The Issues at Issue: Heidegger declares metaphor to be a function of metaphysics. Ricoeur's tension theory of metaphor takes the understanding of metaphor beyond metaphysics. Ricoeur's theory of metaphor is a theory of metaphorical statement not of naming. The classical, lexical theory of metaphor focuses on a primary meaning of each metaphor. As such metaphor is merely ornamentation in language. What it names could more appropriately be accomplished in literal language. In contrast, metaphor is understood by Ricoeur to be a (...) semantic event made possible by three kinds of tensions. One may understand symbols to function with the same metaphorical tensions. In the case of symbols, however, these tensions function not at the level of the sentence but rather of the narrative. Metaphor and symbol both have an ‘ontological priority’ over other elements of discourse and experience. They ‘work’ because of the event character of both understanding and experience. Understanding and experience have event as their condition of possibility. Metaphor and symbol both have a ‘temporal priority’, as well, for they serve as the shock to think ‘more’. This can occur, however, because they are part of a circularity that is non-metaphysical, that is, the circularity of the event character of the Being-of beings. Hence, just as metaphors are always ‘larger’ than the sentence, so are symbols always ‘larger’ than the narrative. (shrink)

A formal model of the processes of digestion in a hypothetical cell is developed and discussed as a case study of how the threefold logic of Peircean semiotics works within Rosen’s paradigm of relational ontology. The formal model is used to demonstrate several fundamental differences between a relational description of biological processes and a mechanistic description. The formal model produces a logic of embodied generalization that is mediated and determined by the cell through its interactions with the environment. Specifically, the (...) synchronization of the functions of pattern recognition and semantic attribution results in an open and adaptive learning system that is stabilized by a hermeneutical circle. The relational principles of biosemiotics demonstrated through this case study are applicable to other biological systems, as well as to the relational ontology of systems theory, artificial intelligence systems, and relativistic quantum theory. (shrink)

Reevaluates Western and Chinese philosophical traditions to question the boundaries of entrenched conceptual frameworks.

This article suggests an iconic turn in cultural sociology. Icons can be seen, it is argued, as symbolic condensations that root social meanings in material form, allowing the abstractions of cognition and morality to be subsumed, to be made invisible, by aesthetic shape. Meaning is made iconically visible, in other words, by the beautiful, sublime, ugly, or simply by the mundane materiality of everyday life. But it is via the senses that iconic power is made. This new approach to meaning (...) is compared with others — with materialism, semiotics, aestheticism, moralism, realism, and spiritualism. (shrink)

This paper argues that Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutical philosophy attempts to reopen the question of human transcendence in contemporary terms. While his conception of language as self-transcending is deeply Husserlian, Ricoeur also responds to the analytical challenge when he deploys a basic distinction in Fregean logic in order to clarify Heidegger’s phenomenology of world. Ricoeur’s commitment to a transcendental view is evident in his conception of narrative, which enables him to emphasize the role of the performative in literary reading. The meaning (...) of the self in time provides Ricoeur with a discursive basis for distinguishing his own position from that of Kant and other philosophers in the transcendental tradition. (shrink)

This article draws attention to the contemporary mantra of cosmopolitanism and how it carries altered symbolic representations, new social images and epistemic shifts. The background is the current cosmopolitan turn within the sciences, including within the discipline of education. How can we understand the contemporary makings of this new cosmopolitanism? And what could be the potential pitfalls and possibilities of a discourse that jeopardises the very representations of the social world? The first part of the article portrays the new cosmopolitanism (...) as a metaphor for a way of life, an ideal and an outlook. The second part, however, moves beyond an encyclopedic mapping of the discourse while pointing out how the new cosmopolitanism is a product of—and produces—a common sense, an alldoxa, and a symbolic universe representing and naming the world: It is here held that “cosmopolitanism” is a name carrying symbolic representations with more or less hidden epistemic functions. However, as the name and metaphor assume something which it is not, the new cosmopolitanism carries and inherent paradox. The third part of the article discusses the impossible possibilities of this paradox: In what ways may the inherent contradictions of the new cosmopolitanism affect its making? And what may be the potential pitfalls and possibilities of a discourse contributing to the remaking of the very vision of the social world? (shrink)

