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
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."
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.
This new approach to Josiah Royce shows one of American philosophy's brightest minds in action for today's readers. Although Royce was one of the towering figures of American pragmatism, his thought is often considered in the wake of his more famous peers. Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley brings fresh perspective to Royce's ideas and clarifies his individual philosophical vision. Kegley foregrounds Royce's concern with contemporary public issues and ethics, focusing in particular on how he addresses long-standing problems such as race, religion, community, the dangers of mass media, mass culture, and blatant individualistic capitalism. She offers a deep and fruitful philosophical exploration of Royce's ideas on conflict resolution, memory, self-identity, and self-development. Kegley's keen understanding and appreciation of Royce reintroduces him to a new generation of scholars and students.
In the spirit of the mega-selling On Bullshit, philosopher Aaron James presents a theory of the asshole that is both intellectually provocative and existentially necessary. What does it mean for someone to be an asshole? The answer is not obvious, despite the fact that we are often personally stuck dealing with people for whom there is no better name. Try as we might to avoid them, assholes are found everywhere—at work, at home, on the road, and in the public sphere. Encountering one causes great difficulty and personal strain, especially because we often cannot understand why exactly someone should be acting like that. Asshole management begins with asshole understanding. Much as Machiavelli illuminated political strategy for princes, this book finally gives us the concepts to think or say why assholes disturb us so, and explains why such people seem part of the human social condition, especially in an age of raging narcissism and unbridled capitalism. These concepts are also practically useful, as understanding the asshole we are stuck with helps us think constructively about how to handle problems he (and they are mostly all men) presents. We get a better sense of when the asshole is best resisted, and when he is best ignored—a better sense of what is, and what is not, worth fighting for.
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.
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.
A new edition of the bestselling classic – published with a special introduction to mark its 10th anniversary This pioneering account sets out to understand the structure of the human brain – the place where mind meets matter. Until recently, the left hemisphere of our brain has been seen as the ‘rational’ side, the superior partner to the right. But is this distinction true? Drawing on a vast body of experimental research, Iain McGilchrist argues while our left brain makes for a wonderful servant, it is a very poor master. As he shows, it is the right side which is the more reliable and insightful. Without it, our world would be mechanistic – stripped of depth, colour and value.
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.