What is the relationship between meaning in life and luck? One popular view within the literature is that resultant luck vitiates meaning; that if the relevant state-of-affairs is primarily the result of luck, chance, or happenstance, rather than the person’s actions, then no meaning is conferred. Call this the anti-luck constraint. In this article it is argued that we should reject the anti-luck constraint. Two types of cases, often cited as examples in favour of the anti-luck constraint, are examined: the (...) lucky idiot and the incompetent villain. Such lives, it is contended, can be meaningful even when the relevant states-of-affairs are primarily the product of resultant luck. (shrink)

Athenian democracy is rightly recognized for its extensive network of accountability institutions. This essay focuses instead on popular unaccountability in democratic Athens: ordinary citizens participating but not speaking in the Courts and the Assembly were unaccountable. I explore possible justifications of popular unaccountability, including arguments from democratic sovereignty and epistemic arguments, and stress the importance of a third strand: the identification of jurors and assemblymen with deservedly unaccountable, because comparatively weak and powerless, idiōtai (private citizens), whose political activity failed to (...) reach a level requiring intense scrutiny and control. Nonetheless, such a justification was always tenuous in light of the power jurors and assemblymen collectively wielded in the city. As I show through a reading of Aristophanes’s Wasps, it was always possible to destabilize the juror idiōtēs identity and replace it with a much more troubling image: the identification of the juror with the dangerously unaccountable tyrant. (shrink)

Introduction -- Mind controls : how the brain regulates the body, and usually makes a mess of things -- Memories are made of this (some assembly required) : the human memory system, and its strange features -- We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and clowns : the many ways in which the brain makes us constantly scared -- Think you're clever, do you? : the baffling and complex science of intelligence -- You see this chapter coming? : the (...) haphazard properties of the brain's observational systems -- You say you have a 'great personality', but how can you be sure? : the complex and confusing properties of personality -- Group hug! : how the brain is influenced by other people -- When the brain breaks down ... mental health problems, and how they come about -- Afterword. (shrink)

Aristotle maintains that vicious people are blameworthy despite their moral ignorance, since becoming vicious was up to them and whatever is up to us we are able to do or not do. However, one’s upbringing shapes one’s moral character. Together, these claims invite an objection I call the horrible childhood challenge. According to this objection, vicious adults who suffered horrible childhoods through which they were taught to adopt bad ends as though they were good should not be held accountable for (...) their vice. Aristotle’s likely answer to this challenge reveals that, for Aristotle, a minimal degree of rationality is necessary for moral responsibility. I argue that, for Aristotle, a vicious agent is responsible for her vice only if 1) she is rational, which implies 2) she grasps a specific basic principle, thus consenting to become a certain kind of person through action. The thoroughly bad who satisfy both claims are moral idiots; those who do not may be blameless brutes. (shrink)

These diary entries from John and Elizabeth Bennett cover the few months before Gurdjieff's death in Paris on October29, 1949. Twice daily the group would go through a series of rituals, the most significant of which was known as "the toast of the idiots". This "science of idiotism" portrayed the human situation and the hazards of attaining liberation.

En este artículo exploramos desde la literatura, por medio de Suenan timbres de Luis Vidales, la dinámica de las nacientes urbes colombianas que inician un proceso acelerado de modernización, carente de un desarrollo adecuado del pensamiento moderno, a la par con los nuevos avances materiales, lo que imposibilita debatir la pertinencia y el proceso de este tipo de transformaciones. Circunstancia que lleva a Colombia a experimentar los idiotismos de la modernización sin modernidad, impidiéndoles a los hombres entender las necesidades y (...) conflictos que genera el progreso. Estas aldeas de principios del siglo XX se convierten rápidamente en proyectos de ciudades determinadas por la aparición de nuevos objetos, creando una atmósfera móvil y ruidosa por oposición a la pasividad de las aldeas, realidad que nos recrea Vidales desde una poética comprometida con los cambios sociales y políticos como poeta de la crítica en Colombia. In this paper, from the literature of Luis Vidales’s Suenan timbres, we explore the dynamics of Colombian rising cities that initiate an accelerated modernization process, deprived of an appropriate development of modern thinking, along with the new material advances, which makes it impossible to debate the relevance and the process followed by these types of transformations. This situation leads Colombia to experience the idiotism of modernization without modernity, impeding men to understand the needs and conflicts generated by progress. These villages from twentieth century beginnings quickly turn into city projects determined by the arrival of new objects, creating a mobile and noisy atmosphere, opposed to villages’ passivity. From poetics committed to social and political change, Vidales recreates reality as a poet of criticism in Colombia. (shrink)

