Grau reconsiders the relationship between "logos" and "mythos" as a precondition to opening theological hermeneutics to discourse from other cultures and genres, other modes of telling and retelling.

Along with Husserl's Ideas and Heidegger's Being and Time, Being Given is one of the classic works of phenomenology in the twentieth century. Through readings of Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida, and twentieth-century French phenomenology (e.g., Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, and Henry), it ventures a bold and decisive reappraisal of phenomenology and its possibilities. Its author's most original work to date, the book pushes phenomenology to its limits in an attempt to redefine and recover the phenomenological ideal, which the author argues has never (...) been realized in any of the historical phenomenologies. Against Husserl's reduction to consciousness and Heidegger's reduction to Dasein, the author proposes a third reduction to givenness, wherein phenomena appear unconditionally and show themselves from themselves at their own initiative. Being Given is the clearest, most systematic response to questions that have occupied its author for the better part of two decades. The book articulates a powerful set of concepts that should provoke new research in philosophy, religion, and art, as well as at the intersection of these disciplines. Some of the significant issues it treats include the phenomenological definition of the phenomenon, the redefinition of the gift in terms not of economy but of givenness, the nature of saturated phenomena, and the question “Who comes after the subject?” Throughout his consideration of these issues, the author carefully notes their significance for the increasingly popular fields of religious studies and philosophy of religion. Being Given is therefore indispensable reading for anyone interested in the question of the relation between the phenomenological and the theological in Marion and emergent French phenomenology. (shrink)

Marked sharply by its time and place (Paris in the 1970s), this early theological text by Jean-Luc Marion nevertheless maintains a strikingly deep resonance with his most recent, groundbreaking, and ever more widely discussed phenomenology. And while Marion will want to insist on a clear distinction between the theological and phenomenological projects, to read each in light of the other can prove illuminating for both the theological and the philosophical reader - and perhaps above all for the reader (...) who wants to read in both directions at once, the reader concerned with those points of interplay and undecidability where theology and philosophy inform, provoke, and challenge one another in endlessly complex ways." "In both his theological and his phenomenological projects Marion's central effort to free the absolute or unconditional (be it theology's God or phenomenology's phenomenon) from the various limits and preconditions of human thought and language will imply a thoroughgoing critique of all metaphysics, and above all of the modern metaphysics centered on the active, spontaneous subject who occupies modern philosophy from Descartes through Hegel and Nietzsche. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Love offers a wide array of original essays on the nature and value of love. The editors, Christopher Grau and Aaron Smuts, have assembled an esteemed group of thinkers, including both established scholars and younger voices. The volume contains thirty-three essays addressing both issues about love as well as key philosophers who have contributed to the philosophy of love, such as Plato, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, and Murdoch. The topics range from central issues about the (...) nature and variety of love, the possibility of its rational justification, and whether it is an emotion, to the significance of love for law, economics, morality, and free will. The volume also contains an introduction to the subject as well as essays on love’s relation to jealousy, biotechnology, religion, knowledge, and several other topics. This wide-ranging handbook will be a key resource for specialists working on the philosophy of love, and a helpful guide for those looking to learn more about the area. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Love offers a wide array of original essays on the nature and value of love. The editors, Christopher Grau and Aaron Smuts, have assembled an esteemed group of thinkers, including both established scholars and younger voices. The volume contains thirty-three essays addressing both issues about love as well as key philosophers who have contributed to the philosophy of love, such as Plato, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, and Murdoch. The topics range from central issues about (...) the nature and variety of love, the possibility of its rational justification, and whether it is an emotion, to the significance of love for law, economics, morality, and free will. The volume also contains an introduction to the subject as well as essays on love’s relation to jealousy, biotechnology, religion, knowledge, and several other topics. This wide-ranging handbook will be a key resource for specialists working on the philosophy of love, and a helpful guide for those looking to learn more about the area. (shrink)

