I argue that Johanna Meehan's call to examine the extra-linguistic psychic, affective and biological dimensions of gender identity is extremely important both for feminist theory in particular and for contemporary Continental philosophy in general. However, I suspect that such an examination might necessitate more than a mere expansion or reconstruction of Habermas' views; on the contrary, I suggest that Meehan's line of argument might lead instead toward a radical deconstruction of Habermasian critical theory. Key Words: feminism • Habermas (...) • identity • moral vs ethical. (shrink)

The paper evaluates a well‐known argument for a self from episodic memories—that remembering that I did something or thought something involves experiencing the identity of my present self with the past doer or thinker. Shaun Nichols argues that although it phenomenologically appears to be the case that we are identical with the past self, no metaphysical conclusion can be drawn from the phenomenology. I draw on literature from contemporary psychology and Buddhist resources to arrive at a more radical conclusion: that (...) there is no phenomenological sense of identity with a past self; the sense of self in episodic memory depends on narrative construction of the self. (shrink)

(1993). Deconstruction and Reconstruction in Contemporary Critical Theory. Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 23, Supplementary Volume 19: New Essays on Metaphilosophy, pp. 247-264.

This article, the first of a two-part series, examines how Saint Ignatius of Loyola’s (1548/ 1991 ) nearly 500 year-old approach to the transformation of others in their leadership journeys is still being actualized, with applications to transformations in workplaces and the graduate education of business leaders, by drawing upon both the handbook Ignatius wrote to guide his work—called the _Spiritual Exercises_—and upon the account of his own transformation experience captured in his _Autobiography_. Our exploratory prelude to practice is guided (...) by the following questions that approximate (both in content and order) Ignatius of Loyola’s approach to personal and spiritual transformation: First, “What are my deepest desires?” (and this question has two distinct parts: “What don’t I want?” and “What do I want?”); once that has been clarified, the next question is “What does this require of me?” (In other words, what must be done to avoid the things you don’t want and achieve the things that you do want?); and finally, the last question requires an answer that lasts a lifetime: “How does this shape the person I am becoming?”. After characterizing the stages of Ignatius of Loyola’s (1548/ 1991 ) own transformation as: Deconstruction (the cannonball at Pamplona); Choice (while convalescing at Loyola); Reconstruction (during his retreat at Montserrat); and Integration (actualized by his mystical experience in Manresa), our contribution concludes by returning to the questions that frame our interrogative inquiry, but with an eye toward the professional formation of online graduate students of organizational leadership. In the second article (Tran and Carey 2023 ), our exploration continues by integrating academic theory with andragogical practice. Particular attention is paid to the qualitative reflections from online graduate leadership education students at a Jesuit university in the Inland Northwest of the United States. (shrink)

Several deconstructive readings of Kierkegaard from the early 1980’s and 1990’s begin with a critique of the role the aesthetic plays in The Point of View for My Work as an Author in order to trouble the entire (ostensive) hierarchy of religious-ethical-aesthetic. These readings suggest that there is no way to discern with certainty whether the signature “Kierkegaard” (here and elsewhere) indeed refers to the factical author, or is just another playful aesthetic pose. From this point, they go on to (...) challenge the received view that the first authorship as a whole should be understood as fundamentally religious rather than aesthetic. I argue that this is a largely unsuccessful move, because these readers do not do full justice to Kierkegaard’s understanding of the transfiguration (or appropriation) of the lower stages of existence into the higher, in the balancing of the self. Re-reading the autobiographical texts with this in mind shows that the authorship is indeed a religious enterprise, even granting the questionable status of The Point of View. I conclude by arguing that On My Work as an Author represents a more successful autobiographical transfiguration of the aesthetic within the ethical-religious stages – and hence a more complete balancing of his own self – and that this work should also be understood as an act of witnessing. Indeed, for Kierkegaard to witness in a way other than through his writing would be a kind of despair, insofar as he would be willing to be someone other than himself. (shrink)

