The Self-Conscious, Thinking Subject: A Kantian Contribution to Reestablishing Reason in a Post-Truth Age 1st ed

This book argues that the primary function of human thinking in language is to make judgments, which are logical-normative connections of concepts. Robert Abele points out that this presupposes cognitive conditions that cannot be accounted for by empirical-linguistic analyses of language content or social conditions alone. Judgments rather assume both reason and a unified subject, and this requires recognition of a Kantian-type of transcendental dimension to them. Judgments are related to perception in that both are syntheses, defined as the unity of representations according to a rule/form. Perceptual syntheses are simultaneously pre-linguistic and proto-rational, and the understanding (Kant’s Verstand) makes these syntheses conceptually and thus self-consciously explicit.  Abele concludes with a transcendental critique of postmodernism and what its deflationary view of ontological categories―such as the unified and reasoning subject―has done to political thinking. He presents an alternative that calls for a return to normativity and a recognition of reason, objectivity, and the universality of principles.

A User’s Guide to the USA PATRIOT Act and Beyond A User’s Guide to the USA PATRIOT Act and Beyond examines the controversial USA PATRIOT Act, passed by Congress six weeks after the horrific events of September 11, 2001. The book summarizes other programs put into operation to severely curtail the civil liberties of Americans, including a second, more intrusive PATRIOT Act, and other proposed programs and laws that attack privacy, probably cause, due process, and free speech.

What people are saying about “A User’s guide to the USA Patriot Act and Beyond”

“This book is an excellent analysis of the controversial PATRIOT Act. It is well written and substantive, providing good reading for anyone interested in this aspect of the war on terrorism.”

— Deen Chatterjee, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Philosophy
University of Utah

“An excellent white paper on the PATRIOT Act. It provides good background on the Act… and analyzes it from a very strong presumption of the right to privacy.”

— Howard Kainz, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of Philosophy
Marquette University

 

Democracy Gone: A Chronicle of the Last Chapters of the Great American Democratic Experiment

This book argues that the last eight years in particular have shown us that our democracy has largely evaporated, leaving behind only an exoskeleton that was once its original vertebrae of ends and principles. It is critical to our form of democracy in the U.S. that citizens become active participants.

The Anatomy of a Deception

This book reconstructs the public dialogue that led to the United States collectively making the decision to invade and occupy the sovereign nation of Iraq. The book examines this public debate concerning the invasion and occupation of Iraq and focuses on thinking critically about the decision to go to war.

Encyclopedia of Global Justice

The multi-volume Encyclopedia of Global Justice, published by Springer, along with Springer’s book series, Studies in Global Justice, is a major publication venture toward a comprehensive coverage of this timely topic. The Encyclopedia is an international, interdisciplinary, and collaborative project, spanning all the relevant areas of scholarship related to issues of global justice, and edited and advised by leading scholars from around the world. The wide-ranging entries present the latest ideas on this complex subject by authors who are at the cutting edge of inquiry.