What attributions must any actor make to an other in order to engage in face-to-face interaction with that other? Edmund Husserl's use of “analogues” suggests that actors use their own experiences of themselves as a starting pointin making such attributions. Alfred Schutz and Erving Goffman claim that for face-to-face interaction to occur, an other must be recognized as copresent and reciprocity must be established. I assert here that the means for determining that these conditions have been met will vary. I (...) explore a varietyof actors and in particular their differing identifications of interactionally available others and I take as problematicthe establishment of co-presence and reciprocity. Taking others to be “analogues of ourselves” serves as a useful starting point, but worthy of detailed analysis is howand with whom an actor draws the analogy, under what circumstances it comes in for revision, and the interactional consequences of the decisions made. (shrink)

Through a wide-ranging international collection of papers, this volume provides theoretical and historical insights into the development and application of phenomenological sociology and ethnomethodology and offers detailed examples of research into social phenomena from these standpoints. All the articles in this volume join together to testify to the enormous efficacy and potential of both phenomenological sociology and ethnomethodology.

The recent work of Frances Chaput Waksler—The New Orleans Sniper: A Phenomenological Case Study of Constituting the Other—demonstrates, by close examination of the case of the New Orleans Sniper of 1973, how people constitute and unconstitute an “Other” in certain situations. This paper explores the process by which people constituted the Other in Japan in February of 2011 through the course of an incident that surprised Japanese people: university entrance exam cheating by use of the Internet question-and-answer (...) bulletin board. I will further examine how the incident can be constructed as a social problem with the construction of a victim and a villain. For data, I use reports from newspapers with nationwide circulation and reports from news agencies present at the time of the event. I also cite additional data from Internet news sites. Although my research here is small and elementary and my analysis is sociological rather than phenomenological, it is inspired by Waksler’s work. I will show how peoples’ commonsense knowledge frames their understanding and construction of an event. This paper will show that Waksler’s ideas about the New Orleans Sniper and her analysis of this case are applicable to another event in a different time at a different place: contemporary Japanese society. (shrink)

The article connects a sociological perspective on violence to the problem of intersubjectivity. After an overview of sociological and cultural accounts of violence, we turn to a fundamental problem caused by the experience of violence. In dialogue with Frances Chaput Wakslers book on The New Orleans Sniper (2010) we discuss a case in which the problem of intersubjectivity figures prominently. The erratic nature of violent acts committed by an unseen sniper is experienced as existential crisis in which the (...) question of subjectivity loses its certainty for the social actors involved. As a consequence the problem of intersubjectivity but also questions of framing past events are opened up for sociological research. (shrink)

With the advent of CRISPR gene-editing technology, designer babies have become a reality. Françoise Baylis insists that scientists alone cannot decide the terms of this new era in human evolution. Members of the public, with diverse interests and perspectives, must have a role in determining our future as a species.

Many people with religious beliefs, pro or con, are aware that those beliefs are denied by a great number of others who are as reasonable, intelligent, fair-minded, and relatively unbiased as they are. Such a realization often leads people to wonder, “How do I know I’m right and they’re wrong? How do I know that the basis for my belief is right and theirs is misleading?” In spite of that realization, most people stick with their admittedly controversial religious belief. This (...) entry examines the epistemology of such belief retention, addressing issues of disagreement, agnosticism, skepticism, and the rationality of reflective religious belief. (shrink)

The imperative to theorize emerges in the practical question of how to live in the world with others. In the contemporary historical moment, one shot through with two hundred fifty years of capitalist political economic practices, such an imperative requires theorists to both use and go beyond a Marxist critique. This need to fold Marxist theory back into itself in an effort to emerge differently inspired, among others, Frankfurt School theorists who wove psychoanalysis into historical materialism, Birmingham School thinkers who (...) stressed difference and the power of ordinary culture, anti-colonial thinkers who theorized the global marketplace, settler colonialism, and racial difference, and Italian Autonomists who... (shrink)

