In recent decades, the idea of cosmopolitanism has enjoyed renewed interest and rapid development across disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences. Theoretical developments in the foundations of cosmopolitan education, however, remain in their nascent stages. In this investigation, I address the question of the nature and dynamics of values in cosmopolitan perspective and develop a philosophical account of value creation as central to cosmopolitan education. The conclusion of this investigation is that in a world increasingly interconnected and intensely (...) impermanent, in societies pluralistic and marked by political tension, shifting cultural practices, and emerging technologies, we need more than an education that fosters openness, tolerance, and global perspectives. We need to cultivate the capacity to transform the self and the normative terrains we inhabit in light of the constraints of actual conditions and the demands of ideals. (shrink)

How can technê both imitate nature, and thus duplicate the model that nature provides, while simultaneously perfecting or accomplishing what nature cannot achieve? Where would technê have learned its skill at fulfilling nature’s ends (and better than nature itself)? How can technê be both disciple and master of physis? The Peripatetic’s competing views about the relationship of physis and technê cannot be consistently reconciled (with apologies to the apologetic Ancient commentators). If technê comes to the aid of physis, and brings (...) physis to completion, then physis cannot be conceived as a simple plenitude or potentiality without lack. Thus the inability of physis to realize its ends without the aid of technê reveals that the relationship of the two cannot be simple subordination. Rather, the relationship is supplementary. (shrink)

The concern of this study is the loss of the meaning or purpose of education and the instrumental view of education as its corollary. Today, education is largely conceived of as a means to gain social and economic privilege. The overemphasis on school children's test scores and the accountability of teachers and schools is evidence that education has lost its proper meaning. In such a climate, we observe general unhappiness among teachers, school children, and their parents. Society as a whole (...) seems to have given up on education, not only school education but also the very idea of educated human beings. There is an urgent need to reconsider what education is and what its purpose is. However, these questions—once being the primary concerns of philosophers of education—are barely discussed today. I intend to energize the discourse of the aims of education by examining Simone Weil's thesis that the sole purpose of education is to nurture attention. It is very hard, however, to agree with Weil's thesis that the sole purpose of education is attention. Is there a single definite purpose to education? Weil suggests that the purpose is attention, but her notion of attention involves religious language and takes essentialist formulation. How can we take her thesis seriously? By addressing such difficulties and potential problems, I argue that her thesis is still compelling if we adequately emphasize her realistic approach to philosophy. Attention is the disposition of the subject that is open and available to the reality of other people, ourselves, objects (natural and artificial), customs and traditions, ideas, and words such as good, truth, beauty, and God. Attention is also synonymous with love. As the disposition takes various objects, love is also inclusively discussed. The purpose of education, then, is to learn to love. This study discusses two important aspects of love: the love of other people, which for Weil is nothing but justice, and the love of God. Justice for Weil is not about enforcement of rights as typically understood today. It is equivalent to love in that it involves the recognition of others for themselves, not as a means for our satisfaction. We tend to see other people from our self-centered perspective, but we must stop doing so to partake in justice and love. This detachment from the self-centered perspective is crucial not only in attending to other people, but in attending to everything. Weil proposes the imitation of the divine perspective—or quasi-perspective, to be precise—from which everything, including the most abhorrent human misery, is capable of being loved because it is the result of God's love. By changing our perspective, we learn to love God. Although it is perhaps inappropriate to include the love of God in the purpose of education (especially school education), the claim that we need to learn to change our perspective and read (in Weil's language) reality better is still compelling. To learn to love is to change how we read. Through proper apprenticeship, we learn to create a comprehensive reading and read reality better. This is achieved through the contemplation of contradictions. Thus, education is apprenticeship in reading and the learning of the method of contemplation. I conceive of Weil's thesis as a comprehensive response to the question in Plato's Meno: "Can Virtue be Taught?" Replacing the term "virtue" with "attention," Weil responds that it can be taught and it should be the sole purpose of education. Like Plato, Weil considers education to be the conversion of the soul to the Good, while attention is the orientation of the soul to the Good (or God). As we turn to see the contradictions between the transcendent Good and the reality in this world, we need to contemplate the without losing the love of the Good in life's bitterness and confusion. By learning to contemplate, reading better, and changing perspectives, one could learn to love better. Weil claims that this should be the sole purpose of education. This grand vision of education may re-kindle the meaning of education and suggests a compelling alternative to the now dominating instrumental view of education. It might then save the downcast situation of education observed in teachers, school- children, their parents, college professors, and our society as a whole. (shrink)

A current trend in social justice oriented education research is the promotion of certain intellectual virtues that support epistemic responsibility, or differently put, the dispositions necessary to be a good knower. On the surface, the proposition of epistemically responsible teaching, or teaching students to be responsible knowers is innocuous, even banal. In the mathematics classroom, however, it is patently at odds with current practice and with the stated goals of mathematics education. This dissertation begins by detailing the extant paradigm in (...) mathematics education, which characterizes mathematics as a body of skills to be mastered, and which rewards ways of thinking that are highly procedural and mechanistic. It then argues, relying on a wide range of educational thinkers including John Dewey, Maxine Greene, Miranda Fricker, and a collection of scholars of white privilege, that an important element in social justice education is the eradication of such process-oriented thinking, and the promotion of such intellectual virtues as courage and humility. Because the dominant paradigm is supported by an ideology and mythology of mathematics, however, changing that paradigm necessitates engaging with the underlying conceptions of mathematics that support it. The dissertation turns to naturalist philosophers of education make clear that the nature of mathematics practice and the growth of mathematical knowledge are not characterized by mechanistic and procedural thinking at all. In these accounts, we can see that good mathematical thinking relies on many of the same habits and dispositions that the social justice educators recommend. In articulating an isomorphism between good mathematical thinking and socially responsive thinking, the dissertation aims to offer a framework for thinking about mathematics education in and for a democratic society. It aims to cast the goals of mathematically rigorous education and socially responsible teaching not only as not in conflict, but also overlapping in meaningful ways. (shrink)

Responding to current concerns about the quality of public education, in this dissertation I look at teacher development. Specifically, I take up the question: how do we promote teacher flourishing? Though the "we" refers to anyone with a vested interest in education, my primary audience is teachers, administrators, and teacher educators. From this lens I investigate questions of how the teaching life can connect the teacher to the good life. I address this from two perspectives. More broadly, I ask: How (...) can we support the teacher in a manner that contributes to his or her achievement of the good life? Focusing on more specific practices: How can we support the teacher to achieve success in the role of teacher? I assert that teaching is complex work that requires a professional who knows the content taught, has a deep understanding of individual students, and utilizes a host of methods for conveying information and creating community within a classroom. I will argue that the successful teacher depends on what has been defined as practical wisdom--knowing what knowledge to apply to a given situation and how best to apply it. Having argued the relevance of practical wisdom in teaching, the remaining chapters will look more closely at how those concerned with teacher education might help teachers develop it. Specifically, I will first explore: * How can practical wisdom be cultivated in teachers? (Chapter 2) * How does narrative promote practical wisdom? (Chapter 3) * How do narratives about teaching referred to as Reflective Teacher Narratives in particular promote practical wisdom? (Chapter 4) Reflective Teacher Narratives are first person narratives written by teachers about their classrooms. The texts focus on individual students, follow a plot, and highlight the teacher's strengths and areas of difficulty. Ultimately, I will conclude that reading Reflective Teacher Narratives support teacher flourishing by providing a means of looking closely at both teachers' practices and thinking. Reflective Teacher Narratives also provide the scaffolding for a means of talking with teachers that supports development and affirms the teacher. (shrink)

Moral perception is the non-inferential moral awareness immediately associated with moral emotion and action. Unfortunately, moral blindness, the incapability of moral perception, is frequently observed in the contemporary world. In order to account for the prevalence of moral blindness moral perception needs to be illuminated first, and the central purpose of this investigation is to elucidate the core property of moral perception. Moral perception has been denied by many modern moral theorists for a long time, but moral perception is an (...) essential constituent of morality, which is also found in traditional moral philosophies, such as Aristotle's and Nietzsche's. Very recently, moral perception begins to be recognized as a way of moral awareness, but the number and diversity of research on it are still limited. Joining the recent effort to highlight moral perception this research attempts a new approach, phenomenological explication of moral perception, and Dewey's concept of perception and Heidegger's concept of thinking are mainly drawn on. For Dewey, perception presupposes the participatory subject who becomes to be related to the object or the situation, which is contrasted to the detached subject of recognition. Heidegger conceives thinking in a primordial sense which includes the perceptive level. Thinking begins with being inclined toward each other. On the ground of mutual inclination thinking becomes thanking to receive all that touch us. As Dewey and Heidegger similarly inform it, the essence of perception is the immediate connection between the perceiver and the perceived, and it is particularly distinct in moral perception. As an illustration of moral perception a Korean movie, Poetry by Chang-dong Lee, is introduced. Mija, the main character of the movie vividly embodies moral perception contrasted to moral blindness of the modern world. Considering the circumstance of modern world where the natural cultivation of moral perception is hindered, it is time to ask what kind of seeing and thinking should be cared about for education today. (shrink)

