Book on the Habermas-Rawls Debate

Habermas and RawlsDisputing the PoliticalEd. by James Gordon Finlayson& Fabian Freyenhagen(Routledge, 2011)315 pagesDescriptionHabermas and Rawls are two heavyweights of social and political philosophy, and they are undoubtedly the two most written about (and widely read) authors in this field. However, there has not been much informed and interesting work on the points of intersection between their projects, partly because their work comes from different traditions — roughly the European tradition of social and political theory and the Anglo-American analytic tradition of political philosophy. In this volume, contributors re-examine the...

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How to Earn a Graduate Degree in Philosophy

If you want to further your philosophical studies or prepare for a career in law, humanities or politics, a gradate degree in philosophy will help you. After receiving your undergraduate degree, pursuing a master's degree is usually the next option for students who enjoy reading, studying and applying the tenets of philosophy to everyday life. Instructions 1. Choose a specific area of study. You may want to isolate your focus to social activism, or study the works of past masters like Plato if you are more oriented to research and academia. You may want to eventually teach philosophy or humanities. 2. Delve further into subjects like epistemology,...

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Interview with Michael Sandel

The new online journal "Art of Theory: A Political Philosophical Quarterly" brings an interview with Professor Michael Sandel (Harvard):12 Questions with Michael Sandel Excerpts:Art of Theory: What features of our political life most puzzle you?Sandel: I would say the largely arid terms of political discourse, the thinness of public discourse in the world’s leading democracies. That’s the single most striking and worrisome thing.It’s partly the tendency, over the past three decades, of economics to crowd out politics. This has been an age of market triumphalism. We’ve come to the assumption that markets are the primary instruments for achieving the public good. I think that is a mistaken notion and people are now beginning to question that.It also has led to political discourse being preoccupied...

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Ink Cash (sm) Business Card Review

The Ink Cash(sm) Business Card from Chase helps business owners earn points for all of their business purchases which can later be redeemed for gift certificates or cash back. The card features no annual fee and a large variety of valuable business tools that help you manage and control business expenses. You have no limits to the amount of cash back you can earn, and all business purchases get 3% cash back. Other eligible purchases will earn you an unlimited 1% cash back. You can redeem your points once you reach 5,000 ($50 check); or turn points in for gift certificates and gift cards at popular retailers. Like most Chase credit cards, Ink Cash(sm) Business card with the Visa logo entitles you to the Blueprint(sm) for payment flexibility. You can choose whether to pay your full balance...

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Toward a Positive Theory of Public Reason

Gillian Hadfield & Stephen Macedo have posted a new paper on SSRN:"Rational Reasonableness: Toward a Positive Theory of Public Reason"Abstract: Why is it important for people to agree on and articulate shared reasons for just laws, rather than whatever reasons they personally find compelling? What, if any, practical role does public reason play in liberal democratic politics? We argue that the practical role of public reason can be better appreciated by examining the structural similarities in normative and positive political theory. Specifically, we consider the analytical parallels between Rawls’ account of political liberalism and a rational choice model of legal order recently proposed by Hadfield & Weingast (2011). The positive model proposes that a shared system of reasoning...

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New book: Jürgen Habermas - Key Concepts

Jürgen Habermas: Key Conceptsed. by Barbara Fultner(Acumen, 2011)256 pagesDescriptionA rare systematic thinker, Habermas has furthered our understanding of modernity, social interaction and linguistic practice, societal institutions, rationality, morality, the law, globalization, and the role of religion in multicultural societies. He has helped shape discussions of truth, objectivity, normativity, and the relationship between the human and the natural sciences. This volume provides an accessible and comprehensive conceptual map of Habermas's theoretical framework and its key concepts, including the theory of communicative action, discourse ethics,...

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Review of "The Philosophy of Richard Rorty"

At "Notre Dame Philosophical Review", Paul Redding reviews "The Philosophy of Richard Rorty" (Open Court, 2010), ed. by Randall E. Auxier and Lewis Edwin Hahn: Review of "The Philosophy of Richard Rorty"Excerpt:"And for Rorty, as for Mill, the good community is one which maximizes the chances of individuals creating unique lives, which for Rorty implies fashioning the "vocabularies" with which they shape their outlooks and behaviors. To the extent that traditional philosophy seeks a source for norms in something other than human agreement, it is to be regarded as just an extension of religion. In short, to see our ideas or language as trying...

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