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Untying Things Together helps to clarify the stakes of the last fifty years of literary and cultural theory by proposing the idea of a sexuality of theory. In 1905, Freud published his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, the book that established the core psychoanalytic thesis that sexuality is central to formations of the unconscious. With this book, Eric L. Santner inverts Freud's title to take up the sexuality of theory—or, more exactly, the modes of enjoyment to be found in the kinds of critical thinking that, since the 1960s, have laid claim to that ancient word, “theory.” Santner unfolds his argument by tracking his own relationship with this tradition and the ways his intellectual and spiritual development has been informed by it. Untying Things Together is both an intellectual history of major theoretical paradigms and a call for their reexamination and renewal. Revisiting many of the topics he has addressed in previous work, Santner proposes a new way of conceptualizing the eros of thinking, attuned to how our minds and bodies individually and collectively incorporate or “encyst” on a void at the heart of things. Rather than proposing a “return to theory,” Santner's book simply employs theory as a way of further “(un)tying together” the resources of philosophy, art and literature, theology, psychoanalysis, political thought, and more.

Post-Theories in Literary and Cultural Studies focuses on the shifting paradigms in literary and cultural studies. Prompted by the changes and problems on the global scale, the last two decades have seen a resurgence of scholarly interest in theories which are more embedded in the social realities and human condition. This volume shows that theory can reinvent theory and re-define criticism according to the demands of the new millennium. In this context, it examines new ways of considering the relation of post-theory to the concepts such as ethics, aesthetics, truth, value, authenticity, human, and reality to understand the mindset of the new century. This volume presents the various suggestions and concerns of post-theoretical studies that reflect the sensibilities of the contemporary social and cultural life. The book is a source of reference to develop an understanding of this change of attitude in post-theoretical studies towards a more directly and sincerely responsive approach to the current problems worldwide, their representations in literature and language, reflections in theory, roots in socio-political domains, and effects on the material reality.

For Theory is an invitation to review the impact of neoliberalization on critical thinking and a call to recover the momentum of theoretical production capable of sustaining better analyses of the conjuncture for an emancipatory strategy. Relying on the tradition of Althusserian studies, the book discusses the political, technocratic, neo-anarchist and reformist drifts of Latin American leftist thought and thus raises the need to advance in a materialistic and pluralistic conceptualization of historical time and to develop the category of overdetermination. It does so by focusing on the theory of reproduction and in a complex consideration of the concept of class struggle, in order to dispute the future with the dominant ideology that imposes a regime of presentist temporality, discouraging any emancipatory imagination of the future.

This open access book examines from a variety of perspectives the disappearance of moral content and ethical judgment from the models employed in the formulation of modern economic theory, and some of the papers contain important proposals about how moral judgment could be reintroduced in economic theory. The chapters collected in this volume result from the favorable reception of the first volume of the Virtues in Economics series and represent further contributions to the themes set out in that volume: (i) examining the philosophical and methodological fallacies of this turn in modern economic theory that the removal of the moral motivation of economic agents from modern economic theory has entailed; and (ii) proposing a return descriptive economics as the means with which the moral content of economic life could be restored in economic theory.This book is of interest to researchers and students of the methodology of economics, ethics, philosophers concerned with agency and economists who build economic models that rest in the intention of the agent.

There Are No Such Things as Theories considers the fundamental question: what is a scientific theory? It presents a range of options - from theories are sets of propositions, to theories are families of models, abstract artefacts, or fictions - and highlights the various problems they all face. In so doing it draws multiple comparisons between theories and artworks: on the one hand, theories are like certain kinds of paintings with regard to their representational capacity; on the other, they are like musical works in that they can be multiply presented. An alternative answer to the question is then offered, drawing on the metaphysics of musical works: there are no such things as theories. Nevertheless, we can still talk about them, since that talk is made true by the various practices that scientists engage in. The implications of this form of eliminativism for the realism debate is then discussed and it is concluded that this may offer a more flexible framework in which we can understand both the history and the philosophy of science in general.

