Jean Baudrillard's work on how contemporary society is dominated by the mass media has become extraordinarily influential. He is notorious for arguing that there is no real world, only simulations which have altered what events mean, and that only violent symbolic exchange can prevent the world becoming a total simulation. An ideal introduction to this most singular cultural critic and philosopher, Jean Baudrillard: live theory offers a comprehensive, critical account of Baudrillard's unsettling, visionary and often prescient work. Baudrillard's relation to a range of theorists as diverse as Nietzsche, Marx, McLuhan, Foucault and Lyotard is explained, and the impact of his thought on contemporary politics, popular culture and art is analyzed. Finally, in the new interview included here, Baudrillard outlines his own position and responds to his critics.

While commentators have sometimes taken up the question of Wittgenstein's view of ethics, none has offered a sustained treatment of what positive contributions Wittgenstein has yet to offer contemporary ethics. In this important new book, Jeremy Wisnewski argues that Wittgenstein, though himself often silent on particular ethical matters, gives us immense resources for understanding the aims appropriate to any philosophical ethics. Using Wittgenstein as a point of departure, Wisnewski re-examines some of the landmarks in the history of moral philosophy in order to cast contemporary ethical philosophy in a new light. Of particular interest is the unique approach to Kant's moral philosophy afforded by seeing him through Wittgensteinian eyes: Wisnewski gives distinct and intriguing analyses of the categorical imperative, arguing that our obsession with a certain brand of ethical theory has led us to misread this most famous contribution to moral philosophy. By seeing the doctrines of historical ethical philosophers anew (particularly those of Kant and Mill), Wisnewski shows a new way of engaging in ethical theory - one that is Wittgensteinian through and through. Rather than assuming that ethical inquiry yields knowledge about what we must do, and what rules we must follow, we should regard ethics (including our historical ethical theories) as clarifying what is involved in the complicated 'form of life' that is ours.

This book explores the work of Thomas Seebohm (1934-2014), a leading phenomenologist and hermeneuticist. It features papers that offer a critical and constructive dialogue about Seebohm's analyses and their implications for the sciences. The net result is an in-depth study and a helpful overview of Seebohm's general approach and his specific views on various areas of modern science. The contributors focus especially upon his final text, History as a Science and the System of the Sciences. They view this as the culmination and summary of his historical and phenomenological investigations into the foundations, nature, and limits of modern sciences. This includes not just history but the Geisteswissenschaften more generally, along with the social and natural sciences as well. The essays in this volume reflect that range. This volume presents insightful discussions about the nature and legitimacy of the human sciences as sciences and the unique character of the social sciences. It will be of interest not just as a matter of historical scholarship, but also and above all as an important contribution to phenomenology and to the philosophy of science and the sciences as such. It deserves attention by scholars from any philosophical tradition interested in thinking about the foundations of their disciplines and a philosophy of science that includes, but is not limited to, the natural sciences.

This book examines the moral philosophy of Paul Ramsey--one of the 20th century's most influential ethicists--from a theological perspective illustrating that religion can still play a substantial role in our ongoing moral inquiries. Ramsey wrote prodigiously on ethical issues including politics, medical research, the Vietnam war, and nuclear proliferation. His ethical theory, which concentrates on divine love, or agape, ' as well as justice and order, provides a middle ground between fundamentalism and secularism. Therefore, Ramsey's ethics will appeal to the 21st-century social conscience.

McKenzie grounds his theological exploration in a comprehensive history of the theological and philosophical influences on Ramsey's thought, including Jonathan Edwards' theory of natural morality. He also explores a multidisciplinary selection of Ramsey's writings. In conclusion, McKenzie argues that Ramsey's natural law theory will continue to have significant and increasing relevance for morality in the postmodern world. This is the most thorough study of Paul Ramsey's work as well as a significant contribution to philosophy and theology.

Feminist philosophy identifies tensions within mainstream theories of knowledge. To create a more egalitarian epistemology, solutions to these problems have been as diverse as the traditions of philosophy out of which feminists continue to emerge. This book considers two equally formidable approaches theorized by Louise Antony and Lynn Hankinson Nelson. The American philosopher W.V.O. Quine locates knowledge as a branch of empirical science. Shuford shows how both Antony and Nelson use Quine's 'naturalized epistemology' to create empirically robust feminist epistemologies. However, Shuford argues that neither can include physical embodiment as an important epistemic variable. The book argues that John Dewey's theory of inquiry extends beyond Quine's insight that knowledge must be interrogated as an empirical matter. Because Dewey insists that all aspects of experience must be subject to the experimental openness that is the hallmark of scientific reasoning, Shuford concludes that physical embodiment must play an important part in knowledge claims.

