The present study concerns the issue of meaning in contemporary continental philosophy. In particular, it develops the two accounts of meaning offered by Heidegger and Levinas, each of whom presents us with a differing break from Husserl. As a first attempt to name the difference between these three thinkers, one could say that Husserl gives us an epistemological notion of meaning; whereas Heidegger gives us an ontological account, and Levinas gives us an ethical account. We will refine and reformulate this (...) division in relation to the issues of each chapter. ;We will thus see how both Heidegger and Levinas develop their separate notions in relation to Husserl's own revolutionary approach to the question of meaning. Whereas Husserl both replaced the term "experience" with the term "intuition" and gave a compelling account of the "prepredicative" roots of the meaningful, Heidegger advances the articulation of such a prepredicative realm of meaning even further than Husserl. He did so, however, in a way that ends up displacing Husserl's notion of intuition. This is the move from Husserl's account of phenomenological intuition to Heidegger's own notion of a more hermeneutic phenomenology . ;I will show how Heidegger articulates an account of meaning as that upon which any projection of understanding takes shape. Meaning becomes a quasi-transcendental, non-subjective notion of that which makes possible the disclosure of any "world." Levinas, on the other hand, offers an account of meaning---in intended opposition to Heidegger---as located primarily in the ethical exposure at the heart of language: in the "face-to-face" relation of Same and Other. He further develops his notion of meaning in terms of the notion of the saying and the said. Both Heidegger and Levinas give us a non-intentional account of the meaningful. For Heidegger it takes the form of a non-intentional background that makes possible both the "worldhood of the world" and the possibilities of Dasein . For Levinas, the meaningful is thought in terms of an interpersonal, quasi-ethical face to face relation between persons exposed to the vulnerability, obligation, and height of an "Other" in what he calls the "saying.". (shrink)

Persons who are dangerous and legally responsible, but who have not yet committed any currently recognised criminal offence, fall within the gap left between the domains of criminal justice and civil commitment. Many jurisdictions operate legal regimes that permit the detention of such persons in order to prevent the occurrence of anticipated criminal harms. These regimes often either fail to respect the principle of proportionality or contradictorily treat a dangerous offender as both legally responsible and not responsible at the same (...) time. In response to these problems, a number of preventive detention models have been proposed. Retributivist models seek to prevent the occurrence of anticipated criminal harms by requiring blame on the dangerous person’s part in order to warrant detention. However, these models are ill-equipped to deal with the problem of coextensiveness; i.e., they struggle to comprehensively reconcile proportionality in punitive sentencing with the period over which dangerous persons remain dangerous and during which one might therefore want them to be incapacitated. In order to achieve comprehensive incapacitation of dangerous persons for the duration of their dangerousness, retributivist models are forced to abandon their fidelity to proportionality in punitive sentencing, thereby losing themselves in the process. Accordingly, if the practice of preventive detention can be justified at all, such justification will not be of a retributivist character. (shrink)

Over the last decade, the increased use of work teams within organizations has been one of the most influential and far-reaching trends to shape the business world. At the same time, corporations have continued to struggle with increased unethical employee behavior. Very little research has been conducted that specifically examines the developmental aspects of employee ethical decision-making in a team environment. This study examines the impact of a team leader’s perceived integrity on his or her subordinates’ behavior. The results, which (...) came from a survey of 245 MBA students functioning for 2 years in a work team environment, indicate an interaction between leader integrity and team member ethical intentions. (shrink)

Mainstream addiction science is today widely marked by an antinomy between a neurologically determinist understanding of the human brain ‘hijacked’ by the biochemical allure of intoxicants and a liberal voluntarist conception of drug use as a free exercise of choice. Prominent defenders of both discourses strive, ultimately without complete success, to provide accounts that are both universal and value-neutral. This has resulted in a variety of conceptual problems and has undermined the utility of such research for those who seek to (...) therapeutically care for people presumed to suffer from addictions. This article contrasts these two contemporary discourses to two others that played vital historical roles in initiating both scientific and popular concern for addiction. These are the Puritan and civic republican discourses that dominated scholarly discussions of addiction in the early modern era. In each case, the place of values in these discussions is highlighted. By comparing them to their early modern historical antecedents, this article seeks to reflexively explore and develop more intellectually sound and therapeutically relevant alternatives to the troubled attempts at universality and value-neutrality now fettering debates in mainstream addiction science. (shrink)