This accessible, hands-on text has now been revised and updated, with expanded coverage of topics including how theory may emerge from exploratory data analysis. The book prepares graduate students, new researchers, and even seasoned investigators to develop their own theories and build on existing ones. Concrete strategies are provided to help readers generate ideas, define constructs, and think through relationships and processes that link constructs. Compelling examples from multiple disciplines illustrate the use of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods orientations to theory construction. The text also offers practical advice for writing effectively about theories in papers and grant applications. Readers learn by doing via application and concept exercises, demonstration boxes, and practical guidelines. The extensive companion website (www.theory-construction.com) includes PowerPoint slides of all of the book's figures, primers on advanced topics, video demonstrations, supplemental exercises, and other resources. New to This Edition •Emergent theory is now covered in mixed methods as well as qualitative approaches, plus in a new chapter on exploratory quantitative methods that can help generate new theory through data mining. •Chapter on whether and how to revise a theory when faced with disconfirmatory data. •Two chapters on the theoretical underpinnings of measurement practices. •New or expanded discussions of what constitutes a theoretical contribution, conceptual logic models, thought experiments, and more. Pedagogical Features •Application and concept exercises in every chapter. •Lists of key terms and engaging topical boxes. •Annotated suggestions for further reading. •New companion website with rich resources for students and instructors. •Chapters stand on their own and can be used in any order.

Now in paperback, nine lectures from Jacques Derrida that challenge the influential Marxist distinction between thinking and acting. Theory and Practice is a series of nine lectures that Jacques Derrida delivered at the École Normale Supérieure in 1976 and 1977. The topic of “theory and practice” was associated above all with Marxist discourse and particularly the influential interpretation of Marx by Louis Althusser. Derrida's many questions to Althusser and other thinkers aim at unsettling the distinction between thinking and acting. Derrida's investigations set out from Marx's “Theses on Feuerbach,” in particular the eleventh thesis, which has often been taken as a mantra for the “end of philosophy,” to be brought about by Marxist practice. Derrida argues, however, that Althusser has no such end in view and that his discourse remains resolutely philosophical, even as it promotes the theory/practice pair as primary values. This seminar also draws fascinating connections between Marxist thought and Heidegger and features Derrida's signature reconsideration of the dichotomy between doing and thinking. This text, available for the first time in English, shows that Derrida was doing important work on Marx long before Specters of Marx. As with the other volumes in this series, it gives readers an unparalleled glimpse into Derrida's thinking at its best—spontaneous, unpredictable, and groundbreaking.

This book provides value to anyone interested in theory—for understanding why it exists, why it exists in the form it does, what it is (and what it is not), how to do it and when and where, and the responsibilities it entails. It is useful for those studying theory (or the philosophy of science), for those writing theory, for those critiquing theory, and for those trying to understand and apply theory. The book provides perspective in this ‘thing'(theory) that is ubiquitous, species-differentiating, and yet deeply flawed in many ways—the thing that undergirds humanity's greatest successes and continued failures. It demystifies the heart of ‘science', while unifying the ‘sciences'in terms of goals and duties.

النظرية كما هو معروف تُستخدمُ لوصفِ شيء ما، سواء أكان علمياً، أم فلسفياً، أم أدبياً، وقد تثبتُ هذه النظرية حقيقة معيّنة، أو تساهمُ في بناءِ فكر جديد، ومن التعريفات الاصطلاحيّة الأخرى للنظريّة: هي دراسة لموضوع معين دراسة عقلانيّة ومنطقيّة. الجزء الاول من هذا الكتاب تناولت فيه 12 نظرية قصيرة النص باعتبار الساعة تحتوي على 12 رقم، فكان لكل رقم نظرية وسبب التسمية هذه أن رسالة الدافع في هذا الكتاب لم تأتِ من فراغ، بل على إثر تفشي كورونا في العالم، وزمن الحجر المنزلي الذي لم يشهده العراق منذ الاحتلال الامريكي عام 2003، حيث يمضي اليوم وكأن الساعة متوقفة أو لكل رقم ميل خاص به. إذا رأيت الساعة في تمام العاشرة صباحاً أو الثانية عشر ليلاً لا فرق، أصبحت الساعة أكثر شيء عديم الفائدة بعد ان كانت قِبلة الوقت في كل بيت. وعلى إثر هذا الزمن تولدت لدي الرغبة بأن أقوم بتأليف هذا الكتاب عبارة عن نظريات بينهم من قامت على تجربة واخرى نظرية فلسفية وكما هو معروف لا توجد نظرية مطلقة ابداً قد تكون فيها مزايا أو أنها تتعرض للنقد، لكن جميعها تميل إلى الجانب النفسي من البشر.

