Practicing Philosophy: Pragmatism and the Philosophical Life

by Shusterman,Richard

• ISBN13: 9780415913942
• ISBN10: 0415913942
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781134717293
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-01-08
• Publisher: Routledge
• More Book Details

Summary

With the increasing professionalization of philosophy, the question of what constitutes philosophical living has been largely neglected. Now one of the leading philosophers working in the pragmatist tradition aims to recover and elaborate the pragmatic idea of philosophy as a practice of living and a practical guide to living better. "How should one live and how should the practice of philosophy relate to the project of one's life?" Shusterman asks. By way of suggesting answers to this question,Practicing Philosophyoffers an analysis of the essential dimensions of the philosophical life as practiced in this century. He explores specific philosophical problems as treated by major twentieth-century pragmatists--Dewey, Goodman, Rorty, and Putnam--as well as by other theorists--Cavell, Habermas, Croce, and Danto--who can be assimilated into the pragmatist tradition. Shusterman concludes with a personal example of critical philosophical living by applying philosophy to theanalysis and direction of a central issue in his own life.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction The Philosophical Life A Renewed Poetics of Philosophy	1	(16)
1 Profiles of the Philosophical Life Dewey, Wittgenstein, Foucault	17	(50)
Part I ETHICS AND POLITICS	67	(46)
2 Pragmatism and Liberalism between Dewey and Rorty	67	(22)
3 Putnam and Cavell on the Ethics of Democracy	89	(24)
Part II ART, KNOWLEDGE, PRAXIS	113	(44)
4 Reason and Aesthetics between Modernity and Postmodernity Habermas and Rorty	113	(18)
5 Art in Action, Art Infraction Goodman, Rap, Pragmatism (New Reality Mix)	131	(26)
PART III EMBODIMENT AND ETHNICITY	157	(40)
6 Somatic Experience Foundation or Reconstruction?	157	(22)
7 Next Year in Jerusalem? Jewish Identity and the Myth of Return	179	(18)
Notes	197	(44)
Index	241