Workplace stressors were identified to have critical impacts on employee creativity. However, little is known about how and when involuntary citizenship behavior (i.e., compulsory citizenship behavior, CCB)-induced stress might exert influence on employee creativity. To fill this void, the present study firstly develops a moderated mediation model to investigate the CCB—employee creativity association as well as the underling mechanism and contextual condition of this relationship. By integrating social cognitive theory such as self-efficacy theory and conservation of resources (COR) theory, we (...) propose that CCB predicts employee creativity through the mediating role of creative self-efficacy (CSE), with the individual characteristics (i.e., personality traits) of negative affect acting as a boundary condition. Using two-wave time-lagged survey data collected from a sample of 251 front-line employees in 10 manufacturing firms in Southern China, the results show that: (a) CSE mediates the negative relationship between CCB and employee creativity; (b) negative affect moderates the relationship between CCB and CSE; (c) negative affect moderates the indirect influence of CCB on employee creativity through CSE. As the level of negative affect rises, this indirect relationship is stronger. Finally, important theoretical and managerial implications and promising avenues for future research are addressed. (shrink)

Based on the person-organization fit theory, this research aims to investigate how socially responsible HRM positively affects employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors toward the environment by increasing person-organization fit. This study also captures the moderating effect of the perceived role of ethics and social responsibility in influencing the indirect effect of SRHRM on OCBE via person-organization fit. Data were collected from 302 employees in a state-owned chain hotel in Shanghai, China. The results indicated that SRHRM indirectly influenced employee’s engagement in OCBE (...) through person-organization fit. The positive relationship between SRHRM and person-organization fit and the indirect effect of SRHRM on OCBE via person-organization fit were more significant when employees hold high rather than low levels of RESR. Research implications and prospects were also explored in this study. (shrink)

