SUNY series in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences

Leading scholars address the work of American philosopher Calvin O. Schrag.

Providing developments and advancements concerning the thought of Calvin O. Schrag, this book includes the first full-length interview with the American continental philosopher and covers his long and illustrative philosophical contribution to thinking about the consequences of communication. The influence of Schrag's work is significant and broad, and these nine thought-provoking pieces by leading scholars whose work has been influenced by his philosophy presents the best contemporary thought on communicative praxis. Encompassing questions of democracy, the public and private spheres, and relations inside organizational structures, to questions of giving and ethics, rhetoric and narrative, suffering and love, this is a wellspring of insight and provocation for both those already familiar with Schrag's work and those seeking a keen invitation to his many critical reflections.

The first systematic treatment of Karl Popper's contribution to the philosophy of the social sciences.

This is the first book-length exploration of Karl Popper's often-neglected contributions to the philosophy of social science. William A. Gorton situates Popper's ideas on social inquiry within the broader framework of his thought, including his philosophy of natural science, his ontological theories, and his political thought. Gorton places special attention on Popper's theory of situational analysis and how it aims to heighten our understanding of the social world by untangling the complex web of human interaction that produces unintended-and often unwanted-social phenomena. Situational analysis, Gorton contends, involves a significant departure from the method of the natural sciences, despite Popper's plea for the unity of scientific method. Gorton also addresses some common misconceptions concerning Popper's stance toward economics and Marxism, making the provocative claim that contemporary analytical Marxism provides the best current example of Popperian social science put into practice.

Marks the trajectory of the author's work as a feminist methodologist.

Winner of the 2008 Critics' Choice Award presented by the American Educational Studies Association

In this follow-up to her classic text Troubling the Angels, an experimental ethnography of women with AIDS, Patti Lather deconstructs her earlier work to articulate methodology out of practice and to answer the question: What would practices of research look like that were a response to the call of the wholly other? She addresses some of the key issues challenging social scientists today, such as power relations with subjects in the field, the crisis in representation, difference, deconstruction, praxis, ethics, responsibility, objectivity, narrative strategy, and situatedness. Including a series of essays, reflections, and interviews marking the trajectory of the author's work as a feminist methodologist, Getting Lost will be an important text for courses in sociology of science, philosophy of science, ethnography, feminist methodology, women and gender studies, and qualitative research in education and related social science fields.

The first book-length treatment in English of Habermas's theory of social evolution and progress.

Between Reason and History examines the role of the idea of progress both in Jurgen Habermas's critical social theory and in critical social theory in general. The reception to Habermas's magnum opus, The Theory of Communicative Action, has tended to downplay the theory of social evolution it contains, but there are no in-depth examinations of this aspect of Habermas's critical theory. This book fills this gap by providing a comprehensive and detailed examination of Habermas's theory of social evolution, its significance within the wider scope of his critical social theory, and the importance of a theoretical understanding of history for any adequate critical social theory.

The first book-length treatment of Paul Ricoeur's conception of philosophy as critical theory.

In Ricoeur's Critical Theory, David M. Kaplan revisits the Habermas-Gadamer debates to show how Paul Ricoeur's narrative-hermeneutics and moral-political philosophy provide a superior interpretive, normative, and critical framework. Arguing that Ricoeur's unique version of critical theory surpasses the hermeneutic philosophy of Gadamer, Kaplan adds a theory of argumentation necessary to criticize false consciousness and distorted communication. He also argues that Ricoeur develops Habermas's critical theory, adding an imaginative, creative dimension and a concern for community values and ideas of the Good Life. He then shows how Ricoeur's political philosophy steers a delicate path between liberalism, communitarianism, and socialism. Ricoeur's version of critical theory not only identifies and criticizes social pathologies, posits Kaplan, but also projects utopian alternatives for personal and social transformation that would counter and heal the effects of unjust societies. The author concludes by applying Ricoeur's critical theory to three related problems-the politics of identity and recognition, technology, and globalization and democracy-to show how his works add depth, complexity, and practical solutions to these problems.

A sustained reflection on philosopher John William Miller and the metaphysical presuppositions and implications of democracy.

