The Trouble with Principle

The Trouble with Principle

Author: Stanley Fish

Publisher: Harvard University Press

ISBN: 9780674005341

Category: Social Science

Page: 337

View: 679

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Stanley Fish is an equal opportunity antagonist. A theorist who has taken on theorists, an academician who has riled the academy, a legal scholar and political pundit who has ruffled feathers left and right, Fish here turns with customary gusto to the trouble with principle. Specifically, Fish has a quarrel with neutral principles. The trouble? They operate by sacrificing everything people care about to their own purity. And they are deployed with equal highmindedness and equally absurd results by liberals and conservatives alike. In this bracing book, Fish argues that there is no realm of higher order impartiality--no neutral or fair territory on which to stake a claim--and that those who invoke one are always making a rhetorical and political gesture. In the end, it is history and context, the very substance against which a purportedly abstract principle defines itself, that determines a principle's content and power. In the course of making this argument, Fish takes up questions about academic freedom and hate speech, affirmative action and multiculturalism, the boundaries between church and state, and much more. Sparing no one, he shows how our notions of intellectual and religious liberty--cherished by those at both ends of the political spectrum--are artifacts of the very partisan politics they supposedly transcend. The Trouble with Principle offers a provocative challenge to the debates of our day that no intellectually honest citizen can afford to ignore.

The Trouble with "Truth through Personality"

The Trouble with

Author: Charles W. Fuller

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

ISBN: 9781608994038

Category: Religion

Page: 162

View: 324

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In an era when the cult of personality has overtaken the task of preaching, Charles W. Fuller offers an engaging query into the necessary boundaries between the person of the preacher and the message preached. By thoroughly evaluating Phillips Brooks's classic "truth through personality" de?nition of preaching, Fuller brings to light a substantial error that remains in contemporary homiletics: namely, the tenuous correlation between Christ's incarnation and Christian preaching. Ultimately, Fuller asserts a sound evangelical framework for preaching on revelational, ontological, rhetorical, and teleological grounds. Preachers who desire to construct pulpit practice upon a robust evangelical foundation will bene?t from Fuller's contribution.

Incommensurability and its Implications for Practical Reasoning, Ethics and Justice

Incommensurability and its Implications for Practical Reasoning, Ethics and Justice

Author: Martijn Boot

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

ISBN: 9781786602299

Category: Philosophy

Page: 256

View: 903

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This highly original book sheds new light on aspects of incommensurability of values and its implications for ethics and justice. It provides original and innovative analysis of the characteristics of incommensurability in relation to values, and explores the implications of incommensurability for ethics, justice and public decision-making.

What is this thing called Knowledge?

What is this thing called Knowledge?

Author: Duncan Pritchard

Publisher: Routledge

ISBN: 9781134573677

Category: Philosophy

Page: 233

View: 654

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What is knowledge? Where does it come from? What kinds of knowledge are there? Can we know anything at all? This lucid and engaging introduction grapples with these central questions in the theory of knowledge, offering a clear, non-partisan view of the main themes of epistemology. Both traditional issues and contemporary ideas are discussed in sixteen easily digestible chapters, each of which conclude with a useful summary of the main ideas discussed, study questions, annotated further reading and a guide to internet resources. Each chapter also features text boxes providing bite-sized summaries of key concepts and major philosophers, and clear and interesting examples are used throughout. The book concludes with an annotated guide to general introductions to epistemology, a glossary of key terms, and a summary of the main examples used in epistemology, This an ideal first textbook in the theory of knowledge for undergraduates coming to philosophy for the first time. The third edition has been revised and updated throughout and features two new chapters, on religious knowledge and scientific knowledge, as part of a whole new section on what kinds of knowledge there are. In addition, the text as a whole has been refreshed to keep it up to date with current developments.