Background
Weinstein, Michael Alan was born on August 24, 1942 in Brooklyn. Son of Aaron and Grace Weinstein.
(Mexican thinkers in recent generations have sought a phil...)
Mexican thinkers in recent generations have sought a philosophy emphasizing the ends of human activity (finalism) as contrasted with one stressing means or techniques (instrumentalism). According to Professor Weinstein's interpretation, an integrated perspective toward all aspects of the human condition characterizes Mexican philosophy and social thought, incorporating close attention to the aesthetic dimension of human experience and the tensions of human existence. The distinctive Mexican world-view provides a needed supplement to the analytical approach of North American philosophy and Marxist determinism.
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( The great crisis of twentieth-century philosophy has be...)
The great crisis of twentieth-century philosophy has been the loss of meaning as a criterion for conduct. With the collapse of the historical sociologies of the nineteenth century and their replacement by relativistic doctrines, contemporary thought has retreated to the fleeting present moment as the ground for describing action. In Meaning and Appreciation, Michael Weinstein traces the history of the failure of historical meaning, showing how the disappearance of collective purpose has altered our sense of time and made us aware that we are the creators of our time perspectives. Drawing upon the vitalistic tradition of Bergson, Weinstein returns to the intuition of the dur6e and argues that beneath practical life, we are rooted in successive lived presents. Weinstein identifies the lived present with appreciation, arguing that the life of expression, not nihilism, lies beyond the wreckage of historical teleology, The climax of Weinstein's work is an original vision of human existence, in which our essence is to express one another to ourselves. Vindicating our intrinsic sociality against the abstract and mechanistic claims of both individualism and collectivism, the author argues that our destiny is not to project meanings into a symbolic future, but to attend to and care for one another in the present. Weinstein's sensitive analysis offers new insights into such contemporary movements as existentialism, the sociology of knowledge, and cultural philosophy, evaluating all of them in terms of the fundamental tension in our society.
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( Smelling the virtual flowers and counting the road-kill...)
Smelling the virtual flowers and counting the road-kill on the digital superhighway are just a couple of things that Kroker/Weinstein explains. Others include: the theory of the virtual class; virtual ideology; the will to virtuality; the political economy of virtual reality; prime time reports; virtual (photographic) culture; and the virtual history file.
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( One of the most popular serious writers of the mid-n...)
One of the most popular serious writers of the mid-nineteenth century, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., was a major figure of the New England Renaissance and wrote seven volumes of imaginative prose that were hybrids of essay and fiction. His four table-talk books initiated the form of the dramatized essay, and his three novels—styled as romances “medicated” by intellectual discourse—were among the first examples of ideologically didactic fiction. Michael A. Weinstein now traces Holmes’s intellectual trajectory across these works to show how his thought evolved over the course of his life and in response to America’s transition from an agrarian to an industrial society. Through close readings of this eclectic ouevre—including such lesser-known late works as A Mortal Antipathy and Over the Teacups—he offers a comprehensive interpretation of Holmes’s thought concerning the American national character, showing him to have had a far richer understanding of human experience than other scholars have previously supposed. This is the first book to consider Holmes’s imaginative prose as a whole and to defend its systematic structure against critics who have branded him a dilettante lacking system or seriousness. Through a careful explication of characters and themes, Weinstein finds at the core of these works a high regard for self-determination as a quintessential American value: an affirmation of the freedom of individuals to decide for themselves how to respond to a human condition that can be as perilous as it is promising. In the course of his analysis, Weinstein engages the spectrum of Holmes criticism and also shows how Holmes anticipated the cultural problems of modernity, pluralism, psychoanalysis, and existentialism, as well as postmodern literary expression. Through his insightful assessment, Weinstein gives us an author whose respect for individual judgment is as relevant in today’s society, torn by cultural politics, as it was in his own time. His book restores Holmes to his place in the canon while introducing a wider readership to a perceptive writer who offers not only insight into the moral possibilities of American identity but also genuine wit and wisdom about the art of living.
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Weinstein, Michael Alan was born on August 24, 1942 in Brooklyn. Son of Aaron and Grace Weinstein.
Bachelor summa cum laude, New York University, 1964. Master of Arts in Political Science, Case Western Reserve University, 1965. Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 1967.
Taught a year at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. Since 1968, Purdue University, presently Professor of Political Theory, and has served on doctoral committees in political science, philosophy, and American studies. 1979, Milward Simpson Professor of Political Science at the University of Wyoming.
