Pádraig Hogan; What Makes Practice Educational?, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 24, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 15–26, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.146.

Analysing the triad ‘understanding–personal identity–education’ in three different contexts (scientism, historicism, hermeneutics) make it possible to investigate the kind of thinking that is emphasised most in each context. The implications of thinking to educational practice are stressed at each level of interpretation. The chief shortfalls in the first two contexts are reviewed, together with their restrictive consequences for how education comes to be understood and practiced. The hermeneutic context recognises the primacy of interpretation and ‘pre-understanding’ in all human understanding. Because (...) of this it acknowledges the interplay that is invariably active between understanding and personal identity, and between both of these and what it means to educate. This third—hermeneutical—context is therefore offered not as any kind of final word on educational matters, but as a more appropriate and inclusive context in which education as a practice might be thought about and bettered. (shrink)

The concept of praxis, also known as the practical discourse in philosophy, has been expressed in different ways in different eras. However, the linkages from one era to another and from one paradigm to another are not well explicated in the nursing literature. Difficulties with translations of ‘praxis’ into ‘practice’ and the connotations of the word ‘practical’ in the English language and in nursing have influenced extrapolation of the linkages. More recently, further blurring of the linkages occurred from the popular (...) association of praxis within the emancipatory paradigm. Integral to the concept of praxis, since the time of Aristotle, is the notion of phronesis: a process of moral reasoning enacted to establish the ‘good’ of a particular situation, often referred to as practical wisdom. The purposes of this paper are twofold. Firstly to demonstrate a number of linkages and shifts in the evolution of praxis. This, I believe, will enhance understanding of the multiple expressions of praxis in contemporary nursing. Secondly, to promote and affirm the importance of praxiological knowledge development in the discipline. Furthermore, increased appreciation of the concept of praxis provides an important vehicle for the advancement of nursing as a moral endeavour and the nurse as moral agent. (shrink)

(1999). Is the postmodern self a feminised citizen? Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 2, Feminism, Identity and Difference, pp. 80-99.

Repositions Bachelard as a critical and integral part of contemporary continental philosophy. Like Schelling before him and Deleuze and Guattari after him, Gaston Bachelard made major philosophical contributions to the advancement of science and the arts. In addition to being a mathematician and epistemologist whose influential work in the philosophy of science is still being absorbed, Bachelard was also one of the most innovative thinkers on poetic creativity and its ethical implications. His approaches to literature and the arts by way (...) of elemental reverie awakened long-buried modes of thinking that have inspired literary critics, depth psychologists, poets, and artists alike. Bachelard’s extraordinary body of work, unduly neglected by the English-language reception of continental philosophy in recent decades, exhibits a capacity to speak to the full complexity and wider reaches of human thinking. The essays in this volume analyze Bachelard as a phenomenological thinker and situate his thought within the Western tradition. Considering his work alongside that of Schelling, Husserl, Bergson, Buber, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, Deleuze, and Nancy, this collection highlights some of Bachelard’s most provocative proposals on questions of ontology, hermeneutics, ethics, environmental politics, spirituality, and the possibilities they offer for productive transformations of self and world. (shrink)

The Middle Included is a systematic exploration of the meanings of logos throughout Aristotle’s work. It claims that the basic meaning is “gathering,” a relation that holds its terms together without isolating them or collapsing one to the other. This meaning also applies to logos in the sense of human language. Aristotle describes how some animals are capable of understanding non-firsthand experience without being able to relay it, while others relay it without understanding. Aygün argues that what distinguishes human language, (...) for Aristotle, is its ability to both understand and relay firsthand and non-firsthand experiences. This ability is key to understanding the human condition: science, history, news media, propaganda, gossip, utopian fiction, and sophistry, as well as philosophy. Ömer Aygün finds Aristotle’s name for this peculiar but crucial human ability of “gathering” both experiences is logos, and this leads to a claim about the specificity of human rationality and language. (shrink)