Cet article vise à comprendre la théorie stoïcienne de la deixis afin d’expliquer l’importance accordée par les stoïciens aux pronoms démonstratifs et aux énoncés qu’ils composent, c’est-à-dire les propositions dites définitives. Nous montrons que ces propositions sont privilégiées pour des raisons à la fois ontologiques et épistémologiques en raison des propriétés sémantiques de leur sujet. Elles sont privilégiées d’un point de vue ontologique parce que la deixis grâce à laquelle leur sujet fait référence au réel crée une relation privilégiée à (...) la matière, la catégorie ontologique stoïcienne fondamentale. De plus, ces sujets requièrent que leur référent existe et soit présent et saisissable. Ces énoncés sont d’autre part privilégiés d’un point de vue épistémologique parce qu’ils sont fondamentaux dans l’acquisition de la connaissance. Nous suggérons enfin que tous les énoncés apparemment définis ne le sont pas en effet, et considérons quand et sous quelles conditions une référence déictique est réussie. (shrink)

In the third book in the trilogy that includes Reduction and Givenness and Being Given. Marion renews his argument for a phenomenology of givenness, with penetrating analyses of the phenomena of event, idol, flesh, and icon. Turning explicitly to hermeneutical dimensions of the debate, Marion masterfully draws together issues emerging from his close reading of Descartes and Pascal, Husserl and Heidegger, Levinas and Henry. Concluding with a revised version of his response to Derrida, In the Name: How to (...) Avoid Speaking of It, Marion powerfully re-articulates the theological possibilities of phenomenology. (shrink)

This pioneering book demonstrates the crucial importance of Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics to his philosophy as a whole. Marion traces the development of Wittgenstein's thinking in the context of the mathematical and philosophical work of the times, to make coherent sense of ideas that have too often been misunderstood because they have been presented in a disjointed and incomplete way. In particular, he illuminates the work of the neglected 'transitional period' between the Tractatus and the Investigations.

Ecosystem management is an integrative, systems-based approach developed in response to the inadequacy of land management strategies centered on single species or resources such as timber. Contemporary ecosystem management acknowledges the dynamism of natural systems, need for ongoing adaptive learning, and importance of citizen engagement, especially in managing public lands. However, ecosystem management faces both conceptual and ethical challenges. Core concepts—such as ecosystem, stability, health, and resilience—remain difficult to define and operationalize. In addition, rapid directional changes in ecological systems have (...) destabilized the use of historical baselines for management. One response to this challenge is to seek new moorings in an “ecosystem services” approach, focused on the role of ecological systems in supporting human interests and needs. Although ecosystem management began as a way to broaden beyond a focus on maximizing yields of particular resources, ecosystem services approaches may—ironically—reintroduce reductionistic tendencies that thwart this original goal. (shrink)

The possible and revelation -- The saturated phenomenon -- Metaphysics and phenomenology: a relief for theology -- "Christian philosophy": hermeneutic or heuristic? -- Sketch of a phenomenological concept of the gift -- What cannot be said: Apophasis and the discourse of love -- The banality of saturation -- Faith and reason.

Jean-Luc Marion advances a controversial argument for a God free of all categories of Being. Taking a characteristically postmodern stance, Marion challenges a fundamental premise of both metaphysics and neo-Thomist theology: that God, before all else, must be. Rather, he locates a "God without Being" in the realm of agape, of Christian charity or love. This volume, the first translation into English of the work of this leading Catholic philosopher, offers a contemporary perspective on the nature of God. (...) "An immensely thoughtful book. . . . It promises a rich harvest. Marion's highly original treatment of the idol and the icon, the Eucharist, boredom and vanity, conversion and prayer takes theological and philosophical discussions to a new level."--Norman Wirzba, Christian Century. (shrink)

While humanists have pondered the subject of love to the point of obsessiveness, philosophers have steadfastly ignored it. One might wonder whether the discipline of philosophy even recognizes love. The word philosophy means “love of wisdom,” but the absence of love from philosophical discourse is curiously glaring. So where did the love go? In The Erotic Phenomenon, Jean-Luc Marion asks this fundamental question of philosophy, while reviving inquiry into the concept of love itself. Marion begins his profound and (...) personal book with a critique of Descartes’ equation of the ego’s ability to doubt with the certainty that one exists—“I think, therefore I am”—arguing that this is worse than vain. We encounter being, he says, when we first experience love: I am loved, therefore I am; and this love is the reason I care whether I exist or not. This philosophical base allows Marion to probe several manifestations of love and its variations, including carnal excitement, self-hate, lying and perversion, fidelity, the generation of children, and the love of God. Throughout, Marion stresses that all erotic phenomena, including sentimentality, pornography, and even boasts about one’s sexual conquests, stem not from the ego as popularly understood but instead from love. A thoroughly enlightening and captivating philosophical investigation of a strangely neglected subject, The Erotic Phenomenon is certain to initiate feverish new dialogue about the philosophical meanings of that most desirable and mysterious of all concepts—love. (shrink)

