In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Research on the Transformation of Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction by Zhan LingShaoming DuanZhan Ling. Research on the Transformation of Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction. Beijing: China Social Sciences Press, 2022, 324 pages, softcover, ¥ 118.00 ISBN: 978-7-5203-9465-9.Research on the Transformation of Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction is a laudable scholarly endeavor that provides reader with a unique interpretation of the representative works in contemporary China science fiction. Taking "transformation" as (...) the key word, this book outlines the development process and transformation features of science fiction since the founding of the People's Republic of China (i.e., new China). Starting with the investigation of the reasons for each transformation, this book combs the changes in the creative values, scientific views, and aesthetics of science fiction in more than seventy years. The book also aims to show the literary achievements of contemporary Chinese science fiction, affirm the academic values of "transformation" from the perspective of literary development history, and points out the existing shortcomings. This book will interest global scholars in literary studies, especially those in the field of Chinese science fiction studies. The detailed studies of contemporary Chinese science fiction by Zhan Ling connect her primary sources with wider temporal and spatial contexts. Zhan Ling approaches contemporary Chinese science fiction that was mostly unknown to the scholars of the twenty-first century, some of which were underestimated and even ignored for a long time.The book has an introduction, seven chapters, and a conclusion. The introduction briefly introduces the origin of Chinese science fiction. There was no category of "science fiction" in ancient Chinese literary tradition; it actually appeared in the late Qing dynasty. At that time, the Qing government was defeated miserably by Western powers in the two [End Page 521] "Opium Wars" and was forced to sign a series of unequal treaties with Western powers, which greatly damaged China's sovereignty and territorial integrity.In order to achieve the goals of "enriching the country and strengthening the army" and "learning foreign technology to counter foreigners," the Qing government decided to carry out the "Westernization Movement" (1861–95), calling on Qing officials to learn and use Western advanced science and technology and set up modern military, industry, and civilian enterprises. Science fiction, as a kind of literature directly linked with Western science and technology, had been introduced into China. In 1872 the Chinese version of Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle was published in Shanghai Shen Daily, which opened the exploration of science fiction in Chinese literature. In 1904 Huang Jiangdiaosou (pen name) wrote the first Chinese science fiction, The Moon Colony. The intellectuals in the late Qing dynasty regarded science fiction as the literary practice of "saving the country through science" (6). Science fiction had contributed to the establishment of modern scientific consciousness for the pedantic people in the late Qing dynasty. The decline of the Qing dynasty was marked by the invasion and encroachment of the Western powers, which marked the formation of Chinese semicolonial and semifeudal society; This, in turn, contributed to the development of science fiction in China.The main body consists of seven chapters. Zhan Ling discusses the changes and transformations in the development of science fiction in contemporary China. The founding of new China marked the full rule of the Communist Party of China. In order to distinguish from the Kuomintang rule, the Communist Party called it "contemporary" after 1949. According to this "division," "contemporary science fiction" of the title refers to the science fiction published in mainland China after 1949. Compared with the past, science fiction in contemporary China has made great progress in quality and quantity (12).Zhan Ling divides the development of science fiction in contemporary China into four stages. The first phase was from 1949 to 1966. The second phase is from 1978 to 1984. The third phase is from 1985 to 1999. The fourth phase is the twenty-first century. The book tries to integrate the development history of contemporary Chinese science fiction into the development history of Chinese science fiction for research, and even puts contemporary Chinese science fiction into the development history of world science fiction [End Page 522... (shrink)

Out of the consideration of the same artistic essence and aesthetic function of drama and opera as theater, many directors devoted their lives to building a "golden bridge" between drama and opera: on the one hand, to maintain the traditional characteristics of opera, but "to make use of new ideas, new techniques, and new organization, so that the face of the old opera can be renewed". On the other hand, their early practice of new drama also made them realize that (...) Chinese drama, which lacked roots, "in terms of scriptwriting and acting, its only master was the Chinese opera. On the other hand, their early practice of new drama also made them realize that Chinese drama, which lacked roots, was "still the only master of Chinese opera in terms of scriptwriting and performance" and therefore needed to draw on the aesthetic spirit and artistic techniques of traditional opera, and in their later years they hoped that drama would "create the latest and most beautiful dramatic art on the basis of tradition". Many directors have left an important legacy for the 20th century Chinese theater by their thinking about and defending the aesthetic nature of theater and its "independent and dignified" artistic status, as well as by their important ideas and remarkable practice of fusing drama and opera to create modern Chinese national theater. It is of great importance to evaluate the effect of fusion. In this paper, we study the deep integration effect measurement of traditional drama and modern drama directing art based on intelligent computing and time-series data analysis, which effectively solves this problem. (shrink)

