_Reshaping Reason_ is an excellent and original work of philosophy. In this book, John McCumber rigorously--and clearly--unites major trajectories from within both continental and analytic philosophy to produce a contemporary philosophical standpoint, a new philosophy that is argumentatively rigorous, historically contextualized, and open to the future. Indeed, the book precisely articulates the concepts and methods necessary to maintain these three dimensions of argumentative rigor, historical contextualization and futural openness. McCumber studies the significance (mostly, in the end, detrimental) of Aristotle's concept of "ousia" for our traditional ways of understanding the world, and McCumber offers an alternative approach that stresses the possibility rather than the actuality that characterizes our world. McCumber specially emphasizes the primacy of human experience for setting the terms of meaning of our world, and generating adequate terms and concepts for addressing human relationships is one of the central projects--and accomplishments--of this work. McCumber stresses his notion of "poetic interaction" when studying human relations: in our relations we create the very terms and structures of those relationships, rather than answering to pregiven patterns. McCumber's establishing of four "elemental" forms of relationship (with both healthy and oppressive forms) is particularly insightful. The book ends with a study of the historically unique nature of the government of the United States, and looks at how this structure does and does not address the essential needs of human life. This would be an excellent book for any serious student of philosophy to read, and would also be an excellent choice for classroom use.

Скачать книгу бесплатно (pdf, 1.57 Mb)

---

Читать «Reshaping Reason: Toward a New Philosophy»