Background
Norris, Christopher Charles was born on November 6, 1947 in London. Son of Charles Frederick Norris and Edith Eliza Ward.
(What might be the outcome for philosophy if its texts wer...)
What might be the outcome for philosophy if its texts were subjected to the powerful techniques of rhetorical close-reading developed by current deconstructionist literary critics? When first published in 1983, Christopher Norris' book was the first to explore such questions in the context of modern analytic and linguistic philosophy, opening up a new and challenging dimension of inter-disciplinary study and creating a fresh and productive dialogue between philosophy and literary theory.
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( This Routledge Revival, first published in 1985, gives ...)
This Routledge Revival, first published in 1985, gives detailed attention to the bearing of literary theory on questions of truth, meaning and reference. On the one hand, deconstruction brings a vigilant awareness of the figural and narrative tropes that make up the discourse of philosophic reason. On the other it insists that argumentative rigour cannot be divorced from the kind of close reading that has come to characterize literary theory in its more advanced or speculative forms. This present-day ‘contest of faculties’ has large implications for philosophers and critics, many of whom will welcome the reissue of such a clear-headed statement of the impact of deconstruction.
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(Since first appearing in 1982 this book has been acclaime...)
Since first appearing in 1982 this book has been acclaimed as by far the most readable, concise and authoritative text of its kind. While in no way oversimplifying the complexities of the subject, or understating the challenge it presents, Norris's book sets out to make deconstruction more accessible to the open-minded reader. For this revised edition the author has provided a substantial postscript which looks back over the past ten years of critical debate and seeks to correct some prevalent misunderstandings. The volume also contains an updated bibliography - among the most extensive of its kind - giving details of more than two hundred books published during that period. Some critics have dismissed deconstruction as a harmless academic game; others have denounced it as a terrorist weapon or a discourse of last-ditch nihilist unreason. As Norris demonstrates, both responses are equally wide of the mark. Focusing on Derrida's major texts, and offers a detailed commentary on his readings of Plato, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Husserl, Saussure, Levi-Strauss, J.L. Austin and others, this book brings out the extraordinary subtlety and force that have characterized his project from the outset. Norris also examines the work of those North American critics - Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman, J. Hillis Miller and Harold Bloom - who in their own prolonged efforts to move beyond the old' New Criticism have variously registered the impact of Derrida's thought.
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(Deconstruction: Theory and Practice has been acclaimed as...)
Deconstruction: Theory and Practice has been acclaimed as by far the most readable, concise and authoritative guide to this topic. Without oversimplifying or glossing over the challenges, Norris makes deconstruction more accessible to the reader. The volume focuses on the works of Jacques Derrida which caused this seismic shift in critical thought, as well as the work of North American critics Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman, J. Hillis Miller and Harold Bloom. In this third, revised edition, Norris builds on his 1991 Afterword with an entirely new Postscript, reflecting upon recent critical debate. The Postscript includes an extensive list of recommended reading, complementing what was already one of the most useful bibliographies available.
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(In this collection of essays in current analytical philos...)
In this collection of essays in current analytical philosophy, the unifying theme is a general concern with the uses of theory and the way that certain "advanced" forms of literary-critical theory have been extended to other disciplines - often, the author argues, with undesirable results. The essays cover a wide range of topics from Shakespeare and Pope to musical criticism, the philosophical bearings of deconstruction and the politics of current neo-pragmatist thinking. The work represents both a statement of the author's own views on the future of critical theory and an interpretation of the thinking of prominent theorists such as Derrida, de Man and Davidson. First published as a Pinter hardback in 1988, the work is now available as an LUP paperback.
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(In this book Christopher Norris develops the case for sci...)
In this book Christopher Norris develops the case for scientific realism by tackling various adversary arguments from a range of anti-realist positions. Through a close critical reading he shows how they fail to make adequate sense on any rational, consistent, and scientifically-informed survey of the evidence. Along the way he incorporates a number of detailed case-studies from the history and philosophy of science. Norris devotes much of his discussion to some of the most prominent and widely influential source-texts of anti-realism. Also included are the sophisticated versions of verificationism developed - albeit in very different ways - by thinkers such as Michael Dummett and Bas van Fraassen. Central to Norris's argument is a prolonged engagement with the once highly influential but nowadays neglected work of Norwood Russell Hanson. This book will be welcomed especially by readers who possess some knowledge of the background debate and who wish to deepen and extend their understanding of these issues beyond an introductory level.
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( In this detailed study, Christopher Norris defends the ...)