According to virtue theory, morality is about the person performing the actions. In The Good Place, Chidi Anagonye is characterized not by habitual moral action but by pained decision making and insecurity. One might say that Chidi can be forgiven for not having yet perfected his character because he is, after all, still acting voluntarily and making moral decisions most of the time. Chidi often wavers and changes his mind about what he should do. Even when he seems to have (...) a good moral intuition about what is right, he second‐guesses himself and overcomplicates things. Chidi falls in the category of incontinence. He has a generally good sense of what a moral person would do in a given situation and a generally reliable moral intuition. Because The Good Place requires near moral perfection, one can confidently say that Chidi deserves his spot in The Bad Place. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Commandment against the Law Writing and Divine Justice in Walter Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence”Tracy McNulty (bio)Pierre Legendre has shown that the Romano-canonical legal traditions that form the foundations of Western jurisprudence “are founded in a discourse which denies the essential quality of the relation of the body to writing” [“Masters of Law” 110]. It emerges historically as a repudiation of Jewish legalism and Talmud law, where the (...) rite of circumcision encodes the subject’s entry into law as an “allegiance to the absolute Writing,” or the “relationship between the human subject and the logical place of the Other” [110–11; see also “les juifs”]. In this shift, one understanding of writing is displaced by another: the material inscription of the letter, as an incommunicable limit or cut, is supplanted by the fantasy of what Legendre calls a “living writing,” a writing “in the heart” that promotes an ideal of perfect communication in which nothing is lost, in which meaning is lodged in an absolute Other who guarantees all knowledge. In his words, “we belong to a culture in which a mystically alienated human body stands in the place of the absolute book. The state has emerged from this structure.... Its basic characteristics can be set out by means of a fundamental Romano-pontifical maxim: the Emperor carries all the archives in his breast (omnia scrinia habet in pectore suo)” [“Masters of Law” 109].The ultimate theological source of this Roman maxim is Paul’s polemic against the Jewish law in the Epistle to the Romans. Paul’s polemic is structured by a distinction between two orders of law: the “law of God” and the “law of sin.” The first is associated with the intelligible “spirit” of the law, which is “written in the heart,” the second with the prescriptive “letter” of the Jewish law, which compromises or corrupts the first by binding it to a particular representation and consigning it to written form. Paul’s solution is to bypass the law, to bypass representation, and perhaps even language itself. The prescriptive “letter” of the Jewish law must be sublated by the law of the spirit, such that “we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit” [Romans 7: 6]. Christ, as the living embodiment of the law of God, upholds the spirit of the law by “fulfilling”––and so rendering obsolete–its written form.The doctrine of Christ as the “living law” sustains what Legendre describes as a “banalisation of writing” [“Masters of Law” 111], a disregard for its material inscription that holds the letter to be nothing more than a placeholder, a flawed or incomplete representation of a meaning or truth that is itself beyond words. At the same time, it makes possible the legal and political fantasy of a living writing, located in a single body understood as the site of interpretive authority. The extraction of a meaning or truth from the intractable letter becomes the ultimate aim of the legal order and the most lofty task of its sovereign interpreter, uniquely charged with animating the dead letter. This notion permeates what Peter Goodrich describes as “the most standard protocols of legal reading,” according to [End Page 34] which “it is not the letter but the spirit that determines the meaning of the law”:The text is composed of dead letters (litera mortua); the rule is no more than a “mute judge,” a sleeping form, requiring the interposition, anima legis, of jurist or judge.... [T]he meaning of the law is internal to its living body, viva vox iuris or lex loquens, its image, interpreter, or legislator. In classical terms it is spelled out by reference to something beyond words: “to know the law is not to know the words of the law, but its force and power.” In a renaissance formulation we are similarly told that “no words, forms, niceties, or propriety of language is of any regard in the Civil Law, in comparison to truth, faithfulness and integrity. For verba menti, non verbis servire debet; words, are made as instruments to serve and express the mind, and not to command it.”[229–30]1... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:To Cut or Not to Cut?That is the QuestionTracy WilsonWhat is circumcision? In simple terms, it is the removal or excision of the foreskin of the penis. Seems so simple, right? In some families, it is that simple. In other families, it is a religious exercise. I am a doctorally-prepared Family Nurse Practitioner and started my nursing career in the NICU. I have seen my fair share of circumcisions. (...) As a nurse, our role was to prep the room with whichever instrument the OB/GYNS preferred and then soothe the baby. Some OB/GYNS prescribed Sucrose, which is ultimately sugar water, for the babies to have while undergoing circumcision, while others wouldn't prescribe anything. What I learned in the NICU and by watching circumcisions being performed was that the doctor's preference determined the pain management protocol. Some doctors cared more about pain control, some cared [End Page 85] about presentation and ensuring the foreskin was cut properly, and some were just old school and had their preferences. I wanted to comfort the baby and make his world as comfortable as possible.Watching circumcisions being performed, I never formed an opinion about them. I really looked at circumcision like any other procedure. However, I did see some parents really toil over the decisions, especially fathers who did not want to "see their son tortured or mutilated like that" as one told me once. I didn't quite understand the comparison to mutilation, but I understood why he did not want his son to go through the procedure. It wasn't until years later that I understood the gravity of the decision when I became pregnant with our son and knew immediately it was a boy. Call it a mother's intuition, but I just knew. To circumcise my son was never a decision I had to deliberate very long because it was something I was accustomed to in my family. It wasn't until one of my relatives got married and had her first son that I became aware that this would ever be a weighty decision for someone in my family.I took it for granted all those years before working in the NICU because circumcision was superficial to me. I realized that it's not just a piece of foreskin to many people. For some circumcision is done for religious reasons, for others making the choice to circumcise is about sameness, or hygiene. For my extended family member, it happened to be about sameness. She didn't want her sons to look different from their dad. Since potty training was mostly going to be taught by their father, they wanted their sons to look like him. Many NICU parents told me they wanted their sons to look like their fathers, so this notion was familiar to me. After my extended family member explained why sameness mattered, I understood the reasons why some parents felt this way.There are other stories like this which we pondered upon when we got pregnant with our son, and I really began to reflect on whether we should circumcise or not. Then two additional frames of thoughts arose; one, I ensured that my husband and I jointly made the decision together, but I really leaned on him for his opinion because he was a male and most of the male teaching would come from him. Second, we considered if the decision to circumcise should come from him once he became an adult. His father and I discussed whether he should have a choice regarding being circumcised. He may have chosen a different decision than us and we didn't want to take away his right to choose. However, waiting to have a circumcision as an adult comes with its own sets of challenges, including the possibility of infection, increased pain, missed work, edema, etc. So, ultimately, we made the decision to go ahead with the circumcision.In our case, our pediatrician performed the circumcision. I asked him explicitly which instrument he used because I had my preference, and I was not going to allow my son to be circumcised by a healthcare professional that did not use my... (shrink)