“Theory offered us a way of understanding the world that, like so many youthful exuberances, was both vital and ridiculous.”As an avowed “theory head,” Jordan Alexander Stein confronts a contradiction: that the abstract, and often frustrating rigors of theory also produced a sense of pride and identity for him and his friends: an idea of how to be and a way to live. Although Stein explains what theory is, this is not an introduction or a how-to. Organized around five ways that theory makes us feel—silly, stupid, sexy, seething and stuck—Stein travels back to the late nineties to tell a story of coming of age at a particular moment and to measure how that moment lives on now.Avidly Reads is a series of short books about how culture makes us feel. Founded in 2012 by Sarah Blackwood and Sarah Mesle, Avidly—an online magazine supported by the Los Angeles Review of Books—specializes in short-form critical essays devoted to thinking and feeling. Avidly Reads is an exciting new series featuring books that are part memoir, part cultural criticism, each bringing to life the author's emotional relationship to a cultural artifact or experience. Avidly Reads invites us to explore the surprising pleasures and obstacles of everyday life. This is a story about the emotional lives of ideas.

This book explores new findings on the long-neglected topic of theory construction and discovery, and challenges the orthodox, current division of scientific development into discrete stages: the stage of generation of new hypotheses; the stage of collection of relevant data; the stage of justification of possible theories; and the final stage of selection from among equally confirmed theories. The chapters, written by leading researchers, offer an interdisciplinary perspective on various aspects of the processes by which theories rationally should, and descriptively are, built. They address issues such as the role of problem-solving and heuristic reasoning in theory-building; how inferences and models shape the pursuit of scientific knowledge; the relation between problem-solving and scientific discovery; the relative values of the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic view of theories in understanding theory construction; and the relation between ampliative inferences, heuristicreasoning, and models as a means for building new theories and knowledge. Through detailed arguments and examinations, the volume collectively challenges the orthodox view's main tenets by characterizing the ways in which the different “stages” are logically, temporally, and psychologically intertwined. As a group, the chapters provide several attempts to answer long-standing questions about the possibility of a unified conceptual framework for building theories and formulating hypotheses.

Engaging scholars from across humanistic fields grappling with the role and value of theory in our times, Theory's Autoimmunity argues for reclaiming theory's skepticism as a value. To cultivate theory's skeptical impulses is to embrace what Jacques Derrida has termed autoimmunity: a condition of openness to the outside—openness of the self, the community, democracy, or other ideals—that allows for change. Openness to change comes with risks, and the self-protective temptation to immunize oneself or one's community against these risks is strong. Yet without such risks, without openness to otherness, no encounter with the new, with difference, can ever take place. Without autoimmunity, theory becomes stagnant and programmatic, unable to receive and respond to the other or the event, to address, revise, and produce new meanings. Taking up the challenge of thinking theory as skepticism, with and against philosophy, this study turns to literature as an interlocutor, investigating the ways theory, like the literary works of Montaigne, Baudelaire, Stendhal, Morrison, or Duras, declines to put on the interpretive brakes, to stop reading at a point of understanding. Undoing and remaking itself, theory—those critical interpretive practices that revel in the creation and proliferation of meaning—becomes autoimmune.

This collection of fourteen essays by scholars from Canada, Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States emerges from a growing interest in the ways postmodern theory can illuminate not just the products and ideas of high culture, but also the ins and outs of everyday life. Taking the university classroom, broadly construed, as a site of theoretical investigation, this volume helps us to understand troublesome classroom dynamics as well as offering pedagogical strategies for dealing with them. It also illuminates current pressures on higher education that find expression in the classroom. As a forum for these issues, these essays draw upon Deleuzian, feminist, Foucauldian, and psychoanalytic approaches, among others, recognizing not only that these approaches are often in conflict, but also that, collectively, they enhance our understanding of the classroom. Important questions posed here include whether, and if so how, we can combine a Marxist or Foucauldian emphasis on the disciplinary and hegemonic practices of educational institutions with a Lacanian or Barthesian appreciation for the disruptive pleasures and drives that the unconscious produces within and through students, teachers, and classrooms. Which theoretical and pedagogical innovations can help teachers and students to “get the job done” as well as to theorize “the job,” to simultaneously practice education and imagine other forms and ends for education? How can theory help us to historicize, criticize, and re-draw the productive, but sometimes disabling, lines that “make” the classroom and its subjects? A site for lively theoretical debate about these and related pedagogical issues, this volume will prove useful for anyone wanting to reinterpret, reinvent, and reinvigorate the classroom.