In this detailed study, Christopher Norris defends the kinds of arguments advanced by the early realist, Hilary Putnam. Norris makes a point of placing Putnam's work in a wider philosophical context, and relating it to various current debates in epistemology and philosophy of science. Much like Putnam, Norris is willing to take full account of opposed viewpoints while maintaining a vigorously argued commitment to the values of debate and enquiry.
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( Truth Matters is the first full-length introduction to...)
Truth Matters is the first full-length introduction to response-dependence, a topic that has lately become a main focus of interest for philosophers across a wide range of disciplines and subject areas. Setting out the issues clearly and concisely, Norris also provides relevant background history of the current debate, including a discussion of its sources and analogues in Plato, Locke, Kant, and Wittgenstein.
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(This text is a reply to some of the more doctrinaire beli...)
This text is a reply to some of the more doctrinaire beliefs that pass for "radical" thinking. For the most part, Norris argues, these ideas are based on a false understanding of crucial episodes in their own pre-history.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0719044529/?tag=2022091-20
(Deconstrution has been widely and damagingly misunderstoo...)
Deconstrution has been widely and damagingly misunderstood. In this provocative new book, Christopher Norris challenges the prevalent idea that deconstruction is merely a more specialized philosophical offshoot of these various trends and cultural fashions grouped under the label of 'postmoderism'.
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(This book is a critical introduction to the long-standing...)
This book is a critical introduction to the long-standing debate concerning the conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics and the problems it has posed for physicists and philosophers from Einstein to the present. Quantum theory has been a major infulence on postmodernism, and presents significant problems for realists. Keeping his own realist position in check, Christopher Norris subjects a wide range of key opponents and supporters of realism to a high and equal level of scrutiny. With a characteristic combination of rigour and intellectual generosity, he draws out the merits and weaknesses from opposing arguments. In a sequence of closely argued chapters, Norris examines the premises of orthodox quantum theory, as developed most influentially by Bohr and Heisenberg, and its impact on varous philosophical developments. These include the ideas developed by W.V Quine, Thomas Kuhn, Michael Dummett, Bas van Fraassen, and Hilary Puttnam. In each case, Norris argues, these thinkers have been influenced by the orthodox construal of quantum mechanics as requiring drastic revision of principles which had hitherto defined the very nature of scientific method, causal explanati and rational enquiry. Putting the case for a realist approach which adheres to well-tried scientific principles of causal reasoning and inference to the best explanation, Christopher Norris clarifies these debates to a non-specialist readership and scholars of philosophy, science studies and the philosophy of science alike. Quantum Theory and the Flight From Realism suggests that philosophical reflection can contribute to a better understanding of these crucial, current issues.
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(This book was written with a view to sorting our some of ...)
This book was written with a view to sorting our some of the muddles and misreadings -- especially misreadings of Kant -- that have charaterized recent postmodernist and post--structuralist thought. For these issues have a relevance, as Norris argues, far beyond the academic enclaves of philosophy, literary theory, and cultural criticism. Thus he makes large claims for the importance of getting Kant right on the relation between epistemology, ethics and aesthetics; for pursuing the Kantian question a What is Enlightenment?a as raised in Foucaulta s late essays; or again, for recalling William Empsona s spirited attempt to reassert the values of reason and truth against the orthodox a lit crita wisdom of his time. These are specialized concerns. But for better or worse it has been largely in the context of a theorya -- that capacious though ill--defined genre-- that such issues have received their most scrutiny over the past two decades. As its title suggests, The Truth About Postmodernism disputes a good deal of what currently passes for advance theoretical wisdom. Above all it mounts a challenge to those fashionable doctrines -- variants of the a end--of--ideologya theme -- that assimilate truth to some existing range of language--games, discourses, or in--place consensus beliefs. Norrisa s book will be welcomed for its clarity of style, its depth of philosophical engagement, and its refusal to endorse the more facile varieties of present--day textualist thought. It will also serve as a timely reminder that the a politics of theorya cannot be practised in safe isolation from the politics (and ethics) of activist social concern.
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(In this sweeping volume, Christopher Norris challenges th...)
