Joel Katzav's survey of the philosophy of Grace Andrus de Laguna's philosophy covers a broad range of ideas, and I have selected three for further development and commentary: (1) the relationship between naturalism and analytic philosophy, (2) the relationship between classical and radical empiricism, and (3) the historical question of where to situate a view such as de Laguna's in the history, the present, and the future of philosophy. I suggest that the view belongs with a group I call the (...) ‘New Naturalists’, including Theodore de Laguna, Susanne Langer, Marjorie Grene, Michael Polanyi, and others who keep philosophy closer to developments in natural and social science than is typical for pragmatists, process philosophers, and analytic philosophers. This is a position somewhere between classical and radical empiricism, but which insists that reductionism is too limiting and unwise, even when restricted to being only a method. (shrink)

The edited collection Rorty and Beyond assesses and moves beyond Rorty’s legacy, bringing together leading international philosophers. The collection covers diverse territory, from his views about what we may hope for to his personal character, and everything in between.

The various efforts to put the idea of humanity on a secure ethical, political, and social base have not succeeded. The various post-humanist and transhumanist programs are inadequate. Our deep-seated suspicion of our deepest selves and motives is understandable in light of the barbarity of the twentieth century, but humanism is not to blame. The thought of Ernst Cassirer holds a framework for a new humanism, once it is rid of certain colonialist, triumphalist, and Eurocentric ideas that distorted Cassirer’s understanding (...) of the European role in creating the problems of civilization, especially its mistake of thinking that science was a progressive symbolic form of culture. I set out the basis of a new humanism based upon not the problem of knowledge, but the problem of genuine self-situating socialty, a personalist point of view. (shrink)

This paper aims to consider Peirce and Eco’s approach to signs and semiotics in order to assess their relation to Peirce’s mature pragmatism. Both thinkers attempted to set out a truly general theory of signs, and ran into difficulties on similar points. I show that the responses of Peirce and Eco to the difficulties that arose in seeking a truly general theory of signs were quite different. And yet, the differences are not so deep as to prevent us from thinking (...) of both Peirce and Eco as pragmatists, and perhaps of a similar stripe. (shrink)

Preview: Bergson noted that the cinematographic image does not really move. It is, then as now, a series of still photographs. The real motion in such images is produced by machinery, which imparts a kinesis, an energy of movement, to the succession of fixed images. Our perception then endows such images with their “life,” insofar as they can be said to possess life. It is an illusion, it is “virtual” both as space and time. The real duration, as generated by (...) the machinery or as lived by the perceiver is part of a broader system of images that includes those still photographs and their succession. Images of images of images, by the time they are processed by our bodies and appear to our mind’s eye as inhibited acts we have not enacted. (shrink)

Josiah Royce (1855?-1916) has had a major influence on American intellectual life, both popular movements and cutting-edge thought, but his name often went unmentioned while his ideas marched forward. The leading American proponent of absolute idealism, Royce has come back into fashion in recent years. With several important new books appearing, the formation of a Josiah Royce Society, and the re-organization of the Royce papers at Harvard, the time is ripe for Time, Will, and Purpose. Randall Auxier delves into the (...) primary texts written by Royce. (shrink)