Among the cognitive capacities of evolved creatures is the capacity to represent. Theories in cognitive neuroscience typically explain our manifest representational capacities by positing internal representations, but there is little agreement about how these representations function, especially with the relatively recent proliferation of connectionist, dynamical, embodied, and enactive approaches to cognition. In this talk I sketch an account of the nature and function of representation in cognitive neuroscience that couples a realist construal of representational vehicles with a pragmatic account of (...) mental content. I call the resulting package a deflationary account of mental representation and I argue that it avoids the problems that afflict competing accounts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rhetorical Circulation in Late CapitalismNeoliberalism and the Overdetermination of Affective EnergyCatherine ChaputIn the world we have known since the nineteenth century, a series of governmental rationalities overlap, lean on each other, challenge each other, and struggle with each other: art of government according to truth, art of government according to the rationality of the sovereign state, and art of government according to the rationality of economic agents, and more (...) generally, according to the rationality of the governed themselves. And it is all these different arts of government, all these different types of ways of calculating, rationalizing, and regulating the art of government which, overlapping with each other, broadly speaking constitute the object of political debate.Michel Foucault, The Birth of BiopoliticsCritical rhetoricians interested in the power dynamics between rhetoric and capitalism have established for themselves the ambitious task of explaining how multiple, intertwined rationalities govern individual and collective [End Page 1] behavior in relationship to the ever-shifting logics of capitalism. Approaches to this complicated directive frequently envision rhetoric as a mediating force among agentive subjects who act within well-defined political economic landscapes. Wedded to a political-communicative model wherein appropriate rhetorical choices persuade those with authority to distribute disputed political and economic rights, rhetorical theory becomes a sophisticated handbook for discovering topoi and executing decorous statements. This focus, according to Ronald Walter Greene, results in a "permanent anxiety over the meaning and potential of rhetorical agency" that positions rhetoricians as "moral entrepreneurs scolding, correcting, and encouraging the body politic" (2004, 188, 189). Committing themselves to endless debates about correct responses in situated spaces, rhetorical theories that underscore agency lose site of the world in flux and of our participation in that world's unpredictable unfoldings. Alternatively, Greene suggests rethinking rhetorical theory through a materialist-communicative model wherein the immaterial labor of communication produces value. Conceptualizing discursive practices as a form of labor rather than a form of political signification sidesteps anxiety about well-chosen language and emphasizes the life-affirming activity involved in deciphering issues, inventing paths through those issues, and communicating new ideas to others. In short, Greene's materialist model challenges critical rhetoricians to end their perennial search for a discursive key to the storehouse of political economic goods (a practice propelled by liberal democratic hopes) so that they can begin to invent analyses and modes of production better suited to the contours of contemporary neoliberalism.Unlike liberalism's clearly assigned spaces for public life and private life or work time and leisure time, neoliberal spaces bear few obvious markers. The neoliberal landscape consists of blurred boundaries that fold into one another: information flows almost instantaneously, commodities and people transgress national boundaries, time accelerates, space collapses, and distinctions between such classic demarcations as agent and subject or politics and economics erode. Facilitated by dramatic changes in our sociopolitical boundaries, economic neoliberalism, what James Arnt Aune calls "economic correctness" (2001), reigns throughout vast uneven terrains opened up from the imploded borders of our liberal world. While economics does indeed rule the neoliberal landscape, it does not do so according to uncompromising rationalism. Political and cultural practices flowing into the previously segregated spaces of economics enable market rule through logics that operate entirely outside the rational-irrational divide. Economic neoliberalism moves from situation to situation, disregarding spatial boundaries between the political, economic, [End Page 2] and cultural realms as well as their attendant modes of persuasion, wearing away at the rhetorical linkages between appropriate discursive choices and agentive power.Regardless of the particularities of neoliberalism's spaces, structures, and governing practices, many rhetoricians continue to mediate among different worldviews based on outmoded liberal gauges. Some rhetorical theorists, for instance, maintain that the problematics of neoliberalism result from an imbalance between reason and passion. Even though the most ardent supporters of neoliberal practices hold firmly to a belief in its scientific rationality, rhetorical theorists often argue that passion overpowers reason in neoliberal discourse. The rhetorical form that sustains this disequilibrium is, according to Bradford Vivian, neoliberal epideictic. Based on an impassioned identification, epideictic texts "unite an otherwise fractured citizenry in a dynamic affective experience" (Vivian 2006, 15). Epideictic rhetoric functions didactically to unite the public... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rhetorical Circulation in Late CapitalismNeoliberalism and the Overdetermination of Affective EnergyCatherine ChaputIn the world we have known since the nineteenth century, a series of governmental rationalities overlap, lean on each other, challenge each other, and struggle with each other: art of government according to truth, art of government according to the rationality of the sovereign state, and art of government according to the rationality of economic agents, and more (...) generally, according to the rationality of the governed themselves. And it is all these different arts of government, all these different types of ways of calculating, rationalizing, and regulating the art of government which, overlapping with each other, broadly speaking constitute the object of political debate.Michel Foucault, The Birth of BiopoliticsCritical rhetoricians interested in the power dynamics between rhetoric and capitalism have established for themselves the ambitious task of explaining how multiple, intertwined rationalities govern individual and collective [End Page 1] behavior in relationship to the ever-shifting logics of capitalism. Approaches to this complicated directive frequently envision rhetoric as a mediating force among agentive subjects who act within well-defined political economic landscapes. Wedded to a political-communicative model wherein appropriate rhetorical choices persuade those with authority to distribute disputed political and economic rights, rhetorical theory becomes a sophisticated handbook for discovering topoi and executing decorous statements. This focus, according to Ronald Walter Greene, results in a "permanent anxiety over the meaning and potential of rhetorical agency" that positions rhetoricians as "moral entrepreneurs scolding, correcting, and encouraging the body politic" (2004, 188, 189). Committing themselves to endless debates about correct responses in situated spaces, rhetorical theories that underscore agency lose site of the world in flux and of our participation in that world's unpredictable unfoldings. Alternatively, Greene suggests rethinking rhetorical theory through a materialist-communicative model wherein the immaterial labor of communication produces value. Conceptualizing discursive practices as a form of labor rather than a form of political signification sidesteps anxiety about well-chosen language and emphasizes the life-affirming activity involved in deciphering issues, inventing paths through those issues, and communicating new ideas to others. In short, Greene's materialist model challenges critical rhetoricians to end their perennial search for a discursive key to the storehouse of political economic goods (a practice propelled by liberal democratic hopes) so that they can begin to invent analyses and modes of production better suited to the contours of contemporary neoliberalism.Unlike liberalism's clearly assigned spaces for public life and private life or work time and leisure time, neoliberal spaces bear few obvious markers. The neoliberal landscape consists of blurred boundaries that fold into one another: information flows almost instantaneously, commodities and people transgress national boundaries, time accelerates, space collapses, and distinctions between such classic demarcations as agent and subject or politics and economics erode. Facilitated by dramatic changes in our sociopolitical boundaries, economic neoliberalism, what James Arnt Aune calls "economic correctness" (2001), reigns throughout vast uneven terrains opened up from the imploded borders of our liberal world. While economics does indeed rule the neoliberal landscape, it does not do so according to uncompromising rationalism. Political and cultural practices flowing into the previously segregated spaces of economics enable market rule through logics that operate entirely outside the rational-irrational divide. Economic neoliberalism moves from situation to situation, disregarding spatial boundaries between the political, economic, [End Page 2] and cultural realms as well as their attendant modes of persuasion, wearing away at the rhetorical linkages between appropriate discursive choices and agentive power.Regardless of the particularities of neoliberalism's spaces, structures, and governing practices, many rhetoricians continue to mediate among different worldviews based on outmoded liberal gauges. Some rhetorical theorists, for instance, maintain that the problematics of neoliberalism result from an imbalance between reason and passion. Even though the most ardent supporters of neoliberal practices hold firmly to a belief in its scientific rationality, rhetorical theorists often argue that passion overpowers reason in neoliberal discourse. The rhetorical form that sustains this disequilibrium is, according to Bradford Vivian, neoliberal epideictic. Based on an impassioned identification, epideictic texts "unite an otherwise fractured citizenry in a dynamic affective experience" (Vivian 2006, 15). Epideictic rhetoric functions didactically to unite the public... (shrink)

