This collection of essays is dedicated to the prolific career of Paul Ricoeur. Honoring his work, this anthology addresses questions and concerns that defined Ricoeur’s.

This book is not an in-depth commentary on the Republic and so should not be read as such. Rather, it is by its author’s own account a short “interpretive guide” and “a general introduction to philosophy and political theory”. The Republic, as is known, consists of ten books. Book 1 serves as an introduction, as the character Socrates indicates later in book 2. There the problem of justice in all its complexity is outlined. The remaining nine books break up into (...) three triads: books 2–4, books 5–7, and books 8–10. The five chapters of Rice’s book closely follow this fourfold division with two minor adjustments: Rice groups book 5 with books 2–4 and revisits book 8 in his concluding chapter. (shrink)

This book presents, for the first time in English, two studies by Salvatore I. Camporeale on the fifteenth-century thinker Lorenzo Valla. Camporeale’s work offers new perspectives on Valla, in terms of both content and method.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Leibniz’s Universal Jurisprudence: Justice as the Charity of the Wise by Patrick RileySusanna GoodinPatrick Riley. Leibniz’s Universal Jurisprudence: Justice as the Charity of the Wise. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996. Pp. xiii + 338. Cloth, $39.95.Leibniz’s political views are often downplayed, if not simply ignored, by philosophers focusing on his metaphysical accounts of substance and force. That Leibniz himself does not view these two areas as distinct (...) is forcefully argued in Patrick Riley’s detailed account of Leibniz’s theory of justice. Under Riley’s presentation, Leibniz’s definition of justice as the “charity of the wise” depends crucially on both his monadology and his theodicy. And his political maneuverings, particularly with France, are dominated by this unique definition of justice.Riley begins his argument by detailing Leibniz’s objections to Descartes’s voluntarism and Hobbes’s mechanistic view of human nature and the emphasis on power as the foundation of moral truths. The central Leibnizian theme to which Riley returns repeatedly is perfection. A perfect God does not act on whim or power but on reason. Monads are created with the freedom to strive toward perfection. Love, or charity, becomes perfect by becoming universal. Justice is not, as Hobbes claimed, that which is determined to be good for the whole by an absolute power, but a love or benevolence for the whole, striving through reason for the best. Wisdom is the heart of justice, not power. And for Leibniz, wisdom is inseparable from charity. God wills to actualize the best of all possible worlds out of love and wisdom, thus, wise charity.But Leibniz’s view of justice as wise charity is not without problems, most significantly the problem of freedom. In his first chapter, “Foundations,” Riley skillfully raises this problem in the context not only of Leibniz’s political stance on justice but also in the context of his metaphysics and theodicy. It is in the second chapter, “Monadology and Justice,” that Riley does the bulk of the work relating the metaphysics with the moral-political: “... on the knowledge of substance, and in consequence of the soul, depends the knowledge of virtue and of justice” (Leibniz, as quoted in Riley, 51). Political philosophy cannot be done correctly without first acquiring an adequate and proper account of substance, something the materialist Hobbes had failed to do. But because Leibniz has so closely linked his politics with his metaphysics, the perhaps insurmountable problem of freedom in his metaphysics hounds his politics. “If there are no autonomous persons with nonillusory ‘wills’, there cannot be ‘general benevolence’—for benevolence is just [End Page 470] ‘good willing’, and Leibniz invariably equates benevolentia with caritas sapientis. Without a certain kind of will, then, wise charity cannot serve as the heart of a justice which is more than sovereign-ordained law” (61). To prevent Hobbes from ruling the day, Leibniz must, as Riley correctly notes, devise a metaphysics which allows for freedom for both God and man.And here arises the one troubling aspect of Riley’s work. He addresses the problem of freedom in Leibniz’s metaphysics, but there is no discussion of the recent work done by such scholars as Robert Adams, whose book Leibniz: Determinist, Theist, Idealist makes significant contributions on exactly this topic. Regarding Leibniz’s serpentine defense of freedom, Riley does little more than bring up the problem and comment that Leibniz had a problem which, ultimately, he seemed unable to resolve. In fact, Riley shows little appreciation for the work done by mainstream scholars in the area of Leibniz’s metaphysics. If Riley’s work centered primarily on Leibniz’s political writings this might not matter, but given that the thrust of the first part of the book is to argue that Leibniz’s political theory is not merely compatible with his metaphysics but arises out of it, so that an understanding of Leibniz’s metaphysics is essential to grasping the logic of his political views, the absence of current scholarship on the metaphysics is troubling. References in footnotes confirm that Riley had read Adams’s book, as well as The Cambridge Companion to Leibniz, which contains David Blumenfeld’s excellent... (shrink)