As nation-states in the Northern Hemisphere experience economic crisis, political corruption and racial tension, it seems as though they might be'evolving'into the kind of societies normally associated with the'Global South'. Anthropologists Jean and John Comaroff draw on their long experience of living in Africa to address a range of familiar themes - democracy, national borders, labour and capital and multiculturalism. They consider how we might understand these issues by using theory developed in the Global South. Challenging our ideas about'developed'and'developing'nations, Theory from the South provides new insights into key problems of our time.

Theory has been an embattled discourse in the academy for decades. But now it faces a serious challenge from those who want to model the analytical methods of all scholarly disciplines on the natural sciences. What is urgently needed, says D. N. Rodowick, is a revitalized concept of theory that can assess the limits of scientific explanation and defend the unique character of humanistic understanding.Philosophy's Artful Conversation is a timely and searching examination of theory's role in the arts and humanities today. Expanding the insights of his earlier book, Elegy for Theory, and drawing on the diverse thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein, G. H. von Wright, P. M. S. Hacker, Richard Rorty, and Charles Taylor, Rodowick provides a blueprint of what he calls a “philosophy of the humanities.” In a surprising and illuminating turn, he views the historical emergence of theory through the lens of film theory, arguing that aesthetics, literary studies, and cinema studies cannot be separated where questions of theory are concerned. These discourses comprise a conceptual whole, providing an overarching model of critique that resembles, in embryonic form, what a new philosophy of the humanities might look like.Rodowick offers original readings of Gilles Deleuze and Stanley Cavell, bringing forward unexamined points of contact between two thinkers who associate philosophical expression with film and the arts. A major contribution to cross-disciplinary intellectual history, Philosophy's Artful Conversation reveals the many threads connecting the arts and humanities with the history of philosophy.

Modern theory needs a history lesson. Neither Marx nor Nietzsche first gave us theory—Hegel did. To support this contention, Andrew Cole's The Birth of Theory presents a refreshingly clear and lively account of the origins and legacy of Hegel's dialectic as theory. Cole explains how Hegel boldly broke from modern philosophy when he adopted medieval dialectical habits of thought to fashion his own dialectic. While his contemporaries rejected premodern dialectic as outdated dogma, Hegel embraced both its emphasis on language as thought and its fascination with the categories of identity and difference, creating what we now recognize as theory, distinct from systematic philosophy. Not content merely to change philosophy, Hegel also used this dialectic to expose the persistent archaism of modern life itself, Cole shows, establishing a method of social analysis that has influenced everyone from Marx and the nineteenth-century Hegelians, to Nietzsche and Bakhtin, all the way to Deleuze and Jameson. By uncovering these theoretical filiations across time, The Birth of Theory will not only change the way we read Hegel, but also the way we think about the histories of theory. With chapters that powerfully reanimate the overly familiar topics of ideology, commodity fetishism, and political economy, along with a groundbreaking reinterpretation of Hegel's famous master/slave dialectic, The Birth of Theory places the disciplines of philosophy, literature, and history in conversation with one another in an unprecedented way. Daring to reconcile the sworn enemies of Hegelianism and Deleuzianism, this timely book will revitalize dialectics for the twenty-first century.

For all masters or doctoral courses on nursing theory or related to framework development for practice or research. For beginning graduate students in nursing and related disciplines, this text offers the clearest, most useful introduction to methods of theory development. It places nursing theory development in context, with a rich historical view that traces the field from its from its mid-20th century beginnings through contemporary and emerging issues. Present-day coverage includes both domain- and population-focused theories designed to specifically address the needs of clients served by nurses. Important additions in this edition include short reflections and critical thinking projects, as well as a new chapter on using knowledge development and theory to inform practice.

