The authors present a materialist analysis of the effects of neoliberalism in education. Specifically, they contend that neoliberalism is a form of cultural invasion that begets necrophilia. Neoliberalism is necrophilous in promoting a cultural desire to fix fluid systems and processes. Such desire manufactures both individuals known and culturally felt experiences of alienation which are, it is argued, symptomatic of an imperialist nostalgia that permeates educational policy and practice. The authors point to ‘unschooling in schools’ as a mechanism for resisting (...) the necrophilous tendencies of contemporary formations of education. (shrink)

Teaching about homosexuality, especially in a positive light, has long been held to be a controversial issue. There is, however, a view of the capacity for reason that finds that those who deem homosexuality to be controversial will ultimately contradict themselves, becoming unreasonable. By this standard of reason, homosexuality should be treated as non controversial in schools. In this essay, John Petrovic argues that this epistemic position is problematic. Instead, he defends a Deweyan epistemology that casts reason as, (...) in part, a set of socially acquired habits of mind. People who have been socialized into heterosexist habits of mind must be exposed to counterhegemonic discourses. One such discourse can be found in the public values of liberal democracy through which the practice of reason must be pursued. Petrovic discusses the practical guidance provided by assuming a view of normative reason versus habituated reason in terms of both pedagogy and curriculum. (shrink)

In this article we consider the material dimensions of schooling as constitutive of the possibilities inherent in “fixing” education. We begin by mapping out the problem of “fixing education,” pointing to the necrophilic tendencies of contemporary education—a desire to kill what otherwise might be life-giving. In this sense, to “fix” education is to make otherwise fluid processes-of-living static. We next point to the material realities of this move to fix. After establishing the material consequences of perpetually fixing schools, we provide (...) a brief overview of two critical perspectives that might be shown as attempts to “unfix” education: critical pedagogy and unschooling. Though both offer critiques of normative education, these approaches are also bound by their failure to fully engage with the material dimensions of schooling. As such, both critical pedagogy and unschooling inadvertently cut off key possibilities for human flourishing within educational environments. In their rush to “unfix”—to counter the necrophilic tendencies of contemporary education—these approaches exclude or otherwise foreclose upon resistive challenges to the normative order that extend from the margins. In response, we turn to the possibilities for unschooling within the materially public spaces of schools. These are the spaces where fixity fails—possibility extends from unschooling in schools, from unfixing the process of fixing education. We end by considering the possibilities inherent in Community Service Learning as a valuable means to engage in a radically public, and unfixed, educational system. (shrink)

(2010). “Meaningful Educational Opportunity” May Not be Equality of Educational Opportunity [Essay Review of the Book Moving Every Child Ahead: From NCLB Hype to Meaningful Educational Opportunity] Educational Studies: Vol. 46, No. 1, pp. 116-128.

In this article we consider the material dimensions of schooling as constitutive of the possibilities inherent in “fixing” education. We begin by mapping out the problem of “fixing education,” pointing to the necrophilic tendencies of contemporary education—a desire to kill what otherwise might be life-giving. In this sense, to “fix” education is to make otherwise fluid processes-of-living static. We next point to the material realities of this move to fix. After establishing the material consequences of perpetually fixing schools, we provide (...) a brief overview of two critical perspectives that might be shown as attempts to “unfix” education: critical pedagogy and unschooling. Though both offer critiques of normative education, these approaches are also bound by their failure to fully engage with the material dimensions of schooling. As such, both critical pedagogy and unschooling inadvertently cut off key possibilities for human flourishing within educational environments. In their rush to “unfix”—to counter the necrophilic tendencies of contemporary education—these approaches exclude or otherwise foreclose upon resistive challenges to the normative order that extend from the margins. In response, we turn to the possibilities for unschooling within the materially public spaces of schools. These are the spaces where fixity fails—possibility extends from unschooling in schools, from unfixing the process of fixing education. We end by considering the possibilities inherent in Community Service Learning as a valuable means to engage in a radically public, and unfixed, educational system. (shrink)