I argue that our physical and social environments play a role in determining the content of most of our thoughts only indirectly—by playing a role in causing, and therefore, determining the content of, our reference-securing beliefs concerning general terms, beliefs that, when true, dictate what a general term will pick out. I also show that the problem of empty natural kind terms can be solved.

In the ethical texts, Aristotle claims that all instances of choice (prohairesis) must be preceded by deliberation, but it is not clear why he believes this. This paper offers an explanation of that commitment, drawing heavily from the De Anima and showing that the account emerging from there complements that of the ethical texts. The view is that the deliberative faculty has the capacity to manipulate reasons combinatorially, while the perceptual/desiderative faculty does not, and choice requires the combinatorial manipulation of (...) reasons. (shrink)

I first argue why Stanley and Williamson fail to eliminate the distinction between knowledge-that and knowledge-how. Then I argue that knowledge-how consists in a special kind of ways of thinking of ways of engaging in actions. So the distinction between knowledge-that and knowledge-how is twofold: the objects of knowledge-that and knowledge-how are different; the ways in which we entertain the object of knowledge are also distinct when we have knowledge-that and knowledge-how. At the end, I consider two recent intellectualist efforts (...) on knowledge-how and show why they fail. (shrink)

Existing research on the formation of employee ethical climate perceptions focuses mainly on organization characteristics as antecedents, and although other constructs have been considered, these constructs have typically been studied in isolation. Thus, our understanding of the context in which ethical climate perceptions develop is incomplete. To address this limitation, we build upon the work of Rupp to develop and test a multi-experience model of ethical climate which links aspects of the corporate social responsibility, ethics, justice, and trust literatures and (...) helps to explain how employees’ ethical climate perceptions form. We argue that in forming ethical climate perceptions, employees consider the actions or characteristics of a complex web of actors. Specifically, we propose that employees look outward at how communities are impacted by their organization’s actions, upward to make inferences about the ethicality of leaders in their organizations, and inward at their own propensity to trust others as they form their perceptions. Using a multiple-wave field study conducted at a privately held US corporation, we find substantial evidence in support of our model. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: I argue that the Ability Hypothesis cannot really accommodate the knowledge intuition that drives the knowledge argument and therefore fails to defend physicalism. When the thought experiment is run with, instead of Mary, an advanced robot Rosemary, for whom there presumably is no distinction between knowledge-how and knowledge-that, proponents of the Ability Hypothesis would have to give a far-fetched and counterintuitive explanation of why Rosemary wouldn’t learn anything new upon release. View HTML Send article to KindleTo send this article (...) to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.The Knowledge Intuition and the Ability HypothesisVolume 51, Issue 2Huiming Ren DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000467Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. The Knowledge Intuition and the Ability HypothesisVolume 51, Issue 2Huiming Ren DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000467Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. The Knowledge Intuition and the Ability HypothesisVolume 51, Issue 2Huiming Ren DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000467Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

I discuss Burge's argument that our entitlement to self-knowledge consists in the constitutive relation between the second-order review of thoughts and the thoughts reviewed, and defend it against Peacocke's criticism. I then argue that though our entitlement to self-knowledge is neutral to different environments, as Burge claims, the consideration of Burge's own notion of brute error shows that Burge's effort to reconcile externalism and self-knowledge is not successful.

I argue that Diaz-Leon fails to defend the phenomenal concept strategy against Stoljar's criticism because she fails to give us any general reasons for thinking that conditionals that involve psychologically distinct concepts could be a priori.

By considering another version of the Inverted Earth thought experiment in which the protagonist is informed that she is implanted with inverting lenses behind her eyes, I argue that the thought experiment doesn’t successfully pose a challenge to representationalism because after many years, the protagonist’s visual experience of the sky of Inverted Earth would simply represent it as blue.

