Books by "John H. Cooley"
12 books found
For much of our century, pragmatism has enjoyed a charmed life, holding the dominant point of view in American politics, law, education, and social thought in general. After suffering a brief eclipse in the post-World War II period, pragmatism has enjoyed a revival, especially in literary theory and such areas as poststructuralism and deconstruction. In this sweeping critique of pragmatism and neopragmatism, one of our leading intellectual historians traces the attempts of thinkers from William James to Richard Rorty to find a response to the crisis of modernism. John Patrick Diggins analyzes the limitations of pragmatism from a historical perspective and dares to ask whether America's one original contribution to the world of philosophy has actually fulfilled its promise. In the late nineteenth century, intellectuals felt themselves in the grips of a spiritual crisis. This confrontation with the "acids of modernity" eroded older faiths and led to a sense that life would continue in the awareness, of absences: knowledge without truth, power without authority, society without spirit, self without identity, politics without virtue, existence without purpose, history without meaning. In Europe, Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Weber faced a world in which God was "dead" and society was succumbing to structures of power and domination. In America, Henry Adams resigned from Harvard when he realized there were no truths to be taught and when he could only conclude: "Experience ceases to educate." To the American philosophers of pragmatism, it was experience that provided the basis on which new methods of knowing could replace older ideas of truth. Diggins examines how, in different ways, William James, Charles Peirce, John Dewey, George H. Mead, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., demonstrated that modernism posed no obstacle in fields such as science, education, religion, law, politics, and diplomacy. Diggins also examines the work of the neopragmatists Jurgen Habermas and Richard Rorty and their attempt to resolve the crisis of postmodernism. Using one author to interrogate another, Diggins brilliantly allows the ideas to speak to our conditions as well as theirs. Did the older philosophers succeed in fulfilling the promises of pragmatism? Can the neopragmatists write their way out of what they have thought themselves into? And does America need philosophers to tell us that we do not need foundational truths when the Founders already told us that the Constitution would be a "machine" that would depend more upon the "counterpoise" of power than on the claims of knowledge? Diggins addresses these and other essential questions in this magisterial account of twentieth-century intellectual life. It should be read by everyone concerned about the roots of postmodernism (and its links to pragmatism) and about the forms of thought and action available for confronting a world after postmodernism.
"[A] vivid, massively researched history of 'hyper-masculine' sensibility . . . An instructive and provocative view of men's dark side." —Peter Filene, Men and Masculinities Are men truly predisposed to violence and aggression? Is it the biological fate of males to struggle for domination over women and vie against one another endlessly? These and related queries have long vexed philosophers, social scientists, and other students of human behavior. In Brutes in Suits, historian John Pettegrew examines theoretical writings and cultural traditions in the United States to find that, Darwinian arguments to the contrary, masculine aggression can be interpreted as a modern strategy for taking power. Drawing ideas from varied and at times seemingly contradictory sources, Pettegrew argues that traditionally held beliefs about masculinity developed largely through language and cultural habit—and that these same tools can be employed to break through the myth that brutishness is an inherently male trait. A major re-synthesis of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century manhood, Brutes in Suits develops ambitious lines of research into the social science of sexual difference and professional history's celebration of rugged individualism; the hunting-and-killing genre of popular men's literature; that master text of hypermasculinity: college football; military culture, war making, and finding pleasure in killing; and patriarchy, sexual jealousy, and the law. This timely assessment of the evolution of masculine culture will be welcomed and debated by social and intellectual historians for years to come. "Pettegrew's book remains rigorous and passionate in its narration of the historic appeal as well as the immediate dangers of de-evolutionary masculinity." — American Historical Review
Edwin Sutherland is the acknowledged father of American criminology. This is the first full-length analysis of his work and his person. Unlike the European schools of criminology, which sought to locate deviant behavior within the deep structures of the economy, Sutherland eschewed such explanations in favor of proximate and observable causes. He located the sources of crime in the association and interaction of specific groups of people. For Sutherland, crime as a way of life results from an individual's attachment to criminals for whom criminal acts are a measure of success no less than a way of life. In a series of publications, Sutherland expanded the horizons of the classic "Chicago School" of interactionists, and in the process founded criminology as a separate area of research while locating it firmly within sociology. As the authors show, Sutherland's work was inspired by strong moral concerns and a sense of the needs of society for social order without falling prey to either blaming the victim or pandering to sentiment about the joys of criminal life. In this sense, he is a model of the sociological tradition long deserving of the biography acknowledging his role as a master and pioneer. Yet Gaylord and Galliher have written more than an intellectual biography. They take seriously the need to fit Sutherland and his "theory of differential association" into a social and historical context. They are also aware and critically straightforward about the limitations of Sutherland's work in criminology, but place both his achievements and their limitations in a fully developed analytical context.
Encyclopedia of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
by John D. Buenker, Joseph Buenker
2021 · Routledge
Spanning the era from the end of Reconstruction (1877) to 1920, the entries of this reference were chosen with attention to the people, events, inventions, political developments, organizations, and other forces that led to significant changes in the U.S. in that era. Seventeen initial stand-alone essays describe as many themes.