Thomas McCarthy has provided a trenchant critique of the deconstructionist turn in recent philosophy and has outlined a program of reconstruction in its aftermath. He develops his version of reconstructionist philosophy against the backdrop of Kant's doctrine of critical reason and the critical theory of Jürgen Habermas. However, McCarthy's reconstructionist design is not simply an appropriation and defense of Habermas. He provides a critical reformulation of the Habermasian position, deftly using Habermas against himself. The author is in accord both (...) with McCarthy's disposition to problematize the premises of deconstruction and his call for philosophical reconstruction. In continuing the conversation, however, he distances himself farther than does McCarthy from the criteriological concept of rationality that was proposed by Kant and which continues to inform Habermas's requirement for the grounding of validity claims. In the process the author proposes a new approach to the resources of reason along the lines of what he has come to call the dynamics of transversal rationality. (shrink)

The controversy over Jacques Derrida's legacy is one of the most effective engines driving the contemporary debate, far beyond the bounds of philosophy. By now, the variety of contesting positions is so wide that it calls for a critical assessment to achieve a unified theoretical scheme. The dyad of deconstruction and reconstruction, to which the title of the volume refers, aims at composing a kind of map of this debate. The three sections of the book include essays that (...) investigate specific aspects of Derrida's reception, from the view of 1. philosophy, 2. literary studies and 3. politics and law. These contributions study the implications of deconstruction beyond its original scope and intervene by taking stock of its most relevant aporias. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Black Deconstruction: Russell Atkins and the Reconstruction of African-American CriticismAldon Lynn Nielsen (bio)“What does that signify?” “It don’t signify nothin’ Mr. Warner.”—Russell Atkins, MaleficiumThere are, everywhere unheard (as one might see deep in an electron microscope) rigidities violently breaking—Russell Atkins, WhicheverCritical debates about the applicability of recent literary theories to the reading of African-American writing have often been marked by curious lacunae. Despite the rapid proliferation of (...) critical texts addressing themselves to black writing, it remains the case that many critics come to black writing with methodologies and agendas already in hand, while few critics have taken upon themselves the task of rereading the critical history of African-American work in theory. This has often resulted in a sort of critical shortsightedness, with the field of black literary theory presented as a foreshortened, if now more level, playing field. While some have engaged in arguments about the question of whether or not African-American writing should be engaged by poststructuralist theorists (a question that seems to begin with the assumption that poststructuralism is a particularly white mode of mythology), the fact is that a form of deconstruction had been theorized by an African-American poet long before deconstruction had entered the American academy. That this fact is largely unknown among contemporary critics is the result of a continuing practice of not reading the theoretical work of black poets who have published outside the established circuit of the academic press. With the prominent exceptions of poets like Amiri Baraka, June Jordan, Larry Neal, and Haki Madhabuti, the critical writings of recent African-American poets have seldom been collected and circulated in any very effective way. Characteristically, Neal’s essays were gathered into a book posthumously, and Madhabuti’s have been published and distributed primarily through his own publishing house. Even Baraka’s collections have been allowed to pass out of print in most instances, only the books on music remaining readily available throughout his career. This may change for black poets who write in more mainstream modes in the near future. Now that Rita Dove has served a term as Poet Laureate of the United States and Derek Walcott has won the Nobel Prize, we might expect a modest increase in interest by publishers and readers in critical works by poets whose forms are less troubling than their content. And black poets who attain academic credentials and write scholarly/critical essays, such as Nathaniel Mackey and Harryette Mullen, may succeed in getting their works published by the university presses. However, surveys of shelves in bookstores and [End Page 86] libraries will confirm that there has been little concern among even university and small presses to collect and preserve the critical legacy of black experimentalists in the way that the essays of Charles Olson, Ed Dorn, or Robert Creeley have been maintained before a public.Russell Atkins has been one of the most prolific and demanding of black poets writing criticism and theory in the last four decades, but like Percy Johnston, central figure of the Dasein group of poets centered at Howard University in the 1950s, he has had to publish most of this work through his own magazine and workshop press, and there has never been a published collection of his critical work. The special Russell Atkins number of the Free Lance, a journal with which Atkins was associated for two decades, included a section surveying his work in critical prose, but little of that work has found its way into the broader critical discourse of literary scholars (it has fared a little better with musicologists), and Atkins’s prose is infrequently cited. As eccentric as Atkins’s prose can sometimes be, these works are important early signs of a break with the “rigidities” of traditional humanist discourse among African-American writers. Atkins’s statements on music, literature, politics, and education parallel the works by Baraka leading into and out of the Black Arts Movement, but Atkins, as he does in his verse, travels an independent and often disturbing path.Speaking of Anthony Braxton’s experimentalism, Ronald Radano observes that it “emerged from the changing landscape of urban American life, from... (shrink)

