Chora L Works documents the unprecedented collaboration, initiated in 1985, between philosopher Jacques Derrida and architect Peter Eisenman on a project for the Parc de la Villette in Paris. Woven into the volume are discussion transcripts, candid correspondence, and essays, as well as sketches, presentation drawings, and models. Derrida and Eisenman's design process was guided by Plato's chora text from the Timeaus; their unique reciprocal relationship was an interchange - and transformation - of voices.

It has become a commonplace that "images" were central to the twentieth century and that their role will be even more powerful in the twenty-first. But what is an image and what can an image be? _Releasing the Image_ understands images as something beyond mere representations of things. Releasing images from that function, it shows them to be self-referential and self-generative, and in this way capable of producing forms of engagement beyond spectatorship and subjectivity. This understanding of images owes much (...) to phenomenology—the work of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty—and to Gilles Deleuze's post-phenomenological work. The essays included here cover historical periods from the Romantic era to the present and address a range of topics, from Cézanne's painting, to images in poetry, to contemporary audiovisual art. They reveal the aesthetic, ethical, and political stakes of the project of releasing images and provoke new ways of engaging with embodiment, agency, history, and technology. (shrink)

Sustainability is concerned with the issues around the ongoing and mutual preservation of both society and the environment. It is a widely used term and supposed goal for many governments but it is also easily misunderstood. Sustainability: The Basics offers an accessible and interdisciplinary introduction to the concept, and discusses key questions such as: How do we decide who or what should be sustained? How can we ensure that the world's resources are distributed fairly? What lessons can we learn from (...) the collapse of previous civilizations? Sustainability studies is in a position to ask some of the most interesting questions about human purpose, identity, modernity, ethics, and the nature of "progress". This book is an ideal starting point for anyone who wants to know more about we can 'hold up' civilization, humanity, and the world we live in. (shrink)

This paper reports on the meeting of the Sounding Board of the EU Reprogenetics Project that was held in Budapest, Hungary, 6–9 November 2005. The Reprogenetics Project runs from 2004 until 2007 and has a brief to study the ethical aspects of human reproductive cloning and germline gene therapy. Discussions during The Budapest Meeting are reported in depth in this paper as well as the initiatives to involve the participating groups and others in ongoing collaborations with the goal of forming (...) an integrated network of European resources in the fields of ethics of science. (shrink)

This paper reports on the meeting of the Sounding Board of the EU Reprogenetics Project that was held in Budapest, Hungary, 6–9 November 2005. The Reprogenetics Project runs from 2004 until 2007 and has a brief to study the ethical aspects of human reproductive cloning and germline gene therapy. Discussions during The Budapest Meeting are reported in depth in this paper as well as the initiatives to involve the participating groups and others in ongoing collaborations with the goal of forming (...) an integrated network of European resources in the fields of ethics of science. (shrink)

This paper describes the design and evaluation of a personality for the robotic user interface “iCat”. An application was developed that helps users find a TV-programme that fits their interests. Two experiments were conducted to investigate what personality users prefer for the robotic TV-assistant, what level of control they prefer, and how personality and the level of control relate to each other. The first experiment demonstrated that it is possible to create convincing personalities of the TV-assistant by applying various social (...) cues. The results of the second experiment showed that an extravert and agreeable TV-assistant was preferred over a more introvert and formal one. Overall, the most preferred combination was an extravert and friendly personality with low user control. Additionally, it was found that perceived level of control was influenced by the robot’s personality. This suggests that the robot’s personality can be used as a means to increase the amount of control that users perceive. (shrink)

"I shall speak of ghost, of flame, and of ashes." These are the first words of Jacques Derrida's lecture on Heidegger. It is again a question of Nazism--of what remains to be thought through of Nazism in general and of Heidegger's Nazism in particular. It is also "politics of spirit" which at the time people thought--they still want to today--to oppose to the inhuman. "Derrida's ruminations should intrigue anyone interested in Post-Structuralism. . . . . This study of Heidegger (...) is a fine example of how Derrida can make readers of philosophical texts notice difficult problems in almost imperceptible details of those texts."--David Hoy, London Review of Books "Will a more important book on Heidegger appear in our time? No, not unless Derrida continues to think and write in his spirit. . . . Let there be no mistake: this is not merely a brilliant book on Heidegger, it is thinking in the grand style."--David Farrell Krell, Research in Phenomenology "The analysis of Heidegger is brilliant, provocative, elusive."--Peter C. Hodgson, Religious Studies Review. (shrink)

This paper reports on the meeting of the Sounding Board of the EU Reprogenetics Project that was held in Budapest, Hungary, 6–9 November 2005. The Reprogenetics Project runs from 2004 until 2007 and has a brief to study the ethical aspects of human reproductive cloning and germline gene therapy. Discussions during The Budapest Meeting are reported in depth in this paper as well as the initiatives to involve the participating groups and others in ongoing collaborations with the goal of forming (...) an integrated network of European resources in the fields of ethics of science. (shrink)

An introduction to the life and work of the philosopher Jacques Derrida.

This article provides a Taoist reading of Camus’ posthumously published novel, The first man. With its focus on the early life of the central character, Jacques Cormery, The first man is a semi-autobiographical account of learning and transformation, but it is, like so many other stories of its kind, one sustained by complex tensions: between the comfort of the familiar and the promise of the new; between possibility and despair; between resistance and acceptance. A theme that binds some of (...) the key educational elements of the book together is love: Jacques’s love of his mother and his elementary school teacher and their love for him; love of learning; and love of ‘home’. A Taoist theoretical framework is helpful in understanding the nature of this love and its pedagogical significance. In particular, the book exemplifies the importance of the figure of the mother—both in the person of Jacques’s mother and more symbolically in the notion of ‘the Great Mother’. The article concludes with thoughts on the value of literature for educational inquiry. (shrink)

In the Essai sur Vorigine des langues (), Jean-Jacques Rousseau reports on an eighteenth-century curiosity that has, from time to time, fascinated musicians ...

