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21Metaphysics and Oppression: Heidegger’s Challenge to Western PhilosophyIndiana University Press. 1999."In this stunning philosophical accomplishment, McCumber sheds important new light on the history of substance metaphysics and Heidegger's challenge to metaphysical thinking.... Well-documented, brilliant, definitely a major contribution to philosophy!" —Choice In this compelling work, John McCumber unfolds a history of Western metaphysics that is also a history of the legitimation of oppression. That is, until Heidegger. But Heidegger himself did not see how his conception of metaphysics opened…Read more
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17Reconnecting Rorty: The Situation of Discourse in Richard Rorty's Contingency, Irony, and SolidarityContingency, Irony, and Solidarity (review)Diacritics 20 (2): 2. 1990.
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16Letters to the EditorProceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 72 (5). 1999.
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153. Hegel and Hamann: Ideas and LifeIn John Russon & Michael Baur (eds.), Hegel and the Tradition: Essays in Honour of H.S. Harris, University of Toronto Press. pp. 77-92. 1997.
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15Philosophy and Freedom: Derrida, Rorty, Habermas, FoucaultIndiana University Press. 2000.John McCumber asserts that the true target of philosophical liberation is to break the structures of domination that have been encoded in western civilization.
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14Reshaping Reason: Toward a New PhilosophyIndiana University Press. 2005.In Reshaping Reason, John McCumber breathes new life into American philosophy. Moving past the tired divide between "analytic" and "continental" camps, he proposes new directions to unite a discipline which has become more unfocused and invisible. McCumber recommends a new set of rational tools to enable philosophers and then puts these tools to work to redefine epistemology, ontology, and ethics. Reshaping Reason explores philosophy's achievements and failures in a cold light and paves the way …Read more
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14Understanding Hegel's Mature Critique of KantStanford University Press. 2013.A short introduction to an endless task -- Hegel and his project -- Hegel contra Kant on philosophical critique and the limits of knowledge -- Transcendental versus linguistic idealism -- The nature and development of will -- Hegel's critique of Kant's moral theory.
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14Problems and renewal in american philosophyPhilosophical Studies 108 (1-2). 2002.Time in the Ditch presents evidence that the politics of the McCarthy Era has distorted American philosophy, both institutionally and intellectually, ever since that time. It proposes a new paradigm, situating reason, which is free of those distortions. It is neither an account of the new golden age of philosophy outside philosophy departments (as Harding wishes) nor a general history of the rise of analytical philosophy (as Hollinger thinks). I defend myself against Cohen's charges of factual e…Read more
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14Comments on Henry Somers-Hall, Hegel, Deleuze, and the Critique of RepresentationPhilosophy Today 59 (4): 719-731. 2015.
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13The company of words: Hegel, language, and systematic philosophyNorthwestern University Press. 1993.In this provocative work, the author asks us to understand Hegel's system as a new approach to human linguistic communication.
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11A Question of Origin: Hegel's Privileging of Spoken Over Written LanguageHegel Bulletin 24 (1-2): 50-60. 2003.In ‘Le puits et la pyramide’, Jacques Derrida critiques the way in which Hegel privileges speech over writing atEncyclopedia§459. He traces that privileging back to Hegel's teleologically motivated view of time as the sublation of space, which he takes in turn to be motivated by Hegel's concern, as a metaphysical thinker, for validating and securing the philosophical dream of “full presence”. This, on Hegelian terms, involves subjecting the “materiality” of space to the “ideality” of time.Perhap…Read more
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9The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of ReflectionPhilosophical Review 100 (2): 300. 1991.
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9The Ubiquity of the Finite: Hegel, Heidegger, and the Entitlements of PhilosophyPhilosophical Review 100 (3): 510. 1991.
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8Book reviews: A Philosophical Introduction to the ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’ (review)Continental Philosophy Review 37 (3): 367-381. 2004.
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8Hegel, “China” and ImihigoJournal of Chinese Philosophy 45 (1-2): 38-51. 2018.Hegel’s account of China, based mainly on the reports of European travelers and missionaries, is hardly trustworthy. Attention to it, however, can illuminate Hegel’s own critical practices. Displacing his claims about China onto the imaginary nation of “Baffinland,” I argue that Hegel’s critical standards derive from the basic nature of his thought, which requires that a good society be one that not merely tolerates but encourages the full development of human diversity. As an example of how thi…Read more
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7Speaking of the Speaking of Matter: Responses to Casey and SushytskaPhilosophy Today 58 (4): 745-761. 2014.The present article responds to the points raised by Edward S. Casey and Julia Sushytska in this issue concerning the nature of the speaking of matter and that of its metaphysical complement,. It fills in several dimensions of those concepts which were omitted from my because of its specific focus on philosophy itself. Among the topics discussed are the way the abstract structure of comes to function concretely on society ; how the speaking of human matter relates to other kinds; the “temporocen…Read more
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6The Philosophy Scare: The Politics of Reason in the Early Cold WarUniversity of Chicago Press. 2016.This fascinating study reveals the extensive influence of Cold War politics on academia, philosophical inquiry, and the course of intellectual history. From the rise of popular novels that championed the heroism of the individual to the proliferation of abstract art as a counter to socialist realism, the years of the Cold War had a profound impact on American intellectual life. As John McCumber shows in this fascinating account, philosophy, too, was hit hard by the Red Scare. Detailing the immen…Read more
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5Hegel's Anarchistic Utopia: The Politics of His AestheticsSouthern Journal of Philosophy 22 (2): 203-210. 2010.
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4Review of Richard Lynch, Foucault’s Critical Ethics (review)Philosophy Today 64 (4): 949-955. 2020.
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4On Philosophy: Notes From a CrisisStanford University Press. 2013.Deepening divisions separate today's philosophers, first, from the culture at large; then, from each other; and finally, from philosophy itself. Though these divisions tend to coalesce publicly as debates over the Enlightenment, their roots lie much deeper. Overcoming them thus requires a confrontation with the whole of Western philosophy. Only when we uncover the strange heritage of Aristotle's metaphysics, as reworked, for example, by Descartes and Kant, can we understand contemporary philosop…Read more
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4Contradiction and Resolution in the State: Hegel's Covert ViewClio: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History 15 (4): 379-390. 1986.
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University of California, Los AngelesEuropean Languages and Transcultural StudiesDistinguished Professor