Essays in Honor of Burleigh Wilkins

Essays in Honor of Burleigh Wilkins PDF Author: Aleksandar Jokić
Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Fourteen essays by contemporary philosophers assess Wilkins' (philosophy, University of California, Santa Barbara) work on the philosophy of history, political philosophy, applied ethics, the philosophy of law, and theories of justice. Questions relating to collective guilt and collective responsibility are given a prominent place. Wilkins responds to his critics in two essays. An intellectual autobiography is also included. No index. c. Book News Inc.

Essays in Honor of Burleigh Wilkins

Essays in Honor of Burleigh Wilkins PDF Author: Aleksandar Jokić
Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Get Book Here

Book Description
Fourteen essays by contemporary philosophers assess Wilkins' (philosophy, University of California, Santa Barbara) work on the philosophy of history, political philosophy, applied ethics, the philosophy of law, and theories of justice. Questions relating to collective guilt and collective responsibility are given a prominent place. Wilkins responds to his critics in two essays. An intellectual autobiography is also included. No index. c. Book News Inc.

Socializing Metaphysics

Socializing Metaphysics PDF Author: Frederick Schmitt
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 0585466653
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
Human life is conducted within a network of social relations, social groups, and societies. Grasping the implications of that fact starts with understanding social metaphysics. Social metaphysics provides a foundation for social theory, as well as for social epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, action theory, ethics, and political philosophy. This volume will interest anyone concerned with mind, action, or the foundations of social theory. Socializing Metaphysics supplies diverse answers, from a broad array of voices, to the basic questions of social metaphysics. What is it for human beings to stand in social relations or form social groups? Do these relations and groups bring about something above and beyond the individuals involved? Is there any sense to the notion of a human being apart from social relations? How can an individual achieve autonomy within a society? In what sense are human kinds like race and gender socially constructed? The answers are found within.

Historical Judgement

Historical Judgement PDF Author: Jonathan Gorman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317493125
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
The historical profession is not noted for examining its own methodologies. Indeed, most historians are averse to historical theory. In "Historical Judgement" Jonathan Gorman's response to this state of affairs is to argue that if we want to characterize a discipline, we need to look to persons who successfully occupy the role of being practitioners of that discipline. So to model historiography we must do so from the views of historians. Gorman begins by showing what it is to model a discipline by using recent philosophy of law and philosophy of science. There are different models at work, whose rivalry and resolution are to be historically understood. With this approach in place he is able to develop the history of historiography and explore the character of historiography as presented by historians. He reveals that historians conform to various norms - that historians now and in the past have agreed and disagreed about the same set of interrelated matters: truth-telling, moral judgement and the synthesis of facts - and it is this internal understanding that we need to recover if we are to arrive at a correct characterization of the discipline of historiography. Demonstrating how the practice of historiography requires choices and therefore the exercise of judgement, Gorman is able to show that in their making of judgements historians enjoy the immense benefit of hindsight. He shows how, in reflecting on their own discipline, historians have typically failed to attend adequately to the history of historiography, neglecting to situate previous historians within their historical contexts, or to pay adequate attention to the fact that present historians, too, are within a context that will change. In addition, Gorman's approach, which emphasizes the power and necessity of choice, and which rests on the pragmatic holistic empiricism of Quine, shows postmodernism not to be the threat that some historians feel it to be, indeed, it is shown to be a radical form of empiricism. Gorman shows how the historical enterprise may be established in our factual and moral understanding in the light of our choices and commitments to a shared world. "Historical Judgement" is an original and important contribution to the philosophy of history. By bringing together the ideas of historians and philosophers, Gorman presents a much more practitioner-focused examination of the discipline of history, one that will, hopefully, encourage historians to think more about the nature of what they do.

How Terrorism Is Wrong

How Terrorism Is Wrong PDF Author: Virginia Held
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190454229
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
What is terrorism? How is it different from other kinds of political violence? Why exactly is it wrong? Why is war often thought capable of being justified? On what grounds should we judge when the use of violence is morally acceptable? It is often thought that using violence to uphold and enforce the rule of law can be justified, that violence used in self-defense is acceptable, and that some liberation movements can be excused for using violence--but that terrorism is always wrong. How persuasive are these arguments, and on what bases should we judge them? How Terrorism is Wrong collects articles by Virginia Held along with much new material. It offers a moral assessment of various forms of political violence, with terrorism the focus of much of the discussion. Here and throughout, Held examines possible causes discussed, including the connection between terrorism and humiliation. Held also considers military intervention, conventional war, intervention to protect human rights, violence to prevent political change, and the status and requirements of international law. She looks at the cases of Rwanda, Kosovo, Iraq, and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Finally, she explores questions of who has legitimate authority to engage in justifiable uses of violence, whether groups can be responsible for ethnic violence, and how the media should cover terrorism. Held discusses appropriate ways of engaging in moral evaluation and improving our moral recommendations concerning the uses of violence. Just war theory has been developed for violence between the military forces of conflicting states, but much contemporary political violence is not of this kind. Held considers the guidance offered by such traditional moral theories as Kantian ethics and utilitarianism, and also examines what the newer approach of the ethics of care can contribute to our evaluations of violence. Care is obviously antithetical to violence since violence destroys what care takes pains to build; but the ethics of care recognizes that violence is not likely to disappear from human affairs, and can offer realistic understandings of how best to reduce it.