Derrida always stressed the importance of his engagement with Heidegger and often returned throughout his life to different aspects of Heidegger’s thought. With the recent publication of his 1964-65 course, Heidegger: The Question of Being and History greater insight is now possible into the exact terms of Derrida’s early engagement with Heidegger and the significance he would accord it in the major works of 1967 and beyond. With the reception of this text just beginning, many lines of interpretation are being (...) unfolded. However, one aspect not yet addressed in this early reception which will be crucial for approaching and orienting this work is the theme of auto-affection. The concept of auto-affection is important for assessing Derrida’s Heidegger course for two reasons. Firstly, Derrida understands auto-affection to be Heidegger’s most radical figuration of temporality in the period of Being and Time. Secondly, tracing Derrida’s early focus on auto-affection in Heidegger can provide an important context for understanding the initial development of what would become a prominent theme in Derrida’s own work. My argument in this paper is structured in three sections. In the first, I give a brief introduction to Derrida’s course. I then present the theme of auto-affection in this course and demonstrate its central importance. In conclusion, I show how Derrida’s treatment of this theme in the context of his early Heidegger engagement can be seen to look forward to his employment of auto-affection in Speech and Phenomena. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 35.1 (2005) 71-98MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Hospitality after the Death of GodTracy McNultyPierre Klossowski's fiction has been only sporadically published in English, and largely dismissed as perverse erotica or soft-core porn. When his 1965 trilogy Les lois de l'hospitalité was partially translated in English (under the title Roberte, ce soir & The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes), its Library of Congress classification characterized it simply as "erotic (...) fiction—French." Even in France, Klossowski has become the very signifier of perversion. His artwork graces the cover of Serge André's L'imposture perverse and of numerous erotic novels, he has been "diagnosed" as a pervert by writers on both sides of the Atlantic, and unironic readers of his Sade mon prochain hail him as Sade's disciple and heir.1Admittedly, the larger stakes of Klossowski's work are easily obscured by its free adaptation of the stock themes of libertine literature. His fictional works, like his visual compositions (essentially representations of rape scenes, often on historical themes—Diana and Actaeon, the Rape of Lucretia), explore the conflict between a woman's chaste moral attitude and her gradual surrender to an assailant's advances. The Laws of Hospitality concerns the erotic awakening of "hospitality" in a woman, which exposes a contradiction within her moral character and reveals her symbolic identity to be without foundation. Its protagonist Octave, who bears more than a passing resemblance to his creator, is a collector of artworks that eroticize the moment of moral hesitation experienced by women submitting to the sexual advances of a chance stranger—or even a "spiritual" apparition. His "laws of hospitality" are the fruit of his desire to experience this operation firsthand; they name a practice wherein the master of the house "offers" his wife to fortuitous guests, in order to savor the moment of her surrender.However, the stakes of Klossowski's "perverse" meditations are very different from the Sadeian project of uprooting religious morality. Sade challenges the patriarchal and religious authorities of his day by demonstrating that the paternal signifier on which their laws are based is without foundation. In proving that the law cannot hold [End Page 71] up against the repeated assaults of libertinage, he mounts a systematic deconstruction of the symbolic order of language by the real of jouissance. But although Klossowski may share Sade's perverse drive to "humiliate the law with the object,"2 his target is not the signifier as such, but rather the imaginary consistency afforded by what he calls the "grammatical fiction of the 'I,'" the illusion of autonomous personhood. The "object" he confronts it with is not the natural "truth" of jouissance, but rather the feminine object who disrupts the identity of the "master" who offers her.Klossowski's reflections on the special status of femininity in Enlightenment culture—at once marginal and singularly "extimate"—have never been fully appreciated, despite their enormous interest for the study of culture. In a way unique among contemporary authors, Klossowski sheds light on Jacques Lacan's enigmatic insight that the cultural importance of the feminine object consists in its sublimated status as an "object raised to the dignity of the Thing" [Lacan 112]. His fiction underscores the close ties between the feminine and what Freud called das Ding, the Thing uncannily internal to subjectivity that Lacan later identified with the function of the Nebenmensch, as the apotheosis of the Christian idea of the prochain, or neighbor [Lacan 151–52].Although Klossowski's erotic scenario invites comparisons with Sade's and Fourier's utopian calls to dissolve the privative boundaries between subjects, what he understands by "hospitality" is not the abolition of personal identity, but rather the staging of its internal contradiction.Hospitality, at the Limits of the LawThe act of hospitality—whose theological and philosophical origins this former Dominican novice and Latin scholar was intimately acquainted with—concerns a very particular tension. Etymologically, the host is the "master," the one who "eminently personifies" identity: not only his own identity, but also that of the group in whose... (shrink)