Duane Cady views warism and pacifism as polar extremes on a continuum that embraces a full spectrum of ethical positions on the morality of war and peace. Realizing that he could not intellectually defend the notions of just-war theory, he found that he was a reluctant pacifist. In this new edition of From Warism to Pacifism, Cady continues to expose the pervasive, subconscious warism that is the dominant ideology in modern Western culture. He explores the changes over the last twenty (...) years—from the end of the Cold War to the ongoing “war on terror,” as well as Barack Obama winning the Nobel Prize for Peace. Like racism and sexism, the uncritical presumption that war is morally justifiable, even morally required, misguides our attitudes and institutions. In its place, Cady proposes the development of a positive concept of peace. Citing common objections to pacifist values, he describes peace as something more than the mere absence of war and demonstrates that pacifism is a defensible position. (shrink)

Three times in Book 1 chapter 13 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says desire partakes of reason in a way. There is a consensus view in the literature about what that claim means: desire has no intrinsic rationality, but can partake of reason by being blindly obedient to the commands of reason. I argue this consensus view is mistaken: for Aristotle, adult human desire has its own intrinsic rationality, and while it is to be obedient to reason, it is not (...) blind obedience, for when reason tells desire to obey, it includes an explanation supporting its order which desire can at least potentially understand. Thus, the nature of human desire, and also of the characteristic interaction of desire and reason, is much different than it is standardly taken to be. (shrink)

This book presents a reading of Martin Heidegger's philosophy as an effort to strike a middle position between the philosophies of Plato and Friedrich Nietzsche. Duane Armitage interprets the history of Western philosophy as comprising a struggle over the meaning of "being," and argues that this struggle is ultimately between materialism and idealism, and, in the end, between atheism and theism. This work therefore concerns the question of the meaning of the so called "death of God" in the context of (...) contemporary Continental Philosophy.. (shrink)

Although the presence or absence of a pitch accent clearly can play an important role in signaling the discourse and information structure of an utterance, whether the form of an accent determines the type of information it conveys is more controversial. We used an eye‐tracking paradigm to investigate whether H*, which has been argued to signal new information, evokes different eye fixations than L+H*, which has been argued to signal the presence of contrast. Our results demonstrate that although listeners interpret (...) these accents differently, their interpretive domains overlap. L+H* creates a strong bias toward contrast referents whereas H* is compatible with both new and contrast referents. (shrink)

A recent literature applies economic reasoning to restrict corporate social responsibility (CSR) to profitable opportunities. The underlying theory of the firmassumes widespread public company ownership and a net positive contribution to social welfare in relatively unfettered markets. This modern economic approach posits strict fiduciary responsibility of agents. Management, in this fiduciary role, should have no CSR discretion beyond the requirements of minimalist laws and customary ethics. Any profitable CSR option can be undertaken. Any unprofitable CSR action is defined as discretionary (...) altruism prohibited to fiduciary agents and recommended against for shareowners acting through the corporate form. The modern economic position shifts all unprofitable social issues into the sphere of public policy—which is then influenced by business on the basis of economic self-interest. There are two points of relaxation in this position. First, a firm may need to practice prudential altruism to forestall more costly action by governments and stakeholders. Second, management must consider productivity effects of employee sentiments about social issues and stakeholders. (shrink)

abstract: Despite the maturing and formalizing of Buddhist-Christian studies as an academic discipline, its practical and pastoral implications are insufficiently addressed. Most of the practical literature to date addresses spiritual care, broadly conceived, within a narrow range of sources and theories. This scoping study identifies three primary resources offered to providers of spiritual care by scholars of Buddhist-Christian studies: an expanded theoretical base for assessment and interpretation, practices for caregiver formation and cultivation, and guidance for care with spiritually fluid people. (...) Scholars of Buddhist-Christian studies could make at least four additional contributions to chaplaincy and spiritual care: a revised telos of care, attention to care as a site of spiritual practice, criteria for salutogenic spiritualities, and refined practices for interreligious and postcolonializing care. These potential contributions require the discipline to carefully consider methodological issues and broaden its range of sources. (shrink)

