•  14
    Principles and Practice of Expressive Arts Therapy: Toward a Therapeutic Aesthetics
    with Paolo J. Knill and Ellen G. Levine
    Jessica Kingsley Publishers. 2005.
    This book lays the foundation for a fresh interpretation of art-making and the therapeutic process by re-examining the concept of poiesis. The authors clarify the methodology and theory of practice with a focus on intermodal therapy, crystallization theory and polyaesthetics, and give guidance on the didactics of acquiring practical skills.
  •  2
    Rorty, Davidson, and Representation
    In Alan Malachowski (ed.), A Companion to Rorty, Wiley. 2020.
    In this chapter, the author shows that the affinity between the two thinkers is far greater than interpreters like Farrell allow. He focuses on evaluating the argument that Richard Rorty is not able to get past the dichotomies ‐ although he will have cause to comment on the first one as well. In the context of a continued anti‐representationalism, Rorty comes to admit that there is a “truth in realism” and that our relations to the world are not just causal but also normative. The author argues …Read more
  •  8
    Neopragmatism (Putnam and Habermas)
    In Martin Müller (ed.), Handbuch Richard Rorty, Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. pp. 363-378. 2023.
    In this chapter, I examine the debate between Rorty and two neopragmatists, Hilary Putnam and Jürgen Habermas. Though Putnam and Habermas have quite different philosophical backgrounds, their critiques of Rorty converge. Both argue that pragmatic radicalization of the linguistic turn requires seeing that our practices are guided from within by unconditional claims, and both argue that this conclusion follows from taking seriously the agent’s point of view. Rorty argues, in contrast, that the pra…Read more
  •  96
    Brandom's Pragmatism
    Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 48 (2): 125-140. 2012.
    I examine Robert Brandom's reading of the classical pragmatists, as given in his new book Perspectives on Pragmatism: Classical, Recent, and Contemporary. I argue that his reading is deficient in certain fundamental respects, and that this deficiency illuminates important blind spots in Brandom's overall theoretical project. Specifically, I focus on Brandom's rationalist pragmatism and its rejection of the classical pragmatic conception of experience. I argue that this rejection is based on an o…Read more
  •  18
    In this paper I examine Brandom's account of Hegel's claim that the content of an intention can only be determined retrospectively. While Brandom's account, given in Chapter 11 of A Spirit of Trust, sets a new standard for thinking about this topic, I argue that it is flawed in three important respects. First, Brandom is not able to make sense of a distinction that is central for Hegel, namely, between the consequences of an action that ought to have been foreseen by an acting agent, given the r…Read more
  •  3
    Min Jian: The Rise of China's Grassroots Intellectuals
    Common Knowledge 28 (1): 159-160. 2022.
  •  8
    This book provides a wide-ranging, systematic, and comprehensive approach to the moral philosophy of John Dewey, one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century. It does so by focusing on his greatest achievement in this field: the Ethics he jointly published with James Hayden Tufts in 1908 and then republished in a heavily revised version in 1932. The essays in this volume are divided into two distinct parts. The first features essays that provide a running commentary on the chapters…Read more
  •  9
    Volume 28, Issue 1, February 2020, Page 96-113.
  •  27
    McDowell, Hegel, and Habits
    Hegel Bulletin 36 (2): 184-201. 2015.
    In his debate with Dreyfus McDowell defends the ‘pervasiveness thesis’, the thesis that rational mindedness pervades the lives of rational animals, their perceptual experiences and exercises of agency. To counter this idea, Dreyfus introduces the notion of ‘social standing’: the culturally inculcated yet non-conceptual sense of the appropriate distance that one should stand from another person. McDowell claims that social standing is not a counter-example to the pervasiveness thesis because it s…Read more
  •  15
    Pragmatism, Objectivity, and Experience
    Cambridge University Press. 2018.
    In this book Steven Levine explores the relation between objectivity and experience from a pragmatic point of view. Like many new pragmatists he aims to rehabilitate objectivity in the wake of Richard Rorty's rejection of the concept. But he challenges the idea, put forward by pragmatists like Robert Brandom, that objectivity is best rehabilitated in communicative-theoretic terms - namely, in terms that can be cashed out by capacities that agents gain through linguistic communication. Levine pro…Read more
  •  81
    Habermas, Kantian pragmatism, and truth
    Philosophy and Social Criticism 36 (6): 677-695. 2010.
