State University of New York Press strana 4 z 4

Collects Walter Feinberg's classic writings on the meaning of democracy for public education. For over fifty years, Walter Feinberg has been a leader in interpreting democracy in and its meaning for public education. In this collection, Feinberg explores the question of how to study education, the necessary role of history and philosophy in this endeavor, and the need for educational theorists to engage with the lived realities of students, parents, and teachers through philosophical anthropology. He demonstrates a particular way of paying attention to public education that brings an interpretive sensitivity for others to the big philosophical questions of what public schooling should be in democratic societies. Feinberg explores many of the central questions that vex educational policy and practice: What should be the purpose of public schools? What should we think of school choice proposals? What are the relationships between religion and public schools? Should schools promote an American identity? How should we think about affirmative action? In this tour of educational ideas, democracy is the central concern, as it both presents questions that demand answers and becomes an approach to studying education with rigor and sensitivity.

Offers a holistic approach to Michel Foucault's thought, introducing the idea of practical philosophy as an original interpretative framework. Michel Foucault's thought, Maddalena Cerrato writes, may be understood as practical philosophy. In this perspective, political analysis, philosophy of history, epistemology, and ethics appear as necessarily cast together in a philosophical project that aims to rethink freedom and emancipation from domination of all kinds. The idea of practical philosophy accounts for Foucault's specific approach to the object, as well as to the task of philosophy, and it identifies the perspective that led him to consider the question of subjectivity as the guiding thread of his work. Overall, Cerrato shows the deep consistency underlying Foucault's reflection and the substantial coherence of his philosophical itinerary, setting aside all the conventional interpretations that pivot on the idea that his thought underwent a radical "turn" from the political engagement of the question of power toward an ethical retrieval of the question of subjectivity.

Explores the connection between Jean-Luc Nancy's political works on community and his works on art and literature, thus providing not only a comprehensive introduction into Nancy’s work but also a broader examination of the social and political role of literature. What is the connection between the work of community and the work of literature? And in what way is literature implied in Jean-Luc Nancy's "inoperative" community? The Unraveled Plot investigates the relation between two domains that have only separately been addressed in the reception of Nancy's work: his political works on community on the one hand and his works on art and literature on the other. Lucidly traversing Nancy's entire oeuvre, Aukje van Rooden offers not only a comprehensive introduction into Nancy’s work but also a much broader reflection on the social and political role of literature. Situating Nancy's thought within a larger philosophical tradition leading from German Romanticism to contemporary social and political theory, she offers new insights, with and beyond Nancy, on the forming of communities and how literature can play a role.

Chronicles the history of Zionism, Israel, and the United States. Fleeing from History offers an understanding of Zionism not as ideology or movement but rather as a multidimensional cosmopolitan arena for Jewish political debate and argument. Drawing on conversations in currently developing literature on colonialism and decolonization, exile and diaspora studies, as well as comparative history, Ylana N. Miller argues that Zionism must be seen through a multinational lens that illuminates the historical process by which it was reduced from a broad, diverse, generative arena of Jewish political creativity to an exclusionary nationalism. Central to the history of this process is the gradual transformation of the American political environment within which Zionism came to be identified with the state of Israel. A key and abiding insight that this history advances is that Jewish history cannot be told without recognition of parallel developments among other groups; for this study, Palestinian Arabs and Algerians. The shift in the diaspora/Zionist center of gravity from European dominance to that of the United States should be understood as representing a break and change rather than continuity. The US–Israel relationship that appears unquestionable today was not inevitable. It was the result of the gradual winnowing of dissenting voices and the embrace of a specific version of state identity.

Beyond Elemental Loss offers an important and innovative contribution to environmental philosophy by investigating loss in times of anthropogenic climate change through the elements of water, fire, air, and earth. Marjolein Oele argues that the current experience of loss prompts a reassessment of the conventional meaning and conceptualization of loss. She proposes that such loss is best understood through infinitesimal, diachronic shifts occurring in the elemental constellations that structure the world?water, fire, air, and earth?and humanity''s incremental inability to cognitively and affectively make sense of this world increasingly transformed by anthropogenic forces. Through a generous yet critical reading of a broad range of interdisciplinary sources tracing changes in our relationship to the elemental over time, Oele''s scholarship plumbs the history of philosophy as much as it pulls from Indigenous philosophies, continental thought, mythologies, anthropological and historical sources, science, and ecology. The book''s argumentative arc ultimately directs our attention toward constructive transformations in our cognitive and affective habits, and it argues that trust can bring us beyond elemental loss.

Examines how Leo Strauss sought to recover the question of "nature," which he saw as inseparable from genuine philosophy since its inception in ancient Greece.Among the political philosophers of the twentieth century, Leo Strauss is usually singled out for his attempt to revitalize the ancient approach to counter the relativism of both historicism and positivism. It is less commonly underscored, however, that the cornerstone of this attempt is the recovery of the question of "nature," which he regarded as inseparable from genuine philosophy since its inception in ancient Greece. Leo Strauss and the Recovery of "Natural Philosophizing" addresses such a theme, focusing on the theoretical presuppositions that Strauss found at the basis of the acquired inability to raise the question of nature. Prominent among these is the encounter between philosophy and revelation, which, due to their conceptual incompatibility, leads to a condition Strauss metaphorically described as a "second, ''unnatural'' cave" characterized by insurmountable "prejudices" rather than "appearance and opinion." These, however, are the starting point of genuine philosophy in the Platonic "first, ''natural'' cave," which has to be regained, by way of historical deconstruction of the presuppositions of the second cave, if the "natural philosophizing" embodied by Socratic dialectics is to be reactivated.