acknowledges that one must recognize the substantive social and political influences of style apart from its traditional connotations of individual artistic performance. "In this context," he explains, "although style still highlights aesthetic reactions it no longer enforces artistic autonomy. Style becomes an analytic category for understanding a social reality; in order to understand the social reality of politics, we can consider how political action involves acting according to a particular political style" (9). Thus, for Hariman, rhetorical choices in political style need not amount to a valorization of "artistic autonomy": "each political style draws on universal elements of the human condition and symbolic repertoire but organizes them into a limited, customary set of communicative designs... Each is thoroughly conventional, yet the means for personal improvisation and intelligent, innovate responses to unique problems" (11-12). His treatise therefore appears to dissociate style from its outmoded definitions while recommending the utility of rhetorical principles to the study of political culture.What Hariman calls the "cautious postmodernism" (6) of his project, however, hinders its innovative aspirations. The postmodern portion of his work endorses the study of style according to the aesthetic dimensions of social relations rather than "artistic autonomy" alone; but its... (shrink)