In Portraits of American Philosophy eight of America’s leading philosophers offer autobiographical narratives, reminding us that the life of a scholar is both a personal struggle and an adventure in ideas. Selected from the prestigious John Dewey Lectures, these reminiscences provide personal perspectives on how a generation of scholars faced barriers built on prejudices of religion, race, gender, and sexual orientation, while being affected by the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and feminism. Also explored are the major themes of post-World War II American philosophy, including the temporary dominance of logical positivism and then ordinary language philosophy; the animus between some supporters of the so-called analytic and Continental traditions; new approaches to a variety of subfields; and a deepened understanding of how the history of philosophy can be enriched through concentration on textual and contextual study. These unique remembrances of people, institutions, and issues not only chart the history of recent American philosophy but also present incisive accounts of the trajectory of American intellectual life as seen through the eyes of some of its most influential thinkers.

Product Description: We live in a time when we are overwhelmed with talk and images ofviolence. Whether on television, the internet, films or the videoscreen, we can’t escape representations of actual orfictional violence - another murder, another killing spree in ahigh school or movie theatre, another action movie filled withimages of violence...read more

Product Description: The first comprehensive collection of the work of Richard Rorty(1931-2007), The Rorty Reader brings together the influentialAmerican philosopher’s essential essays from over fourdecades of writings.  Offers a comprehensive introduction to Richard Rorty's life andbody of workBrings key essays published across many volumes and journalsinto one collection, including selections from his final volume ofphilosophical papers, Philosophy as Cultural Politics (2007))Contains the previously unpublished (in English) essay,“Redemption from Egotism”Includes in-depth interviews, and several revealingautobiographical piecesRepresents the fullest portrait available today onRorty’s relationship with American pragmatism and thetrajectory of his though...read more

Since 9/11 politicians, preachers, conservatives and the media are all speaking about evil. In the past the dicourse about evil in our religious, philosophic and literary traditions has provoked thinking, questioning and inquiry. But today the appeal to evil is being used as a political tool to obscure compex issues, block serious thinking and stifle public discussion and debate.We are now confronting a clash of mentalities, not a clash of civilisations. One mentality is drawn to absolutes, moral certainties, and simplistic dichotomies of good and evil. The other seriously questions an appeal to absolutes in politics and criticizes the simplistic division of the world into the forces of evil and the forces of good.In The Abuse of Evil Bernstein challenges the claim that without an appeal to absolutes, we lack the grounds for acting decisively in fighting our enemies. The post 9/11 abuse of evil corrupts both democratic politics and religion. The stakes are high in this clash of mentalities in shaping how we think and act in the world today - and in the future.

Can Israel be both Jewish and democratic?Transformative Justice, Leora Bilsky's landmark study of Israeli political trials, poses this deceptively simple question. The four trials that she analyzes focus on identity, the nature of pluralism, human rights, and the rule of law-issues whose importance extends far beyond Israel's borders. Drawing on the latest work in philosophy, law, history, and rhetoric, Bilsky exposes the many narratives that compete in a political trial and demonstrates how Israel's history of social and ideological conflicts in the courtroom offers us a rare opportunity to understand the meaning of political trials. The result is a bold new perspective on the politics of justice and its complex relationship to the values of liberalism.Leora Bilsky is Professor of Law, Tel Aviv University.

The work of Richard J. Bernstein has achieved a groundbreaking synthesis of the analytical and continental modes of thought. Countering the highly technical metaphysical and epistemological puzzles of analytic philosophy in the early 1960s, Bernstein offered a model of philosophy in a democratic society as the work of the engaged public intellectual. Working within the tradition of American pragmatism, he also changed that tradition by opening it to the international intellectual currents of phenomenology, deconstructionism, and critical theory. These essays by leading philosophers and social thinkers pay tribute to Bernstein and reflect the themes that have engaged him throughout his career. Pragmatism, Critique, Judgment opens with a group of essays that examine the place of philosophy in a democratic society; included in this section are Richard Rorty's exploration of the legacy of American pragmatism and Jürgen Habermas's reconsideration of ethics in philosophy. The essays in the second section examine postpositivist social critique and include Jacques Derrida's consideration of the philosophical paradoxes of the death penalty. The third group of essays considers the theme of radical evil, and includes discussions of Bernstein's nuanced reading of Hannah Arendt. The book ends with a biographical essay based in part on a series of conversations with Bernstein himself.

Product Description: At present, there is an enormous gulf between the visibility of evil and the paucity of our intellectual resources for coming to grips with it. We have been flooded with images of death camps, terrorist attacks and horrendous human suffering...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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This important new title by Richard J. Bernstein presents a detailed examination of Freud's last book, Moses and Monotheism. Bernstein argues convincingly that this frequently vilified and dismissed book is one of Freud's most important works. It is in Moses and Monotheism that Freud answers the question that obsessed him: what is the essence of the Jewish people? Bernstein goes on to show how Freud developed a new interpretation of the concept of a religious tradition--an interpretation that is applicable to both Judaism and Christianity. (view table of contents)

Hannah Arendt (1906­ 1975) was one of the most original and interesting political thinkers of the twentieth century. In this new interpretation of her career, philosopher Richard Bernstein situates Arendt historically as an engaged Jewish intellectual and explores the range of her thinking from the perspective of her continuing confrontation with "the Jewish question." Bernstein argues that many themes that emerged in the course of Arendt's attempts to understand specifically Jewish issues shaped her thinking about politics in general and the life of the mind. By exploring pivotal events of her life story ­ her arrest and subsequent emigration from Germany in 1933, her precarious existence in Paris as a stateless Jew working for Zionist organizations, her internment at Gurs and her subsequent escape, and finally her flight from Europe in 1941 ­ he shows how personal experiences and her responses to them oriented her thinking.

The argument of this work is that the modernity/postmodernity debate should be understood as a 'Stimmung' or a 'mood' which exerts influence on current thinking. The author examines the ethical-political views of such thinkers as Heidegger, Derrida, Habermas and Rorty.

All of these essays focus on the concept of modernity in the philosophical work of Jürgen Habermas - an ambitious and carefully argued intellectual project that invites, indeed demands, rigorous scrutiny. Following an introductory overview of Habermas's work by Richard Bernstein, Albrecht Wellmer's essay places the philosopher within the tradition of Hegel, Marx, Weber, and Critical Theory. Martin Jay discusses Habermas's views on art and aesthetics, and Joel Whitebook examines his interpretations of Freud and psychoanalysis, Anthony Giddens offers a critical reading of Habermas's major work, The Theory of Communicative Action. Richard Rorty criticizes the whole thrust of his program by way of a comparison with the work of the French philosopher of postmodernity, Jean-Francois Lyotard. And Thomas McCarthy concentrates on the question of the selectivity of rationalization processes in the modern age. Habermas himself has three contributions - on Marcuse, on neoconservativism, and a reply to the other essayists. Richard J. Bernstein is T. Wistar Brown Professor of Philosophy at Haverford College. He was editor of the journal Praxis International, in which these essays recently appeared. Habermas and Modernity is included in the series Studies in contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy.

Philosophical Profiles brings together ten important essays by Richard Berstein. Each focuses on the work of a thinker or group of thinkers at the center of contemporary developments in philosophy, including Hannah Arendt, John Dewey, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jurgen Habermas, G.W.F. Hegel, Alasdair MacIntyre, Herbert Marcuse, and Richard Rorty.

Product Description: Recognized as America's most original philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) was a practicing scientist, a logician, and a student of medieval philosophy and the history of science.