By exploring the life and work of the influential feminist thinker Simone de Beauvoir, this book shows how each of us lives within political and social structures that we can--and must--play a part in transforming. It argues that Beauvoir's careful examination of her own existence can also be understood as a dynamic method for political thinking. ......
In this incisive commentary, Mitchell Aboulafia examines the relevance of the American pragmatist philosopher George Herbert Mead to current debates on pluralism, universalism, and the fostering of a democratic temper. Addressing the relationship between Mead's notions of self and society and those of important continental thinkers, The ......
Augustine's notions of human nature and of person have not received adequate systematic treatment, despite their centrality to all the important areas of his thought. Although he notoriously changed his mind on many major points, his explorations of human nature and person remained central and to a great extent consistent across his mature and ......
Philosophical considerations and positions underlie all of the natural and social sciences. In the latter case philosophical foundations and their emergent issues have a profound impact on methodology and empirical practice. Design decisions will usually depend on philosophical perspectives or assumptions, such as the very fundamental decision to employ a quantitative design or an interpretive design. The 'philosophy of social research' is thus a subset of the philosophy of social science, but also an important subject area that spans methodology and method. The articles making up this timely collection are the best exemplars of key positions in a very wide disciplinary field. The selection is designed to begin each section with an 'entry level' article to introduce the reader to the topic area and to ground the approach a research problem. Topics covered include science and art in the history of social research, positivism and antipositivism, language and the linguistic turn, realism and anti-realism, theory and theory choice, logic and models, prediction and laws, interpretation, probability and complexity. With the study of the philosophical foundations of methods and methodology gaining increasing priority in university courses, this will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers across the social sciences.
From science to politics, the era of the the Enlightenment is widely recognized as a crucible for modern Western culture. It has shaped vast portions of the Western world view, including our conceptions and experiences of happiness, family life, the nation-state, and religious and ethnic identities. However, in recent years, scholars from both the sciences and the humanities have debated the question of how we should understand, and to what extent we should endorse, our debt to the Enlightenment. The January 2006 issue of American Behavioral Scientist offers rigorous engagement of pro-Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment perspectives, continuing a debate that began in the late eighteenth century. The opening essays by James Schmidt and Graeme Garrard offer historically and linguistically nuanced defenses of plural uses of the term "enlightenment"- especially to capture the distinction between the process of enlightenment and the era of the Enlightenment. The remaining articles more closely examine several questions about the Enlightenment's legacy for contemporary life: Are we living out the aspirations of the Enlightenment in a critical or tacit manner? Are we witnessing the end of the Enlightenment's pervasive influence on intellectual paradigms, social practices, and nation-states or making room for its further articulation? Which, if any, of these relationships to the Enlightenment are sociologically accurate or normatively preferable? The remaining essays by Darrin M. McMahon, Eileen Hunt Botting, Adam Sutcliffe, Russell Arben Fox, and Damon Linker review these questions from different perspectives and assess the value of the Enlightenment's legacy in various spheres of human life. McMahon's essay focuses on the Enlightenment's impact on the modern understanding of happiness and social welfare. Botting's essay concentrates on how Mary Wollstonecraft's Enlightenment philosophy contributed to the development of the "modern social imaginary" of the egalitarian family. Sutcliffe and Fox illustrate how Western conceptions of religious, ethnic, and national identities have been shaped in critical dialogue with, or in opposition to, the rationalistic, universalistic strands of Enlightenment thought. Linker argues that we should resist Heidegger's rejection of the philosophical process of enlightenment and that we should instead embrace the Enlightenment's promotion of the normative ideal and political practice of critical public discourse about our relationships to one another and the world around us. This issue of American Behavioral Scientist offers an accessible survey of current research on the contemporary relevance of the Enlightenment and should be in the library of every political scientist, sociologist, historian, humanist, philosopher, and student!
Spanning over nine hundred years, Eight Women Philosophers is the first singly-authored work to trace the themes of standard philosophical theorizing and feminist thought across women philosophers in the Western tradition. Jane Duran has crafted a comprehensive overview of eight women philosophers--Hildegard of Bingen, Anne Conway, Mary Astell, ......
In this concise new volume by the acclaimed author of the biography of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Jean-Pierre Torrell brings his expertise to bear on Aquinas's ""Summa Theologiae"". Readers will turn to this book again and again for a brief and popular introduction to Aquinas's masterpiece - it's content; it's historical, literary, and doctrinal ......
An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe
In Book Three of this four-volume work, Alexander presents hundreds of his own buildings and those of his contemporaries who have used methods consistent with the theory of living process. Containing nearly seven hundred pages of projects which have been built and planned in a number of countries over a thirty-year period, this book amply ......
This is a comprehensive and authoritative reference collection in the philosophy and methodology of the social sciences. The source materials selected are drawn from debates within the natural sciences as well as social scientific practice. This four volume set covers the traditional literature on the philosophy of the social sciences, and ......