Despite the ubiquitous presence of children in society, the dominant discourse of childhood does not admit room for much of the complexity that the condition of children presents. This project shows that reading for childhood in philosophy and literature makes space for re-imagining childhood as a complex and valuable concept that impacts both the experience of children and their relationships with others and the world. This project situates childhood as a magnified time of growth and development, a unique aspect of (...) human life. At the same time childhood cultivates an interest in and with others, it is also a constructed concept. This inquiry engages this complexity by a reading of rich descriptions and inquiries of childhood in texts of philosophy and literature. These foundational texts are: Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile, John Dewey's Democracy and Education, Simone De Beauvoir's Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, Virginia Woolf's The Waves, Vivian Paley's The Boy Who Wanted to Be a Helicopter, and Harriet Cuffaro's Experimenting with the World. Childhood in the texts functions to complicate and reframe conventional and historical interpretations of childhood. The readings in the project challenge a conventional rendering of childhood that serves to distance childhood from its wider community. Childhood is reframed as a concept of inclusion of the other, particularly the adult educator. The project expands scholarship examining how adult interactions with childhood manifest changes in conceptual understandings or practices. The project concludes that cultivating habits of reading for the concept of childhood assists educators in engaging their teaching practice meaningfully. Uncovering the complexity of the concept of childhood invites educators to uncover such ethical aspects of the educational relationship as responsibility, recognition, acceptance of difference, acknowledgement of power dynamics, freedom, and growth. In this context childhood functions as an ethical construct - a guiding value - in education. Multiple ways of viewing and reflecting on the concept of childhood illuminate possibilities for renewing and reengaging these ethical aspects within an educational context. (shrink)

The beginning of the 21th century has not been a particularly stable period for the university, at least if you trust the steady stream of books, articles, jeremiads and statements from public officials lamenting its fallen status and calling for bold reforms. Such a state of affairs has allowed critics and reformers alike to axiomatically evoke the "crisis" of the university, but this begs several questions: Are universities in a genuine state of crisis? If so, what are the root causes (...) of this situation and what are its salient features? Are there historical antecedents that shed light on our present moment? In this dissertation I investigate the "crisis of the university" theme by revisiting two prior crises - the worldwide student movements of 1960s and the crisis of German universities in the opening decades of the 20th century. In both cases I argue that the "crisis of the university" is derivative of a broader shift in the nature of the economy and the nation-state, wherein once-popular justifications for the university are called into question, particularly when the scale and complexity of universities have rapidly increased. Returning to the present "crisis," I argue that current debates should focus on rehabilitating "public" nature of the university, which has undergone significant degradation in effects of neoliberalism on the nation-state, the "knowledge economy," and the nature of academic work itself. (shrink)

This dissertation addresses a common, but troubling, educational interaction: when a facilitator (whether teacher, professor, or organizer) announces that a discussion will take place about some subject or question, but proceeds to speak at length and field questions regarding that subject. In this case, a controlled and unequal form of interaction known as recitation has occurred, though the interaction was called a "discussion" at the outset. Since discussion, as a form of interaction, connotes democracy, equality, and freedom, this interaction (where (...) recitation passes for discussion) is distorted. After a survey of discussion's many pedagogical meanings, a Marxist theoretical approach--primarily drawing from Louis Althusser and Valentin Voloshinov--is used to critique the distortion of discussion. From the Voloshinovian perspective, the aforementioned distortion composes and iterates the social formation known as neoliberal capitalism. A psychoanalytic theoretical approach is then used to propose a new concept of discussion that works against this neoliberal distortion, one founded on Jacques Lacan's early concept of dehiscence. The dissertation concludes with suggestions for dehiscent facilitation practices, calling for greater emphasis on the form of interaction (as opposed to content) when working for social and political change. (shrink)

L. Nandi Theunissen offers an original and provocative account of the value of humanity. Human beings have value just as anything of value has value: because we are capable of being of value to someone--in the first place, to ourselves. And this explains the key forms of ethical responsiveness that we owe to one another.

This project seeks to address the way in which democratic citizens are equal, and the kind of equality of opportunity that follows from this notion of equality. I will then apply this theoretical discussion to public education, a fundamental component of any notion of equality of opportunity. I am asserting principles that may inform questions of equality in any democracy, but I am giving specific content to the way these ideals have been articulated in one particular democracy. Because I ultimately (...) want to make sense of the best realization of these ideals in the American educational system, I will explore these with reference to American political morality. (shrink)

There are some things we know that we would not normally doubt. Take my birth date for example. I was born on the 17th of July 1991. I think I know this, and am fairly certain about it. But do I really know my birth date? And, if so, how do I know? Surely, it would be too much to ask of my newborn self to check the calendar on the delivery room wall and say to itself, “I must remember (...) this date, for it is my birthday.” Nor is it likely that I was simply born knowing my own date of birth. So I must have learnt it from some secondary source, such as one of my official documents or my parents’ testimony. Of these two options, the second one seems to be the only reasonable one, since as far as I can remember, I knew my birthday before I could even understand what an official document is, let alone decipher its content. But even if my memory serves me wrong, the birth date specified by my official documents is likely to have been provided by my parents when they applied for those documents anyway. Hence, testimony plays an important role even in the acquisition of such mundane beliefs as that of our own dates of birth. (shrink)

While there is a wealth of research about literary history, literary genres, and the nature of the literary text, research on approaches to teaching literature that shape the interpretation and reception of the text is insufficient. My overarching aim in this study is to conceptualize literature pedagogy across the historical evolution of the field of literature in English. Underlying literature pedagogy are beliefs about the good of teaching literature. Consequently, the teaching of literature is a form of values education. In (...) the late eighteenth century, the teaching of literature was used to propagate ideological values of the nation-state when the discipline of English literature was institutionalized in public education. From the early twentieth century onwards, various global-political and disciplinary movements led to a shift towards a post nation-state model of values education emphasizing education for world, global, and cosmopolitan values. One way to understand the different values underlying literature pedagogy is to examine beliefs about the good of teaching literature as these are manifested in concepts that demonstrate various orientations to teaching literature. Given that the formal institutionalization of English literature and its subsequent re-configurations, in the form of literature in English, were conditioned by the phenomenon of globalization, the study explores how approaches to teaching literature have responded to four waves of globalization from the late eighteenth to the twenty-first century. Rather than focus on events, I employ a historical-paradigmatic analysis to analyze conceptual turns or moments in a historical period when particular concepts gain dominance. The advantage of this analysis is two-fold. First, it avoids examining history in terms of events so that more attention is paid to the history of ideas and second, paradigms disrupt the notion of a linear history which then allows for historical overlaps. In order to locate concepts that gain dominance, three domains are analyzed within each historical period - global waves, disciplinary movements, and philosophical contributions. The objectives of the study are driven by two research questions: (1) How do global waves, disciplinary movements, and philosophical contributions, from the late eighteenth century to the present, contribute to characterizing various beliefs about the good of teaching literature? (2) How do these beliefs orient approaches to teaching literature? The study argues that various global waves across history have facilitated the interrelation and dominance of key concepts that provide insights into beliefs about the good of teaching literature. From these concepts, four orientations emerge - nationalist-oriented, world-oriented, global-oriented, and cosmopolitan-oriented approaches to teaching literature. These approaches serve to recognize a key role for the teaching literature in educating for values beyond the ideologies of the nation-state. The study has implications for literature teachers in the hopes that it would broaden their consciousness and repertoire of pedagogical approaches as well as equip them to be more purposeful in their applications of these to the classroom. More importantly, an understanding of these orientations would serve to develop a greater sense of ethical agency in teachers as they work towards cultivating a hospitable imagination in their students. (shrink)

