Thinking Like a Mall

Thinking Like a Mall PDF Author: Steven Vogel
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262029103
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
A provocative argument that environmental thinking would be better off if it dropped the concept of “nature” altogether and spoke instead of the built environment. Environmentalism, in theory and practice, is concerned with protecting nature. But if we have now reached “the end of nature,” as Bill McKibben and other environmental thinkers have declared, what is there left to protect? In Thinking like a Mall, Steven Vogel argues that environmental thinking would be better off if it dropped the concept of “nature” altogether and spoke instead of the “environment”—that is, the world that actually surrounds us, which is always a built world, the only one that we inhabit. We need to think not so much like a mountain (as Aldo Leopold urged) as like a mall. Shopping malls, too, are part of the environment and deserve as much serious consideration from environmental thinkers as do mountains. Vogel argues provocatively that environmental philosophy, in its ethics, should no longer draw a distinction between the natural and the artificial and, in its politics, should abandon the idea that something beyond human practices (such as “nature”) can serve as a standard determining what those practices ought to be. The appeal to nature distinct from the built environment, he contends, may be not merely unhelpful to environmental thinking but in itself harmful to that thinking. The question for environmental philosophy is not “how can we save nature?” but rather “what environment should we inhabit, and what practices should we engage in to help build it?”

After Philosophy

After Philosophy PDF Author: Kenneth Baynes
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262521130
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Book Description
After Philosophy provides an excellent framework for understanding the most important strains of current philosophical work in North America, England, France, and Germany. The selections from the work of fourteen contemporary philosophers not only display the multiplicity of approaches being pursued since the breakup of any consensus on what philosophy is, but also help to clarify this proliferation of views and to spell out today's basic options for doing, or not doing, philosophy today. With a general introduction delineating what is in dispute between the different parties to the end-of-philosophy debates, brief introductions to the thought of each author, and suggestions for further reading following each selection, After Philosophy is ideally suited for use in any course that includes an overview of the bewildering variety of contemporary approaches to philosophy.The major sections and contributors are: I. The End of Philosophy. Richard Rorty Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida. II. The Transformation of Philosophy: Systematic Proposals. Donald Davidson, Michael Dummett, Hilary Putnam, Karl-Otto Apel, Jürgen Habermas. III. The Transformation of Philosophy: Hermeneutics, Narrative, Rhetoric. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Alasdair Maclntyre, Hans Blumenberg, Charles Taylor.Kenneth Baynes is currently doing postgraduate research at the University of Frankfurt. James Bohman lectures in philosophy at Boston University, and Thomas McCarthy is a professor of philosophy at Northwestern University and the editor of the MIT Press series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought.

The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy

The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy PDF Author: Eckart Förster
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674064984
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
Kant declared that philosophy began in 1781 with his Critique of Pure Reason. In 1806 Hegel announced that philosophy had now been completed. Eckart Förster examines the reasons behind these claims and assesses the steps that led in such a short time from Kant's "(Bbeginning" to Hegel's "(Bend." He concludes that, in an unexpected yet significant sense, both Kant and Hegel were indeed right. The Twenty-Five Years of Philosophy follows the unfolding of a key idea during this exceptionally productive period: the Kantian idea that philosophy can be scientific and, consequently, can be completed. Förster's study combines historical research with philosophical insight and leads him to propose a new thesis. The development of Kant's transcendental philosophy in his three Critiques, Förster claims, resulted in a fundamental distinction between "(Bintellectual intuition" and "(Bintuitive understanding." Overlooked until now, this distinction yields two takes on how to pursue philosophy as science after Kant. One line of thought culminates in Fichte's theory of freedom (Wissenschaftslehre), while the other--and here Förster brings Goethe's significance to the fore--results in Goethe's transformation of the Kantian idea of an intuitive understanding in light of Spinoza's third kind of knowledge. Both strands are brought together in Hegel and propel his split from Schelling. Förster's work makes an original contribution to our understanding of the classical era of German philosophy--an expanding interest within the Anglophone philosophical community.

Philosophy the Day After Tomorrow

Philosophy the Day After Tomorrow PDF Author: Stanley Cavell
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674022324
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
Seeking for philosophy the same spirit and assurance conveyed by artists like Fred Astaire, Cavell presents essays exploring the meaning of grace and gesture in film and on stage, in language and in life. Critical to the renaissance in American thought Cavell hopes to provoke is the recognition of the centrality of the “ordinary” to American life.