Despite the importance of linguistic disclosure for philosophical hermeneutics there has been a conspicuous lack of attention to the question of how linguistic disclosure actually works. I examine the mechanics of disclosure by drawing on Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics as well as Ricoeur’s concept of translation and his theory of metaphor. My claim is that the background horizon of the unsaid that differs between languages enables each to disclose different things. This situation underscores the importance of engaging in East-West comparative philosophy, (...) of philosophizing across what Ricoeur calls the radical “fold” (pli) in what can be thought and experienced. (shrink)

Multistable figures offer an intriguing model for arbitrating conflicting positions. Moving back and forth between the different aspects under which something can be seen, one recognizes that mutually contradictory descriptions can be equally valid and that disputes over the correct account can be resolved without dissolving differences or establishing a higher synthesis. Yet, the experience of a gestalt switch also offers a model for radical conversions and revolutions – that is, for irreversible leaps to incommensurable alternatives foiling ideals of rational (...) choice while providing the possibility and necessity of decision. Accentuating the temporal dimensions of multistable figures, this multidisciplinary volume illuminates the critical potentials and limits of multistability as a complex figure of thought. (shrink)

When I studied the Scriptures then I did not feel as I am writing about them now. They seemed to me unworthy of comparison with the grand style of Cicero (Augustine, III, 5).As for the absurdities which used to offend me in Scripture, … I now looked for their meanings in the depth of mystery (sacramentorum) (Augustine, VI, 5).

Kant’s effort to defend the co-existence of transcendental freedom and natural necessity is one of the crowning achievements of the first Critique. Yet by identifying the will with practical reason in his moral philosophy, he lent support to the view that the moral law is the causal law of a free will – the result of which, as Reinhold argued, left immoral action impossible. However, Reinhold’s attempt to separate the will from practical reason generated difficulties of its own, which Maimon (...) was quick to point out. By identifying freedom with indifferent choice, Maimon argued, Reinhold had no resources to explain why a free will acts at all. My aim in this article is to show how Fichte’s theory of freedom seeks to reconcile these two commitments: the key lies in what I call Fichte’s Genetic Model, according to which indifferent choice is the original condition of the will, but a condition we must actively overcome. (shrink)

Challenging a long-standing assumption of the separation of ethical from poetic activity, this essay develops the basis for a theory of moral life as inherently and radically creative. A range of contemporary post-Kantian ethicists--including Ricoeur, Nussbaum, Kearney, and Gutiérrez--are employed to make the argument that moral practice requires a fundamental capability for creative transformation, imagination, and social renewal. In addition, this poetic moral capability can finally be understood only from the primordial religious point of view of the mystery of Creation (...) as such. Humanity as an image of its Creator is called to the endless impossible possibility of the re-creation of its own complex, plural, and fallen social world. Such a perspective is opposed to views of moral life as the application of law-like principles or the recovery of past moral histories. Without a better understanding of moral life's radically creative imperative, we miss a vital element of social relations' distinctive humanity. (shrink)

RésuméL'herméneutique de Paul Ricœur est centrée sur le problème de l'interprétation de soi par le moyen de la référence sémantique du monde du texte. Bien que Ricœeur poursuive un examen fort important du rapport entre le discours narratif et le processus de formation de l'identité, la façon dont il prolonge cette dynamique pour y inclure la question du sot est problématique. La distinction qu'il tente de tracer entre deux types d'identités, liés l'un à «ce qu'est» une personne et l'autre à (...) «qui» elle est enchevêtre inévitablement sa compréhension de la pragmatique du soi dans la sémantique de l'identité. (shrink)

In an essay examining Hannah Arendt's approach to public memory, rhetorical scholar Stephen H. Browne notes that "to remember is thus not simply to turn backward; it is itself a type of action that steadies us in the face of an unknown and unpredictable future" (2004, 60). The act of remembering connects the rememberer to both the past and the future. As scholars such as Benedict Anderson, John Bodnar, and John Gillis have pointed out, remembering also connects human beings to (...) their contemporaries and "imagined communities" by establishing a common narrative and space for identification. In many cases, action itself provides the material from which memories are formed—an individual from the past betrayed his .. (shrink)

A large body of experimental evidence in the empirical sciences shows that writing about life experiences can be beneficial for mental and physical health. While empirical data regarding the health benefits of writing interventions have been collected in numerous studies in psychology and biomedicine, this literature has remained almost entirely disconnected from scholarship in the humanities and cognitive neuropsychology. In this paper, I review the literature from psychological and biomedical writing interventions, connect these findings to views from philosophy, cognitive neuropsychology (...) and narratology and argue that examining established regularities in how narratives are structured can shed further light on the psychological processes engaged during writing interventions. In particular, I argue that the narratological concept of conflict can be applied to resolve patterns of seemingly conflicting empirical findings in psychological studies. More generally, I propose that an interdisciplinary perspective can provide a broader theoretical basis for understanding the psychological processes underlying the health benefits of autobiographical writing and provide directions for future research in psychology and biomedicine. (shrink)