A Great Plains land ethic is shaped by an intimate knowledge of and appreciation for the evolution, ecology, and aesthetics of the plains landscape. The landscape evokes a sense of wonder and mystery suggested by the word "sacrament." The biblical concept of "covenant" points to God as a community-forming power, a creative process that has evolved into the earth community to which we humans belong. In contrast to an anthropocentric ethic which emphasizes human dominion over nature, a Theo-centric land ethic (...) seeks a balance, reflected in Genesis 1–3, between humans who are members of the earth community and moral agents accountable to God for the earth. A land ethic identifies concrete practices of metanoia and healing: agricultural practices to address the loss and degradation of soil; conservation and protection of water sources; utilization of wind and solar energy; and prescribed burning to restore processes vital to the prairie ecosystem. The concept of subsidiarity suggests that practices of metanoia and healing are a combination of wise public policy balanced by personal, family, church, business, and community responsibility. (shrink)

Currently, there are two bottleneck problems in the research of college students’ entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial behavior: lack of comprehensive and systematic theoretical framework and empirical analysis to reveal the role path that affects entrepreneurial intention, and most studies ignore the gap between entrepreneurial intention and behavior. Based on the literature review, this study adopted the Theory of Planned Behavior as the theoretical framework introduced entrepreneurial situational factors and entrepreneurial implementation intention, and constructed a two-step extended entrepreneurial intention–behavior model. The (...) structural equation was constructed using AMOS24.0 to empirically analyze the antecedent variables of college students’ entrepreneurial intention and the factors influencing entrepreneurial behavior. The empirical results showed that expected material possessions, expected social reputation, expected self-evaluation, mission and responsibility, and career development are the antecedent variables of entrepreneurial attitude. Support from families and friends, college teachers’ views, and the role models are antecedent variables of entrepreneurial subjective norms. Professional ability, entrepreneurial ability, entrepreneurial experiences, and personality traits are the antecedent variables of entrepreneurial perceived behavior control. In the formation stage of college students’ entrepreneurial intention, attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavior control, and entrepreneurial situational factors have significant impacts on the formation of college students’ entrepreneurial intention, while entrepreneurial intention, perceived behavior control, and entrepreneurial situational factors have significant impacts on the transformation phase of entrepreneurial behavior. Entrepreneurial implementation intention plays an intervening role between entrepreneurial intention and behavior of college students. (shrink)

The dispute between determinists and libertarians often fails to distinguish two issues: Is a man responsible for his behavior?; and Is man to be considered an integral part of the natural order, or something transcendently related to it? I wish to argue both that man is responsible and that there is nothing about him which transcends the natural causal order.

This essay examines a key theme in the work of the medieval mystical theologian, Meister Eckhart, namely, the Father giving birth to the Son in the soul. It explores this theme in the light of feminist theology, and argues that Eckhart is deliberately applying to God a female act and therefore characteristic. Criticisms of the efficacy of such female imagery are considered, but countered through a defence of what is argued to be Eckhart’s incontestable qualification of the male symbol through (...) a metaphor based on a biological fact. In turn the image of women in the limited biological role of giving birth is critically examined, while Eckhart is argued in his life and work to have risen above any position that fixes and limits the roles and identities of women. Further it is shown that Eckhart has not simply substituted female imagery for male, thereby reinforcing binary gender opposition and any negative consequences that befall. Eckhart is rather shown to employ an androgynous and transgendered metaphor in that the male Father-God is simultaneously a female Mother-God. The nature and purpose of Eckhart’s transgendered metaphor is then explored in relation to its apophatic context. (shrink)

Hamacher, Duane Indigenous Australian practices, developed and honed over thousands of years, weave science with storytelling. In this Indigenous science series, we'll look at different aspects of First Australians' traditional life and uncover the knowledge behind them - starting today with astronomy.

I offer a novel analysis of the relations between Aristotle’s three species of desire - appetite, temper, and wish - and the three things he says in EN 2.3 lead to pursuit - the pleasant, the beneficial, and the noble. It has long been tempting to think that these trios line up with one another in some way, ideally relating their members in one-to-one fashion. One account, by John Cooper, has gathered prominent adherents, but other authors, notably Giles Pearson, have (...) argued we should give up on even trying to correlate the two trios. I attempt to show that the two trios do relate in interesting ways, but not in a way that correlates their members in a one-to-one fashion. Instead, I argue that both appetite and temper are ultimately for the pleasant, while all things that an agent takes as objects of wish are conceived of as either pleasant, beneficial, or noble. This account conflicts with a dominant understanding of the species of desire as differentiated by their objects. I reply defend the view by showing that there is a second criterion for differentiating the species of desire. (shrink)