One of the central theses of egalitarian liberals in the domain of distributive justice is that talented individuals should not be allowed to keep their entire market-income even if it flows solely from their greater abilities. This claim is usually supported by one of several arguments or some mixture of them, but in the present paper, I want to concentrate on the version that invokes equality of opportunity as its starting point. Namely, it is claimed that every human being should (...) enjoy an equal starting point in the life-race but that this is not secured insofar as some have greater natural talents than others. Therefore, egalitarians hold that results that arise from such an unfair situation are unjust and should be corrected by a redistributive taxation. I want to criticize this argument by hoping to show that it presupposes an untenable view about identity of persons. (shrink)

The article develops a critique of John Deely’s ontological realism, specifically in its relevance for the project of global semiotics. Deely, whose theorizations rely heavily on the pre-modern philosophical systems of Thomas Aquinas and the Latin scholastics, has made the most sustained attempt to give philosophical grounding to Charles Peirce’s famous intuition that “all this universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs”. The critique developsalong two main lines. Firstly, I contend that Deely’s account (...) of onto logical relations is unsatisfactory, for it assumes the very fact it promises to demonstrate: the identity between patterns of physical events, on one hand, and patt erns of thought, on the other. As it is never adequately explained what it means for the former to be identical with the latter, the mediating term – “ontological relation” – remains highly problematic. Secondly, I argue that even if this ontological paradigm is allowed to stand as proposed, it still fails to bridge the gap between the so-called “natural” signs and human-specific, language-based signification; for, as it posits a unity between the stipulable and the non-stipulable sign, the argument falls into a performative contradiction. (shrink)

This article critically explores John Rawls’s contention that the personal assets of individuals, i.e. their mental and bodily powers, should not determine the size of their holdings. Since such an argument may have several forms, the first task is to establish which of them Rawls himself advocates. He relies, it is argued, on a version that attempts to convince us that personal assets should not play a decisive distributive role because they are undeserved. This account is then formally reconstructed, (...) making all the relevant premises visible and preparing the ground for a critique that concentrates on the argument’s separate steps. Coming under attack first is the claim that everything should be deserved. The discussion examines next the premise urging us to find an ultimate, indisputable ground for desert-claims. Debate about this issue reveals some fundamental weaknesses in Rawls’s position: that he demands too much and is inconsistent; that some strong counter-intuitive consequences follow from his demands; and that his entire project, were such a criterion taken seriously, is undermined. Final comments are directed against the assertion that the community should own everything an individual does not deserve, showing that this does not remove moral arbitrariness, allows for the use of some persons as resources for others, and cannot plausibly limit its range of application. Most of these criticisms are not original, but are in accord with this paper’s main intention of combining as many good points against Rawls as possible. (shrink)

Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition.

Reissued here in its corrected second edition of 1864, this essay by John Stuart Mill argues for a utilitarian theory of morality. Originally printed as a series of three articles in Fraser's Magazine in 1861, the work sought to refine the 'greatest happiness' principle that had been championed by Jeremy Bentham, defending it from common criticisms, and offering a justification of its validity. Following Bentham, Mill holds that actions can be judged as right or wrong depending on whether they (...) promote happiness or 'the reverse of happiness'. Although attracted by Bentham's consequentialist framework based on empirical evidence rather than intuition, Mill separates happiness into 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures, arguing for a weighted system of measurement when making and judging decisions. Dissected and debated since its first appearance, the essay is Mill's key discussion on the topic and remains a fundamental text in the study of ethics. (shrink)