There has been a longstanding and acrimonious debate in the human sciences over the role played by classic texts. Advocates of the classic insist its value is timeless and rests on the intrinsic superiority of its cognitive insights and aesthetic virtues. Critics, by contrast, argue that the respect accorded the classic is spurious because it conceals the ideological assumptions, tensions and discontinuities of tradition. This paper seeks a solution through the account of ‘the classical’ brought by Hans-Georg Gadamer in Truth (...) and Method, which acknowledges a text’s ‘eminence’ as well as its ‘historicity’. Following the introduction, the paper divides into four sections. Section one, notes that the hermeneutic account of tradition describes it as being open to challenge rather than closed and unchangeable, and that the classic, as grounded in tradition, will conserve difficulty as readily as comfortable certainty. Section two focuses on the idea that in the classic we find matter ‘properly portrayed’, while section three notes the importance of ‘application’ for an understanding of classic texts. It is noted that both ‘proper portrayal’ and ‘application’ depend on recognising the role of the fusion of historical horizons in generating classic texts. The final section challenges the criticism that the classic is no more than a reflection of the institutional power wielded by the canon, arguing instead that the classic and the canon are different entities, and conflating them in favour of the latter, misleadingly reduces classic-ness to being no more than an effect of canonicity. (shrink)

Currently, there is a resurgence of interests in phenomenology in education. This article sheds light on the importance of hermeneutical phenomenology in teaching and learning based on the lived experience of a Sioux Indian adolescent boy, elicited from an ethnographic case study conducted at an alternative high school in the US. Employing narrative inquiry, this article seeks phenomenological ways of understanding students' lived experiences and explores the meaning of the pedagogical practice of hermeneutical phenomenology in education. I delve into how (...) hermeneutical understanding of the phenomena of students' lived experience can catapult both students and teachers into the personal growth and development in a reciprocal way. It is my hope that such an understanding will facilitate an educational aim that focuses on the ontology of being and becoming while students' existence is brought to the center of teaching and learning. (shrink)

Currently, there is a resurgence of interests in phenomenology in education. This article sheds light on the importance of hermeneutical phenomenology in teaching and learning based on the lived experience of a Sioux Indian adolescent boy, elicited from an ethnographic case study conducted at an alternative high school in the US. Employing narrative inquiry, this article seeks phenomenological ways of understanding students' lived experiences and explores the meaning of the pedagogical practice of hermeneutical phenomenology in education. I delve into how (...) hermeneutical understanding of the phenomena of students' lived experience can catapult both students and teachers into the personal growth and development in a reciprocal way. It is my hope that such an understanding will facilitate an educational aim that focuses on the ontology of being and becoming while students' existence is brought to the center of teaching and learning. (shrink)

Offers a revised understanding of human subjectivity that avoids the extremes of both traditional humanism and cultural relativism.“Acknowledging the importance of the ‘middle voice’ of rhetoric is a worthwhile endeavor. For this, Vivian’s goals are to be applauded.” — Rhetoric and Public Affairs.

This article seeks the possibility of a genuine ethical dialogue based on Gadamer’s notion of a “fusion of horizons”. For Gadamer, the human being is blessed with the unique ability to understand, and understanding is modelled on the act of conversation in which we engage with others. The fact that different points of view of dialogue partners merge in the process of understanding leads them to a better and mutual understanding, which is a fusion of horizons. For some of Gadamer’s (...) critics, in the fusion, the more dominant horizon assimilates the other, which is why Gadamer’s notion of understanding seems to be unethical. To avoid this misinterpretation of the process of understanding, I will interpret Gadamer’s notion of understanding as the fusion of horizons based on his analysis of the concepts of “dialogue” and “play” (Spiel). By doing that, I aim at showing that Gadamer’s notion of the fusion of horizons is a dynamic process and that the latter requires an “openness” of participants to each other, which leads their encounter toward a genuine ethical dialogue. (shrink)

