Philosophy, Freedom, Language, and their Others PDF Download

Author: Elias Kifon Bongmba
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350340111
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Kantian and Hegelian conceptions of freedom guide this collection of essays that engage with the linguistic turn in continental philosophy to explore contemporary interpretations of freedom. Using a broad approach to the tradition of German Idealism, this volume considers its modern recasting of philosophy as a rigorous thinking practice with profound implications for individual and communal praxis and wellbeing. Philosophy, Freedom, Language, and its Others further cultivates and demonstrates the freedom to think and engage philosophy in a critical dialogue with other fields of inquiry. This method is exemplified in the philosophy and teaching of Professor Jere P. Surber, whom this book honors by using his interdisciplinary method as a springboard for new understandings of freedom in contemporary life. Expert scholars working in the philosophy of language, continental philosophy of religion, ancient philosophy, critical theory, and ethics engage seminal thinkers on freedom including Plato, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Debord to provide a diverse range of perspectives on freedom. In so doing, they address the complex legacy of philosophical freedom across subjects from contemporary media and political patrimonial culture to literary imagination and the politics of Nelson Mandela.

Author: Mariam Thalos
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317394941
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
In A Social Theory of Freedom, Mariam Thalos argues that the theory of human freedom should be a broadly social and political theory, rather than a theory that places itself in opposition to the issue of determinism. Thalos rejects the premise that a theory of freedom is fundamentally a theory of the metaphysics of constraint and, instead, lays out a political conception of freedom that is closely aligned with questions of social identity, self-development in contexts of intimate relationships, and social solidarity. Thalos argues that whether a person is free (in any context) depends upon a certain relationship of fit between that agent’s conception of themselves (both present and future), on the one hand, and the facts of their circumstances, on the other. Since relationships of fit are broadly logical, freedom is a logic—it is the logic of fit between one’s aspirations and one’s circumstances, what Thalos calls the logic of agency. The logic of agency, once fleshed out, becomes a broadly social and political theory that encompasses one’s self-conceptions as well as how these self-conceptions are generated, together with how they fit with the circumstances of one’s life. The theory of freedom proposed in this volume is fundamentally a political one.

Author: Lars Svendsen
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1780234104
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Freedom of speech, religion, choice, will—humans have fought, and continue to fight, for all of these. But what is human freedom really? Taking a broad approach across metaphysics, politics, and ethics, Lars Svendsen explores this question in his engaging book, while also looking at the threats freedom faces today. Though our behaviors, thoughts, and actions are restricted by social and legal rules, deadlines, and burdens, Svendsen argues that the fundamental requirement for living a human life is the ability to be free. A Philosophy of Freedom questions how we can successfully create meaningful lives when we are estranged from the very concept of freedom. Svendsen tackles such issues as the nature of free agency and the possibility of freedom in a universe governed by natural laws. He concludes that the true definition of personal freedom is first and foremost the liberty to devote yourself to what really matters to you—to realize the true value of the life you are living. Drawing on the fascinating debates around the possibility of freedom and its limits within society, this comprehensive investigation provides an accessible and insightful overview that will appeal to academics and general readers alike.

Author: Rudolf Steiner
Publisher: SteinerBooks
ISBN: 1621511731
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
Dr. Ehrenfreied Pfeiffer writes: "Research carried on since 1925 has shown that the formation and arrangement of crystals during the process of crystallization can, under certain conditions, be greatly influenced by the admixture of various substances.... Hence, from these alterations (in form) apriori conclusions can be drawn about the qualities and characteristics of the admixture itself." This is an essential element in his work of analyzing the health and qualities of human blood as an aid in the process of diagnoses.