RELATIVISM AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES by Ernest Gellner Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. 200 pp., £25, £8.50 (paper) Gellner assails Wittgenstein's putative legitimation of the relativistic assumption that ?forms of life?; are autonomous and ultimate, mutually incommunicable, and immune to external criticism. Gellner's view is used here to defend a reconstructed Popperian position against all comers, including Gellner. The tactic is to attack the Cartesian presuppositions Popper implicitly shares with the whole Logical Positivist tradition, arguing that these cannot even be (...) coherently expressed without presupposing the possession of knowledge of the various kinds thereby denied. (shrink)

Shows that value system is a desirable mode of behavior or the existence of the state, according to their relative needs of the sequences, some lasting organization. This so-called desirable patterns of behavior or the existence of the state, should bear some yet to be achieved, and wish to pursue and to achieve the ideal state. Accordingly, the value system can be divided into two aspects: First, the value of the ideal surface, because the total value includes the "ought" of (...) the ingredients, so in traditional Chinese culture and contemporary changes in value systems are ideal and should be However, the side, you can use philosophy and humanities research methods to be presented. Second, the value of face cards in fact, the performance of personal value system is also pursuing the target of real natural state, have to use empirical methods to be presented. Value system of traditional Chinese culture to the Republic since the change, I can not go back the way empirical research, only the literature of interpretation and historical reconstructions were; the mainland since 1949 for the value system, due to limited conditions , I can not discourse, expect more than Zhumo mainland scholars. For the value system in Taiwan, there are many empirical results can be presented in this article. (shrink)

‘Justice’ is spoken of in two ways: the lawful and the fair. The law is a human construct that is devoted to the advantage of all, or to the advantage of the best, or to the advantage of those in power or to the advantage of those representing it – let it be the politician, the media, the TV presenter, the filmmaker. Thus, the law serves the production or the preservation of happiness within politics and business. The law commands us (...) to act according to the mean. A well-written law follows the mean well and a poorly written law does not. On the other hand, fairness is a principle sometimes materialised through the law and the given justice system. Fairness is the ultimate value pursued by both the common law and civil law traditions. However, its distribution through the law and the representation of this delivery varies. Does this mean that a different kind of justice is distributed? Through the teachings of Aristotle, this essay aims to deconstruct the notion of justice, by breaking down its two ingredients, the lawful and the fair, and by analysing the effect of their representation in modern European society. The relativity attached to the notion of justice is not a modern phenomenon, but a philosophical matter that can be analysed and indeed explained through the teachings of Aristotle and its contemporary students. The analysis will be developed in the context of convergent Europe, focusing on the role of the media and courts especially in relation to criminal justice. (shrink)