Noting the prevalence of a misguided suspicion towards tradition, as well as an overt misunderstanding of the very notion of tradition in certain academic circles, this essay seeks to outline some of the basic tenets of an alternative understanding of tradition, based on a ‘sociological’ reading of several major philosophical works. It does so by revisiting and synthesizing some well-known, highly influential conceptual arguments that, taken together, offer a compelling, comprehensive interpretation and understanding of tradition, which manages to avoid and (...) overcome the false dichotomies that have dominated social-scientific thought. The article offers three corresponding analogies that capture the complex nature of tradition: tradition as language, tradition as narrative, and tradition as horizon. It then goes on to discuss the main implications these analogies carry to our understanding of tradition. (shrink)

The present study deals with the problem of the acquisition of language in children in the light of rationalist philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. The main objective of the paper is to present the way Gerauld de Cordemoy’s views on the nature of language, including its socio-linguistic aspects, and on the process of speech acquisition in children are reflected in contemporary writings on how people communicate with each other. Reflections on 17th-century rationalist philosophy of mind and the latest (...) research conducted within the field of cognitive abilities of human beings indicate that between those two spheres many similarities could be discerned in terms of particular stages of the development of speech and its physical aspects. (shrink)

Weiming’s notion of transcendence in terms both of its legitimacy as an interpretation of Confucianism and of its viability as an answer to modern challenges. An examination of Tu’s hermeneutical assumptions in his Zhongyong commentary leads to a discussion of his locating transcendence in the subjectivity of the junzi, the profound person. Calling the self-cultivation self-knowledge, Tu makes explicit the religious character of the xin, the basis of self-cultivation, and its transcendent character, because it is endowed from heaven. However, because (...) the xin is irreducibly human, this transcendence is also immanentized. From the xin a fiduciary community is formed, hence the covenantal nature of Confucian religiousness. The essay ends with the question: Because Tu does not elaborate on cultivating a community’s intersubjectivity, does it make the realization of the transcendent xin a deferred potentiality, without mooring in the actual formation of human community? (shrink)

Perhaps no other aspect of Hans-Georg Gadamer'sWahrheit und Methodehas generated more controversy and caustic criticism than his attempt to defend the role of ‘prejudice’ (Vorurteil) in human understanding. Gadamer's goal in challenging what he calls ‘the Enlightenment's prejudice against prejudice’ is not to defend irresponsible, idiosyncratic, parochial or otherwise self-willed understanding in the human sciences, but to argue that all human cognition is ‘finite’ and ‘limited’ in the sense that it always involves, to borrow Polanyi's phrase, a ‘tacit dimension’ of (...) implicit judgments, concerns, or commitments which shape definitively our grasp of the subject matter in ways we cannot anticipate or control. This implies a ‘finite’ or ‘limited’ view of human understanding in at least two ways. First, Gadamer seems to use the word ‘finite’ in conscious opposition to Hegel's notion of an ‘infinite’ intellect. For Hegel the ‘infinite’ was the ‘unconditioned’ and ‘self-determining’. An ‘infinite’ intellect would be its own master, an autonomous, spontaneous source of all its essential activities and contents. (shrink)

Recently philosophers interested in bridging the gap between continental and analytic philosophy have looked to connecting Hans‐Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics with Donald Davidson’s philosophy of language. Both seem to share a number of positions, and each was familiar with the other’s writings. In this essay, I look at Davidson’s criticisms of Gadamer’s hermeneutics—in particular Gadamer’s view that dialogue always depends on a shared language and, when successful, produces a new common language to understand a topic. I argue that Davidson’s objections (...) miss the way Gadamer is using conversation as a technical term. Working out the difference between what Davidson and Gadamer mean reveals a deeper divide between their views about the relation between language and thought. (shrink)

The project behind this and the following1 special issue of Angelaki first assumed concrete form in the shape of a three-day international conference, “Continental Philosophy and the Sciences,” hel...