In an effort to promote more theoretically incisive research regarding the specifically sociological aspects of addiction, this article critically discusses three prominent theoretical paradigms for the study of addiction - neurology, learning theory and symbolic interaction. Neurological theories and learning theories are found to inadequately provide for the role of culturally transmitted meanings in the addiction process. While symbolic interactionist theories have been centrally concerned with meaning, they have failed to theorize how issues of meaning might figure in the addict's (...) inevitable subjective estrangement from his or her drug-related activities. This stems from their failure to appreciate the reality of non-symbolic meaning, or meaningful experience that manifests pre-reflectively, at the level of our immediate bodily encounter with reality. The article concludes by suggesting that sociological students of addiction adopt a more thoroughly praxiological orientation to meaningful experience, so as to overcome the analytic limitations inherent in the antinomy between biological reductionism and disembodied cognitivism. (shrink)

Pierre Klossowski's career in philosophy is a brief but significant intervention into the manner in which the connections between desire, identity, and meaning are thought. Although Klossowski's influence on much of what is called French “post-structuralism” or “post-modernism” is frequently noted, Klossowski's development of the motif of the simulacrum is rarely traced in its proper context. Through readings of the texts of the Marquis de Sade, Georges Bataille, and Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as his own ruminations on the polytheism of (...) the ancient Roman cult of Diana, Klossowski constructs a critique not only of the identity of the self but also of the supposed unity of reason and rational signs. Klossowski's critique demonstrates how meaningful discourse is produced from the basis of incommunicable affects, which project images in consciousness that, only then, are able to take the form of iterable simulacra. Our “gregarious” discourse in language is, thus, formed only indirectly from the affects and acquires its supposed unity only as it fails to express those affects. (shrink)

Os primeiros seis parágrafos de O Desespero humano, de Kierkegaard, estão entre as passagens mais densas e difíceis de interpretar em toda sua obra. Nelas, ele expõe a natureza do eu em termos de relações e muitos têm interpretado isso como uma expressão da dialética de Hegel. Nesse artigo, leio aqueles parágrafos da lógica das relações de Peirce e mostro que Peirce nos permite entender Kierkegaard muito mais claramente do que Hegel. Além disso, apesar de tudo que Peirce e Hegel (...) têm em comum, Peirce o critica severamente com respeito à realidade da Segundidade. Analisando essa crítica e também o que Peirce e Kierkegaard dizem sobre a importância da dúvida vis-à-vis consciência, eu mostro que uma leitura Peirciana de Kierkegaard é bem mais frutífera do que a estruturaHegeliana que Kierkegaard conhecia. No final, eu reflito sobre a possibilidade de falar sobre um Kierkegaard semiótico e um Peirce existencialista. (shrink)