In seven essays that draw from metaphysics, phenomenology, literature, Christological theology, and Biblical exegesis,Marion sketches several prolegomena to a future fuller thinking and saying of love’s paradoxical reasons, exploring evil, freedom, bedazzlement, and the loving gaze; crisis, absence, and knowing.

Metaphysicians who are aware of modern physics usually follow Putnam (1967) in arguing that Special Theory of Relativity is incompatible with the view that what exists is only what exists now or presently. Partisans of presentism (the motto ‘only present things exist’) had very difficult times since, and no presentist theory of time seems to have been able to satisfactorily counter the objection raised from Special Relativity. One of the strategies offered to the presentist consists in relativizing existence to inertial (...) frames. This unfashionable strategy has been accused of counterfeiting, since the meaning of the concept of existence would be incompatible with its relativization. Therefore, existence could only be relativistically invariant. In this paper, I shall examine whether such an accusation hits its target, and I will do this by examining whether the different criteria of existence that have been suggested by the Philosophical Tradition from Plato onwards imply that existence cannot be relativized. (shrink)

This book examines the outlook for Latin American entrepreneurs in the new global environment. Using case studies from across the region, the book highlights liberalization measures nations are adopting to facilitate small and medium size enterprise (SME) creation and growth, and existing barriers that are threatening SME sector gains.

Grau and Pury (Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 5, 155–168, 2014) reported that people’s views about love are related to their views about reference. This surprising effect was however not replicated in Cova et al.’s (in press) replication study. In this article, we show that the replication failure is probably due to the replication’s low power and that a metaanalytic reanalysis of the result in Cova et al. suggests that the effect reported in Grau and Pury is real. (...) We then report a large, highly powered replication that successfully replicates Grau and Pury 2014. This successful replication is a case study in the challenges involved in replicating scientific work, and our article contributes to the discussion of these challenges. (shrink)

John Cook Wilson (1849–1915) was Wykeham Professor of Logic at New College, Oxford and the founder of ‘Oxford Realism’, a philosophical movement that flourished at Oxford during the first decades of the 20th century. Although trained as a classicist and a mathematician, his most important contribution was to the theory of knowledge, where he argued that knowledge is factive and not definable in terms of belief, and he criticized ‘hybrid’ and ‘externalist’ accounts. He also argued for direct realism in perception, (...) criticizing both empiricism and idealism, and argued for a moderate nominalist view of universals as being in rebus and only ‘apprehended’ by their particulars. His influence helped swaying Oxford away from idealism and, through figures such as H. A. Prichard, Gilbert Ryle, or J. L. Austin, his ideas were also to some extent at the origin of ‘moral intuitionism’ and ‘ordinary language philosophy’ which defined much of Oxford philosophy until the second half of the twentieth-century. Nevertheless, his name and legacy were all but forgotten for generations after World War II. Still, his views on knowledge are with us today, being in part at work in the writings of philosophers as diverse as John McDowell, Charles Travis, and Timothy Williamson. (shrink)

Der auf Kants kritischer Philosophie fußenden Philosophengeneration galt Herder als hoffnungslos anachronistischer, vorkritischer Philosoph, dessen Denken für das eigene philosophische Programm keine Relevanz zukomme. Das im folgenden dokumentierte Projekt geht demgegenüber von der Hypothese aus, daß Herder in die Vorgeschichte der Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus gehört, daß er Vorläufer und Weggenosse der nachkantischen Philosophengeneration war. Der vorliegende Band versammelt Arbeiten, die zur Begründung und Diskussion dieser Auffassung in unterschiedlicher Weise beitragen: es geht um die Konturierung der für diese Thematik relevanten (...) Aspekte von Herders eigenem Denken, um die Erschließung der gemeinsamen philosophischen und wissenschaftshistorischen Grundlagen des Herderschen Denkens und der Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus, nicht zuletzt geht es um die Erarbeitung der Rezeption von Herders Philosophie in der nachkantischen Philosophengeneration. (shrink)