The ancient antagonism between the active and the contemplative lives is taken up in this innovative and wide-ranging examination of John William Miller's effort to forge a metaphysics of democracy. The Active Life sheds new light on Miller's actualist philosophy-its scope, its systematic character, and its dialectical form. Michael J. McGandy persuasively sets Miller's actualism in the context of Hannah Arendt's understanding of the active life and skillfully presents actualism as a response to Whitman's challenge to craft a democratic form of metaphysics. McGandy concludes that Miller reveals how the philosophical and the political are inextricably connected, how there is no active life without the contemplative life, and that the contemplative life is founded in the active life.

A comprehensive account of human kindness.

Winner of the 2004 Edward Goodwin Ballard Book Prize in Phenomenology presented by the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology with interest from a fund raised from Professor Ballard's family, students, and friends

Kindness and the Good Society utilizes phenomenology and a wide variety of traditional and non-traditional sources to provide the first comprehensive account of kindness in any genre of philosophy. Remarkably rich in descriptive detail and drawing upon a wide range of examples, including literary sources, current affairs, and traditional philosophical texts, Hamrick's book rescues kindness from the purposeful neglect of deontological and utilitarian ethical theories. Beginning with an account of the personal and social areas of ethical and moral comportment, Hamrick addresses what is not intuitively obvious about kindness and its opposite, details a critical kindness that avoids both naiveté as well as popular cynicism, and guides us toward a new notion of aesthetic humanism.

Analyzes new social movements and their ramifications for social and political theory.

By reexamining the very foundations of everyday acting and thinking and stepping into the open expanse of a possible transition to a postmodern era, this book presents a radical phenomenological approach to the study of contemporary social movements. It offers a theory of acting that refuses to surrender to norms and legislations and thus always intimates a mode of thinking that challenges various manifestations of ultimacy. Vahabzadeh invites us to radically rethink many basic principles that inform our lives, such as the democratic discourse, the concept of rights, liberal democratic regimes, time and epochs, oppression, acting, and the practice of sociology, in an effort to instate a reworked concept of experience in theories about social movements.

Argues that the technical model of practice has limited applicability for the practices of care (teaching, nursing, social work, and psychotherapy).

Teachers, nurses, psychotherapists, and other practitioners of care are under pressure to substitute specific, prescribed techniques in place of using their own judgment. Donald E. Polkinghorne assembles the case for the return to judgment-based practice for the professions that engage in direct person-to-person interaction with those they serve. Set in the larger context of the technification of society, Polkinghorne draws from Weber, Heidegger, Ihde, Bourdieu, de Certeau, and other philosophers to trace the advancing power of the technological worldview in Western culture and uses Aristotle, Dewey, and Gadamer to help make his case that we should be doing things very differently.

An in-depth biography of the philosopher who brought phenomenology to the social sciences.

Winner of the2007 Edward Goodwin Ballard Book Prize in Phenomenology presented by the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology with interest from a fund raised from Professor Ballard's family, students, and friends

Vienna-born philosopher and social scientist Alfred Schutz (1899–1959) is primarily responsible for applying to the social sciences the resources of phenomenology, the prominent philosophical movement begun by Edmund Husserl in the early twentieth century. Drawing on previously unavailable letters, this biography depicts Schutz's childhood, adolescence, first visit to the United States, struggle to secure asylum for family and friends after the Austrian Anschluss, family and business life, and connections with phenomenologists worldwide, the New School for Social Research, and close friends. As a philosophical biography, it examines the ethical dimensions of his philosophical work, including its resistance to ethical theory, and shows how during the civil rights movement he articulated a standard for assessing democracy in terms of ability to facilitate individual citizen participation.

Engages contemporary European thought on a variety of philosophical topics.

Calvin O. Schrag, one of America's leading philosophers, traverses the literal and metaphysical boundaries of Bulgaria, England, France, Russia, and the Czech Republic and offers a new examination of hermeneutics, phenomenology, subjectivity, and transnational identity. He presents his notion of rationality-transversal rationality-with unusual clarity and simplicity, while encouraging the continuing philosophic dialogue of humankind across cultures.

