The Just Family presents a comprehensive and systematic theory of family values, determining both how marriage and parent-child relations should be structured as ethical institutions of freedom and how the rights and duties of family membership can be upheld in unity with social and political justice.
This book develops a comprehensive systematic economic theory, conceiving how the dynamic of market relations generates an economy dominated by the competitive process of individual profit-seeking enterprises. The author shows how, contrary to classical political economy and contemporary economics, the theory of capital is an a priori normative account properly belonging to ethics. Exposing and overcoming the limits of the economic conceptions of Hegel and Marx, Rethinking Capital determines how the system of capitals shapes economic freedom, jeopardizing the very rights in whose exercise it consists. Winfield thereby provides the understanding required to guide the private and public interventions with which capitalism can be given a human face.
This is a finely argued, detailed, and comprehensive systematic theory of justice, brilliantly extending Hegelian ethics much as Rawls's Theory of Justice rehabilitated and extended classical Liberalism. Winfield argues that justice, like reason, must be self-grounding, and that to achieve this, it must be self-determined. The theory of justice must therefore abandon its appeal to metaphysically given or transcendentally constituted norms and instead determine the institutions of freedom. In pursuit of this task, Winfield offers insightful discussions of property relations, morality, the family, capital and commodity relations, economic and social justice, and the state. In contrast to Liberalism, which sees the state as instrumental to non-political ends, Winfield defends the democratic state as the just realization of freedom. Throughout, it is argued that justice is defined interactively, where one's freedom is determined by how one's interactions respect and foster the institutional freedom of others. Although the author's arguments proceed systematically, at each stage he deals adroitly with the relevant major thinkers in the Western tradition--not only with Hegel, but with the ancients, the classical liberals, Marx, and contemporaries such as Rawls.
As enthusiasm for computational models of the mind has waned and the revolution in neuroscience has progressed, attention in philosophy and cognitive science has shifted toward more biological approaches. The Living Mind establishes that mind cannot be immaterial or reduced to mechanistic or cybernetic processes, but must instead possess a subjectivity embodied in an animal organism. On this basis, the work proceeds to show why mind involves a pre-conscious psyche, a non-discursive consciousness and self-consciousness, and an intelligence overcoming the opposition of consciousness. In so doing, The Living Mind provides a detailed account of the psyche and consciousness, paving the way for conceiving the psychological enabling conditions of rational theory and practice.
Here is a universal biology that draws upon the contributions of Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel to unravel the mystery of life and conceive what is essential to living things anywhere they may arise. The book develops a philosopher’s guide to life in the universe, conceiving how nature becomes a biosphere in which life can emerge, what are the basic life processes common to any organism, how evolution can give rise to the different possible forms of life, and what distinguishes the essential life forms from one another.
This book questions the postmodern credo that the autonomy of reason and action is a delusion, concealing our entrapment in historical convention and masking a logocentric domination. The author shows how this dogma not only assails a false vision of self-determination, but also how it ignores the way in which a critique of rational autonomy can provide no epistemology or ethics, nor any critique of modernity, without embracing the very independence of thought and conduct that it spurns. Freedom and Modernity offers a positive alternative revealing how self-determination is the very substance of legitimacy for both knowledge and conduct.
The war on terror cannot be truly understood without investigating the legitimacy of modernity, the challenge that religion presents to modernization, the inescapable conflicts attending the emergence and expansion of modernity, and the post-colonial predicament from which Islamist reaction arises. Richard Dien Winfield illuminates the war on terror in light of these issues, presenting an anti-foundationalist justification of the rationality and freedom of modernity, while assessing how religion can stand in opposition to modernity and why Islam has been a privileged vehicle of anti-modern religious revolt. Winfield shows that the privatization that religion must undergo to be compatible with modern freedom involves no capitulation to relativism, but rather is a theological imperative on which the truth of religion depends. Exposing the limits of any purely secular modernization of Islam, Winfield shows how Islam can draw upon its core tradition to repudiate the oppression of Islamist reaction and become at home in the modern world.
Hegel and the Future of Systematic Philosophy critically rethinks and extends Hegel's project for systematic philosophy without foundations, engaging the most important contemporary debates concerning logic, epistemology, metaphysics, nature, mind, economic justice, political freedom, globalization, and literary theory.