Those of us who take skepticism seriously typically have two relevant beliefs: (a) it’s plausible (even if false) that in order to know that I have hands I have to be able to epistemically neutralize, to some significant degree, some skeptical hypotheses, such as the brain-in-a-vat (BIV) one; and (b) it’s also plausible (even if false) that I can’t so neutralize those hypotheses. There is no reason for us to also think (c) that the BIV hypothesis, for instance, is plausible (...) or probably true. In order to take skepticism seriously it’s sufficient to hold (a) and (b); one need not hold (c). Indeed, philosophers who accept (a) and (b) never endorse (c). Show me a philosopher who suspects that he is a brain in a vat and I’ll show you someone who is deranged! That’s one thing that bothers undergraduates in philosophy. They object: why on earth do some philosophers take the BIV hypothesis to pose any threat at all to our beliefs given that those very same philosophers think that there’s no real chance that the BIV hypothesis is true? Sure, the BIV hypothesis is formally inconsistent with my belief that I have hands, so if the former is true then my belief is false. But so what? Why should that bare inconsistency matter so much? Is this strange attitude amongst philosophers the result of some logic fetish infecting the philosophical community? It is sometimes said that the skeptical hypotheses are not only inconsistent with our beliefs but are explanatory of our experiences, which is supposed to make them more of a threat. But students aren’t fooled: although the skeptical hypotheses may attempt to explain why our experience is as it is, it’s the kind of attempt appropriate for science fiction movies that are all special effects and virtually no plot. No one with any sense of reality will take the evil demon hypothesis to be even tenuously explanatory. (shrink)

Pour la sémantique moderne, le sens d'un texte n'est plus seulement accessible à l'intuition : il peut se décrire rationnellement. L'analyse reconnaît d'abord dans chaque mot des composants élémentaires propres à la langue, que le contexte et la situation de communication convoquent ou virtualisent. Paradoxalement, cette microsémantique permet aussi de fonder la sémantique textuelle. Si bien qu'en deçà comme au-delà de la prétendue limite de la phrase se met à l'œuvre une théorie descriptive unifiée. De manière cohérente, elle permet de (...) rendre compte de questions éparses léguées par les traditions de la logique, de la rhétorique, de l'exégèse ou de la critique littéraire : métaphore, double sens, hypallage, tautologie, contradiction, thème et topos, etc. Toutefois le sens du texte n'est pas donné, mais construit par des stratégies de lecture. Aussi cette recherche s'ouvre-t-elle sur une théorie de l'interprétation, qui va de l'assignation du sens lexical à la construction des grandes unités textuelles. Elle ne cherche pas à énoncer le sens, mais à évaluer la plausibilité de divers parcours interprétatifs. Ce traité propose aussi des outils descriptifs aux linguistes, spécialistes de la littérature, historiens, psychologues, enseignants, bref à tous ceux qui ont affaire au texte, cette dimension majeure des langues. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Caught Between History and ImaginationVico's Ingenium for a Rhetorical Renovation of CitizenshipAlessandra Beasley Von BurgCitizenship is usually thought of as synonymous with nationality and the rights and duties associated with the people who live, work, and participate politically, socially, and economically within the borders of their nation-state. In this conception, the main criterion used to decide who is and who is not a citizen is nationality. As the nature (...) of nation-state governance evolves and the acceleration of citizen mobility hastens interdependence, pressures for new definitions and paradigms of citizenship build. As Joseph Weiler argues, this pressure produces cognitive dissonance because "the traditional, classical vocabulary of citizenship is the vocabulary of the State, the Nation and Peoplehood" (qtd. in La Torre 1998, 1).1 The classical association of citizenship with nationality blocks our ability to grasp new, nonstatist conceptions of citizenship, even as postnational political visions take shape in institutions like the European Union (EU).2 In 1992, EU citizenship was established in the Treaty of Maastricht, which granted some additional rights to citizens of the member states in the same way that single nation-states grant their inhabitants special status as nationals, rights that are not nullified when citizens leave their home country to live and work in other member states.3 [End Page 26]The relationship between nationality and citizenship in the EU context is complicated by the fact that although Maastricht guidelines set postnational membership criteria for EU citizens, they also limit the scope of EU citizenship. In trying to reach beyond the nation while anchoring its very essence to the nation, EU citizenship remains limited as it relies on the traditional language of national membership to found its postnational concept of equality and inclusion for noncitizens. The contradictory elements of EU citizenship are exemplified in its current definition, which includes all member states' citizens and excludes millions who are living in Europe as third-country nationals (TCNs), defined as "any person who is not a citizen of one of the member states" of the EU but permanently and legally resides in one.4 The current debate over the status of legal, long-term TCNs challenges the relationship between citizenship and nationality, as advocates from EU institutions, national governments, nongovernmental organizations and academia argue that TCNs should be granted EU citizenship rather than be naturalized in the member states and push for a new, postnational mode of citizenship based on residency. Advocates for the inclusion of TCNs as EU citizens have to work with the limited vocabulary of national citizenship yet articulate a case for a new kind of citizenship divorced from nationality. They suggest that the EU should be viewed as a deliberative community, in which all long-term residents like TCNs are given an equal opportunity to practice citizenship. The deliberative community rationale is based on an idea of citizenship as performance with residents enacting citizenship by living together and deliberating with each other about common interests and concerns.5This reordering of the concept of community arising out of political practice calls for a full philosophical and rhetorical reimagining of the meaning of citizenship. The act of reimagining citizenship creates a new practice of citizenship and grounds citizenship in a philosophical context as well as a practical one. There is no better philosophical and rhetorical tradition to turn to for this purpose than that of Giambattista Vico. Vico, and to a larger extent the entire tradition of Italian humanism, has been overlooked in modern Western philosophy. Yet Vico embodies a seamless marriage of philosophy and rhetoric. Vico's philosophically grounded rhetoric provides the means in an investigation of EU citizenship as an innovative rhetorical practice beyond nationality, for understanding how new practices become persuasive through imaginative language, until citizens separate citizenship from nationality and accept residence and deliberative practices as legitimate criteria for citizenship. Vico argues that "every study method [End Page 27] may be said to be made up of three things: instruments, complementary aids, and aim envisaged" and notes that "the instruments presuppose and include a systematic, orderly manner of proceeding" (1990, 6). This essay proceeds in this fashion to reveal how a new vocabulary of citizenship... (shrink)

Dastur is well respected in France and Europe for her mastery of phenomenology as a movement and her clear and cogent explications of phenomenology in movement. These qualities are on display in this remarkable set of essays. The book is organized into four areas of inquiry: Language and Logic, Ego and Other, Temporality and History,and Finitude and Mortality. In each, Dastur guides the reader through a series of phenomenological questions that also serve to call phenomenology itself into question, testing its (...) limits and pushing it in newdirections. Taking a cue from Merleau-Ponty, Dastur sees phenomenology not as a doctrine, a catalogue of concepts and catchphrases authored by a single thinker, but rather as a movement in which several thinkers participate, each one contributing to and inflecting the development of the movement in unique ways. She thus draws inspiration from Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Ricoeur, Gadamer, Fink, and Patocka, moving with ease from one thinker's conceptual vocabulary and outlook to the next's, feeling at home in each, and communicating their central ideas with clarity.Through her critical and productive dialogue with multiple phenomenological thinkers, Dastur concisely shows one thinker's debts to and departures from another and reveals the limits of one's approach while highlighting the innovation of another's. She does this judiciously, without choosing sides, because for her, phenomenology is above all a way of thinking through a problem and practicing a method. The fecundity of the movement is appreciated only by participating in it--it has always thought of itself as philosophical research undertaken by and through a community of thinkers who share certain fundamental questions and ways of approaching those questions, even if their responses to these questions often differ. In this regard, Dastur is both one of the clearest guides to phenomenology and one of France's most able practitioners of phenomenology. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: I II III IV V References.

Quand on avance dans la vie, il est une question qu'on ne peut plus, peu à peu, ne pas se poser : pourquoi est-ce que je continue de vivre? Cette question, on peut la maintenir au niveau bas du développement personnel, affublé en "sagesse", et du marché du bonheur. Ou bien l'affronter philosophiquement pour y chercher une issue plus ambitieuse qui soit la promotion d'une "seconde" vie. Une seconde vie est une vie qui, du cours même de la vie, se (...) décale lentement d'elle-même et commence de se choisir et de se réformer. Pour y accéder, il faudra penser ce que sont des vérités, non pas démontrées, mais décantées à partir de la vie même ; ou comment, de l'expérience accumulée, on peut à nouveau essayer ; ou comment la lucidité est ce savoir négatif (de Pecq!) qui nous vient malgré nous, mais qu'on peut assumer ; ou comment la vie peut ouvrir, non sur une conversion, mais sur une vie dégagée. Ou comment un second amour, fondé, non plus sur la possession, mais sur l'infini de l'intime, peut débuter. Puis-je, non plus répéter ma vie, mais la reprendre, et commencer véritablement d'exister?"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Cette édition numérique a été réalisée à partir d'un support physique, parfois ancien, conservé au sein du dépôt légal de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, conformément à la loi n° 2012-287 du 1er mars 2012 relative à l'exploitation des Livres indisponibles du XXe siècle. Pages de début Avant-propos Chapitre premier - Art, esthétique et sciences humaines Chapitre II - Formes, couleurs et sons Chapitre III - L'œuvre d'art picturale Chapitre IV - Le domaine musical Chapitre V - Les espaces architecturaux (...) Chapitre VI - Aspects esthétiques et iconiques du corps Chapitre VII - L'image cinématographiquePages de fin. (shrink)

G. W. F. Hegel's interest in F. H. Jacobi's thought is persistent. It relies essentially on the issue of the nature of knowledge and truth, and the way we may apprehend it, either immediately or mediately. One of the central concepts at play in Jacobi's thought is that of perception as a hold on truth (Wahr-nehmen). Based on that concept of perception, extensively discussed in the second chapter ofThe Phenomenology of Spirit, I clarify and open new perspectives for the understanding (...) of Hegel's critique of Jacobi. (shrink)

Terstenjak, A. Franz Webers philosophisches Gedankengut im Umriss.--Wolf, K. Franz Veber und Graz.--Ilc, M. Näheres zur Verdinglichung und Veranschaulichung in Webers Wirtlichkeitsfrage.--Pirjevec, D. Franz Webers ästhetisches Denken.--Urbančič, I. Philosophische Grundanschauungen bei Franz Weber.--Trofenik, R. Franz Weber.--Weber, F. Meine Beziehungen zu Meinong.--Weber, F. Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Persönlichkeit.--Weber, F. Die Frage der Wirklichkeit.

In this paper, I explore Hegel’s concept of freedom as self-liberation. I consider the struggle between the soul and the body within Hegel’s Anthropology as an example of how conflict can act as a condition for asserting one’s freedom through self-improvement or Bildung. In this regard, there are reminiscent aspects of the famous ‘Lordship and Bondage’ dialectic within Hegel’s treatment of the body-soul relation. If the initial dominion of nature over the soul can be described as madness for Hegel, habit (...) constitutes the mean through which spirit acquires its freedom. (shrink)