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Badiou's Ethics Three Concerns about Badiou's Ethics Mainstream Approaches to the Ethics of Teaching The Ethics of Teaching Note References.

Although the desire to be free from God springs from humanity’s wish to enjoy pleasure without restraint, Lacan observes that humans remain neurotic and unhappy. That is because the prevailing “dead of God” form of atheism relies on the denial of a father/god, a negation that inadvertently replicates the logic of religion. Lacan, by contrast, grounds his atheism in a theory of pleasure that recognizes the role of “unpleasure” in breaking the tedium of easy, unlimited gratification. Turning to Greek tragedy, (...) Lacan shows how the ancient world used the gods as creators of “unpleasure” to generate human _jouissance_. The figure of Antigone, in particular, shows how the divine function can fulfill “the true formula of atheism,” which is not “God is dead,” but rather, Lacan affirms, that “_God is unconscious_.”. (shrink)

Layers in Husserl's Phenomenology situates Husserl firmly within the trajectory of later Continental thought and contributes to the recent reconsideration of Husserl as a legitimate precursor to the thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida.

This two-volume work examines far-reaching debates on the concept of courage from Greek antiquity to the Christian and mediaeval periods, as well as the modern era. Volume 1 begins with Homeric poetry and the politics of fearless demi-gods thriving on war. The tales of lion-hearted Heracles, Achilles, and Ulysses, and their tragic fall at the hands of fate, eventually give way to classical views of courage based on competing theories of rational wisdom and truth. Fears of the enemy and anxieties (...) about suffering and death are addressed through the lenses and teachings of medicine, geography, military history, moral philosophy, and metaphysics. For early Christian thinkers, the ethics of fear, fate, and fealty to the Almighty supplant the voice of reason and the wisdom of virtue. Much of Christian doctrine's history is a long journey towards bridging the gap between Greek philosophy and devotion to God and spirits in heaven. Some Church Fathers attempt to dispel the fear of suffering through a joyful craving for martyrdom and the eternal blessings that follow. Others show openness to one or more of the following principles: the abstractions of moral philosophy, the metaphysics of Gnostic enlightenment, the gift of free will and intentionality, the growth of church authority and hegemony, and the intrinsic worth of life on Earth. Augustine, Ambrose, Cassian, and Chrysostom play a central role in revisiting the foundations of Christian fortitude along some or all of these lines. They lay the groundwork for the scholastic adaptations of faith-based rationalism proposed by Peter Lombard, Philip the Chancellor, Albert the Great, and Thomas of Aquinas. The mediaeval period ends with church dissidents and Protestant Reform leaders condemning Rome’s corruption and calling for a return to early Christian faith and the courage of godly fear, submission, suffering, and fate. (shrink)

This paper argues that Badiou's and Lacan's theorizations of ethics offer a way to formulate an ethics of teaching and to explore what such an ethics might look like when teachers encounter events that disrupt their quotidian lives. Relying on the work of Badiou and Lacan, the paper critiques mainstream approaches to the ethics of teaching and sketches an alternative pedagogical ethics.

The various theories about business ethics need to take much more notice of technology, realising that technology has its own increasing momentum which is driving business, and that, whereas business people think they control technology as a simple neutral means to their ends, in fact the reverse is true: business is the servant of technological development. Jacques Ellul, however, offers some hope for the future to help us ‘reappropriate our humanity’. Dr Davies is a senior lecturer in Strategic Management (...) and Business Ethics at the Buckingham Business School, Buckinghamshire College [a College of Brunel University], Newland Park Campus, Gorelands Lane, Chalfton‐St‐Giles, Buckinghamshire HP8 4PB (Tel 01494‐874441, ext. 2240; fax 01494‐874230; Email [email protected]). His background is in mining and production engineering and he would like to hear from others interested in the new field of engineering ethics. (shrink)

SUMMARYThe sixteenth-century Huguenot émigré Jacques Bellot played a seminal role in the history of English and French language tuition, and is remembered for composing some of the first descriptive grammars for learners of both languages. His methods remained in use throughout the seventeenth century after being incorporated into the often-reprinted Grammaire angloise. This essay considers a previously undiscussed manuscript copy of Bellot's Rules containing the Perfect Understanding of the French Tongue for evidence of his early attempts to teach French (...) to members of Sir Thomas Wroth's family. The Rules provides new insights into how Bellot and his printers adapted the content and parallel-text layout in his subsequent printed manuals to create more efficient aids to language learning. (shrink)

From early in his career Jacques Derrida was intrigued by law. Over time, this fascination with law grew more manifest and he published a number of highly influential analyses of ethics, justice, violence and law. This book brings together leading scholars in a variety of disciplines to assess Derrida's importance for and impact upon legal studies.

In this compelling and timely treatise, cultural theorist and educator Peter Trifonas puts forth the first book-length study of Jacques Derrida's 'educational texts:' that is, those writings most explicitly concerned with the ethics and politics of the historico-philosophical structures constituting the scene of teaching. The text examines how deconstruction allows us to re-think the socio-historical and ethico-philosophical aspects of pedagogical practices and policies, including pedagogical theories that have had direct bearing on the ethical and cultural ideals forming the (...) reason of Western educational systems and the exclusion of its 'Others.'. (shrink)