This text provides a truly comprehensive guide to one of the most important and challenging works of modern philosophy. The systematic complexity of Hegel's radical project in the Science of Logic prevents many from understanding and appreciating its value. By independently and critically working through Hegel's argument, this book offers an enlightening aid for study and anchors the Science of Logic at a central position in the philosophical canon.
Democracy Unchained draws upon lessons from Professor Richard Dien Winfield's 2018 campaign for US Congress in Georgia to show how the United States' failure to fulfill our social rights has put our self-government in jeopardy and undermined our ability to uphold family welfare and the social opportunity on which democracy depends. Pulling from both basic philosophical argument and research into the state of our society, Democracy Unchained presents detailed policy proposals to fulfill our fundamental right to employment at a fair wage, level the playing field between employee and employer, secure a healthy environment and fair access to healthcare, balance work and family, make decent housing available to all, ensure educational opportunity at all levels, provide legal care for all - enabling everyone's rights to be duly protected - and fund all these measures through fair taxation.
In Defense of Reason After Hegel undermines the assault on truth pervading public life and the academy, showing how we can think objectively about reason, nature, right, and beauty.
Presents a systematic theory of the artforms (symbolic, classical, and romantic), providing a way of addressing contemporary art and sketching a theory of the individual arts.
Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit: A Critical Rethinking in Seventeen Lectures provides a clear and philosophically engaging investigation of Hegel’s first masterpiece, perhaps the most revolutionary work of modern philosophy. The book guides the reader on an intellectual adventure that takes up Hegel’s revolutionary strategy of paving the way for doing philosophy without presuppositions by first engaging in a phenomenological investigation of knowing as it appears.
From Concept to Objectivity uncovers the nature and authority of conceptual determination by critically thinking through neglected arguments in Hegel’s Science of Logic pivotal for understanding reason and its role in philosophy. Winfield clarifies the logical problems of presuppositionlessness and determinacy that prepare the way for conceiving the concept, examines how universality, particularity, and individuality are determined, investigates how judgment and syllogism are exhaustively differentiated, and, on that basis, explores how objectivity can be categorized without casting thought in irrevocable opposition to reality. Winfield's book will be of interest to readers of Hegel as well as anyone wondering how thought can be objective.
This book defies the reigning dismissal of the philosophy of nature by turning to what Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel have had to say about nature and critically thinking through their arguments to reconstruct a comprehensive account of the universe. Aided by the contributions of more recent thinkers, such as Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Michael B. Foster, and Hans Jonas, Conceiving Nature shows how the mechanics of matter in motion, the physics of electromagnetism, and chemical process provide all that is needed for life to emerge and give rise to rational animals capable of knowing nature in truth. The work contains detailed discussions of much of Aristotle’s writing on nature, of Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, and of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature.
The Intelligent Mind conceives the psychological reality of thought and language, explaining how intelligence develops from intuition to representation and then to linguistic interaction and thinking. Overcoming the prevailing dogmas regarding how discursive reason emerges, this book secures the psychological possibility of the philosophy of mind.
First Published in 1988, Richard Dien Winfield's The Just Economy investigates what the economy should be, undertaking a normative inquiry ignored by contemporary economists. Drawing upon Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Winfield's book shows how justice lies in self-determination, how the economy can realize social freedom, and how economic relations must be regulated to uphold family welfare, equal economic opportunity, and political autonomy. Exposing the pitfalls in past attempts to conceive economic justice, including those of ancient Greek philosophers, social contract thinkers, the classical political economists, and Marx, The Just Economy settles the controversy between capitalism, socialism, and communism. It is crucial reading for thinkers and citizens the world over.