PC Wars: Politics and Theory in the Academy addresses the very issue of political correctness and the current skirmishes in the culture wars. It includes statements from many of our leading contemporary public intellectuals, including Joan Wallach Scott, Michael Bérubé, Bruce Robbins, Henry Giroux, and Gerald Graff. The collection marks a watershed in the debate about pc in that it presents serious considerations and analyses of the factors, causes, and consequences of the culture wars. Carefully examining the construction of pc, PC Wars analyses political correctness by focusing on the mass media, class politics, and the ideology of managerial democracy. It places the disputes around pc in the context of contemporary developments in critical and cultural theory and the current backlash against theory, manifested in the recent attacks on Marxism, feminism and deconstruction. The book also scrutinizes the undercurrents of anti-intellectualism and anti-professionalism which have tended to create a fertile ground for the pc hysteria. Offering much more than slogans and slinging arrows, PC Wars provides a spirited and critical look at the reaction, ideology, and political forces that have coalesced around the term. Contributors: Michael Bérubé, Reed Way Dasenbrock, Frank Farmer, Henry Giroux, Gerald Graff, Darlene Hantzis and Devoney Looser, John S. Howard and James M. Lang, Tom Lewis, James Neilson, Christopher Newfield, Richard Ohmann, Burce Robbins, Barry Sarchett, Joan W. Scott, Michael Sprinker, Jeffrey Williams

This book presents the first analysis and critique of the idea of practice as it has developed in the various theoretical traditions of the social sciences and the humanities. The concept of a practice, understood broadly as a tacit possession that is'shared'by and the same for different people, has a fatal difficulty, the author argues. This object must in some way be transmitted,'reproduced', in Bourdieu's famous phrase, in different persons. But there is no plausible mechanism by which such a process occurs. The historical uses of the concept, from Durkheim to Kripke's version of Wittgenstein, provide examples of the contortions that thinkers have been forced into by this problem, and show the ultimate implausibility of the idea of the interpersonal transmission of these supposed objects. Without the notion of'sameness'the concept of practice collapses into the concept of habit. The conclusion sketches a picture of what happens when we do without the notion of a shared practice, and how this bears on social theory and philosophy. It explains why social theory cannot get beyond the stage of constructing fuzzy analogies, and why the standard constructions of the contemporary philosophical problem of relativism depend upon this defective notion.

The first section of this chapter describes the major goals of this investiga­ tion and the general strategy of my presentation. The remaining three sections review some requisite background material and introduce some terminology and notation used in the book. Section B contains a brief review of some of the ideas and notation of elementary logic and set theory. Section C contains an introductory discussion of kinds and at­ tributes. Section D presents some basic ideas about laws and law­ sentences. A. GENERAL PLAN OF THE BOOK Basic scientific research is directed towards the goals of increasing our knowledge of the wor1d and our understanding of the wor1d. Knowledge increases through the discovery and confirmation of facts and laws. Understanding results from the explanation of known facts and laws, and through the formulation of general, systematic theories. Other things being equal, we tend to feeI that our understanding of a c1ass of phenomena increases as we develop increasingly general and intuitively unified theories of that c1ass of phenomena. It is therefore natural to consider the possibility of one very general, unified theory which, at least in principle, governs all known phenomena. The dream of obtaining such a theory, and the understanding that it would provide, has motivated an enormous amount of research by both scientists and philosophers.

Gibt es einen grundsätzlichen Unterschied zwischen praktischem und theoretischem Wissen? Die auf Gilbert Ryle zurückgehende These, dass Wissen-wie eine eigenständige Wissensform darstellt, die sich in praktischen Fähigkeiten manifestiert und nicht auf Wissen-dass (d.h. propositionales Wissen) reduziert werden kann, wird in der gegenwärtigen Philosophie kontrovers diskutiert. Im Mittelpunkt dieser Debatte steht die Frage nach den Zusammenhängen von Wissen, Denken und Handeln, die unterschiedliche Themengebiete der Erkenntnistheorie, der Philosophie des Geistes und der Neuro- und Kognitionswissenschaften berührt. In diesem Buch wird zum einen dafür argumentiert, dass in Bezug auf die Frage nach praktischem Wissen einige grundlegende Argumentationsebenen zu unterscheiden sind, die in der gegenwärtigen Debatte oftmals vermischt werden. Zum anderen wird eine philosophische Analyse praktischen Wissens vorgestellt, die dieses als eigenständige Wissensform auffasst und systematische Bezüge zu theoretischem Wissen aufzeigt.

This book has been replaced by Theory Construction and Model-Building Skills, Second Edition, ISBN 978-1-4625-4243-7.