In this sweeping volume, Christopher Norris challenges the view that there is no room for productive engagement between mainstream analytic philosophers and thinkers in the post-Kantian continental line of descent. On the contrary, he argues, this view is simply the product of a limiting perspective that accompanied the rise of logical positivism. Norris reveals the various shared concerns that have often been obscured by parochial interests or the desire to stake out separate philosophical territory. He examines the problems that emerged within the analytic tradition as a result of its turn against Husserlian phenomenology and its outright rejection of what came to be seen as a merely "psychologistic" approach to issues of meaning, knowledge, and truth. Norris shows how these problems have resurfaced in various forms from the heyday of logical empiricism to the present. He provides critical readings of such philosophers as Willard Quine, Thomas Kuhn, Donald Davidson, Hilary Putnam, Richard Rorty, Michael Dummett, Thomas Nagel, and John McDowell. He also offers a running discussion of Wittgenstein's influence and its harmful effect in promoting a placidly consensus-based theory of knowledge. On the continental side, Norris argues for a reassessment of Husserl's phenomenological project and its potential contribution to present day Anglo-American debates in epistemology and philosophy of science. He discusses Bachelard, Canguilhem, and the French tradition of rationalisme appliqué as an alternative to Kuhnian conceptions of scientific paradigm change. This leads him to suggest a non-Wittgensteinian way around the problems that have dogged more traditional theories of knowledge and truth. In two chapters on the work of Jacques Derrida, Norris explores the "supplementary" logic of deconstruction and compares it with other recent proposals for a nonstandard logic. Here again he stresses the community of interests between the two philosophical cultures and the extent to which continental thinking has engaged certain issues with a rigor largely ignored by Anglophone writers. By bringing a fresh perspective to questions that have often been considered the exclusive preserve of analytic philosophy, Norris offers an overview of current debates that is at once refreshingly open-minded and sure of its own argumentative bearings.
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(This book offers a broad-based critical survey of recent ...)
This book offers a broad-based critical survey of recent anti-realist arguments in the philosophy of science, cultural theory, hermeneutics, the sociology of knowledge and the interpretation of quantum-mechanics. Norris' contribution will be welcome for its vigorous critique of these ideas and also, more constructively, for presenting strong counter-arguments in support of the realist case. This book will be widely discussed for its cogent defence of critical realism in the natural and human sciences. It will also provoke debate through its revisionist reading of Derrida, its engagement with postmodernist theory, and not least its detailed reconstruction of crucial episodes in the recent history of Anglo-American and continental philosophy.
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( Truth, Christopher Norris reminds us, is very much out ...)
Truth, Christopher Norris reminds us, is very much out of fashion at the moment whether at the hands of politicians, media pundits, or purveyors of postmodern wisdom in cultural and literary studies. Across a range of disciplines the idea has taken hold that truth-talk is either redundant or the product of epistemic might. Questions of truth and falsehood are always internal to some specific language-game; history is just another kind of fiction; philosophy is only a kind of writing; law is a wholly rhetorical practice. In Reclaiming Truth, Norris critiques these fashionable trends of thought and mounts a specific challenge to cultural relativist doctrines in epistemology, philosophy of science, ethics, and political theory. Norris presents his case in a series of closely argued chapters that take issue with the relativist position. He attempts to rehabilitate the value of truth in philosophy of science by restoring a lost distinction between concept and metaphor and argues that theoretical discourse, so far from being an inconsequential activity, has very real consequences, particularly in ethics and politics. This debate has become skewed, he suggests, through the widespread and typically postmodern idea that truth-claims must always go along with a presumptive or authoritarian bid to silence opposing views. On the contrary, there is nothing as dogmatic—or as silencing—as a relativism that acknowledges no shared truth conditions for valid or responsible discourse. Norris also offers a timely reassessment of several thinkers—Althusser and Derrida among them—whose reception history has been distorted by the vagaries of short-term intellectual fashion. Reclaiming Truth will be welcomed by readers concerned with the uses and abuses of theory at a time when such questions are in urgent need of sustained and serious debate.
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(Covering de Man's major writings, Norris addresses the qu...)
Covering de Man's major writings, Norris addresses the question of de Man's relationship to philosophical thinking in the post-Kantian tradition and the vexed issue of his politics.
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(Through a close engagement with some key thinkers, Norris...)
Through a close engagement with some key thinkers, Norris argues that deconstruction is part of the "unfinished project of modernity." a project whose interest and values it upholds by continuing to question them in a spirit of enlightened self-critical inquiry.
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(This book offers a vigorous and constructive challenge to...)
This book offers a vigorous and constructive challenge to relativism by examining a wide range of anti-realist theories, and in response offering a variety of arguments amounting to a strong defence of critical realism in the natural and social sciences.
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(On 29 March 1991, shortly after the cessation of hostilit...)
On 29 March 1991, shortly after the cessation of hostilities in the Gulf War, Jean Baudrillard published an article entitled "The Gulf War has not taken place", in which he argued that "the true belligerents are those who thrive on the ideology of the truth of this war". It is in response to such excesses of post-modernism that Christopher Norris has written this extended polemical essay. He argues that the extreme cognitive scepticism and relativism of this school of thought is profoundly disabling for critical theory. Reviewing the writings of Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard and Baudrillard, as well as the American neo-pragmatist school as represented by Rorty and Fish, he meticulously examines the flaws in their arguments, and makes an impassioned plea for the continuance of the philosopher's role as intellectual critic of real world politics and governments.