To de-essentialize, to break up the lump, to pick over these traditions and institutions one by one, and see what use they have for our present purposes - this is the path that Richard Rorty navigates in order to make his mark in the realm of philosophical thinking. He ruptures intellectual discourse by being flagrantly anti- philosophical, as made manifest by his avoidance of the ironic act of asking essentialistic yet unanswerable questions such as What is being? What is human (...) nature? What can we know for sure? Instead, Rorty re- strategizes his approach toward our interpretation of the history of ideas so as to downplay the Sisyphean search for primordiality. This paper plays on three themes: edification, hermeneutics, and the philosophers of edification in the 20th century. It intends to show that even upon the death of philosophy as epistemology – or in Rortian terms, as mirror-imagery – the “Conversation of Mankind” ensues in fresher, better, more relevant ways. (shrink)

Reprint of the first edition. This incisive critique was written around 1807 by Tracy [1754-1836], a French philosopher and path-breaking psychologist who was a friend of Jefferson [1743-1826]. Jefferson saw the Commentary when it was still a manuscript and was so impressed that he took pains to have it printed. He even helped with the translation and corrected the page proofs. Although the translation was published anonymously, we can identify the author and translators through a letter by Jefferson dated (...) January 26, 1811. Elsewhere in this letter he commends it for correcting the Spirit of the Laws. While other studies had merely "nibbled only at its errors...This want is now supplied, and with a depth of thought, recision of idea, of language and of logic, which will force conviction into every mind. I declare to you, Sir, in the spirit of truth and sincerity, that I consider it the most precious gift the present age has received.": The Writings of Thomas Jefferson V:566-571. (shrink)

A Copernican revolution heralds a grand renovation of a tradition of knowledge. In science—the discipline from which the concept originates—it aptly connotes a paradigm shift from a previously accepted notion of reality. It is upon this conceptualization that John Dewey wrote: “Kant claimed that he had effected a Copernican revolution in philosophy by treating the world and our knowledge of it from the standpoint of the knowing subject.” For the Enlightenment thinker, traditional philosophy construed a rational system of nature and (...) then borrowed from it the features by which to characterize knowledge. He argued that this “borrowing” of a rational system should not be credited to some outworldy power, but to human reason. Thus, his “revolution” was a shift from theological to human authorship and a placing of the locus of intellect in man as a knowing subject. Kant’s work created a new center in philosophy: that it is the mind that knows by means of an equipment of powers complete within itself and that it merely exercises its capabilities upon an antecedent external material equally complete in itself. (shrink)

In this book, Rousseau is understood as a theorist of the common person. For Strong, Rousseau resonates with Kant, Hegel, and Marx, but he is more modern like Emerson, Nietzsche, Eittegenstein, and Heidegger. Rousseau's democratic individual is an ordinary self, paradoxically multiple and not singular. In the course of exploring this contention, Strong examines Rousseau's fear of authorship , his understanding of the human, his attempt to overcome the scandal that relativism posed for politics, and the political importance of sexuality.

The apparent liberalism of Raymond Aron's thought can be understood only in the context of the questions asked by the "continental" philosophical tradition. Aron contends that the strong neo-Kantian and existentialist trends which came together in Weber's work serve to split man off from meaningful intercourse with the social world. Aron intends to re-establish that intercourse. He attempts to show precisely what the consequences and responsibilities of making choices are for a man "thrown" into the world. Politics becomes focused around (...) the choice of values in a world delineated only in negative terms. Aron's program yields a low number of generalizable empirical conclusions and policy recommendations, and this is instructive to those who wish to practice "good" social science. (shrink)

Peter Berkowitz’s book is about the “moral intention that gives birth to and governs Nietzsche’s thought”. Bracing his book by an introduction and conclusion, he divides it into two parts. The first comprises individual chapters on what Berkowitz calls Nietzsche’s “histories.” These are on the ethics of history, the ethics of art, the ethics of morality and the ethics of religion.

This article explores the political, as opposed to the philosophical, impact of Leo Strauss’s exile in America on his thought. After a consideration of anti-Semitism and the importance Strauss attached to being a Jew, I argue that the fact that in America he no longer wrote in his Muttersprache but in English was central to his becoming a political theorist rather than a philosopher. Whereas as a philosopher he was unable to speak to the demos, as a political theorist what (...) he needed was a group of “rhetors” who would carry a particular message to the demos. (shrink)

Interpretations of Nietzsche, particularly about politics, cover an exceptionally wide range. Additionally, Nietzsche is often said to commit “rhetorical excesses.” I argue and show that Nietzsche consciously crafted his published works to allow this range of interpretations, that he did this for critical purposes, and that his so-called rhetoric is there to serve this purpose.

