Philosophy, History and Social Action

Philosophy, History and Social Action PDF Author: S. Hook
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400928734
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 491

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Book Description
Two articles by Lewis Feuer caught my attention in the '40s when 1 was wondering, asa student physicist, about the relations of physics to philosophy and to the world in turmoil. One was his essay on 'The Development of Logical Empiricism' (1941), and the other his critical review of Philipp Frank's biography of Einstein, 'Philosophy and the Theory of Relativity' (1947). How extraordinary it was to find so intelligent, independent, critical, and humane a mind; and furthermore he went further, as I soon realized when I looked for his name on other publications. I recall arguing with myself over his exploration of 'Indeterminacy and Economic Development' (1948), and even more when I read his 'Dialectical Materialism and Soviet Science' (1949). More papers, and then the fascinating, sometimes irritating, always insightful, books. His monograph on Psychoanalysis and Ethics 1955, the beautiful sociological and humanist study of Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism (1958), his essays on 'The Social Roots of Einstein's Theory of Relativity' (1971) together with the book on Einstein and the Genera tions of Science (1974), the splendid reader from the works of Marx and Engels, Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy (1959) which was a major text of the '60s, the stimulating essays on the social formation which seems to have been required for a modern scientific movement to develop, set forth most convincingly in The Scientific Intellectual (1963).

Philosophy, History and Social Action

Philosophy, History and Social Action PDF Author: S. Hook
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400928734
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 491

Get Book Here

Book Description
Two articles by Lewis Feuer caught my attention in the '40s when 1 was wondering, asa student physicist, about the relations of physics to philosophy and to the world in turmoil. One was his essay on 'The Development of Logical Empiricism' (1941), and the other his critical review of Philipp Frank's biography of Einstein, 'Philosophy and the Theory of Relativity' (1947). How extraordinary it was to find so intelligent, independent, critical, and humane a mind; and furthermore he went further, as I soon realized when I looked for his name on other publications. I recall arguing with myself over his exploration of 'Indeterminacy and Economic Development' (1948), and even more when I read his 'Dialectical Materialism and Soviet Science' (1949). More papers, and then the fascinating, sometimes irritating, always insightful, books. His monograph on Psychoanalysis and Ethics 1955, the beautiful sociological and humanist study of Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism (1958), his essays on 'The Social Roots of Einstein's Theory of Relativity' (1971) together with the book on Einstein and the Genera tions of Science (1974), the splendid reader from the works of Marx and Engels, Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy (1959) which was a major text of the '60s, the stimulating essays on the social formation which seems to have been required for a modern scientific movement to develop, set forth most convincingly in The Scientific Intellectual (1963).

The Explanation of Social Action

The Explanation of Social Action PDF Author: John Levi Martin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199773440
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
The Explanation of Social Action is a sustained critique of the conventional understanding of what it means to "explain" something in the social sciences. It makes the strong argument that the traditional understanding involves asking questions that have no clear foundation and provoke an unnecessary tension between lay and expert vocabularies. Drawing on the history and philosophy of the social sciences, John Levi Martin exposes the root of the problem as an attempt to counterpose two radically different types of answers to the question of why someone did a certain thing: first person and third person responses. The tendency is epitomized by attempts to explain human action in "causal" terms. This "causality" has little to do with reality and instead involves the creation and validation of abstract statements that almost no social scientist would defend literally. This substitution of analysts' imaginations over actors' realities results from an intellectual history wherein social scientists began to distrust the self-understanding of actors in favor of fundamentally anti-democratic epistemologies. These were rooted most defensibly in a general understanding of an epistemic hiatus in social knowledge and least defensibly in the importation of practices of truth production from the hierarchical setting of institutions for the insane. Martin, instead of assuming that there is something fundamentally arbitrary about the cognitive schemes of actors, focuses on the nature of judgment. This implies the need for a social aesthetics, an understanding of the process whereby actors intuit intersubjectively valid qualities of complex social objects. In this thought-provoking and ambitious book, John Levi Martin argues that the most promising way forward to such a science of social aesthetics will involve a rigorous field theory.