ArgumentThroughout the nineteenth century, French alienists reflected on the nature of idiocy, on its causes and possible treatments. Central to this reflection was the question of education. Was it possible to teach a child idiot to develop physically, intellectually, and morally? Schools were established, wards were rearranged, and educational methods were suggested. The extent to which all of this succeeded is hard to assess. The optimistic tone of educational treatises was never reflected in the life in the asylum. By the (...) end of the century, the dichotomy between theoretical ideals and practical reality came to a halt as both methodological treatises on education and pleas for funding ceased. Soon, idiots left the wards and their schools for new classes within the common school system. While the former practice had proved successful in improving the patients' abilities, it was claimed that it had failed to bring about the social integration for which alienists had once hoped. This final period marked a rupture in the treatment of idiocy, both in terms of space and organization from asylums to schools and from alienists to psychologists. (shrink)

When, after the agreeable fatigues of solicitation, Mrs Millamant set out a long bill of conditions subject to which she might by degrees dwindle into a wife, Mirabell offered in return the condition that he might not thereby be beyond measure enlarged into a husband. With age and experience in research come the twin dangers of dwindling into a philosopher of science while being enlarged into a dotard. The philosophy of science, I believe, should not be the preserve of senile (...) scientists and of teachers of philosophy who have themselves never so much as understood the contents of a textbook of theoretical physics, let alone done a bit of mathematical research or even enjoyed the confidence of a creating scientist. On the latter count I run no risk: Any reader will see that I am untrained (though not altogether unread) in classroom philosophy. Of no ignorance of mine do I boast, indeed I regret it, but neither do I find this one ignorance fatal here, for few indeed of the great philosophers to explicate whose works hodiernal professors of phil osophy destroy forests of pulp were themselves so broadly and specially trained as are their scholiasts. In attempt to palliate the former count I have chosen to collect works written over the past thirty years, some of them not published before, and I include only a few very recent essays. (shrink)

In academic writing, facts about the past generally require the citation of relevant sources unless the fact or idea is considered?common knowledge:? bits of information or dates upon which there is a wide scholarly consensus. This brief article reflects on the use of?common knowledge? claims in contemporary scholarship about women, families, and sexuality as experienced during 20th century, East European, state socialist regimes. We focus on several key stereotypes about the communist state and the situation of women that are often (...) asserted in the scholarly literature, and argue that many of these ideas uncannily resemble American anti-communist propaganda. When contemporary scholars make claims about communist intrusions into the private sphere to effect social engineering or the inefficacy of state socialist mass organizations or communist efforts to break up the family or indoctrinate the young, they often do so without citation to previous sources or empirical evidence supporting their claims, thereby suggesting that such claims are?common knowledge.? We believe that those wishing to assert such claims should link these assertions to concrete originating sources, lest it turn out the?common knowledge? derives, in fact, from western Cold War rhetoric. nema. (shrink)

Foreword to new edition / George Bennett -- Original foreword / Elizabeth Bennett -- The diaries July 23, 1949-November 7,1949 -- Additional entries November 8-22, 1949.

