Death: A Philosophical Inquiry

From Nietzsche's pronouncement that "God is dead" to Camus' argument that suicide is the fundamental question of philosophy, the concept of death plays an important role in existential phenomenology, reaching from Kierkegaard to Heidegger and Marcel.  This book explores the phenomenology of death and offers a unique way into the phenomenological tradition. Paul Fairfield examines the following key topics:    the modern denial of death  Heidegger's important concept of 'being-toward-death' and its centrality in phenomenological ideas, such as authenticity and existence  the philosophical significance of death rituals: what explains the imperative toward ritual around death, and what is its purpose and meaning?  death in an age of secularism  the philosophy and ethics of suicide  death as a mystery rather than a philosophical problem to be solved the relationship between hope and death.  Death: A Philosophical Inquiry is essential reading for students of phenomenology and existentialism, and will also be of interest to students in related fields such as religion, anthropology and the medical humanities.

Death: A Philosophical Inquiry: A Philosophical Inquiry

Fairfield, Paul

Religion & Spirituality

Routledge

From Nietzsche's pronouncement that "God is dead" to Camus' argument that suicide is the fundamental question of philosophy, the concept of death plays an important role in existential phenomenology, reaching from Kierkegaard to Heidegger and Marcel. This book explores the phenomenology of death and offers a unique way into the phenomenological tradition. Paul Fairfield examines the following key topics: <ul>
<li>the modern denial of death </li> <li>Heidegger's important concept of 'being-toward-death' and its centrality in phenomenological ideas, such as authenticity and existence </li> <li>the philosophical significance of death rituals: what explains the imperative toward ritual around death, and what is its purpose and meaning? </li> <li>death in an age of secularism </li> <li>the philosophy and ethics of suicide </li> <li>death as a mystery rather than a philosophical problem to be solved</li> <li>the relationship between hope and death.</li> </ul>
Death: A Philosophical Inquiry is essential reading for students of phenomenology and existentialism, and will also be of interest to students in related fields such as religion, anthropology and the medical humanities.

Public/Private

Computers & Technology

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

[ Public/Private: Negotiating a Distinction By Fairfield, Paul ( Author ) Paperback 2005 ]

Is There a Canadian Philosophy? addresses the themes of community, culture, national identity, and universal human rights, taking the Canadian example as its focus. The authors argue that nations compelled to cope with increasing demands for group recognition may do so in a broadly liberal spirit and without succumbing to the dangers associated with an illiberal, adversarial multiculturalism. They identify and describe a Canadian civic philosophy and attempt to show how this modus operandi of Canadian public life is capable of reconciling questions of collective identity and recognition with a commitment to individual rights and related principles of liberal democracy. They further argue that this philosophy can serve as a model for nations around the world faced with internal complexities and growing demands for recognition from populations more diverse than at any previous time in their histories.

Is There a Canadian Philosophy?: Reflections on the Canadian Identity (Philosophica)

Politics & Social Sciences

Madison, G.B.

Harris, Ingrid

Philosophy

University of Ottawa Press

Reexamines the normative justification for democratic politics.

Why Democracy?

State Univ of New York Pr

While much of the world now embraces the democratic idea that the people must rule the philosophical case for democracy has yet to be made convincingly. Why Democracy? not only reexamines the current debates in normative democratic theory, but also challenges popular conceptions that tend toward an uncritical idealization of popular rule. It is not enough to call for more extensive public deliberation, or for greater participation and inclusion in the democratic process, or for a radical extension of the scope of the process. Making the case for democracy requires examining its imaginative and rhetorical dimensions as well. The democratic idea of rule by the people must be understood less as a definition than as an aspiration, a trope, and the beginning of a narrative that includes, while extending beyond, the domain of government."

State University of New York Press

Recent critiques of the foundations of liberalism from communitarian, socialist, postmodern, and other philosophical circles have served to remind liberals of several problematic assumptions at the heart of liberal doctrine from its inception to the present day. Such critiques necessitate a rethinking of the foundations of liberalism, and in particular those regarding the self and rationality that liberal politics presupposes.
Beginning with a wide-ranging discussion of liberal philosophers - including Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Green, Mill, and Rawls - Paul Fairfield proposes that liberalism requires a complete reconception of moral selfhood, one that accommodates elements of the contemporary critiques without abandoning liberal individualism. The model that emerges is one of situated agency - of a historically and linguistically constituted being who is never without the capacity for individual and autonomous expression. Fairfield defends a narrative conception of moral selfhood in the tradition of phenomenological hermeneutics, one that affords a proper vantage point from which to support and interpret liberal principles.

Moral Selfhood in the Liberal Tradition (Toronto Studies in Philosophy)

University of Toronto Press

John Dewey and Continental Philosophy

John Dewey and Continental Philosophy provides a rich sampling of exchanges that could have taken place long ago between the traditions of American pragmatism and continental philosophy had the lines of communication been more open between Dewey and his European contemporaries. Since they were not, Paul Fairfield and thirteen of his colleagues seek to remedy the situation by bringing the philosophy of Dewey into conversation with several currents in continental philosophical thought, from post-Kantian idealism and the work of Friedrich Nietzsche to twentieth-century phenomenology, hermeneutics, and poststructuralism. This unique volume includes discussions comparing and contrasting Dewey with the German philosophers G. W. F. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Hans-Georg Gadamer on such topics as phenomenology, naturalism, organicism, contextualism, and poetry. Others investigate a series of connections between Dewey and contemporary French philosophy, including the notions of subjectivity, education, and the critique of modernity in Michel Foucault; language and politics in Jacques Derrida; and the concept of experience in Gilles Deleuze. Also discussed is the question of whether we can identify traces of Bildung in Dewey’s writings on education, and pragmatism’s complex relation to twentieth-century phenomenology and hermeneutics, including the problematic question of whether Heidegger was a pragmatist in any meaningful sense. Presented in intriguing pairings, these thirteen essays offer different approaches to the material that will leave readers with much to deliberate.             John Dewey and Continental Philosophy demonstrates some of the many connections and opportunities for cross-traditional thinking that have long existed between Dewey and continental thought, but have been under-explored. The intersection presented here between Dewey’s pragmatism and the European traditions makes a significant contribution to continental and American philosophy and will spur new and important developments in the American philosophical debate.  

Southern Illinois University Press

Theorizing Praxis investigates the theory/practice relation in philosophy, particularly within the fields of hermeneutics, ethics, and the philosophy of education. In so doing, it uncovers important areas of common ground between hermeneutical and pragmatist philosophy. Paul Fairfield defends a «practice-immanent» method of theorizing, which is indebted to both traditions and aims to explicitly articulate the spontaneously emergent constitutional dynamics of social practices rather than continue the project of transcendental theory construction.

Theorizing Praxis: Studies in Hermeneutical Pragmatism

Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers

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Books by Fairfield, Paul

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Fairfield, Paul. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Death: A Philosophical Inquiry: A Philosophical Inquiry

Death: A Philosophical Inquiry

Public/Private

Public/Private

Is There a Canadian Philosophy?: Reflections on the Canadian Identity (Philosophica)

Why Democracy?

Why Democracy?

Moral Selfhood in the Liberal Tradition (Toronto Studies in Philosophy)

John Dewey and Continental Philosophy

Theorizing Praxis: Studies in Hermeneutical Pragmatism