This article considers the current relevance of settler colonial tropes, narratives and idioms by discussing the opening section of On Settling (2012), a recently published book authored by respected political scientist Robert E. Goodin. While Goodin argues that ‘settling’ should be considered a ‘normatively defensible practice’, my critique focuses on his assumed link between ‘settling’ in general and settler colonialism in particular. The first section of this article follows the narrative of settlement that underpins Goodin’s book. The (...) second section discusses this narrative’s inherently exclusionary character, a characteristic that undermines claims to universal normative validity; while the third section appraises the language that supports it. In the fourth, conclusive, section On Settling’s apology of settler colonialism is used as a starting point for an analysis of the settler colonial present in an ‘age of unsettlement’. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Philosophy and the Language of the People: The Claims of Common Speech from Petrarch to Locke by Lodi NautaPatrick RysiewLodi Nauta. Philosophy and the Language of the People: The Claims of Common Speech from Petrarch to Locke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. 275. Hardback, $39.99.What type of language should philosophers use? Granted that such things as clarity and communicative efficacy are desiderata of a good language in (...) which to philosophize, are they best achieved by inventing a specialized language or by sticking to the common language we already possess? It might seem that using familiar terms would be among the nonnegotiable starting points in philosophical theorizing. After all, how else are we to ensure that our theories make and maintain contact with the subjects that prompted us to philosophize in the first place? On reflection, however, perhaps our common language is so beset with defects—imprecision, the encoding of various prejudices, an inability to express certain types of truths, and so on—that philosophers, like specialists in other fields, have no alternative but to devise their own technical language. So, even if we agree that philosophers should use “clean tools,” as J. L. Austin famously put it, that does not settle the question of whether they should adhere to a common language or whether such a language is ill-suited for philosophical purposes.In contemporary analytic circles, the debate just rehearsed is likely to prompt thoughts of the twentieth-century back-and-forth between those who thought that philosophical advancement required developing a logically ideal language (e.g. Russell and Frege) and those who were deeply suspicious of such a project (e.g. Austin and Wittgenstein). But then, contemporary analytic philosophy tends to be pretty ahistorical. And one of the main aims, and most welcome accomplishments, of Lodi Nauta’s Philosophy and the Language of the People is to demonstrate that this type of debate is not a recent phenomenon. In particular, Nauta’s stated goal is to increase awareness of the role that a critique of language—and, in particular, an insistence upon the need to respect common language—played in helping to bring about the erosion and eventual demise of Aristotelian-scholastic philosophy.Of course, Aristotle himself was hardly indifferent to the workings of ordinary language, drawing important lessons from how we use certain words. But neither was he averse to coining new terms when ordinary Greek fell short. The example of Aristotle thus makes it clear that, as Nauta notes (16), in adjudicating between common and technical language there is plenty of room for intermediate positions that do not simply champion one or the other. This general point notwithstanding, attempts to render Aristotle’s ideas in Latin and to capture the subtleties of various proposed additions to the Aristotelean framework historically led to significant increases in the stock of technical terms used to philosophize. With this came the growing sense that philosophy had lost contact with its subject matter and lost track of its proper aim of making sense of the world of everyday experience.As Nauta suggests (4), the concern that philosophy is just so much technical tire-spinning will be all too familiar to contemporary philosophers. Much less familiar, however, is that precisely this was the complaint of many Renaissance humanist and early modern philosophers. Hence the need for Nauta’s book: over eight central chapters—book-ended [End Page 506] by an introduction and conclusion—Nauta recounts the various ways in which an insistence upon the importance of “common language” played destructive and constructive theoretical roles in the writings of a selected range of thinkers.Chapter 1 considers early humanist critiques of scholastic jargon by Francesco Petrarch and Leonardo Bruni. Chapter 2 examines Lorenzo Valla (the subject of Nauta’s previous monograph) and his attempt to cast classical Latin as the natural common language in which learned scholarship should be conducted. Chapters 3–5 survey three humanists who built differently on Valla’s foundation—Giovanni Pontano, via a genealogical approach to language and an emphasis on its role in our affective, social, and cognitive lives; Juan Luis Vives, as part of his wider views on human culture... