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16In this path-breaking study Christopher Norris proposes a transformed understanding of the much-exaggerated differences between analytic and continental philosophy. While keeping the analytic tradition squarely in view, his book focuses on the work of Jacques Derrida and Alain Badiou, two of the most original and significant figures in the recent history of ideas. Norris argues that these thinkers have decisively reconfigured the terrain of contemporary philosophy and, between them, pointed a wa…Read more
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10This book brings together three main topics - deconstruction, philosophy of language, and literary theory - that have figured centrally in Christopher Norris's work over the past two decades. It offers a refreshingly clear and vigorous statement of his views as to how ‘theory' might profit from a greater awareness of current philosophical debates while philosophy might likewise gain by adopting a more open-minded attitude toward developments in literary theory. Most significant here is Norris's …Read more
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8Post-structuralism - what's in it for philosophers?The Philosophers' Magazine 6 (6): 20-21. 1999.
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10Ontological relativity and meaning‐variance: A critical‐constructive reviewInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 40 (2). 1997.This article offers a critical review of various ontological-relativist arguments, mostly deriving from the work of W. V. Quine and Thomas K hn. I maintain that these arguments are (1) internally contradictory, (2) incapable of accounting for our knowledge of the growth of scientific knowledge, and (3) shown up as fallacious from the standpoint of a causal-realist approach to issues of truth, meaning, and interpretation. Moreover, they have often been viewed as lending support to such programmes…Read more
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7Deconstruction and the 'Unfinished Project of Modernity'Routledge. 2000.Through a close engagement with some key thinkers, Norris argues that deconstruction is part of the "unfinished project of modernity." a project whose interest and values it upholds by continuing to question them in a spirit of enlightened self-critical inquiry
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3Staying for an answer: Truth, knowledge, and the Rumsfeld creedPhilosophy and Social Criticism 30 (7): 777-798. 2004.Should the truth-value of statements be thought of as epistemically constrained or as determined by objective factors that stand quite apart from our best knowledge, evidence, or powers of conceptual grasp? The anti-realist/realist debate turns ultimately on this disagreement. My article takes its lead from a famous pronouncement by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfield to the effect that there are ‘known knowns’, i.e. ‘things that we know we know’; ‘known unknowns’, or ‘things we know we do not…Read more
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6What's wrong with postmodernism: critical theory and the ends of philosophyJohns Hopkins University Press. 1990.In What's Wrong with Postmodernism Norris critiques the "postmodern-pragmatist malaise" of Baudrillard, Fish, Rorty, and Lyotard. In contrast he finds a continuing critical impulse--an "enlightened or emancipatory interest"--in thinkers like Derrida, de Man, Bhaskar, and Habermas. Offering a provocative reassessment of Derrida's influence on modern thinking, Norris attempts to sever the tie between deconstruction and American literary critics who, he argues, favor endless, playful, polysemic int…Read more
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6Reply to Jeff Malpas: On truth, realism, changing one's mind about Davidson (not heidegger), and related topicsInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 12 (3). 2004.This essay responds to Jeff Malpas's foregoing article, itself written in response to my various publications over the past two decades concerning Donald Davidson's ideas about truth, meaning, and interpretation. It has to do mainly with our disagreement as regards the substantive content of Davidson's truth-based semantic approach in relation to the problematic legacy of logical empiricism, including Quine's incisive but no less problematical critique of that legacy. I also raise questions with…Read more
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5Philosophy of language and the challenge to scientific realismRoutledge. 2004.In this book Christopher Norris develops the case for scientific realism by tackling various adversary arguments from a range of anti-realist positions. Through a close critical reading he shows how they fail to make adequate sense on any rational, consistent and scientifically informed survey of the evidence. Along the way he incorporates a number of detailed case-studies from the history and philosophy of science. Norris devotes much of his discussion to some of the most prominent and widely i…Read more
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6Language, logic, and epistemology: a modal-realist approachPalgrave-Macmillan. 2004.Norris presents a series of closely linked chapters on recent developments in epistemology, philosophy of language, cognitive science, literary theory, musicology and other related fields. While to this extent adopting an interdisciplinary approach, Norris also very forcefully challenges the view that the academic "disciplines" as we know them are so many artificial constructs of recent date and with no further role than to prop up existing divisions of intellectual labour. He makes his case thr…Read more
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6Badiou's 'Being and Event': A Reader's GuideContinuum. 2009.Badiou is without doubt the most influential philosopher working in Europe today - this book will provide the first detailed introduction to Being and Event, a ...