It is commonly assumed, at least by continental philosophers, that epistemological hermeneutics and foundationalism are incompatible. I argue that this assumption is mistaken. If I am correct, the analytic and continental traditions may be closer than is commonly supposed. Hermeneutics, as I will argue, is a descriptive claim about human cognition, and foundationalism is a normative claim about how beliefs ought to be related to one another. Once the positions are stated in this way, their putative incompatibility vanishes. Also, to (...) inspire further research I include an appendix which contains an unfinished prototype of a hermeneutic foundationalism. (shrink)

In this article, the authors use the context of childbirth to consider the power that is endemic in certain forms of evidence within maternity care research. First, there is consideration of how the current evidence hierarchy and experimental‐based studies are the gold standard to determine and direct women's maternity experiences, although this can be at the detriment of care and irrespective of women's needs. This is followed by a critique of how the predominant means to assess women's experiences via satisfaction (...) surveys is of limited utility, offering impartial and restricted insights to assess the quality of care provision. A counter position of hermeneutic phenomenology as research method is then described. This approach offers an alternative perspective by penetrating the taken‐for‐granted ordinariness of an event (such as childbirth) to elicit rich emic meanings. Whilst all approaches to understanding maternity care have a place, depending on the question(s) being asked, the contribution of phenomenology is how it can uncover a depth of contextual understanding into what matters to women and to inform and transform care delivery. (shrink)

Intersubjectivity is the proposition that human experience occurs in a world of shared and embodied understandings, mediated by culture and language. Nursing is fundamentally relational, and nursing research stems from an exchange between participants and researchers and indeed around the transaction of the patient and the nurse in the intersubjective space of clinical settings. Through the philosophical standpoints of Husserl, Merleau‐Ponty, Heidegger, and Gadamer we examine these differing philosophical constructs of intersubjectivity and the contribution of these positions to phenomenological nursing (...) inquiry. Particular framings of intersubjectivity should influence the way researchers interact with their participants and data so that the chosen philosophy sits coherently within a research plan and methodology. This exploration of philosophical standpoints is extended through examples of, and reflections upon, the authors' experiences of intersubjectivity in our published phenomenological nursing studies and through dynamic interactions that characterise interpretive activities within a research team. (shrink)

Conserving the vitality of suffering: addressing family constraints to illness conversationsWhen persons are confronted with life‐threatening or chronic illness, there is always a possibility that family members other than the person experiencing the illness also suffer as they attempt to manage their own distress. This paper describes exemplars from a hermeneutic study that explored therapeutic conversations between nurses and families who were living with a member experiencing ischaemic heart disease. These conversations uncovered the complexity of both individual and family suffering (...) following acute cardiac illness events, and called attention to nursing practices that addressed some of the ways that family members were constrained from having conversations about the illness. When spaces were created for these conversations to occur, possibilities for making sense of illness and suffering were revealed as vital. These understandings support the efforts of family members to sustain and conserve family relationships in the face of illness and suffering, and inform both the professional and personal lives of nurses. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 54, Issue 5, Page 1278-1305, October 2020.

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to bring philosophical thinking closer to practice-based empirical work. Using Martin Heidegger’s philosophy, it offers a bridge between these two worlds, attempting to provide philosophical depth to the findings of a hermeneutic phenomenological study. This process unfolded through the appearance of three intertwined, potential, meaningful modes of being in the lifeworld: space as a condition for being and being for worlding the world; temporal and spatial self-being, the existence of multiple selves in time (...) and space; and suffering and thriving as modes of being. The article extends the dialogue and concludes with key reflections and insight for research practice. (shrink)