This article elaborates on the relationship between structuralism (and to some extent post-structuralism), hermeneutics and pragmatism, starting from what I comprehend as the inherent dilemma articulated in the policy documents concerning the emerging knowledge economy: the tension between innovation and adaptation. In the first section, I delineate a horizon of understanding for my presentation by defining the particular societal transformations in the historical context where the question of creativity and innovation has become of strategic importance. Then, in the second section, (...) I suggest a diagnosis of the new and predominant flexible organization of knowledge within the context of the new creative economy. The third section is a short interlude, where the philosophical implications of these societal transformations are being disclosed, together with the challenges that influence the agenda for a discussion about a constructive philosophical contribution. In the last two sections, I introduce a particular kind of hermeneutical perspective into the discussion by a close reading of one of Paul Ricoeur’s major works from the mid 1970s, here distinctively interpreted as a profound investigation into the micro-mechanisms of the epistemology of creativity. Thus, by the configuration of a hermeneutics of creativity and innovation from these philosophical resources, my intention is to disclose the ontological implications of innovation as well as the anthropological prerequisites for a conception of creativity “with a human face.”. (shrink)

Postmodernism has been criticized as failing to offer, on the one hand, authoritative explanations for social phenomena that might provide a scientific basis for policy formation or, on the other, the philosophical justification for emancipatory work – its radical scepticism about claims to knowledge leaving its advocates, including many nurses, with little scope to transform oppressive social and political regimes. Various approaches to this important problem have been offered, both philosophical and mediodological. Some critical theorists have rejected certain aspects of (...) postmodernism as dangerous and distracting. Some more accommodating solutions are troubled by unacknowledged inconsistencies. Others embrace post‐modernism's unavoidable ambiguity (towards the Enlightenment for instance) with a lighter heart. In this paper I will review some of the criticism of postmodernism and some proposed solutions to these problems. Using recent research into the impact of managerialism on nursing within the UK National Health Service as an example and drawing on deconstructive literary theory, I conclude by accepting a rhetorical agonistics of undecidability. I take postmodernism as a mandate for causing trouble for those groups who are currently having their say and whose version of truth and rationality has achieved domination over others. I do not take postmodernism as a place from which to champion the cause or privilege the view of any particular group. (shrink)

This paper proposes a teaching alternative that can encourage the ethical reflective sensibility among students of social entrepreneurship. It does so by exploring the possibility of using religious parables as narratives that can be analysed from Ricoeur’s hermeneutics to provoke and encourage ethical discussions in social entrepreneurship courses. To illustrate this argument, the paper makes use of a parable from the New Testament as an example of a religious narrative that can be used to prompt discussions about social entrepreneurs’ ethical (...) dilemmas. The paper adds to the limited works that consider the teaching of ethics within social entrepreneurship education. It also advances studies that seek alternative strategies to teaching ethics in business contexts, making these strategies discernible for discussion within the broader business and management literature. (shrink)

This paper seeks to bridge two aspects of Fronto's letters, erotics and rhetoric, by demonstrating that Fronto himself merges the two areas in his discourse with Marcus Aurelius about their relationship. Whereas some letters suggest an unequal relationship based on power, others encourage the identification of Fronto with Marcus. Fronto achieves this identification by structuring their relationship itself as a metaphor in which he and Marcus are equated and linked by epistolary bonds. I close by discussing why the epistolary genre (...) in particular is an apt site for the merger of metaphor and love. (shrink)

This paper draws attention to the potential pitfalls and possibilities of a new cosmopolitanism. The first part of the paper briefly portrays cosmopolitanism as a name and metaphor for a way of life, an ideal and an outlook. The second part, however, discloses a paradoxical attribution of the metaphor, revealing the ways in which it assumes something which it is not. The third part of the paper further explores the powers of this paradox, arguing that the new cosmopolitanism can be (...) seen as a riddle that surprises, bewilders and educates: The surprise is in the deviation from current and most common ways of speech. The bewilderment happens as the mantra of cosmopolitanism is bringing together logical opposites, jumbling categories and disturbing pre-existing modes of thought. The educational work of cosmopolitanism thus occurs as a violation of the cognitive framework and logical categories generating our very modes of learning. The vital work of the new cosmopolitanism is therefore in the ways in which it creates epistemic ruptures, recasts our mental categories, generates radically new modes of learning, and thus completely new ways of experiencing, seeing and knowing a world of change. But what are the potential pitfalls and possibilities of a discourse jeopardizing the very vision of the social world, and thus the world itself? (shrink)