Critically engages the work of the philosopher Don Ihde.

Postphenomenology is the first book devoted exclusively to the interpretation and advancement of prominent phenomenologist Don Ihde's landmark contributions to history, philosophy, sociology, science, sound studies, and technology studies. Ihde has made a direct and lasting impact on the study of technological experience across the disciplines and acquired an international following of diverse scholars along the way, many of whom contribute to Postphenomenology, including Albert Borgmann, who characterizes Ihde as being "among the most interesting and provocative contemporary American philosophers." The contributors situate, assess, and apply Ihde's philosophy with respect to the primary themes that his oeuvre emphasizes. They not only clarify Ihde's work, but also make significant contributions to the philosophy of technology, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and the philosophy of science. A comprehensive response from Ihde concludes the volume.

A reading of Marx's critique of capitalism through the lens of process philosophy.

Marx and Whitehead boldly asks us to reconsider capitalism, not merely as an "economic system" but as a fundamentally self-destructive mode that, by its very nature and operation, undermines the cohesive fabric of human existence. Author Anne Fairchild Pomeroy asserts that it is impossible to appreciate fully the impact of Marx's critique of capitalism without understanding the philosophical system that underlies it. Alfred North Whitehead's work is used to forge a systematic link between process philosophy and dialectical materialism via the category of production. Whitehead's process thought brings Marx's philosophical vision into sharper focus. This union provides the grounds for Pomeroy's claim that the heart of Marx's critique of capitalism is fundamentally ontological, and that therefore the necessary condition for genuine human flourishing lies in overcoming the capitalist form of social relations.

Reinvigorates Jürgen Habermas' early critical theory.

The first close study of Jürgen Habermas's theory of socialization, a central but infrequently discussed component of his defense of deliberative democracy, The Idolatry of the Actual charts its increasingly uneasy relationship with the later development of Habermas's social theory. In particular, David A. Borman argues that Habermas's account of the development of the subject and of the conditions under which autonomy can be realized is fundamentally at odds with the increasingly liberal tenor of his social theory. This leads Borman to return to the set of concerns that guided Habermas's social theory in the early 1970s, paying particular attention to questions of crisis and the means by which public reactions are shaped-questions perhaps more relevant today than they have been at any time since the 1930s. Using Habermas's early work as a framework, Borman constructs an original critical-theoretical argument that draws on research in the sociology of schooling to understand how attitudes toward work, reward, achievement, class, gender, and race are shaped in economically functional ways, and draws on philosophical and empirical scholarship to demonstrate the challenges of multicultural integration and the impact of both on the potential for progressive social transformation.

This book expands the concept of the nature of science and provides a practical research alternative for those who work with people and organizations.

Using literary criticism, philosophy, and history, as well as recent developments in the cognitive and social sciences, Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences shows how to use research information organized by the narrative form-such information as clinical life histories, organizational case studies, biographic material, corporate cultural designs, and literary products. The relationship between the narrative format and classical and statistical and experimental designs is clarified and made explicit. Suggestions for doing research are given as well as criteria for judging the accuracy and quality of narrative research results.

Maps the future of phenomenological thought, accounting for how technology expands our means of experiencing the world.

A revised form of phenomenology, postphenomenology aims to overcome the limitations of subjectivism and its largely dystopian stance toward science and technology. Timely and insightful, this book provides a useful introduction to postphenomenology, asking how it can effectively transform classical phenomenology into a new and concrete reflection upon technoscience. Tracing the modern history of phenomenology, pragmatism, and philosophy of science, Don Ihde proposes a reframing of phenomenology to better suit today's contemporary world. An excellent overview of the recent history of the philosophy of science, Postphenomenology and Technoscience revitalizes conceptual frameworks that still have much to offer.

Connects the work of Merleau-Ponty to environmental studies.