During the 21st century organizations will undergo a level of radical and global change that has rarely been seen before. This transformation will come as a result of the environmental, social and economic challenges that now confront organisations in all their activities. But are our understandings and theories of change up to the task of meeting these challenges? Will we be able to develop sustaining visions of how organizations might contribute to the long-term viability of our interdependent global communities? Organizational Transformation for Sustainability: An Integral Metatheory offers some innovative answers to the big questions involved in organizational sustainability and the radical changes that organizations will need to undergo as we move into the third millennium. This new approach comes from the emerging field of integral metatheory. Edwards shows how a'Big Picture'view of organisational transformation can contribute to our understanding of, and search for, organisational sustainability. There are four key themes to the book: i) the need for integrative metatheories for organisational change; ii) the development of a general research method for building metatheory; iii) the description of an integral metatheory for organisational sustainability; and iv) the discussion of the implications of this metatheory for organisational change and social policy regarding sustainability. This book brings a unique and important orienting perspective to these issues.

This volume of'Research in Competence-Based Management'focuses on a range of fundamental issues in developing competence-base theory and in undertaking competence-based research intended to contribute to management theory development. The first papers in this volume revisit and reappraise a number of foundational competence ideas, concepts, and research themes to suggest a number of conceptual distinctions and clarifications that would be useful in further theory development. Following papers assess the areas in which restatements or extensions of current competence theory may be needed or would be useful. The final papers in the volume address the ways in which research undertaken within the competence perspective interfaces with the broad stream of theorizing and research conducted in strategy and management.

Contemporary philosophy and science strive to give a complete account of the world and our position in it. In this original and provocative book, David Gamez engages the reader in a series of colourful thought experiments that illustrate the limits of this mission. Although we commonly believe that science will give a final description of everything, What We Can Never Know reveals blindspots in many of our theories that completely undermine their ability to explain reality. Each chapter explores these problems using a popular question or topic in philosophy, such as our perception of space, the nature of time, scepticism or the relationship between reason and madness. In this series of lively studies, Gamez pushes our everyday assumptions to their limits and opens up fresh perspectives on philosophy and science. By leading the reader progressively through key areas of our knowledge, this book will leave you questioning everything that you think you know.

The analysis of social and public policy and professional practice has become increasingly theoretical in recent years. This volume draws together experienced practitioners and academics in social work, probation and counselling, as well as from other forms of legal and social practice, to better understand the relationship between theory, policy and practice. The contributors argue that the use of theory in studying policy and practice is overall a positive and necessary development. However, they also highlight and explore a number of methodological problems and philosophical issues for critical reflection: ¢ The often inaccessible nature of abstract theoretical argument ¢ Perceived problems of relevance and applicability to practice given the structure and purpose of theoretical modelling; ¢ Philosophical difficulties and questions when applying theoretical generalization to policy and practice. The authors address these problems in a style fully accessible to non-theorists, offering a unique multi-disciplinary resource for students, academics, policy analysts and practitioners.

'This is an exceptional book - and one that should be essential reading for anyone seriously thinking about educational practice - for two reasons. First, it is one of the few books on thinking about education which is written with the wit and humour which makes compulsive reading. Second, the approach to theory (or thinking systematically, philosophically and evidentially) is through the author's own attempt to understand what appears to many as a mystery. In this personal journey, the author provides a comprehensive and critical review of different theoretical positions.'Professor Richard Pring, University of Oxford What is the role of theory in education? Does the pursuit of theory in education always lead to improvements in practice? What is the alternative to theory?Theory holds a central place in educational inquiry: tutors urge students to embed their work in it; funding bodies demand that research proposals be located in. But in an important new analysis, Gary Thomas suggests that the pursuit of theory in education is the pursuit of a chimera.This compelling book examines what theory means for both student and researcher and questions whether the confidence in educational theory is justified. It begins by looking at what theory is, and what use it has in education and examines some theoretically significant influences on educational thought and practice in the twentieth century. Challenging the idea that the practice of education should be based on theory, the author offers alternative, simpler frameworks for conducting inquiry, without the constraints of existing theory, contending that it is time for a discussion about how values, evidence and ideas can more straightforwardly guide educational practice.Education and Theory is stimulating reading for academics, researchers, teachers and students of education.