The collection presents a variety of promising new directions in Royce scholarship from an international group of scholars, including historical reinterpretations, explorations of Royce's ethics of loyalty and religious philosophy, and contemporary applications of his ideas in psychology, the problem of reference, neo-pragmatism, and literary aesthetics.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Remembering Lewis E. HahnGeorge C. H. Sun, President, John Howie, Professor Emeritus, Thomas Alexander, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Kenneth W. Stikkers, Professor and Chair, Randall Auxier, Professor, Robert Hahn, Professor, Joseph Wu, Professor Emeritus, Elizabeth R. Eames, Professor Emeritus, Martin Lu, Professor of Philosophy, George Kimball Plochmann, Professor Emeritus, Matt Sronkoski, Philosophy Graduate and Academic Adviser, Dave Clarke, Professor Emeritus, Eugenie Gatens-Robinson, Professor Emerita, Hans H. Rudnick, (...) Professor Emeritus, Stephen Bickham, Professor EmeritusPresident, and Don Mikula (bio)The following testimonials were offered on the occasion of a memorial gathering for Dr. Lewis E. Hahn held on February 19, 2005, and were compiled for presentation here by Sharon (Hahn) Crowell.A Tribute to Dr. Lewis E. Hahn (1908-2004) from a Global PerspectiveGeorge C. H. Sun President, Thomé H. Fang Institute, Inc., Mobile, AlabamaAmong the philosophical community in both the East and the West, no word of introduction is needed for our beloved Master, who was the recipient of numerous distinctions and honors, with titles that included "Man of the Year in Philosophy" and "Award of Lifetime Achievement." The very name "Lewis E. Hahn" itself already stands now for genuineness, dedication, and fulfillment.A great work is a dialogue with eternity; a great person is such a work. In less than thirty years he succeeded in developing Carbondale from what had been a small college town in the Midwest into the Mecca of American philosophy. His most important achievements were the Dewey Center and the Pepper Archives that he helped install at SIUC These, among other such institutions, will remain a unique contribution, a glory of American philosophy, and a monument in the history of human thought.For posterity Lewis E. Hahn will remain an object of wonder and amazement. How is it possible for one human being to have accomplished so much, so well, and in so short a span of time—less than one century—in breadth, depth, and diversity? Some one hundred years ago, by bridging the gap between the New World and the Old, William James was hailed as the great genius of international friendship among philosophical thinkers, but we now find a greater genius in Lewis E. Hahn, who succeeded in bringing together the peoples of East and West from at least four continents: Europe, Australia, America (both North and Latin America), and Asia. To my knowledge, few of his predecessors and contemporaries have been half so widely read and liberal-minded as he was, in view of the range and scope of the Library of Living Philosophers that he helped continue after the passing of its founder, Dr. Paul A. Schilpp.What type of man was Hahn, our younger generation will wonder? Only a pluralist approach can help us understand the true character of such a legendary pluralist-contextualist. In short, he was "a full personality." As I recall, while working on my dissertation with him in the 1970s, we had a brief discussion on Confucius, the sage of ancient China. "A full personality!" was his laconic assessment. Suddenly I realized, to quote the Analects: "The Master is talking about himself!" For, as the Buddhists put it, only a Buddha can understand a Buddha. Or, as William James put it, only one who has philosophy can appreciate philosophy. Many friends [End Page 1] of my generation admire him so much; Te Chen of Hong Kong calls him "a great Confucian in America." Those who regret the loss of many precious Confucian virtues in China today have now rediscovered them in the person of Lewis E. Hahn! If Nietzsche called Kant "a great Chinese in Königsberg," it is simply because he had not encountered our own Master.A paradigm of academic leadership, Dr. Hahn is simply irreplaceable—this is a tribute I personally heard in Carbondale in the late 1960s. It is not an exaggeration to say that he was a superb administrator, and he could have been the best Secretary of the State we ever had, for he possessed more in the way of philosophical wisdom than all his predecessors put together! As a great teacher, he was no less "serene, good, learned, wise, and ardent" than... (shrink)

This is a performative piece of writing in the presence of and inspired by Richard Shusterman'sPhilosophy and the Art of Writing. It tries to show that the relationship between the act of writing and the formation of our human consciousness (philosophical and, more deeply, poietic) is a developing and growing process through history, and before it. The dominance of an image consciousness was slowly challenged and then replaced by a linguistic consciousness with the advent of writing, and accelerated by the (...) invention of printing and mass literacy. Shusterman teaches us an embodied kind of philosophizing that uses the word but isn't limited by it. This paper suggests that a return to image consciousness has already occurred and that the old book consciousness is disappearing. Lessons from the book consciousness are offered. (shrink)

This is the second of the essays on the existential-ontological ground of otherness, in which we see this ground as essentially entwined with our personhood and our personal identities. We analyze irony as both a “mechanism” of constituting these very identities and as an act revealing their self-altering nature. Irony in our view — informed by Kierkegaard, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis — is a subtle existential strategy by means of which subjectivity (not “the subject”) not only asserts itself, but also, and (...) much more importantly, initiates an open-ended process of self-actualization and self-formation. Irony, as we present it, is at once a form of defensive response against the “absolute” character of reality and comparably “absolutist” aspirations of an individual. Such responses open up a space of negotiation between and among these forces, in their creative interplay. In doing so the responses can be as constitutive for subjectivity as they can be disruptive. The disruption does not only undermine the (apparently) unshakeable forms of our self-understanding. More radically, the disruption puts on the stage our “alternative identities,” those with which we have to confront ourselves, whether in the negative mode of repression, or in the acts of positive, or even playful, recognition. In this way irony reveals and articulates otherness in the very heart of subjectivity. (shrink)

