Joseph Heath
Joseph Heath (born 1967) is a philosophy professor at the University of Toronto. He also teaches at the School of Public Policy and Governance. He received his BA from McGill University, where his teachers included Charles Taylor, and his MA and PhD degrees are from Northwestern University, where he studied under Thomas A. McCarthy and Jürgen Habermas. He has published both academic and popular writings, including the bestselling The Rebel Sell. His philosophical work includes papers and books in political philosophy, business ethics, rational choice theory, action theory, and critical theory.
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[edit] Ideas
The central claim of Rebel Sell is that counter-cultural movements have failed, and that they all share a common fatal error in the way they understand society; thus counter-culture is not a threat to "the system". For example, it is suggested of Adbusters' Blackspot campaign that the shoe's existence proves that "no rational person could possibly believe that there is any tension between 'mainstream' and 'alternative' culture."
In the book Filthy Lucre, Joseph Heath criticizes the idea that tax-paying is inherently different than consumption, and argues that the idea of a tax freedom day is flawed:
It would make just as much sense to declare an annual "mortgage freedom day", in order to let mortgage owners know what day they "stop working for the bank and start working for themselves". ...But who cares? Homeowners are not really "working for the bank"; they're merely financing their own consumption. After all, they're the ones living in the house, not the bank manager.[1]
[edit] Publications
[edit] Popular books
- The Efficient Society, 2002.
- The Rebel Sell, 2004, with Andrew Potter.
- Filthy Lucre: Economics for People Who Hate Capitalism, 2009.
[edit] Academic books
- Communicative Action and Rational Choice, 2001.
- Following the Rules. Practical Reasoning and Deontic Constraint, 2008.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Heath, Joseph. Filthy Lucre. pp. 90.
[edit] External links
- Home page
- University of Toronto profile
- Audio file of lecture by Heath & Potter summarizing The Rebel Sell from TVO's Big Ideas
- Video (with mp3 available) of conversation between Heath and Will Wilkinson on Bloggingheads.tv
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