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6Structure and genesis in scientific theory: Husserl, Bachelard, DerridaBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 8 (1). 2000.(2000). STRUCTURE AND GENESIS IN SCIENTIFIC THEORY: HUSSERL, BACHELARD, DERRIDA. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 107-139. doi: 10.1080/096087800360247
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18Putnam on realism, reference and truth: The problem with quantum mechanicsInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 15 (1). 2001.In this essay, I offer a critical evaluation of Hilary Putnam's writings on epistemology and philosophy of science, in particular his engagement with interpretative problems in quantum mechanics. I trace the development of his thinking from the late 1960s when he adopted a strong causal-realist position on issues of meaning, reference, and truth, via the "internal realist" approach of his middle-period writings, to the various forms of pragmatist, naturalized, or "commonsense" epistemology propo…Read more
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Making for Truth: Some Problems with Virtue-based EpistemologyFacta Philosophica: Internazionale Zeitschrift für Gegenwartsphilosophie: International Journal for Contemporary Philosophy 6 111-1. 2004.
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28This Routledge Revival , first published in 1985, gives detailed attention to the bearing of literary theory on questions of truth, meaning and reference. On the one hand, deconstruction brings a vigilant awareness of the figural and narrative tropes that make up the discourse of philosophic reason. On the other it insists that argumentative rigour cannot be divorced from the kind of close reading that has come to characterize literary theory in its more advanced or speculative forms. This prese…Read more
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8Ontology According to van Fraassen: Some Problems with Constructive EmpiricismMetaphilosophy 28 (3): 196-218. 1997.This paper argues the case for ontological realism as against various present‐day forms of conventionalist, instrumentalist, cultural‐relativist, or anti‐realist doctrine. In particular it takes issue with Richard Rorty’s writings on philosophy of science – where these ideas receive their most extreme and provocative statement – and with Bas van Fraassen’s more moderate ‘constructive empiricist’ approach. This latter entails ontological commitment to whatever shows up through trained observation…Read more
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3Resources of realism: prospects for 'post-analytic' philosophySt. Martin's Press. 1997.This book is concerned chiefly with issues in epistemology, philosophical semantics and philosophy of science. It defends a causal-realist approach to theories and explanations in the natural sciences and a truth-based propositional semantics for natural language derived from various sources, among them unusually in this context the work of William Empson. It argues against various forms of anti-realist doctrine with regard to both the truth-claims of science and the construal of intentions, mea…Read more
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7Paul de Man : Deconstruction and the Critique of Aesthetic IdeologyRoutledge. 1988.Paul de Man - literary critic, literary philosopher, "American deconstructionist" - changed the landscape of criticism through his rigorous theories and writings. Upon its original publication in 1988, Christopher Norris' book was the first full-length introduction to de Man, a reading that offers a much-needed corrective to the pattern of extreme antithetical response which marked the initial reception to de Man's writings. Norris addresses de Man's relationship to philosophical thinking in the…Read more
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22Deconstruction: Theory and PracticeRoutledge. 2002._Deconstruction: Theory and Practice_ has been acclaimed as by far the most readable, concise and authoritative guide to this topic. Without oversimplifying or glossing over the challenges, Norris makes deconstruction more accessible to the reader. The volume focuses on the works of Jacques Derrida which caused this seismic shift in critical thought, as well as the work of North American critics Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman, J. Hillis Miller and Harold Bloom. In this third, revised edition, Nor…Read more
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1Ambiguities of the third way: Realism, anti-realism, and response-dependencePhilosophical Forum 33 (1). 2002.