Preface and Postscript Combining a Preface with a Postscript seems a particularly apposite way to introduce (and conclude) a collection of essays on ...

A provocative critique of Western attitudes about the Orient, this history examines the ways in which the West has discovered, invented, and sought to control the East from the 1700s to the present.

When we watch movies, or are tricked by a trompe-l'oeil painting, we seem to be visually representing possible worlds; often non-actual possible worlds. This suggests that we really can visually represent possible worlds. The suggested claim is refined and developed here into a theory of visual experience that holds that all visual experiences, both veridical and non-veridical, represent possible worlds, many of which are non-actual.

At this point I should say something about one of the frequent criticisms addressed to me, and to which I have always wanted to respond, that in the process of characterizing the production of Europe’s inferior Others, my work is only negative polemic which does not advance a new epistemological approach or method, and expresses only desperation at the possibility of ever dealing seriously with other cultures. These criticisms are related to the matters I’ve been discussing so far, and while (...) I have no desire to unleash a point-by-point refutation of my critics, I do want to respond in a way that is intellectually pertinent to the topic at hand.What I took myself to be undertaking in Orientalism was an adversarial critique not only of the field’s perspective and political economy, but also of the sociocultural situation that makes its discourse both so possible and so sustainable. Epistemologies, discourses, and methods like Orientalism are scarcely worth the name if they are reductively characterized as objects like shoes, patched when worn out, discarded and replaced with new objects when old and unfixable. The archival dignity, institutional authority, and patriarchal longevity of Orientalism should be taken seriously because in the aggregate these traits function as a worldview with considerable political force not easily brushed away as so much epistemology. Thus Orientalism in my view is a structure erected in the thick of an imperial contest whose dominant wing it represented and elaborated not only as scholarship but as a partisan ideology. Yet Orientalism hid the contest beneath its scholarly and aesthetic idioms. These things are what I was trying to show, in addition to arguing that there is no discipline, no structure of knowledge, no institution or epistemology that can or has ever stood free of the various sociocultural, historical, and political formations that give epochs their peculiar individuality. Edward W. Said is Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. His most recent contribution to Critical Inquiry is “An Ideology of Difference”. (shrink)

The book addresses George Santayana’s philosophy of religion and its basis in his overall philosophical project with an exploration of some phenomenological aspects of his approach and his potential influence on contemporary religious thought. Emphasis is placed upon his Roman Catholic and Greek influences and his constructionist viewpoint toward Catholic symbols and dogma.

This article makes an argument for Atlas Shrugged as a highly unified and integrated novel. All of the sections of the paper explain how integration and unity are embodied in Atlas Shrugged. Part one discusses the philosophical and literary structure of Rand’s masterpiece. The next section is concerned with issues of political economy. Section three then examines Rand’s techniques of characterization and character development as demonstrated in Atlas Shrugged. The following part analyzes the philosophical speeches. The final major part considers (...) Atlas Shrugged as a means for social change. The conclusion then discusses Atlas Shrugged as the manifestation of a fully-integrated philosophical novel. (shrink)

At one point Fish says that a profession produces no “real” commodity but offers only a service. But surely the increasing reification of services and even of knowledge has made them a commodity as well. And indeed the logical extension of Fish’s position on professionalism is not that it is something done or lived but something produced and reproduced, albeit with redistributed and redeployed values. What those are, Fish doesn’t say. Then again he makes the rather telling remarks that he (...) is “turning everything into professionalism” —an instance of overstating and overinsisting at a moment when what he is really arguing for can neither be formulated nor defended clearly. To turn “everything” into professionalism is to strip professionalism of any meaning at all. For until one can define professionalism—and the particular values associated with it—there is very little value in going on about the incoherencies of antiprofessionalism. Fish resorts to the reductionist attitude of telling us that professionalism is what is, and whatever is, is more or less therefore right, which by only the slightest extension of its logic is a view no less applicable to antiprofessionalism.On the other hand, Fish does say that the profession has changed, that new ways of doing things have emerged, that values are contested within and without the profession. Those kinds of observations, however, have to be pursued, made me more concrete, put in specific historical contexts, one of which is the fact that professions are not natural objects but concrete, political, economic, and social formations playing very defined, although sometimes barely visible, roles. Unfortunately, Fish commits the lobbyist-s error by obscuring and being blind to the sociopolitical actualities of what he lobbies for even as he defends its existence. Thus when Fish alleges that the reason most literary professionals “exist in a shamefaced relationship with the machinery that enables their labors” is because of their damaging antiprofessionalism , he is making an observation whose form is assertive but whose sense is tautological since he neither defines the professional and professionalism nor specifies “machinery” and “labors” with any precision at all. For if you take the extraordinary step of reducing everything to professionalism and institutionalism as Fish does, then the very possibility of talking about the profession with any intelligibility is negated. Few would dispute Fish’s important point, that all interpretive and social situations are in fact already grounded in a context, in institutions, communities, and so forth. But there is a very great difference between making that claim and going on to say that so far as the literary profession is concerned, “the profession” is the context to which “everything” can be related. Edward W. Said’s most recent work is The World, the Text, and the Critic. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are “The Problem of Textuality: Two Exemplary Positions” and “Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies, and Community”. (shrink)

