This article turns to early modern and Enlightenment advocates of tolerance in order to discover and lay bare the line of argument that informed their commitment to free speech. This line of argument will subsequently be used to assess the shift from free speech to the contemporary ideal of free self-expression. In order to take this assessment one step further, this article will finally turn to Immanuel Kant’s famous defense of the public use of reason. In the wake of Katerina (...) Deligiorgi’s readings of Kant, it will show that the idea of free speech requires a specific disposition on behalf of speakers and writers that is in danger of being neglected in the contemporary prevailing conception of free speech as freedom of self-expression. (shrink)

Verhack's book De mens en zijn onrust. Over het raadsel van de beweging seeks to develop a metaphysics after the 'end of metaphysics'. Such a metaphysics not only has to take into account Nietzsche's and Heidegger's radical critiques of metaphysics. It also has to avoid the soteriological strategies of traditional metaphysics by searching for a transcendent meaning, to which our finite and resdess human existence is pointing from the inside. Yet in which direction does our human existence transcend itself? By (...) comparing Verhack's answer to this question with Thomas Aquinas' discussion of the desiderium naturale Dei, it is argued that Verhack's post-metaphysical metaphysics is based on a spiritualistic outlook on life. From this line of argument it is shown that this metaphysics threatens to perpetrate the verysame soteriological strategies it tried to avoid, and to pass over the meaning and bearing of 'the end of metaphysics'. (shrink)

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

Recalling some recent publications on the influence of the Stoics on the development of Kant’s thought, this article intends to contribute to the knowledge of Kant’s appreciation of ancient authors by revealing the carefully hidden and hitherto unnoticed presence of Seneca behind one of Kant’s most peculiar pre-critical writings: Gedanken bei dem frühzeitigen Ableben des Hernn Johann Friedrich von Funk . Kant not only appears to model this Trostschreiben on Seneca’s famous consolationes; it is also shown that he is constantly (...) alluding to various philosophical writings of Seneca such as De vita beata, De brevitate vitae, De tranquilitate animi, ad Polybium de consolatione, and especially ad Marciam de consolatione. In conclusion it is suggested that the results of this analysis not only reaffirm Kant’s profound acquaintance with Seneca and shed more light on the Kantian style in his popular writings, but can also have some importance for Kant’s biography. (shrink)

Pas de deux with a theological legacy. Jürgen Habermas on David Hume and Immanuel Kant In his latest opus magnum, Jürgen Habermas reconsiders the history of philosophy from a peculiar perspective: the true and unique nature of philosophy is shown to have been given shape in philosophy’s dispute with Christian theology. This article reviews Habermas’ chapter on the Enlightenment, in which Habermas casts David Hume and Immanuel Kant dancing their own pas de deux with that theological legacy. After having sketched (...) the historical scripts in which Hume and Kant are involved by Habermas, I will critically assess the author’s claim that while Hume ends up refusing the dance and (hence) betraying (enlightened) philosophy’s nature, Kant accepts and transforms the heritage, yet ends up failing to give his pas de deux a genuine modern and enlightened twist. (shrink)

In Part One of Immanuel Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, the so-called thesis of innate evil notoriously plays a central role. Yet in the General Remark closing that part, Kant minimizes the weight of that thesis. In his view, it is of no use in moral dogmatics, and also in moral discipline its meaning is of a limited nature. Consequently, the thesis of innate evil is both relegated to a short footnote in the Introduction and completely passed (...) over in silence in the Doctrine of the methods of ethics in Kant’s Metaphysical Principles of the Doctrine of Virtue. This article investigates Kant’s assessment of the use of the thesis of innate evil in moral philosophy. It explores Kant’s semantics of the thesis in order to find out why the thesis makes no difference in moral philosophy, and tries to demonstrate why it is silenced furthermore in the methods of ethics. (shrink)

