Community and Loyalty in American Philosophy

Community and Loyalty in American Philosophy PDF Author: Steven A. Miller
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351336452
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
American pragmatism has always had at its heart a focus on questions of communities and ethics. This book explores the interrelated work of three thinkers influenced by the pragmatist tradition: Josiah Royce, Wilfrid Sellars, and Richard Rorty. These thinkers’ work spanned the range of twentieth-century philosophy, both historically and conceptually, but all had common concerns about how morality functions and what we can hope for in our interactions with others. Steven Miller argues that Royce, Sellars, and Rorty form a traditional line of inheritance, with the thought of each developing upon the best insights of the ones prior. Furthermore, he shows how three divergent views about the function, possibilities, and limits of moral community coalesce into a key narrative about how best we can work with and for other people, as we strive to come to think of widely different others as somehow being morally considerable as "one of us."

Community and Loyalty in American Philosophy

Community and Loyalty in American Philosophy PDF Author: Steven A. Miller
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351336452
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
American pragmatism has always had at its heart a focus on questions of communities and ethics. This book explores the interrelated work of three thinkers influenced by the pragmatist tradition: Josiah Royce, Wilfrid Sellars, and Richard Rorty. These thinkers’ work spanned the range of twentieth-century philosophy, both historically and conceptually, but all had common concerns about how morality functions and what we can hope for in our interactions with others. Steven Miller argues that Royce, Sellars, and Rorty form a traditional line of inheritance, with the thought of each developing upon the best insights of the ones prior. Furthermore, he shows how three divergent views about the function, possibilities, and limits of moral community coalesce into a key narrative about how best we can work with and for other people, as we strive to come to think of widely different others as somehow being morally considerable as "one of us."

Community and Loyalty in American Philosophy

Community and Loyalty in American Philosophy PDF Author: Steven A. Miller
Publisher: Routledge Studies in American Philosophy
ISBN: 9781138570238
Category : Philosophy, American
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction: 'We': The Dangerous Thing -- 1 The Sellarsian Ethical Framework -- 2 Josiah Royce's Philosophy of Loyalty -- 3 Richard Rorty's Quasi-Sellarsian We -- 4 On the Prospects of Redescribing Rorty Roycely -- Bibliography -- Index

The Philosophy of Loyalty

The Philosophy of Loyalty PDF Author: Josiah Royce
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ethics
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description


The Soul of Classical American Philosophy

The Soul of Classical American Philosophy PDF Author: Richard P. Mullin
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791480011
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
The Soul of Classical American Philosophy is an introduction to the thought of William James, Josiah Royce, and Charles Sanders Peirce, particularly in terms of the ethical and the spiritual. Writing for the nonspecialist in a straightforward style, Richard P. Mullin brings together the central ideas of these three key figures of classical American Pragmatism and explores their engagement with issues of truth, the meaning of self, free will, moral values, community, scientific thinking, and the relationship with the transcendent. He also addresses the growing international interest in American philosophy and sheds light on a defining movement in its history.

Time, Will, and Purpose

Time, Will, and Purpose PDF Author: Randall E. Auxier
Publisher: Open Court
ISBN: 0812698533
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
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 to retrieve the most poignant ideas, the ideas we need most in the present day, while he also offers a new framework for understanding the development of Royce’s philosophy. Auxier responds to everything that has been written about Royce, both early and recent.

Loyalty

Loyalty PDF Author: Eric Felten
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439176884
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
A witty, provocative, story-filled inquiry into the indispensable virtue of loyalty—a tricky ideal that gets tangled and compromised when loyalties collide (as they inevitably do), but a virtue the author, a prizewinning columnist for The Wall Street Journal, says is as essential as it is impossible. Felten illustrates the push and pull of loyalties— from the ancient Greeks to Facebook—with stories and scenarios in which conflicting would-be moral trump cards trap the unlucky in painful ethical dilemmas. The foundation of our greatest satisfactions in life, loyalty also proves to be the root of much misery. Can we escape the excruciating predicaments when loyalties are at loggerheads? Can we avoid betraying and being betrayed? When looking for love and friendship—the things that make life worthwhile—we are looking for loyalty. Who can we count on? And who can count on us? These are the essential (and uncomfortable) questions loyalty poses. Loyalty and betrayal are the stuff of the great stories that move us: Agamemnon, Huck Finn, Brutus, Antigone, Judas. When is loyalty right, and when does the virtue become a vice? As Felten writes in his thoughtful and entertaining book, loyalty is vexing. It forces us to choose who and what counts most in our lives—from siding with one friend over another to favoring our own children over others. It forces us to confront the conflicting claims of fidelity to country, community, company, church, and even ourselves. Loyalty demands we make decisions that define who we are.

On Loyalty

On Loyalty PDF Author: Troy A. Jollimore
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415614570
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
Loyalty is one of the most highly charged and important issues, often evoking strong feelings and actions. It is also a deceptively difficult concept to grasp. What is loyalty? Is loyalty compatible with impartiality? Are there limits to loyalty and if so, where do they lie? In aglobal era is loyalty to my country an outmoded idea? Drawing on a fascinating array of examples from Socrates' suicidal loyalty to Athens to The Remains of the Day and No Country for Old Men, Troy Jollimore expertly unravels the phenomenon of loyalty from a philosophical standpoint.