This paper explores corporate charitable giving disclosures in order to question the extent to which corporations can claim that their philanthropy activities are charitable at all. Exploration of these issues is carried out by means of a tropological analysis that focuses on the different linguistic tropes within the philanthropy disclosures of 52 companies, namely metaphor and synecdoche. The results reveal a number of complex and contradictory things. Primarily, the master metaphor of 'altruism' projected by the corporate disclosures is ideologically at (...) odds with the more business case-oriented discourse that shapes the disclosures. This contradiction is put into starker contrast by the existence of a root metaphor, whereby the recipients of corporate philanthropy are presented as the 'deserving poor'. Synecdochal devices are present within the corporate disclosures, whereby employee initiatives that are independent of corporate strategies are used to confer attributes onto the disclosures that bolster the master metaphor of 'altruism'. As such, corporate philanthropy is presented by the paper as a structurally incoherent discourse and yet one that has implications for both extracting greater value from various societal groups and in defining, on behalf of civil society, what is a worthy cause. (shrink)

This paper explores corporate charitable giving disclosures in order to question the extent to which corporations can claim that their philanthropy activities are charitable at all. Exploration of these issues is carried out by means of a tropological analysis that focuses on the different linguistic tropes within the philanthropy disclosures of 52 companies, namely metaphor and synecdoche. The results reveal a number of complex and contradictory things. Primarily, the master metaphor of ‘altruism’ projected by the corporate disclosures is ideologically at (...) odds with the more business case-oriented discourse that shapes the disclosures. This contradiction is put into starker contrast by the existence of a root metaphor, whereby the recipients of corporate philanthropy are presented as the ‘deserving poor’. Synecdochal devices are present within the corporate disclosures, whereby employee initiatives that are independent of corporate strategies are used to confer attributes onto the disclosures that bolster the master metaphor of ‘altruism’. As such, corporate philanthropy is presented by the paper as a structurally incoherent discourse and yet one that has implications for both extracting greater value from various societal groups and in defining, on behalf of civil society, what is a worthy cause. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that self-awareness is intertwined with one's awareness of possibilities for action. I show this by critically examining Dan Zahavi's multidimensional account of the self. I argue that the distinction Zahavi makes among 'pre-reflective minimal', 'interpersonal', and 'normative' dimensions of selfhood needs to be refined in order to accommodate what I call 'pre-reflective self-understanding'. The latter is a normative dimension of selfhood manifest not in reflection and deliberation, but in the habits and style of a person’s (...) pre-reflective absorption in the world. After reviewing Zahavi's multidimensional account and revealing this gap in his explanatory taxonomy, I draw upon Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Frankfurt in order to sketch an account of pre-reflective self-understanding. I end by raising an objection to Zahavi’s claim for the primitive and foundational status of pre-reflective self-awareness. To carve off self-awareness from the self’s practical immersion in a situation where things and possibilities already matter and draw one to act is to distort the phenomena. A more careful phenomenology of pre-reflective action shows that pre-reflective self-awareness and pre-reflective self-understanding are co-constitutive, both mutually for each other and jointly for everyday experience. (shrink)

In this article, I propose a phenomenological account of historical experience, aimed at showing how people directly experience an event as being historical. After examining the only previous phenomenological account, David Carr’s Experience and History, and exploring its limits, I present my own contributions. My analysis focuses on the features of three main concepts or “moments”: eventfulness, substantiality, and narrativity. Considering the transcendent character of historical experience in the moment of eventfulness brings three features to light: initial incomprehensibility, need for (...) categorization, and memorability. The concept of “substantiality,” on the other hand, shows how a historical event is felt as a moment of change. History is perceived as a structure shaping a community and whose unity seems irremediably shattered. Three features of historical change are explored: threatened identity, broken temporality, and emphasized belongingness. Lastly, I look at the decisive role of the gradual transformation of past beliefs and expectations as it occurs “narratively,” revealing a further two features of historical experience: narrative justifications and uncertain new normativity. Dealing narratively with a historical event means providing justifications for how it constitutes a new configuration of practices and ideas foreshadowing the now uncertain future. (shrink)