Abstract:International business norms do not exist. Content and development of such norms is a significant research question for business ethics scholarship. Any norms must address difficult practical and moral problems facing multinational enterprises. The author’s thesis is as follows. A key circumstance is that international relations remain a Hobbesian state of nature. The theoretical solution of a global sovereignty for norm formulation and enforcement is unlikely. The business ethics literature proposes other insightful but theoretical and conflicting solutions to abstract wealth-responsibility (...) and universalism-relativism controversies. Theoretical convergence seems unlikely. Evolution of multiple international policy regimes fragmented by policy arena is more probable. Regimes will typically be neither morals by agreement nor a morality of the marketplace. Regime development can occur in various other ways. Moral leadership, by firms, stakeholders, nongovernmental organizations or governments, can be a vital force. Formal ethical theories can inform and guide such leadership initiatives. This process perspective is applied to several recent case examples cited here as supporting evidence: anti-corruption, labor, environmental, human rights, and fiduciary responsibility initiatives. (shrink)

Summary The optical quality and properties of over 200 telescopes residing in museums and private collections have been measured and tested with the goal of obtaining new information about the early development of the achromatic lens (1757–1770). Quantitative measurements of the chromatic and spherical aberration of telescope objective lenses were made and are discussed within the context of John and Peter Dollond's description of their efforts to overcome these two optical defects inherent in any single lens. Their work was chronicled (...) in the Philosophical Transactions of 1758 and 1765. An important finding of this investigation is that a particular form of the achromatic lens that has been suggested as being a rare and early form by some investigators, and presumably introduced by Chester Moor Hall, was in fact found to be numerous and present in most museums and many private collections. It is shown that the colour correction of an early eighteenth-century doublet telescope objective is very sensitive to the ratio of the flint to crown glass focal lengths, as well as the variations of the indices of refraction with colour. This sensitivity would preclude any simple recipe for constructing an achromatic lens. The third order theory of spherical aberration of Nevil Maskelyne is reexamined, in which he pointed out that John Dollond developed a theoretical formula equivalent to what today is called geometric third order spherical aberration theory. (shrink)

Karl Schmitz‐Moormann argues that the doctrines of God and Creation, usually explicated in Roman Catholic theology by using the analogy of being, must rather be conceived in light of evolution and an analogy of becoming. God the Trinity, characterized by unity, information, and freedom, provides the image toward which the creation tends in its evolutionary processes. Informed by Teilhard and others, the author hereby provides more of a new research program for theology's engagement with natural science than a fully developed (...) theology. (shrink)

The discrepancy between measures of preferred and actual participation in decision making was used as a measure of ecological dissonance for an organization and then used to assess its relationship to job satisfaction, job involvement, job alienation, and job formalization. Questionnaires were administered to 143 faculty and staff members of Mississippi State University. Correlational analyses indicated mild relationships between the measures of ecological dissonance and job satisfaction, job involvement, job alienation, and job formalization, thus providing support for ecological dissonance theory (...) (see Miller, Topping, & Wells-Parker, 1989). It was concluded that ecological dissonance in participation in decision making was a predictor of workers’ job satisfaction, job involvement, job alienation, and job formalization. (shrink)

Ball (2009) claims that without phenomenal concepts, the knowledge argument fails. In this article, I argue that Ball doesn’t succeed in proving his claim. The reason is that the Marianna case is not a case where the acquisition of the concept required for entertaining a phenomenal belief content Q alone is sufficient for Marianna, given enough physical information about her environment, to infer Q.

本书介绍了资政百代,垂范万里的管理智慧;儒家文化视野下的中国当代管理等两个部分组成。.