Pupils’ attribution of significance to sensitive ‘heritage’ of slavery may differ, particularly in multicultural classrooms. Little is known about the ways in which pupils establish a relationship with the present when discussing the significance of heritage of slavery. Starting from theories of historical significance and identity, these attributions and the interplay with the pupils’ identities were examined at a Dutch secondary school using questionnaires and interviews. Pupils primarily used two arguments: significance for a specific identity or group; and slavery as (...) a historical example of inequality. The interplay with their identity was ambiguous. (shrink)

How on Earth can Humans be perfect? The striving for perfection has always occupied a central place in ancient Greek culture. This dynamics urged the Greeks on to surpass themselves in different fields, from sculpture and architecture over athletics to philosophy. In this volume, an international group of scholars examines how the ideal of perfection was conceived and pursued in Late Antiquity, both within philosophical circles and Christianity. Their studies yield a fascinating panorama of various attempts to bridge the unbridgeable (...) and assimilate our frail, imperfect human nature as far as possible to divine perfection. (shrink)

This book is relevant for anyone involved in the practice of psychology and the social sciences more broadly: researchers, teachers, students, and practitioners. It challenges the status quo with regards to the way that psychology is done, and it offers a unified solution that encompasses both theory and methodology.

The triangular desire and the scapegoat mechanism are the key issues of René Girard’s mimetic theory. The imitative desire to have what the other has conceals the ‘meta-physical’ desire to be the Other. The ‘inter-dividual’ human being does not recognize in his model/rival or in the idol/scapegoat the mimetic ‘counter-part’ of himself. How can Nietzsche’s reading of the ancient Greek agonal or competitive culture be re-interpreted in the context of his ambivalent relationship with Richard Wagner? What is the correlation of (...) Nietzsche’s mental illness and his choice in favour of the violence by Dionysus against the Judaeo-Christian truth of the innocent victim? Nietzsche’s attitude of resentment – from a 'thwarted and traumatized desire' – is put in a wider cultural-psychological and ‘anthropo-ethical’ context. The tripartite division of the soul according to Plato, Aristotle’s rhetoric ‘patho-etho-logy’ and the trifunctional hypothesis of Georges Dumézil make up the interpretative framework. Nietzsche’s ‘patho-logy’ – self-knowledge alienated from desire – and the destruction of his moral resilience typify an ‘autoimmune crisis’. (shrink)

In this survey of business ethics in Europe, we compare the present state of business ethics in Europe with the situation as described by Enderle (BEER 5(1):33–46, 1996 ). At that time, business ethics was still dominated by a mainly philosophical, normative analysis of business issues with a maximum of 25 chairs in business ethics all over Europe. It has since expanded dramatically in numbers as well as diversified into many different domains. We find this rich diversity in the conception (...) of business ethics back in the answers of our respondents to every single question. The concepts they propose, the courses they teach, the subjects under research as well as the training and consultancy offered to clients and even the challenges for the future all reflect this diversity. Decisive for the expansion of business ethics in Europe has been the advance of CSR and the official backing of CSR by the European Commission. We further argue that the prevalence and importance of business ethics and CSR differs throughout Europe. A rough approximation based on our survey results and literature review is that it is more important and more developed in core and Nordic European countries and somewhat less in Southern and Eastern European countries. The real East with countries like Belarus and Bulgaria remains a challenge. (shrink)

This short essay presents a critical cartography of the critical new materialist notion and methodology of diffraction.

Tactile perception is often impaired during movement. The present study investigated whether such sensory suppression also occurs during back movements, and whether this would be modulated by attention. In two tactile detection experiments, participants simultaneously engaged in a movement task, in which they executed a back-bending movement, and a perceptual task, consisting of the detection of subtle tactile stimuli administered to their upper or lower back. The focus of participants’ attention was manipulated by raising the probability that one of the (...) back locations would be stimulated. The results revealed that tactile detection was suppressed during the execution of the back movements. Furthermore, the results of Experiment 2 revealed that when the stimulus was always presented to the attended location, tactile suppression was substantially reduced, suggesting that sensory suppression can be modulated by top-down attentional processes. The potential of this paradigm for studying tactile information processing in clinical populations is discussed. (shrink)