The professions of nursing and nurse education are currently experiencing a crisis of confidence, particularly in the UK, where the Francis Report and other recent reviews have highlighted a number of cases of nurses who no longer appear willing or able to ‘care’. The popular press, along with some elements of the nursing profession, has placed the blame for these failures firmly on the academy and particularly on the relatively recent move to all‐graduate status in England for pre‐registration student nurses. (...) This has come to be known in the UK as the ‘too‐posh‐to‐wash’ argument, that there is an incommensurability between being educated to degree level and performing basic nursing tasks. I will argue in this paper that the diagnosis of the problem is substantively correct, but the formulation and the prescription are misguided and dangerous. I will suggest that the growing emphasis on research‐based and evidence‐based practice is the logical conclusion of an inappropriate scientific paradigm for nursing which is underpinned by the social sciences, by technical rationality, and by a focus on people. In contrast, I will suggest that a more fruitful way of thinking about and practising nursing and nurse education is to consider it as a human science with a focus on persons in which evidence for practice derives largely from practice itself. The history of the idea of a human science is traced from its roots in nineteenth century hermeneutics to the work of Gadamer and R.D. Laing in the 1960s, and I attempt to imagine a paradigm for nursing practice, scholarship, and education based on Laing's ‘existential–phenomenological’ approach with a focus on the endeavour to understand and relate to individual persons rather than to make broad prescriptions for practice based on statistical and other generalizations. (shrink)

Western thought has dominated scientific development for a long time, and nursing has not escaped the influence of such ideology. Nurse scholars, in an attempt to fit the dominant scientific ideology, typically have had to struggle with non-empirical elements of nursing. This orientation in science, however, may have contributed inadvertently to a form of scientific ethnocentrism in the culture of inquiry in nursing as in other fields. The result has been a narrow view of science and knowledge and failure to (...) recognize the potential significance of Eastern philosophy in nursing knowledge development. Recently, intensive cultural exchanges between the East and the West have contributed to Western scientists becoming aware of the limits of Western linear thinking and concomitant efforts to explore the mysteries of Eastern philosophy. In this article, we explore Buddhism as one example of such philosophies that have great potential to enrich nursing as it continues to strive for definition and identity. (shrink)

Abstract:This article deals with the question as to what makes bioethics a critical discipline. It considers different senses of criticism and evaluates their strengths and weaknesses. A primary method in bioethics as a philosophical discipline is critical thinking, which implies critical evaluation of concepts, positions, and arguments. It is argued that the type of analytical criticism that restricts its critical role to critical thinking of this type often suffers from other intellectual flaws. Three examples are taken to demonstrate this: premature (...) criticism, uncritical self-understanding of theoretical assumptions, and narrow framing of bioethical issues. Such flaws can lead both to unfair treatment of authors and to uncritical discussion of topics. In this context, the article makes use of Häyry’s analysis of different rationalities in bioethical approaches and argues for the need to recognize the importance of communicative rationality for critical bioethics. A radically different critical approach in bioethics, rooted in social theory, focuses on analyses of power relations neglected in mainstream critical thinking. It is argued that, although this kind of criticism provides an important alternative in bioethics, it suffers from other shortcomings that are rooted in a lack of normative dimensions. In order to complement these approaches and counter their shortcomings, there is a need for a bioethics enlightened by critical hermeneutics. Such hermeneutic bioethics is aware of its own assumptions, places the issues in a wide context, and reflects critically on the power relations that stand in the way of understanding them. Moreover, such an approach is dialogical, which provides both a critical exercise of speech and a normative dimension implied in the free exchange of reasons and arguments. This discussion is framed by Hedgecoe’s argument that critical bioethics needs four elements: to be empirically rooted, theory challenging, reflexive, and politely skeptical. (shrink)