continent. 2.2 (2012): 152–154 Levi R. Bryant. The Democracy of Objects . Ann Arbor, MI: Open Humanities Press. 2011. 316 pp. | ISBN 9781607852049. | $23.99 For two decades post-anarchism has adopted an epistemological point of departure for its critique of the representative ontologies of classical anarchism. This critique focused on the classical anarchist conceptualization of power as a unitary phenomenon that operated unidirectionally to repress an otherwise creative and benign human essence. Andrew Koch may have inaugurated this trend in (...) 1993 when he wrote his influential paper entitled “Post-structuralism and the Epistemological Basis of Anarchism.” Koch’s paper certainly laid some of the important groundwork for post-anarchism’s continual subsumption of ontology beneath the a priori of an epistemological orientation, and his work continues to be cited as an early and important venture into post-anarchist philosophy. The problem is that Koch could not conceive of an anti-essentialist and autonomous ontological system, one not subject to regulation or representation by the human mind. Consequently, he was forced to assert a subjectivist claims-making ego as the foundation of a post-structuralist anarchist politics. Saul Newman was indebted to this heritage insofar as he also posited the ego (extrapolated from the writings of Max Stirner) and the subject (extrapolated from Jacques Lacan’s oeuvre ) as the paradoxical ‘outside’ to power and representation. Todd May fell into a similar trap in his book The Political Philosophy of Post-structuralist Anarchism when he wrote that “[m]etaphysics [...] partakes of the normativity inhabiting the epistemology that provides its foundations.” 1 Whereas Newman’s approach did not necessarily foreclose the possibility of metaphysics—at least to the extent that he began with the subject of the Lacanian tradition (wherein the subject is believed to be radically split between thinking and being)—May completely foreclosed the possibility of any escape from the reign of the epistemological. There laid the impasse of yesterday’s post-anarchism. This impasse at the heart of the project of post-anarchism has forced Koch, Newman, May, and many others, to come to similar conclusions about the place of ontology in post-anarchist scholarship. The post-anarchists have all formulated a response strikingly similar to Koch’s argument that any representative ontology ought to be dismantled and dethroned in favour of “a conceptualization of knowledge that is contingent on a plurality of internally consistent episteme .” 2 By dismissing all ontologies as suspiciously representative and as incessantly harbouring a dangerous form of essentialism, post-anarchists have overlooked the privilege that they have placed on the human subject, language, and discourse, at the expense of the democracy that the human subject shares with other animals, objects, and beings in the world. This epistemological characterization of post-anarchism has held sway for far too long. It is not by chance that post-anarchism, as a concept, was first formulated by Hakim Bey as an “ontological anarchism,” 3 and subsequently repressed by the canon of post-anarchist authors. Perhaps Bey’s ontological anarchism also lacked the ‘rigour’ required of today’s scholarly audience and for these two reasons (at least) he has received very little credit for his inaugurating efforts into post-anarchism. In any case, I want to challenge this reluctance and revive the roots of post-anarchism. Levi Bryant gives us a reason to believe that we can achieve the promise of Bey’s ontological anarchism without sacrificing the scholarly standard of rigour. Levi Bryant’s newest open-access book, The Democracy of Objects , is a tour de force . His book challenges post-anarchists to take their radical critique of representation a step further by questioning the “hegemony that epistemology currently enjoys in philosophy.” Bryant maintains that post-structuralism, and radical anti-humanisms, only appear to reject the subject as the locus of political agency. Their rejection is actually more of a disavowal, a replacement of the human subject with the equally human order of language or discourse. What post-structuralism attempts to elucidate is the manner in which the subject is colonized by the Other of language, discourse and social relations. What here appears as a movement away from the determining subject of humanism and existentialism is only replaced with the determining apparatuses of structures as they are conceived by astute analysts of political culture. Post-structuralism thus re-enters the anthropocentric discourse to the extent that the cultural analyst believes himself capable of conceiving the determinative structures of society. In contradistinction to the claims of post-structuralism and post-anarchism, the role of the ontologist is not to suture the gap between epistemology and the real but to de-suture it, as Bryant puts it: “[o]ntology does not tell us what objects exist, but that objects exist, that they are generative mechanisms.” Above all else, the role of ontology, for post-anarchists, ought to be a real de-centering of the subject in relation to other objects in the non-human world such that the subject becomes conceived as one object among others within a living democracy of equality. This inevitably leads to the conclusion that objects exist whether or not the subject or analyst is there to represent them: they represent themselves and are autonomous from our dictation, just as each object finds its autonomy in relation to other objects. Ontology must now be distinguished from representation. We must shift the terms of the debate and interrogate the hegemony that epistemology has been afforded within post-anarchist philosophy. At least two possibilities are now permitted. On the one hand, one could intervene into the reigning mode of philosophy, namely epistemology, by latching onto concepts from meta-ethical philosophy. Meta-ethics allows one to easily separate the ontological from the epistemological and to answer very particular questions about each in order to formulate an overarching meta-ethical position. 