The End of Philosophy

The End of Philosophy PDF Author: Martin Heidegger
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226323831
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
Joan Stambaugh's translations of the works of Heidegger, accomplished with his guidance, have made key aspects of his thought and philosophy accessible to readers of English for many years. This collection, writes Stambaugh, contains Heidegger's attempt "to show the history of Being as metaphysics," combining three chapters from the philosopher's Nietzsche ("Metaphysics as a History of Being," "Sketches for a History of Being as Metaphysics," and "Recollection in Metaphysics") with a selection from Vorträge und Aufsätze ("Overcoming Metaphysics").

The End of Philosophy of Religion

The End of Philosophy of Religion PDF Author: Nick Trakakis
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1847065341
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
An expert examination of the analytic-continental divide in the writing and study of philosophy of religion.

Adorno and the Ends of Philosophy

Adorno and the Ends of Philosophy PDF Author: Andrew Bowie
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 0745671594
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Theodor Adorno’s reputation as a cultural critic has been well-established for some time, but his status as a philosopher remains unclear. In Adorno and the Ends of Philosophy Andrew Bowie seeks to establish what Adorno can contribute to philosophy today. Adorno’s published texts are notably difficult and have tended to hinder his reception by a broad philosophical audience. His main influence as a philosopher when he was alive was, though, often based on his very lucid public lectures. Drawing on these lectures, both published and unpublished, Bowie argues that important recent interpretations of Hegel, and related developments in pragmatism, echo key ideas in Adorno’s thought. At the same time, Adorno’s insistence that philosophy should make the Holocaust central to the assessment of modern rationality suggests ways in which these approaches should be complemented by his preparedness to confront some of the most disturbing aspects of modern history. What emerges is a remarkably clear and engaging re-interpretation of Adorno’s thought, as well as an illuminating and original review of the state of contemporary philosophy. Adorno and the Ends of Philosophy will be indispensable to students of Adorno’s work at all levels. This compelling book is also set to ignite debate surrounding the reception of Adorno’s philosophy and bring him into the mainstream of philosophical debate at a time when the divisions between analytical and European philosophy are increasingly breaking down.

Changing the Subject

Changing the Subject PDF Author: Raymond Geuss
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674545729
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
“A history of philosophy in twelve thinkers...The whole performance combines polyglot philological rigor with supple intellectual sympathy, and it is all presented...in a spirit of fun...This bracing and approachable book [shows] that there is life in philosophy yet.” —Times Literary Supplement “Exceptionally engaging...Geuss has a remarkable knack for putting even familiar thinkers in a new light.” —Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews “Geuss is something like the consummate teacher, his analyses navigable and crystal, his guidance on point.” —Doug Phillips, Key Reporter Raymond Geuss explores the ideas of twelve philosophers who broke dramatically with prevailing wisdom, from Socrates and Plato in the ancient world to Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Adorno. The result is a striking account of some of the most innovative thinkers in Western history and an indirect manifesto for how to pursue philosophy today. Geuss cautions that philosophers’ attempts to break from convention do not necessarily make the world a better place. Montaigne’s ideas may have been benign, but the fate of those of Hobbes, Hegel, and Nietzsche has been more varied. Yet in the act of provoking people to think differently, philosophers remind us that we are not fated to live within the systems of thought we inherit.

Against Nature

Against Nature PDF Author: Steven Vogel
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791430453
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Against Nature examines the history of the concept of nature in the tradition of Critical Theory, with chapters on Lukacs, Horkheimer and Adorno, Marcuse, and Habermas. It argues that the tradition has been marked by significant difficulties with respect to that concept; that these problems are relevant to contemporary environmental philosophy as well; and that a solution to them requires taking seriously--and literally--the idea of nature as socially constructed.

Derrida After the End of Writing

Derrida After the End of Writing PDF Author: Clayton Crockett
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780823277841
Category : Political science
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
This book offers a new materialist interpretation of Derrida's later work, including his engagements with religion and politics. It argues that there is a shift from a context or background motor scheme of writing to what Derrida calls the machinic, and Catherine Malabou calls plasticity.