Confident Pluralism

Confident Pluralism
Author: John D. Inazu
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 187
Release: 2018-08-03
Genre: Law
ISBN: 022659243X

In the three years since Donald Trump first announced his plans to run for president, the United States seems to become more dramatically polarized and divided with each passing month. There are seemingly irresolvable differences in the beliefs, values, and identities of citizens across the country that too often play out in our legal system in clashes on a range of topics such as the tensions between law enforcement and minority communities. How can we possibly argue for civic aspirations like tolerance, humility, and patience in our current moment? In Confident Pluralism, John D. Inazu analyzes the current state of the country, orients the contemporary United States within its broader history, and explores the ways that Americans can—and must—strive to live together peaceably despite our deeply engrained differences. Pluralism is one of the founding creeds of the United States—yet America’s society and legal system continues to face deep, unsolved structural problems in dealing with differing cultural anxieties and differing viewpoints. Inazu not only argues that it is possible to cohabitate peacefully in this country, but also lays out realistic guidelines for our society and legal system to achieve the new American dream through civic practices that value toleration over protest, humility over defensiveness, and persuasion over coercion. With a new preface that addresses the election of Donald Trump, the decline in civic discourse after the election, the Nazi march in Charlottesville, and more, this new edition of Confident Pluralism is an essential clarion call during one of the most troubled times in US history. Inazu argues for institutions that can work to bring people together as well as political institutions that will defend the unprotected. Confident Pluralism offers a refreshing argument for how the legal system can protect peoples’ personal beliefs and differences and provides a path forward to a healthier future of tolerance, humility, and patience.

Scientific Pluralism Reconsidered

Scientific Pluralism Reconsidered
Author: Stephanie Ruphy
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2016-12-23
Genre: Science
ISBN: 082298153X

Can we expect our scientific theories to make up a unified structure, or do they form a kind of "patchwork" whose pieces remain independent from each other? Does the proliferation of sometimes-incompatible representations of the same phenomenon compromise the ability of science to deliver reliable knowledge? Is there a single correct way to classify things that science should try to discover, or is taxonomic pluralism here to stay? These questions are at the heart of philosophical debate on the unity or plurality of science, one of the most central issues in philosophy of science today. This book offers a critical overview and a new structure of this debate. It focuses on the methodological, epistemic, and metaphysical commitments of various philosophical attitudes surrounding monism and pluralism, and offers novel perspectives and pluralist theses on scientific methods and objects, reductionism, plurality of representations, natural kinds, and scientific classifications.

Pluralism by Default

Pluralism by Default
Author: Lucan Way
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2015-12-31
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1421418134

“Pluralism by Default will change the way we understand the emergence of democracies and the consolidation of autocracies.” —Chrystia Freeland, author of Plutocrats Exploring sources of political contestation in the former Soviet Union and beyond, Pluralism by Default proposes that pluralism in “new democracies” is often grounded less in democratic leadership or emerging civil society and more in the failure of authoritarianism. Dynamic competition frequently emerges because autocrats lack the state capacity to steal elections, impose censorship, or repress opposition. In fact, the same institutional failures that facilitate political competition may also thwart the development of stable democracy. “A tour de force brimming with theoretical originality and effective use of in-depth case studies. It will enrich our understanding of post-communist politics and help reshape the way we think about democracy, authoritarianism, and regime change more broadly.” —M. Steven Fish, author of Democracy Derailed in Russia: The Failure of Open Politics

Pragmatism, Pluralism, and the Nature of Philosophy

Pragmatism, Pluralism, and the Nature of Philosophy
Author: Scott F. Aikin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2017-10-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1351811312

For the past fifteen years, Aikin and Talisse have been working collaboratively on a new vision of American pragmatism, one which sees pragmatism as a living and developing philosophical idiom that originates in the work of the "classical" pragmatisms of Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, uninterruptedly develops through the later 20th Century pragmatists (C. I. Lewis, Wilfrid Sellars, Nelson Goodman, W. V. O. Quine), and continues through the present day. According to Aikin and Talisse, pragmatism is fundamentally a metaphilosophical proposal – a methodological suggestion for carrying inquiry forward amidst ongoing deep disagreement over the aims, limitations, and possibilities of philosophy. This conception of pragmatism not only runs contrary to the dominant self-understanding among cotemporary philosophers who identify with the classical pragmatists, it also holds important implications for pragmatist philosophy. In particular, Aikin and Talisse show that their version of pragmatism involves distinctive claims about epistemic justification, moral disagreement, democratic citizenship, and the conduct of inquiry. The chapters combine detailed engagements with the history and development of pragmatism with original argumentation aimed at a philosophical audience beyond pragmatism.

The Challenge of Pluralism

The Challenge of Pluralism
Author: Stephen V. Monsma
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2009
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0742554163

Provides a comparative analysis of church-state issues in the United States, the Netherlands, Australia, England, and Germany, and argues that the U.S. is unique in the way it resolves religious freedom and religious establishment questions.

After Pluralism

After Pluralism
Author: Courtney Bender
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2010-11-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0231527268

The contributors to this volume treat pluralism as a concept that is historically and ideologically produced or, put another way, as a doctrine that is embedded within a range of political, civic, and cultural institutions. Their critique considers how religious difference is framed as a problem that only pluralism can solve. Working comparatively across nations and disciplines, the essays in After Pluralism explore pluralism as a "term of art" that sets the norms of identity and the parameters of exchange, encounter, and conflict. Contributors locate pluralism's ideals in diverse sites Broadway plays, Polish Holocaust memorials, Egyptian dream interpretations, German jails, and legal theories and demonstrate its shaping of political and social interaction in surprising and powerful ways. Throughout, they question assumptions underlying pluralism's discourse and its influence on the legal decisions that shape modern religious practice. Contributors do more than deconstruct this theory; they tackle what comes next. Having established the genealogy and effects of pluralism, they generate new questions for engaging the collective worlds and multiple registers in which religion operates.

The Practice of Liberal Pluralism

The Practice of Liberal Pluralism
Author: William A. Galston
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2005
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780521549639

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Forms of Pluralism and Democratic Constitutionalism

Forms of Pluralism and Democratic Constitutionalism
Author: Andrew Arato
Publisher:
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2018
Genre: Cultural pluralism
ISBN: 9780231187022

In this interdisciplinary volume, a group of prominent international scholars considers alternative political formations to the nation-state, discussing their ability to preserve and expand the achievements of democratic constitutionalism in the twenty-first century and their capacity to deal with deep societal differences.