Ethical issues arise for nurses involved in all phases of clinical trials regardless of whether they are caregivers, research nurses, trial co-ordinators or principal investigators. Potential problem areas centre on nurses’ moral obligation related to methodological issues as well as the notions of beneficence/non-maleficence and autonomy. These ethical concerns can be highly upsetting to nurses if they are not addressed, so it is imperative that they are discussed fully prior to the initiation of a trial. Failure to resolve these issues (...) can place both the conduct and the results of research in jeopardy. (shrink)

A unique and interdisciplinary collection in which scholars from Philosophy join those from Film Studies, English, and Comparative Literature to explore the nature and limits of love through in-depth reflection on particular works of literature and film.

Le corps constitue un axe fort de la pensée de Michel Foucault. En 1963, déjà, La Naissance de la clinique se présente comme une histoire des distributions spatiales que le regard médical effectue sur les corps. Mais c’est dans les années 1970, plus encore, que le tournant généalogique opéré par Foucault confère au corps une importance primordiale : celui-ci forme alors le point de départ d’une enquête qui s’ancre dans l’expérience corporelle de la prison, en même temps qu’il apparaît, au (...) ter... (shrink)

The speech of the Armenian embassy to Khusrow in the opening of Book 2 of Procopius'Warshas received little scholarly attention. Historians propose that this embassy, along with those sent by the Goths and Lazi, provided Khusrow with a pretext for violating the Eternal Peace in 540. As for the speeches themselves, they have been considered formulaic set pieces, requirements of the genre in which Procopius was writing. However, Anthony Kaldellis has argued that Procopius uses the Armenians as a mouthpiece for (...) his own criticisms of Justinian, namely that the emperor is to blame for ending the Eternal Peace and that he behaved like an oriental despot. While these literary and historical readings are not incompatible, none fully explicates the mechanics and function of the Armenians' speech. (shrink)

Comment la conscience se rapporte-t-elle au corps? Peut-elle, telle est l’interrogation décisive, s’affranchir de toute dépendance à son égard? Le Journal Intime, au cours de ses plus de quarante années d’écriture (1839-1881), fait de ce questionnement un point central de la philosophie d’Henri-Frédéric Amiel. Le corps, pour lui, ne constitue pas une évidence première. La conscience, en tant que puissance dissociative et critique, le pose comme objet et s’en sépare, s’en reconnaissant diffé...

This essay discusses the nature of collective responsibility and explores various controversies associated with its possibility and normative value.

This is the first book to explore and address the philosophical aspects of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Beginning with a helpful introduction that places each essay in context, specially commissioned chapters examine the following topics: -/- * Philosophical issues surrounding love, friendship, affirmation and repetition * The role of memory (and the emotions) in personal identity and decision-making * The morality of imagination and ethical importance of memory * Philosophical questions about self-knowledge and knowing the minds of others (...) * The aesthetics of the film considered in relation to Gondry’s other works and issues in the philosophy of perception. (shrink)

In order to explore the political and transformative potential of bodies in relation to gender and affects, I discuss how bodies, gender and politics are entangled through the figuration of ‘overflown bodies’. Departing from a material-discursive feminist conceptualisation of bodies, ‘overflown bodies’ are assemblages embedded in complex relationships of matter, discourse, emotions, affects, ideologies, protest, norms, values, relations, practices, expectations and other possibilities of (for) social and political action. Three ethnographic cases illustrate how ‘overflown bodies’ assemble matter and discourse, and (...) how matter, bodies and gender matter. They are used to explore the political possibilities of gendered bodies and show how matter is entangled, embedded and assembled with our politics of being. The three cases interrogate the limits and boundaries of bodies and the modes and modalities of (political) agency. Finally, the article argues that it is through visibility and recognition that ‘overflown bodies’ become critically and creatively transforming, which can be useful for addressing issues related to exclusion, domination, political emancipation and social transformation. (shrink)

