In Lieu of Actual
Philosophical Writings

My philosophical interests are in Chinese philosophy, practical philosophy and the rhetoric of science, process philosophy, and a divergent approach to human psychology. To my knowledge none of these fields is really flourishing in today's academy. In general, I admire thinkers who describe a world in which actual people can actually live, describing it in such a way that people can learn to live better within that world. That's not a description of most scholarly work.

Here's a list my favorite books.

Classic authors who have been important for me are Herodotus, Montaigne (Frame translation), William James, Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil and The Geneology of Morals), and above all, the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu.

Practical Philosophy:

The anti-theoretical , real-time foundation. Toulmin is the place to start. Meyer connects to academic philosophy. Simons' collection includes a variety of approaches. Bourdieu has been quite influential in some circles. Prigogine further below is also relevant to this section.

Bourdieu. Pierre, The Logic of Practice, Stanford, 1980.

Meyer, Michel, Rhetoric, Language, and Reason, Penn State, 1994.

Toulmin, Stephen, Cosmopolis, Free Press, 1990.

Simons, Herbert W., The Rhetorical Turn, Chicago, 1990.

Buddhism:

Nishitani's book is the best thing I've read on Nietzsche or Heidegger. None of these books can be pigeonholed. Varela below also uses Buddhist concepts in his work.

Nishitani, Keiji, Religion and Nothingness, California, 1982.

Odin, Steve, Process Metaphysics and Hua-yen Buddhism, SUNY, 1982.

Red Pine (Bill Porter), The Diamond Sutra, Counterpoint, 2001.

Streng, Frederick, Emptiness: A Study in Religious Meaning, Abingdon, 1967.

Gudmunsen, Chris, Wittgenstein and Buddhism, Macmillan 1977.

"The Mind":

Doi's is the best book I've ever read on Freud. All these books point out that a human mind needs a body,and also needs other people to be human with. AI and analytic philosophy is written by people who think otherwise, many of who resent the very existence of other people as well as their own dependency on their bodies.

Damasio, Antonio, Descartes' Error, Avon, 1994.

Damasio, Antonio, The Feeling of What Happens, Harcourt Brace, 1999.

Doi, Takeo, The Anatomy of Self, Kodansha, 1986.

Doi, Takeo, The Anatomy of Dependency, Kodansha, (reissued 2002).

Harre, Rom, Personal Being, Harvard, 1984

Hayward, Jeremy, Perceiving Ordinary Magic, Shambhala, 1984.

Mead, George Herbert, (ed. Anselm Strauss), Mead on Social Psychology, Chicago, 1977.

Varela, Francisco, Thompson, Evan, and Rosch, Eleanor, The Embodied Mind, MIT, 1991.

History and Time:

Veyne and Hexter write about the historian's work. All write about the contingent and open future which social science and analytical philosophy still try to wish away.

Hexter, J. H., The History Primer, Basic Books, 1971.

Gould, Stephen Jay, Time's Cycle, Time's Arrow, Harvard, 1987.

Gould, Stephen Jay, Wonderful Life, Norton, 1989.

Toulmin, Stephen, and Goodfield, June, The Discovery of Time, Penguin, 1965.

Prigogine, Ilya, and Stengers, Isabelle, Order out of Chaos, Bantam, 1984.

Veyne, Paul, Writing History, Wesleyan, 1984.

Society:

Mostly anthropological stuff, tending toward the "cultural".

Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger, Routledge Kegan Paul, 1966.

Eliade, Mircea, The Myth of the Eternal Return, Princeton, 1954.

Illich, Ivan, Gender, Pantheon, 1982.

Sahlins, Marshall, Stone Age Economics, Aldine, 1972.

Sahlins, Marshall, Culture and Practical Reason, Chicago, 1976.

Turner, Victor, The Ritual Process, Cornell, 1969.

Politics:

The last thirty years have not been good to me, politically speaking, but it's not entirely my fault. My reading of Foucault is different than anyone else's, including his own. A tremendous amount of social criticism from various points of view could be included.

Daly, Herman, and Cobb, John, For the Common Good, Beacon, 1989.

Dumont, Louis, From Mandeville to Marx, Chicago, 1977/83.

Foucault, Michel, Power / Knowledge, Pantheon, 1980.

MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue, Notre Dame, 1981.

Polanyi, Karl, The Great Transformation, Beacon, 1944.

Modern Philosophy:

The relative absence of continental thinkers here has been noted. Harteshorne is my stand-in for Whitehead. The process philosophers do the best job of anyone in describing an open future. Buchler deserves far more attention than he gets. Rorty is on the list because he debunks analytic philosophy.

Buchler, Justus, Metaphysics of Natural Complexes, SUNY, 1990.

Dewey, John, Experience and Nature, Open Court, 1925.

Finch, Henry Leroy, Wittgenstein: The Early Philosophy, The Humanities Press, 1971.

Finch, Henry Leroy, Wittgenstein: The Later Philosophy, The Humanities Press, 1977.

Harteshorne, Charles, Insights and Oversights of Great Thinkers, SUNY, 1983.

Rorty, Richard, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton, 1979.

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All original material copyright John J. Emerson 

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