Liberalism and Social Action

Liberalism and Social Action PDF Author: John Dewey
Publisher: Great Books in Philosophy
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 104

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Book Description
In this, one of Dewey's most accessible works, he surveys the history of liberal thought from John Locke to John Stuart Mill, in his search to find the core of liberalism for today's world. While liberals of all stripes have held to some very basic values-liberty, individuality, and the critical use of intelligence-earlier forms of liberalism restricted the state function to protecting its citizens while allowing free reign to socioeconomic forces. But, as society matures, so must liberalism as it reaches out to redefine itself in a world where government must play a role in creating an environment in which citizens can achieve their potential. Dewey's advocacy of a positive role for government-a new liberalism-nevertheless finds him rejecting radical Marxists and fascists who would use violence and revolution rather than democratic methods to aid the citizenry.

Social Action and Human Nature

Social Action and Human Nature PDF Author: Axel Honneth
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521339353
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description


History and Social Theory

History and Social Theory PDF Author: Peter Burke
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 0745634079
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Taking into account new developments since this book was first published, 'History and Social Theory' discusses topics including globalization, postcolonialism and social capital.

Ethics and Social Justice

Ethics and Social Justice PDF Author: Howard Evans Kiefer
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780873950541
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Hailed by philosopher Sidney Hook as "a landmark in the history of American philosophy," the International Philosophy Year in 1967-68 brought seventy of the Western world's most distinguished philosophers to the State University College at Brockport for a series of fourteen conferences devoted to different areas of philosophic inquiry. Contemporary Philosophic Thought, which records the original papers of these conferences in four volumes, stands not only as a major contribution to philosophy, but also as a wide survey of the range of conceptual problems that philosophers are working to solve. Vol. 1, Language, Belief, and Metaphysics, is addressed to problems of logic and language. Contributors discuss the nature of belief and present theories on the concept of the world and on identity through time. Vol. 2, Mind, Science, and History, focuses on the mind and related issues. Scientists and historians join philosophers in considering problems that bear upon their disciplines. Vol. 3, Perspectives in Education, Religion, and the Arts, discusses philosophy as related to cultural change, the changing aims of education, and religion. The philosophy of art is explored from varying viewpoints of genre, style, poetics, aesthetics, rhetoric, and communication. Vol. 4, Ethics and Social Justice, takes up moral and legal issues with essays on human rights and on philosophy as applied to practice.

An Introduction to the Philosophy of History

An Introduction to the Philosophy of History PDF Author: Michael Stanford
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0631199411
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
This book uncovers the wealth of philosophical problems that history presents, and encourages further thought on how these issues grow out of historical questions.

Spinoza's Ethics

Spinoza's Ethics PDF Author: Yitzhak Y. Melamed
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110822864X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 610

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Book Description
Spinoza's Ethics, published in 1677, is considered his greatest work and one of history's most influential philosophical treatises. This volume brings established scholars together with new voices to engage with the complex system of philosophy proposed by Spinoza in his masterpiece. Topics including identity, thought, free will, metaphysics, and reason are all addressed, as individual chapters investigate the key themes of the Ethics and combine to offer readers a fresh and thought-provoking view of the work as a whole. Written in a clear and accessible style, the volume sets out cutting-edge research that reflects, challenges, and promotes the most recent scholarly advances in the field of Spinoza studies, tackling old issues and bringing to light new subjects for debate.

Action and Interpretation

Action and Interpretation PDF Author: Christopher Hookway
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521217408
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
Whether the interpretations made by social scientists of the thoughts, utterances and actions of other people, including those from an alien culture or a different period in history, are objectively correct, whether the forms of explanation they employ conform to those of the natural sciences, and whether values have a role in arriving at the theory that delivers the interpretations, are the main questions addressed by the contributors to this volume. Of particular importance in the discussion of the issues are developments in the philosophy of language and mind. The eight essays converge on the themes of intentionality, realism and theory choice, reflecting the amount of attention being given to these matters when this book was first published in 1980. Together they make a distinguished contribution to discussion in the area and serve to underline the importance of intellectual collaboration on such discussion between philosophy and the social sciences.

Plural Action

Plural Action PDF Author: Hans Bernhard Schmid
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9048124379
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Collective Intentionality is a relatively new label for a basic social fact: the sharing of attitudes such as intentions, beliefs and emotions. This volume contributes to current research on collective intentionality by pursuing three aims. First, some of the main conceptual problems in the received literature are introduced, and a number of new insights into basic questions in the philosophy of collective intentionality are developed (part 1). Second, examples are given for the use of the analysis of collective intentionality in the theory and philosophy of the social sciences (part 2). Third, it is shown that this line of research opens up new perspectives on classical topics in the history of social philosophy and social science, and that, conversely, an inquiry into the history of ideas can lead to further refinement of our conceptual tools in the analysis of collective intentionality (part 3).