Perceptual experience is often said to be transparent; that is, when we have a perceptual experience we seem to be aware of properties of the objects around us, and never seem to be aware of properties of the experience itself. This is a introspective fact. It is also often said that we can infer a metaphysical fact from this introspective fact, e.g. a fact about the nature of perceptual experience. A transparency theory fills in the details for these two facts, (...) and bridges the gap between them. We have three aims: to scrutinize Michael Tye’s transparency theory :137–151, 2002; Consciousness revisited: materialism without phenomenal concepts, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2009; Philos Stud 170:39–57, 2014a), introduce a new transparency theory, and advance a meta-theoretical hypothesis about the interest, and import, of transparency theories. (shrink)

Ayn Rand wrote and lectured on economic concepts and topics. This volume addresses the economic and business aspects of her writings. The authors of this anthology are from a variety of fields and all of them are enthusiastic supporters of her ideas.

Aesop's Fables With the possible exception of the New Testament, no works written in Greek are more widespread and better known than Aesop’s Fables. For at least 2500 years they have been teaching people of all ages and every social status lessons how to choose correct actions and the likely consequences of choosing incorrect actions. … Continue reading Aesop's Fables →.

Research with predominately minority, urban students has documented an educational “gender gap,” where girls tend to be more likely to go to college, make higher grades, and aspire to higher status occupations than boys. We know less, however, about inequality, gender, and schooling in rural contexts. Does a similar gap emerge among the rural poor? How does gender shape the educational experiences of rural students? This article explores these questions by drawing on participant observation and student interviews at a predominately (...) white and low-income rural high school. I find a substantial gap favoring girls in this context, and I analyze how understandings of masculinity shaped schooling using the theory of hegemonic masculinity. The findings suggest that boys' underachievement is actually rooted in masculine dominance and related to particular constructions of gender and social class. (shrink)

Derrida and Foucault are opposed to each other on a number of grounds, and perhaps the one specially singled out in Foucault's attack on Derrida—that Derrida is concerned only with "reading" a text and that a text is nothing more than the "traces" found there by the reader—would be the appropriate one to begin with here.1 According to Foucault, if the text is important for Derrida because its real situation is literally an abysmally textual element, l'écriture en abîme with which (...) criticism so far has been unable really to deal,2 then for Foucault the text is important because it inhabits an element of power with a decisive claim on actuality, even though that power is invisible or implied. Derrida's criticism therefore moves us into the text, Foucault's in and out of it. · 1. Michel Foucault's attack on Derrida is to be found in an appendix to the later version of Folie et déraison: Historie de la folie à l'âge classique , pp. 583-602; the earlier edition has been translated into English: Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. Richard Howard .· 2. Jacques Derrida, La Dissémination , p. 297. Edward W. Said, Parr Professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University, is the author of Orientalism and The Question of Palestine, along with numerous publications on literature, politics, and culture; his Beginnings: Intention and Method received the first annual Lionel Trilling Memorial Award. "The Problem of Textuality" will appear in a slightly different form in his Criticism between Culture and System. (shrink)

Eamonn Butler’s Ayn Rand: An Introduction is a short, well-organized, and easy-to-read guide to Ayn Rand’s key ideas. This primer focuses on the essentials, avoids academic details, and is structured around the major elements of her philosophy of Objectivism. Butler’s book is a fine, brief introduction to Rand’s thought.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Widely hailed as a universal genius, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was one of the most important thinkers of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. A polymath and one of the founders of calculus, Leibniz is best known philosophically for his metaphysical idealism; his theory that reality is composed of spiritual, non-interacting … Continue reading Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm →.

The purpose of this article is to discuss the several ways in which Atlas Shrugged is related to social change. It explains both how characters such as entrepreneurs and strikers introduce change in the novel as well as how Atlas Shrugged itself can be employed as a tool for bringing about change in the real world. The potential effects of the novel on readers are examined, as are the efforts of social movements that have embraced and incorporated the ideas found (...) therein into their own philosophy. (shrink)

If Hume is considered cosmopolitan in his ethics at all, he is said to be so through his anti-mercantilist approach to commerce. Prevailing commercial interpretations attribute to Hume a cosmopolitanism that is best described as instrumental and supervenient. I argue that Hume’s principles lead to a cosmopolitan ethic that is more demanding than commercial interpretations recognize. Hume’s cosmopolitanism is more than merely supervenient and its instrumentality is such that cosmopolitan regard becomes inseparable from healthy patriotic concern. I show sympathy and (...) duty, not merely justice, central to Hume’s cosmopolitanism and address how Hume’s moderate cosmopolitanism might be enacted in society. I suggest Hume’s view can contribute to contemporary cosmopolitan discourse, aiding both those forms with which it is consonant and the practical ends of otherwise opposed, Kantian forms. (shrink)