Life in Groups

Life in Groups PDF Author: Margaret Gilbert
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019266283X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
Life in Groups: How We Think, Feel, and Act Together develops and applies the author's perspective on topics she relates to joint commitment. This kind of commitment unifies those who participate in it, guides their actions going forward, and determines their relations to one another in important ways. In particular, it grounds in each of the parties a set of rights and obligations of a central kind. This volume contains thirteen essays, together with a substantial introduction, which serves both to explain joint commitment for those unfamiliar with it and to advance discussion in light of some questions it has prompted, and a reflective conclusion. The essays range over collective beliefs and intentions; rational choice and collective preference; group lies and corporate misbehavior; remorse and other emotions in a group context; rights, obligations, and freedom.

Joint Commitment

Joint Commitment PDF Author: Margaret Gilbert
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190251956
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
This new essay collection by distinguished philosopher Margaret Gilbert provides a richly textured argument for the importance of joint commitment in our personal and public lives. Topics covered by these diverse essays range from marital love to patriotism, from promissory obligation to the unity of the European Union.

Bibliography of Sources on the Region of Former Yugoslavia Volume III

Bibliography of Sources on the Region of Former Yugoslavia Volume III PDF Author: Rusko Matuli?
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1493190784
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description


Rights and Reason

Rights and Reason PDF Author: Jonathan Gorman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317489349
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
In "Rights and Reason", Jonathan Gorman sets discussion of the 'rights debate' within a wide-ranging philosophical and historical framework. Drawing on positions in epistemology, metaphysics and the theory of human nature as well as on the ideas of canonical thinkers, Gorman provides an introduction to the philosophy of rights that is firmly grounded in the history of philosophy as well as the concerns of contemporary political and legal philosophy. The book gives readers a clear sense that, just as there are arguments about the content of rights, and just as there are myriad claims to rights, so there are pluralities of theories of rights that offer some understanding of the moral and legal realm and of the place rights may hold within it. Gorman argues that in a pluralist context of inconsistent rights we require pragmatic procedures rather than universal principles of justice to resolve conflicting claims.

Whose American Revolution Was It?

Whose American Revolution Was It? PDF Author: Alfred F. Young
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814789129
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
The meaning of the American Revolution has always been a much contested question, and asking it is particularly important today: the standard, easily digested narrative puts the Founding Fathers at the head of a unified movement, failing to acknowledge the deep divisions in Revolutionary-era society and the many different historical interpretations that have followed. Whose American Revolution Was It? speaks both to the ways diverse groups of Americans who lived through the Revolution might have answered that question and to the different ways historians through the decades have interpreted the Revolution for our own time. As the only volume to offer an accessible and sweeping discussion of the period's historiography and its historians, Whose American Revolution Was It? is an essential reference for anyone studying early American history. The first section, by Alfred F. Young, begins in 1925 with historian J. Franklin Jameson and takes the reader through the successive schools of interpretation up to the 1990s. The second section, by Gregory H. Nobles, focuses primarily on the ways present-day historians have expanded our understanding of the broader social history of the Revolution, bringing onto the stage farmers and artisans, who made up the majority of white men, as well as African Americans, Native Americans, and women of all social classes.

Mystic Chords of Memory

Mystic Chords of Memory PDF Author: Michael Kammen
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0679741771
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 879

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Book Description
Mystic Chords of Memory "Illustrated with hundreds of well-chosen anecdotes and minute observations . . . Kammen is a demon researcher who seems to have mined his nuggets from the entire corpus of American cultural history. . . . Insightful and sardonic."—Washington Post Book World In this groundbreaking, panoramic work of American cultural history, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Machine That Would Go of Itself examines a central paradox of our national identity. How did "the land of the future" acquire a past? And to what extent has our collective memory of that past—as embodied in our traditions—been distorted, or even manufactured? Ranging from John Adams to Ronald Reagan, from the origins of Independence Day celebrations to the controversies surrounding the Vietnam War Memorial, from the Daughters of the American Revolution to immigrant associations, and filled with incisive analyses of such phenonema as Americana and its collectors, "historic" villages and Disneyland, Mystic Chords of Memory is a brilliant, immensely readable, and enormously important book. "Fascinating . . . a subtle and teeming narrative . . . masterly."—Time "This is a big, ambitious book, and Kammen pulls it off admirably. . . . [He] brings a prodigious mind and much scholarly rigor to his task. . . . An important book—and a revealing look at how Americans look at themselves."—Milwaukee Journal