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 14.4 (2004) 411-425 [Access article in PDF] Vulnerability, Vulnerable Populations, and Policy Mary C. Ruof "Special justification is required for inviting vulnerable individuals to serve as research subjects and, if they are selected, the means of protecting their rights and welfare must be strictly applied."Guideline 13: Research Involving Vulnerable Persons International Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects Council for International Organizations of (...) Medical Sciences (CIOMS) and World Health Organization (WHO) Geneva, Switzerland, 2002 Within medical research and healthcare certain groups are afforded special protections and services because of their designation as vulnerable. The vulnerable require special justification to participate in human subject research in order to eliminate potential human rights abuses. The Nuremberg Code of 1947 was written in response to the extreme human subject abuses that occurred under the Nazi regime, and, although the intent of the 1947 Code was to protect human rights, rigid voluntary consent requirements deprived some individuals of the right to participate in clinical trials. Recent human research guidelines, such as the CIOMS/WHO guidelines referenced above and the guidelines referenced in Section V of this Scope Note, attempt to balance both protection from abuse in research and access to new, experimental treatments for the vulnerable.Although various protective guidelines stipulate special protections for vulnerable populations, the concept of vulnerability and consequently the criteria designating vulnerable populations remain vague. Precisely who are the vulnerable? The word "vulnerability" stems from the Latin vulnerare, "to wound." (Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary 1995). In clinical research, the term [End Page 411] vulnerable generally is applied to individuals who are unable to give informed consent or who are susceptible to coercion. The Common Rule (45 CFR 46, Subpart A) includes as vulnerable research subjects: children, prisoners, pregnant women, and persons who are handicapped, mentally disabled, economically disadvantaged, or educationally disadvantaged. Although the Common Rule specifies certain vulnerable categories, the guidelines were not intended to be exclusive, leaving open the interpretation of vulnerability.In medical research and health policy, vulnerability is an abstract concept that has concrete effects both for those labeled vulnerable and for those not. Clinical researchers, healthcare workers, ethical reviewers, and policymakers must be able to identify vulnerable subjects to establish how healthcare resources will be allocated and who will qualify for special protections and socialized benefits. Attempts to quantify vulnerability in clear, measurable ways have met little if any consensus. As Alexander Morawa (II, 2003, p. 150) states, "There is no single approach to definition of vulnerability. In fact, there is no purposeful categorisation at all."Difficulties in defining vulnerability have prompted discourse surrounding its utility as a qualifying factor in the allocation of health resources and its appropriateness as a guiding principle in bioethics. Some of the authors cited in this Scope Note argue against the labeling and categorization of vulnerable individuals and populations. "Labeling individuals as 'vulnerable' risks viewing vulnerable individuals as 'others' worthy of pity, a view rarely appreciated" (III, Danis and Patrick 2002, p. 320). The categories of vulnerable groups listed under the Common Rule have been the source of controversy, "for example, many find the suggestion that pregnant women are vulnerable to be quite sexist" (IV, DeBruin 2001, p. 7). Instead of creating categories of vulnerable populations, would it not be better to derive an account of just treatment from a just social policy at large that encompasses human vulnerabilities (II, Brock 2002, p. 283).For some of the authors listed here, the concept of vulnerability is essential to bioethics. Robert Goodin (I, 1985, p. 107) writes that the vulnerability of other human beings is the source of our special responsibilities to them. In contrast to the four American principles of biomedical ethics—autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice—the four principles of European bioethics and biolaw include vulnerability along with autonomy, dignity, and integrity. According to, Jacob Dahl Rendtorff and Peter Kemp (I, 2000, p. 274) "the principle of vulnerability is ontologically prior to the other [European] principles, it expresses better than all of the other ethical principles... the finitude of the human condition."Some of the... (shrink)