The volume honours Eva Picardi - her philosophical views and interests, as well as her teaching - collecting eighteen essays, some by former students of hers, some by colleagues with whom she discussed and interacted. The themes of the volume encompass topics ranging from foundational and historical issues in the philosophy of language and the philosophy of logic and mathematics, as well as issues related to the recent debates on rationality, naturalism and the contextual aspects of meaning. The volume is split into three sections: one on Gottlob Frege's work - in philosophy of language and logic -, taking into account also its historical dimension; one on Donald's Davidson's work; and one on the contextualism-literalism dispute about meaning and on naturalist research programmes such as Chomsky's.

Translation exposes aspects of language that can easily be ignored, renewing the sense of the proximity and inseparability of language and thought. The ancient quarrel between philosophy and literature was an early expression of a self-understanding of philosophy that has, in some quarters at least, survived the centuries. This book explores the idea of translation as a philosophical theme and as an important feature of philosophy and practical life, especially in relation to the work of Stanley Cavell. The essays in this volume explore philosophical questions about translation, especially in the light of the work of Stanley Cavell. They take the questions raised by translation to be of key importance not only for philosophical thinking but for our lives as a whole. Thoreau's enigmatic remark "The truth is translated" reveals that apparently technical matters of translation extend through human lives to remarkable effect, conditioning the ways in which the world comes to light. The experience of the translator exemplifies the challenge of judgement where governing rules and principles are incommensurable; and it shows something of the ways in which words come to us, opening new possibilities of thought. This book puts Cavell's rich exploration of these matters into conversation with traditions of pragmatism and European thought. Translation, then, far from a merely technical matter, is at work in human being, and it is the means of humanisation. The book brings together philosophers and translators with common interests in Cavell and in the questions of language at the heart of his work.

This book illustrates how non-pragmatic finite provinces of meaning emancipate one from pragmatic everyday pressures. Barber portrays everyday life originally, as including the interplay between intrinsic and imposed relevances, the unavoidable pursuit of pragmatic mastery, and the resulting tensions non-pragmatic provinces can relieve. But individuals and groups also inevitably resort to meta-level strategies of hyper-mastery to protect set ways of satisfying lower-level relevances-strategies that easily augment individual anxiety and social pathologies. After creatively interpreting the Schutzian dialectic between the world of working and non-pragmatic provinces, Barber describes the experience of reality in the finite provinces of religion and humor. Schutz, who only mentioned these provinces, laid out the six features of the cognitive style that characterize any finite province of meaning. This book is the first to follow up on these suggestions and depict two new finite provinces of meaning beyond those in "On Multiple Realities." While entrance into these provinces reduces everyday life tensions, it does not suffice since pragmatic relevances infiltrate the provinces, as when one uses humor to belittle competing cultural groups or one deploys religion only as an instrument to ensure crop productivity. Instead, liberation from anxieties and pathologies is brought to completion when the ego agens, the 0-point of all its coordinates, discovers its value in relation to the transcendent, even if it fails to realize its pragmatic purposes, or when one becomes comical to oneself through the eyes of another different from oneself. This book, aimed at advanced undergraduate, graduate, or scholarly audiences, presents stimulating analyses of the religious "appresentative mindset" or of the healing potential of interracial humor. Drawing heavily on interdisciplinary resources, the book also illustrates the relevance of phenomenological methods and concepts for concrete human experience. Barber offers a fresh understanding of pragmatic everyday life, original descriptions of the religious and humorous provinces of meaning, and a picture of how the overarching intentional stances of meaning-provinces, along with exposure to another perspective, can diminish the pressures everyday life engenders.

Human life is susceptible of changing suddenly, of shifting inadvertently, of appearing differently, of varying unpredictably, of being altered deliberately, of advancing fortuitously, of commencing or ending accidentally, of a certain malleability. In theory, any human being is potentially capacitated to conceive of-and convey-the chance, view, or fact that matters may be otherwise, or not at all; with respect to other lifeforms, this might be said animal's distinctive characteristic. This state of play is both an everyday phenomenon, and an indispensable prerequisite for exceptional innovations in culture and science: contingency is the condition of possibility for any of the arts-be they dominantly concerned with thinking, crafting, or enacting. While their scope and method may differ, the (f)act of reckoning with-and taking advantage of-contingency renders rhetoricians and philosophers associates after all. In this regard, Aristotle and Blumenberg will be exemplary, hence provide the framework. Between these diachronic bridgeheads, close readings applying the nexus of rhetoric and contingency to a selection of (Early) Modern texts and authors are intercalated-among them La Celestina, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, Wilde, Fontane.