Previous studies on body ownership illusions have shown that under certain multimodal conditions, healthy people can experience artificial body-parts as if they were part of their own body, with direct physiological consequences for the real limb that gets ‘substituted’. In this study we wanted to assess (a) whether healthy people can experience ‘missing’ a body-part through illusory ownership of an amputated virtual body, and (b) whether this would cause corticospinal excitability changes in muscles associated with the ‘missing’ body-part. Forty right-handed (...) participants saw a virtual body from a first person perspective but for half of them the virtual body was missing a part of its right arm. Single pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied before and after the experiment to left and right motor cortices. Motor evoked potentials (MEPs) were recorded from the first dorsal interosseous (FDI) and the extensor digitorum communis (EDC) of each hand. We found that the stronger the illusion of amputation and arm ownership, the more the reduction of MEP amplitudes of the EDC muscle for the contralateral sensorimotor cortex. In contrast, no association was found for the EDC amplitudes in the ipsilateral cortex and for the FDI amplitudes in both contralateral and ipsilateral cortices. Our study provides evidence that a short-term illusory perception of missing a body-part can trigger inhibitory effects on corticospinal pathways and importantly in the absence of any limb deafferentation or disuse. (shrink)

Natural kinds is a widely used and pivotal concept in philosophy – the idea being that the classifications and taxonomies employed by science correspond to the real kinds in nature. Natural kinds are often opposed to the idea of kinds in the human and social sciences, which are typically seen as social constructions, characterised by changing norms and resisting scientific reduction. Yet human beings are also a subject of scientific study.Does this mean humans fall into corresponding kinds of their own? (...) In The Epistemology and Morality of Human Kinds Marion Godman defends the idea of human kinds. She first examines the scientific use and nature of human kinds, considering the arguments of key philosophers whose work bears upon human kinds, such as Ian Hacking, John Searle, Richard Boyd and Ruth Millikan. Using the examples of gender, ethnic minorities and Buddhism she then argues that human kinds are a result of ongoing historical reproduction, chiefly due to pre-existing cultural models and social learning. Her novel argument shifts the focus away from the reductionism characteristic of research about human kinds. Instead, she argues that they are “multiply projectable” and deserving of scientific study not in spite of, but because of their role in explaining our identity, injustice and the emergence of group rights. (shrink)

Reuben Louis Goodstein (1912-1985) foi aluno de Wittgenstein em Cambridge de1931 a 1934. Neste artigo, faço uma breve descrição de seu trabalho na lógica matemática,no qual se percebe a influência das idéias de Wittgenstein, inclusive a substituição,em seu cálculo equacional, da indução matemática por uma regra de unicidade de umafunção definida por uma função recursiva. Esse último aspecto se encontra no Big Typescriptde Wittgenstein. Também mostro que as idéias fundamentais do cálculo equacionalpodem ser encontradas não apenas no período intermediário, mas, (...) in nuce, nas observaçõessobre matemática do Tractatus Logico-philosophicus. A partir disso, procuro desenvolverum argumento contra uma leitura corrente daquele livro, o assim chamado “NovoWittgenstein”. Outra conexão entre Goodstein e Wittgenstein se encontra na rejeição dateoria da quantificação; na parte final do artigo, recorro às observações críticas de Goodsteinsobre a Lei do Terceiro Excluído (que também incluem uma crítica a Brouwer e à suarejeição “pela metade” dessa lei) para lançar luz sobre as observações do próprioWittgenstein a esse respeito. (shrink)

The theme of this paper is Husserl’s concept of experience, through which I hope to show that and how Husserl’s description points the way toward a more adequate account of experience than traditional ones operating within realist-idealist and rationalist-empiricist frameworks.

