False Moves in Philosophy and Social Theory: Losing Public Purpose [Hardcover]

This book considers diverse philosophical topics unified by the identification of false moves commonly found in modern philosophy, mainstream Anglo-American philosophy, and social theory. The authors expose the sources of fundamental problems that recur in philosophybasic problems with what the authors call factoring philosophy. Factoring philosophy fails to attend to the phenomenological task of determining when what is distinguishable is separable and when not. Consequently, factoring philosophy makes phenomenological mistakesfalse moveswhen it treats as separable what is only distinguishable. Analytic philosophy is prone to false moves when it fails to recognize that phenomenology is the necessary complement to analysis. There is nothing wrong with analysiswe might as well give up thinking as give up analysisand nothing is wrong with the values prized by analytic philosophy. As Hegel observed, philosophizing requires, above all, that each thought should be grasped in its full precision and that nothing should remain vague and indeterminate. Ultimately, this book contends that false moves prevail in philosophical analysis and social theory when they neglect their phenomenological foundations. 

Introduction: How Factoring Philosophy Puts Philosophy on the Sidelines.- Chapter One: Is Life Absurd?.- Chapter Two: Being Mortal.- Chapter Three: Reinventing Humans: The Strange Allure of Stoicism.- Chapter Four: Beyond the Illusion of Philosophical Egoism: Recovering Self-Love and Selfishness.- Chapter Five: Moral Luck, Responsibility, and this Worldly Life.- Chapter Six: The Pure Self in Political Life: Reconsidering the Primacy of the Right over the Good.- Chapter Seven: Values as Purely Subjective: Against the Idea of A New Creation.- Chapter Eight: Setting Aside the Purely Subjective: Reclaiming the Discourse of Tl“(