Books by Seth Vannatta
Conservatism and Pragmatism illustrates the intersections between classical British Conservative ... more Conservatism and Pragmatism illustrates the intersections between classical British Conservative thought and classical American Pragmatist philosophy with regard to methodology in politics, ethics, and law.
Journal Articles by Seth Vannatta
Film and Philosophy, 2025
This paper investigates Shannon Sullivan’s concept of white privilege through the lens of James G... more This paper investigates Shannon Sullivan’s concept of white privilege through the lens of James Gray’s 2022 film, Armageddon Time. Sullivan investigates the concept of white racial privilege and the problem with middle-class, white anti-racism. In Armageddon Time, the Graff family, “good white people”, progressives with anti-racist intentions, actually strive to achieve the white privilege Sullivan analyzes. The dynamics of white privilege in the film are more complex because the family is Jewish. I argue that antisemitism provides a problem for Sullivan’s analytical matrix regarding white privilege, provide an alternative strategy for dealing with ethnic and religious nuances within the category of whiteness and offer a conjecture as to why Sullivan relies on a mostly binary white and non-white analysis.
Film and Philosophy, 2024
Popular Culture Review, 2023
This paper argues that Lowry's novel, The Giver, falls short of a consistent philosophical premis... more This paper argues that Lowry's novel, The Giver, falls short of a consistent philosophical premise regarding the establishment of Sameness in the novel because it vacillates between a metaphysical and an epistemological understanding of Sameness. On the other hand, Ross's film, Pleasantville, navigates the same high concept with more philosophical consistency. Further, the film illustrates the white establishment's fears of female sexuality and the racialized Other with more concreteness than the abstract liberation experienced by community members in The Giver.
Journal of Counselor Education and Supervision, 2021
The literature addressing pedagogy in counselor education is sparse. In this paper, we propose us... more The literature addressing pedagogy in counselor education is sparse. In this paper, we propose using John Dewey's philosophy of education to inform pedagogy in counseling programs. More specifically, we describe the pattern of inquiry, issues of mind-body continuity, the role of the teacher and student, the difference between educative and miseducative experiential activities, and problem based learning in the context of counselor education. These concepts are exemplified using a case illustration comparing a professor using a traditional model of teaching and a professor using a model of teaching informed by Dewey.
Contemporary Pragmatism, 2019
In this review essay, I offer a summary of Brian E. Butler's The Democratic Constitution: Experim... more In this review essay, I offer a summary of Brian E. Butler's The Democratic Constitution: Experimentalism and Interpretation. Butler's democratic experimentalism offers the thesis that democracy needs to be protected democratically rather than by relying on the judicial supremacy over constitutional interpretation by the Supreme Court. Butler illustrates what democratic experimentalism looks like through a close reading of key cases showing the virtues of an ongoing , open-ended, empirical, fallibilist, and collaborative approach to constitutional interpretation against rival formalist and ex-clusionary theories. Butler relies on Richard Posner's iconoclastic empirical approach to adjudication in advancing his thesis. However, Posner is skeptical of the Deweyan democracy Butler deploys to illustrate the democratic constitution. Further, Posner dismisses the philosophical pragmatism of Peirce and Dewey that Butler uses to ground his theory. Because of Butler's reliance on Posner's judicial practice and his side-stepping of Posner's views on democracy and philosophical pragma-tism, I ask how Butler's proposal stands in relation to the ways it departs from Posner's theory, if not his practice.
Contemporary Pragmatism, 2019
At a book-in-progress session of the 2013 Summer Institute in American Philosophy , in an effort ... more At a book-in-progress session of the 2013 Summer Institute in American Philosophy , in an effort to direct the focus of the question and answer session toward ways of improving the manuscript that became Conservatism and Pragma-tism in Law, Politics, and Ethics, I told the audience what conservatism, for my purposes, was not. It does not mean a neo-liberal fetish for markets and is not equivalent to libertarianism. It does not mean neo-conservatism or advocate for re-making the world in an American image. Further, it does not mean the social conservatism of the religious right wing. And it does not advocate for white nationalism alongside the Alt Right. In the book, I indicate that my conservatism is methodological, which it is. However, to indicate that my conservatism is methodological and not political, is to concede to the assumption that the contemporary political right wing in the United States is anything but a coalition of these ideological interests from which I attempt to de-couple my conservatism. I did, as Luke Plotica points out, define conservatism negatively as skepticism of rationalism in law, politics, and ethics. Such skepticism registers as suspicion of wholesale change and the a priori method and method of authority , as defined by C.S. Peirce. To cash out this negative description in law, politics , and ethics is to distance conservatism from other methodologies in these forms of culture. In law, this means distinguishing conservatism from three important legal traditions: the legal positivism of Jeremy Bentham, John Austin, H.L.A. Hart; the metaphysical conservatism of natural law theory in the medieval tradition but also in the Blackstonian equation of the common law and natural law, referred to by Allen Mendenhall in his review essay; and perhaps most importantly, from the formalism embraced by mainstream legal conser-vatives. Plotica has rightly directed his summary and critique to the embrace of formalism qua originalism by contemporary mainstream legal conservatives, and I will address the challenges his essay poses to my attempt to de-couple my understanding of conservatism from formalist versions of legal conservatism. In politics, this meant distancing conservatism from the a priori method of
The Pluralist, 2019
This article investigates the extent to which Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was a Social Darw... more This article investigates the extent to which Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was a Social Darwinist.
