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​The Meaning of Height takes seriously the traditional figure of “higher life” for intrinsically preferable manners of living. Reworking the Platonic model of ascent to the ideal and descent to responsible engagement with the world, The Meaning of Height lays out concrete possible itineraries of reaching (upward to new acquisitions of personal capacity) and righting (downward from prompts for good order), showing connections between individual and social fulfillment. By focusing on our diversely demanding encounters with the interesting, the important, and the transcendent, the book strikes a counterpoint to the commonly homogenized conception of personal “happiness.” It also counters illiberal views of higher education with a Humboldtian vitality argument for a meaningfully “high” higher education geared to full development of human faculties, a level of education to which the disciplines of philosophy and religious studies make essential contributions. The book concludes by considering the essential role of this sort of higher education in democratic societies.

This book illuminates the aesthetically underrated meaningfulness of particular elements in works of art and aesthetic experiences generally. Beginning from the idea of'hooks'in popular song, the book identifies experiences of special liveliness that are of enduring interest, supporting contemplation and probing discussion. When hooks are placed in the foreground of aesthetic experience, so is an enthusiastic “grabbing back” by the experiencer who forms a quasi-personal bond with the beloved singular moment and is probably inclined to share this still-evolving realization of value with others. This book presents numerous models of enthusiastic “grabbing back” that are art-critically motivated to explain how hooks achieve their effects and philosophically motivated to discover how hooks and hook appreciation contribute to a more ideally desirable life. Framing hook appreciation with a defensible general model of aesthetic experience, this book gives an unprecedented demonstration of the substantial aesthetic and philosophical interest of hook-centered inquiry.

Starting with an appreciation of the practical realizations that move us to assume responsibility, Full Responsibility develops an ontologically-grounded model of different forms of responsibility and the challenges and fulfillments found in each. Special attention is given to pragmatic and political responsibility, highlighting considerations for right action that are not accurately recognized by universalizing ethics. Issues in abortion decisions, providing for responsible work, and immigration and refugee policy are examined in the complex frame of political responsibility. Moving past the standoff between political moralism and political realism, Steven G. Smith offers an account of political responsibility as an unstable combination of all modes of responsibility. The book concludes by reviewing different approaches to the impossible but compelling ideal of full responsibility. The distinctive natures of ethical, historical, and religious forms of responsibility are discussed in appendices.

In this book, Steven G. Smith focuses on the guidance function in language and scripture and evaluates the assumptions and ideals of scriptural religion in global perspective. He brings to language studies a new pragmatic emphasis on the shared modeling of life-in-the-world by communicators constantly depending on each other's guidance. Using concepts of axiality and axialization derived from Jaspers'description of the'Axial Age', he shows the essential role of scripture in the historical progress of communicative action. This volume clarifies the formative power of scriptures in religions of the'world religion'type and brings scripture into philosophy of religion as a major cross-cultural category of study, thereby helping philosophy of religion find a needed cross-cultural footing.

Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Steven G. Smith showcases the picturesque Thames River basin, which extends from southern Massachusetts through Connecticut to the Long Island Sound. The river and its watershed help define the borders of a valley that is unique among its East Coast neighbors, considered to be the last place where dark night sky can be viewed between Washington, D.C. and the Boston metro area. Locals like to call the area the'Quiet Corner'or the'Last Green Valley.'In 1994, the U.S. Congress designated parts of the area as a Natural Heritage Corridor because it is one of the last remaining stretches of green in the area and boasts some of the largest unbroken forests in southern New England. This full-color documentary photo essay explores this Atlantic gem, through the faces of the people and the landscapes. An excellent gift and an educational resource, the book includes a foreword by noted outdoor writer Steve Grant.

In Centering and Extending, Steven G. Smith retrieves and refashions some of the best ideas of classical and early modern metaphysics to support insight into the natures of mental and material beings and their relations. Avoiding what he critiques as distortive paths of idealism, materialism, repressive monism, and overly permissive pluralism, Smith builds his framework on centering and extending as universal principles of formation. Identifying the basic consistency of being with these principles in symmetrical partnership enables a naturalist process view that, unlike Whitehead's, does not overbalance toward the subjective and teleological and, unlike Deleuze and Guattari's, does not overbalance toward the material and chaotic. This view supports useful conceptions of mind and matter, form and energy, reason and cause, and a layered world order without relying on a blind concept of supervenience or emergence. It also respects and reinforces a division of roles between metaphysical sense-making and spiritual determinations of meaningfulness.

How can we take history seriously as real and relevant? Despite the hazards of politically dangerous or misleading accounts of the past, we live our lives in a great network of cooperation with other actors; past, present, and future. We study and reflect on the past as a way of exercising a responsibility for shared action. In each of the chapters of Full History Smith poses a key question about history as a concern for conscious participants in the sharing of action, starting with “What Is Historical Meaningfulness?” and ending with “How Can History Have an Aim?” Constructing new models of historical meaning while engaging critically with perspectives offered by Ranke, Dilthey, Rickert, Heidegger, Eliade, Sartre, Foucault, and Arendt, Smith develops a philosophical account of thinking about history that moves beyond postmodernist skepticism. Full History seeks to expand the cast of significant actors, establishing an inclusive version of the historical that recognizes large-scale cumulative actions but also encourages critical revision and expansion of any paradigm of shared action.

In Appeal and Attitude, the author offers a multicultural view into issues at the heart of existentialism, hermeneutics, and the phenomenology of religion. By looking closely at the concepts of appeal, or what commands our attention, and attitude, or the quality of the attention we pay, Smith probes into the core of religious ideals to answer questions such as why faith and rationality are compelling and how religious experience becomes meaningful.