In the reported, experiment participants hit a ball to aim at the vertex of a Müller–Lyer configuration. This configuration either remained stable, changed its shaft length or the orientation of the tails during movement execution. A significant illusion bias was observed in all perturbation conditions, but not in the stationary condition. The illusion bias emerged for perturbations shortly after movement onset and for perturbations during execution, the latter of which allowed only a minimum of time for making adjustments . These (...) findings indicate that allocentric information is exploited for online control when people make rapid adjustments in response to a sudden change in the environment and not when people guide their limb movements to interact with a stable environment. (shrink)

This article reviews the debate on ‘intersectionality’ as the dominant approach in gender studies, with an emphasis on the politics of representation. The debate on intersectionality officially began in the late 1980s, though the approach can be traced back to the institutionalization of women's studies in the 1970s and the feminist movement of the 1960s. Black and lesbian feminists have long advocated hyphenated identities to be the backbone of feminist thought. But in recent years, intersectionality has sustained criticism from numerous (...) angles within gender studies, ranging from feminist philosophy to applied political research. This article will use the theorization of ‘interference’ as a searchlight to produce an overview of this interdisciplinary debate, culminating in our affirmative answer to the question: should we move from intersectionality to interference? Our answer is based on onto-epistemological reflections, i.e., reflections in which being and knowing are always already entangled. -/- . (shrink)

Quantum leaps happen in texts, too. This reading of the role of the quantum leap in Karen Barad's agential realism is necessary, because arguing that the diffractive reading strategy proposed by Barad's ethico-onto-epistemology mirrors the physical phenomenon of diffraction would indeed be representationalist. Reviewing how Barad—in her own oeuvre—has transformed diffraction into an innovative reading methodology that could not only potentially challenge the epistemological underpinnings of the canonization process that is at work in feminist theory, but could also radically change (...) the canonization practice of feminist oeuvres itself, our article embarks on a detailed examination of the ways in which the oeuvres of Simone de Beauvoir and Luce Irigaray have been mistakenly categorized and canonized in a hierarchical and Oedipalized manner. This conflict-based narrative has not only paralyzed the oeuvres of Irigaray and Beauvoir, but also has had a negative impact on the canonization of sexual difference philosophy as a whole in feminist theory. By (re)reading the oeuvres diffractively, this article brings the feminist philosophies of Beauvoir and Irigaray together by invalidating the idea that the feminist canonization process always has to run along the lines of discontinuity, Oedipalization and dialectization. (shrink)

Empathy is important in our digitized and polarized world and an important aspect of education. What contribution can history teachers make to develop this in their students? In this study we investigated whether a lesson unit making use of eyewitnesses and designed from six pedagogical principles, resulted in more confidence in the ability to empathize, attributed importance to empathy and understanding of empathy by 10th grade students. In addition, we investigated the differences between two conditions: the use of a guest (...) speaker versus eyewitnesses in a documentary. In this quasi-experimental intervention study, we used a pretest-posttest-follow-up design. The data were collected via questionnaires containing closed and open questions. The results showed that students (N = 97) in both conditions gained confidence in their ability to empathize and improved their ability to explain what empathy means and why it is important. After two months, progress on these items was still significant. In the condition with the guest speaker students scored significantly higher on understanding empathy than students who participated in the lesson unit with the documentary. This study contributes to the understanding of developing empathy through the use of eyewitnesses in history classes and the measurement of students’ understanding of empathy. (shrink)

New-born screening programs for congenital disorders and chronic disease are expanding worldwide and children “at risk” are identified by nationwide tracking systems at the earliest possible stage. These practices are never neutral and raise important social and ethical questions. An emergent concern is that a reflexive professionalism should interrogate the ever earlier interference in children’s lives. The Flemish community of Belgium was among the first to generalize the screening for hearing loss in young children and is an interesting case to (...) study the public justification of early interventions for families with deaf children. This article uses a critical lens to study the archive of the government child healthcare organization in Flanders in order to uncover underlying constructions of childhood, deafness, and preventive health. We focus on two interrelated themes. The first is the notion of exclusion of the human factor through the mediation of technology. The second is the idea of deafness as endangering a healthy development, an impairment that can nevertheless be treated if detected early enough. It is argued that, since deafness cannot be viewed as a life-threatening condition, the public interest which is implicitly defended is not the rescue of deaf children rather the exclusion of otherness. (shrink)