Nietzsche's life project remains constant throughout his life: it is the project of transformation or transfiguration. He formulates this as the necessity of dealing with the way that one's past shapes one's present. The paradigm for this transformation is first to be found in The Birth of Tragedy, but it reappears in various guises in all of his work. I argue that Nietzsche's writing is itself designed so as to make possible such a transformation in his readers.

ABSTRACT Nietzsche’s life project remains constant throughout his life: it is the project of transformation or transfiguration. He formulates this as the necessity of dealing with the way that one’s past shapes one’s present. The paradigm for this transformation is first to be found in The Birth of Tragedy, but it reappears in various guises in all of his work. I argue that Nietzsche’s writing is itself designed so as to make possible such a transformation in his readers.

Book 8 of Lucan's Bellum Civile opens with Pompey in desperate flight from Caesar after the disaster of Pharsalus, and in equally desperate search for a reliable ally. Before the fateful decision is taken that Pompey should make for Egypt, where he will be murdered upon arrival by minions of the treacherous Ptolemy XIII, Pompey dispatches his Galatian client-tetrarch Deiotarus to sound out the distant Parthians and summon their armed hordes to wage war on his behalf ; the king promptly (...) embarks on his arduous errand, never to reappear in Lucan's text. Although Pompey is said by several historical sources to have expressed an interest in exploring the prospect of an alliance with Parthia, the mission of Deiotarus is almost certainly a complete fiction, as Duff has convincingly demonstrated. What could Lucan's motive have been for inventing this episode out of whole cloth? (shrink)

Few historical figures have been more important in modeling the ideal of impartial critical scholarship than Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469-1536). Yet his critical scholarship, though beholden to no one, was not dispassionate. James Tracy shows how Erasmus the scholar sought through his writings to promote the moral and religious renewal of Christian society. Tracy finds the genesis of the humanist's notion of a "Christian republic" of pious and learned individuals in his "Burgundian," or Low Countries, roots. Erasmus's vision (...) of reform, Tracy argues, sprung from a humanist tradition focusing on the importance of teaching (_doctrina_), a tradition from which Erasmus departed in his optimism about human nature and his deep suspicion of the powers that be. Amid the storms of Reformation controversy, he pruned back the "dissimulation" by which he had thought to convey different meanings to different readers, yet in the end he could not control the way his words were read. If Erasmus's scholarly ideal carries an enduring fascination, so too does his dilemma as a man of circumspection who would also be a reformer. (shrink)

In Clark’s thoughtful analysis of the evolution of the two facets of pride, he suggests that the concurrent existence of hubristic and authentic pride in humans represents a “persistence problem,” wherein the vestigial trait (hubristic pride) continues to exist alongside the derived trait (authentic pride). In our view, evidence for the two facets does not pose a persistence problem; rather, hubristic and authentic pride both likely evolved as higher-order cognitive emotions that solve uniquely human—but distinct— evolutionary problems. Instead of being (...) conceptualized as serial homologues, with one the vestigial form of the other, we argue that hubristic and authentic pride are both derived homologues of a vestigial proto-pride emotion that existed in our shared ancestry with other primates. (shrink)

Many disabled people face some form of exclusion or discrimination. One of the most damaging, yet pervasive, types of exclusion is sexual exclusion. Various factors hinder sexual opportunities for disabled persons, such as social attitudes around body image, gender, and sexuality. In this paper, I engage with Sheila Jeffreys's paper, “ Disability and the Male Sex Right,” wherein she argues that discourse around sexual rights for disabled people is a veiled way of promoting male dominance over women. Though Jeffreys raises (...) many pertinent issues, she assumes that when a disabled man seeks commercial sex, he does so as an act of domination or violence. I argue that when a disabled man seeks commercial sex, he is seeking the goods of sex, such as connection, intimacy, and pleasure. (shrink)

This paper publishes a gold ring until recently in private hands in the United States. The former owners, private persons with no scholarly background, brought the ring to the present writer's attention upon learning that he had some knowledge of Greek inscriptions. The one deplorable fact is that this ring was removed from its context, so that much of its scientific value is forever lost to us. Nonetheless, the damage was done by others years ago, and its owners deserve praise (...) for making the ring available for study. The dedicatory inscription on it is an invaluable example of early Argive script. The details of acquisition are unclear. I have been able to ascertain only that the ring was acquired in ancient Mycenae from some Greeks who claimed to have dug it up in the area. As will be seen, in all probability it comes from the Argive Heraion. (shrink)

Peter Berkowitz’s book is about the “moral intention that gives birth to and governs Nietzsche’s thought”. Bracing his book by an introduction and conclusion, he divides it into two parts. The first comprises individual chapters on what Berkowitz calls Nietzsche’s “histories.” These are on the ethics of history, the ethics of art, the ethics of morality and the ethics of religion.

