Richard Bernstein

INGRESS: Hannah Arendts politiske tenkning er aktuell, og hennes idé var at det kan oppstå lyspunkt selv i problematiske politiske faser der autoritaer politikk utfolder seg. Dette hevder filosofen Richard J. Bernstein, som i sin siste bok forklarer hvorfor Arendt bør leses nå.

Nettside: http://www.salongen.no/15959-2/

Starting from his book Violence: Thinking without Banisters, the American philosopher Richard J. Bernstein – Vera List Professor of Philosophy at The New School of Social Research – deals with the issue of violence, especially on contemporary age. In the interview, it appears clear his fallibilist approach to Philosophy and to History of Ideas. The theme of violence is something important today, and – in the opinion of Bernstein – it is more connected to dogmatism than other. On this perspective, philosophic reflection could help us to face this problem.

Draft d'un article proposé à la revue Théorèmes, dans le cadre d'un dossier coordonné par Yann Schmitt et Romain Mollard sur "Pragmatisme et religion".

Résumé : Cet article poursuit deux lignes de discussion : la première regarde la montée en puissance des discours et théories du « post-séculier » ; la seconde concerne la fréquente (et récente) atténuation du caractère tranchant du sécularisme et du naturalisme de John Dewey. S’il m’importe de relever le curieux affadissement du naturalisme et du sécularisme de Dewey chez de nombreux pragmatistes contemporains, c’est afin de mieux répondre aux théories de la « société post-séculière », en opposant à ces théories une critique deweyenne non affadie. Pour faire droit à cette critique non affadie, je reviens sur plusieurs textes de Dewey, trop souvent occultés au seul profit de A Common Faith (Dewey, 1934) – un ouvrage dont la radicalité est d’ailleurs rarement considérée. Ce retour m’autorise, d’une part, à recouvrer la pleine puissance de la critique deweyenne des religions, et donc, par voie de conséquence, à corriger l’affadissement dont cette critique a fait l’objet ces dernières années. D’autre part, ce même retour me permet de montrer combien les positions deweyennes sont difficilement compatibles avec les discours et théories qui réclament l’advenue d’une « société post-séculière » ou d’un « âge post-séculier ».

Richard Rorty's project of discarding philosophy as a whole suffers a contradictory, self-defeating problem that I call philosophical exorcism. Since Rorty's understanding of radicality is misleading , when he criticizes philosophy in its entirety, his criticism returns to itself so that his project itself is to be discarded. As a remedy for the exorcism, a different radicality, found in Dewey's concept of quality, is examined through two films directed by John Cassavetes and Da-vid Lynch. The radicality at stake contains a paradox of sharing the unsharable, which distances philosophy from Rorty's self-defeating pragmatism.

In this paper I will analyze the possible tensions that the inclusion of the topic of forgiveness can give rise to in the approach of Richard Bernstein to the problem of evil. Ultimately, the whole work will aim to answer the question about the possibility, inside or outside Bernstein's work, of conciliating these two major American products: pragmatism and Westerns.

Il volume collettivo Il pragmatismo. Dalle origini agli sviluppi contemporanei vede raccolti contributi specifici di diversi autori italiani nell’ambito di ricerca del pragmatismo, sia da un punto di vista storiografico, sia da uno prettamente teorico. Il collante principale dell’opera consiste nella volontà di articolare e prospettare l’intera esperienza della galassia pragmatista, indagandone in primo luogo le origini con una lettura attenta delle dinamiche sociali e culturali dell’America di fine ’800 e giungendo, nel tramite dei vari snodi teorici raccolti durante la storia dei suoi sviluppi, sino alle più urgenti e attuali prospettive teoriche dello scenario contemporaneo.

Diálogo con el filósofo de New York, R. J. Bernstein (New School for Social Research) en el Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid sobre su nuevo libro, Ironic Life, que se publicará en Estados Unidos la primavera de 2016. El texto completo  de la conferencia de Bernstein, "¿Qué es la ironía socrática?", puede leerse en la edición digital de este número 25 de MINERVA, en traducción de Alfonso Cuenca y Ramón del Castillo
http://www.circulobellasartes.com/revistaminerva/articulo.php?id=653

My aim in this article is twofold. First, I hope to show that, despite its seeming rehabilitation, metaphysics as systematic, speculative philosophy is no less threatened. Second, I will argue that metaphysics as systematic, speculative philosophy is ultimately revisable. That is, metaphysics is not (or should not be) the aim at a closed system of apodictic truths but, rather, an open-ended, fallibilistic pursuit of ever-more-adequate accounts of reality. Specifically, building on the work of Charles Sanders Peirce and Alfred North Whitehead, I will argue that we should conceive of metaphysics not as the quest for absolute certainty but as “working hypothesis.” Thus, the first part will be
largely historical and critical, and the second part will be  positive and exploratory.

This article seeks to contribute to the growing literature on pragmatism in political theory by revisiting the role of moral absolutes in politics. More specifically, it proposes the idea that pragmatism can support a particular defence of the ban on torture. In contradistinction with deontological accounts, it will be argued that the principles underlying the ban on torture should not be construed as transcendental values that impose external constraints on political action, but as constitutive rules that emerge from, and are sustained by, a web of intersecting social practices. While pragmatists vehemently reject the introduction of absolutes in politics, their anti-foundationalist conception of reasoning crucially hinges on the sustainability of adjustable banisters along which judgements are formed. The article suggests that the torture prohibition ought to be reinterpreted as one such banister.

Traduction de textes classiques et contemporains du pragmatisme, introduits par Roberto Frega : John Dewey, Janes Addams, George H. Mead, Sidney Hook, Richard J. Bernstein, John Ryder, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Paul C. Taylor, Patricial Hill Collins, Elizabeth Anderson, Charles Sabel.

