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Mark Johnson. The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Pp. 308. Cloth ISBN: 0-226-40192-8.

Mark Johnson. The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding . Chicago: University of... Book Notes relationships. Among Brandom's many speculative inspirations is his new aim of developing a universal pragmatic metavocabulary, not to legislate what can be meaningfully said, but only to explain how humans manage to actually use any vocabulary. Larry A. Hickman. Pragmatism as Post-postmodernism: Lessons from John Dewey. New York: Fordham University Press, 2007. Pp. 288. Cloth ISBN: 0-8232-2841-6. The lessons from Dewey that Hickman selects are mostly for non-pragmatists and even non-philosophers. This book is assembled from talks and papers that Hickman has delivered to diverse audiences over the past dozen years. Taking pains to carefully quote and explain Dewey in every chapter, a quite thorough exegesis of much of Dewey's thought takes shape here. The general theme of "post-postmodernism" means that Dewey anticipated some postmodernist themes such as antifoundationalism, while already avoiding their relativistic excesses. In the course of explaining Dewey's approaches to specific issues arising in philosophical concerns about scientific method, naturalism, technology, environmentalism, aesthetics, religion, and politics, Hickman contrasts Dewey with notable twentieth century figures, including Jürgen Habermas, Albert Borgmann, and Max Scheler. Inspired by the cognitive neurosciences, Johnson explores the processes of subconscious thought and feeling in order to entirely reconstruct aesthetics. He views aesthetics very broadly as the human mode of meaning-making, and places aesthetics at the foundations of human understanding. Finding confirmations of claims by classical pragmatism, especially John Dewey, at every turn of his tale, Johnson builds a systematic pragmatist theory of human intelligence. The titles of the book's three sections are "Bodily Meaning and Felt Sense," "Embodied Meaning and the Sciences of the Mind," and "Embodied Meaning, Aesthetics, and Art." His primary conclusions: mind is embodied; feeling transcends thinking; feelings are essential to meaning and knowledge; aesthetics is hardly just subjective taste; and the arts are necessary conditions of human flourishing. Notable convergences with Johnson's Deweyan aesthetics are found in neuroscientist Jay Schulkin's Cognitive Adaptation: A Pragmatist Perspective (Cambridge, 2008) and philosopher Denis Dutton's The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution (Bloomsbury, 2008). http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Contemporary Pragmatism Brill

Mark Johnson. The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Pp. 308. Cloth ISBN: 0-226-40192-8.

Contemporary Pragmatism , Volume 5 (2): 166 – Apr 21, 2008

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Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© Copyright 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
1572-3429
eISSN
1875-8185
DOI
10.1163/18758185-90000100
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Book Notes relationships. Among Brandom's many speculative inspirations is his new aim of developing a universal pragmatic metavocabulary, not to legislate what can be meaningfully said, but only to explain how humans manage to actually use any vocabulary. Larry A. Hickman. Pragmatism as Post-postmodernism: Lessons from John Dewey. New York: Fordham University Press, 2007. Pp. 288. Cloth ISBN: 0-8232-2841-6. The lessons from Dewey that Hickman selects are mostly for non-pragmatists and even non-philosophers. This book is assembled from talks and papers that Hickman has delivered to diverse audiences over the past dozen years. Taking pains to carefully quote and explain Dewey in every chapter, a quite thorough exegesis of much of Dewey's thought takes shape here. The general theme of "post-postmodernism" means that Dewey anticipated some postmodernist themes such as antifoundationalism, while already avoiding their relativistic excesses. In the course of explaining Dewey's approaches to specific issues arising in philosophical concerns about scientific method, naturalism, technology, environmentalism, aesthetics, religion, and politics, Hickman contrasts Dewey with notable twentieth century figures, including Jürgen Habermas, Albert Borgmann, and Max Scheler. Inspired by the cognitive neurosciences, Johnson explores the processes of subconscious thought and feeling in order to entirely reconstruct aesthetics. He views aesthetics very broadly as the human mode of meaning-making, and places aesthetics at the foundations of human understanding. Finding confirmations of claims by classical pragmatism, especially John Dewey, at every turn of his tale, Johnson builds a systematic pragmatist theory of human intelligence. The titles of the book's three sections are "Bodily Meaning and Felt Sense," "Embodied Meaning and the Sciences of the Mind," and "Embodied Meaning, Aesthetics, and Art." His primary conclusions: mind is embodied; feeling transcends thinking; feelings are essential to meaning and knowledge; aesthetics is hardly just subjective taste; and the arts are necessary conditions of human flourishing. Notable convergences with Johnson's Deweyan aesthetics are found in neuroscientist Jay Schulkin's Cognitive Adaptation: A Pragmatist Perspective (Cambridge, 2008) and philosopher Denis Dutton's The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution (Bloomsbury, 2008).

Journal

Contemporary PragmatismBrill

Published: Apr 21, 2008

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