This article discusses the concept of ἰδιώτης, often translated as ‘layman’, in Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ critical essays, where he places particular emphasis on validating the judgement of the ἰδιώτης in aesthetic evaluation. Dionysius’ focus on the impact and reception of art enables him to lay the groundwork for shifting the semantic meaning of ἰδιώτης from being in strict opposition to the artist/critic to a more fluid category, ranging from ‘unskilled’ listener and layman to a relatively experienced ‘amateur’. By conceiving the (...) change from ἰδιώτης to τεχνίτης in criticism as a more gradual process (rather than one of irreconcilable division), Dionysius shows the discipline of rhetoric and literary criticism to be a particularly relevant form of learning that speaks to the sensibilities of Imperial Rome. (shrink)

The old idiot wanted, by himself, to account for what was lost or saved; but the new idiot wants the lost, the incomprehensible, and the absurd to be restored to him. This is most certainly not the same persona; a mutation has taken place. And yet a slender thread links the two idiots, as if the first had to lose reason so that the second rediscovers what the other, in winning it, had lost in advance.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Stiva's Idiotic GrinStewart JustmanIRecall if you will the stunning opening chapter of Anna Karenina. After laying down the principle that "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,"1 the narrative introduces us to one of the latter. The Oblonsky household is in turmoil. Having found out that her spouse is philandering with a former governess, Dolly has kept to her room for three (...) days. For the first time since the discovery Stiva, the husband, now sleeps at home—on a leather sofa in the study. Turning "as though he would sink into a long sleep again," he suddenly awakens, sits up, and tries to recover the delights of wine, women, and song that were his in a tantalizing dream. "Yes, Alabin was giving a dinner on glass tables, and the tables sang Il mio tesoro—not Il mio tesoro, though, but something better, and there were some sort of little decanters on the table, and they were women, too." A man who has been playing Don Juan plays in a dream with an aria from Don Giovanni.Incongruously for one whose household is in open revolt and whose wife flees the sight of him, as he recollects his dream Stiva's eyes "twinkled gaily, and he pondered with a smile." Awakening itself seems to be an act of escapism for Stiva. "Cheerfully" he feels about for the slippers embroidered for him by his wife. (It was when his attention was arrested by some beautiful embroidery on his robe and he fell to thinking "about how people get the idea in their heads to invent all these patterns and [End Page 427] ornaments of embroidery" that Tolstoy got the idea for Anna Karenina.)2 Only when he reaches for his dressing gown in the usual place and doesn't find it does Stiva return to reality, and as he does so, the smile disappears from his face. "'Ah, ah, ah! Oo!...' he groaned, recalling everything that had happened. And as he recalled every detail of his quarrel with his wife, he realized the hopelessness of his situation, and, most tormenting thought of all, that it was his own fault." But as if contriving an escape from a situation that permits none, he maintains that even though the crisis in his marriage and his household is undoubtedly his own doing, still he is not to blame. "And the most awful thing about it [he tells himself] is that it's all my fault—all my fault, though I'm not to blame." Like a lawyer producing an argument, Stiva invents a saving distinction between being at fault and being really at fault—in effect claiming that although he does engage in adultery, he can't be condemned for it as his wife has lost her charms and he was just following his nature. As Stiva clings to fantasy and reverie in this scene, so his belief that he isn't really to blame for his own deeds implies a defect in his sense of reality. (In Part Three of the novel we are told that despite Stiva's "efforts to be an attentive father and husband, he never could keep in his mind that he had a wife and children," p. 297.)At this point in his musings Stiva thinks back to the terrible moment when he returned "from the theater" to find his wife brandishing an incriminating letter (whether from him to the governess or the governess to him), and demanding an explanation.And at this recollection, Stepan Arkadyevich, as is so often the case, was not so much annoyed at the fact itself as at the way in which he had reacted to his wife's words.There happened to him at that instant what happens to people when they are unexpectedly caught in something very disgraceful. He did not succeed in assuming an expression suitable to the position in which he was placed by his wife's discovery of his guilt. Instead of acting hurt, denying, defending himself, begging forgiveness, instead of remaining indifferent... his face utterly involuntarily (reflex action of the brain, reflected Stepan Arkadyevich, who was... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Stiva's Idiotic GrinStewart JustmanIRecall if you will the stunning opening chapter of Anna Karenina. After laying down the principle that "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,"1 the narrative introduces us to one of the latter. The Oblonsky household is in turmoil. Having found out that her spouse is philandering with a former governess, Dolly has kept to her room for three (...) days. For the first time since the discovery Stiva, the husband, now sleeps at home—on a leather sofa in the study. Turning "as though he would sink into a long sleep again," he suddenly awakens, sits up, and tries to recover the delights of wine, women, and song that were his in a tantalizing dream. "Yes, Alabin was giving a dinner on glass tables, and the tables sang Il mio tesoro—not Il mio tesoro, though, but something better, and there were some sort of little decanters on the table, and they were women, too." A man who has been playing Don Juan plays in a dream with an aria from Don Giovanni.Incongruously for one whose household is in open revolt and whose wife flees the sight of him, as he recollects his dream Stiva's eyes "twinkled gaily, and he pondered with a smile." Awakening itself seems to be an act of escapism for Stiva. "Cheerfully" he feels about for the slippers embroidered for him by his wife. (It was when his attention was arrested by some beautiful embroidery on his robe and he fell to thinking "about how people get the idea in their heads to invent all these patterns and [End Page 427] ornaments of embroidery" that Tolstoy got the idea for Anna Karenina.)2 Only when he reaches for his dressing gown in the usual place and doesn't find it does Stiva return to reality, and as he does so, the smile disappears from his face. "'Ah, ah, ah! Oo!...' he groaned, recalling everything that had happened. And as he recalled every detail of his quarrel with his wife, he realized the hopelessness of his situation, and, most tormenting thought of all, that it was his own fault." But as if contriving an escape from a situation that permits none, he maintains that even though the crisis in his marriage and his household is undoubtedly his own doing, still he is not to blame. "And the most awful thing about it [he tells himself] is that it's all my fault—all my fault, though I'm not to blame." Like a lawyer producing an argument, Stiva invents a saving distinction between being at fault and being really at fault—in effect claiming that although he does engage in adultery, he can't be condemned for it as his wife has lost her charms and he was just following his nature. As Stiva clings to fantasy and reverie in this scene, so his belief that he isn't really to blame for his own deeds implies a defect in his sense of reality. (In Part Three of the novel we are told that despite Stiva's "efforts to be an attentive father and husband, he never could keep in his mind that he had a wife and children," p. 297.)At this point in his musings Stiva thinks back to the terrible moment when he returned "from the theater" to find his wife brandishing an incriminating letter (whether from him to the governess or the governess to him), and demanding an explanation.And at this recollection, Stepan Arkadyevich, as is so often the case, was not so much annoyed at the fact itself as at the way in which he had reacted to his wife's words.There happened to him at that instant what happens to people when they are unexpectedly caught in something very disgraceful. He did not succeed in assuming an expression suitable to the position in which he was placed by his wife's discovery of his guilt. Instead of acting hurt, denying, defending himself, begging forgiveness, instead of remaining indifferent... his face utterly involuntarily (reflex action of the brain, reflected Stepan Arkadyevich, who was... (shrink)