J.L. Mackie insists that ordinary evaluative thought presents itself as a matter of sensitivity to aspects of the world. And this phenomenological thesis seems correct. When one or another variety of philosophical non-cognitivism claims to capture the truth about what the experience of value is like, or (in a familiar surrogate for phenomenology) about what we mean by our evaluative language, the claim is never based on careful attention to the lived character of evaluative thought or discourse. The idea is, (...) rather, that the very concept of the cognitive or factual rules out the possibility of an undiluted representation of how things are, enjoying, nevertheless, the internal relation to 'attitudes' or the will that would be needed to count as evaluative. On this view the phenomenology of value would involve a mere incoherence, if it were as Mackie says--a possibility that then tends (naturally enough) not to be so much as entertained. But, as Mackie sees, there is no satisfactory justification for supposing that the factual is, by definition, attitudinatively and motivationally neutral. This clears away the only obstacle to accepting his phenomenological claim; and the upshot is that non-cognitivism must offer to correct the phenomenology of value, rather than give an account of it. -/- In Machie's view the correction is called for. In this paper I want to suggest that he attributes an unmerited plausibility to this thesis, by giving a false picture of what one is committed to if one resists it. (shrink)

In this philosophically sophisticated and historically significant work, John H. Zammito reconstructs Kant's composition of The Critique of Judgment and reveals that it underwent three major transformations before publication. He shows that Kant not only made his "cognitive" turn, expanding the project from a "Critique of Taste" to a Critique of Judgment but he also made an "ethical" turn. This "ethical" turn was provoked by controversies in German philosophical and religious culture, in particular the writings of Johann Herder and (...) the Sturm und Drang movement in art and science, as well as the related pantheism controversy. Such topicality made the Third Critique pivotal in creating a "Kantian" movement in the 1790s, leading directly to German Idealism and Romanticism. The austerity and grandeur of Kant's philosophical writings sometimes make it hard to recognize them as the products of a historical individual situated in the particular constellation of his time and society. Here Kant emerges as a concrete historical figure struggling to preserve the achievements of cosmopolitan Aufkl-rung against challenges in natural science, religion, and politics in the late 1780s. More specifically Zammito suggests that Kant's Third Critique was animated throughout by a fierce personal rivalry with Herder and by a strong commitment to traditional Christian ideas of God and human moral freedom. "A work of extraordinary erudition. Zammito's study is both comprehensive and novel, connecting Kant's work with the aesthetic and religious controversies of the late eighteenth century. He seems to have read everything. I know of no comparable historical study of Kant's Third Critique."-Arnulf Zweig, translator and editor of Kant's ;IPhilosophical Correspondence, 1759-1799;X "An intricate, subtle, and exciting explanation of how Kant's thinking developed and adjusted to new challenges over the decade from the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason to the appearance of the Critique of Judgment. "--John W. Burbidge, Review of Metaphysics "There has been for a long time a serious gap in English commentary on Kant's Critique of Judgment Zammito's book finally fills it. All students and scholars of Kant will want to consult it."--Frederick Beiser, Times Literary Supplement. (shrink)

Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition.

Стаття є детальним історіографічним оглядом проблеми політики СРСР щодо євангельських церков у 1940-1960-і роки. У ній розглядається та аналізується науковий доробок як вітчизняної історіографії класичного радянського періоду, періоду "перебудови", так і сучасної пострадянської історіографії. Окрема увага в статті приділяється роботам західних дослідників другої половини ХХ - початку ХХІ століття, які вивчали державно-релігійні відносини в СРСР щодо євангельських церков у 1940-1960-і роки. Розглядається також конфесійна історіографія проблеми, яка з'явилась в останні роки існування СРСР та набула свого розквіту у 2000-і роки.