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) required healthcare providers in the United States to adopt and demonstrate meaningful use of electronic health records (EHRs) by January 1, 2014. In many ways, EHRs mark a notable improvement over paper medical records as they are more easily accessible and allow for electronic searching and sharing of medical history. However, as EHRs have become mandated by ARRA, many nurses now rely upon computers far more heavily during nurse–patient interactions, thereby decreasing (...) the level of direct interpersonal communication between the two. There is evidence that eye contact between nurses and patients positively affects patient satisfaction. Above and beyond the issue of patient satisfaction is the more basic ethical issue of respecting the patient as a person. The author argues that the templates used in electronic health systems have the possibility of eroding the respect for humanity that is the hallmark of nurse–patient relationships, as signalled by the American Nurses Association’s first principle in their Code of Ethics. Using concepts from philosophers Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas, the author provides guidance as to what an ethical interaction between nurse and patient should look like in an age of EHRs. (shrink)

Communication between medical professionals and patients is an important aspect of therapy and patient satisfaction. Common barriers that get in the way of effective communication in this sphere include: (1) gender, age, and cultural differences; (2) physical or psychological discomfort or pain; (3) medical literacy; and (4) distraction due to technological factors or simply being overworked. The author examines these communicative barriers from a philosophical lens and then utilizes Martin Heidegger’s phenomenology and hermeneutics to provide guidance for medical professional–patient interactions. (...) The phenomenological approach espoused emphasizes the particular, contextual nature of such interactions, and thus is opposed to abstract, theoretical principles. Heidegger’s hermeneutics provides a philosophical approach to communication that may guide the back-and-forth interpretation that should happen between medical professionals and patients to achieve effective communication. (shrink)

Introduction: Expressions of dignity as a clinical phenomenon in nursing homes as expressed by caregivers were investigated. A coherence could be detected between the concepts and phenomena of existence and dignity in relationships and caring culture as a context. A caring culture is interpreted by caregivers as the meaning-making of what is accepted or not in the ward culture. Background: The rationale for the connection between existence and dignity in relationships and caring culture is that suffering is a part of (...) existence, as well as compassion in relieving suffering, and ontological interdependency. Aim: To describe different expressions of dignity in relationships and existence in context of caring cultures from the perspective of the caregivers. Research design: The methodology and method are hermeneutic. The method used was to merge the theoretical preunderstanding as one horizon of understanding with empirical data. Participants and research context: Focus group interviews with caregivers in nursing homes. Ethical considerations: The principles of the Helsinki Declaration have been followed to, for example, preserve self-determination, integrity, dignity, confidentiality and privacy of the research persons. Findings: Data interpretation resulted in four themes: Encountering existential needs that promote dignity in a caring culture; To amplify dignity in relationships by the creative art of caring in a caring culture; Violation of dignity by ignorance or neglect in a non-caring culture and The ethic of words and appropriated ground values in a caring culture. Discussion: Dignity-promoting acts of caring, or dignity-depriving acts of non-caring are adequate to see from the perspective of dignity in relationships and existence and the caring culture. Conclusions: Dignity in relationships seems to touch the innermost existential life, as the existential life is dependent on confirmation from others. (shrink)

The article focuses on the problem of constitutional symbolism in functionally differentiated societies and its relevance to legal, political, and moral systems. The first part analyses differences between the three systems and their constitutional context. The second part concentrates on the moral symbolic function of modern constitutions and its temporal dimension. It shows that the “good/bad” moral code of constitutions draws on expressive symbolism and transforms it into evaluative symbolism and dogma of morality. The final part analyses the prospective character (...) of modern constitution‐making and its symbolic selectivity regarding the past. The paper concludes by emphasising the systemic pluralisation effect of constitution‐making and the impossibility of constituting systems of “pure” law, morality, and politics. (shrink)

Hans-Georg Gadamer argues that consciousness not only historically constrains experience but also allows strangeness to intelligibly speak to it. This historically effected and effective consciousness features in Gadamer’s idea that a common language is unearthed for the interpretive horizons of those involved in dialogue with each other through a logic of question and answer. I argue, however, that this reveals a conceptual uncertainty about evaluating progress in interpretive understanding. Gadamer’s failure to escape from this uncertainty risks the possibility of a (...) problematic relativism. Effectively, even if sufficient interpretation occurs when horizons are infinitely structured, this does not preclude incoherence between a horizon’s elements. (shrink)