This is a unique and significant new reference work which reflects the shifting intellectual boundaries of British Thought between 1860 and 1920. Often regarded as an aberrant phase in the history of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century philosophy, British Idealism provoked a wide range of attacks and replies from all the major figures of the time, such as Sidgwick, Dewey, Broad and of course Russell. Some of the major figures which were associated with the movements were Bosanquet, F.H. Bradley, Edward Caird, Collingwood, T.H. Green, Hobhouse, McTaggart, Muirhead, Ritchie and and Stirling. Earlier idealists such as the Cambridge Platonists, Coleridge, Carlyle and Ferrier amongst others, are also included as are important later contributors such as Oakeshott. Non-British thinkers who made important contributions to the traditions and discussion such as Blanshard, Croce, Dewey, William James, Peirce, Royce and Santayana also have entries. In recent years, there has been a considerable amount of renewed interest and many of the ideas of that tradition are being reintroduced and discussed in philosophy and politics.

This volume treats the topic of rationality developing a perspective that integrates elements of philosophy of language, phenomenology, pragmatism, and philosophy of life. The two reference authors, Wittgenstein and Ortega, are contemporaries but come from different philosophical traditions. Wittgenstein's early work was influenced by logical positivism. Later he developed an influential approach to philosophy of language. Ortega was influenced by Neo-Kantianism, perspectivism, life philosophy, and phenomenology. On this basis, he developed an independent approach that has become known as ratiovitalism. Astonishing affinities between their respective reflections on rationality motivated the experiment of bringing the different approaches into a synergetic relation. Both investigate the structures and limits of rationality, emphasize the importance of basic beliefs, and criticize the restriction of rationality concepts to the intellectual sphere. The contributions of the volume focus on: dynamics of belief and knowledge, implicit and explicit knowledge, the concept of "vital reason", the role of world-pictures and forms of life, questions regarding certainty, ignorance, doubt, and madness, as well as matters of pluralism and relativism.

This work examines the rise of postmodernism in management scholarship and argues that the prevalence of postmodernist thought reflects a lack of understanding by management researchers of the core principles upon which Western business endeavour is based. The author highlights postmodernism's methodological and conceptual failings, such as disbelief in material progress and economic advancement, and its denial of generalizable laws to direct management research. In its place, the author proposes a return to traditional modernist principles in management research, based on scientific evidence. This ground breaking, timely work will spark debate and challenge previously accepted claims of postmodernism, a nice retort to the anti-business/anti-capitalist literature now prevalent in academia.

Derrida's claim that 'without deconstruction there can be no responsible political thought' is one of his most provocative, and one that even his most vocal admirers have been reluctant to endorse fully. Deconstruction and Democracy evaluates and substantiates Derrida's assertion, assessing the importance of this eminent contemporary philosopher's work for political thought. From the early 1980s onwards, Derrida has addressed political subjects more and more explicitly; here Alex Thomson argues that the time has come for a fresh understanding of deconstruction -- one that acknowledges its relevance for, and potential contribution to, political thinking. The book provides cogent analysis and exegesis of Derrida's often rather abstruse and impenetrable political writings; explores the implications for political theory and practice of Derrida's work; and brings Derrida's work into dialogue with other major strands of contemporary political thought. Deconstruction and Democracy is the clearest and most detailed engagement available with the politics of deconstruction, and is a major contribution to scholarship on the later work of Jacques Derrida, most notably his Politics of Friendship.

Roland Barthes - the author of such enduringly influential works as Mythologies and Camera Lucida - was one of the most important cultural critics of the post-war era. Since his death in 1980, new writings have continued to be discovered and published. The Afterlives of Roland Barthes is the first book to revisit and reassess Barthes' thought in light of these posthumously published writings. Covering work such as Barthes' Mourning Diary, the notes for his projected Vita Nova and many writings yet to be translated into English, Neil Badmington reveals a very different Barthes of today than the figure familiar from the writings published in his lifetime.

Helene Cixous: live theory provides a clear and informative introduction to one of the most important and influential European writers working today. The book opens with an overview of the key features of Cixous' theory of "ecriture feminine" (feminine writing). The various manifestations of "ecriture feminine" are then explored in chapters on Cixous' fictional and theatrical writing, her philosophical essays, and her intensely personal approach to literary criticism. The book concludes with a new, lively and wide-ranging interview with Helene Cixous in which she discusses her influences and inspirations, and her thoughts on the nature of writing and the need for an ethical relationship with the world. Also offering a survey of the many English translations of Cixous' work, this book is an indispensable introduction to Cixous' work for students of literature, philosophy, cultural and gender studies.