Czy coś naprawdę „odchodzi” całkowicie? Niniejszy artykuł jest poszukiwaniem „rzeczywistego usunięcia” i metafizyki, która musi temu towarzyszyć. Dlaczego to jest ważne? W badaniach nad sztuczną inteligencją naukowcy zaproponowali ruchomy punkt docelowy do momentu osiągnięcia sztucznej inteligencji. Zaczęło się od testu Turinga i ewoluowało przez dużą ilość argumentacji (np. Dreyfussa, dotyczącą tego, czego nie potrafią komputery, przez „osobliwość” Kurzweila oraz wiele innych kryteriów i tysiące dyskusji na temat tego, czym jest inteligencja i co oznaczałoby ją symulować lub, jak wolę, naśladować). Cała (...) ta dyskusja wciąż polega na rozważaniu analogii do ludzkiej inteligencji, a nie na zbliżaniu się do samej rzeczy, ale dobre analogie muszą dotyczyć czegoś znacznie więcej niż funkcji analogicznej: muszą zbliżać się do prawdziwej nieodróżnialności. Moje wywody będą zatem dotyczyły głównie dziedziny metafizyki i ontologii, tak jak rozumiem słowo „rzeczywisty” w wyrażeniu „rzeczywiste usunięcie”. Nie sądzę, aby współcześni badacze właściwie rozumieli problem czasu i jego wpływ na kryterium lub. kryteria sztucznej inteligencji. Stąd j w tych ramach oferuję „rzeczywiste usunięcie” w znaczeniu, które należy właśnie opisać. Argument AI ma implikacje dla całej metafizyki, ponieważ odnosi się do fundamentalnego charakteru czasu. (shrink)

thomas o. buford was the founder of the journal that evolved into The Pluralist. It was one of many things he “started.” Tom was a great starter of things, but also a strong continuer. This journal began as The Personalist Forum in 1984, with the first issue appearing in 1985. The reason Tom started the journal was that the two principal organs of personalist philosophy in the United States had ceased to recognize the relationship to personalism, which had provided their (...) missions. These were The Personalist, started by Borden Parker Bowne’s student Ralph Tyler Flewelling at the University of Southern California in 1920, and The Philosophical Forum, started at Boston University in 1943. The former was... (shrink)

Usually philosophers worry about the existence of mind, or consciousness, or persons, or other difficult-to-explain phenomena. Having posited matter or nature, or fields, they wonder where can person or consciousness originate? This kind of thinking is backward. Only persons ask such questions. Persons exist. I turn the tables on the traditional problem of person by asking whether anything impersonal really exists. I argue that the impersonal almost exists, using the theory of feeling of Max Scheler and supplementing it with insights (...) from Alfred North Whitehead and Josiah Royce. Even though feeling almost succeeds in divesting itself of the pre-supposed act of the person, but its concrete actuality blocks such complete self-abstraction. (shrink)

In the first of two essays on the ontological ground of otherness, and its phenomenological availability, we argue that what we call the “occasion” within the encounter of others are sources as well as re-sources for disclosing the results of a construction and concealment of a secret identity, one we keep from ourselves even though we have created it. Yet, individuals are capable of returning their encounters to the well of sensus communis, and that sensus communis is as natural as (...) it is cultural. Human beings are not compelled to interpret strangeness as threat, even if we are culturally compelled to interpret strangeness itself. Narrative lives in our sensus communis, and it is open, revisable, even danceable. Immediacy is person, the person that is community, and it is sublime, is both liked and disliked. (shrink)

The ideas of process philosophy in general, and Alfred North Whitehead in particular, will soon come into greater use and wider familiarity. This emergence of his ideas into wider use will be a great aid to education and to the reforming of our institutions and practices around the very different educational requirements of the sort of world that sits just beyond the horizon of our present vision. There will be discontinuities in the world to come, but there will also be (...) continuities. Whitehead’s ideas about time and possibility, and their practical applications, place us in a position to do better than guess and conjecture about what is coming. (shrink)

This volume consists of an intellectual autobiography by world-renowned philosopher Hilary Putnam, 26 critical or descriptive essays, 26 replies by Arthur C. Danto, and a bibliography listing all of Putnam's published writings.