Wisdom’s pursuit through symbols, metaphors, poetry, and therapy is a path of indirection, less available the more one’s pursuit is direct. Wisdom may be gained through particular processes of knowing, pilgrimages towards the truth of things. Dante’s 14 th century poem engages a new rhyme scheme to further this pursuit of knowing towards wisdom. He called it terza rima, or third rhyme. Its structure, the essay argues, embodies two movements of the soul: the journey towards knowing, one which is always (...) bending back in memory, and the movement of therapy itself, wherein one becomes more conscious by seeing in the present a confluence of one’s history and one’s destiny at the same instant. Love and the gracious heart are but one thing, As that wise poet puts it in his poem; As much can one without the other be As without reason can the reasoning mind. (shrink)

Ricoeur placed a great deal of importance upon text and the interpretation of text. Bell accepts this by virtue of his extended analysis of the story of Babel, and I hope to offer ways of extending and developing Bell’s arguments to incorporate the ethical demands that Ricoeur placed upon text, upon our interpretation of text and upon action as a form of readable text. This will not include a commentary on discourse analysis, which I am not qualified to give. Ricoeur (...) differed from the structuralist tradition in that he saw the relationship between language and life as taking a dialectical form: debate that presumes the possibility of altering one’s position by grappling with different views, and often taking inspiration from Hegelian dialectics, with their contrasting polarized views and the eventual attempt at affirmative common ground. The term λoƔoσ was first used in a philosophical way by Heraclitus to give us the principle of order and knowledge, and yet for Heraclitus the world was dominated by conflict and change. Ricoeur studied this tension within logos between order and disorder, partly by his writing about language and his work on signs and symbols, partly through metaphor and narrative and also through his insights on translation. For him, all these are facets of the need for both Explaining and Understanding as forms of interpretation of language, ethics and action. Ricoeur’s work on logos provides us with an approach that asks whether ethics controls language or vice versa or both and how this fits in with structuralism and later movements. For Ricoeur, signs are not the centres of our perceptual experience. At the heart of our perception are our motivations and our actions, for which we must take responsibility in a sort of provisional affirmation that we will keep trying. In so doing we must doubt our own motives just as much as those of others, and see action as a form of readable text. (shrink)

In this article, I relate the demand that Paul Ricoeur suggests mimesis places on the way we think about truth to the idea that the work of art is a model for thinking about testimony. By attributing a work’s epoché of reality to the work of imagination, I resolve the impasse that arises from attributing music, literature, and art’s distance from the real to their social emancipation. Examining the conjunction, in aesthetic experience, of the communicability and the exemplarity of a (...) work reveals how Ricoeur’s definition of mimesis as refiguration relates to the “rule” that the work summons. This “rule” constitutes the solution to a problem or question for which the work is the answer. In conclusion, as a model for thinking about testimony, the claims that works make have a counterpart in the injunctions that issue from exemplary moral and political acts.  . (shrink)

The paper examines some philosophical aspects of translation as a metaphor for education—a metaphor that avoids the closure of final definitions, in favour of an ongoing and tentative process of interpretation and revision. Translation, it is argued, is a complex process involving language, within and among cultures, and in the exercise of power. Drawing on Foucault's analysis of power, Nietzschean contingency, and the inversion of meaning that characterises the work of Heidegger and Derrida, the paper points towards Ricoeur's notion of (...) linguistic hospitality as the ethical dimension to the inevitably inadequate representation of the ‘other’. In this exploration, translation is posited as a creative and interpretive act—involving neither image nor copy, but poetic transposition.The power of language emerges in the close association between power and knowledge, in which the ability to define what is real generates the realm of future possibilities. From a Foucauldian perspective, language functions as a creative strategic relation—a form of power that structures the field of other possible actions. It is through the mediation of translation, the paper argues, that language communicates, leaving us with a world of difference (i.e. ‘lost in translation’), as both our curse and our blessing as part of the human condition and as part of our ethical endeavour as educators. The contingent and arbitrary nature of language problematises what appears natural and necessary, generating the possibility of creative dialogue. (shrink)