How do the ways we argue represent a practical philosophy or a way of life? Are concepts of character and ethos pertinent to our understanding of academic debate? In this book, Amanda Anderson analyzes arguments in literary, cultural, and political theory, with special attention to the ways in which theorists understand ideals of critical distance, forms of subjective experience, and the determinants of belief and practice. Drawing on the resources of the liberal and rationalist tradition, Anderson interrogates the limits of identity politics and poststructuralism while holding to the importance of theory as a form of life. Considering high-profile trends as well as less noted patterns of argument, The Way We Argue Now addresses work in feminism, new historicism, queer theory, postcolonialism, cosmopolitanism, pragmatism, and proceduralism. The essays brought together here--lucid, precise, rigorously argued--combine pointed critique with an appreciative assessment of the productive internal contests and creative developments across these influential bodies of thought. Ultimately, The Way We Argue Now promotes a revitalized culture of argument through a richer understanding of the ways critical reason is practiced at the individual, collective, and institutional levels. Bringing to the fore the complexities of academic debate while shifting the terms by which we assess the continued influence of theory, it will appeal to readers interested in political theory, literary studies, cultural studies, gender studies, and the place of academic culture in society and politics.

In Body and Story, Richard Terdiman explores the tension between what might seem to be two fundamentally different ways of understanding the world: as physical reality and as representation in language. In demonstrating the complicated relationship between these two modes of being, he also presents a new bold approach to the problem of conflicts between irreconcilable but equally compelling theoretical ideas. Enlightenment rationalism is most often understood as maintaining that words can meaningfully refer to and grasp things in the material world, while Postmodernism famously argues that nothing exists outside of language. Terdiman challenges this clean distinction, finding the early seeds of Postmodern doubt in the Enlightenment, and demonstrating the stubborn resistance of material reality—particularly that of the body—to language even today. Building on readings of works by 18th-century encyclopedist Denis Diderot and contemporary philosopher-icon Jacques Derrida, Terdiman argues that despite their genuine and profound opposition, a constant negotiation or mutual interrogation has always been taking place between these two world-views, even as the balance at times shifts to one side or the other. In analyzing these shifts he proposes a new model for understanding how seemingly unabridgeable theories legitimately coexist in our intellectual conception of the world, and he suggests a new ethics for managing this coexistence.

Our world is full of composite objects that persist through time: dogs, persons, chairs and rocks. But in virtue of what do a bunch of little objects get to compose some bigger object, and how does that bigger object persist through time? This book aims to answer these questions, but it does so by looking at accounts of composition and persistence through a new methodological lens. It asks the question: what does it take for two theories to be genuinely different, and how can we know whether what seems like metaphysical disagreement is really just semantic disagreement? By offering a framework within which to explore issues of theoretical diversity, this book provides a novel way of thinking about the inter-relationship between composition and persistence. Ultimately, it argues for a new way of thinking about these issues, a way that does not preserve the standard theoretical dichotomies between four-dimensionalist theories on the one hand, and three-dimensionalist theories on the other.

In Theoretical Knowledge an original conception of a structure and dynamics of scientific knowledge is proposed. A detailed analysis of the foundations of science performed by the author allowed him to develop new ideas and approaches, to demonstrate how sociocultural factors are incorporated in the process of yielding of new theories. He shows direct and inverse links between foundations of science and new theories and empirical facts evolved from those, how among many potentially possible histories of science a culture selects just those directions which become a real history of science. The author analyses mechanisms of the generation of scientific theories and shows that those are changed in the process of historical development of science. He displays three historical types of scientific rationality (classical, non-classical and post-non-classical, which appears in modern science) and shows features of their coexistence and interplay. It is shown that along with the emerging of post-non-classical rationality science increases the sphere of its worldview applications. Science begins to correlate not only with the basic values of technogenic civilization but also with some values and patterns of traditional cultures. The investigation is based on the extensive literature on the history of natural and social sciences. The reader will find in the book authentic historical reconstructions of the processes of the development of classical and quantum electrodynamics, relativity, and conceptions of evolution in biology.

Written for undergraduates, the educated layperson, and scholars in fields other than philosophy, The Myth of Religious Neutrality offers a radical reinterpretation of the general relations between religion, science, and philosophy. This new edition has been completely revised and updated by the author.