Cette sélection permet d'apprécier les contributions du pragmatisme aux problématiques sociales et politiques du vingtième siècle et sa relation au marxisme, au libéralisme, au naturalisme, à l'expérimentalisme, aux race studies, aux cultural studies, aux gender studies, et aux questions d'intersectionnalité.

Il movimento della cosiddetta riabilitazione della filosofia pratica, nato in Germania agli inizi degli anni Sessanta con la formula di Rehabilitierung der praktischen Philosophie, si connota come un movimento di rinascita dell’interesse filosofico per le tematiche della morale, del diritto e della politica, affrontate da una prospettiva alternativa rispetto sia a quella tecnico-scientifica che a quella metafisico-trascendentale(2). Per superare il relativismo ed il pluralismo etico della moderna società, globalizzata e policentrica, il movimento della Rehabilitierung rifiuta sia il modello della razionalità tecnico-scientifica (avvalendosi in ciò delle argomentazioni della prima Scuola di Francoforte) con il suo “divisionismo etico”(3), sia quello metafisico con la sua lontananza dagli ambiti della vita pratica (a partire dalla sua pretesa fondazione trascendentale), volgendosi invece alla ricerca di un modello di razionalità che, conciliando l’ethos con il logos (quindi né tramite una ratio calcolante e strumentale, né tramite la fede in ciò che risiederebbe prima e/o oltre la vita pratica), possa fungere da guida per l’azione.

This international meeting aims at exploring the many senses of irony as a rhetoric figure and existential tone, and its relevance for the study of social and political experience. During four days, scholars form various fields in the Humanities (Philosophy, Cultural and Literary Criticism, History of Ideas, Psychoanalysis) will be debating on the many ways to understand irony and its meaning in different historical periods. From Antiquity and Renaissance to Modernity and Postmodernity…and beyond. Philosophers like Socrates, Plato, Hegel, Kierkegaard, William (and Henry) James, Freud, Leo Strauss, Vlastos, Nehamas, Derrida Rorty and Lear will be revisited on the issue of irony, but also earlier and modern classics like Cervantes, Montaigne, and Shakespeare, and contemporary writers as Penelope Fitzgerald and Nabokov, Pynchon and Foster Wallace, Kundera and Piglia.

Irony seems contrary to sincerity, engagement, truthfulness and the justification for each one’s way of life and beliefs; but irony has also to do with self-examination, caring and tolerance needed to live a life with less violence and cruelty. These topics will open further discussions on some decisive drifts in the political sensitivity and thinking since the 1990s. What happened to the ironic, yet socialdemocratic committed citizen that Richard Rorty so highly praised? Why did such a Neo-Nietzschean as Sloterdijk want to paint the rortyan democrat as the successor of Nietzsche's “last man”? What is the difference between cynicism à la Baudrillard and the new political sensibilities? How does Žižek really distinguish between irony, sarcasm and cynicism? Can we still  be ironic in our time –a time of destruction, endless violence and permanent horror? Should we vindicate the virtue of irony over again? Or should we rather say farewell to irony?

We will have the special participation of Professor Richard J. Bernstein (New School for Social Research in New York), among whose books there are titles as influential as Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question (1996) Freud and the Legacy of Moses (1998), Radical Evil: A Philosophical Interrogation (2002), The Abuse of Evil: The Corruption of Politics and Religion since 9/11 (2006) and most recently Reflections on Violence. Thinking Without Bannisters (2013). Professor Bernstein will give a special lecture on the actuality of Socratic irony and the art of living, He will also contribute with a presentation on his departed friend Richard Rorty and Jonathan Lear’s A Case for Irony. He is currently preparing a new book on the idea of irony in the philosophical tradition.

Sponsored by

Marcos de entendimiento. Proyecto coordinado de Investigación (UNED +UCLM) Secretaría de Estado de I+D+i, MINECO, FFI2012-38009-C02-01 + 02

Encrucijadas de la subjetividad, Proyecto de Investigación (UC3M), Secretaria de Estado de I+D+i, MiNECO, FFI2012-32033

Center for the Study of Mind in Nature, Oslo University

Programa de Doctorado en Filosofía, UNED

In collaboration with Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid

Coordinator
R. del Castillo (UNED)

Organization Assistants
A. López (UNED) and J. Infante (UNED-UC3M)

Information:
almalopez@bec.uned.es

Os ensaios aqui reunidos pretendem servir de introdução ao tema da mudança conceitual. Partindo de uma perspectiva que busca vincular aspectos epistemológicos e hermenêuticos da mudança conceitual, são apresentadas e discutidas questões centrais da Epistemologia e da História da Ciência, considerando especialmente algumas das contribuições mais significativas da Filosofia atual, representadas por Ludwick Fleck, Norwood Russell Hanson, Thomas S. Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, Jean Piaget, Paul K. Feyerabend, Theodor Adorno, Alfred Schütz, Jürgen Habermas, Hans Geor Gadamer e Richard Bernstein.

Richard Rorty was one of the most controversial and influential philosophers of the late twentieth century. Known primarily for his attacks on truth and the idea that knowledge is a ‘mirror of nature’, his contribution as a humanist and a great moralist has been overlooked by recent scholarship. McClean re-evaluates Rorty’s work in the light of his liberal cosmopolitan outlook, showing how it can be applied to a range of social and political issues, including international terrorism, religious fundamentalism, neo-liberalism, sexual politics and business culture.

http://www.pickeringchatto.com/titles/1773-9781848934894-richard-rorty-liberalism-and-cosmopolitanism