In his essay Tracy Lupher (henceforth, TL) is concerned with Robert Kane's (1984) version of the modal ontological argument (MOA). As he correctly points out, Kane's argument is valid only if the accessibility relation between possible worlds is assumed to be symmetric. TL's remarks pave the way to thinking that the MOA is intended to establish the existence of a perfect being as a matter of logical necessity. Moreover, given TL's undisputed supposition (even shared by Kane) that S5 - (...) in which the accessibility relation is symmetric - captures the notion of logical necessity, the real issue becomes whether the premise of the MOA is true. Contrary to TL's main claim, the discussion thus shifts back from technical arguments for why the appropriate modal logic must have a symmetric accessibility relation to metaphysical, theological, or conceptual considerations about the notion of a perfect being itself. I argue that it is only due to such considerations that we even start to ponder the question of what modal logic is the appropriate one to choose. (shrink)

This article examines the critique of the biological species concept advanced by protozoan geneticist Tracy Sonneborn at the 1955 AAAS symposium on "the species problem," published subsequently in 1957. Although Sonneborn was a strong proponent of a population genetical conception of species, he became critical of the biological species concept for its failure to incorporate asexual and obligatory inbreeding organisms. It is argued that Sonneborn's intimate knowledge of the ciliate protozoan Paramecium aurelia species complex brought him into conflict with (...) a growing pressure in the biological sciences to emphasize universal principles of life. Faced with the need to defend the value of P. aurelia as an investigative tool, Sonneborn argued that the sharp break in nature between sexual and asexual organisms posited by proponents of the biological species concept was not an existential feature of the living world, but rather the misleading consequence of an operational definition of species based only upon sexual organisms. Drawing upon his knowledge of the immense variability of P. aurelia, he proposed instead a continuum of breeding systems from obligatory outbreeding to asexual organisms, and a more broadly unifying definition of species that incorporated asexual as well as sexual organisms. Paradoxically, the push for unification that then characterized the evolutionary synthesis served to debar critical consideration of Sonneborn's more unificatory alternative, and his underlying contention that biological anomaly could serve as an important source of conceptual unification. (shrink)

Foundational theories of mental content seek to identify the conditions under which a mental representation expresses, in the mind of a particular thinker, a particular content. Normativists endorse the following general sort of foundational theory of mental content: A mental representation r expresses concept C for agent S just in case S ought to use r in conformity with some particular pattern of use associated with C. In response to Normativist theories of content, Kathrin Glüer-Pagin and Åsa Wikforss propose a (...) dilemma, alleging that Normativism either entails a vicious regress or falls prey to a charge of idleness. In this paper, I respond to this argument. I argue that Normativism can avoid the commitments that generate the regress and does not propose the sort of explanation required to charge that its explanation has been shown to be problematically idle. The regress-generating commitment to be avoided is, roughly, that tokened, contentful mental states are the product of rule-following. The explanatory task Normativists should disavow is that of explaining how it is that beliefs and other contentful mental states are produced. I argue that Normativism, properly understood as a theory of content, does not provide this kind of psychological explanation, and therefore does not entail that such explanations are to be given in terms of rule-following. If this is correct, Normativism is not the proper target of the dilemma offered by Glüer-Pagin and Wikforss. Understanding why one might construe Normativism in the way Glüer-Pagin and Wikforss must, and how, properly understood, it avoids their dilemma, can help us to appreciate the attractiveness of a genuinely normative theory of content and the importance of paying careful attention to the sort of normativity involved in norm-based theories of content. (shrink)

Interviewed by Christian Sheppard about Richard Kearney’s book The God Who May Be (2001), and speaking also of Kearney’s On Stories (2002) and Strangers, Gods and Monsters (2002), David Tracy remarks on Kearney’s development of the possible as a major philosophical and theological category. Showing the importance of the idea of the infinite, he speaks of the need for a hermeneutical moment to follow the initial encounter, and of a call for general criteria of judgment of the Other. He (...) discusses, too, the dangers and the rewards of doing both theology and philosophy at the same time. To him the category of the Impossible enters into the possible and is not only positive but desired. In a conversation that ranges widely - Derrida and Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion, Angelus Silesius, Kierkegaard, Nicholas of Cusa, Heidegger and Ricoeur, and, in the call for plurality, William James - the two speakers discuss both poetic sensibility and the call for justice. Reflecting on fragmentation, Tracy speaks of the need to focus on suffering and the importance of attaining a sense of ‘the entire story, all of the metaphors’. (shrink)

