Bøger af Stephen David Ross

The story of my life becoming a philosopher. Learning to question. The story of my life as a philosopher. A life in question, as every life is in question before its end, in the face of wounding and death. But most of all, a life of questioning, joyously and affirmatively. In the fullness of being, the fullness of living ethically. Not a guide to life but perhaps a celebration of its promises.

Drawing upon the rich interdisciplinary resources of animal studies-biology and other sciences, philosophy, history, storytelling and other arts--this book develops a notion of ethical fullness extending from human beings to animals, to plants, then to all things--large and small, tangible and intangible, living and nonliving, familiar and strange--in which everything is ethical, each in inexhaustibly varied ways. It draws deeply upon philosophical and other academic forms of ethics, yet is critical of their limitations. It is similarly critical of scientific research on animals and the rest of things. It intersperses personal, literary, scientific, and technical discussions in its arguments and organization. The key to ethics is how to deal with others in their strangeness; the key to animal ethics is how surprising animals are, as are plants in their responses and capabilities. These insights extend to the things of the world, in wonder at the fullness of their being, at how enchanting they are, nonidentical with themselves. The central theme of the book is that a life of ethical fullness is infinitely demanding, impossible, full of wounds, and joys, and promises. It asks us to change the ways we live, and think, and believe; to live more intimately, to believe more subjunctively, to think more questioningly. It promotes art and literature as ethical resources in our scientific and daily work. It links human lives and practices with the things of the natural world, providing a new and different approach to environmental and global issues. It answers the most demanding question of ethics, why should we be just, why should we live ethically? Because that way of life is ethically full.

The world is full of things full of being, things that matter to other things, things that matter to themselves, where how they matter, and what mattering means, exceeds all limits and expectations. Such a fullness is ethical, exceeding comprehension and anticipation, inexhaustibly full in goodness and abundance, in suffering and joy. I wrote my book, Ethical Fullness: Thinking of Animals, Believing in Things, to express such an ethics, from animals to plants and things. Such a fullness is also aesthetic, inexhaustibly filled with beauty and abundance, with enchantment and wonder. I wrote my book, The World as Image, to express such an aesthetics. The fullness of being is full beyond itself, full beyond ethics and aesthetics, where they are full beyond themselves.Here I hope to provide a guide to such a fullness, with ethical fullness foremost in mind. This guide and invitation continues the more complex, earlier work by making it more accessible, but also by developing what fullness means and why it is ethical. It provides answers to the persistent questions of why ethics is so difficult, why injustice is always mixed with justice, why the world is not a better place. The answer is that this divergence and variation is what fullness means.This book may be read in different ways: As an introduction to Ethical Fullness, which spells out its movements in greater detail; As a more explicit account of what ethical fullness means in human life, given its complexities and evasions, supposing the development in Ethical Fullness; As an extension of the theory of ethical fullness in the context of human life, ethics and politics, taking the thinking and believing of Ethical Fullness for granted; As another struggle to be ethical in the fullness of its exposition.

The Limits of Language concerns itself with the nature and limits of language at a time when our understanding of the world and of ourselves is intimately related to what we understand of language.

This work completes Ross''s trilogy examining the inexhaustible complexity of the world and our relation to our surroundings.

At a time when the metaphysical tradition is being called profoundly into question by proponents of pragmatism and continental philosophy, Inexhaustibility and Human Being examines a specific aspect of metaphysics: the nature of being human, acknowledging the force of these critiques and discussing their ramifications. Exploring the possibility of a systematic metaphysics that acknowledges the limits of every thought, the book offers a metaphysics of human being based on locality and inexhaustibility. Its major focus is on a corresponding "anthropology" in which human being is both local and exhaustive - that is, based on limitation and on the limitation of limitation. Among the book's major topics are: being as locality and inexhaustibility; human being as judgment and perspective; knowing and reason as query; language and meaning as semasis; emotion; sociality; politics; life and death. Clearly written, and wide-ranging in scope, Inexhaustibility and Human Being covers a multitude of subjects - history, love, sexuality, consciousness, suffering, the body, instrumentality, government, and law - in the development of its thesis. The book will appeal not only to philosophers - but also to those involved in studying the various arenas of human activity Professor Ross examines.