This essay discusses the work of the Venetian composer Luigi Nono (29 January 1924 - 8 May 1990) in the context of Marxist aesthetics. Nono is the most explicitly political member of the Darmstadt generation. A card-carrying member of the Communist party whose titles and texts often directly refer to political personages and events, Nono bids the listener or critic to confront the problematic of political expression in instrumental music, a subject of inquiry at least as old as Plato (to (...) whom Nono explicitly refers in Fragmente , his late string quartet that is the subject of examination here) and of crucial relevance since World War II, the cold war, and the rise of mass media. Yet the majority of literature devoted to his work has largely ignored the question of where his work and philosophical attitude locate themselves within the four major strands of Marxist aesthetics. The relationship between Nono's his work and his political perspective is either treated in an imprecise, undisciplined fashion, relying on cliches of existentialism, mysticism, or vaguely defined alternative modes of perception to stand in for the notion of opposition (Nono's fascination with Hölderlin is often invoked); or the element of ideology is ignored altogether, and the works are submitted to traditional post-serial analysis of compositional technique. Whereas both of these approaches do shed light on a challenging body of work, a brief examination of the four major models of a Marxist approach to art - the Marx/Engels, the Benjaminian, the Adorno,and the Bloch/Jameson - and the attempt to contextualize Nono's work within or against them situates this complex personality within the universe of the poltical talis qualis. A narratological take on Nono's late sting quartet Fragmente provides a demonstration of invoking literary theory to create a productive analogy between political readings of instrumental music and that of other artforms. Various analytic techniques employed by critical theory - techniques examining communciation, culture, and political consciousness which themselves are drawn from linguistic and analytic philosophy, symbolic interactionism, structural linguistics, hermeneutics, semiology, poststructural psychoanalysis, and deconstruction - may not simply be borrowed by the musicologist. These strategies can be fruitfully transposed, in the mathematical sense, wherein a limited number of elements within the critical structure are exchanged provided that others are fixed. The essays explores one example of such an exchanged element: Nono's use of polyvalent quotations. Other elements are available to the musicologist via the classic Husserlian move of Einklammerung, the "phenomenological reduction." Jameson had no particular personal or professional association with Nono, and Jameson has no important writings on music. Nevertheless, Jameson was Nono's historical contemporary; Jameson was born only ten years after Nono; and Nono's work is much closer to the Bloch / Jameson model than that of Adorno, the passionate anti-bourgeois devotee of the Second Viennese School; or that of Benjamin, the passionate anti-bourgeois proponent of the "fragment," the thinker who plays the most superficially salient role in Nono's work. Jameson's 1981 book The Political Unconscious, written at the same time Nono wrote Fragmente, describes three non-dialectical analytical approaches, or "horizons," shared by the critic, the spectator, and the artist: the political, the social, and the historical. They form concentric circles. By situating Nono's work within Jameson's theory, Nono is revealed, far from the mystical/naive poet in the style of a Rothko or a Tarkovsky, as a wily, canny dramatist whose technique is conservative and neoromantic, if never regressive, always consciously bent against the postmodernity, properly speaking, of Cage. (shrink)

The present essay provides a survey of a previously unexplored, formative period in the life of the famed Victorian English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (EBB). Her personal Bibles (Hebrew, LXX, and Greek New Testament), held in The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary/Columbia University, have been discovered to contain Barrett Browning’s own extensive handwritten notes. These notes demonstrate that EBB read extensively among the biblical exegetes and scholars of the day, many of whom influenced her reading of the text. The (...) essay considers the life circumstances in which she devoted herself to these studies, an overview of her marginalia in these volumes, and some suggestions on how Browning’s biblical studies may have influenced her later poetic works. (shrink)

This dissertation is about friendship and rivalry and, particularly, about the connection between them. The main argument of the dissertation is that friendship, philia, and rivalry, eris, are interconnected and that the failure to recognize this interconnection leads to violence and destruction. More specifically, I argue that every philia, friendship, contains elements of eris, of difference and disagreement, and that the failure to provide a space for these elements within the philia relationship results in the collapse of the friendship. Similarly, (...) I argue that every eris, rivalry, contains elements of philia, of similarity and communality, and that the failure to recognize these elements leads to violent and destructive results. I use the term `philia' here in a broad sense that includes different interpersonal relations like love, friendship, cooperation, solidarity, sympathy, etc., which are endowed with some gravity force that draws individuals close to each other and links them together. Likewise, I use the term `eris' here in a wide-ranging sense that includes various interpersonal relations like hate, rivalry, hostility antipathy, etc., which are endowed with a sort of repulsive force that draws individuals away from each other and divides them. I argue that somewhat similarly to Newton's third law of motion in the physical world - "To any action there is always an opposite and equal reaction." - also in the interpersonal world every interaction implies `opposite reaction'. So that, for example, friendship implies rivalry, cooperation entails competition, peace contains conflict, and trust presumes suspicion. To use William Blake's words: "Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human Existence.". (shrink)

The goal of my dissertation is to argue that Descartes arrives at his account of self-knowledge by grappling with skepticism about introspection. As I interpret him, Descartes has his meditator attempt to undermine introspection so that he can replace his former beliefs about his mind's nature and activities with an account of self-knowledge that is immune from doubt. Just as he must show that reason and sense perception are sources of knowledge because they can withstand his skeptical challenges, he must (...) also show that introspection is equally indubitable. To this end, he constructs the strongest arguments he can from the perspective of a skeptic who maintains that we can be ignorant of or in error about our thought. Then he attempts to show that none of the skeptic's premises can undermine his conclusion that we have infallible knowledge of our mind's nature and activities. My dissertation reconstructs these skeptical arguments in order to clarify the role they play in motivating (and ultimately grounding) Descartes' account of self-knowledge. (shrink)

My dissertation addresses the question "do desires provide reasons?" I present two independent lines of argument in support of the conclusion that they do not. The first line of argument emerges from the way I circumscribe the concept of a desire. Complications aside, I conceive of a desire as a member of a family of attitudes that have imperative content, understood as content that displays doability-conditions rather than truth-conditions. Moreover, I hold that an attitude may provide reasons only if it (...) has truth-evaluable content. Insofar as desires lack truth-evaluable content, I hold that the content of a desire has the wrong kind of logical structure to provide reasons. My second line of argument claims that even if a desire did have truth-evaluable content, it would not follow that desires provide reasons. This is because a desire has no more rational significance than a guess or coin-flip. My argument relies on what I call the non-substitutability principle, the thesis that (all things being equal) one cannot substitute something that lacks rational significance, relative to some attitude, A, for something that has rational significance, relative to A, and leave the rational standing of A unchanged. For example, one cannot substitute the guess that P (i.e., something that lacks rational significance relative to the belief that P) for the perception that P (i.e., something that is rationally significant relative to the belief that P) without altering the rational standing of the belief. I argue that when the non-substitutability principle is applied to a desire that gives rise to an intention, it turns out that one can always substitute a guess or coin-flip (i.e., something that lacks rational significance relative to the intention) for the desire, without altering the rational standing of the intention. I take this to show that desires are not rationally significant relative to the intentions to which they give. (shrink)

This project explains Polish non-violence and Algerian violence under martial law following peaceful protests against comparable material deprivation and authoritarian political exclusion. From narratives of state formation, institutional performance, and social movement evolution in postwar Poland and postcolonial Algeria a conditional model derives violent and non-violent opposition strategies from divergent practical citizenship regimes in formally similar autocratic systems. It argues that distinct regimes of citizen-subjectivity under authoritarian governance foster divergent practices of resistance and evaluations of states before and during emergency (...) conditions that reduce activists to biological life, tempting violence. Where citizenship regimes differentiate social resources (means of protest) from state resources (means or sovereignty), affording regime opponents actual or immanent systemic subjectivity, social agitation remains non-violent despite objectively comprehensive political and social dispossession; in contrast, by subordinating social to state resources, undifferentiated citizenship regimes under martial law wholly eliminate systemic subjectivity, provoking violence. Neither the formal political regime-type nor the immediate experience of social suffering or political abjection distinguishes violent from non-violent responses to despotism; rather, violent versus non-violent protest strategies express discrepant evaluations of regime coercion, reflecting the elimination versus endurance of the citizenship regime that formed the iterated systemic subjectivity of regime opponents. Poland's worker-based citizenship regime endured fiscal crisis and martial law because it provided differentiated social resources: regime opponents had means independent of state solvency to compel policy concessions by withdrawing labor power from industries pivotal to ruling-elite incumbency. But Algeria's client-based citizenship - based on undifferentiated resources - tied activists' systemic means of compulsion to state largesse. Differentiated citizenship regimes endure state crises because citizens retain the social resources, however suspended, of systemic-subjectivity that ground their evaluations of state actions, minimizing incentives to violent pressure on ruling classes. Undifferentiated citizenship regimes perish under state bankruptcy or force, eradicating social resources and channeling the recuperation of subjectivity to anti-systemic acts. In short, Polish workers could strike and threaten the state under martial law; Algerian clients were effectively expelled from political status. In forming opposition strategies, citizens judge state policies or legitimacy, but also their status as systemic subjects. Evaluations of systemic subjectivity reflect experiences in using social resources, not merely immediate material or political conditions. The research design does not test a general theoretical model linking citizenship-subjectivity regimes to experiential evaluations of objective dehumanization, but its conceptual and causal variable analyses may complement other studies of state institutions and social agitations by promoting subject formation over abstract human universals as the key mechanism in reliable social explanation. (shrink)

This essay is intended to (re)introduce schools of preaching to the academic and ministerial communities within Churches of Christ (a cappella). It makes a call for more rigorous and sustained engagement with these schools and their theologies. In doing so, this essay is intended to shed light on a neglected topic and provide an extensive bibliography to lay the groundwork for future research and writing. The essay presents these schools as educational institutions under three broad headings: locating the schools of (...) preaching within a specific historical context (that of the United States in the mid-late 20th century); defining the schools and describing their status as educational institutions affiliated with Churches of Christ today; and providing a framework for their philosophies of education. The essay concludes with general observations and questions about these schools and the impact their witness continues to have on Churches of Christ. (shrink)