Abstract“Patient-centred care” is the recent response to the malaise produced in the field of health care from the point of view both of a technical mentality and the paternalistic model. The interest in the story-telling approach shown by both the humanities and the social sciences has favoured a “narrative turn” in medicine too, where the new ethics of therapeutic relationship consider the hermeneutic method a means by which to integrate evidence and subjectivity, scientific data and patient experience. The aim of (...) this paper is to show how Ricoeur’s theory of “threefold mimesis” makes a conceptual contribution to the use of narrative interviews in nursing and also be successfully transferred into and applied in the field of healthcare in general. First, the paper examines how this narrative approach might open up new possibilities for the acquisition of in-depth knowledge of patients’ life experiences, a condition indispensable for the improvement of the quality of care. Secondly, it highlights how this Ricoeurian method seems capable of provide an opportunity for healthcare professionals to review their own understanding of the caregiver-patient therapeutic relationship, beginning with their confrontation with the patient’s world as revealed by the narrative they provide. (shrink)

This essay examines Ricœur’s mimetic and transfigurative perspective on non-objective art and adopts it as an idiom for examining Mark Rothko’s artistic intention in the multiform canvases of his “classical” period from 1949 until his death in 1970. Rothko unequivocally denied being an abstractionist, a colorist, or a formalist, insisting, on the contrary, that he desired to communicate discrete dimensions of experience and emotions to his viewers, specifically, experiences of the sacred and the spiritual. His large canvases, with their blurred (...) edges, force the spectator into an intimacy of experience that opens the potentiality of heterogeneous interpretations. In other words, one might consider his paintings to be metaphors of dense meanings that imitate reality, not through facile representation, but through a Kierkegaardian repetition of worlds that track Ricœur’s own ideas of prefiguration, configuration, and re-figuration. I contend in this essay that Rothko’s “abstract expressionism” adequately illustrates Ricœur’s contention that non-figurative art succeeds far better than representational art in refiguring new worlds of meaning. (shrink)

This essay addresses Jacques Derrida’s theory of metaphor, as it has been handed to literary theory and continental philosophy. Our aim is to reassess the relationship between metaphor and metaphysics, using two distinct critical lenses. We will contrast Derrida’s influential position to an anachronistic author – Giambattista Vico. Vico initiated what is now called the romantic theory of metaphor, but the details of his theory are missing from current discussions. For this reason, Vico’s view is given closer attention. Two new (...) concepts are introduced: mute metaphor and heroic metaphor. These terms help specify precisely how metaphor can be conceived as a process of consciousness rather than a grammatical rule or grammatical exception. Finally, it is suggested that Vico’s theory is preferable to Derrida’s. Vico’s vision of metaphorical language is more fruitful and less problematic than Derrida’s, both methodologically and terminologically. The romanticism espoused by Vico also suggests itself to new modes of contemporary research concerning the purpose and function of metaphor within language. (shrink)

In Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique, contemporary feminist philosopher Sally Haslanger claims that the reality of race and gender is built on unjust social structures and must be resisted. Meanwhile, contemporary social theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak extends the term ‘subaltern’ to Third World Asian women who were rendered inarticulate by centuries of oppressive masculinist, imperialist, and colonial rule. This article examines how a metaphysics of resistance, culled from philosophy and postcolonial studies, can contribute to expanding postcolonial feminist theologizing.

Military metaphors are pervasive in biomedicine, including HIV research. Rooted in the mind set that regards pathogens as enemies to be defeated, terms such as “shock and kill” have become widely accepted idioms within HIV cure research. Such language and symbolism must be critically examined as they may be especially problematic when used to express scientific ideas within emerging health-related fields. In this article, philosophical analysis and an interdisciplinary literature review utilizing key texts from sociology, anthropology, history, and Chinese and (...) African studies were conducted to investigate the current proliferation of military metaphors. We found the use of these metaphors to be ironic, unfortunate, and unnecessary. To overcome military metaphors we propose to give them less aggressive meanings, and/or replace them with more peaceful metaphors. Building on previous authors' work, we argue for the increased use of “journey” metaphors as meaningful, cross-culturally app... (shrink)