This paper provides an account of the paradoxes of teaching democracy, the paradoxes of being a citizen in a liberal democracy, and the insights that can be gained from the model of citizenship that T.H. Green promoted. Green thought citizenship was predicated on the twin foundations of the community and the common good. Freedom for Green means individual self-determination coupled with recognition of the dependency relations between individuals and the community. Green is noteworthy not only as a theorist but also (...) as an active contributor to the development of public schools in England. A consideration of his arguments provides a model for educating citizens, addresses the paradoxes of democracy in education, and reveals elements of his philosophy that are relevant to educational issues today. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Christian Art of Dying: Learning from Jesus by Allen VerheyMandy Rodgers-GatesThe Christian Art of Dying: Learning from Jesus By Allen Verhey GRAND RAPIDS: WILLIAM B. EERDMANS, 2011. 423 PP. $30.00When Allen Verhey, my former adviser, learned that I would be writing this review, he warned me (with characteristic modesty) that I ought to be careful to critique something about his book, or people might become suspicious. It (...) seems fitting now that this piece is being published after his death, which gives me permission to praise the book without reserve.Over the last few decades, the topic of death and dying has garnered renewed interest among Christian ethicists, and Verhey has been at the center of these conversations. Such conversations have brought into focus the reality that death is not merely the cessation of a life lived well (the “true” subject of ethics) but also that “dying well” is a legitimate subject within ethics. Dying offers unique opportunities for practicing virtues and for loving God, self, and neighbor, and care for the dying and grieving represents an important test of the faithfulness of Christian communities.After beginning with his own assessment of death in the modern West—acknowledging the benefits and triumphs of medicine, along with the pitfalls of medicalized death and the failure of the Church to resist medicalization—Verhey moves to the heart of his book: a retrieval of the Ars Moriendi tradition. Verhey engages a fifteenth-century abridged manual on the art of dying that appeared within the wider genre, one accompanied by wood-block prints (whose images appear alongside Verhey’s text). Placing the little book within its historical context, Verhey describes the view of death presented in it, a “commendacion” of death. He then moves on to the Ars Moriendi’s presentation of temptations faced by the dying person (“Moriens”), the virtues required, and questions, instructions, and prayers for the dying. Along the way, Verhey offers some of his own analysis; but he reserves the bulk of his critique and reformulations for the third section of his book, “Toward a contemporary Ars Moriendi.”Verhey’s articulation of a contemporary Ars Moriendi begins with a “commendacion” of life, in contrast to the medieval commendation of death. He demonstrates how the lens of Jesus’s resurrection serves to illuminate a proper Christian view of death: life is a good—though not the ultimate good—and death and suffering per se ought not to be considered good. At the same time, we need not fear death. Death and suffering are not the greatest evils, and [End Page 191] sometimes they must be risked or accepted “for the sake of God’s cause in the world” (215). Taking its cue from the Ars Moriendi tradition of remembering Jesus, the next chapter traces some of the details of the Passion narratives, including the seven final words of Jesus, and comments on these as they pertain to a modern context of dying. This remembering is then brought to bear on a contemporary retelling of the virtues necessary for dying well—again, relying upon and yet transforming the earlier tradition in nuanced ways. Verhey’s final section, on Christian communities’ care for the dying, includes sustained reflection on the practices of those communities and the resources they offer, focusing particularly on prayer. It offers critiques and additions—for example, recognizing the value of increased silence at funerals, “instead of rushing to fill the silence of death with our words” (348).Verhey’s engagement with the Ars Moriendi literature offers a creative and exemplary use of tradition for a contemporary concern. Our age—one that often refuses to face death—is brought into conversation with another era, when people took their dying seriously. At the same time, Verhey is free with his critique of the tradition and the need to reshape it, primarily on theological grounds. The strength of this book, like all his work, lies in its attention to scripture and its theological nuance and depth. At the same time, he knew and understood people, and that knowledge and pastoral concern are evident throughout. Ultimately, he accomplishes what he expresses in the introduction: “I hope... (shrink)

"Missouri's return to prominence among the ranks of college football teams is chronicled in this account of the Tigers' 2007 and 2008 seasons"--Provided by publisher.

This response considers how Friesen’s account of simulation helps us to think through the situation of politics under technological conditions. The alleviation of material and corporeal risks entailed in simulated dissection is compared to the manner in which emerging media technologies facilitate experiences of political participation that are evacuated of the burdens of engagement. This dynamic is finally attributed not to digital mediation itself, but to its operation under the sign of simulation.

This response considers how Friesen’s account of simulation helps us to think through the situation of politics under technological conditions. The alleviation of material and corporeal risks entailed in simulated dissection is compared to the manner in which emerging media technologies facilitate experiences of political participation that are evacuated of the burdens of engagement. This dynamic is finally attributed not to digital mediation itself, but to its operation under the sign of simulation.

Historians have used university statutes and acts to reconstruct the official astrology curriculum for students in both the arts and medical faculties, including the books studied, their order, and their relation to other texts. Statutes and acts, however, cannot offer insight into what actually happened during lectures and in the classroom: in other words, how and why astrology was taught and learned in the medieval university. This paper assumes that the astrology curriculum is better understood as the set of practices (...) that constituted it and gave it meaning for both masters and students. It begins to reconstruct what occurred in the classroom by drawing on published and unpublished lecture notes. These offer insight into how masters presented the material as they did, and why. The paper argues three points: first, the teaching of astrology centered on demonstrations involving astrological instruments: specifically, various kinds of paper astrolabes. Second, the astrological instruction focused on conveying the pragmatics of astrology rather than esoteric, theoretical issues. Finally, astrology as it was taught in the arts curriculum was explicitly intended to provide a foundation for students who would advance to study medicine at the university. (shrink)

