[artinfo] Available online: Mike Sandbothe's Pragmatic Media Philosophy

[Geert Lovink [c]]

Announcement:

Pragmatic Media Philosophy
Foundations of a New Discipline in the Internet Age
by Mike Sandbothe

German original appeared as "Pragmatische 
Medienphilosophie. Grundlegung einer neuen 
Disziplin im Zeitalter des Internet", 
Weilerswist: Velbröck
Wissenschaft 2001.

The full text is available as a pdf file (1.2MB): 
http://www.sandbothe.net/pmp.pdf

Mike Sandbothe is Professor for Media Philosophy 
at the Department of Communication of the Faculty 
of Humanities at Aalborg University (Denmark). 
There he is teaching in the following study 
programs:
Humanistic Informatics, Culture and Media Studies, ICT and Learning.

Reviews of Pragmatic Media Philosophy:

"Pragmatische Medienphilosophie is a remarkable work of intellectual
synthesis. It offers both a very clear and well-informed account of
recent trends in metaphilosophy and an equally lucid account of the state
of the new discipline of 'media studies'." - Richard Rorty

"The book attempts for the first time to draw up a systematic conception
of media philosophy as a philosophical discipline. Its aim is thus not
only to attain an adequate understanding of the media problematic, but
also =96 in the spirit of the pragmatic perspective to contribute
prospectively in shaping the current media transformation." - Wolfgang Welsch

"Mike Sandbothe's Pragmatic Media Philosophy is the attempt innovatively
to link two of the most up-to-date strands of debate in contemporary
philosophy with one another and to explain each in terms of the other:
the neopragmatic discourse (which arose from the crisis of the analytic
project) and philosophical media theory. The result of this undertaking
is convincing." - Ludwig Nagl

"Sandbothe's polemic calls for a reorientation towards a pragmatically
understood active use of reason, one that not only puts forward
sophisticated claims, but is capable of guiding changes. Hence his
investigation is not only a call to reason, but understandably also lays
claim to a position of its own within 
professional philosophy."  - Lorenz Engell

"Against the standard cultural-studies theses of media and corresponding
technological aprioris Mike Sandbothe rightly emphasizes the need for a
yet-to-be-achieved foundation of media philosophy, and in so doing draws
attention to a fundamental theoretical deficit that of the grounding, of
the legitimacy of the discourse itself. His approach, based on an
extensive survey of the entire media-theoretical landscape, attempts in
particular to develop a dialogue between theoreticist and pragmatic
perspectives." - Dieter Mersch

"Hence philosophy too is attributed a place in the movement which runs
through the whole strategy of pragmatic media philosophy. Philosophy
itself becomes a tool, it is ordered within something larger than itself:
the endeavour to carry forward the project of democracy in search of a
better future." - Jan Janzen