How is it that metaphors are meaningful, yet we have so much trouble saying exactly what they mean? I argue that metaphoric thought is an act of imagination, mediated by the contingent form of human embodiment. Metaphoric cognition is an example of the productive interplay between intentional imagery and the body scheme, a process of imaginal modeling. The case of metaphor marks the intersection of linguistic and psychological processes and demonstrates the need for a multi-disciplinary approach not only in philosophy (...) of language, but in cognitive science and consciousness studies as well. (shrink)

Using the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur as an interpretive matrix, this article suggests that critical theologies may be understood as an instantiation of the concrete unity of past and present in religious symbol. The intransigence of debates between critical and counter-critical theologies is thus disclosed as an inability to account for and remain within the past-future dynamic in religious symbol. Ricoeur’s Freud and Philosophy provides the philosophical terminology for unpacking the simultaneously archaeological and teleological character of symbol. The article then (...) turns to Ricoeur’s accounts of metaphor and narrative to make the following observations: Reflecting the metaphorical capacity of language, critical theologies occur as a juxtaposition of known and unknown, here understood as a juxtaposition of past and present in religious expression; The inherently tensive character in critical theology gives way to a dialogical trajectory. Critical theologians engender Ricoeur’s reference to the pluralism of ontology in the ‘metaphorical is’; and Critical theology represents the very human capacity to create a new future out of a meaningless past by narrating the stories of the marginalized. These Ricoeurian themes are highlighted by examples drawn from the theologies of James Cone, Jürgen Moltmann, Mario Aguilar, David Tracy, and Johann Baptist Metz. (shrink)

This article revisits Jean-Louis Comolli's “Historical Fiction: A Body Too Much” in the spirit of film-philosophy's various efforts to reassess the field's seminal texts, and it recasts Comolli's attentive analyses of film acting in terms of the original interpretations they produce. In short, I look to “A Body Too Much’ for its subtle disclosure of an underappreciated substratum of hermeneutics in so called “1970s film theory.” Comolli's study of the discord between actor and referent, I argue, is surprisingly consistent with (...) Paul Ricoeur's pioneering contemporaneous work on metaphor and interpretation, and it leads him to understand the meaningful deployment of film actors in very particular ways. I provide an extended analysis of Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York to further demonstrate how the distinctive utilization of actors constitutes both a redescription of the historical past and a spur to interpretation. When critically apprehended as a solution to the broadly construed problems of creating historical fictions, the calculated deployment of film actors can reveal a manner of thinking about the historical past – simply put, it can tell us what a film is thinking and how it regards its historical characters and events. In the final analysis, I claim, our attention to – and critical interpretation of – the embodiment of such filmic thinking permits us to grasp the imaginative form of historical knowledge on view in such films. (shrink)

The empirical basis for this article is threeyears of experience with ethical rounds atUppsala University Hospital. Three standardapproaches of ethical reasoning are examined aspotential explanations of what actually occursduring the ethical rounds. For reasons given,these are not found to be satisfyingexplanations. An approach called ``imaginativeethics'', is suggested as a more satisfactoryaccount of this kind of ethical reasoning. Theparticipants in the ethical rounds seem to drawon a kind of moral competence based on personallife experience and professional competence andexperience. By listening to (...) other perspectivesand other experiences related to one particularpatient story, the participants imaginealternative horizons of moral experience andexplore a multitude of values related toclinical practice that might be at stake. Inhis systematic treatment of aesthetics in theCritique of Judgement, Kant made use ofan operation of thought that, if applied toethics, will enable us to be more sensitive tothe particulars of each moral situation. Basedon this reading of Kant, an account ofimaginative ethics is developed in order tobring the ethical praxis of doctors and nursesinto sharper relief. The Hebraic and theHellenic traditions of imagination are used inorder to illuminate some of the experiences ofethical rounds. In conclusion, it is arguedthat imaginative ethics and principle-basedethics should be seen as complementary in orderto endow a moral discourse with ethicalauthority. Kantian ethics will do the job if itis remembered that Kant suggested only amodest, negative role of principle-baseddeliberation. (shrink)

