For many liberals, the question “Do others live rightly?” feels inappropriate. Liberalism seems to demand a follow-up question: “Who am I to judge?” Peaceful coexistence, in this view, is predicated on restraint from morally evaluating our peers. But Rahel Jaeggi sees the situation differently. Criticizing is not only valid but also useful, she argues. Moral judgment is no error; the error lies in how we go about judging. One way to judge is external, based on universal standards derived from ideas about God or human nature. The other is internal, relying on standards peculiar to a given society. Both approaches have serious flaws and detractors. In Critique of Forms of Life, Jaeggi offers a third way, which she calls “immanent” critique. Inspired by Hegelian social philosophy and engaged with Anglo-American theorists such as John Dewey, Michael Walzer, and Alasdair MacIntyre, immanent critique begins with the recognition that ways of life are inherently normative because they assert their own goodness and rightness. They also have a consistent purpose: to solve basic social problems and advance social goods, most of which are common across cultures. Jaeggi argues that we can judge the validity of a society’s moral claims by evaluating how well the society adapts to crisis—whether it is able to overcome contradictions that arise from within and continue to fulfill its purpose. Jaeggi enlivens her ideas through concrete, contemporary examples. Against both relativistic and absolutist accounts, she shows that rational social critique is possible.

Philosophy in the Islamic World is a comprehensive and unprecedented four-volume reference work devoted to the history of philosophy in the realms of Islam, from its beginnings in the eighth century AD down to modern times. The focus of this fourth installment of the series, divided into two volumes, is the 19th and 20th centuries and geographically on the Arab countries, the Ottoman-Turkish region, Iran, and Muslim South Asia. During this time philosophy was pursued at Islamic institutions and increasingly in Western-style universities, but philosophy also had an impact beyond academia. In each chapter, an international expert on philosophy in this period explores the teachings of individual philosophers, philosophical movements (philosophy of religion, logical empiricism, deconstructionism, etc.), and schools (for instance the continuation of Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophy of being). Debates over cultural authenticity, political rule, gender, and other major issues are also presented. This is the English version of the relevant volume of the Ueberweg, the most authoritative German reference work on the history of philosophy, which updates the German version (Philosophie in der Islamischen Welt Band 4/1: 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Arabischer Sprachraum, Basel: Schwabe, 2021) by providing references to the latest scholarly literature. Contributors Katajun Amirpur, Sadik Jalal al-Azm, Serpil Çakır, Frank Darwiche, Bettina Dennerlein, Sarhan Dhouib, Zeynep Direk, Michael Frey, Urs Gösken, Ursula Günther, Reza Hajatpour, Jan-Peter Hartung, Christoph Herzog, Elisabeth Susanne Kassab, Mohamed Aziz Lahbabi, Kata Moser, Sait Özervarlı, Nils Riecken, Sajjad Rizvi, Ruggero Vimercati Sanseverino, Roman Seidel and Harald Viersen.

This series consists of accession logs which document the purchases of the General Library of the University of Michigan. Information in this series includes accession number, classification number, number of volumes, author, title, place of publication, name of publisher, date of publication, binding description, vendor, cost, and remarks.

“These essays build a valuable, if virtual, bridge between the thought of John Dewey and that of a host of modern European philosophers. They invite us to entertain a set of imagined conversations among the mighty dead that no doubt would have intrigued Dewey and each of the interlocutors gathered here.”—Robert Westbrook, author of John Dewey and American Democracy and/or Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth. John Dewey and Continental Philosophy provides a rich sampling of exchanges that could have taken place long ago between the traditions of American pragmatism and continental philosophy had the lines of communication been more open between Dewey and his European contemporaries. Since they were not, Paul Fairfield and thirteen of his colleagues seek to remedy the situation by bringing the philosophy of Dewey into conversation with several currents in continental philosophical thought, from post-Kantian idealism and the work of Friedrich Nietzsche to twentieth-century phenomenology, hermeneutics, and poststructuralism. John Dewey and Continental Philosophy demonstrates some of the many connections and opportunities for cross-traditional thinking that have long existed between Dewey and continental thought, but have been under-explored. The intersection presented here between Dewey’s pragmatism and the European traditions makes a significant contribution to continental and American philosophy and will spur new and important developments in the American philosophical debate.

Analysis of Dewey’s pre-1916 work on logic and its relationship to his better-known 1938 book on the topic. When John Dewey’s logical theory is discussed, the focus is invariably on his 1938 book Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. His earlier logical works are seldom referenced except in relation to that later work. As a result, Dewey’s earlier logical theory is cut off from his later work, and this later work receives a curiously ahistorical gloss. Examining the earlier works from Studies in Logical Theory to Essays in Experimental Logic, James Scott Johnston provides an unparalleled account of the development of Dewey’s thinking in logic, examining various themes and issues Dewey felt relevant to a systematic logical theory. These include the context in which logical theory operates, the ingredients of logical inquiry, the distinctiveness of an instrumentalist logical theory, and the benefit of logical theory to practical concerns—particularly ethics and education. Along the way, and complicating the standard picture of Dewey’s logic being indebted to Charles S. Peirce, William James, and Charles Darwin, Johnston argues that Hegel is ultimately a more important influence.