A closely reasoned account defining, arranging, and systematically explicating some of the major concepts of aesthetics. Winfield's system has range and power such that it will invite a variety of commentary and discussion among those scholars who take a serious interest in the concepts analyzed in this kind of philosophical endeavor."--David A. White, DePaul University "A clear and comprehensive exposition, critical analysis, and defense of Hegel's aesthetics in relation to some of its most significant competitors in the history of Western thought."--Robert E. Wood, University of Dallas Systematic Aesthetics rehabilitates and develops the approach to aesthetics pioneered by Hegel, showing how it overcomes the dilemmas undermining the two other basic options in aesthetic theory, the metaphysical (pioneered by Plato and Aristotle) and the transcendental (initiated by Hume and Kant and dominating contemporary theory). By demonstrating the pitfalls of these other approaches, Winfield frees aesthetics from the appeal to privileged givens and determining processes of reception that obscure the individuality underlying all aspects of fine art. Systematic Aesthetics provides a thorough account of the concept of beauty, of the type of truth suited for artistic construal, and of the special transfiguration of content in art--how the unity of meaning and configuration affects the physical being of the artwork and its relation to its audience, how artistic creation operates, and how the reception of art involves both catharsis and aesthetic judgment--without succumbing to arbitrary interpretation. In the course of providing an independent theory of his own, Winfield engages in a critical dialogue with classic and contemporary figures in the philosophy of art, from Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger to Luk�cs, Szondi, Derrida, Goodman, and Danto. Both in the breadth of debate that it enters and in the scope of the issues that it addresses, Systematic Aesthetics stands apart. Paving the way for further exploration of particular art forms, Winfield presents a radical challenge to the dogmas of tradition and of postmodernism alike. Richard Dien Winfield is professor of philosophy at the University of Georgia. His previous books include The Just Economy; Reason and Justice; Overcoming Foundations; Freedom and Modernity; and Law in Civil Society.
This title was first published in 2001. Autonomy and Normativity explores central topics in current philosophical debate, challenging the prevailing post-modern dogma that theory, practice and art are captive to contingent historical foundations by showing how foundational dilemmas are overcome once validity is recognized to reside in self-determination. Through constructive arguments covering the principal topics and controversies in epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics, Autonomy and Normativity demonstrates how truth, right and beauty can retain universal validity without succumbing to the mistaken Enlightenment strategy of seeking foundations for rational autonomy. Presenting a compact, yet comprehensive statement of a powerful and provocative alternative to the reigning orthodoxies of current philosophical debate, Richard Winfield employs Hegelian techniques and focus to object to opponents, and presents a radical and systematic critique of the work of mainstream thinkers including Kant, Rawls, Husserl, Habermas and others. The ramifications for the legitimation of modernity are thoroughly explored, in conjunction with an analysis of the fate of theory, practice and art in the modern world. This book offers an invaluable resource for students of both analytic and continental philosophical traditions, and related areas of law, social theory and aesthetics.
The Intelligent Mind conceives the psychological reality of thought and language, explaining how intelligence develops from intuition to representation and then to linguistic interaction and thinking. Overcoming the prevailing dogmas regarding how discursive reason emerges, this book secures the psychological possibility of the philosophy of mind.
From Concept to Objectivity uncovers the nature and authority of conceptual determination by critically thinking through neglected arguments in Hegel’s Science of Logic pivotal for understanding reason and its role in philosophy. Winfield clarifies the logical problems of presuppositionlessness and determinacy that prepare the way for conceiving the concept, examines how universality, particularity, and individuality are determined, investigates how judgment and syllogism are exhaustively differentiated, and, on that basis, explores how objectivity can be categorized without casting thought in irrevocable opposition to reality. Winfield's book will be of interest to readers of Hegel as well as anyone wondering how thought can be objective.
This book questions the postmodern credo that the autonomy of reason and action is a delusion, concealing our entrapment in historical convention and masking a logocentric domination. The author shows how this dogma not only assails a false vision of self-determination, but also how it ignores the way in which a critique of rational autonomy can provide no epistemology or ethics, nor any critique of modernity, without embracing the very independence of thought and conduct that it spurns. Freedom and Modernity offers a positive alternative revealing how self-determination is the very substance of legitimacy for both knowledge and conduct.
Presents a systematic theory of the artforms (symbolic, classical, and romantic), providing a way of addressing contemporary art and sketching a theory of the individual arts.
In this book, Richard Dien Winfield builds upon Hegel’s Aesthetics to provide a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the individual fine arts, which remedies Hegel's inconsistencies and major omissions. In addition to conceiving the general aesthetics and particular stylistic forms of architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature, Winfield determines the fundamental character of the new arts of photography and cinema that the master thinkers of aesthetics never had the opportunity to consider. Winfield’s analysis covers a wide-ranging array of artistic creations from diverse periods and cultures, while engaging in debate with the most important aesthetic theorists of the past and present.