Cross-education is the phenomenon in which repeated practice of a unilateral motor task does not only result in performance improvement of the trained limb, but also in the untrained contralateral limb. The aim of this study was to test whether cross-education or positive transfer of learning is also achieved for tasks in which both limbs contribute in different ways by using modified equipment that switches the limbs’ role. To this end, a reverse field hockey stick was used that requires a (...) mirroring of arm and hand use and dominance. Two groups of young skilled female field hockey players participated in a crossover-design, in which participants received four training sessions with a reverse hockey stick followed by four training sessions with a regular hockey stick, or vice versa. In a pre-test, intermediate test, a post-test and a retention test, participants’ performance on a field hockey skill test with a regular hockey stick was measured. The results revealed that training with the reversed hockey stick led to significantly increased improvements compared to training with a regular hockey stick. We conclude that modified equipment can be used to exploit positive transfer of learning by switching the limbs’ roles. The findings are discussed by referring to the symmetry preservation principle in dynamic systems theory and have clear practical relevance for field hockey trainers and players seeking to further improve field hockey skills. (shrink)

We investigate empirically whether framing in general, and the use of Simplifying Models as a framing tool in particular, has an effect on the way topics are cognitively construed. Existing studies on framing in linguistics have either been theoretical or descriptive. Going beyond such methodologically simple approaches, we use a more rigid test design involving the use of a control group, the construction of test conditions in which different Simplifying Models constitute the major source of variation, the inclusion of independent (...) variables like age and prior knowledge of the subjects, and the use of linear and logistic regression analysis. Our results show that our more rigid methodological approach yields a more reliable image of the effect of Simplifying Models on the way in which people deal with information on a complex topic like sustainable food production. Fleshing out these effects further may in time lead to a better informed construction of communication on complex social topics. (shrink)

Social scientific reasoning (SSR) is essential to social science education and to a democratic society as a whole. Students are challenged to analyze and reason about social problems such as social inequality, crime, and poverty. However, students experience difficulties with SSR. This study addresses the research question: Which design principles can guide teachers in designing lessons that promote social scientific reasoning? In this design-based research, four social science teachers employed a conceptualization of SSR and its levels together with three initial (...) design principles to develop curriculum materials and activities. These design principles and curriculum materials were piloted in two secondary education classes (9th and 10th grades) and evaluated by four social science teachers, four social science teacher educators and 90 students. The study produced six design principles that can promote students’ SSR. In combination with the curriculum materials, those design principles can help develop teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and guide the design of tasks and units that develop SSR. (shrink)

René Girard’s mimetic theory allows for an anthropological recontextualization of ancient Greek literature against the backdrop of biblical texts. The story , dialogue and reflection are the basic forms of mythos and logos, in which man translates and gives shape to his violent origin. Greek drama, which represents the ‘poli-tical’ crisis of human existence, offers a partial deconstruction of the scapegoat mechanism as the hidden foundation of society. On the tragic stage all protagonists are divided and united in a non-decidable (...) dispute – a mimetic-sacrificial non-difference which is decided at the expense of the hero/scapegoat who eventually ‘makes a difference.’Sophocles’ Antigone resists the mythical lie of a decisive difference between the mimetic doubles and enemy brothers Eteocles and Polynices. As a prefiguration of Christ , the tragic heroine Antigone reveals the collective hatred and the unanimous violence against the scapegoat as the bloody foundation of human civilization. Antigone’s ethical ‘an-archy’ and ‘non-in-difference’ remains a blind spot in Heidegger’s and Lacan’s philosophical and psychoanalytical interpretations. (shrink)

Norman's reconciliation of the two theories of perception is challenged because it directly leads to the nature-nurture dichotomy in the development of the two visual systems. In contrast, the proposition of a separate development of the two visual systems may be better understood as involving different types of information that follow a distinct temporal sequence.