For several decades, public political discourses on ‘welfare dependency’ have failed to recognise that welfare states are not the source of economic dependence, but rather reconfigure economic dependencies in a specific way. This article distinguishes four senses of ‘economic dependence’ that can help to clarify what is missing from these discourses, and what is at stake in political and legal decisions about how we may economically depend upon one another. While feminist, republican and egalitarian philosophical work has examined the problems (...) of dependence on states, in families and in markets, the present approach adds a further dimension to our cultural and political concerns with economic dependence: it argues that it is reasonable and useful to consider the economic dependence of the economically powerful. Doing so requires a clarification of the ‘varieties of dependence’ that exist in contemporary societies and economies, and the recognition that legal and political choices regarding social and economic justice are often about choosing between varieties of dependence, not about escaping dependence entirely. (shrink)

Is childhood valuable? And is childhood as, less, or more, valuable than adulthood? In this article I first delineate several different questions that we might be asking when we think about the ‘value of childhood’, and I explore some difficulties of doing so. I then focus on the question of whether childhood is good for the person who experiences it. I argue for two key claims. First, if childhood wellbeing is measured by the same standards as adulthood, then children are (...) worse off than adults. Second, if childhood and adulthood wellbeing are measured by different standards, then we cannot compare them, and children are neither better off nor worse off than adults. This has some counter-intuitive implications, such as that we do not harm persons by depriving them of a childhood, nor by keeping them as children for elongated periods. (shrink)

An emerging discourse about automated agricultural machinery imagines farms as places where farmers and workers do not need to be, but also implicitly frames farms as intolerable places where people do not want to be. Only autonomous machines, this story goes, can relieve farmers and workers of this presumed burden by letting them ‘farm at a distance’. In return for this distanced autonomy, farmers are promised increased control over their work-life balance and greater farm productivity from letting ‘smart’ robots assume (...) control over the operational environment. Drawing upon the ways that these machines are promoted by manufacturers in various media, we trace the nascent contours of what we term a liberatory sociotechnical imaginary for agricultural automation across three cases—automated milking systems, self-driving tractors, and robotic strawberry pickers. We show how promises for new freedoms and autonomy are flexibly deployed to respond to distinct frictions that farmers, workers, and even farm animals experience in different modes of industrial agriculture. However, underlying these promises is the purposefully understated self-interest of manufacturers, who stand to gain further control over farms if automated technologies assume a central role in agriculture. Through the liberatory rhetoric, we contend, the imaginary seeks to enroll farmers into a socio-technical network that creates new relations of dependence upon the companies who design, sell, maintain, and often retain ownership over automated technologies. While potentially powerful, this imaginary may nonetheless fail to coalesce as farmers, workers, and agroecosystems exert their own agency on automated imaginaries and technological futures for agriculture. (shrink)

Human propensities that are the products of Darwinian evolution may combine to generate a form of social behavior that is not itself a direct result of such pressure. This possibility may provide a satisfying explanation for the origin of socially transmitted rules such as the incest taboo. Similarly, the regulatory processes of development that generated adaptations to the environment in the circumstances in which they evolved can produce surprising and sometimes maladaptive consequences for the individual in modern conditions. These combinatorial (...) aspects of social and developmental dynamics leave a subtle but not wholly uninteresting role for evolutionary biology in explaining the origins of human morality. (shrink)

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic the use of the term “hero” has been widespread. This is especially common in the context of healthcare workers and it is now unremarkable to see large banners on hospital exteriors that say “heroes work here”. There is more to be gleaned from the rhetoric of heroism than just awareness of public appreciation, however. Calling physicians and nurses heroes for treating sick people indicates something about the concept of medicine and medical professionals. In this essay, I (...) will examine three aspects of the social role of medicine exposed by the language of heroism. One, if a hero is someone who goes above and the call of duty, then does that mean exposing oneself to risk of infection is no longer a duty of physicians? If so, does that mean the “profession” of medicine is much like any other business? Two, physicians and nurses are not the only “heroes” this go-around. Anyone deemed essential to the US “infrastructure” is designated by the US government as having “special responsibilities” to remain at their posts for the public good, which explicitly puts physicians in the same category as sewage workers and grocery store cashiers. Three, what does it mean to belong to a profession that does have self-sacrifice and risk-taking as part of its mission—especially a profession that rarely gets called upon to practice these obligations? (shrink)

The concept of media accountability is widely used but remains inadequately defined in the literature and often is restricted to a 1-dimensional interpretation. This study explores perceptions of accountability as manifestations of claims to responsibility, based on philosophical conceptions of the 2 terms, and suggests media accountability be more broadly understood as a dynamic of interaction between a given medium and the value sets of individuals or groups receiving media messages. The shape-shifting nature of the concept contributes to the volatility (...) of debate surrounding conflicting notions of press freedom and responsibility. (shrink)