_The Quantum of Explanation_ advances a bold new theory of how explanation ought to be understood in philosophical and cosmological inquiries. Using a complete interpretation of Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophical and mathematical writings and an interpretive structure that is essentially new, Auxier and Herstein argue that Whitehead has never been properly understood, nor has the depth and breadth of his contribution to the human search for knowledge been assimilated by his successors. This important book effectively applies Whitehead’s philosophy to problems (...) in the interpretation of science, empirical knowledge, and nature. It develops a new account of philosophical naturalism that will contribute to the current naturalism debate in both Analytic and Continental philosophy. Auxier and Herstein also draw attention to some of the most important differences between the process theology tradition and Whitehead’s thought, arguing in favor of a Whiteheadian naturalism that is more or less independent of theological concerns. This book offers a clear and comprehensive introduction to Whitehead’s philosophy and is an essential resource for students and scholars interested in American philosophy, the philosophy of mathematics and physics, and issues associated with naturalism, explanation and radical empiricism. (shrink)

Aleksandr Dugin is sometimes called “Putin’s brain,” and there can be no question that Putin’s global strategy for expanding Russian power has followed quite precisely a strategic plan created, published, and advocated by Dugin beginning in 1996. This aggressive plan of political destabilization, economic hostage-taking, and ultimately militaristic invasions has been defended with a philosophical patchwork called “the Fourth Political Theory.” Dugin claims his “National Bolshevism” can stand alongside communism, fascism, and liberalism as a genuine contender in ontology, the philosophy (...) of history, and political philosophy; and that it is the only theory that stands in genuine opposition to neo-liberalism and corporate capitalism. I show that this view, built from a distortion of Heidegger’s idea of “human-being” as Dasein, is not a coherent philosophy or worldview. I contrast it with personalism, which has always opposed the very aspects of communism, fascism, and liberalism that Dugin opposes, and does so quite effectively and without militarism, expansionism, or the need to take the nation state as some final end of human political development. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Umberto Eco stands out in the Library of Living Philosophers series as the volume on the most interdisciplinary scholar hitherto and probably the most widely translated. The Italian philosopher's name and works are well known in the humanities, both his philosophical and literary works being translated into fifteen or more languages. Eco is a founder of modern semiotics and widely known for his work in the philosophy of language and aesthetics. He is also a leading figure in (...) the emergence of postmodern literature, and is associated with cultural and mass communication studies. His writings cover topics such as advertising, television, and children's literature as well as philosophical questions bearing on truth, reality, cognition, language, and literature. The critical essays in this volume cover the full range of this output. This book has wide appeal not only because of its interdisciplinary nature but also because of Eco's famous "high and low" approach, which is deeply scholarly in conception and very accessible in outcome. The short essay "Why Philosophy?" included in the volume is exemplary in this regard: it will appeal to scholars for its wit and to high school students for its intelligibility. (shrink)

The authors of this collection argue that all philosophy is really philosophy of culture and that through it we can live more meaningful, flourishing, and wisely guided lives.

BOOK REVIEWS 3~3 reaction to them into account. The actual historical dialectic involving Moore, Mal- colm, and Wittgenstein is a good deal more complicated, and more interesting, than the story told here by Stroll. Moving on to Stroll's discussion of Wittgenstein, I should now acknowledge that, so far as I can judge, Stroll offers a largely reliable account of On Certainty. In particular, in the best chapter of the book, on "Wittgenstein's Foundationalism," he makes a convincing case for the view (...) that Wittgenstein, unlike Moore, separates propositional knowledge from the kind of "non-propositional" certainty concerning what "stands fast" for us and which is primarily evinced in our ways of acting. What is less clear to me is just what kind of response to sceptical arguments this amounts to: Stroll says that although at some points Wittgenstein is prepared to countenance, in a relativist spirit which closely adjoins scepticism, radical changes in what is thus cer- tain, by and large towards the end of On Certainty Wittgenstein advances an "absolut- ist" position which rules out such changes. But if this is so , we surely need some arguments why it has to be so. But much here depends on the broader context within which Wittgenstein's position is developed and discussed. Despite noting Wittgenstein's invocation of the conception of man as a "primitive.. (shrink)