Author: Mary Hawkesworth File Type: epub Western political theory typically incorporates certain assumptions about sex and gender as natural, unvarying and pre-political. This book critically examines these assumptions and shows how recent scholarship undermines the illusion that bodies exist outside politics and beyond the reach of the state. Leading political theorist Mary Hawkesworths cutting-edge intersectional account demonstrates how popular conceptions of human nature, public and private, citizenship, liberty, the state, and injustice relegate women, people of color, sexual minorities, and gender-variant people to inferior status despite constitutional guarantees of equality before the law. Hawkesworth argues that traditional political theory has contributed to the perpetuation of pernicious forms of injustice by masking the states role in the creation of subordinated and stigmatized subjects. The book draws insights from critical race, feminist, postcolonial, queer, and trans* theory to give a compelling, original, and highly readable introduction to historical and contemporary debates on gender and political theory for students. **

Author: Richard Foley File Type: pdf A woman glances at a broken clock and comes to believe it is a quarter past seven. Yet, despite the broken clock, it really does happen to be a quarter past seven. Her belief is true, but it isnt knowledge. This is a classic illustration of a central problem in epistemology determining what knowledge requires in addition to true belief.In this provocative book, Richard Foley finds a new solution to the problem in the observation that whenever someone has a true belief but not knowledge, there is some significant aspect of the situation about which she lacks true beliefs--something important that she doesnt quite get. This may seem a modest point but, as Foley shows, it has the potential to reorient the theory of knowledge. Whether a true belief counts as knowledge depends on the importance of the information one does or doesnt have. This means that questions of knowledge cannot be separated from questions about human concerns and values. It also means that, contrary to what is often thought, there is no privileged way of coming to know. Knowledge is a mutt. Proper pedigree is not required. What matters is that one doesnt lack important nearby information.Challenging some of the central assumptions of contemporary epistemology, this is an original and important account of knowledge.Review[Foleys] book impressively combines breadth, succinctness, and readability. It will profit both professional philosophers and advanced students in epistemology.--Choice This book is an illustrative and erudite contribution to the field of epistemology. Foley departs from the typical rational objective and presents an intuitive account of knowledge and true belief.--Diana Karbonowska, *European Legacy*From the Inside FlapThis engaging and imaginative book proposes an original and strikingly simple account of propositional knowledge, and offers an ingenious, many-sided argument for preferring it to alternatives already abroad. It makes many interesting and unexpected moves along the way.--Ernest Sosa, Rutgers UniversityGoing against the grain, Foley argues that knowledge does not require justified belief and that the pedigree of a true belief has nothing to do with whether it counts as knowledge. His impressive defense of this view is a singular achievement. He shows that his account can easily accommodate cases that might appear problematic, and that it offers more intuitive explanations for a variety of epistemic phenomena than available alternatives. Beautifully written, carefully argued, and a pleasure to read, this book will be required reading for everyone in epistemology.--Hilary Kornblith, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Author: David Corner File Type: pdf Philosophers who wish to argue for the rationality of belief in God frequently employ a god-of-the-gaps strategy. This strategy consists in trying to find a phenomenon that cannot be explained by natural science, and insisting that it can be explained only by reference to the activity of God. Philosophical discussion of miracles usually revolves around the attempt to link a miracle to God in just this way. One of the problems with this approach is that it is very difficult to identify anything as being forever beyond the power of science to explain. Science continues to advance upon the territory occupied by the god of the gaps. Thus it is desirable to develop an account of divine agency that will not be subject to revision in the face of scientific progress. This book is just such an account. Drawing on recent work in the theory of action, it shows that we can attribute Gods agency to an event in nature without eliminating the possibility that it might be explained scientifically. In bringing Gods actions out of the gaps, we avoid the possibility that future discoveries in science will make our talk of divine agency obsolete. **

Author: Martin Jay File Type: epub Long considered the noblest of the senses, vision has increasingly come under critical scrutiny by a wide range of thinkers who question its dominance in Western culture. These critics of vision, especially prominent in twentieth-century France, have challenged its allegedly superior capacity to provide access to the world. They have also criticized its supposed complicity with political and social oppression through the promulgation of spectacle and surveillance.Martin Jay turns to this discourse surrounding vision and explores its often contradictory implications in the work of such influential figures as Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, Guy Debord, Luce Irigaray, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida. Jay begins with a discussion of the theory of vision from Plato to Descartes, then considers its role in the French Enlightenment before turning to its status in the culture of modernity. From consideration of French Impressionism to analysis of Georges Bataille and the Surrealists, Roland Barthess writings on photography, and the film theory of Christian Metz, Jay provides lucid and fair-minded accounts of thinkers and ideas widely known for their difficulty.His book examines the myriad links between the interrogation of vision and the pervasive antihumanist, antimodernist, and counter-enlightenment tenor of much recent French thought. Refusing, however, to defend the dominant visual order, he calls instead for a plurality of scopic regimes. Certain to generate controversy and discussion throughout the humanities and social sciences, Downcast Eyes will consolidate Jays reputation as one of todays premier cultural and intellectual historians. Long considered the noblest of the senses, vision has increasingly come under critical scrutiny by a wide range of thinkers who question its dominance in Western culture. These critics of vision, especially prominent in twentieth-century France, have challenged its allegedly superior capacity to provide access to the world. They have also criticized its supposed complicity with political and social oppression through the promulgation of spectacle and surveillance.Martin Jay turns to this discourse surrounding vision and explores its often contradictory implications in the work of such influential figures as Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, Guy Debord, Luce Irigaray, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida. Jay begins with a discussion of the theory of vision from Plato to Descartes, then considers its role in the French Enlightenment before turning to its status in the culture of modernity. From consideration of French Impressionism to analysis of Georges Bataille and the Surrealists, Roland Barthess writings on photography, and the film theory of Christian Metz, Jay provides lucid and fair-minded accounts of thinkers and ideas widely known for their difficulty.His book examines the myriad links between the interrogation of vision and the pervasive antihumanist, antimodernist, and counter-enlightenment tenor of much recent French thought. Refusing, however, to defend the dominant visual order, he calls instead for a plurality of scopic regimes. Certain to generate controversy and discussion throughout the humanities and social sciences, Downcast Eyes will consolidate Jays reputation as one of todays premier cultural and intellectual historians.