Thursday, July 17, 2008

Senchuk, Dennis. "Review of Larry Hickman's PRAGMATISM AS POST-POSTMODERNISM." NDPR (July 2008).

Hickman, Larry A. Pragmatism as Post-Postmodernism: Lessons from John Dewey. New York: Fordham UP, 2007. This book, a collection of essays, suggests that Dewey has anticipated solutions to some major problems that plague postmodernism -- a loosely confederated movement which the author characterizes (with help from other scholars) as a rejection of epistemological foundationalism, objectivity, and metaphysical realism, as an affirmation of self-reflexiveness and relativism, and as an attempt to have meaning without transcendent value and action without absolute truth. The essays range over po-mo views on global citizenship, Rorty's neo-pragmatism, divers conceptions of technology, environmental concerns, and some straightforwardly expository discussions of Dewey's philosophy. At book's end, Hickman concludes that Dewey's (and Peirce's) views on habit afford post-po-mo solutions to po-mo problems about objectivity and the interminability of "self-referentiality, redescription, and reinterpretation" (p. 254). . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=13646.

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