Author: Axel Honneth
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745680062
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
The theory of justice is one of the most intensely debated areas of contemporary philosophy. Most theories of justice, however, have only attained their high level of justification at great cost. By focusing on purely normative, abstract principles, they become detached from the sphere that constitutes their “field of application” - namely, social reality. Axel Honneth proposes a different approach. He seeks to derive the currently definitive criteria of social justice directly from the normative claims that have developed within Western liberal democratic societies. These criteria and these claims together make up what he terms “democratic ethical life”: a system of morally legitimate norms that are not only legally anchored, but also institutionally established. Honneth justifies this far-reaching endeavour by demonstrating that all essential spheres of action in Western societies share a single feature, as they all claim to realize a specific aspect of individual freedom. In the spirit of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and guided by the theory of recognition, Honneth shows how principles of individual freedom are generated which constitute the standard of justice in various concrete social spheres: personal relationships, economic activity in the market, and the political public sphere. Honneth seeks thereby to realize a very ambitious aim: to renew the theory of justice as an analysis of society.

Author: John R. Searle
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231137524
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
"In the second half of the book, Searle applies his theory of social reality to the problem of political power, explaining the role of language in the formation of our political reality. The institutional structures that organize, empower, and regulate our lives - money, property, marriage, government - consist in the assignment and collective acceptance of certain statuses to objects and people. Whether it is the president of the United States, a twenty-dollar bill, or private property, these entities perform functions as determined by their status in our institutional reality. Searle focuses on the political powers that exist within these systems of status functions and the way in which language constitutes them."--BOOK JACKET.

Author: Sidney Hook
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520347285
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1962.

Author: Noam Chomsky
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN:
Category : Knowledge, Sociology of
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
Originally delivered in 1971 as the first Cambridge lectures in memory of Bertrand Russell, Problems of Knowledge and Freedom is an erudite and cogent synthesis of Noam Chomsky's moral philosophy, linguistic analysis, and emergent political critique of America's war in Vietnam. In the first half of this wide-ranging work, Chomsky takes up Russell's lifelong search for the empirical principles of human understanding, in a philosophical overview referencing Hume, Leibniz, Wittgenstein, and others. In the following half, aptly-titled "On Changing the World," Chomsky applies these concepts to the issues that would remain the focus of his increasingly political work of the period. These include the war in Indochina and the Cold War ideology that supported it, the centralization of U.S. decision-making in the Pentagon and the growing influence of multinational corporations in those circles, the politicization of American universities in the post-World War II years, along with his reflections on the Cuban missile crisis and the mass liberation movements of the era. This is the third in a series of Chomsky's early political books reissued by The New Press. The others are American Power and the New Mandarins and For Reasons of State. Book jacket.

Author: Paul Franco
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300093223
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Human freedom is the central theme of modern political philosophy, and G. W. F. Hegel offers perhaps the most profound and systematic modern attempt to understand the state as the realization of human freedom. In this comprehensive examination of Hegel's philosophy of freedom, Paul Franco traces the development of Hegel's ideas of freedom, situates them within his general philosophical system, and relates them to the larger tradition of modern political philosophy. Franco then applies Hegel's understanding of liberty to certain problems in contemporary political theory. He argues that Hegel offers a powerful reformulation of liberalism that escapes many of the problematic assumptions of traditional liberal doctrine and yet avoids falling into the romantic and relativistic excesses of a substantial communitarianism. Devoting the major portion of his attention to Hegel's masterpiece the Philosophy of Right, published in 1821, Franco provides a clear and nontechnical guide to the challenging arguments Hegel presents. Franco establishes the necessary context within which to understand the work and draws on Hegel's other writings, including the unpublished lecture notes, to illuminate it. For the Hegel specialist as well as the reader with a more general interest in political philosophy and modern intellectual history, this book offers significant insights into Hegel's ideas on the theme of human liberty.

Author: Helen Steward
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199552053
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Helen Steward argues that determinism is incompatible with agency itself--not only the special human variety of agency, but also powers which can be accorded to animal agents. She offers a distinctive, non-dualistic version of libertarianism, rooted in a conception of what biological forms of organisation might make possible in the way of freedom.