Routledge Practicing Philosophy: Pragmatism and the Philosophical Life

Applying contemporary pragmatism to the crucial question of how philosophy can help us live better, Shusterman develops his distinctive aesthetic model of philosophical living that includes politics, somatics, and ethnicity, while critically engaging the rival views of Dewey, Wittgenstein, and Foucault, as well as Rorty, Putnam, Goodman, Habermas, and Cavell. Review "...a robust and wide-ranging work..." -- Ethics "...a wide-ranging invitation to rethink philosophy and philosophical aesthetics..." -- Practicing Philosophy is about bringing the love of wisdom to bear on everyday life...Academic philosophy can use more of this kind of breadth "While no hemlock cocktail is being prepared for Shusterman, he is scandalizing his fellow philosophers no less than his ancient counterpart did . . . philosophy at its best is both inspiring, well-thought-out ideas and the exemplification of those ideas in a life well-lived. Richard Shusterman is trying to give us such a philosophy." -- The Philadelphia Inquirer "Many years ago, William James and John Dewey warned us about the dangers of the professionalization and narrowing of philosophy as a discipline. Richard Shusterman, working in the best of the pragmatic tradition, has taken this warning to heart. He strongly advocates the need to practice one's philosophy, to revive the almost forgotten tradition of living a philosophical life-- a tradition that dates back to Socrates. With verve and perceptive clarity, he ranges over the topics of aesthetics, liberalism, democracy, somatic experience, rap, and Jewish identity. The unifying theme in these diverse explorations is a passionate concern with living a genuinely philosophical life in today's complex and fragmented world." -- Richard J. Bernstein, New School for Social Research "Richard Shusterman exemplifies the current renaissance in American pragmatism. His new essays are characteristically astute and wide-ranging, exploring fields as different as democratic theory and hip-hop aesthetics. Above all, Shusterman elaborates a new understanding of the philosophical life, revealing the tacit poetry of the personal in thinkers from Wittgenstein to Rorty." -- James Miller, New School for Social Research "...a wide-ranging invitation to rethink philosophy and philosophical aesthetics... Practicing Philosophy is about bringing the love of wisdom to bear on everyday life...Academic philosophy can use more of this kind of breadth." -- The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism About the Author Richard Shusterman is Professor of Philosophy at Temple University and Directeur de Programmes at the College International de Philosophie, Paris. His books include T. S. Eliot and the Philosophy of Criticism (1988), Analytic Aesthetics (1989), Sous l'interpretation (1994), and the much acclaimed and widely translated Pragmatist Aesthetics (1992).