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The Trouble with Principle

The Trouble with Principle PDF Author: Stanley Fish
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674910126
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Book Description
The author explains that history and context determine a principle's content and power and that "intellectual and religious liberty ... are artifacts of the very partisan politics they supposedly transcend."--Jacket.

The Trouble with Principle

The Trouble with Principle PDF Author: Stanley Fish
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674005341
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
Stanley Fish is an equal opportunity antagonist. A theorist who has taken on theorists, an academician who has riled the academy, a legal scholar and political pundit who has ruffled feathers left and right, Fish here turns with customary gusto to the trouble with principle. Specifically, Fish has a quarrel with neutral principles. The trouble? They operate by sacrificing everything people care about to their own purity. And they are deployed with equal highmindedness and equally absurd results by liberals and conservatives alike. In this bracing book, Fish argues that there is no realm of higher order impartiality--no neutral or fair territory on which to stake a claim--and that those who invoke one are always making a rhetorical and political gesture. In the end, it is history and context, the very substance against which a purportedly abstract principle defines itself, that determines a principle's content and power. In the course of making this argument, Fish takes up questions about academic freedom and hate speech, affirmative action and multiculturalism, the boundaries between church and state, and much more. Sparing no one, he shows how our notions of intellectual and religious liberty--cherished by those at both ends of the political spectrum--are artifacts of the very partisan politics they supposedly transcend. The Trouble with Principle offers a provocative challenge to the debates of our day that no intellectually honest citizen can afford to ignore.

The Trouble with Principle

The Trouble with Principle PDF Author: Stanley Fish
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674910126
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Book Description
The author explains that history and context determine a principle's content and power and that "intellectual and religious liberty ... are artifacts of the very partisan politics they supposedly transcend."--Jacket.

The Trouble with Theory

The Trouble with Theory PDF Author: Gavin Kitching
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100024721X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 131

Book Description
Postmodern theory has engaged the hearts and heads of the brightest students because of its apparent political and social radicalism. Despite this Professor Gavin Kitching claims that, 'At the heart of postmodernism is very poor, deeply confused and misbegotten philosophy. As a result even the very best students who fall under its sway produce radically incoherent ideas about language, meaning, truth and reality.' This is not another conservative attack on postmodernism. Rather, it is a carefully considered analysis from a dedicated university teacher who is convinced that we have gone terribly astray. He shows that postmodern theory is at best irrelevant to, and at worst undermining of, persuasive political arguments, and reveals the basic philosophical confusion at its heart which makes this so. Essential reading for any student writing a thesis in the humanities and the social sciences, and for their teachers. 'It is the strongest and best attack on the ravages of routine post-modernism that I have ever read. I applaud the way he lists the good causes that students warmly espouse, and then suggests a simpler way to support them without the self-destructive it's all just language that is implicit in their work.' - Professor Sir Bernard Crick, Emeritus Professor of Politics, Birkbeck College, University of London 'Gavin Kitching rattles the cages. Will the inmates hear this? They should, if only for the reason that there is virtue in learning to argue against yourself. This is a serious book.' - Professor Peter Beilharz, Sociology, La Trobe University 'Required reading for anyone who wants to understand how and why postmodernism has had such disastrous pedagogical consequences.' - Professor David G. Stern, Philosophy, University of Iowa

Principle and Interest

Principle and Interest PDF Author: Herbert E. Sloan
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813920931
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 396

Book Description
Eloquently written and exhaustively researched, Principle and Interest provides a unique perspective on a range of topics--revolutionary ideology, political economy, the mechanics of party organization--central to an understanding of the period.

The Trouble with Passion

The Trouble with Passion PDF Author: Erin Cech
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520972694
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 341

Book Description
Probing the ominous side of career advice to "follow your passion," this data-driven study explains how the passion principle fails us and perpetuates inequality by class, gender, and race; and it suggests how we can reconfigure our relationships to paid work. "Follow your passion" is a popular mantra for career decision-making in the United States. Passion-seeking seems like a promising path for avoiding the potential drudgery of a life of paid work, but this "passion principle"—seductive as it is—does not universally translate. The Trouble with Passion reveals the significant downside of the passion principle: the concept helps culturally legitimize and reproduce an exploited, overworked white-collar labor force and broadly serves to reinforce class, race, and gender segregation and inequality. Grounding her investigation in the paradoxical tensions between capitalism's demand for ideal workers and our cultural expectations for self-expression, sociologist Erin A. Cech draws on interviews that follow students from college into the workforce, surveys of US workers, and experimental data to explain why the passion principle is such an attractive, if deceptive, career decision-making mantra, particularly for the college educated. Passion-seeking presumes middle-class safety nets and springboards and penalizes first-generation and working-class young adults who seek passion without them. The ripple effects of this mantra undermine the promise of college as a tool for social and economic mobility. The passion principle also feeds into a culture of overwork, encouraging white-collar workers to tolerate precarious employment and gladly sacrifice time, money, and leisure for work they are passionate about. And potential employers covet, but won't compensate, passion among job applicants. This book asks, What does it take to center passion in career decisions? Who gets ahead and who gets left behind by passion-seeking? The Trouble with Passion calls for citizens, educators, college administrators, and industry leaders to reconsider how we think about good jobs and, by extension, good lives.