The conclusion of Marcella Althaus-Reid and Lisa Isherwood’s 2007 book, Controversies in Feminist Theology, noted that ‘The future of feminist theologies are assured while gender and sexual oppression exist’.1 Yet, they also spoke of a number of challenges to the field, specifically difference in methodologies, varied nomenclature and terminologies, and stereotyping among its practitioners. I would add another: that the nature of bias itself is not uniform nor homogeneous but is largely treated as such by contextual theologians. In this article (...) the challenge presented by the presupposition that ‘a bias-is-a-bias’ is addressed from an epistemological one that attempts to delve into the nature of bias, beginning with the question: if the root nature of the problem, that is bias, is not homogeneous but rather reflects the interplay of different types of biases, does not gender oppression call for more comprehensive solutions beyond solidarity or justice? While justice-based solutions called for by feminist theologies are certainly valid and necessary, perhaps they function more as short-term solutions to a much larger dialectic, one that requires a more comprehensive grace-based approach. This article explores this idea and humbly offers a few methodological reflections. (shrink)

The fall of the Soviet Union is analysed in conceptual terms, drawing on Reinhart Koselleck’s Begriffsgeschichte. The author seeks to interpret the instrumental role of the concepts perestrojka, glasnost´, reform, revolution, socialist pluralism, and acceleration in the Soviet collapse. The semantics and pragmatics are related to a wider intellectual and political context, and the conceptual perspective is used to help explain the progress of events. The author argues that the common notion of the reform policy concepts as clichés is not (...) valid. (shrink)

The essays in this volume are from the Second Conference of the Central European Pragmatist Forum, held in Krakow, Poland in 2002. Written by prominent specialists in pragmatism and American philosophy from the United States and Europe, they survey contemporary thinking on classical and contemporary pragmatism, social and political theory, ethics, aesthetics, experience, knowledge, rationality, metaphysics, and the application of pragmatist thought in contemporary Europe.

These lucid studies of Derrida, Foucault, Habermas, and Rorty analyze majorcontributions to recent critical theory and forge a distinct position in the current philosophicaldebate.Thomas McCarthy is John Schaffer Professor in the Humanities ...

By exposing itself as fiction, Dante’s poetry becomes true. Especially the Malebolge stages a relentless self-critique by Dante of his prophetic voice and the presumption of a human poet who imitates divine prophecy through merely human counterfeits. This self-deconstruction opens the poem to being informed from above and beyond itself by an authority not its own: divine grace can work the revelation of truth directly within interpretive acts of readers focused on the “doctrine hiding beneath the veil of the (...) strange verses.” The apex (or nadir) of infernal irony is that Dante’s Inferno becomes prophetic revelation of truth by undermining its own merely human claim to be capable of delivering just such revelation. (shrink)

Social philosophy is a somewhat broad and imprecise term. In this article I discuss the social philosophy of Habermas, Foucault and Honneth, arguing that the latter’s work is an interesting, but not unproblematic, conception of the discipline. Following Habermas and Honneth, I argue that social philosophy should be reconstructive, but incorporate insights from Foucault. Specifically, reconstructive social philosophy can be both normative and descriptive, and at the same time establish a dialectical relationship between philosophy and the social sciences, thus fulfilling (...) the ambition for social philosophy originally put forward by Horkheimer. The thesis I defend in this article is that reconstructive social philosophy in Habermasian or Honnethian fashion has the resources available to accomplish this ambitious task. (shrink)

The construction of difference is central to racism, sexism and other forms of oppression. This paper examines the similar and dissimilar ways in which race and gender have been constructed in the United States and analyzes the consequences of these differences in construction for the development of social policy and the growth and nature of movements for social change.

Memory is currently an important concern for our societies, as well as for the social and human sciences. This article discusses aspects of memory and history. Never have memory’s tools been more powerful or more efficient, yet never has the relationship between history and memory seemed more uncertain. History has lost its monopoly over the production and conservation of memory; memory has developed independently and is inspiring new partners, for example in science and literature.

(1991). Can feminism politicize hermeneutics and reconstruct deconstruction? Social Epistemology: Vol. 5, Postmodern Social Epistemology, pp. 361-369.

