Amelie Rorty

(1932 - 2020)

Paintings invite us to engage in dialogues with them. By questioning them, by reflecting on the ways they structure and express the world, we can come to understand the layers of meaning that are embedded in the ways we construct our perceptions. Learning to look at paintings is a way of learning to see the world through someone else’s eyes. The questions in "Dialogues with Paintings" are intended to help us see a painting, to understand how and why the painter made it look the way it does. It takes a long time and many questions–many dialogues–to come to see a painting as a whole composed of many approaches, perspectives, aspects. By reflecting on the ways paintings structure and express the world, we can come to understand the layers of meaning that are embedded in the ways we construct our perceptions. Learning how to look at paintings can also help us see things more clearly and vividly, to notice the compositions of things–scenes, faces, landscapes, city streets, rooms–to see how light and shadow affect color, how shapes echo one another, how distance is conveyed, how ways of understanding the world are visually expressed and conveyed, how seeing a painting can change our way of seeing our world.

_Philosophers on Education_ offers us the most comprehensive available history of philosopher's views and impacts on the directions of education. As Amelie Rorty explains, in describing a history of education, we are essentially describing and gaining the clearest understanding of the issues that presently concern and divide us. The essays in this stellar collection are written by some of the finest comtemporary philosophers. Those interested in history of philosophy, epistemology, moral psychology and education, and political theory will find _Philosophers on Education_ to be both an engaging and fascinating read.

_Philosophers on Education_ offers us the most comprehensive available history of philosopher's views and impacts on the directions of education. As Amelie Rorty explains, in describing a history of education, we are essentially describing and gaining the clearest understanding of the issues that presently concern and divide us. The essays in this stellar collection are written by some of the finest comtemporary philosophers. Those interested in history of philosophy, epistemology, moral psychology and education, and political theory will find _Philosophers on Education_ to be both an engaging and fascinating read.

Lively current debates about narratives of historical progress, the conditions for international justice, and the implications of globalisation have prompted a renewed interest in Kant's Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim. The essays in this volume, written by distinguished contributors, discuss the questions that are at the core of Kant's investigations. Does the study of history convey any philosophical insight? Can it provide political guidance? How are we to understand the destructive and bloody upheavals that constitute so much of human experience? What connections, if any, can be traced between politics, economics, and morality? What is the relation between the rule of law in the nation state and the advancement of a cosmopolitan political order? These questions and others are examined and discussed in a book that will be of interest to philosophers, social and political theorists, and intellectual and cultural historians