Back to the Rough Ground : Practical Judgement and the Lure of Technique: Experiments in Truth and Religion

by Dunne, Joseph

• ISBN13: 9780268007058
• ISBN10: 0268007055
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-10-01
• Publisher: Univ of Notre Dame Pr

Table of Contents

Foreword to the Paperback Edition	xiii	(2)
Alasdair MacIntyre
Preface	xv
Introduction	1	(30)
1. Generative Context of the Study and Its Central Issue	1	(7)
2. The Company of Philosophers	8	(12)
3. Conversation as a Mode of Philosophical Inquiry	20	(11)
PART 1: THE RETRIEVAL OF PHRONESIS AND TECHNE IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY	31	(206)
A. Specific Domains: Religion, Art, and Politics	31	(73)
1. J.H. Newman's Appeal to Phronesis in A Grammar of Assent	31	(24)
1. Newman's Critique of Rationalism: Preliminary Remarks	31	(2)
2. Newman and Aristotle	33	(5)
3. Newman and Contemporary Philosophy	38	(7)
4. `Incommensurability' in Philosophy of Science, Aristotelian Scholarship, and the Grammar	45	(5)
5. Conclusion: Newman on Language	50	(5)
2. R. G. Collingwood's Critique of Techne in The Principles of Art	55	(33)
1. `The Technical Theory of Art'	55	(5)
2. `Imaginative Expression'	60	(4)
3. Expression and Language	64	(5)
4. Aesthetics and Ethics: Collingwood and Aristotle	69	(6)
5. Collingwood's Subjectivism and Anti-Individualism	75	(6)
6. Intersubjectivity and Language: What Collingwood Is `Trying to Say'	81	(7)
3. Hannah Arendt's Distinction between Action and Making in The Human Condition	88	(16)
1. Action and Behavior	89	(2)
2. Uncertain Stories and the Limits of Practical Knowledge	91	(2)
3. Tyranny and the Flight from Action into Making	93	(4)
4. Promising, Forgiving, and the Condition of Plurality	97	(3)
5. Arendt and Aristotle	100	(4)
B. The Universal Scope of Philosophical Hermeneutics	104	(64)
4. The Play of Phronesis and Techne in Hans-Georg Gadamer's Truth and Method	104	(34)
1. Nineteenth-Century Hermeneutics	106	(3)
2. The Heideggerian Background	109	(1)
3. Finitude, Tradition, and the Hermeneutical Circle	110	(7)
4. Conversation as the Medium of `Effective-Historical Consciousness'	117	(4)
5. The `Fusion of Horizons' in the Act of `Application'	121	(2)
6. Aristotle as Mentor: The Centrality of the Appeal to Phronesis	123	(5)
7. Gadamer's Account of Experience, in Relation to Aristotle	128	(4)
8. Experience as Being-in-Play	132	(6)
5. Language, Hermeneutics, and Practical Philosophy	138	(30)
1. The Unity of Thought and Language	138	(6)
2. Finitude and the `Infinity' of Language	144	(3)
3. Limitations of the `Statement' and the Synthesis of Hermeneutical Ideas in Reflection on Language	147	(5)
4. Beyond `Substance Metaphysics': Reflection on Language as a Way of Profiling Techne and Phronesis	152	(4)
5. Theory and Practice: The Extent of Gadamer's Appeal to Aristotelian Practical Philosophy and Phronesis	156	(8)
6. The Scope of Gadamer's Thought: Concluding Questions	164	(4)
C. The Challenge of Critical Theory	168	(69)
6. The Distinction between Praxis and Technique in the Early Philosophy of Jurgen Habermas	168	(25)
1. Situating Habermas	168	(5)
2. The Aristotelian Background	173	(4)
3. Praxis Mediated through Modern Thought	177	(5)
4. Habermas and Hermeneutics	182	(4)
5. The Modern Loss of the Distinction between Praxis and Technique	186	(7)
7. Habermas's Later Philosophy: Ambiguities of Rationalization	193	(34)
1. Critique and Praxis: The Shift to the Notion of Communicative Action	193	(5)
2. The `Uncoupling of System and Life-World': Progress and Deformation	198	(3)
3. Habermas's Defense of the `Rationalization of the Life-World': Technicism in a New Guise?	201	(8)
4. The Life-World and the Limits of Rationalization: The Shadow Side of Habermas's Thought	209	(7)
5. Conclusion: Aporiai in Habermas's Thought and the Point of a Return to Aristotle	216	(11)
Interlude	227	(10)
PART 2: PHRONESIS AND TECHNE IN ARISTOTLE	237	(120)
8. Theory, Techne, and Phronesis: Distinctions and Relations	237	(38)
1. Aristotle's Conception of `Theory'	237	(2)
2. The Primacy of Theory and the Questionable Status of Practice	239	(5)
3. The Place of Techne and Phronesis, and of the Distinction between Them, in Aristotle's Writings	244	(5)
4. Aristotle's `Official' Concept of Techne: Its Essential Reference to Fabrication and Its Closeness to Theory	249	(4)
5. Technai of the Kairos and Their Affinity with Phronesis	253	(8)
6. The Distinction between Techne Poietike and Phronesis	261	(8)
7. Meeting Two Difficulties That Stem from Aristotle's Usage	269	(6)
9. The Circle between Knowledge and Virtuous Character: Phronesis as a Form of Experience	275	(40)
1. Aristotle's Reserve about the Role of Knowledge in Virtue: The Emergence of a Circle between Phronesis and Character	275	(4)
2. The Key to Understanding the Circle Is `Experience'	279	(2)
3. Interlude: The Nonassimilation of `Experience' Raises Questions about Techne in Metaphysics 1.1	281	(4)
4. The Appeal to Experience in Nicomachean Ethics 10.9 and 1.3	285	(5)
5. Phronesis and Character as Modalities of Experience	290	(5)
6. Nous, or Perceptiveness with Regard to `Ultimate Particulars,' as a Crucial Element in Phronesis	295	(5)
7. Suggested Examples of `Ultimate Particulars' Elucidated by Reference to De Anima and Wittgenstein	300	(4)
8. The Openness of the Phronetic Approach, and How It Differs from Deductivism	304	(6)
9. The Relationship between Universals and Particulars in the Sphere of Phronesis and Eupraxia	310	(5)
10. Beyond the `Official' Notion of Techne: Recovering the Experiential Background	315	(42)
1. Aristotle's Failure to Distinguish between Techne as an Ability to Analyze and Techne as an Ability to Make	315	(4)
2. Evidence of Two Different Tendencies in Aristotle's Treatment of Techne	319	(7)
3. Aristotle's Neglect of the Role of Experience in Techne Related to His Characteristic Approach to Genesis	326	(3)
4. The Role of Matter in Aristotle's Thought Supports an Emphasis on Experience	329	(5)
5. Implications of the Analogy between Techne and Nature	334	(4)
6. Implications for `Techne' of Aristotle's Account of Change	338	(5)
7. Aristotle's Account of `Soul' Supports a Conception of Techne as Embodied	343	(7)
8. `Deliberation' Reconsidered, and Conclusion	350	(7)
Epilogue	357	(26)
1. The Main Themes	357	(7)
2. Import for Practices	364	(7)
3. Bearings in Philosophy	371	(12)
Notes	383	(86)
Bibliography to Introduction and Part 1	469	(8)
Bibliography to Part 2 and Epilogue	477	(8)
Index	485