There's No Such Thing As Free Speech

There's No Such Thing As Free Speech PDF Author: Stanley Fish
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198024193
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 345

Book Description
In an era when much of what passes for debate is merely moral posturing--traditional family values versus the cultural elite, free speech versus censorship--or reflexive name-calling--the terms "liberal" and "politically correct," are used with as much dismissive scorn by the right as "reactionary" and "fascist" are by the left--Stanley Fish would seem an unlikely lightning rod for controversy. A renowned scholar of Milton, head of the English Department of Duke University, Fish has emerged as a brilliantly original critic of the culture at large, praised and pilloried as a vigorous debunker of the pieties of both the left and right. His mission is not to win the cultural wars that preoccupy the nation's attention, but rather to redefine the terms of battle. In There's No Such Thing as Free Speech, Fish takes aim at the ideological gridlock paralyzing academic and political exchange in the nineties. In his witty, accessible dissections of the swirling controversies over multiculturalism, affirmative action, canon revision, hate speech, and legal reform, he neatly eviscerates both the conservatives' claim to possession of timeless, transcendent values (the timeless transcendence of which they themselves have conveniently identified), and the intellectual left's icons of equality, tolerance, and non-discrimination. He argues that while conservative ideologues and liberal stalwarts might disagree vehemently on what is essential to a culture, or to a curriculum, both mistakenly believe that what is essential can be identified apart from the accidental circumstances (of time and history) to which the essential is ritually opposed. In the book's first section, which includes the five essays written for Fish's celebrated debates with Dinesh D'Souza (the author and former Reagan White House policy analyst), Fish turns his attention to the neoconservative backlash. In his introduction, Fish writes, "Terms that come to us wearing the label 'apolitical'--'common values', 'fairness', 'merit', 'color blind', 'free speech', 'reason'--are in fact the ideologically charged constructions of a decidedly political agenda. I make the point not in order to level an accusation, but to remove the sting of accusation from the world 'politics' and redefine it as a synonym for what everyone inevitably does." Fish maintains that the debate over political correctness is an artificial one, because it is simply not possible for any party or individual to occupy a position above or beyond politics. Regarding the controversy over the revision of the college curriculum, Fish argues that the point is not to try to insist that inclusion of ethnic and gender studies is not a political decision, but "to point out that any alternative curriculum--say a diet of exclusively Western or European texts--would be no less politically invested." In Part Two, Fish follows the implications of his arguments to a surprising rejection of the optimistic claims of the intellectual left that awareness of the historical roots of our beliefs and biases can allow us, as individuals or as a society, to escape or transcend them. Specifically, he turns to the movement for reform of legal studies, and insists that a dream of a legal culture in which no one's values are slighted or declared peripheral can no more be realized than the dream of a concept of fairness that answers to everyone's notions of equality and jsutice, or a yardstick of merit that is true to everyone's notions of worth and substance. Similarly, he argues that attempts to politicize the study of literature are ultimately misguided, because recharacterizations of literary works have absolutely no impact on the mainstream of political life. He concludes his critique of the academy with "The Unbearable Ugliness of Volvos," an extraordinary look at some of the more puzzing, if not out-and-out masochistic, characteristics of a life in academia. Penetrating, fearless, and brilliantly argued, There's No Such Thing as Free Speech captures the essential Fish. It is must reading for anyone who cares about the outcome of America's cultural wars.

Moral Principles and Political Obligations

Moral Principles and Political Obligations PDF Author: A. John Simmons
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691213240
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Book Description
Outlining the major competing theories in the history of political and moral philosophy--from Locke and Hume through Hart, Rawls, and Nozick--John Simmons attempts to understand and solve the ancient problem of political obligation. Under what conditions and for what reasons (if any), he asks, are we morally bound to obey the law and support the political institutions of our countries?

Save the World on Your Own Time

Save the World on Your Own Time PDF Author: Stanley Fish
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199892970
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Book Description
"Save the World on Your Own Time is invariably smart, stimulating, and provocative. It is filled with insights and crackles with verve. It is a joy to take in." - Texas Law Review

Postmodern Sophistry

Postmodern Sophistry PDF Author: Gary A. Olson
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791462133
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 326

Book Description
An intensive examination of the theoretical writings of cultural and literary critic Stanley Fish.

Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments

Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments PDF Author: Benjamin Constant
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 594

Book Description
Benjamin Constant (1767-1830) was born in Switzerland and became one of France's leading writers, as well as a journalist, philosopher, and politician. His colourful life included a formative stay at the University of Edinburgh; service at the court of Brunswick, Germany; election to the French Tribunate; and initial opposition and subsequent support for Napoleon, even the drafting of a constitution for the Hundred Days. Constant wrote many books, essays, and pamphlets. His deepest conviction was that reform is hugely superior to revolution, both morally and politically. While Constant's fluid, dynamic style and lofty eloquence do not always make for easy reading, his text forms a coherent whole, and in his translation Dennis O'Keeffe has focused on retaining the 'general elegance and subtle rhetoric' of the original. Sir Isaiah Berlin called Constant 'the most eloquent of all defenders of freedom and privacy' and believed to him we owe the notion of 'negative liberty', that is, what Biancamaria Fontana describes as "the protection of individual experience and choices from external interferences and constraints." To Constant it was relatively unimportant whether liberty was ultimately grounded in religion or metaphysics -- what mattered were the practical guarantees of practical freedom -- "autonomy in all those aspects of life that could cause no harm to others or to society as a whole." This translation is based on Etienne Hofmann's critical edition of Principes de politique (1980), complete with Constant's additions to the original work.