The Philosophies of America Reader brings together an unparalleled selection of original and translated readings spanning several eras and American traditions. Addressing perennial questions of philosophy and new questions arising in a variety of cultural contexts, texts from Classical American, Native American, Latin American, African American, Asian American, Mexican, Caribbean, and South American philosophers reveal the interweaving tapestry of ideas characteristic of America. With its distinctively pluralistic approach, this reader promotes intercultural dialogue and understanding, highlighting points of convergence and divergence across American philosophical traditions. It features: * Writings by traditionally underrepresented groups * Primary texts thematically arranged around major areas of philosophical enquiry including selfhood, knowledge, learning, and ethics * Introductory essays outlining the trajectories of each section * Suggestions for further primary and secondary readings, guiding readers in further study As the only available reader in American philosophy of such wide ranging content, this is an essential resource for those interested in intellectual history, thought and culture, and philosophical theories of America.

'I should have written you after my first reading of The Living Currency; it was already breath-taking and I should have responded. After reading it a few more times, I know it is the best book of our times.' Letter to Pierre Klossowski from Michel Foucault, winter 1970. Living Currency is the first English translation of Klossowski's La monnaie vivante. It offers an analysis of economic production as a mechanism of psychic production of desires and is a key work from this often overlooked but wonderfully creative French thinker.

This is an original and refreshing look at one of the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th Century. This book offers a faithful and meticulous reading of Heidegger's magnum opus, "Being and Time".Martin Heidegger was one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. His analysis of human existence proves an inexhaustible ground for thinkers of all backgrounds who seek answers for their specific questions left open or opened up by our times. This book explores the intrinsic connection between two fundamentally human traits, language and death. Heidegger addresses each of these traits in depth, without ever explicitly outlining their relationship in a separate theory. However, in a close examination of Heidegger's magnum opus, "Being and Time", Joachim L. Oberst uncovers a connection in three basic steps. Ultimately the author argues that the human invention of language is motivated by the drive towards immortality - language emerges from the experience of mortality as a response to it. This is a refreshing look at one of the most challenging and influential philosophers of our times.

Charles S. Peirce, the founder of pragmatism, was also the architect of a remarkable theory of signs that continues to puzzle and inspire philosophers today. In this important new book, Mats Bergman articulates a bold new approach to Peirce's semeiotic through a reassessment of the role of rhetoric in his work. This systematic approach, which is offered as an alternative to formalistic accounts of Peirce's project, shows how general sign-theoretical conceptions can plausibly be interpreted as abstractions from everyday communicative experiences and practices. Building on this fallible ground of rhetoric-in-use, Bergman explicates Peirce's semeiotic in a way that is conducive to the development of rhetorical inquiry and philosophical criticism. Following this path, the underpinnings of a uniquely Peircean philosophy of communication is unearthed - a pragmatic conception encased in a normative rhetoric, motivated by the continual need to transform and improve our habits of action.

The present book is the first to undertake a systematic study of Peirce's conception of historical knowledge and of its value for philosophy. It does so by both reconstructing in detail Peirce's arguments and giving a detailed account of the many ways in which history becomes an object of explicit reflection in his writings. The book's leading idea may be stated as follows: Peirce manages to put together an exceptionally compelling argument about history's bearing on philosophy not so much because he derives it from a well-articulated and polished conception of the relation between the two disciplines; but on the contrary, because he holds on to this relation while intuiting that it can easily turn into a conflict. This potential conflict acts therefore as a spur to put forth an unusually profound and multi-faceted analysis of what it means for philosophy to rely on historical arguments. Peirce looks at history as a way to render philosophical investigations more detailed, more concrete and more sensitive to the infinite and unforeseeable nuances that characterize human experience. In this way, he provides us with an exceptionally valuable contribution to a question that has remained gravely under-theorized in contemporary debates.

Although Foucault departs from Marxism, his own approach constitutes a form of consistent materialism which has theoretical implications for the analysis of social and educational discursive systems. In seeking to demonstrate a correct reading of Foucault, linguistic readings of his work, such as those of Christopher Norris (1993), which represent him as part of the linguistic turn in French philosophy, where language (or representation) henceforth defines the limits of thought, will be dispelled in the process of being corrected. Rather, Foucault will be represented, as Habermas (1987) has suggested, not merely as a historicist but at the same time as a nominalist, materialist, and empiricist.

Because the distinctiveness of Foucault's approach can best be seen in contrast to other major philosophical systems and thinkers, considerable attention is given to examining Foucault's relationship to Marxism, as well as his relations to Kant, Gramsci, Habermas, and the Greeks. In relation to education, there is in Foucault's approach a double emphasis which constitutes an ordering principle for this work. On the one hand, attention is directed to discursive practices which perform an educative role in the constitution of subjects and of human forms of existence. On the other hand, forms of education are constituted and utilized for the purposes of collective ethical self-creation, a theme Foucault emphasized in his later works. The book assesses some of the more interesting recent utilizations of Foucault in educational research.