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This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.
Descartes’s concern with the proper method of belief formation is evident in the titles of his works—e.g., The Search after Truth, The Rules for the Direction of the Mind and The Discourse on Method of rightly conducting one’s reason and seeking the truth in the sciences. It is most apparent, however, in his famous discussions, both in the Meditations and in the Principles, of one particularly noteworthy source of our doxastic errors—namely, the misuse of one’s will. What is not widely recognized, let alone appreciated and understood, is the relationship between his concern with belief formation and his concern with virtue. In fact, few seem to realize that Descartes regards doxast...
Boethius, the Roman philosopher, was executed for treason and pilloried by modern scholars for misinterpreting Aristotle to the West. This book examines his semantics and logic, attempting to clear his name and lend him new credence.
Provides an ontological characterization of texts, explores the issues raised by the identity of various texts, and presents a view of the function of authors and audiences, and of their relations to texts.
This book treats values as the basis for all of philosophy, an approach distinct from critiquing theories of value and far rarer. "First Philosophy," the effort to justify the foundations for a system of philosophy, is one of the main issues that divide philosophers today. McDonald's philosophy of values is a comprehensive attempt to replace philosophies of "existence," "being," "experience," the "subject," or "language," with a philosophy that locates value as most basic. This transformation is a radical move within Western philosophy as a whole, since it has never been done in such a thoroughgoing way. Hugh P. McDonald makes a comprehensive case against first philosophy as metaphysical, by mounting a case against all metaphysical systems of philosophy. Radical Axiology: A First Philosophy of Values is a fresh start for a rebirth of philosophy. While other movements debate the "death of philosophy," this book radically re-evaluates the direction of philosophy by discovering values at the basis of all philosophy. This reorientation addresses the question of what the love of wisdom can mean for us today.
Responding to skeptics within higher education and critics without, James Crosswhite argues powerfully that the core of a college education should be learning to write a reasoned argument. A trained philosopher and director of a university-wide composition program, Crosswhite challenges his readers—teachers of writing and communication, philosophers, critical theorists, and educational administrators—to reestablish the traditional role of rhetoric in education. To those who have lost faith in the abilities of people to reach reasoned mutual agreements, and to others who have attacked the right-or-wrong model of formal logic, this book offers the reminder that the rhetorical tradition has...
Human subjects are both formed by historical inheritances and capable of active criticism. Insisting on this fact, Kant and Benjamin each develop powerful, systematic, but sharply opposed accounts of human powers and interests in freedom. A persistent constitutive tension between Kantian and Benjaminan ideals is woven through human life. By examining the two philosophers through this volume, Richard Eldridge attempts to make better sense of the commitment forming, commitment revising, anxious, reflective and acculturated human subjects we are.
The expression laissez les bons temps rouler—"let the good times roll"—conveys the sense of exuberance and good times associated with southern Louisiana’s vibrant cultural milieu. Yet, for Cajuns, descendants of French settlers exiled from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in the mid-eighteenth century, this sense of celebration has always been mixed with sorrow. By focusing on Cajun music and dance and the ways they convey the dual experiences of joy and pain, Disenchanting Les Bons Temps illuminates the complexities of Cajun culture. Charles J. Stivale shows how vexed issues of cultural identity and authenticity are negotiated through the rich expressions of emotion, sensation, sound, an...
Common Sense and Science from Aristotle to Reid reveals that thinkers have pondered the nature of common sense and its relationship to science and scientific thinking for a very long time. It demonstrates how a diverse array of neglected early modern thinkers turn out to have been on the right track for understanding how the mind makes sense of the world and how basic features of the human mind and cognition are related to scientific theory and practice. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources and scholarship from the history of ideas, cognitive science, and the history and philosophy of science, this book helps readers understand the fundamental historical and philosophical relationship between common sense and science.
Drawing upon the work of such theorists as Foucault, Habermas, Toulmin and Wittgenstein, this book brings recent work on language and argumentation to bear on the practical concerns of policy analysis and planning. The European and US contributors to the book examine the interplay of language, action and power in terms of both applied policy and theoretical debates. Emphasizing the political nature of the work of planners and policy-makers, the book stresses the role of persuasive arguments in practical decision contexts. Recognizing the rhetorical, communicative character of planning and policy deliberations, the writers demonstrate that policy arguments are necessarily selective, both shaping and being shaped by power relations.