Both the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations have awarded him major Fellowships.
(Mexican thinkers in recent generations have sought a phil...)
( Smelling the virtual flowers and counting the road-kill...)
( The great crisis of twentieth-century philosophy has be...)
( One of the most popular serious writers of the mid-n...)
(Book by Weinstein, Michael A.)
(Book by Weinstein, Michael A.)
(Book by Weinstein, Michael A.)
(Book by Weinstein, Michael A)
(Book by Weinstein, Deena)
Author: (with Deena Weinstein) Living Sociology, 1974, The Polarity of Mexican Thought, 1976, The Tragic Sense of Political Life, 1977, Meaning and Appreciation, 1978, The Structure of Human Life, 1979, The Wilderness and the City, 1982, Unity and Variety in the Philosophy of Samuel Alexander, 1984, Finite Perfection, 1985, Culture Critique: Fernand Dumont and New Quebec Sociology, 1985, (with Helmut Loiskandl and Deena Weinstein) Georg Simmel's Scopenhauer and Nietzsche, 1986. (with Deena Weinstein) Deconstruction as Cultural History/The Cultural History of Deconstruction, 1990, La Déconstruction un Jeu Symbolique, 1990, (with Deena Weinstein) Georg Simmel: Sociological Flãmeur/Bricoleur, 1991, Photographic Realism as a Moral Practice, 1992, (with Deena Weinstein) Postmodern(ized) Simmel, 1993, (with Arthur Kroker) Data Trash: The Theory of the Virtual Class, 1994, Culture/Flesh: Explorations of Postcivilized Modernity, 1995, Peter Vierecki Reconciliation and Beyond, 1997, East/West: Globalizing Civilization, 2000, (with Deena Weinstein) Hail to the Shrub: Mediating the President, 2002, The Power of Silence and the Limits of Discourse at Oliver Wendell Holmes's Breakfast Table, 2005, The Imaginative Prose of Oliver Wendell Holmes, 2006. Artist in residence Columbia College, 2002.
Member editorial board Humanitas, Social Philosophy Research Book Series.
Weinstein’s work has been characterized by a continuing reference to the situation of the critical person, inevitably immersed in both the traditions of Western philosophy and the decentring themes of twentieth-century intellectual life. With a selfdescribed intellectual origin in the socio-cultural criticism of the 1960s, Weinstein has developed powerful syntheses of classical American and contemporary European thought. Originally attracted to Jamesian radical empiricism and existentialism, some of Weinstein’s later work incorporated a ‘sociology of knowledge’ understood to include a healthy respect for Freudian and various other psycho-social critiques of individualism.
A dimension of this respect for self-critiquing perspective has been numerous powerful essays which examine contemporary American social science and academic ‘professionalism’. Noteworthy for a North American philosopher has been a respect for Hispanic thought, particularly Latin American anti-positivism and such Iberians as Orgega y Gasset and, as a book title of 1977 reveals, Miguel de Unamuno.
More recently, in essays on philosophy and political values, and in innumerable reviews of photography displays in the Chicago area, Weinstein has explored the ‘postmodern’ with obvious openness, and made clearer a persistent vision of the self-critical individual equipped with a kind of ‘vitalist’ psycho-physical anchoring, a sense of human life which seeks to critique comprehensively and avoid reductive descriptions of the subjective and relativistic, take account of death and embrace a broad possibility of appreciation and expression of the human condition as found in particular lives.
AMY A. OLIVER
Krettek, T. (1987) Creativity and Common Sense. Essays in Honour of Paul Weiss, Albany: SUNY Press.
Founding first editor of the Review of Metaphysics, Weiss began his career as a logician.
Reality (1938) presents a metaphysical theory restricted to actuality. Cognizant that it was inadequate for ethics, Weiss went on to present a theory of man and morality that requires additional ontological realms. Modes of Being (1958) is his systematic modal ontology, positing four modes of being: actuality, ideality, existence and God.
In subsequent decades Weiss has traced the ramifications of his ontology in all the fields of human experience, such as art, religion, science, politics, law and history. His latest works constitute a postmodal metaphysics, with actualities juxtaposed to finalities and a pervasive principle of creativity, termed the ‘dunamis’. Sources: 1. C. Lieb (1961) Experience, Existence, and the Good: Essays in Honor of Paul Weiss, Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP.
Who’s Who in America.
Member Phi Beta Kappa.
Married Deena, May 31, 1964.