Questions about dirty hands have often focused on legitimate, secure leaders deciding whether to violate important deontological principles or the rules of interpersonal morality. The purpose of this paper is to show that revolutionaries have dirty hands; revolutionaries do wrong by engaging in unilateral usurpation of the existing system with the hope that latter benefits will justify their actions. Yet, once the revolution securely generates improvements for the common good, the initial usurpation becomes increasingly irrelevant to judgments of the new (...) government’s legitimacy. The paper argues that only retroactive justification—where later success forces opponents and advocates to reinterpret the wrongness of the initial action—can fully capture the complex moral dynamics of revolutions. (shrink)

L’essentiel des œuvres de Patočka et du dernier Foucault peut se lire à la lumière de la figure de Faust. Celle-ci éclaire en effet, au fil de ses variantes, ce qui oppose savoir de spiritualité et savoir de connaissance. Si l’on entend par spiritualité l’effort pour penser ensemble l’acte de connaissance et une transformation dans l’être du sujet, la légende faustienne illustre autant qu’elle questionne la pratique qui établit l’individu comme un être à même de se soucier de soi. Nous (...) préciserons cette idée à partir d’un exemple, celui de l’idéalisme allemand, en nous demandant s’il a su prendre la mesure de cette dimension faustienne de la philosophie et chercherons à savoir si c’est effectivement « le souci du souci de soi » qui l’a mis en mouvement ou l’a conduit à rechercher les conditions d’une spiritualité moderne. Nous nous demanderons, pour le dire dans des termes plus proches de ceux de Patočka, si l’on peut déjà apercevoir dans le postkantisme quelque chose qui anticipe l’idée d’une vue intellectuelle rendue possible par le phénomène. (shrink)

In this book, Patrick G. Stefan argues that the subversive message of resurrection was instrumental in Christianity’s expansion. Using Foucault’s analysis of how material conditions shape and create individual subjects, Stefan shows how the idea of resurrection undermined Caesar’s control over those living in his domain.

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, EarlyView.

Develops new perspectives on Schopenhauer's moral philosophy, addressing the moral status of animals; the moral permissibility of suicide; the possibility of altruistic action; the virtue and asceticism; and how Schopenhauer integrates Western and Indian traditions..

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Proceedings of the ALSC (1995 Convention)Patrick HenryGiven the oppressively politicized character of academic literary studies today, it took courage and conviction to found a new literary society in 1994. The Association of Literary Scholars and Critics is dedicated to the study of literature as a source of pleasure and insight. This would be banal were it not for the way in which culture wars, identity politics, and race (...) and gender issues have come to dominate university literature departments. More than merely a handful of scholars wish to reverse this trend: in less than two years, the ALSC has grown to 1800 members and its first conference, held in Minneapolis, September 22–24, 1995, was a notable success.Because we favor a true pluralism, and like many others are tired of the predictable posturing that permeates so much literary scholarship today, we invited the ALSC to publish its first conference proceedings in our pages. The meeting offered much variety, with classicists and modernists, poets, fiction writers, and critics trading ideas on literature and aesthetics. Despite worries by its detractors that the ALSC represents reaction or blind traditionalism, there was a refreshing openness to the proceedings, with lucid examples of critical reading and topics from metaphor in Dickens and Auden’s Alcaic stanza in “In memory of Sigmund Freud,” to the Islamic influence on Dante’s Commedia—a connection that belies the charge that the Western canon is inevitably Eurocentric. If the ALSC can revive a sense of wonder before the greatest works of literary art and provide an alternative to the complacency and pretentiousness of contemporary theory, it deserves support from us all.For twenty years it has said on our inside back cover that Philosophy and Literature “owes allegiance to no particular school or style of criticism or philosophy.” Our only loyalty is to literature and philosophy; they constitute our field of interest. It has never been our aim to adopt the correct ideology. We remain skeptical of ideological commitments and will continue to publish exciting jargon-free articles representative of the entire spectrum of approaches to literature and philosophy.Copyright © 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Patrick D Walsh; Education: one concept in many uses, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 19, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 167–180, https://doi.org/10.111.

