Csapdában Kant és Dewey között. A morálfilozófia jelenlegi helyzete

A filozófia tanárainak mostanában egyre nehezebb elmagyarázni egyetemi kollégáiknak és a társadalomnak, mit is tesznek azért, hogy megkeressék betevő falatjukat. Minél specializáltabbá és professzionalizáltabbá válik a diszciplína, az egyetemi élet többi része vagy a nagyközönség annál kevésbé vesz róla tudomást. Ma már az a veszély fenyeget, hogy egyáltalán nem is veszik észre, hogy a klasszika filológiához hasonlóan egyszerűen bájos túlélőnek tartják

City fear

Ope

La Redención del Egotismo: James y Proust comoEjercicios Espirituales

Based on the recommendations of Harold Bloom regarding what one should read and why, the article proposes that imaginative literature, more than argumentative literature, is the most efficient way to reach intellectual autonomy, a kind of autonomy that liberates one from stereotyped forms of thought regarding human beings. After stating these positions, the writers James and Proust are extrapolated as examples of creators of works that free one from egotism.Partiendo de la recomendaciones de Harold Bloom sobre qué leer y por qué, se plantea que la literatura imaginativa, más que la argumentativa, es la manera más eficiente de alcanzar una autonomía intelectual. Una clase de autonomía que lo libera a uno de formas de pensamiento esterotipadas sobre los seres humanos. Luego estos planteamiento se extrapoldan a los escritores James y Proust como ejemplos de creadores de obras liberadoras del egotismo

Is There a Legal Path to Environmental Justice? Movement-building, strategic litigation, and a case study of Chicago’s General Iron dispute

This socio-legal research project assesses the role of litigation in environmental justice activist movements, using the planned relocation of the General Iron metal recycling plant in Chicago as a case study. To understand the modern environmental justice landscape, I conducted semi-structured interviews with ten environmental justice activists, plaintiffs, and attorneys, several of whom were involved in the General Iron issue specifically, to answer the research questions (1) What is the role of litigation in today’s environmental justice battles, especially on the Southeast Side of Chicago? and (2) What legal strategies are recommended by both the track record of environmental justice litigation in the courts and the needs of environmental justice grassroots movements as reported by organizers? I then analyzed the resulting transcripts for recurring patterns and insights. My interviews with community organizers on Chicago’s Southeast Side indicated that the General Iron issue exemplifies a dynamic wherein litigation is one of several elements of a grassroots environmental justice campaign, each essential but none more so than the others. In interviewing attorneys and reviewing the legal literature, I find that environmental justice lawsuits can catalyze political victories and bring attention and credibility to activist movements, even when they do not succeed in the courts. Based on both a review of legal literature and recent jurisprudence and my interviews, I ultimately propose that in the General Iron issue and future environmental justice battles on the Southeast Side, the community could draw on youth organizers to launch a youth plaintiff-led lawsuit employing both state constitutional claims and more traditional environmental law. Consistent with activists’ current use of the courts, this lawsuit should be accompanied by a media campaign and efforts to lobby local and state politicians for policy changes. With appropriately specific claims and compelling plaintiffs, such an effort could set new precedents, breathe life into Illinois’ historically limited environmental rights amendment, and succeed where past youth plaintiff cases have failed

Our Master’s Voice

“I was an ad-man once,” James Rorty writes in this classic dissection of the advertising industry. Steeped in Rorty’s leftist politics, Our Master’s Voice presents advertising as the linchpin of a capitalist economy that it also helps justify. The book set off tremors when it was published in 1934, perhaps because its author so decisively repudiated his former profession. But Rorty and his spirited takedown of publicity were all but forgotten a decade later. The book is a neglected masterpiece, republished in this mediastudies.press edition with a new introduction by Jefferson Pooley

Rorty and Literature

This chapter addresses the relationship between Rorty's pragmatist philosophy and his view of literature and literary writing. It begins by examining the relationship between philosophy and literature, construed by Rorty in terms of the opposition between “normal,” professionalized, argument‐centered philosophical discourse and the kind of cultural criticism which emphasizes human finitude and contingency, seeking through the use of irony and literary inventiveness to transform our prevalent visions of what it means to be human. This humanist side of Rorty's argument is further developed through the discussion of the role that literature plays in intellectual self‐formation and moral edification, by educating moral sensibility and providing transformational shifts of conceptual perspective. These dynamics of literary innovation are then shown to dovetail nicely with Rorty's naturalistic, evolutionary conception of cultural development as well as his views regarding the indispensable role of the personal, the private, and the unshared in producing genuine cultural innovation