Empirical research into political sentiments gives force to the proposition that, in the context of the 2013–14 Euromaidan and subsequent war, Ukrainian national identity, for most of its history predominantly ethno-cultural, has undergone changes justifying its qualification as ‘civic’. In this article I discuss the ethno-cultural orientation, conventional during the 19th and 20th centuries, of Ukrainian literary history, a scholarly genre that has a tradition of promoting the cause of Ukrainian nation-building; I identify contemporary examples of discourses in the literary (...) sphere – literary works themselves, literary anthologies and the public statements and debates of writers – that embody or applaud civic identities akin to those in evidence on the Euromaidan; and I reflect upon the values, inclusive and multicultural, that a Ukrainian national literary history rhetorically in harmony with post-Euromaidan sentiment would evince. (shrink)

This article takes its inspiration from Jacques Derrida to consider how deconstructionism can be done inadvertently. This possibility is underscored when one considers how a very significant phrase in Ifá texts— “A díá fún...” has been construed away from its transliteration as “Ifá divination was performed for...” by each of Oluwole and Karenga. Oluwole justifies her “deconstruction” on the grounds that such transliteration does not capture the philosophic cogs gravid within Ifá verses. Karenga, through his Kawaida methodology, “improvises” to suit (...) the ethical inferences he seeks to deduce out of the corpus. On this showing, this research infers that each of these scholars have engaged in a reflective activity that passes, on Derrida’s reading, as deconstruction, unbeknownst to them. Would they admit that their intellectual drudgeries amount to postmodern philosophy? This is the primary research question that this disquisition interrogates. (shrink)

Chung-ying’s project of onto-hermeneutics draws in order to shed light on the relations between ontology and epistemology in the hermeneutic act. In the process, not only will we be thinking with Cheng and some Western hermeneutic theorists, but we will also be thinking through history by examining the Confucian act of reading. To the extent that any hermeneutic exercise, in accordance with Cheng’s construal, cannot merely be a disembodied act of theoretical knowing but is also moral effort that entails personal (...) cultivation—or, in Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s terms, Bildung—its espousal and its practice necessarily embody a larger conception of culture. In fact, precisely in terms of the intimate engagement with culture, Confucian insights, filtered through Cheng’s onto-hermeneutic lenses, may have much to offer contemporary hermeneutics. (shrink)

Nursing on paper: therapeutic letters in nursing practice This paper offers a selected piece of interpretive research extracted from the context of a larger research study. The hermeneutic research inquiry described in this paper involved the examination of the nursing and family therapy intervention of therapeutic letters. It incorporated the textual interpretation of 11 therapeutic letters, clinical sessions with three families, clinical team discussions, and research interviews with four family members and three nurse clinicians who participated in the writing of (...) the letters. This particular paper extracts segments of the research related to the letters received by two participants, as well as some general findings, with a focus on the possibilities and influences of therapeutic letters in nursing practice. The findings of this research offer suggestions, not as a template, but as an inspiration and evocation to write therapeutic letters that address the obligation of meeting people experiencing illness at the point of their suffering, with words and questions that invite relationship, reflection, and are large enough to sustain a meeting. (shrink)

This paper attempts to clarify the meaning and significance of "qualitative confirmation". The need to do so is related to the fact that, without such a conceptualization, a large portion of the human sciences are relegated to a less than scientific status. Accordingly, "qualitative confirmation" is viewed as a proper subset of traditional confirmation theory. To establish such a case, a general Hempelian framework is utilized, but it is supplemented with two additional levels of confirmation. It is concluded that the (...) final test for adequacy of such confirmation must rest on a subjective probability notion. (shrink)