This is a book review of Paul D. Spears and Steven R. Loomis, "Education for Human Flourishing: A Christian Perspective." As a theologically trained educator working in the public school system, I often struggle to integrate my theological convictions into my professional life. It was, therefore, refreshing to see that Paul Spears and Steven Loomis have given Christian educators a framework within which to address that integration in their new Education for Human Flourishing: A Christian Perspective.Their goal was to articulate (...) a robust and apologetically Christian philosophy of education that seeks to lay a foundation for teaching within the K-16 context. The book discusses both public and private academic institutions, but my review focuses mainly on its theses for public education. Series editors Francis J. Beckwith and J.P. Moreland begin the volume with a preface to The Christian Worldview Integration Series (Education for Human Flourishing is the first volume in that series). In this provocative essay, they challenge some of the traditional methods by which faith interacts with varying academic contexts. The preface argues for a bold integration of religious ideals into academic enterprises, articulating seven "reasons why integration matters." Structurally, the six chapters of Education for Human Flourishing are essentially divided into two major sections. In chapters 1-3, Spears and Loomis establish the ontological, historical, and epistemological framework upon which they build the theses of chapters 4-6. They devote these last chapters to the more tangible aspects of economics, ethics, and policy. (shrink)

This study pushes back to the origins of the Italian lyric tradition in order to demonstrate that the impulse to distill the highest levels of intellectual culture into the vernacular love lyric was present from the very inception of the poetic vernacular. I aim to nuance our understanding of the divide between the early schools of poetry as determined by Dante in his role as a literary historian by analyzing early experiments in vulgarizing philosophy and science in the lyric production (...) of Giacomo da Lentini, Guido delle Colonne, Guittone d'Arezzo, and Guido Guinizzelli. By isolating both formal elements of Scholastic argumentation and complex renderings of philosophical/scientific ideas, I develop a broad understanding of the early vernacular poetic engagement with Aristotelian philosophy that encompasses such areas as sensory perception, meteorology, and ethics. I trace the progression of this engagement from its Sicilian beginnings to the poetry of Guido Guinizzelli that is informed by the university culture of Bologna and posit that this early lyric form of vernacular humanism has profound implications for Dante's poetic identity as well as the development of a vernacular intellectual identity that feeds in to such developments as Humanism and the Scientific Revolution. (shrink)

My dissertation offers a revisionary history of the early development of Chöd, a philosophy and practice that became integral to all Tibetan Buddhist schools. Recent scholars have interpreted Chöd ahistorically, considering it as a shamanic tradition consonant with indigenous Tibetan practices. In contrast, through a study of the inception, lineages, and praxis of Chöd, my dissertation argues that Chöd evolved through its responses to particular Buddhist ideas and developments during the "later spread" of Buddhism in Tibet. I examine the efforts (...) of Machik Labdrön (1055-1153), the founder of Chöd and the first woman to develop a Buddhist tradition in Tibet, simultaneously to legitimate her teachings as authentically Buddhist and to differentiate them from those of male charismatic teachers. In contrast to the prevailing scholarly view which exoticizes central Chöd practices--such as the visualized offering of the body to demons--I examine them as a manifestation of key Buddhist tenets from the Prajñaparamita corpus and Vajrayana traditions on the virtue of generosity, the problem of ego-clinging, and the ontology of emptiness. Finally, my translation and discussion of the texts of the Third Karmapa Rangjung Dorjé (1284-1339), including the earliest extant commentary on a text of Machik Labdrön's, focuses on new ways to appreciate the transmission and institutionalization of Chöd. I argue not only that Chöd praxis has been an ongoing project of innovation and renewal, but also that we can properly understand modern incarnations of Chöd only through a nuanced appreciation of its historical and philosophical developments. (shrink)

The philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal offers a new way of thinking about what it means to be an individual and suggests a course of action which celebrates the individual and by doing so describes what he thinks a Muslim individual (and therefore community) should be. My previous paper was an investigation into the question of individuality and the evolution of that question over time worked around a concept of individual in terms of inner unity of consciousness, self-recognition and identification, and (...) awareness of personal agency. By framing the individual with these subcategories, I have prepared this paper to suit a discussion of what it means to be one amongst many and what collective identity is and does, and to include an explanation of how Iqbal's philosophy serves to structure a community (collective identity) through individuals (personal identity). (shrink)

The modern Western concept of the individual begins first with the question of oneness. What does it means to be one? Herein I will briefly discuss how Descartes, Locke, Husserl, and Nagel, as important and interesting philosophers on this idea, treat the concept of the individual. Though this paper deals with a modern Western concept, it does so in the interest of providing philosophical background to my larger research interest in Muhammad Iqbal's ideas of the individual and the individual's relationship (...) to the community; Iqbal's philosophy asks next, 'what does it mean to be one in a community?' and thereby necessitates this background inquiry. (shrink)

In this paper I introduce the concept of biodiversity by means of its peculiar story and defend the importance of biodiversity as an autonomous object of scientific enquiry (Sections 1 and 2). I then discuss two difficulties, (i) the lack of an agreed definition and (ii) the elusiveness of the notion of biodiversity. While I argue that (i) is a problem that can be handled, I suggest that (ii) follows from the vagueness of the concept of diversity and its cognate (...) kind (Sections 3 and 4). Yet, the notion of kind, connecting biodiversity to taxonomy, indicates the path to follow in order to explore what biodiversity is, even though it is a way full of hurdles to overcome (Sections 5 and 6). (shrink)

In the last two centuries, science has been regarded as the most important agent of change and progress in our society. The narrative of how and why it came to be such a commanding force contributed powerfully to this perception. The rise of modern science has long been portrayed as the triumph of human reason over superstition and authority; its history, a gallery adorned with the images of heroes like Copernicus, Galileo or Darwin who upheld self-evident facts against the prejudices (...) of their times; experimental results and the laws of nature, the only objective “truths” that human beings could attain and agree upon. This narrative still largely informs popular views of the scientific enterprise; yet, the image of science as a disinterested pursuit of truth has come increasingly under question during the last decades, to the point that mistrust of science as a source of objectivie knowledge is considered a defining feature of postmodernity. The history of science as an academic discipline has long participated in this trend,1 but it was not until the 1980s that it ceased to identify with the development of ideas and theories, as formulated by the most illustrious scientists. In their influential 1985 book Leviathan and the Air Pump, Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer argued that experimental results ultimately represent no more than social constructions, negotiated according to the conventions that regulate the acknowledgement of authority and credibility.2 A few years later, Mario Biagioli sought to explain part of Galileo’s scientific activity (and even his trial) in terms of the courtly culture and values of his time.3. (shrink)

This book's basic aim is "to clarify the relationship between revolutionary practice and moral reasoning" (p. 2). This aim primarily involves presenting a complex argument to show that revolution cannot be justified in the usual sense of what it means to justify an act precisely because the ordinary moral courts of appeal are called into question by revolutionaries. This is so because, for Gunnemann, revolution is, fundamentally, a rejection of an existing understanding of the problem of evil and an attempt (...) to put forward a new solution to the problem of evil. Following the pioneering work of Thomas Kuhn in philosophy of science, Gunnemann holds that ordinary moral courts of appeal are rejected by revolutionaries because such courts of appeal "imply residual confidence in the existing theodicy and the revolutionary loses his case merely by submitting to such a process" (p. 43). Hence, revolution is better understood as an apocalyptic event or as a religious conversion than as a moral act. For Gunnemann, conflicting paradigm solutions to the problem of evil—defined by Max Weber as the incongruity between destiny and merit—are at the heart of the moral meaning of revolution. (shrink)

Despite the proliferation of fine works on Marx, Dupré's learned text deserves attention. This is so because it provides a superb critical exposition of the complex development of Marx's social vision and theory as well as a provocative organicist critique of cultural disintegration in the modern West. In his close readings of Marx's works—from the doctoral dissertation to the third volume of Capital—Dupré displays an intellectual patience, historical sensitivity, and philosophical acumen rarely found in scholarly treatments of Marx. By refusing (...) to succumb to either uncritical presentation or tendentious dismissal, he provides one of the most reliable, succinct, and engaging interpretations we have of Marx's own writings. (shrink)

The immeasurable impact of Pascal is rarely appreciated or understood by contemporary thinkers. On the one hand, Pascal is lauded by literary critics for his writing style while his philosophical contributions are overlooked. On the other hand, Pascal is trivialized by analytic philosophers who view his wager argument as but a poor instance of decision theory. Nicholas Reseller's book is distinctive in that it takes Pascal seriously as a philosopher in light of past and present theological modes of argumentation. As (...) a distinguished historian of pragmatic philosophy, Rescher understands Pascal to be the great innovator of the major philosophical trends of our day: the theological use of practical reason, the diversity of modes of rationality, and the focus on praxis in contemporary hermeneutics. (shrink)

Of science and religion I have little to say today. I imagine there are those born and raised as atheists, those who convert to atheism, and those for whom, like me, atheism—I guess I would call mine atheistic paganism—came like a sort of salvation compared to the emphasis on Satan and hell that I was raised with. At the same time, anything that makes anyone's life more pleasurable, not to say bearable, without at the same time making someone else's less (...) so, seems to me a gorgeous thing. Of love I have a little more to say. I'm definitely for it; in fact I believe that the cash reward for introducing me to an eligible gentleman just went up last week. This afternoon, however, I thought I'd look at love and obstacles in terms of family and of self. (shrink)

The increasing interest in Hegel among legal scholars can be attributed to three recent developments. First, there is a slow but sure historicist turn in legal studies that is unsettling legal formalists and positivists. This turn—initiated by legal realists decades ago and deepened by the Critical Legal Studies movement in our own time—radically calls into question objectivist claims about procedure, due process, and the liberal view of law. Second, there are a growing number of serious reexaminations of the basic assumptions (...) and fundamental presuppositions of dominant forms of liberalism not only among critics but also by many prominent liberal thinkers themselves. These reexaminations take the form of immanent critiques of liberalism as well as creative revisions of liberalism. Third, a new emerging subject matter has seized the imagination of some legal theorists: the complex cultures of liberal societies (including the subcultures of the liberal legal academy). For the first time in American legal studies, the crucial roles of race and especially gender are receiving wide attention as legitimate spheres of legal inquiry into what constitutes the ways of life that circumscribe the operations of power in the legal systems of liberal societies. (shrink)

I am in need of the experience of love, of receiving love. Therefore I would like to approach the time I have before you as a kind of experience in love, so that we can, for a while, talk about love: what it is; what restrains it; what may perhaps help to retrain it; and what its implications might be personally, in family, in community, in institutions, and in our nation. So, please: I've had a difficult week, and I am (...) in the mood for love. (shrink)

In this talk, I want to convey some of the psychoanalytic understanding of sexual love—the loving relationship of a couple—that a number of researchers, clinicians, and theoreticians in various countries have achieved regarding what keeps a couple together and what tends to separate them. I've been influenced by my own study of personality disorders and by my work in recent years in treating couples in serious conflict, as well as by the psychoanalytic literature. The subject is so vast that I (...) have to concentrate on just one aspect of it. Ill talk about the dynamics of the love relations of the heterosexual couple. Ill try to highlight what we know by describing how I would apply this knowledge concretely in dealing with a couple, hoping that the general theory will emerge from this description. It's an experiment; I hope it goes well. (shrink)

First, let me say one or two things about the word love. Love is such a used, abused, and misused word that people should possibly stay away from it. We use it for all kinds of purposes, to contain all kinds of meanings. Most of them are completely disconnected and unimportant. The word is especially abused in the English language, where you have love and divine love and "whatever" love. You have also the phrase making love, which is not exactly (...) like love, but at least has a veiy clear-cut meaning. We should use other words for this, in order not be confused and mistaken. Today, we will look at the concept of love in international affairs and love in the university. The very combinations seem somehow impossible, or perhaps too ugly, to contemplate. Having discussed the problems with the word love, let me say a few words about how I would define it. I am not going to try to make a comprehensive definition—it's too complex and too hard. But to make a definition that has a clear meaning, clear enough to comprehend in itself, and to set borders and limits, let us say that— in essence—love is the basic experience of a feeling for the Other. In its simplest form, it is the motion of going out from myself toward the Other. That is the essence of love, and therefore any other meaning you give the word is marring it, obscuring it or making fraudulent claims. (shrink)

In this talk, which is about power and love, I have been influenced by several backgrounds that I want to acknowledge right away. Any practitioner in my field hears a lot about love and love problems, and love has been a major force in my own life. If I talk about my life truly, I always talk about the love relationships in my life. One of the influences on this paper, however, comes not from my personal life, nor from psychoanalysis (...) and what I have learned there, but from what I learned from a political scientist, the late Hans Morgenthau, who taught at Columbia for a while. He was a master theoretician of power and power relations, and occasionally he turned that lens not just on international politics or national politics, but also on everyday, human politics.In this talk, which is about power and love, I have been influenced by several backgrounds that I want to acknowledge right away. Any practitioner in my field hears a lot about love and love problems, and love has been a major force in my own life. If I talk about my life truly, I always talk about the love relationships in my life. One of the influences on this paper, however, comes not from my personal life, nor from psychoanalysis and what I have learned there, but from what I learned from a political scientist, the late Hans Morgenthau, who taught at Columbia for a while. He was a master theoretician of power and power relations, and occasionally he turned that lens not just on international politics or national politics, but also on everyday, human politics. (shrink)

Since 1999 the Center for the Study of Science and Religion has been, within the Earth Institute at Columbia University, a small novelty in the larger structures of this place, but one that has proven remarkably effective at nurturing new ideas that otherwise would not easily have found a place to be thought through, in the various communities that make up our departments, schools, institutes, and campuses. One of the most radical of these new ideas is the notion that love (...) might have a specific, significant, even central role in the operations and purposes of the university; and that in particular, love might be necessary precisely for the protection of new ideas, if that is indeed the university's core mission. (shrink)

I'm afraid I'm going to talk more today about the obstacles to love than I am about love itself. I'm going to talk about the social circumstances in which hate arises, and particularly about the issues we're facing in our country and in the world right now, on a morning when dozens more people have been killed in Iraq, and when American warplanes are routinely bombing civilian neighborhoods in a manner that would have seemed utterly impossible—shocking and barbaric—to many of (...) us, I think, just a short time ago. The newspapers are dreadful in what they don't tell us every day. The New York Times reported yesterday, "American armored vehicles roared through the villages surrounding Falluja, the western town at the heart of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, on Friday, as warplanes pounded rebel positions and ground forces ratcheted up their preparations for what appeared to be an imminent assault on the city."1 This is sheer propaganda, because already in the first line is the idea that our warplanes are pounding "rebel positions," not bombing civilian neighborhoods. We learned last week from The Lancet magazine, which published the most serious epidemiological study that has been undertaken regarding the casualties in Iraq since the war began, that there are by best estimates—though admittedly this is with high uncertainty—100,000 deaths in excess of what would have been expected based on prewar circumstances, and that the vast majority of those deaths have come through violent attacks by U.S. forces, principally bombing by our aircraft.2 and so we enact Guernica every day, and our newspapers report it as "warplanes pounding rebel positions." The Associated Press this morning said the same thing, that Marines fired a barrage of artillery at "rebel positions" inside Falluja; U.S. jets have been pounding the "rebel bastion" for days—not the city. (shrink)

In this paper, I will try to show the ways in which Nietzsche prefigures the crucial moves made recently in postmodern" American philosophy. I will confine my remarks to two of Nietzsche's texts: Twilight of the Idols and The Will To Power. The postmodern American philosophers I will examine are W.V. Quine, Nelson Goodman, Wilfred Sellars, Thomas Kuhn and Richard Rorty. The three moves I shall portray are: the move toward anti-realism or conventionalism in ontology; the move toward the demythologization (...) of the Myth of the Given or anti-foundationalism in epistemology; and the move toward the detranscendentalization of the subject or the dismissal of the mind as a sphere of inquiry. I then shall claim that Nietzsche believed such moves lead to a paralyzing nihilism and ironic skepticism unless they are supplemented with a new world view, a new "countermovement" to overcome such nihilism and skepticism. Lastly, I will suggest that postmodern American philosophy has not provided such a "countermovement," settling instead for either updated versions of scientism (Quine and Sellars), an aristocratic resurrection of pluralistic stylism (Goodman), a glib ideology of professionalism (Kuhn), or a nostalgic appeal to enlightened conversation (Rorty). Such weak candidates for a "countermovement" seem to indicate the extent to which postmodern American philosophy—similar to much of postmodern thought in the West—constitutes a dead, impotent rhetoric of a declining and decaying civilization. (shrink)

The antihistoricist climate of postmodern thought makes a reassessment of Lukács refreshing. Despite his incurable nostalgia for the highbrow achievements of classical bourgeois culture, Lukács remains the most provocative and profound Marxist thinker of this century. His major texts display the richness of the dialectical tradition, a tradition which emerged in figural biblical interpretation, was definitively articulated by Hegel and deepened by Kierkegaard and Marx.

What I want to argue is that when we talk about contemporary crisis in culture, the one way of beginning to come to terms with this is having to historicize and pluralize and contextualize the postmodernism debate. How does that relate to the vocation of the intellectual, given the challenge of the technical intelligentsia, given the challenge of the middlebrow journalist? What kind of role and function can the humanistic intellectual have in advanced capitalist society, given his or her placement (...) within the academic’s life of the professional managerial class of this particular society? (shrink)

Fredric Jameson is the most challenging American Marxist hermeneutical thinker on the present scene. His ingenious interpretations (prior to accessible translations) of major figures of the Frankfurt School, Russian formalism, French structuralism and poststructuralism as well as of Georg Lukàcs, Jean-Paul Sartre, Louis Althusser, Max Weber and Louis Marin are significant contributions to the intellectual history of twentieth century Marxist and European thought. Jameson's treatments of the development of the novel, the Surrealist movement, of Continental writers such as Honoré de (...) Balzac, Marcel Proust, Alessandro Manzoni, and Robbe Grillet, and of American writers, including Ernest Hemingway, Kenneth Burke and Ursula LeGuin, constitute powerful political readings. Furthermore, his adamantly anti-philosophical form of Marxist hermeneutics puts forward an American Aufhebung of poststructuralism which merits close scrutiny. (shrink)

In the last few years of the twentieth century, there is emerging a significant shift in the sensibilities and outlooks of critics and artists. In fact, I would go so far as to claim that a new kind of cultural worker is in the making, associated with a new politics of difference. These new forms of intellectual consciousness advance new conceptions of the vocation of critic and artist, attempting to undermine the prevailing disciplinary divisions of labor in the academy, museum, (...) mass media, and gallery networks while preserving modes of critique within the ubiquitous commodification of culture in the global village. (shrink)

Love is a moral value; it's also a great slogan. The problem, of course, is that like all slogans, it lacks nuance. Selfless love of the stranger is a moral value for sure, but is self-love a moral value? Love of the family, yes, but love of the familiar? How about love of other species, even at the expense of our own? The problem with nuance is that it bores people. The purpose of this symposium is to work against that (...) boredom, so that we and the academic world in the largest sense may begin to renew ourselves as a voice worth listening to. If love is a moral value—and I think it is—then the success of this symposium will be in finding a way for this university to discuss moral values, by transcending the current paradigm of loveless objectivity that has gone so far in making our voices irrelevant to so many people. (shrink)

"What do we mean by 'identity'?" Since this term itself can be a rather elusive, amorphous, and even vaporous one, we need to have heuristic markings for it. The second is "What is the moral content of one's identities?"-because we all have multiple positions in terms of constructing our identities; there's no such thing as having one identity or of there being one essential identity that fundamentally defines who we actually are. And third, "What are the political consequences of our (...) various identities?". (shrink)

An interpretation of how Aristotle explains the value of worldly goods within the terms of his ethical theory in the Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle claims that to live in a worthwhile and subjectively satisfying way--that is, to achieve eudaimonia--one needs such things as honor, wealth, friends, and political power. He groups these things together as the external goods, since they are all external in a spatial sense from the perspective of any given person. It is clear that people almost always attach (...) value to such things, but it is less clear why Aristotle should. My aim is to explain why Aristotle regards these things as important, and--in a more formal sense--how far his definition of eudaimonia explains their value. On Aristotle's formal theory, the external goods ought to gain value through some relation to excellent rational activity, but fleshing out the details of this relation raises problems. Chapter 2 assesses Aristotle's formal argument for the value of such goods at NE I.1099a31-b8, chapter 1 develops an account of Aristotle's method in order to support this assessment, and chapter 3 considers the kinds of explanations for the value of the external goods available to Aristotle in terms of his account of action. Chapter 4 draws on the results of the earlier chapters to assess Aristotle's position on moral luck--that is, how Aristotle regards his various categories of value as depending upon factors outside of the agent's control. My aim throughout is to consider how successfully Aristotle draws on his formal theory in order to explain the value of the external goods as well as external things in the broadest sense. (shrink)

This dissertation analyzes Socratic ethics in three Platonic dialogues: the Protagoras, the Gorgias, and the Republic. The purpose is twofold: 1) to question the standard view that what is the defining characteristic of Socratic ethics in the Protagoras and the Gorgias is its intellectualism and that the Republic represents a correction to, or deviation from, such intellectualism, and 2) to offer an alternative account of Socratic ethics in these dialogues. The alternative account this dissertation proposes is that what makes Socrates (...) a compelling ethical figure is his unique understanding of what constitutes an agent's self-interest. Moreover, the contention will be that the uniqueness of Socrates' ethical views comes into focus when we consider them vis-à-vis the views and concerns of his interlocutors, particularly the sophists. (shrink)

Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature strikes a deathblow to modern European philosophy by telling a story about the emergence, development and decline of its primary props: the correspondence theory of truth, the notion of privileged representations and the idea of a self-reflective transcendental subject. Rorty's fascinating tale—his-story—is regulated by three fundamental shifts which he delineates in detail and promotes in principle: the move toward anti-realism or conventionalism in ontology, the move toward the demythologizing of the Myth of (...) the Given or anti-foundationalism in epistemology, and the move toward detranscendentalizing the subject or dismissing the mind as a sphere of inquiry. (shrink)

Friedrich Schleiermacher is the father of modern philosophical hermeneutics. His Copernican Revolution in hermeneutics shifted the focus from understanding texts to the process of understanding itself. In this essay, I shall argue that Schleiermacher's valiant attempt to provide an acceptable hermeneutical theory to overcome the distance between speakers and listeners, readers and authors is unsuccessful owing to his acceptance of The Myth of the Given. The Myth of the Given is a philosophical doctrine held most notably by Cartesian and Kantian (...) thinkers. Its rests upon a particular view of langauge and the relation of language to consciousness and awareness. I will try to show that The Myth of the Given is untenable by sketching three contemporary attacks on it-those of Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Lastly, I will suggest implications these attacks have for the future of philosophy and theology. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide a view of the relationship between political and legal thought, in order to discuss some topics and philological aspects of the research on Guicciardini's work that I’m conducting here at the Italian Academy.

My dissertation argues that the beliefs, desires, and preferences that count as rational may change from one deliberative context to another. The argument rests on the premise that rational deliberation requires one to identify all the possibilities that are relevant to a decision problem. How does a decision maker accomplish this task? What impact does this demarcation have on the beliefs and desires that she uses to deliberate? The answers I propose suggest changes to the way we view rational agents (...) and what they know. Appealing to empirical research and normative concerns, I argue that an agent's deliberative beliefs, desires, and preferences are "constructed'' on a case to case basis and are distinct from the agent's stable set of background attitudes. For deliberative judgments depend upon the ways one specifies what is relevant for a decision problem and this may change from one context to the next. Upon articulating a suitable context-sensitive view of rational decision making, I develop accounts of warranted assertion, rational full belief and knowledge that are similarly context-sensitive. These views criticize simple constitutive norms of assertion, like the knowledge norm, and propose a way to connect degrees of belief and full belief. In addition, the proffered account of knowledge explains how knowledge precludes epistemic luck, as required by Gettier cases, by appealing to the way the standards of knowledge vary from one deliberative context to the next. (shrink)

This dissertation is about prejudice. In particular, it examines the theoretical and ethical questions raised by research on implicit social biases. Social biases are termed "implicit" when they are not reported, though they lie just beneath the surface of consciousness. Such biases are easy to adopt but very difficult to introspect and control. Despite this difficulty, I argue that we are personally responsible for our biases and obligated to overcome them if they can bring harm to ourselves or to others. (...) My dissertation addresses the terms of their removal. It is grounded in a comprehensive examination of empirical research and, as such, is a contribution to social psychology. Although implicit social biases significantly influence our judgment and action, they are not reducible to beliefs or desires. Rather, they constitute a class of their own. Understanding their particular character is vital to determining how to replace them with more preferable habits of mind. I argue for a model of interpersonal fluency, a kind of ethical expertise that requires transforming our underlying dispositions of thought, feeling, and action. (shrink)

My dissertation offers a critique of the concept of authenticity that Martin Heidegger develops in Being and Time. The concept of authenticity has been critiqued for many reasons--mainly for political, moral, and ideological reasons. My dissertation develops, on the other hand, a conceptual critique: I argue that the concept of authenticity is a paradoxical concept. I argue, more precisely, that it is paradoxical, as the concept of authenticity proposes, for a person to confront, transparently and determinedly, his or her own (...) death, while, at the same time, being able to be an individual--understanding him or herself as an individual, and making autonomous choices. In offering this critique, I provide interpretations of some of the basic concepts in Being and Time that break from conventional interpretations or are new. For example, I interpret the concept of inauthenticity from the perspective of the psychoanalytic idea of mania. Ultimately, however, I provide philosophical, or conceptual reasons to resist a concept with clearly problematic moral and political implications. (shrink)

