From Text To Action

With his writings on phenomenology, psychoanalysis, Marxism, ideology, and religion, Paul Ricoeur has single-handedly redefined and revitalized the hermeneutic tradition. From Text to Action is an essential companion to the now classic The Conflict of Interpretations. Here, Ricoeur continues and extends his project of constructing a general theory of interpretation, positioning his work in relation to its own philosophical background: Hegel, Husserl, Gadamer, and Weber. He also responds to contemporary figures like K.O. Apel and Jürgen Habermas, connecting his own theorization of ideology to their version of ideology critique.

This collection of essays is a sequel to Ricoeur's earlier volume, The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics 1 (1969, English edition 1989, Athlone). From Text to Action follows an original line of thought, passing from phenomenology to hermeneutics (defined by Ricoeur as the general theory of interpretation) and from the hermeneutics of the text to the hermeneutics of action. It draws on the thought of Dilthey, Heidegger and Gadamer and incorporates ideas from the Social Sciences, the Philosophy of Language and Political Philosophy.

Following on from the widely acclaimed The Actor and the Text - which was addressed directly to the actor - Text in Action is drawn from Cicely's group work experiences, encompassing the viewpoint of the director as well. To begin with, the author explores language from a cultural and personal perspective. In these days of management jargon and internet technology are we losing touch with the ability to communicate fully?' Is the deeper imaginative world being left unexpressed? The main body of the book contains detailed, practical exercises for actors and directors during the rehearsal process. All exercises will be tied to specific scenes, leading to a fuller exploration of the rext. Text In Action analyses the imagery of plays, speech structures, the physicality of language and emphasises the importance of finding a collective voice. Cicely's guidance on the matter of voice will help actors find relationships and situations through the text in a unique way, in order to make it more dynamic and creative.

What is the difference between a wink and a blink? The answer is important not only to philosophers of mind, for significant moral and legal consequences rest on the distinction between voluntary and involuntary behavior. However, "action theory"—the branch of philosophy that has traditionally articulated the boundaries between action and non-action, and between voluntary and involuntary behavior—has been unable to account for the difference. Alicia Juarrero argues that a mistaken, 350-year-old model of cause and explanation—one that takes all causes to be of the push-pull, efficient cause sort, and all explanation to be prooflike—underlies contemporary theories of action. Juarrero then proposes a new framework for conceptualizing causes based on complex adaptive systems. Thinking of causes as dynamical constraints makes bottom-up and top-down causal relations, including those involving intentional causes, suddenly tractable. A different logic for explaining actions—as historical narrative, not inference—follows if one adopts this novel approach to long-standing questions of action and responsibility.

Collective Intentionality is a relatively new label for a basic social fact: the sharing of attitudes such as intentions, beliefs and emotions. This volume contributes to current research on collective intentionality by pursuing three aims. First, some of the main conceptual problems in the received literature are introduced, and a number of new insights into basic questions in the philosophy of collective intentionality are developed (part 1). Second, examples are given for the use of the analysis of collective intentionality in the theory and philosophy of the social sciences (part 2). Third, it is shown that this line of research opens up new perspectives on classical topics in the history of social philosophy and social science, and that, conversely, an inquiry into the history of ideas can lead to further refinement of our conceptual tools in the analysis of collective intentionality (part 3).

This book provides a wealth of enactment techniques that help students apply their social, physical, and intellectual selves to the books they read to help improve their comprehension.

Computer science as an engineering discipline has been spectacularly successful. Yet it is also a philosophical enterprise in the way it represents the world and creates and manipulates models of reality, people, and action. In this book, Paul Dourish addresses the philosophical bases of human-computer interaction. He looks at how what he calls "embodied interaction"—an approach to interacting with software systems that emphasizes skilled, engaged practice rather than disembodied rationality—reflects the phenomenological approaches of Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and other twentieth-century philosophers. The phenomenological tradition emphasizes the primacy of natural practice over abstract cognition in everyday activity. Dourish shows how this perspective can shed light on the foundational underpinnings of current research on embodied interaction. He looks in particular at how tangible and social approaches to interaction are related, how they can be used to analyze and understand embodied interaction, and how they could affect the design of future interactive systems.

Emotional Intelligence in Action shows how to tap the power of EI through forty-six exercises that can be used to build effective emotional skills and create real change. The workouts are designed to align with the four leading emotional intelligence measures—EQ-I or EQ-360, ECI 360, MSCEIT, and EQ Map, —or can be used independently or as part of a wider leadership and management development program. All of the book's forty-six exercises offer experiential learning scenarios that have been proven to enhance emotional intelligence competencies.