The central themes of Jesus’ preaching, the kingdom and household of God, are root metaphors expressing the symbolic universe of God’s patronage subverting patronage and patriarchy structuring contemporary Mediterranean society, thus legitimising an anti-hierarchical community of faith. This dominant focus of Jesus’ message was discarded, as society’s prevalent patronage and patriarchy became the societal structure of the later faith communities. Today, patronage and patriarchy still forms the social structure for a large sector of Christian communities and many cultures, resulting in (...) inequality, injustice, exploitation and suffering. This article proposes that the only remedy for the faithful is a return to Jesus’ essential message, by investigating the social dynamics suggested by these root metaphors using metaphor theory and social scientific methods. Patronage is studied within contemporary Roman and Mediterranean aristocratic patriarchal society, forming an a-typical broad-based needle-like power pyramid with multiple similarly structured power pyramids within, based on a morality of indebtedness, honour and power. Jesus accepted God as his father and declared the advent of God’s patronage as king (kingdom of God) and father of the faithful (children of God). Within the kingdom and household of God, there was no hierarchy, except for the primate of the first born son, whom Jesus symbolises as broker for God’s patronage to all his followers. Within the faith communities there should be no hierarchy or any form of clientage other than God’s patronage. Rather, the faithful are equal and should serve each other and their communities with compassion, responsibility and justice.Contribution: The contribution of this research is its focus on similarity and dissimilarity of these patronage metaphors and their application to subvert the power dynamics of patronage and patriarchy within the community of the faithful, in order to proffer God’s patronage of a society of caring, selfless equals today. This research falls within the scope of HTS Theological studies, as it is a multi-disciplinary study of key biblical metaphors investigated with accepted methodology resulting in valid conclusions which are ethically sound. (shrink)

This article seeks to elaborate the step of epistemological affirmation that exists within every movement of learning. My epistemological method is rooted in philosophical hermeneutics in contrast to empirical or rationalist traditions. I argue that any movement of learning is based upon an entry into a hermeneutical circle: one is thrown into, or leaps into, an interpretation which in some sense has to be temporarily affirmed or adopted in order to be either absorbed and integrated, or overcome and rejected. I (...) illustrate this process through a retrieval of the concept of submission in pedagogy, particularly with reference to submission in Eastern traditions, as well as pre-modern Christian thought. These other traditions are introduced to contrast with the modern liberal Western perspective in which the role of submission has been almost entirely lost. (shrink)

Being diagnosed with cancer can be one of those critical incidents that negatively affect the self. Identity is threatened when physical, psychological, and social consequences of chronic illness begin to erode one’s sense of self and challenge an individual’s ability to continue to present the self he or she prefers to present to others. Based on the notion of illness trajectory and adopting a Ricoeurian narrative perspective, this theoretical paper shall explore the impact of cancer disease on identity and establish (...) the crucial importance of metaphor in the narratives of life with cancer. Findings indicate that in cancer narratives the illness experience supplies the narrative structure with temporal and spatial meeting points that make the narrative comprehensible and meaningful. Cancer forces identity changes not only from having to endure the long-term physical and psychosocial effects of the disease, but also from inevitable existential questions about life’s meaning. Improved medical knowledge today means improved ethnomedical practices. Metaphor can bridge the gap between the cancer experience and the world of technology and treatment, helping patients to symbolically control their illness. (shrink)

In this paper I respond to Samantha Vice’s prescriptions for living morally as a white person in South Africa today. I allow that her ‘How do I live in this strange place?’ (2010) is convincing when read – probably against intent – as a descriptive account. It fails, though, in its attempt to provide an attractive set of moral prescriptions. I set out an argument against both shame and silence, focussing primarily on shame as I contend that the need to (...) withdraw or keep silent follows from feeling ashamed. I argue that shame is experienced as a diminution of the self, whereas guilt is experienced as a burdening of the self by wrongful behaviour; the diminution of the self in shame experiences is intrinsically harmful, and instead of enabling the self to be moral, actually inhibits the moral instincts of a person by cutting the self off from other selves. In a group context this type of severance has unhealthy moral features, as well as negative consequences for inter-group relations. (shrink)

In order for theology to have a cognitive dimension, it is necessary to have procedures for testing and critically evaluating theological models. We make use of certain features of scientific models to show how science has been able to move beyond the poles of foundationalism, represented by logical positivism, and antifoundationalism or relativism, represented by the sociologists of knowledge. These ideas are generalized to show that constructing and testing theological models similarly offers a means by which theology can move beyond (...) confessionalism and postmodernism. Our starting point is Paul Tillich's concept of God as the ground of being and the different levels of consciousness and thinking that accompany his understanding of theology. The ontological argument of Anselm is shown to play a key role, not as a proof for the existence of God but as a means for testing theological models. An example of a theological model, drawn from the domain of philosophy of science, is presented to show how theological models are constructed and tested. (shrink)