This is a finely argued, detailed, and comprehensive systematic theory of justice, brilliantly extending Hegelian ethics much as Rawls's Theory of Justice rehabilitated and extended classical Liberalism. Winfield argues that justice, like reason, must be self-grounding, and that to achieve this, it must be self-determined. The theory of justice must therefore abandon its appeal to metaphysically given or transcendentally constituted norms and instead determine the institutions of freedom. In pursuit of this task, Winfield offers insightful discussions of property relations, morality, the family, capital and commodity relations, economic and social justice, and the state. In contrast to Liberalism, which sees the state as instrumental to non-political ends, Winfield defends the democratic state as the just realization of freedom. Throughout, it is argued that justice is defined interactively, where one's freedom is determined by how one's interactions respect and foster the institutional freedom of others. Although the author's arguments proceed systematically, at each stage he deals adroitly with the relevant major thinkers in the Western tradition--not only with Hegel, but with the ancients, the classical liberals, Marx, and contemporaries such as Rawls.
The Just Family presents a comprehensive and systematic theory of family values, determining both how marriage and parent-child relations should be structured as ethical institutions of freedom and how the rights and duties of family membership can be upheld in unity with social and political justice.
Here is a universal biology that draws upon the contributions of Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel to unravel the mystery of life and conceive what is essential to living things anywhere they may arise. The book develops a philosopher’s guide to life in the universe, conceiving how nature becomes a biosphere in which life can emerge, what are the basic life processes common to any organism, how evolution can give rise to the different possible forms of life, and what distinguishes the essential life forms from one another.
The war on terror cannot be truly understood without investigating the legitimacy of modernity, the challenge that religion presents to modernization, the inescapable conflicts attending the emergence and expansion of modernity, and the post-colonial predicament from which Islamist reaction arises. Richard Dien Winfield illuminates the war on terror in light of these issues, presenting an anti-foundationalist justification of the rationality and freedom of modernity, while assessing how religion can stand in opposition to modernity and why Islam has been a privileged vehicle of anti-modern religious revolt. Winfield shows that the privatization that religion must undergo to be compatible with modern freedom involves no capitulation to relativism, but rather is a theological imperative on which the truth of religion depends. Exposing the limits of any purely secular modernization of Islam, Winfield shows how Islam can draw upon its core tradition to repudiate the oppression of Islamist reaction and become at home in the modern world.
The Intelligent Mind conceives the psychological reality of thought and language, explaining how intelligence develops from intuition to representation and then to linguistic interaction and thinking. Overcoming the prevailing dogmas regarding how discursive reason emerges, this book secures the psychological possibility of the philosophy of mind.
First Published in 1988, Richard Dien Winfield's The Just Economy investigates what the economy should be, undertaking a normative inquiry ignored by contemporary economists. Drawing upon Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Winfield's book shows how justice lies in self-determination, how the economy can realize social freedom, and how economic relations must be regulated to uphold family welfare, equal economic opportunity, and political autonomy. Exposing the pitfalls in past attempts to conceive economic justice, including those of ancient Greek philosophers, social contract thinkers, the classical political economists, and Marx, The Just Economy settles the controversy between capitalism, socialism, and communism. It is crucial reading for thinkers and citizens the world over.
First published in 1989, Overcoming Foundations offers a challenge to both postmodernism and traditional doctrines of knowledge and value by undertaking a systematic philosophy without foundations. United by a concern for overcoming foundations without overcoming philosophy, the essays in this book discuss a wide range of issues in epistemology and ethics, incorporating analysis of major thinkers of the past and present and drawing critically on Hegel’s argument. The book unveils the dogmatic assumption of the futility of philosophy’s traditional quests for universal truth and ethics and lays out the strategy for achieving autonomy of reason and valid norms of conduct without foundational appeals. After examining how a critique of foundations can be executed without making new foundational claims, Winfield considers how philosophy must operate in order to think truth without given conceptual schemes and to achieve rational autonomy. Finally, the author explores the implications of a reason free of foundations for the history of philosophy and the debates embroiling contemporary thought. The essays outline an independent theory of justice, rethinking morality, and the structures of civil society and democratic government. Overcoming Foundations advances a much ignored philosophical alternative, a systematic contribution to epistemology, ethics, and social and political philosophy.
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