Research Catalog

Title

Speech and political practice : recovering the place of human responsibility / Murray Jardine.

Author

Jardine, Murray, 1954-

Publication

Albany : State University of New York Press, [1998], ©1998.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

x, 207 pages; 24 cm.

Summary

• Recently, political theorists, philosophers, and theologians have given considerable attention to the role of narrative both in the formation and maintenance of political communities and in moral reasoning. Speech and Political Practice examines a central question for narrative-based theories of community and ethics: How can we tell a good story from a bad one? That is, how can narrative models of community escape moral relativism?
• Speech and Political Practice develops a dynamic and egalitarian conception of place based on the human capacity for speech. It argues that places of responsibility can be derived from the structures of various types of speech act, and that such places of responsibility can establish limits on individual and collective action without abandoning legitimate modern achievements such as democracy and science.
• Drawing upon recent philosophy of language and science and upon anthropological studies of oral, literate, and electronic-image cultures, Jardine concludes that practical development of speech-based places will require that we reorient ourselves from visual modes of experience toward oral/aural experience. He discusses what this would imply for a revival of public life.

Series Statement

SUNY series in the philosophy of the social sciences

Uniform Title

SUNY series in the philosophy of the social sciences.

Subjects

• Narration (Rhetoric)
• Ethics
• Objectivism (Philosophy)
• Language and languages > Philosophy
• Political science
• Speech acts (Linguistics)

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [193]-204) and index.

Contents

Introduction: Political Theory and Human Finitude -- 1. The Concept of a Narrative Practice as an Alternative to Objectivism -- 2. Scientific Practice and Its Implicit Critique of Objectivism -- 3. The Written Word as an Experiential Source of Objectivism -- 4. Beyond Objectivism: The Logic of the Speech Act -- 5. Speech, Place, and Narrative Practice -- Conclusion: Speech, Place, and the Postmodern Public Realm.

ISBN

• 0791436853
• 0791436861 (pbk.)

LCCN

97019490

OCLC

ocm36858227

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries