In this article, I situate and reconstruct Sartre's rejections of subjective and objective idealism in order both to sketch his realism-all-the-way-down and to contrast it with Richard Rorty's pragmatic, anti-essentialist contextualism. The contrast with Rorty is important because his contextualism is one of the most prominent approaches within the relatively recent proliferation of antiessentialist views mobilized under the banners of pragmatism, hermeneutics, postmodernism, constructivism, etc. Although Rorty's contextualism is both compelling and comparable to Sartre's realism-all-the-way-down, I shall argue that the (...) latter does not throw out the baby that the former throws out with the bathwater. Realism-all-the-way-down is not compelled to throw out realism along with subjective and objective idealism, whereas contextualism must throw out the whole lot. If compelling intuitions recommend realism to us, and if Rorty's rejection of realism is unconvincing, there are good reasons to prefer Sartre's realism-all-the-way-down. (shrink)

Discussing authorial power, landscape metaphor and the notions of community and sense of place, this explores the ways in which spatial and cultural analysis have found much common ground in making sense of ourselves and the landscape we inhabit.

In this article, I situate and reconstruct Sartre's rejections of subjective and objective idealism in order both to sketch his realism-all-the-way-down and to contrast it with Richard Rorty's pragmatic, anti-essentialist contextualism. The contrast with Rorty is important because his contextualism is one of the most prominent approaches within the relatively recent proliferation of antiessentialist views mobilized under the banners of pragmatism, hermeneutics, postmodernism, constructivism, etc. Although Rorty's contextualism is both compelling and comparable to Sartre's realism-all-the-way-down, I shall argue that the (...) latter does not throw out the baby that the former throws out with the bathwater. Realism-all-the-way-down is not compelled to throw out realism along with subjective and objective idealism, whereas contextualism must throw out the whole lot. If compelling intuitions recommend realism to us, and if Rorty's rejection of realism is unconvincing, there are good reasons to prefer Sartre's realism-all-the-way-down. (shrink)

The need for urgent, structural transformations to dominant food systems is increasingly recognized in research and policy. The direction these transformations take is in great part influenced by how the problem is framed and what future pathways become seen as plausible and desirable. Scientific knowledge and the organizations producing it hold considerable authority in suggesting what alternatives are or are not worth pursuing, ultimately shaping frames and in turn being shaped by them. This paper examines Brazil’s federal Agricultural Research Corporation (...) (Embrapa), a major contributor to technological advances that made Brazil into an agricultural powerhouse. We examine the ways in which Embrapa’s leadership has framed sustainable agriculture in its public communication and the wider implications for food systems transformation. Drawing from Embrapa news articles in the period 2015–2020, we identify four interrelated frames forming Embrapa’s prevalent position on sustainability. Our results show that while Embrapa promotes practices based on alternative approaches such as agroecology, its deeper framing often reflects the core assumptions driving dominant industrial food systems. This framing reinforces underlying logics of control, efficiency, and competition aligned with the productivist paradigm and excludes divergent perspectives that exist within the organization. (shrink)

To generate coherent behaviour, the brain needs to attend selectively to the many objects that are present in the environment, but this poses several questions. How does the brain know which objects 'belong together'? How does the information from different senses get combined? How does this help to plan and carry out actions? The subject of attentional mechanisms has a long history in cognitive psychology, as it is the key to making sense of the visual world. However, new developments in (...) cognitive neuroscience, and greater understanding of how attention and action are integrated, have transformed the field. This book is the first to bring together leading researchers to discuss the convergence of experimental findings in the following areas: Visual selective attention Attention and perceptual integration Spatial representation and attention Visual attention and action Control of attention Attention, Space, and Action provides a unique combination of perspectives that will appeal to students and researchers from psychology, neuropsychology, neurophysiology, and neuroanatomy. (shrink)

Food systems transformations require coherent policies and improved understandings of the drivers and institutional dynamics that shape (un)sustainable food systems outcomes. In this paper, we introduce the Chilean National Organic Agriculture Law as a case of a policy process seeking to institutionalize a recognized pathway towards more sustainable food systems. Drawing from institutional theory we make visible multiple, and at times competing, logics (i.e., values, assumptions and practices) of different actors implicated in organic agriculture in Chile. More specifically, our findings (...) identify five main institutional transformative logics underpinning the interests and actions of organic actors. However, we find that the Law was not motivated by these logics and did not advance them. Rather, the Law was designed to support a market niche targeted to elite consumers and to reinforce agricultural exports. As a result, the Law constrains rather than enables the practice of organic agriculture and access to organic food by consumers, especially at the domestic level. We note that attention to institutional logics in the analysis of food systems, and specifically food system transformation, is relevant to more comprehensive assessments of the transformational potential of food systems policies. We conclude that there is a need to further consider and make visible the way in which different drivers (i.e., laws) are constituted through and by diverse, and often competing, institutional logics. (shrink)

In this essay I look at The Birth of Tragedy in order to explore two related issues. First, beginning with Nietzsche’s own later critical look back at the book, I argue that in lamenting both the influence of Schopenhauer, and the inclusion of an extended discussion of contemporary German culture, Nietzsche underplayed the interdependence of these elements and his analysis of tragedy and its significance in the book. Second, I argue that to understand Nietzsche's Schopenhauerian concept of tragedy we may (...) begin from the perspective of the term's common usage, attending to phenomena often labelled tragic, and glimpsing what holds sway just beneath their surfaces. Ultimately, although Nietzsche's expressed understanding of tragedy in these early years drew heavily on Schopenhauerian pessimism, it nevertheless exceeded that influence. (shrink)

In this essay I look at The Birth of Tragedy in order to explore two related issues. First, beginning with Nietzsche’s own later critical look back at the book, I argue that in lamenting both the influence of Schopenhauer, and the inclusion of an extended discussion of contemporary German culture, Nietzsche underplayed the interdependence of these elements and his analysis of tragedy and its significance in the book. Second, I argue that to understand Nietzsche's Schopenhauerian concept of tragedy we may (...) begin from the perspective of the term's common usage, attending to phenomena often labelled tragic, and glimpsing what holds sway just beneath their surfaces. Ultimately, although Nietzsche's expressed understanding of tragedy in these early years drew heavily on Schopenhauerian pessimism, it nevertheless exceeded that influence. (shrink)

The practice of personal autonomy is a dynamic event that consists of a vital interplay between the self, socio-cultural reality, meaning, and being epistemically responsible. Autonomy is not static, something that we simply possess by virtue of a status as 'rational beings'. Therefore, in this dissertation, I examine the traditional notion of autonomy as it has been developed by Kant and subsequently influenced the current debate between 'liberals' and 'communitarians'. Primarily from the standpoint of the critiques developed by Charles Taylor, (...) I argue that the fundamental disagreement between these two camps is over the concept of the self. While this landscape stands divided, some middle ground can be found in the work of Joseph Raz, who postulated the need for a combination of individual abilities and an autonomy-supporting environment as necessary conditions for practicing personal autonomy. His characterization of 'personal autonomy', distinct from Kantian autonomy, forms the underlying paradigm for this work. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present Sartre’s early philosophical anthropology and later existential Marxism as part of the development of a pure Critical Theory that, with respect to its content and with respect to the context of its production, informs a trajectory that runs through the events of May ’68. Both Sartre’s pure Critical Theory and the events of May ’68 share deep commitments to possibility, agency, and ethics. A different trajectory that runs through May ’68 is the (...) post-humanism of Foucault, which both contrasts directly with Sartrean Critical Theory, and traces useful boundaries around it and its application. In the twenty-first century, significant elements of a Critical Theory that remains committed to possibility, agency, and ethics, but that pays heed to Foucauldian boundaries, may be seen in the contestation of mainstream politics that at the same time stands on its own as an activism best exemplified by the alternative press. The contestation of propaganda is possible, and its completion requires that agents pit subjects against subjection as the way to a better future. (shrink)

The chapters in is collection examine various aspects of JJ Rousseau's work as it relates to the concept of desire.