In this paper I apply an old problem of Quine's (the inscrutability of reference in translation) to a new style of theory about mental content (causal/nomological/informational accounts of meaning) and conclude that no "naturalization" of content of the sort currently popular can solve Quine's "gavagai" enigma. I show how failure to solve the problem leads to absurd conclusions not about one's own mental life, but about the non-mental world. I discuss various ways of attempting to remedy the accounts so as (...) to avoid the problem and explain why each attempt at solving the problem would take the information theorists further from their self-assigned task of "naturalizing" semantics. (shrink)

One of the signal developments in contemporary criticism over the past several years has been the ascendancy of the colonial paradigm. In conjunction with this new turn, Frantz Fanon has now been reinstated as a global theorist, and not simply by those engaged in Third World or subaltern studies. In a recent collection centered on British romanticism, Jerome McGann opens a discussion of William Blake and Ezra Pound with an extended invocation of Fanon. Donald Pease has used Fanon to open (...) an attack on Stephen Greenblatt’s reading of the Henriad and the interdisciplinary practices of the new historicism. And Fanon, and published interpretations of Fanon, have become regularly cited in the rereading of the Renaissance that have emerged from places like Sussex, Essex, and Birmingham.1My intent is not to offer a reading of Fanon to supplant these others, but to read, even if summarily, some of these readings of Fanon. By focusing on successive appropriations of this figure, as both totem and text, I think we can chart out an itinerary through contemporary colonial discourse theory. I want to stress, then, that my ambitions here are extremely limited: what follows may be a prelude to a reading of Fanon, but does not even begin that task itself.2 1. See Jerome McGann, “The Third World of Criticism,” in Rethinking Historicism: Critical Readings in Romantic History, ed. Marjorie Levinson et al., pp. 85-107, and Donald Pease, “Toward a Sociology of Literary Knowledge: Greenblatt, Colonialism, and the New Historicism,” in Consequences of Theory, ed. Barbara Johnson and Jonathan Arac.2. A properly contextualized reading of Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, the text to which I most frequently recur, should situate it in respect to such germinal works as Jean-Paul Sartre’s Réflexions sur la question Juive, Dominique O. Mannoni’s Psychologie de la colonisation, Germaine Guex’s La Névrose d’abandon, as well as many lesser known works. But this is only to begin to sketch out the challenge of rehistoricizing Fanon. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is coeditor of Transition, a quarterly review, and the author of Figures in Black and The Signifying Monkey, which received an American Book Award. (shrink)

This study investigates the processes involved in the shaping of a society's economic ethos. The discussion of ethics and economics has a very long history across multiple disciplines. The founder of modern economics, Adam Smith, likewise had a keen interest in this topic. However, with the development of economic science, scholarly assessment has shifted toward positive analysis while normative analysis has been left mainly to philosophers. By utilizing the newly developed morality of profit-making scale, the authors sought to understand how (...) respondents' economic ethical worldview shifts over time. Specifically, we theorized that the news media's copious negative coverage of the gasoline price crisis of 2006 would significandy impact individuals' MPM worldview. The results show that respondents' explicit attitudes toward MPM were significantly impacted. However, respondents' more deeply held, implicit economic ethical worldview was only slightly impacted. The authors argue that only patient, long-term explanation and argumentation can permanently affect a society's economic ethos. Implications and future research directions for business researchers are oudined. (shrink)

Highlights popular debates about the contribution of reflection to teacher education and emphasizes the role of the mentor in facilitating teachers' professional development. Each chapter is concerned with exploring the concept of reflection and considering its contributions to teacher education.

This study utilizes an exploratory research design to investigate the influence of historical socialism and communism on the shaping of a society’s economic ethos. The discussion of ethics and economics has a very long history across multiple disciplines including the founder of modern economics, Adam Smith. However, with the growth of economic science, academic consideration has shifted toward positive analysis while normative analysis has been left mainly to philosophers. By utilizing the newly developed Morality of Profit-Making scale, the authors sought (...) to understand how historical socialism and communism influences respondents’ economic ethical worldview utilizing an exploratory research design. Data were collected from respondents in the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, Serbia, Poland, and Hungary. (shrink)