Focusing democratic theory on the pressing issue of punishment, Punishment, Participatory Democracy, and the Jury argues for participatory institutional designs as antidotes to the American penal state. Citizen action in institutions like the jury and restorative justice programs can foster the attunement, reflectiveness, and full-bodied communication needed as foundations for widespread civic responsibility for criminal justice.

The first English collection of the work of Albert Lautman, a major figure in philosophy of mathematics and a key influence on Badiou and Deleuze.

America is a wonderful and magnificent country that affords its citizens the broadest freedoms and the greatest prosperity in the world. But it also has its share of warts. It is embroiled in a war that many of its citizens consider unjust and even illegal. It continues to ravage the natural environment and ignore poverty both at home and abroad, and its culture is increasingly driven by materialism and consumerism. But America, for better or for worse, is still a nation (...) that we have built. So why then, asks Albert Borgmann in this most timely and urgent work, are we failing to take responsibility for it? In Real American Ethics , Borgmann asks us to reevaluate our role in the making of American values. Taking his cue from Winston Churchill—who once observed that we shape our buildings, and then our buildings shape us—Borgmann considers the power of our most enduring institutions and the condition of our present moral makeup to propose inspired new ways in which we, as ordinary citizens, can act to improve our country. This, he shows, includes everything from where we choose to live and what we spend our money on to daunting tasks like the reshaping of our cities—habits and actions that can guide us to more accomplished and virtuous lives. Using prose that is easy and direct throughout, Borgmann’s position is grounded neither by conservative nor liberal ideology, but in his understanding that he is a devoted citizen among many. In an age in which the blame game is the only game in town, this patriotic book is an eloquent reminder of the political strength we all wield when we work together. (shrink)

(K1) All knowledge of necessary propositions is a priori. (K2) All propositions known a priori are necessary. (K3) All knowledge of analytic propositions is a priori; and (K4) Some propositions known a priori are synthetic.

A response to Roberto Gargarella’s review of Punishment, Participatory Democracy, and the Jury, by Albert W. Dzur.

By turns historical, sociological and autobiographical, this book investigates racism as social pathology - a cultural disease that prevails because it allows one segment of society to empower itself at the expense of another.

Research into consciousness has now become respectable, and much has been written about it. Is consciousness the exclusive property of human beings, or can it be found also in animals? Can machines become conscious? Is consciousness an illusion, and are all mental states ultimately reducible to the movement of molecules? If consciousness is other than matter, what connection does it have with matter? These and others like them are now serious scientific questions in the West. This article discusses consciousness within (...) the frame of the following assertions: Consciousness has evolved from earlier states of awareness to be found in lower forms of life. The current scientific method is too restrictive for the study of conscience and its evolution. In particular classical logic leads scientists to ignore or reject consciousness as a legitimate field of study. Mind and matter, generalized as knowing and being, have equal status. (shrink)