Pluralism by Nicholas Rescher
Nicholas Rescher presents a critical reaction against two currently influential tendencies of thought. On the one hand, he rejects the facile relativism that pervades contemporary social and academic life. On the other hand, he opposes the rationalism inherent in new-contractarian theory - both in the idealized communicative-contract version promoted in continental European political philosophy by Jurgen Habermas, and in the idealized social-contract version of the theory promoted in the Anglo-American context by John Rawls. Against such tendencies, Professor Rescher's pluralist approach takes a more realistic and pragmatic line, eschewing the convenient recourse of idealization in cognitive and practical matters. Instead of a utopianism that looks to a uniquely perfect order that would prevail under ideal conditions, he advocates incremental improvements within the framework or arrangements that none of us will deem perfect but that all of us 'can live with'. Such an approach replaces the yearning tor an unattainable consensus with the institution of pragmatic arrangements in which the community will acquiesce - not through agreeing on their optimality, but through a shared recognition among the dissonant parties that the available options are even worse.
Rescher provides a cogent and sustained attack on the thesis that consensus is necessary and sufficient and desirable for rationality, truth, communication, cooperation, and social orderHe also offers a powerful argument in favor of dissensus ... Highly recommended for all libraries. * Choice *
NICHOLAS RESCHER is Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. In a productive research career extending over six decades he has well over one hundred books to this credit and fourteen books about Rescher's philosophy have been published in five languages. He has served as a President of: the American Philosophical Association, the American Catholic Philosophy Association, the American G. W. Leibniz Society, the C. S. Peirce Society, and the American Metaphysical Society, as well as Secretary General of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Sciences. Rescher has been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Academia Europea, the Royal Society of Canada, and the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain. He has been awarded the Alexander von Humboldt prize for Humanistic Scholarship in 1984, the Belgian Prix Mercier in 2005, the Aquinas Medal of the American Catholic Philosophical Association in 2007, the Founder's Medal of the Metaphysical Society of America in 2016, and the Helmholtz Medal of the Germany Academy of Sciences (Berlin/Brandenburg) in 2016. In 2011 he was awarded the premier cross of the Order of Merit (Bundesverdienstkreuz Erster Klasse) of the Federal Republic of Germany, and honorary degrees have been awarded to him by eight universities on three continents. In 2010 the University of Pittsburgh honored him with the inauguration of a biennial Rescher Medal for distinguished lifetime contributions to systematic philosophy, and in 2018 the American Philosophical Association launched a Rescher Prize with a similar objective.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780198236016 |
| ISBN 10 | 0198236018 |
| Title | Pluralism |
| Author | Nicholas Rescher |
| Series | Clarendon Library Of Logic And Philosophy |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| Year published | 1995-09-14 |
| Number of pages | 216 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |