English Introduction, Volume 8, n°2, 2017.

Of those who have tried to establish the connection between hermeneutics and phenomenology, two stand out: Martin Heidegger and Paul Ricoeur. In Being and Time, Heidegger famously declared that phenomenology is a hermeneutic, though not in the sense of an epistemological theory of interpretation. In From Text to Action, Ricoeur set out to show how it is possible for hermeneutics and phenomenology to have a relationship of “mutual belonging”. This chapter examines four programmatic statements on the relationship: two versions offered (...) by Heidegger in the 1920s and two versions offered by Ricoeur, one in the late 1960s and the other in the mid‐1980s. Attention is drawn both to the evolution of Heidegger's and Ricoeur's thinking on the subject and to the ways in which the various accounts differ from one another. (shrink)

French Introduction Volume 8, n°2, 2017.

Inspired by the report, Reimagining our Futures Together. A New Social Contract for Education, which warns that humanity and planet Earth are under threat, but acknowledges that education has the power to bring about profound change, this article makes the case for giving careful consideration both to Paul Ricœur’s reflections on humanity and human capacities, and to his comments on “true education” and the educational value of poetic thought. To get a sense of where scientific-technological civilization is headed, it draws (...) on the work of Allen Buchanan and Dominique Janicaud. It then examines Ricœur’s account of the essential characteristics of education and his thoughts on the roles of families and teachers. It argues that Ricœur’s proposal for the cultivation of an “ethical consciousness” offers greater protection for humanity in an uncertain future than Janicaud and Buchanan’s proposals for “ethical vigilance” and rules-based protective measures. (shrink)

Introduction for issue on "Ricoeur and Translation".

This article takes up Paul Ricœur’s suggestion that he learned more about the idea of justice by positioning himself on the juridical plane than he had by moving directly to a consideration of political theory. It contends that Ricœur’s very interesting but largely neglected text, “The Just between the Legal and the Good,” illustrates the value of doing philosophical work at a level where there is an imperative to make a judgement and following on from that to distribute, in the (...) fairest way possible, the goods that are at the heart of the dispute. The article also offers a detailed commentary on Ricœur’s text, noting the unusual form of critique that it brings to bear on Rawls’s principles of justice. It also discusses Ricœur’s proposals for entrenching those principles in a concrete judicial practice. (shrink)

This article takes up Paul Ricœur’s suggestion that he learned more about the idea of justice by positioning himself on the juridical plane than he had by moving directly to a consideration of political theory. It contends that Ricœur’s very interesting but largely neglected text, “The Just between the Legal and the Good,” illustrates the value of doing philosophical work at a level where there is an imperative to make a judgement and following on from that to distribute, in the (...) fairest way possible, the goods that are at the heart of the dispute. The article also offers a detailed commentary on Ricœur’s text, noting the unusual form of critique that it brings to bear on Rawls’s principles of justice. It also discusses Ricœur’s proposals for entrenching those principles in a concrete judicial practice. (shrink)

Introduction for issue on "Ricoeur and Translation".

Dominique Janicaud considered Paul Ricœur an ally in the dispute with those who, like Emmanuel Lévinas and Jean-Luc Marion, allegedly failed to keep phenomenology within its proper methodological limits. Janicaud also claimed to have been guided by Ricœur when it came to developing positive proposals for the future direction of phenomenology. This paper argues, however, that Janicaud misinterpreted key passages in works by Ricœur that address phenomenological issues. It also offers alternative readings which take account of the wider context. Thus, (...) for example, Ricœur’s comments on Lévinasian phenomenology are shown to be appreciative rather than polemical. The paper also discusses Ricœur’s rarely commented upon oblique and indirect response to Janicaud, which establishes that Ricœur chose to align himself with phenomenologists who had taken “the theological turn.”. (shrink)

Heidegger's history of hermeneutics discovered nothing more than a “diluted” understanding of hermeneutics in Schleiermacher and Dilthey. In contrast, Gadamer's and Ricoeur's histories of hermeneutics placed little or no emphasis on the premodern period, focusing instead on the rise of the “hermeneutic problem” in Schleiermacher's work and the development of that problematic in works by Dilthey and Heidegger. Ricoeur added Gadamer to that list, recognizing that Gadamer was instrumental in the way he had received and perceived the problem in question. (...) Charles R. Bambach argues that it was, in fact, Karl Barth's “crisis theology” that had inspired Heidegger's “destructive” alternative to the conventional view of historical research. He revealed that he had followed Hegel when writing his history of hermeneutics, noting that his decision to do so had consequences for the way he depicted the rise of hermeneutics; and the way his history of hermeneutics ended. (shrink)

This is the first collection of essays examining Paul Ricoeur's writings on law, bringing together eminent Ricoeur scholars from around the world to demonstrate the importance of Ricoeur's philosophy for the juridical field while offering new paths to extend and build on his work.

History and Systems of Psychology provides an engaging introduction to the rich story of psychology's past. Retaining the clarity and accessibility praised by readers of earlier editions, this classic textbook provides a chronological history of psychology from the pre-Socratic Greeks to contemporary systems, research, and applications. The new edition also features expanded coverage of Eastern as well as Western traditions, influential women in psychology, professional psychology in clinical, educational, and social settings, and new directions in twenty-first century psychology as a (...) cognitive and a positive science. Assuming little prerequisite knowledge, the authors discuss the people, places, and concepts that have shaped psychology's story, and show that we remain fascinated by the same enduring questions that confronted our ancestors - namely, our wonder at our subjectivity and consciousness of self. The seventh edition is fully supported by robust pedagogical features, instructor resources, and a companion website to aid student learning. (shrink)

Democracy is both an obvious and dubious idea. Here's why democracy is an obvious idea: For most of history, most governments divided people into the few who rule and the many who obey. The few then used the state to advance their own private interests at the expense of the many. Rulers were less like noble protectors appointed by God and more like intestinal parasites. The obvious solution is to eliminate the distinction between those who rule and those who obey. (...) Make every citizen both a ruler and a subject of that rule. This ensures government promotes everyone's interests. Thus, democracy is the best form of government. It's too bad it took most of civilized history to realize this-and too bad that the world isn't more democratic than it is. Here's why democracy is a dubious idea. Government decisions are high stakes. It decides matters of war and peace, prosperity and poverty, freedom or oppression. Yet we let incompetent people steer the ship of state. Most voters are ignorant and process what little information they have in biased and irrational ways. They fall prey to propaganda and demagogues. They are conformists and don't even try to vote their interests. Democracy is the political equivalent of drunk driving. Thus, democracy is a defective form of government. Democracy is a method by which the masses shoot themselves in their feet. Philosophy students often start essays by writing, "Since the dawn of time, humanity has pondered..." In this case, these arguments and concerns are old, if not dawn-of-time old. We find laypeople, pundits, social scientists, and philosophers making these two arguments today. But in ancient Athens, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle said similar things. (shrink)

Libertarians often bill their theory as an alternative to both the traditional Left and Right. _The Routledge Handbook of Libertarianism_ helps readers fully examine this alternative, without preaching it to them, exploring the contours of libertarian thinking on justice, institutions, interpersonal ethics, government, and political economy. The 31 chapters--all written specifically for this volume--are organized into five parts. Part I asks, what should libertarianism learn from other theories of justice, and what should defenders of other theories of justice learn from (...) libertarianism? Part II asks, what are some of the deepest problems facing libertarian theories? Part III asks, what is the right way to think about property rights and the market? Part IV asks, how should we think about the state? Finally, part V asks, how well can libertarianism deal with some of the major policy challenges of our day, such as immigration, trade, religion in politics, and paternalism in a free market. Among the _Handbook_’s chapters are those from critics who write about what they believe libertarians get right as well as others from leading libertarian theorists who identify what they think libertarians get wrong. As a whole, the _Handbook_ provides a comprehensive, clear-eyed look at what libertarianism has been and could be, and why it matters. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Seinfeld Waiting to Exhale Ellen Special News Broadcasts Radio Programs Outlaw Communities Talk Shows Conclusion.

Theory of health care ethics -- Principles of health care ethics -- The moral status of gametes and embryos : storage and surrogacy -- The ethical challenges of the new reproductive technology -- Ethics and aging in America -- -- Healthcare ethics committees : roles, memberships, structure, and difficulties -- Ethics in the management of health information systems -- Technological advances in health care : blessing or ethics nightmare? -- Ethics and safe patient handling and mobility -- Spirituality and healthcare (...) organizations -- A new era of health care : the ethics of healthcare reform -- Health inequalities and health inequities -- The ethics of epidemics -- Ethics of disasters : planning and response -- Domestic violence : changing theory, changing practice -- Looking toward the future. (shrink)

Throughout the 20th century, market capitalism was defended on parallel grounds. First, it promotes freedom by enabling individuals to exploit their own property and labor-power; second, it facilitates an efficient allocation and use of resources. Recently, however, both defenses have begun to unravel—as capitalism has moved into its “platform” phase. Today, the pursuit of allocative efficiency, bolstered by pervasive data surveillance, often undermines individual freedom rather than promoting it. And more fundamentally, the very idea that markets are necessary to achieve (...) allocative efficiency has come under strain. Even supposing, for argument’s sake, that the claim was true in the early 20th century when von Mises and Hayek pioneered it, advances in computing have rekindled the old “socialist calculation” debate. And this time around, markets—as information technology—are unlikely to have the upper hand. -/- All of this, we argue, raises an important set of governance questions regarding the political economy of the future. We focus on two: How much should our economic system prioritize freedom, and to what extent should it rely on markets? The arc of platform capitalism bends, increasingly, toward a system that neither prioritizes freedom nor relies on markets. And the dominant critical response, exemplified by Shoshana Zuboff’s work, has been to call for a restoration of market capitalism. Longer term, however, we believe it would be more productive to think about how “postmarket” economic arrangements might promote freedom—or better yet, autonomy—even more effectively than markets, and to determine the practical steps necessary to realize that possibility. (shrink)

The ‘community principle’ is crucial to G. A. Cohen’s argument for socialism, because it is the best independent argument he has adduced for his strongly egalitarian conclusions. Cohen argues that even small differences in wealth ought to be prohibited because they bring us out of community with one another. In this paper, I show that his underlying premises lead to some repugnant conclusions, and thus should be rejected. If Cohen is right that even small differences in wealth can upset community, (...) then, by the very psychological mechanisms he identifies, we should think that other differences, such as differences in religion, conceptions of the good, race, or taste, should also upset community. Cohen is thus caught in a trap: the more strongly egalitarian his community principle is, the more it not only prohibits differences of wealth, but diversity of any kind, including the forms of diversity we should celebrate rather than reject. (shrink)

The desire for esteem, and the associated desire for good reputation, serve an important role in ordinary social life in disciplining interactions and supporting the operation of social norms. The fact that many Internet relations are conducted under separate dedicated e-identities may encourage the view that Internet relations are not susceptible to these esteem-related incentives. We argue that this view is mistaken. Certainly, pseudonyms allow individuals to moderate the effects of disesteem-either by changing the pseudonym to avoid the negative reputation, (...) or by partitioning various audiences according to different audience values. However, there is every reason to believe that a good e-reputation is an object of desire for real agents. Further, although integrating one’s reputation under a single identity has some esteem-enhancing features, those features are not necessarily decisive. We explore in the paper what some of the countervailing considerations might be, by appeal to various analogies with the Internet case. (shrink)

[1] Handbook 1-26 -- [2] Handbook 27-53.

the standard reading of plato's Republic is that justice is predicated of the ideal city and of the philosophers, and that all other constitutions, both psychic and political, that are mentioned in the course of the dialogue are in some way or another defective and unjust. A non-standard reading appears to be gaining traction, however. Unorthodox Plato commentators such as Silverman, Jonas, Nakazawa, Braun, and Rowe argue that the ideal city—lovingly named 'Kallipolis'—is not just, that it is merely an improvement (...) upon, but not a complete cure for, the Luxurious City that is described immediately before it.1 If we want to gaze upon a just city, these unorthodox commentators propose, look no farther than the City of... (shrink)

Business Ethics for Better Behavior concisely answers the three most pressing ethical questions business professionals face: 1. What makes business practices right or wrong? 2. Why do normal, decent businesspeople of good will sometimes do the wrong thing? 3. How can we use the answer to these questions to get ourselves, our coworkers, our bosses, and our employees to behave better? Bad behavior in business rarely results from bad will. Most people mean well much of the time. But most of (...) us are vulnerable. We all fall into moral traps, usually without even noticing. Business Ethics for Better Behavior teaches business professionals, students, and other readers how to become aware of those traps, how to avoid them, and how to dig their way out if they fall in. It integrates the best work in psychology, economics, management theory, and normative philosophy into a simple action plan for ensuring the best ethical performance at all levels of business practice. This is a book anyone in business, from an entry-level employee to CEO, can use. (shrink)

The paper mobilizes Adam Smith’s treatment of the division of labour in relation to the production, consumption and exchange of knowledge. One aspect of this mobilization deals with the epistemic demands that exchange makes on its participants. The other deals with increasing returns in the provision of knowledge itself, treating knowledge creation as just another example of specialization and exchange. These two aspects come together in relation to the epistemic demands associated with assessing knowledge quality. These demands differ according to (...) whether the knowledge is embodied in products or whether the knowledge is an object for its own sake. It is argued that disciplines play a critical role as institutions for meeting the epistemic demands that the division of labour creates in the ‘knowledge’ case. (shrink)

This book draws on transpersonal anthropology and psychology in order to explore mild altered states of consciousness (ASCs) experienced in everyday life. While research into consciousness and particularly ASCs is growing, this book focuses on a neglected area: ‘everyday’ experiences of ASCs. Opening with an up-to-date overview of the development of the study of ASCs, the author presents an in-depth empirical exploration and mapping of mild ASCs. Dr Sheppard examines original research conducted in a range of religious and secular contexts (...) with participants who were engaged in activities including prayer, sport, nature conservation, music and musical instrument making, and TV viewing. The author takes a novel phenomenological approach to the analysis of ASCs, emphasising the subjective experience. The book explores the healing potential of such mild ASCs; the everyday fantasy reality of the interior landscape; and discusses the problem of validity, and belief in the study of ASCs. It will appeal to students and scholars of transpersonal psychology, consciousness studies, social anthropology, and the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This article surveys recent feminist contributions to moral philosophy with an emphasis on those works which engage with debates within mainstream ethics. The article begins by examining a tension said to arise from the two criteria a theory must meet if it is to count as feminist moral theory: the women's experience requirement and the feminist conclusion requirement. Subsequent sections deal with feminist relational theories of rights, feminist work on responsibility and feminist contractarian approaches to ethics. A final section looks (...) at the application of some feminist moral theories to the problem of abortion. (shrink)

This book attempts to reframe abortion rights by focusing not on a woman's right to choose abortion, but rather on a woman's right to consent to pregnancy. Drawing on legal, medical, and philosophical definitions of pregnancy, it disaggregates the consent to sexual intercourse from the consent to pregnancy and argues that men and women have equal right to bodily integrity, which is defined as the freedom from nonconsensual bodily intrusion. The work provides the grounds for a woman's right to an (...) abortion and state funding of abortions. (shrink)

Little is known about older persons’ expectancies (or anticipations) about the possible actions of home-care professionals, although such data have implications for the ethics of home care and home-care policies. From a longitudinal study of older women’s experience of home care, findings are reported concerning their expectancies of professional home-care providers. A descriptive phenomenological method was used to detail the structure of the experience and its context. Data were analyzed from a series of interviews with 13 women aged 82 to (...) 96 years. Among the five key structures of experience were ‘finding that someone has the job of helping me here’ and ‘determining where the helper’s field lies’. Two subsets within a category of expectancies were differentiated: speculations about helpers’ possible actions and expectancies about outcomes of helpers’ actions. As parameters of relational ethics, clients’ speculations and expectancies are appropriate bases for dialogue about older widows’ relationships with home-care professionals and the foci of home-care policies. (shrink)

Appeals to imagination to distinguish fiction from nonfiction have been persuasively challenged by philosophers such as Derek Matravers and Stacie Friend. This essay aims to uphold the importance of the fiction/nonfiction distinction by other means. Instead of relying on contrasting roles for imagination and belief, can we isolate kinds of experience that are paradigmatically sustained by fiction? Can status as fiction encourage, and help to explain, certain tendencies and qualities of experience? Several common aspects of experience, of what it is (...) like to experience something as fiction, are proposed: the experience of individuals as representative; a linked epistemic and aesthetic interest in detail; and openness to evaluative judgement. Nonfictional works can support these experiences, but they make most sense ethically and epistemically in the context of fiction. (shrink)