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238The ScavengerDewey Studies 7 (1): 64-81. 2023.In this reflection I draw out Richard J. Bernstein’s claim that he was a ‘scavenger’ and put it to use in revisiting main themes of his engagements with pragmatism, hermeneutics, Hegel, and critical theory. This piece is included in a memorial issue of Dewey Studies on Bernstein.
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14Real Interests and Incoherent DesiresJournal of Speculative Philosophy 36 (1): 51-68. 2022.ABSTRACT The fact of pluralism has set a number of practical and theoretical problems for political theorists. One of the most serious difficulties is the question of the criteria for judgment. What critical standards are available when encountering a society's practices that are different from one's own? One strategy for dealing with this is to separate out questions of ethics from questions of morality. We argue that this is a particularly unfruitful conceptual strategy. Rather our position is…Read more
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355Pushing Social Philosophy to Its Democratic LimitsContemporary Pragmatism 18 (3): 311-324. 2021.Roberto Frega’s Pragmatism and the Wide View of Democracy reformulates the question of democracy posed by our current historic conjuncture using the resources of a variety of pragmatic thinkers. He brings into the contemporary conversation regarding democracy’s fortunes both classical and somewhat neglected figures in the pragmatic tradition to deal with questions of power, ontology, and politics. In particular, Frega takes a social philosophical starting point and draws out the consequences of …Read more
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271What is economics for?In Peter Róna, László Zsolnai & Agnieszka Wincewicz-Price (eds.), Words, Objects and Events in Economics: The Making of Economic Theory, Springer International Publishing. 2021.The methodological foundations of any scientific discipline are shaped by the goals towards which that discipline is aiming. While it is almost universally accepted that the goals of explanation and prediction of natural and non-human phenomena have been met with great success since the scientific revolution, it is almost just as universally accepted that the social sciences have not even come close to achieving these goals. This raises the question addressed in this paper, namely, what is…Read more
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71Practices of Interpretation: Social Inquiry as Problem Solving and Self-DefinitionIn Vinicio Busacchi & Anna Nieddu (eds.), Pragmatismo ed ermeneutica. Soggettività, storicità, rappresentazione, Mimesis. 2019.John Dewey attempted a pragmatic aufhebung of the disparate methodological aims of social science-explanation, understanding, and critique- in his 1938 Logic: the theory of Inquiry. There, in his penultimate chapter ‘Social Inquiry’, Dewey performed a trademark implementation of his deflation of absolutistic and universalistic pretensions in intellectual and theoretical discourse, in this case with respect to any one approach to social science. This deflation--as elsewhere in his analogous trea…Read more
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The Tenuous Harmony of Imagination, Vision, and CritiqueIn Randall E. Auxier, Eli Kramer & Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński (eds.), Rorty and Beyond, Lexington Books. 2019.
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38Actionable Consequences: Reconstruction, Therapy, and the Remainder of Social ScienceJournal of Speculative Philosophy 34 (1): 97-112. 2020.John Dewey and Ludwig Wittgenstein offer devastating critiques of the dominant model of human action that each inherited in their own time. Dewey, very early in his philosophical career, ostensibly put the stimulus–response mechanical understanding of action to rest with his “reflex-arc” concept article. Wittgenstein famously redescribed action as moves within language games that interconnect to constitute an interpretively open-ended form of life. In each case, these fundamental insights serve …Read more
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48The Complementarity of Means and Ends: Putnam, pragmatism and the critique of economic rationalityGraduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 38 (2): 401-428. 2017.
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59Consequences of Liberal Naturalism: Hilary Putnam's Naturalism, Realism, and NormativityGraduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 38 (2): 463-97. 2017.This is a review article (15,000 words) of Putnam's Naturalism, Realism, and Normativity, (Harvard, 2016).
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48Antonio Gramsci: a humanist reconstruction of MarxismIn J. Ward Regan (ed.), Great Books Written in Prison: Essays on Classic Works from Plato to Martin Luther King, Jr., Macfarland & Co.. 2014.
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9Philosophy and Freedom (review)Newsletter of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy 29 (89): 28-32. 2001.