    In his book Truth and Justification Habermas replaces his long-held discourse-theoretic conception of truth with what he calls a pragmatic theory of truth. Instead of taking truth to originate in the communicative interactions between subjects, this new theory ties truth to the action contexts of the lifeworld, contexts where the existence of the world is ratified in practice. This, Habermas argues, overcomes the relativism and contextualism endemic to the linguistic turn. This article has two g…Read more
  •  9
    Foundations of Hegel’s Social Theory (review)
    Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 23 (1): 203-207. 2001.
  •  15
    Intentionality: Bifurcated or Intertwined?
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies 24 (4): 551-558. 2016.
  • On Heidegger's Being and Time (edited book)
    Routledge. 2008.
    _On Heidegger's Being and Time_ is an outstanding exploration of Heidegger's most important work by two major philosophers. Simon Critchley argues that we must see _Being and Time_ as a radicalization of Husserl's phenomenology, particularly his theories of intentionality, categorial intuition, and the phenomenological concept of the a priori. This leads to a reappraisal and defense of Heidegger's conception of phenomenology. In contrast, Reiner Schürmann urges us to read Heidegger 'backward', a…Read more
  •  32
    Intentionality and the Myths of the Given (review)
    Philosophical Quarterly 66 (262): 89-193. 2016.
  •  39
    Rorty, Davidson, and the New Pragmatists
    Philosophical Topics 36 (1): 167-192. 2008.
  •  165
    Norms and Habits: Brandom on the Sociality of Action
    European Journal of Philosophy 23 (2): 248-272. 2012.
    In this paper I argue against Brandom's two-ply theory of action. For Brandom, action is the result of an agent acknowledging a practical commitment and then causally responding to that commitment by acting. Action is social because the content of the commitment upon which one acts is socially conferred in the game of giving and asking for reasons. On my proposal, instead of seeing action as the coupling of a rational capacity to acknowledge commitments and a non-rational capacity to reliably re…Read more
  •  28
    Heidegger, Language, and World-Disclosure (review)
    Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 23 (2): 245-251. 2002.
  •  12
    Reflections of Equality by Christoph Menke (review)
    Constellations 14 (3): 454-457. 2007.
  •  57
    Expressivism and I‐Beliefs in Brandom’s Making it Explicit
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies 17 (1). 2009.
    No abstract
  •  89
    Sellars' critical direct realism
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies 15 (1). 2007.
    In this paper, I attempt to demonstrate the structure of Sellars' critical direct realism in the philosophy of perception. This position is original because it attempts to balance two claims that many have thought to be incompatible: (1) that perceptual knowledge is direct, i.e., not inferential, and (2) that perceptual knowledge is irreducibly conceptual. Even though perceptual episodes are not the result of inferences, they must still stand within the space of reasons if they are to be counted…Read more
  •  10
    Kantianism and Pragmatism: A Response to Margolis
    Contemporary Pragmatism 13 (1): 118-121. 2016.
    In this piece I respond to Joseph Margolis’ article “The Future of Pragmatism’s Second Life.” I make two arguments. First, I argue that Margolis misinterprets the true contest between Kantianism and Pragmatism, and that his vision of Pragmatism’s second life is overly Kantian. Second, I question his conclusion that truths about our agential norms can only ever be ‘second best’.
  •  56
    Neo-Kantianism in Contemporary Philosophy (review)
    The Pluralist 7 (2): 81-85. 2012.
  •  312
    Rehabilitating objectivity: Rorty, Brandom, and the new pragmatism
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 40 (4): 567-589. 2010.
    In recent years, a renascent form of pragmatism has developed which argues that a satisfactory pragmatic position must integrate into itself the concepts of truth and objectivity. This New Pragmatism, as Cheryl Misak calls it, is directed primarily against Rorty's neo-pragmatic dismissal of these concepts. For Rorty, the goal of our epistemic practices should not be to achieve an objective view, one that tries to represent things as they are 'in themselves,' but rather to attain a view of things…Read more
  •  76
    Sellars and Nonconceptual Content
    European Journal of Philosophy 24 (4): 855-878. 2016.
    In this paper I take up the question of whether Wilfrid Sellars has a notion of non-conceptual perceptual content. The question is controversial, being one of the fault lines along which so-called left and right Sellarsians diverge. In the paper I try to make clear what it is in Sellars' thought that leads interpreters to such disparate conclusions. My account depends on highlighting the importance of Sellars' little discussed thesis that perception involves a systematic form of mis-categorizati…Read more