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(TEORIA ACRITICA. POSMODERNISMO, INTELECTUALES Y LA GUERRA...)
TEORIA ACRITICA. POSMODERNISMO, INTELECTUALES Y LA GUERRA DEL GOLFO
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(This book offers a detailed account of Spinoza's influenc...)
This book offers a detailed account of Spinoza's influence on various schools of present-day critical thought. That influence extends from Althusserian Marxism to hermeneutics, deconstruction, narrative poetics, new historicism, and the unclassifiable writings of a thinker like Giles Deleuze. The author combines a close exegesis of Spinoza's texts with a series of chapters that trace the evolution of literary theory from its period of high scientific rigour in the mid-1960s to its latest "postmodern", neopragmatist or anti-theoretical phase. He examines the thought of Althusser, Macherey and Deleuze as well as others (including the new historicists) who have registered the impact of his pioneering work without any overt acknowledgement. On the one hand, theorists like Althusser and Macherey could celebrate Spinoza as the first philosopher before Marx to understand the need for a riorous distinction between science (or "theoretical practice") and ideology (or the realm of lived experience subject to various forms of imaginary error of misrecognition). On the other, Deleuze makes Spinoza the hero of his crusade against theories of whatever kind - Kantian, Marxist, Freudian, post structuralist - which always end up by imposing some abstract order of concepts and categories on the libidinal flux of "desiring production", or the "body-without-organs" of anarchic instinctual drives.
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Norris, Christopher Charles was born on November 6, 1947 in London. Son of Charles Frederick Norris and Edith Eliza Ward.
Bachelor honours 1st class, University London, 1970. Doctor of Philosophy, University London, 1975.
After an early career in literary and music criticism (during the late 1970s, he wrote for the now-defunct magazine Records and Recording), Norris moved in 1991 to the Cardiff Philosophy Department. In 1997, he was awarded the title of Distinguished Research Professor in the Cardiff School of English, Communication & Philosophy. He has also held fellowships and visiting appointments at a number of institutions, including the University of California, Berkeley, the City University of New York, Aarhus University, and Dartmouth College.
Norris has been criticised by philosopher Roger Scruton for accepting Derrida"s thesis of logocentrism "with a dogmatic conviction that closes the door to argument".
(What might be the outcome for philosophy if its texts wer...)
(In this collection of essays in current analytical philos...)
(On 29 March 1991, shortly after the cessation of hostilit...)
(This book offers a vigorous and constructive challenge to...)
(This book is a critical introduction to the long-standing...)
(In this sweeping volume, Christopher Norris challenges th...)
(This book offers a broad-based critical survey of recent ...)
( Truth Matters is the first full-length introduction to...)
( Truth, Christopher Norris reminds us, is very much out ...)
(This book was written with a view to sorting our some of ...)
(Covering de Man's major writings, Norris addresses the qu...)
(In this path-breaking study Christopher Norris proposes a...)
( This Routledge Revival, first published in 1985, gives ...)
( This Routledge Revival, first published in 1985, gives ...)
(In this book Christopher Norris develops the case for sci...)
(Through a close engagement with some key thinkers, Norris...)
(Since first appearing in 1982 this book has been acclaime...)
(Deconstruction: Theory and Practice has been acclaimed as...)
(Jacques Derrida (born 1930) is undoubtedly the single mos...)
( In this detailed study, Christopher Norris defends the ...)
(This book offers a detailed account of Spinoza's influenc...)
(This book offers a detailed account of Spinoza's influenc...)
(This text is a reply to some of the more doctrinaire beli...)
(Deconstrution has been widely and damagingly misunderstoo...)
(An examination of deconstruction.)
(Will be shipped from US. Brand new copy.)
(TEORIA ACRITICA. POSMODERNISMO, INTELECTUALES Y LA GUERRA...)
(Brand New. In Stock. Will be shipped from US. Excellent C...)
He is one of the world"s leading scholars on deconstruction, and the work of Jacques Derrida. He has written numerous books and papers on literary theory, continental philosophy, philosophy of music, philosophy of language and philosophy of science. More recently, he has been focussing on the work of Alain Badiou in relation with both the analytic tradition (particularly analytic philosophy of mathematics) and with the philosophy of Derrida.
Active The Red Choir, Cardiff.
Married Alison Newton, April 17, 1971. Children: Clare Tamasin, Jennifer Mary.