Knowledge and Lotteries is organized around an epistemological puzzle: in many cases, we seem consistently inclined to deny that we know a certain class of propositions, while crediting ourselves with knowledge of propositions that imply them. In its starkest form, the puzzle is this: we do not think we know that a given lottery ticket will be a loser, yet we normally count ourselves as knowing all sorts of ordinary things that entail that its holder will not suddenly acquire a (...) large fortune. After providing a number of specific and general characterizations of the puzzle, Hawthorne carefully examines the competing merits of candidate solutions. In so doing, he explores a number of central questions concerning the nature and importance of knowledge, including the relationship of knowledge to assertion and practical reasoning, the status of epistemic closure principles, the merits of various brands of scepticism, the prospects for a contextualist account of knowledge, and the potential for other sorts of salience-sensitive accounts. Along the way, he offers a careful treatment of pertinent issues at the foundations of semantics. His book will be of interest to anyone working in the field of epistemology, as well as to philosophers of language. (shrink)

У статті проведено аналіз впливу зовнішньополітичного аспекту на процес генезису "нової релігійної політики" Й. Сталіна, її інституціоналізації та причин, що призвели до охолодження в державно-церковних відносинах наприкінці 40-х років ХХ століття. Показані роль та місце, яке займали євангельські церкви в цьому процесі.

У статті розглянуті методи проведення місіонерської та культурно-просвітницької діяльності релігійних організацій на Донеччині в умовах сучасних реалій розвитку суспільства. Наведено приклади місіонерських та культурних заходів у Донецькій області.

Foreword I. Critical rationalism is a genuinely new philosophical perspective. It is not, however, one systematic view. The development of it by Popper and ...

What does reality encompass? Is it exclusively physical, or does it include mental and 'abstract' aspects? What are the elements of being, reality's raw materials? John Heil offers stimulating answers to these questions framed in terms of a comprehensive metaphysics of substances and properties inspired by Descartes, Locke, and their successors.

Everyone loves something or somebody, and most people are concerned with loving another person like themselves, all equal. This book is based on the belief that getting clear about the concept and meaning of love between equals is essential for success in our practical lives. For how can we love properly unless we have a fairly clear idea of what love is? The book is written in ordinary language and for the ordinary person, without jargon or philosophical technicalities. It aims (...) to show that love between equals involves a single basic disposition, though that disposition expresses itself in various ways. Thus, after an introduction explaining the need for analysis and clarification, the author then deals in order with love as desire or need; with intrinsic friendship and sharing the self; with basic difficulties concerning power, dependence, altruism and paranoia; with sex and erotic love; and finally with the value in human life of love between equals. The work as a whole gives clear, coherent and practical guidance for all who wish to grasp what such love is really like. (shrink)

In his preface Mr Wilson writes 'I feel that a great many adults … would do better to spend less time in simply accepting the concepts of others uncritically, and more time in learning how to analyse concepts in general'. Mr Wilson starts by describing the techniques of conceptual analysis. He then gives examples of them in action by composing answers to specific questions and by criticism of quoted passages of argument. Chapter 3 sums up the importance of this kind (...) of mental activity. Chapter 4 presents selections for the reader to analyse, followed by questions of university entrance/scholarship type. This is a book to be worked through, in a sense a text-book. (shrink)

This book's critical approach addresses the anachronism, essentialism and ethnocentrism that underlie contemporary theoretical and methodological uses of the term «cosmopolitanism». It explores the concept of cosmopolitan reason from the viewpoints of comparative literature, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, postcolonialism and moral philosophy.

While art and science still functioned side-by-side during the Renaissance, their methods and perspectives diverged during the nineteenth century, creating a still enduring separation between the "two cultures". Recently, artists and scientists again collaborate more frequently, as promoted most radically by the ArtScience movement. This approach aims at a true synthesis between the intuitive, imaginative methods of art and the rational, rule-governed methods of science. To prepare the grounds for a theoretical synthesis, this paper surveys the fundamental commonalities and differences (...) between science and art. Science and art are united in their creative investigation, where coherence, pattern or meaning play a vital role in the development of concepts, while relying on concrete representations to experiment with the resulting insights. On the other hand, according to the standard conception, science seeks an understanding that is universal, objective and unambiguous, while art focuses on unique, subjective and open-ended experiences. Both offer prospect and coherence, mystery and complexity, albeit with science preferring the former and art, the latter. The paper concludes with some examples of artscience works that combine all these aspects. (shrink)

Ed. Daniel Greenberger, 750pp May 1995 164.95.