4 Post-anarchism is particularly adept at this task because of its resounding ability to frame itself as an ethical political philosophy in relation to the strategic political philosophy of classical Marxism. On the other hand, Bryant argues that “[p]erhaps the best way to defeat [the privilege currently held by epistemology] is to shift the terms of debate.” Shifting the terms of debate is also something that post-anarchists have been very good at doing. Thus, instead of asking the question ‘how do representative ontological systems harbour concealed epistemological orientations toward the political?’ one might ask ‘ do epistemological orientations toward the political always harbour representative and subject-centred ontological systems?” The genius of Bryant’s book rests in its ability to convincingly argue for the radical autonomy of being and of objects. This claim speaks to some of the most compelling theories of the political in anarchist and marxist political philosophy (for instance, hegemony, representation, democracy, and so on) and it re-stages the political drama of our times across a much wider terrain. The fallacy of strategic political philosophy in the Marxist tradition, as Todd May quite correctly points out, is that it remains committed to a concept of power that is unitary in its analysis, unidirectional in its influence, and utterly repressive in its effect. Similarly, Bryant’s ontology allows one to argue that there is a fallacy that occurs “whenever one type of entity is treated as the ground or explains all other entities.” Whereas May’s post-structuralist anarchism moved away from the fallacy of the unitary analysis of power, whereby subjects are constituted by the influence of a single site of power, it nonetheless remained committed to a tactical political philosophy which is monarchical in the final analysis . It remains monarchical to the extent that the human world, the world of epistemology, is treated as the yardstick of democracy. Bryant’s argument is quite instructive: “[w]hat we thus get is not a democracy of objects or actants where all objects are on equal ontological footing [...] but instead a monarchy of the human in relation to all other beings.” The real fallacy is thus not against strategic political philosophy but philosophy itself and the way it has played out over so many centuries. “The epistemic fallacy,” writes Bryant, “consists in the thesis that proper ontological questions can be fully transposed into epistemological questions.” The point that Bryant is making relates to the way ontology is today always reduced to an epistemology and thereby loses its significance as a philosophical question. This book should be applauded for its novelty and its thesis ought to be taken seriously by post-anarchists today. Because of this book, and the attendant post-continental movement that is being called ‘speculative realism,’ we can now distinguish three stages in the life of post-anarchism. First, we can deduce what Süreyya Evren has described as its ‘introductory period.’ The introductory period of post-anarchism is defined by its inability to side-step the ontological problem in the literature of classical anarchism. During this period, post-anarchism needed to distinguish itself from classical anarchism while nonetheless remaining committed to its ethical project. The second period overcomes the problem of the separation of post-anarchism from classical anarchism by re-reading the classical tradition as essentially post-anarchistic. Some of the critiques of post-anarchism—especially that from Cohn & Wilbur 5 —are included into this period insofar as post-anarchism, for them, was always already anarchism. Whereas the first and second phases have included only explicitly anarchist literature under their rubric of worthwhile investigation, in the third period this no longer holds true. To be certain, the second period permitted the incorporation of post-structuralist literature into post-anarchist discussions (but always with a certain amount of reservation). This third period, the one that is to come—the one that is already here if only we would heed its call—will not take such care with attempts at identification or canonization. Indeed, post-anarchism is already here, like a seed beneath the snow, waiting to be discovered. Levi Bryant teaches us that the third period is already here: and yet where is it? NOTES 1) Todd May. The Political Philosophy of Post-Structuralist Anarchism . University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. 1997. 2. 2) Andrew Koch. “Post-structuralism and the Epistemological Basis of Anarchism” [1993] in Post-Anarchism: A Reader . Eds. Duane Rousselle & Sureyyya Evren. London: Pluto Press. 2011. pp. 23-40. 3) Bey, Hakim. “ Post-Anarchism Anarchy .” 1987. 4) I have attempted to do this in my paper on Bataille’s post-anarchism; see Duane Rousselle. “Georges Bataille’s Post-anarchism.” Journal of Political Ideologies . 17(3): in press. 5) Jesse Cohn & Shawn Wilbur. “ What’s Wrong with Post-anarchism? ” 2010. (shrink)