Part of the highly regarded Philosophy, Politics and Society series, this text is an important resource for political philosophers who wish to know about population policy, population specialists interested in political theory, and public ...

I argue for the possibility of hypergunk: that is, it is possible that there exists an x such that every part of x has a proper part and, for any set S of parts of x, there is a set S′ of parts of...

When incorporating the environment into mental processing (cf., cognitive offloading), one creates novel cognitive strategies that have the potential to improve task performance. Improved performance can, for example, mean faster problem solving, more accurate solutions, or even higher grades at university.1 Although cognitive offloading has frequently been associated with improved performance, it is yet unclear how flexible problem solvers are at matching their offloading habits with their current performance goals (can people improve goal‐related instead of generic performance, e.g., when being (...) in a hurry and aiming for a “quick and dirty” solution?). Here, we asked participants to solve a cognitive task, provided them with different goals—maximizing speed (SPD) or accuracy (ACC), respectively—and measured how frequently (Experiment 1) and how proficiently (Experiment 2) they made use of a novel external resource to support their cognitive processing. Experiment 1 showed that offloading behavior varied with goals: Participants offloaded less in the SPD than in the ACC condition. Experiment 2 showed that this differential offloading behavior was associated with high goal‐related performance: fast answers in the SPD, accurate answers in the ACC condition. Simultaneously, goal‐unrelated performance was sacrificed: inaccurate answers in the SPD, slow answers in the ACC condition. The findings support the notion of humans as canny offloaders who are able to successfully incorporate their environment in pursuit of their current cognitive goals. Future efforts should be focused on the finding's generalizability, for example, to settings without feedback or with high mental workload. (shrink)

Using Ricoeur's ethicomoral position, advances an alternative, more viable ethics than that of deconstruction.

The study examines the ontological similarity between the concept of competitor orientation and questionable intelligence-gathering efforts. Respondents from the hotel industry were surveyed with self-administered questionnaires. Exploratory factor analysis was carried out to identify the structure underlying variables of market orientation and ethical judgment on questionable intelligence-gathering efforts. The results suggest that the surveyed hotel managers are unable to distinguish the legitimate tactics of competitor orientation from the questionable practice of industrial espionage.

Der Kosmologie von Alfred N. Whitehead wird gegenwärtig viel Aufmerksamkeit zuteil. Eine entscheidende Frage entbehrt jedoch einer zufriedenstellenden Antwort: Wie kommen die prozesshaften Ereignisse zu ihrer räumlichen Ausdehnung? Dieser Artikel möchte aufzeigen, worin das Problem besteht und dass Whiteheads Metaphysik keine Lösung des Problems zu bieten vermag.The cosmology of Alfred N. Whitehead is attracting much attention these days. But a vital point remains unanswered: In which way do the actual occasions acquire their spatial extension? This paper is supposed to show (...) where the problem lies and that Whitehead's metaphysics offers no solution to it. (shrink)

This lecture is cpncerned with the expected-utility or Bayesian model of rationality, with particular attention both to the strengths and limitations of the model. The alternative market and legal models of rationality are examined and rejected as less satisfactory than the expected-utility model. The role of intuitive judgement in the context of actual decision making is stressed. The fundamental place of intuitive judgement in science, especially in the performance of experiments and the analysis and presentation of results is analyzed. Errors (...) of measurement naturally arise in application of the expected-utility model, but there is a long history of theory and practice for dealing with such errors. The existence of such errors constitutes a limitation, not a prohibition, on the use of expected-utility theory as a fundamental framework for rational behaviour. (shrink)

This article introduces and critically analyses Richard Rorty’s neo-pragmatism as a contribution to the philosophy of social sciences. Although Rorty has written little about philosophy of social sciences as such, it is argued that his overall philosophical position has significant ramifications for this subject area. The first part of the article sets out the implications of Rorty’s neo-pragmatism for various issues in the philosophy of social sciences, for instance, the doctrine of naturalism, the nineteenth-century Methodenstreit, the philosophical tenets of Marxism, (...) and the relatively recent wave of post-structuralism. The second part presents a constructive critique of Rorty’s neopragmatist philosophy of social sciences. Although critical of some aspects of Rorty’s argument, it is argued that his stance could provide a base for a fruitful view of social sciences, aiming at enlarging human potentialities rather than representation. (shrink)