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54Pragmatic hegemony: questions and convergenceJournal of Speculative Philosophy 29 (1): 107-117. 2015.ABSTRACT The question concerning the connection of scientific inquiry to democratic praxis is central to both Antonio Gramsci and John Dewey. They share a common philosophical origin in Hegel and are essentially both in the tradition of Left Hegelian thought. Likewise, their respective analyses of the forces obstructing democratic emancipation were sharply focused on the distortions of social life caused by economic agents cooperating under hugely unequal power relations. As Gramsci wrote from h…Read more
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72Agency, political economy, and the transnational democratic idealEthics and Global Politics 3 (1): 37-45. 2010.James Bohman’s Democracy across borders: from demos to demoi is a rich and deep text. It is also deceptively short in length in comparison to those authors he engages and compactly reconstructs. Bohman puts forward strong normative arguments for a ‘reconstructed’ ideal of transnational democracy and provides models for realizing these ideals that also aim to meet standards of practicability. Bohman articulates the minimum necessary conditions for any democratic ideal in terms of freedom from dom…Read more
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4CommunicationIn John Lachs Robert Talisse (ed.), American Philosophy: an encyclopedia, Routledge. 2007.This encyclopedia article traces the concept of communication from the classical pragmatists to contemporary philosophers association with pragmatism. Special emphasis on Peirce, Mead, Dewey, and Habermas.
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57Pragmatism, Power, and the Situation of DemocracyJournal of Speculative Philosophy 30 (1): 64-74. 2016.ABSTRACT Pragmatism as a theoretical enterprise has been criticized since its inception for not having a coherent account of the role of power and violence in human affairs as well as a moral justification and criteria for marshaling arguments in favor of democracy. In this essay I approach recent developments in pragmatic democratic theory with those persistent criticisms in mind. Rather than lacking justificatory resources and underthematizing the role of violence and asymmetrical power relati…Read more
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25Guest Editor Introduction to a Symposium on Robert Westbrook’s Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of TruthContemporary Pragmatism 4 (2): 1-2. 2007.Westbrook provides an epistemological argument for democracy which features Cheryl Misak's version of "truth aptness" in moral and political discourse. Importantly, practices of citizenship are also pointed to in providing the habits necessary to engage in inquiry that democracy requires. However, while the regulative ideal of Misak's epistemology includes pragmatic reflection regarding multiple possible answers to moral questions and fallibilism with regard to these answers, it is still unclear…Read more
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72Imagination, imaginaries, and emancipationPragmatism Today 6 (2): 48-61. 2015.This reflection on the topic of emancipation stems from an ongoing project in tune with a wider development in pragmatic philosophy. Specifically, the project aims to piece together some of the consequences of pragmatism’s reconstruction of the tradition of philosophical inquiry, from the angle of human imagination. More recently this project has taken a different direction, in light of our critical situation under intensifying anti-democratic forces in the US, but also in many parliamentary dem…Read more
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65Abstract Objectivity: Richard J. Bernstein's critique of Hilary PutnamIn Judith M. Green (ed.), Richard J. Bernstein and the pragmatist turn in contemporary philosophy: rekindling pragmatism's fire, Palgrave-macmillan. 2014.
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67Richard J. BernsteinIn John R. Shook & Richard T. Hull (eds.), The dictionary of modern American philosophers, Thoemmes Continuum. 2005.This encyclopedia article traces the development of Richard J. Bernstein's philosophical work and provide s short biography.
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22Any Democracy Worth its Name: Bernstein's democratic ethos and a role for representationIn Marcia Morgan & Megan Craig (eds.), Thinking The Plural: Richard J. Bernstein and the Expansion of American Philosophy, Rowman & Littlefield. 2016.
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20Guest Editor Introduction to a Symposium on Robert Westbrook’s Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of TruthContemporary Pragmatism 4 (2): 1-2. 2007.This symposium on Robert Westbrook's John Dewey and American Democracy explores the continuing relevance of pragmatism for democratic political theory
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26Hegemony, social inquiry, and the primacy of practical reasonIn Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley & Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński (eds.), Persuasion and Compulsion in Democracy, Lexington. 2013.
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2The Imaginative Character of Pragmatic InquiryCognitio Estudos 5 (2). 2008.John Dewey’s lifelong labor to articulate an alternative account of logic from the ‘abstract thought’ predominant in discussions of logic culminates in his 1938 Logic: the theory of inquiry. In this text Dewey argues that all inquiry involves the instantiation of a general pattern of inquiry. Articulating the role of imagination in the general pattern of inquiry is crucial to illuminating the practical character and theoretical scope of this activity. Specifically, the agency of the inquirer…Read more
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New York UniversityClinical Professor
Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy of Social Science |
20th Century American Pragmatism, Misc |
Areas of Interest
19th Century Philosophy |
20th Century Philosophy |
European Philosophy |
Value Theory |