American Philosophy

American Philosophy PDF Author: John Kaag
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374713111
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
The epic wisdom contained in a lost library helps the author turn his life around John Kaag is a dispirited young philosopher at sea in his marriage and his career when he stumbles upon West Wind, a ruin of an estate in the hinterlands of New Hampshire that belonged to the eminent Harvard philosopher William Ernest Hocking. Hocking was one of the last true giants of American philosophy and a direct intellectual descendent of William James, the father of American philosophy and psychology, with whom Kaag feels a deep kinship. It is James’s question “Is life worth living?” that guides this remarkable book. The books Kaag discovers in the Hocking library are crawling with insects and full of mold. But he resolves to restore them, as he immediately recognizes their importance. Not only does the library at West Wind contain handwritten notes from Whitman and inscriptions from Frost, but there are startlingly rare first editions of Hobbes, Descartes, and Kant. As Kaag begins to catalog and read through these priceless volumes, he embarks on a thrilling journey that leads him to the life-affirming tenets of American philosophy—self-reliance, pragmatism, and transcendence—and to a brilliant young Kantian who joins him in the restoration of the Hocking books. Part intellectual history, part memoir, American Philosophy is ultimately about love, freedom, and the role that wisdom can play in turning one’s life around.

Loyalty

Loyalty PDF Author: George P. Fletcher
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198023499
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
At a time when age-old political structures are crumbling, civil strife abounds, and economic uncertainty permeates the air, loyalty offers us security in our relationships with associates, friends, and family. Yet loyalty is a suspect virtue. It is not impartial. It is not blind. It violates the principles of morality that have dominated Western thought for the last two hundred years. Loyalties are also thought to be irrational and contrary to the spirit of Capitalism. In a free market society, we are encouraged to move to the competition when we are not happy. This way of thinking has invaded our personal relationships and undermined our capacities for friendship and loyalty to those who do not serve our immediate interests. As George P. Fletcher writes, it is time for loyal bonds, born of history and experience, to prevail both over impartial morality and the self-interested thinking of the market trader. In this extended essay, George P. Fletcher offers an account of loyalty that illuminates its role in our relationships with family and friends, our ties to country, and the commitment of the religious to God and their community. Fletcher opposes the traditional view of the moral self as detached from context and history. He argues instead that loyalty, not impartial detachment, should be the central feature of our moral and political lives. Writing as a political "liberal," he claims that a commitment to country is necessary to improve the lot of the poor and disadvantaged. This commitment to country may well require greater reliance on patriotic rituals in education and a reconsideration of the Supreme Court's extending the First Amendment to protect flag burning. Given the worldwide currents of parochialism and political decentralization, the task for us, Fletcher argues, is to renew our commitment to a single nation united in its diversity. Bringing to bear his expertise as a law professor, Fletcher reasons that the legal systems should defer to existing relationships of loyalty. Familial, professional, and religious loyalties should be respected as relationships beyond the limits of the law. Thus surrogate mothers should not be forced to surrender and betray their children, spouses should not be required to testify against each other in court, parents should not be prevented from willing their property to their children, and the religiously committed should not be forced to act contrary to conscience. Yet the question remains: Aren't loyalty, and particularly patriotism, dangerously one-sided? Indeed, they are, but no more than are love and friendship. The challenge, Fletcher maintains, is to overcome the distorting effects of impartial morality and to develop a morality of loyalty properly suited to our emotional and spiritual lives. Justice has its sphere, as do loyalties. In this book, Fletcher provides the first step toward a new way of thinking that recognizes the complexity of our moral and political lives.

Josiah Royce's 1909 Pittsburgh Loyalty Lectures

Josiah Royce's 1909 Pittsburgh Loyalty Lectures PDF Author: Mathew A. Foust
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527576639
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 105

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Book Description
American philosopher Josiah Royce (1856-1916) delivered three lectures on the topic of loyalty at the Twentieth Century Club in Pittsburgh in February 1909. These lectures, “The Conflict of Loyalties,” “The Art of Loyalty,” and “Loyalty and Individuality,” are indispensable for a complete and coherent picture of the development of Royce’s philosophy of loyalty. This publication marks the first appearance of these lectures in a book, making them widely accessible to readers. Included in this volume is an Editor’s Introduction by Mathew A. Foust, a preeminent scholar of Royce’s philosophy of loyalty. Foust details the mysteries long surrounding these lectures and the clues that led to their solutions. Foust then demonstrates how the 1909 Pittsburgh Loyalty Lectures constitute a “missing link” between The Philosophy of Loyalty (1908) and subsequent works by Royce such as “Loyalty and Insight” in William James and Other Essays on the Philosophy of Life (1911), The Sources of Religious Insight (1912), The Problem of Christianity (1913), War and Insurance (1914), and The Hope of the Great Community (1916). Students and scholars of American Studies, the history of philosophy, ethics and moral philosophy, and social philosophy will find much of enduring relevance in Josiah Royce’s 1909 Pittsburgh Loyalty Lectures.