How did Baruch Spinoza, the seventeenth-century Dutch-Jewish philosopher, become a nineteenth-century German Marxist? It is on its face an unlikely development. Karl Marx was a fiery revolutionary theorist who heralded the imminent demise of capitalism, while Spinoza was a contemplative philosopher who preached rational understanding and voiced skepticism about open rebellion. Further, Spinoza criticized all teleological ideas as anthropomorphic fantasies, while Marxism came to be associated expressly with teleological historical development. Yet socialists of the German nineteenth century were consistently drawn (...) to Spinoza as their philosophical guide. Tracie Matysik shows how the metaphorical meeting of Spinoza and Marx arose out of an intellectual conundrum about the meaning of activity. How is it, exactly, that humans can be fully determined creatures - creatures in nature and governed by causal laws of nature - and also able to change their world? To address this seeming paradox, many revolutionary theorists scrapped the idea of activity as something autonomous humans do when they assert themselves against nature and its causal laws. Thinking with Spinoza, they came to think of activity instead as relating - as the state of relations between humans and between humans and the non-human world. Matysik follows these Spinozist-socialist intellectual experiments in the meaning of activity that unfolded across the nineteenth century, drawing lessons from them that may be meaningful for the environmental-justice issues confronting the contemporary world. (shrink)

The notion that modernity entails the loss of authoritative grounds has become a piece of conventional wisdom in contemporary political philosophy. In Politics without Vision, Tracy Strong offers a new perspective on this notion by identifying a unique tradition in twentieth-century political thought. His cast includes Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber, Sigmund Freud, Vladimir Lenin, Carl Schmitt, Martin Heidegger, and Hannah Arendt. With the insightfulness that characterizes much of his scholarship, Strong sheds new light on the familiar and (...) persuasively draws connections that would otherwise seem farfetched. This is because he eyes a grand theme, while remaining attentive to nuances. With a nod to the... (shrink)

The world as we find it -- Kant and the death of God -- Nietzsche: the tragic ethos and the spirit of music -- Max Weber, magic, and the politics of social scientific objectivity -- "What have we to do with morals?": Nietzsche and Weber on the politics of morality -- Sigmund Freud and the heroism of knowledge -- Lenin and the calling of the party -- Carl Schmitt and the exceptional sovereign -- Martin Heidegger and the space of the (...) political -- Without a banister: Hannah Arendt and roads not taken -- Conclusion: the world as it finds us. (shrink)

Wrestling with the Angel is a meditation on contemporary political, legal, and social theory from a psychoanalytic perspective. It argues for the enabling function of formal and symbolic constraints in sustaining desire as a source of creativity, innovation, and social change. The book begins by calling for a richer understanding of the psychoanalytic concept of the symbolic and the resources it might offer for an examination of the social link and the political sphere. The symbolic is a crucial dimension of (...) social coexistence but cannot be reduced to the social norms, rules, and practices with which it is so often collapsed. As a dimension of human life that is introduced by language--and thus inescapably "other" with respect to the laws of nature--the symbolic is an undeniable fact of human existence. Yet the same cannot be said of the forms and practices that represent and sustain it. In designating these laws, structures, and practices as "fictions," Jacques Lacan makes clear that the symbolic is a dimension of social life that has to be created and maintained and that can also be displaced, eradicated, or rendered dysfunctional. The symbolic fictions that structure and support the social tie are therefore historicizable, emerging at specific times and in particular contexts and losing their efficacy when circumstances change. They are also fragile and ephemeral, needing to be renewed and reinvented if they are not to become outmoded or ridiculous. Therefore the aim of this study is not to call for a return to traditional symbolic laws but to reflect on the relationship between the symbolic in its most elementary or structural form and the function of constraints and limits. McNulty analyzes examples of "experimental" (as opposed to "normative") articulations of the symbolic and their creative use of formal limits and constraints not as mere prohibitions or rules but as "enabling constraints" that favor the exercise of freedom. The first part examines practices that conceive of subjective freedom as enabled by the struggle with constraints or limits, from the transference that structures the "minimal social link" of psychoanalysis to constrained relationships between two or more people in the context of political and social movements. Examples discussed range from the spiritual practices and social legacies of Moses, Jesus, and Teresa of Avila to the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt and Jacques Rancière. The second part is devoted to legal and political debates surrounding the function of the written law. It isolates the law's function as a symbolic limit or constraint as distinct from its content and representational character. The analysis draws on Mosaic law traditions, the political theology of Paul, and twentieth-century treatments of written law in the work of Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, Pierre Legendre, and Alain Badiou. In conclusion, the study considers the relationship between will and constraint in Kant's aesthetic philosophy and in the experimental literary works of the collective Oulipo. (shrink)