In this paper I discuss whether there is a specific experience of thinking or not. I address this question by analysing if it is possible to reduce the phenomenal character of thinking to the phenomenal character of sensory experiences. My purpose is to defend that there is a specific phenomenality for at least some thinking mental states. I present Husserl's theory of intentionality in the Logical Investigations as a way to defend this claim and I consider its assumptions. Then I (...) present the case of understanding as a paradigmatic case for the phenomenal contrast argument and I defend it against two objections. (shrink)

In this classic work of feminist political thought, Iris Marion Young challenges the prevailing reduction of social justice to distributive justice.

Las discusiones sobre la intencionalidad en la Filosofía de la mente contemporánea se plantean en un marco un tanto ajeno al de la Fenomenología, bajo la suposición, de modo bastante generalizado, de que hay una separación entre intencionalidad y consciencia . Mi objetivo en este artículo es, en primer lugar, exponer tal supuesto. En segundo lugar, presentar los elementos clave de la teoría de la intencionalidad en las Investigaciones Lógicas de Husserl para presentar una visión que se opone a tal (...) separación. Y, en tercer lugar, finalizar con un tema común a ambos espacios de discusión, el de una experiencia o vivencia propia del pensamiento, que surge como un problema para muchas visiones analíticascontemporáneas y que tiene una explicación que puede derivarse de la concepción de Husserl.In contemporary Philosophy of mind, discussions about intentionality areset up in a quite different framework from the phenomenological one, assuming, in general, a separation between intentionality and consciousness. My aim in this paper is, firstly, to present this assumption. Secondly, I will put forward the key elements of Husserl's theory of intentionality in the Logical Investigations in order to present a view which is opposed to this assumption. And thirdly, I will end up with a common topic for both frameworks, that is, the topic of a specific experience of thinking, which emerges as a problem for many contemporary analytic views and which has an explanation that can be derived from Husserl's conception. (shrink)

The topic of this paper concerns the relation between thinking and phenomenality as it is discussed in the Philosophy of Mind. Thus, I am addressing the following questions: does the domain of phenomenal consciousness include thinking? And if so, is the phenomenality of thinking (PT) proprietary or not? I will firstly present the debate and the main notions involved in it, by contrasting a certain mainstream picture of the mind with the one offered by Phenomenology. Second, I will consider the (...) particular question of a proprietary phenomenology of conscious thought through the examination of the reductionist and antireductionist positions, concluding with a sceptical remark towards this dialectics. (shrink)

The problems of racism and racially motivated violence in predominantly African American communities in the United States are complex, multifactorial, and historically rooted. While these problems are also deeply morally troubling, bioethicists have not contributed substantially to addressing them. Concern for justice has been one of the core commitments of bioethics. For this and other reasons, bioethicists should contribute to addressing these problems. We consider how bioethicists can offer meaningful contributions to the public discourse, research, teaching, training, policy development, and (...) academic scholarship in response to the alarming and persistent patterns of racism and implicit biases associated with it. To make any useful contribution, bioethicists will require preparation and should expect to play a significant role through collaborative action with others. (shrink)

Family members can provide crucial support to individuals participating in clinical trials. In research on the “newest frontier” of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS)—the use of DBS for psychiatric conditions—family member support is frequently listed as a criterion for trial enrollment. Despite the significance of family members, qualitative ethics research on DBS for psychiatric conditions has focused almost exclusively on the perspectives and experiences of DBS recipients. This qualitative study is one of the first to include both DBS recipients and their (...) family members as interview participants. Using dyadic thematic analysis—an approach that takes both the individuals and the relationship as units of analyses—this study analyzes the complex ways in which family relationships can affect DBS trial participation, and how DBS trial participation in turn influences family relationships. Based on these findings, we propose ways to improve study designs to better take family relationships into account, and better support family members in taking on the complex, essential roles that they play in DBS trials for psychiatric conditions. (shrink)

What makes science trustworthy to the public? This chapter examines one proposed answer: the trustworthiness of science is based at least in part on its independence from the idiosyncratic values, interests, and ideas of individual scientists. That is, science is trustworthy to the extent that following the scientific process would result in the same conclusions, regardless of the particular scientists involved. We analyze this "idiosyncrasy-free ideal" for science by looking at philosophical debates about inductive risk, focusing on two recent proposals (...) which offer different methods of avoiding idiosyncrasy: the high epistemic standards proposal and the democratic values proposal. (shrink)