Real Knowing: New Versions of the Coherence Theory - Hardcover

Alcoff, Linda Martín

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080143047X ISBN 13: 9780801430473

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 1996

Synopsis

"Real" knowing always involves a political dimension, Linda Martín Alcoff suggests. But this does not mean we need to give up realism or the possibility of truth. Recent work in continental philosophy insists on the influence that power and desire exert on knowing, whereas contemporary analytic philosophy largely ignores these political concerns in its accounts of justification and truth. Alcoff engages these traditionally conflicting approaches in a constructive dialogue, effectively spanning the analytic/continental divide.

In provocative readings of major figures in the continental tradition, Alcoff shows that the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Michel Foucault can help rectify key problems in coherence epistemology, such as the link between coherence and truth. She also argues that discussions about knowledge among continental philosophers can benefit from the work of analytic philosophers Donald Davidson and Hilary Putnam on meaning and ontology.

Alcoff makes a compelling case for the need to address truth as a metaphysical issue, in contrast to minimalist tendencies in Anglo-American philosophy and deconstructionism on the continent. Her work persuasively argues for coherentist epistemology as a more realistic reconfiguration of the ontology of truth.

About this title

About the Author:

Linda Martín Alcoff is Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies and Director of Women's Studies at Syracuse University. She is the author of Singing in the Fire, Thinking from the Underside of History, Identities, Epistemology, and Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self.

Review:

"Real Knowing is exciting, important, and extremely well written. The prose is clear and fluid, and the author is adept at taking notions that are notoriously vague and making their sense in her arguments clear."

(Lynn Hankinson Nelson)

"Real Knowing is a fine advertisement for having continental philosophy be heard on issues that are sometimes still thought to be the preserve of Anglo-American philosophers. More important still, [Alcoff's] brand of 'social epistemology' shows the political import of what are often taken for merely theoretical issues. I look forward to the debates that this book will provoke."

(Robert Bernasconi)

About this edition

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 080143047X
• ISBN 13: 9780801430473
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 252