This article investigates UnREAL’s gender and racial discourse and imagery in order to assess its... more This article investigates UnREAL’s gender and racial discourse and imagery in order to assess its ability to promote a feminist and anti-racist agenda. It proceeds by defining essentialism generally and gender and racial essentialism specifically. Next, it illustrates the way these concepts are depicted on Season 2 of UnREAL. Third, it investigates the UnREAL’s ability to undermine static notions of gender, depict the complexity of contemporary racism, and illustrate elements of racism inherent in white feminism. Ultimately, this article argues that in Season 2 UnREAL consciously constructs racial and gender injustices and stereotypes in a successful effort to make the audience reflect on patriarchy and racial injustice in contemporary society. The result of this analysis is that UnREAL constitutes a successful iteration of the feminist project of Lifetime’s Broad Focus initiative, one which includes a critique of liberal white feminism’s racist elements.
Richard Posner is one of the few legal minds to have noticed the affinity between the philosophie... more Richard Posner is one of the few legal minds to have noticed the affinity between the philosophies of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and Friedrich Nietzsche. This article examines that affinity, showing how Holmes's pragmatism both comports with and departs from Nietzsche's existentialism. Holmes's pragmatism shares with Nietzsche's existentialism a commitment to skepticism, perspectivalism, experiential knowledge, and aesthetics, as well as an abiding awareness of the problematic nature of truth and the fallibility of the human mind. We demonstrate here that Holmes was familiar with Nietzsche's writings and that the two thinkers turned away from Christian ethics and glorified the life struggle in distinctly evolutionary terms. Both men celebrated the individual capacity to exercise the will for purposes of personal autonomy, greatness, and creative or aesthetic achievement. Nietzsche, however, did not share Holmes's belief in the pragmatic potential of meliorism, which marks the distinction between their notions of fate. The thinking of Nietzsche and Holmes converges in the person of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was a manifest influence on both Holmes and Nietzsche and whose thinking on fate and power, inflected as it is by aesthetic pragmatism, shapes our understanding not only of Holmes and Nietzsche in isolation but also of Holmes and Nietzsche as paired, ambitious philosophers concerned about the role of fate and power in human activity.
In this article I summarize four archetypal responses, the reactionary, conservative, pragmatist,... more In this article I summarize four archetypal responses, the reactionary, conservative, pragmatist, and presentist, to the real or perceived threat to liberal learning in higher education I will advocate a balance between the conservative and the pragmatist responses. A conservative pragmatist response resists the canonical rigidity of the reactionary, responds to the ever evolving social demands and practices which help frame the perennial questions of liberal learning, but values the poetry of conversation. The conservative pragmatist response highlights the perennial and the evolutionary, the universal and the particular, and the end in itself and the instrumental in liberal arts education.
Response ver ince the pulication of Kant' Critique of Judgment, the concept of tate ha een... more Response ver ince the pulication of Kant' Critique of Judgment, the concept of tate ha een evered from it moral ene and reduced to a merel aethetic one. 1 (#fn:1) ince then two trend have predominated in moral philooph. The rt i a rationalit view of ethic, which propoe the need to uume particular action under univeral law. Deontological and utilitarian theorie oth have thi paradigm in common. The econd i the refraction of thi poition, which marginalize an dicuion of moral feeling a a pchological quetion of emotivim or ujectivim. 2 (#fn:2) Thi trend of poitivim dimie feeling a mere emotive tate, quetion of pcholog, ujective, and therefore not inding.
In this paper I argue that Michael Oakeshott’s metaphysics of experience shares significant featu... more In this paper I argue that Michael Oakeshott’s metaphysics of experience shares significant features with the pragmatism of C.S. Peirce and John Dewey and that these similarities highlight methodological norms guiding inquiry into philosophy’s value fields. Oakeshott, Peirce, and Dewey agree on (1) the primacy of experience in philosophical inquiry, (2) the dismissal of the capacity of intuition as a valid mode of experience contributing to a reliable epistemology, (3) a refusal of metaphysical dualism and a resulting continuity principle, and (4) consonant notions of the conditions and pattern of inquiry. This comparative analysis opens up new possibilities for prudently advancing the value fields in philosophy. Inquiry into legal, moral, and political philosophies, given the insights of Oakeshott, Peirce, and Dewey, can proceed prudently upon these shared premises and the skepticism of rationalism in politics, ethics, and law which ensues from them.
Contemporary Pragmatism, 2013
Southwest Philosophy Review, 2013
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Books by Seth Vannatta
Journal Articles by Seth Vannatta