Social theory is central to the disciplines of sociology, cultural studies, criminology and media studies. Many students, however, find it difficult to relate theory to their other courses, projects, dissertations and theses, let alone imagine themselves producing theory. In contrast to conventional social theory textbooks that restrict themselves to the description and analysis of theories and what other professionals have said about them, this innovative book shows students how to use, criticise and contribute to the development of theory. Treating theory as a variety of ‘visual work'that is intimately connected with the process of empirical investigation, and with the help of clear diagrams and carefully chosen quotations, Part 1 provides an exceptionally clear introduction to the different ways of practicing social theory. Part 2 provides a practical example of how to theorise by producing and demonstrating the effectiveness of a new concept of reflexivity in the course of an outline of the history of the development of social theory since 1945.This is important reading for students and researchers in sociology and related fields.

Interdisciplinary essays on the role of high theory in politics and popular culture.Interdisciplinary in scope and often provocative in their choice of materials, the essays in this volume present new strategies for theorizing culture and politics. Not content simply to “apply” theory to political and cultural objects, they instead treat all three as complex, interconnected, and constantly evolving areas of inquiry. Drawn from the innovative work originally published in Strategies: Journal of Theory, Culture and Politics, the essays collected here explore a variety of topics, ranging from considerations of Marx, Foucault, Jameson, and Rorty to investigations of Madonna, Pasolini, pornography, and vampires. Lively and inventive, Strategies for Theory goes beyond conventional cultural studies and cultural politics in order to suggest new approaches to both.R. L. Rutsky teaches film and media studies at the University of California at Irvine and is the author of High Technē: Art and Technology from the Machine Aesthetic to the Posthuman. Bradley J. Macdonald teaches political theory at Colorado State University and is the author of William Morris and the Aesthetic Constitution of Politics.

This major intervention into debates about the postcolonial and the global proposes that theory should embody unevenness as symptom even as it envisions strategies to get beyond unevenness. Radhakrishnan's thought-provoking engagement with theorists and writers from around the world will fascinate readers across a wide range of disciplines. A major intervention into debates about the postcolonial and the global. Proposes that theory bear the burden of unevenness even as it seeks a way out of it - neither captive to the world as it is, nor naively credulous of visions of the world as it should be, theory argues for an ethics of persuasion that is firmly rooted in political resistance. Engages with a wide range of theorists and writers from around the world. Ranges over fields as diverse as critical theory, postmodernism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, minority studies, cultural studies and anthropology.

In this collection of original papers, leading international authorities turn their attention to one of the most important questions in theoretical philosophy: what is truth? To arrive at an answer, two further questions need to be addressed in this context: 1) Does truth possess any essence, any inner nature? and 2) If so, what does this nature consist of? The present discussion focuses on the antagonism between substantial or robust theories of truth, with correspondence theory taking the lead, and deflationist or minimalist views, which have been commanding an increasing amount of attention in recent years. Whereas substantial theories proceed from the premise that truth has an essence, and that therefore the objective is to discover this essence, the challenge presented by deflationism is to dispense with this very premise.

In this controversial manifesto, Jean-Michel Rabaté addresses current anxieties about the future of literary and cultural theory and proposes that it still has a crucial role to play.

In this famous essay, first published in 1793, Kant considers the alleged conflict between theory and practice in the conduct of human affairs in three widening contexts: those of the common person faced with a moral decision, of the politician and the citizen concerned with the extent and limits of political obligation, and, finally, of the citizen of the world whose actions have a bearing on war and peace among nations.Unlike other animals, Kant reminds us, people must decide how they will live their lives. They therefore ask for a guide to action, a set of principles—a theory.From the outset, Kant rejects the ancient claim that the practical possibilities of action cannot always be reconciled with moral demands. He offers his own moral theory, a theory starting out from the principle of the right as an unequivocal guide to action. In partial disagreement with the rival theories of Hobbes and Locke, he proposes that the only condition under which the individual can achieve true destiny as a person and a member of the human race is the civil state. Such a state can be secured only by law. Although'from such crooked wood as man is made of, nothing perfectly straight can be built,'only the rule of law can bring about a stable society.Last, Kant turns to the relation between theory and practice in international relations.'Nowhere,'he writes,'does human nature appear less lovable than in the relation of whole nations to each other.'But to hope for world peace on the basis of'the so-called balance of power is a mere chimera.'There is no other remedy to international lawlessness and war than an international coercive law, and such law can grow only out of sound theory.'I put my trust in theory. At the same time, I trust in the nature of things, and also take account of human nature, which I cannot, or will not, consider so steeped in evil that in the end reason should not triumph.'