The aim of this dissertation is to provide an analysis of central concepts in philosophy of science from the perspective of current molecular and developmental research. Each chapter explores the ways in which particular phenomena or discoveries in molecular biology influences our philosophical understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge. The introductory prologue draws some general connections between the various threads, which revolve around two central themes: causation and explanation. Chapter Two identifies a particular type of causal relation which is (...) widespread across the sciences, but cannot be straightforwardly accommodated by extant accounts of causation and causal explanation. Chapter Three explores how the form of redundant causality identified in the previous chapter plays an important role in causal explanation, by making the effect stable and robust. Chapter Four offers a novel perspective on the debate over biological reductionism by distinguishing between different paradigms of molecular explanation. Chapter Five provides a philosophical analysis of the so-called "Developmental Synthesis" of evolutionary and developmental biology, and suggests a general account of scientific unification grounded in the notion of explanatory relevance. Chapter Six offers an account of dispositional properties inspired by mechanisms of gene regulation, according to which dispositions are not properties of entities, but properties that describe the behavior of abstract idealized models. Finally, Chapter Seven scrutinizes the concept of the molecular ecosystem, a metaphor frequently employed by biologists to describe cellular interactions, but seldom articulated in detail. (shrink)

This article describes two case studies: one is from a graduate course in social work practice evaluation taught by the second author; the other is from an undergraduate political science course in media and politics taught by the first author. These cases describe the way blogs, created by students and the professors, facilitate communications within the class, reduce paperwork for the professors, and let students practice their 'public voices.' While the cases are specific to two courses-Masters-level social work and undergraduate (...) political science-the concepts are easily transferred to others. The article begins with a history and literature review of blogs used pedagogically; next, the reader is walked through the creation of a blog using currently popular online tools; the next two sections are devoted to the two cases; and the final section attempts to draw some generalizations about using blogs in the classroom. (shrink)

The author explains how the creation of a Web-based version of her book allowed her to make full use of parerga as a way to interrogate and dissent from the primary text, following in a philosophical tradition of the parergon that began in the 18th century with Nikolaos Mavrokordatos' Philotheou Parerga and has been further developed by Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Jacques Derrida, among others.

My dissertation investigates teachers' thinking within that "oscillating place of difference" that is the classroom. I propose that teachers think and see differently in the classroom because they have practiced, like travelers, the dynamic thinking which makes them open to novelty, attentive to difference, reflective wayfarers on the paths of the world. I offer a threefold articulation of teaching into thinking, traveling and philosophizing . My guiding figure is that of teacher as traveler. I focus on the teacher's way of (...) seeing the familiar and the unfamiliar in the classroom. Reliance on teaching routines is considered as a sign of the need for the teacher to feel at home in the classroom, and as a response to the inherent uncertainty of the educational experience. Dewey's conception of reflective thinking is put at work to explain teachers thinking in the classroom: reflection is a twofold movement of the mind that at first focuses on the given particular of the experience, and that also expands and opens up the given to new possible interpretations. The third chapter proposes to historicize the metaphor of teacher as traveler by considering Graeco-Roman thinking about travel and movement in relation to knowledge and wisdom. I consider the thesis that traveling is conducive to learning and wisdom. Herodotus explicitly connects travel to knowledge. The presence of itinerant teachers in Ancient Greece seems to reinforce this connection, as does the mythological representation of the ideal teacher as the centaur Chiron. I then posit an antithetical idea: that traveling be counterproductive because in travel the person is exposed to distraction, loss of focus, fragmentation. This antithesis is endorsed by Seneca's Epistles to Lucilius. The dissertation moves to a re-examination of the figure of teacher as traveler in relation to the idea of home. The traveler reaches out and explores novelty and alterity in a meaning-making relation to where she is from. Similarly, the teacher thinks in the classroom by being attentive to newness and difference while keeping in mind the home or familiar: her routines, her curriculum, her tradition Montaigne's humanistic philosophizing is considered in its constitutive dynamism. The way to the knowledge of home-- and the wisdom deriving from it-- passes through the encounter with the Other, be it the indigenous inhabitant of the new world, or the neighboring country, or a different language. Like a traveler, a teacher retains her freedom to move and to chose the direction to her steps, and carries the necessary provisions and supplies: enough to get around, but not too many to weigh her down. The teacher as traveler can read the world of experience, can read her discipline, and can read her students by paying attention and knowing their pace. The encounters that are at the heart of the educational experience, between teachers, students, works and things of the world, all concur to exercise the mind of a traveler: a mind that finds itself " at home" in the world. (shrink)

Orienting around Plato's allegory of the cave, this dissertation looks back to earlier mythological and historical roots and forward to the spatial aesthetics of "occupation" and "No Child Left Behind," to trace the enduring connection between philosophies and practices of education and sacrificial journeys of descent and emergence. This thematic work of repetition, birth and death, is not so much knowable as it is the privileged way in which we enact and recognize knowing itself. Education, as a spatial practice and (...) a narrative rehearsal, is a way of situating ourselves and organizing our places. Urban Education, rather than being a beleaguered branch of Education proper, cleaves to the very project of Education, emerging as it does out of cities. This is an examination of the philosophical, architectural, urban, aesthetic, and embodied conditions and strategies by which we learn to remember and forget ourselves. (shrink)

This study examines the educational benefits of what the ancients called otium: the time and freedom from overt action that allows people to think about the world and their reasons for being. While leisure is not a new concept in philosophy of education, it is one to which not enough people pay attention. In the very few instances in which scholars have recently argued that leisure should make its way into our contemporary conversations on education, the argument, in my view, (...) falls short due to the fact that the concept of leisure is still not well understood. This study seeks to demonstrate and illustrate the value of the ancient concept of leisure (otium) in an effort to show its significance for education today. It begins by offering a portrait of leisure, anchoring the discussion in the figure of Socrates, especially in Plato's Phaedo. This discussion is further expanded by Seneca's account of leisure in On the Shortness of Life. An extension of this portraiture follows by making direct liaisons with education, as the themes of the art of living and culture emerge. A full consideration of leisure in education continues by turning to the concepts of philosophy and contemplation. An examination of Yves R. Simon's definition of teaching as an "overflow of contemplation" provides a final consideration that leads to conclude that otium, as the ancient ideal of leisure, will benefit students, teachers, and society in general, by allowing us to recover a fundamental experience of human flourishing that finds its source in our time for education. (shrink)

Judgments of symmetry lay at the heart of the classical theory of probability. It was by direct appeal to the symmetries exhibited by the processes underlying simple games of chance that the earliest theorists of probability were able to justify the initial assumptions of equiprobability which allowed them to compute the probabilities of more complex events using combinatorial methods, i.e., by simply counting cases. Nevertheless, in spite of the role that symmetry played in the earliest writings on the subject, in (...) light of the fact it is only in highly contrived settings that a direct appeal to symmetries can suffice to determine the probabilities of events, many philosophers have been led to conclude that the concept of symmetry itself has, at best, a limited role to play in a general theory of probability. In this essay, I argue that this view of the matter is mistaken, and that judgments of symmetry, in fact, have an indispensible role to play in all probabilistic reasoning. In chapter 1, I provide a detailed account of symmetry-based reasoning and argue against the view that the judgments of relevance on which such reasoning is based must be construed in subjective terms if symmetry-based reasoning is to be applied to deterministic processes. In chapter 2, I argue that the two most plausible proposals for how to avoid an appeal to symmetry in the assignment of probabilities (viz., those which are based on a priori principles of epistemic conservatism or the observed frequencies of events) must themselves rely on implicit assumptions of symmetry if they are to defend themselves against the charges of incoherency and arbitrariness. In chapter 3, I consider a decision-theoretic example of symmetry-based reasoning, in which the appeal to symmetry arises in the context of an agent's choice of a deliberative methodology. In this context, the principle of symmetry amounts to the requirement that the agent avoid adopting a biased deliberative methodology, i.e., one which treats two equally legitimate sources of information differently. In the specific context of the exchange paradox, I propose an account of how biased information is to be handled, which, despite suffering from some important defects, does, I believe, capture some of our general intuitions about how a rational agent ought to adjust his expectations to correct for the effects of bias. (shrink)

This essay explores elements of the ethical and political thought of William James (1842-1910) in the last two decades of his life. It examines James' writings and political activities, especially his involvement in the anti-imperialist movement against the American occupation of the Philippines, in the context of the cultural and social upheaval of turn-of-the-century America. Rather than attempting to place James in a specific ideological category, a task that has bedeviled historians for the last century, this essay provides a new (...) framework for examining James' ethics and politics. James approached the social challenges of the 1890s and 1900s through a quest for what I call "moral strenuousness," an ethical perspective that denied philosophical determinism and rejected an optimistic faith in cultural progress. James defined this ideal against both the commercialized culture he saw as dominating American life and the imperialistic and militaristic conceptions of the "strenuous life" advanced by Theodore Roosevelt and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. James' pursuit of an ideal of moral strenuousness further intersected with his commitment to pluralism, on a metaphysical as well as a social or cultural level. This essay illustrates how the interactions between these two ethical priorities shaped William James' thought and his engagement in public affairs from 1891 to 1910. (shrink)