In this article I explore some points of convergence between Habermas and Derrida that revolve around the intersection of ethical and epistemological issues in dialogue. After some preliminary remarks on how dialogue and language are viewed by Habermas and Derrida as standpoints for departing from the philosophy of consciousness and from logocentric metaphysics, I cite the main points of a classroom dialogue in order to illustrate the way in which the ideas of Habermas and Derrida are sometimes received as well (...) as the actual relevance of ethical and epistemic concerns within educational settings. I claim that such concerns cannot be sidestepped without cost and that they can be approached by combining rather than rigidly separating Habermas and Derrida. Beyond the consolidated polemics, emancipatory politics and Enlightenment priorities of truth and justice bring Habermasian reconstruction and Derridean deconstruction closer than it is typically assumed. Attention to such a convergence can enrich the teaching material of higher education courses which usually comprises either Habermasian or Derridean texts but rarely both. It can also stave off some of the risks involved in some versions of constructivism as they occur in school practice. (shrink)

The paper addresses the problem of the place of deconstruction in the history of transcendental philosophy. J. Derrida’s project is considered as one of the most representative and consistent realizations of theoretical foundations of transcendentalism along with prominent conceptions such as Kant’s critique and Husserl’s phenomenology. The author suggests a number of attributes of transcendental thinking that allow historical reconstruction of the transcendental paradigm. Derridian approach is considered as a turn towards this tradition, conceived as a transcendental tradition (...) par exellence, guided by the attitude of «turning. Historical legacy of deconstructive «turning» is analyzed with respect to Husserlian Rückfrage: return-inquiry as method, idea and attitude, reproducing in deconstructive strategy of interpretative critique. A concept of hyperbolic transcendentalism is introduced in order to (1) define a deconstructive version of transcendental philosophy and (2) indicate an immanent tendency in the transcendental thought, constitutive for both Kantian critical project and Husserlian strive towards intellectual radicalism extending from methodological hyperboles (reduction and epoche) to radicalization of «transcendental motive». The author relies upon the concept of quasi-transcendental (thematized by Derrida himself), which defines a mode of de-dogmatization, critical purifying and preservation of proper transcendental foundations of philosophical thinking. (shrink)

ResumenEn este artículo se lleva a cabo una reconstrucción de la deconstrucción que realiza Paul de Man de la célebre distinción kantiana entre la filosofía transcendental y la metafísica, tal y como ésta es expuesta en la Crítica del Juicio. En lugar de considerar que pertenecen a dos esferas separadas, en el artículo se muestra cómo, según de Man, se da una transición entre ellas que sólo se puede explicar bajo la forma de un cortocircuito tropológico o lingüístico que Kant (...) mismo realiza, pero de manera inconsciente. También se pone de relieve que la noción kantiana de lo sublime, escondida bajo la categoría de lo esct Ttético, cumple la función ideológica de reprimir la constitución inherentemente lingüística de todo conocimiento.Palabras clave Crítica, deconstrucción, estética, ideologÍaThis article carefully reconstructs Paul de Man’s deconstruction of Kant’s distinction between transcendental philosophy and metaphysics, as the latter appears in The Critique of Judgment. Instead of posing these two as belonging to two separate spheres, the paper shows how, according to de Man, there is a transition between them that can only be accounted for in terms of a tropological or linguistic trick that Kant himself realizes, yet unaware of it. The paper also discusses that Kant’s notion of the sublime has an ideological function disguised under the category of the aesthetic, and which amounts to a denial of the inherently linguistic constitution of all knowledge.Key wordsCritique, deconstruction, aesthetics, ideology. (shrink)

This book takes the discursive and postmodern turn in psychotherapy a significant step forward and will be of interest to all those working in mental health who want to work wiht clients in ways that will facilitate challenges to oppression and processes of emancipation. It achieves this by: · reflecting on the role of psychotherapy in contemporary culture · developing critiques of language in psychotherapy that unravel its claims to personal truth · the reworking of a place in the transforative (...) therapeutic practice Deconstruction is brought to bear on the key conceptual and pragmatic issues that therapists and clinical psychologists face, and the project of therapy is opened up to critical attention and reconstruction. The book provides clear reviews of different viewpoints and will help readers to orient themselves on the complex terrain of debates. (shrink)