The concept of nihilism plays an interesting role in Richard Rorty's oeuvre. On the one hand, Rorty barely refers to the concept; on the other, Rorty's critics pejoratively characterize his pragmatism as nihilistic. This chapter seeks to clarify Rorty's position. It suggests that Rorty avoids the concept in order to get away from the conceptual baggage that accompanies the existential sense of the term. Rorty neither endorses the idea that human lives are meaningless nor thinks that abandoning the Platonic quest (...) for truth diminishes our capacity to experience meaningful lives. By challenging these assumptions, Rorty can then be seen as a thinker who may have much more to say about the modern challenges to human meaning than meets the eye. In this light, the chapter presents three cases that explore Rorty's contributions to our understanding of existential nihilism. It also suggests contemporary research approaches to Rorty and nihilism. (shrink)

Introduction : critical ethics, or, the subject of reform -- An ethics of Gesellschaft -- The "new ethic" : a particularist challenge -- Conflicted sexualities and conflicted secularisms -- Global influences, local responses -- Moral laws and impossible laws : the "female homosexual" and the Criminal Code -- Social matters : social democracy and the ethics of materialism -- Losses and unlikely legacies : psychoanalysis and femininity -- Afterword : moral citizenship, or, ethics beyond the law.

This article examines the potential for moral agency in human resource management practice. It draws on an ethnographic study of human resource managers in a global organization to provide a theorized account of situated moral agency. This account suggests that within contemporary organizations, institutional structures—particularly the structures of Anglo-American market capitalism— threaten and constrain the capacity of HR managers to exercise moral agency and hence engage in ethical behaviour. The contextualized explanation of HR management action directly addresses the question of (...) whether HRM is inherently unethical. The discussion draws on MacIntyre’s conceptualization of moral agency within contemporary social structures. In practice, HR managers embody roles that may not be wholly compartmentalized. Alternative institutional structures can provide HR managers with a vocabulary of motives for people-centred HRM and widen the scope for the exercising of moral agency, when enacted within reflective relational spaces that provide milieus for critical questioning of logics and values. This article aims to contribute to and extend debate on whether HRM can ever be ethical, and provide a means of reconnecting business ethics with longstanding concerns in critical management studies. (shrink)

Intentional collective action -- Collective moral responsibility -- Collective guilt -- Individual responsibility for (and in) collective wrongs -- Collective obligation, individual obligation, and individual moral responsibility -- Individual moral responsibility in wrongful social practice.

In this special section, Ekman and Cordaro (2011); Izard (2011); Levenson (2011); and Panksepp and Watt (2011) have each outlined the latest instantiation of each lead author’s theoretical model of basic emotions. We identify four themes emerging from these models, and discuss areas of agreement and disagreement. We then briefly evaluate the models’ usefulness by examining how they would account for an emotion that has received considerable empirical attention but does not fit clearly within or outside of the basic emotion (...) category: pride. Finally, we compare the central themes covered by the four models with themes emerging from current emotion research, to conclude that, for the most part, the models are comprehensive; they largely converge with the current state of affective science research. (shrink)

From the immemorial humans have lived together in groups. What it means to be a human being has no other basis than the interactions that take place in these groups. Politics then is the shaping of the necessary fact of social interaction. This volume concerns itself with the role of the individual in this social and political order. Including selections from both classical writers such as Plato, and contemporary scholars such as George Kareb, Michael Sandel, and Donna Haraway, the work (...) examines one of the most fundemental questions of human society: what part do individual desires and concerns play, and what part should they play, in political society? How can we negotiate the relation between individuals and society, between the will of one and the mandate of the multitude? Strong's lengthy introduction provides an excellent framework that serves to unify these semial writings. (shrink)

Although many of the congenital syndromes that used to be lethal no longer are, they are still routinely referred to as “lethal anomalies.” But the label is not only inaccurate, it is also dangerous: by portraying as a medical determination what is in fact a judgment about the child's quality of life, it wrests from the parents a decision that only the parents can make.