In a democracy, every individual is thought to have the potential to achieve what Matthew Arnold considers the supreme characteristic of intellectual freedom, "the intellectual maturity of man himself; the tendency to observe facts with a critical spirit; to search for their law, not to wander among them at random; to judge by the rule of reason, not by the impulse of prejudice or caprice" (The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, Vol. 1, p. 21). But Arnold finds a critical (...) opposition between man's instinctive efforts to develop "fully and freely" and the economic forces of the industrial culture of modern democracies, consumed with work and wealth accumulation. He maintains that in the aesthetic experience of literature we behold the being we are capable of. First in his poetry, and later in his critical prose, Arnold confronts the malaise of modernity and the spiritual fragmentation at the heart of contemporary literature. The hope for his project for education is that it can free us to find new critical consciousness and recover the moral authority of aesthetic judgment. In this study I try to explicate Arnold's conviction that collapsing the duality of literature and science expands our knowledge of the world and that cultivating humanity through the experience of ideas in literature affirms the integrity of the individual and reconciles his or her relation to nature and the human community. The aim of this work is twofold. First it recasts Arnold's uncertain legacy among philosophers of education in the perspective of philosophy as a way of life. I hope it also invites further inquiry into his synthesis of intellect and imagination in the aesthetic phenomenon and its capacity to critique conditions of existence. (shrink)

The accelerating pace of globalization places an imperative on formal schooling to figure out how to educate students for the rapidly changing world that today reaches even into the smallest towns and regions of our shared globe. This project attempts to respond to that imperative by examining the moral component of schooling, and specifically, what might be the best way to provide moral education. I begin from a premise that prevalent existing moral education constructs fall short of this task because (...) they consist of either pre-determined morals that students are expected to learn and adopt or they teach about morality systems without analyzing their merits, preventing the development of the important skill of judgment. In a world of significantly different cultures and ways of living, such forms of moral education are simply incapable of providing the kind of education in morality that can withstand and accommodate the diversity that exists and the new forms of life that are yet to come. Cosmopolitan education, based in cosmopolitan philosophy, is posited as a possible answer to this question. Beginning with cosmopolitanism's grounding in the principle of shared humanity I show how cosmopolitan education might offer a more mutually beneficial response to evolving global conditions. This project uses conceptual analysis to examine the concepts of an education in morality and Hannah Arendt's work on natality, thinking, action, and the public space of politics to show that an education in morality is public and political. As a result, cosmopolitan education can use the processes found in Thomas Nagel's epistemological restraint, Jürgen Habermas's discourse ethics, and Chantal Mouffe's agonistic pluralism to help students acquire a disposition that both promotes active and flexible engagement in moral inquiry, as well as in other educational experiences, and embraces plurality and diversity by recognizing the positive contribution that others can make in one's life. Shared humanity emerges as a collective possession of what Arendt calls 'the human condition,' which is essentially a collection of the human conditions of plurality, natality, action, and one that I add, the condition of uncertainty. Through a cosmopolitan lens, these conditions frame the way political processes can be utilized in an education in morality to encourage the development of a disposition that I call 'moral agonism,' which equips students to inquire into and participate in the development of morality in the face of constantly evolving and uncertain conditions in the world. (shrink)

Kant once said that the "whole field of philosophy" is guided by the fundamental question, "What is the human being?" Kant himself, and even more so his Idealist successors, addressed this question by offering transcendental theories of human subjectivity. My dissertation explores the philosophical development of the Kantian and post-Kantian theories of subjectivity and their relationship to the often neglected theory of selfhood in Heidegger's Being and Time. After examining the issues in Kant's theory which were decisive motivating factors for (...) the post-Kantian Idealists--namely the metaphysical status of the apperceptive I and the unity of reason--I explore Fichte's metaphysics of subjectivity and his attempt to demonstrate the unity and self-sufficiency of reason. Finally, I argue that the early Heidegger's theory of finite human existence is best understood as an extension of and corrective to the classical Idealist tradition. I attempt to cash out two of Heidegger's claims: (1) that his own "fundamental ontology" is pre-figured by Kant's theory of subjectivity, and (2) that the crucial insights in his reading of Kant share much with the Idealists but also "move in the opposite direction" from them. I argue that Heidegger's theory of selfhood gives an account of the sui generis features of human existence which unifies our theoretical and practical activities while avoiding the stronger Idealist claims regarding the self-sufficiency and self-legitimacy of reason. (shrink)

Central to most forms of liberal social and political philosophy is the idea of the free and equal, self-governing person. And yet we do not come into the world as autonomous and accountable individuals; at best, this is the outcome of a long process of development and education which (in many societies) now extends throughout the first quarter of the average life. During this period of childhood, moreover, we are governed, not by ourselves, but by others. This dissertation examines the (...) paradoxical position of children in liberal theory, who (as Locke put it) though not born in a state of freedom and equality, are born to it. In particular, the dissertation's three parts examine three interrelated questions. First, what is the basis of the paternalistic authority that is exercised over children? Second, what is the moral basis of the special rights of parents over particular children? And third, when, if ever, are inequalities of education and opportunity justified, when these emerge from decentralized authority over children in families and local communities? Part I: On what grounds do we deny children the personal freedom we accord to adults? The standard liberal view is that we are "born free as we are born rational" (Locke). That is, we are only born with the potential for freedom and rationality. Others ought to respect our liberty once we have, with age, become sufficiently reasonable to govern ourselves. On this view, a person's age matters only insofar as it is correlated with reason. I, on the contrary, argue that we should recognize age to have independent moral significance. This is because the educational paternalism at the beginning of a life does not impede our ability to carry out our life plans in the same way as would similar interference in the middle of a life. This explains why it is appropriate for parents and educators to aspire to more than fostering the minimal competence necessary for just getting by in life. Part II: What is the moral basis and extent of parental rights? Typically, liberals assume that governmental authority is only justified insofar as it serves the interests of the governed. Is parental authority the same, or is it partly justified by the interests of the "governors" as well (e.g., the interest parents have in passing on their values to another generation)? While many contemporary philosophers have followed Locke in describing parental authority as a fiduciary power, I suggest that Hegel provides a richer account in two respects. First, because Hegel has a more nuanced account of the differences between natural right, personal morality, and social ethics, he has the resources for a more sophisticated philosophy of moral education than Locke. From this we can derive a more detailed account of parental duties, as well as see why, without the help of schools, individual families are not generally well-suited to educate children for the modern world. Second, Hegel's conceptions of love and of social roles help illuminate the interests that adults have in rearing their children. Part III: When, if ever, are inequalities in the provision of education justified? While parents have traditionally been responsible for providing for their children's education, this role has increasingly been taken on by the state. In Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court held that public education must be made available "on equal terms" to all. But how is this to be understood? Does it require that the state spend roughly the same amount on educating every child? Or does it require that the state attempt to compensate children who have fewer educational advantages in the home to even out life chances? Or should educational equality be understood in a more modest way: an equal opportunity for a decent or adequate education? I claim that, assuming a rich and multi-faceted conception of adequate outcomes, educational inequalities above the adequacy threshold that emerge from differences in native ability or family background are not necessarily unjust. However, a norm of equal treatment establishes a defeasible presumption of resource equality in the public school system, once the adequacy threshold is met. I allow that inequalities between local communities may be justifiable if communities have chosen to tax themselves at different rates, but not if the school-finance system permits some communities to draw on significantly larger revenue bases than others. (shrink)

Zines and blogs written by the young women in this study are an important form of inquiry that, if considered by educators, may push us to critically question discourses of young womanhood, questions of subjectivity, and the way we engage with texts. I use readings of Antigone to shape a reading of this discourse. I argue following Judith Butler (2000), that her act speaks to the loss of her particular brother, as well as the ungrievable losses resultant from her tragic (...) family life. Her story invites us to question boundaries of public and private, and suggests a space between them that was inaccessible to Antigone. Similarly, young women who publicly articulate their stories in zines and blogs access a hybrid space, between public and private, where they conduct important subjectivity work. Through hermeneutic readings of these texts, I explore the ways in which their authors articulate the importance of hybrid spaces between public and private as where they can do this work. Like Antigone, whose action challenges binaries, young women who posit their personal stories in public reflect on the past in a way that suggests melancholia, or an unwillingness to part with the past completely as they moves toward the future. I conclude by arguing that when academics and educators approach these texts as hermeneutic readers, they engage in a critical process of understanding with these young women that invites consideration of new feminism articulated in these works. (shrink)

This dissertation argues for a teleological theory of representations on the grounds that it provides a better account of explanation in psychology and cognitive science than its main competitor, non-teleological functionalism. Grounds for evaluating competing models of explanation are presented and several recent accounts of psychological explanation are analyzed and evaluated. An inclusive model, which incorporates both teleological and non-teleological features, is developed.

We establish that, due to certain quantum indeterminacies, there must be foundational colours that do not reliably cause any particular experience. This report functions as an appendix to Morrison's "Colour in a Physical World.".