In his discussions of life as narrative, and identity as narrative identity, Paul Ricoeur has claimed that we learn to become narrators and heroes of our own stories, without actually becoming the authors of our own lives. This idea, that we cannot be the author of our own life-story in the same way that the author of fictional narrative is the author of that story, seems at first incontestable, given that we are caught up within the enactment of the narrative (...) that is our life, unlike the author of a fictional story who also has an independent existence outside that story. This asymmetry leads Ricoeur to pronounce that an ineradicable difference exists between fictional and life narratives. But is this difference in fact ineffaceable, or is there a sense in which we can be said to be the authors of our own lives? In this article I suggest that there are more points of similarity than Ricoeur explicitly recognizes between what authors do in writing fictional narratives and what we do in figuring, prospectively, our lives. These similarities are brought to light by a revision of the naïve, received concept of author and, once acknowledged, serve to bridge the purportedly ‘unbridgeable gap’ between fictional narratives and life narratives. I then consider how bridging this gap — establishing ourselves as authors as well as narrators — has ethical implications with regard to creating our own lives: a creation which authoring implies, but which is — given the revised notion of author — limited, both by the reciprocity of the other as co-author and by those events in life which the life-author is not fully able to plot. (shrink)

The paper analyzes the cognitive functions of metaphors present in both colloquial and scientific discourse. First, presented is the history of research into linguistic metaphors, followed by a discussion of the psycholinguistic turn towards metaphors as thought schemas, as well as metaphoricality embodied in gestures, images and behaviors and their socio-cultural contexts. Based on the analysis of metaphors in the natural sciences, mainly in physics as well as in psychology, the heuristic and methodological functions of metaphors in science are discussed. (...) Finally, on this basis, a general model of the cognitive functions of metaphor is constructed in which, apart from the cognitive communicative functions, emphasized are also the pragmatic aspects of metaphorical thinking. (shrink)

As a way forward in assessing how the Old Testament wisdom tradition might speak to decisions in a modern medical context, in this paper, I propose exploring the iconographic function of the “tree of life” in the Old Testament, which is consistently associated with both wisdom as well as life and health, in order to tease out two-related issues that can help in providing a Christian theological framework for thinking about the problem of the medicalization of risk: first, how should (...) the natural and good human desire for health and long life be framed in terms of the pursuit of wisdom? And, second, how might a sapientially formed character approach risk and uncertainty in making medical decisions? The answers to these questions help establish a framework in which more specific questions related to the medicalization of risk can be assessed. As such, this paper is deliberately programmatic and perspectival rather than prescriptive. (shrink)

I argue that imagination has an inherently paradoxical structure: it enables one to flee one’s socio-cultural reality and to constitute one’s socio-cultural world. I maintain that most philosophical accounts of the imagination leave this paradox unexplored. I further contend that Paul Ricoeur is the only thinker to have addressed this paradox explicitly. According to Ricoeur, to resolve this paradox, one needs to recognize language as the origin of productive imagination. This paper explores Ricoeur’s solution by offering a detailed study of (...) reproductive and productive imagination in the framework of poetic imagination. My analysis subjects Ricoeur’s distinction between reproductive and productive imagination to a critique that relies upon the principles of classical phenomenology. According to my central thesis, the imaginative powers of language are themselves rooted in perception. This thesis broadens the scope and significance of Ricoeur’s solution by enabling one to resolve the paradox of imagination not only at the level of language-based imagination, but also at the level of dreams and daydreaming as well as at the level of non-language based art. No less significantly, this thesis enables one to open a fresh dialogue between phenomenology and hermeneutics. (shrink)

In this work, I argue that creative metaphors are formed when some persistent problem, caused by an inadequacy in preexisting knowledge, descends into the collective unconscious, is reconfigured unconsciously in novel ways, and then reemerges back into consciousness where the impasse is resolved by the metaphorical expression of new knowledge. To develop this position, I (1) review and critique some well-known language-based studies of metaphor, (2) summarize psychoanalytic and depth psychological approaches to the psyche as one way to overcome the (...) shortcomings of the language-based scholarship, (3) relate C. G. Jung's account of the psyche and his related notion of synchronicity to creative metaphors, (4) graft a quantum physics approach to material reality back onto Jung's work as a provisional structure of the collective unconscious, and finally, (5) offer some suggestions about how creative metaphors might work psychologically. (shrink)