This richly diverse collection looks at the contemporary relevance of the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty to environmental issues and builds a coherent philosophical ecology based on his thought. The contributors describe and analyze relations within the natural world by focusing on the centrality of relations in Merleau-Ponty's work; his concept of the bond between humanity and nature; and his novel philosophies of perception, embodiment, and "wild" Being. Eco-phenomenologies of living places such as Central Park in New York City, Midwestern farmlands, and communal household dwellings of Pacific Northwest Coast people are closely examined. The contributors also explore Merleau-Ponty's philosophy for environmental ethics and develop notions such as vital values, somatic empathy, and interspecies sociality.

Leading scholars address Paul Ricoeur's last major work, Oneself as Another.

This collection of essays by internationally known Paul Ricoeur experts explores the noted philosopher's book, Oneself as Another. Ricoeur's book represents the completion of a decades-long inquiry into the self as he links his earlier studies of symbolism, hermeneutics, phenomenology, the philosophy of language, action theory, and theory of narrative to his most recent concern for ethics and the social constitution of ethical subjectivity.

Cohen and Marsh's volume is divided into two parts, the first primarily involving Ricoeur's thought itself, and the second involving the relation of his thought to that of others, such as Levinas, Rawls, Habermas, Apel, Taylor, and MacIntyre. The contributors also offer detailed examinations of Ricoeur's ethical theory and its ontological implications.

Explores deep intimate personal relationships between men and women.

Culminating a twenty-year personal and scholarly quest, the authors explore the phenomenon of loving relationships (minus the sexual attraction) between men and women. They articulate these relationships as dialogical love in which partners respond to each other's presence personally rather than categorically as friend or lover. In a society where relationships of dialogical love are neither articulated and named nor recognized as acceptable ways of being, they are usually mistaken as affairs or regarded as "just" friend relationships. Since these relationships are spontaneous, free, and open, their meaning is disclosed through examples rather than by traditional definition. Throughout the book, the authors share their own personal relationship, similar relationships of those they interviewed, and relationships from literature and popular movies. Further illuminating interpretations of friendship and love are excerpts from C. S. Lewis, Rollo May, Caroline Simon, and Robert Solomon. Personal relationships are explicated by the work of Martin Buber, John Macmurray, and Alfred Schutz.

Illustrates how Marcuse's theory sheds new light on current debates in both education and society involving issues of multiculturalism, postmodernism, civic education, the "culture wars," critical thinking, and critical literacy.

Winner of the 2002 American Educational Studies Association's Critics' Choice Award

By examining the aesthetic, social, and educational philosophy of Herbert Marcuse, the author documents and demonstrates the structure and movement of Marcuse's thought on art, alienation, and the humanities. Reitz's work stresses the centrality of Marcuse's argument that the arts and humanities may act as disalienating educational forces.

Presents three generations of German, French, and Anglo-American thinking on the Hegelian narrative of desire, recognition, and alienation in life, labor, and language.

This book presents three generations of German, French, and Anglo-American thinking on the Hegelian narrative of desire, recognition, and alienation in life, labor, and language-a narrative that has been subject to extensive commentary in philosophy, literature, psychoanalysis, and feminist thought. The texts focus on a central topos in Western thought, the story of self-consciousness awakened in nature and in history. John O'Neill argues that current postmodern rejections of the Hegelian-Marxist narrative demand an understanding of the texts included here. Without Hegel and Marx in our toolbox, he argues, we will flounder in a world marked by the split between postmodern indifference and premodern passion.

The book makes a strong selection from the history of Hegelian-Marxist debate, hermeneutical and critical theory, and Freudian/Lacanian and feminist commentary on the dialectic of desire and recognition, on the levels of social psychology and political economy. Included are articles by Karl Marx, G. W. F. Hegel, Alexandre Kojève, Jean Hyppolite, Jean-Paul Sarte, Georg Lukács, Jürgen Habermas, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Howard Adelman, Shlomo Avineri, Jessica Benjamin, Edward S. Casey and J. Melvin Woody, Henry S. Harris, George Armstrong Kelly, Ludwig Siep, Judith N. Shklar, and Henry Sussman. The texts and commentaries show how the Hegelian-Maxist narrative of desire, recognition, and alienation is a contested story, one in which class, race, and gender issues are drawn into a historical romance that is being rewritten in contemporary cultural politics.