Prior to the second world war, most persons confined in insane asylums were regarded as legally incompetent and had guardians appointed for them. Today, most persons confined in mental hospitals are, in law, competent; nevertheless, in fact, they are treated as if they were incompetent. Should the goal of mental health policy be providing better psychiatric services to more and more people, or the reduction and ultimate elimination of the number of persons in the population treated as mentally ill?

As a political philosopher he’s very important as a kind of default position: everybody else takes up political philosophy where he leaves off and tries to brighten it up a bit in one way or another.

Quelle politique peut-on faire quand on est un idiot? Loin d'être saugrenue, c'est bien la question qu'on est conduit à se poser inévitablement en lisant l'oeuvre de Gilles Deleuze. L'"idiot" joue, en effet, un rôle incontournable et essentiel dans la philosophie de Deleuze. Il est le personnage conceptuel qui fait tenir cette philosophie dans sa consistance propre. Il se situe à la charnière de l'image de la pensée que le philosophe invoque et suppose plus ou moins implicitement et de la (...) création de concepts qu'il produit explicitement. Aussi, faire de la philosophie, tout comme agir et penser politiquement, c'est toujours une manière de faire l'idiot. Les conséquences de cette approche sont capitales, du fait des questions posées à la réflexion politique classique centrée sur le Droit et l'Etat, du fait aussi des problématiques qui se voient invalidées dans ce champ. La place qui revient au contrôle et au bio-pouvoir, aux zones d'indétermination et aux espaces lisses, permet de prendre une saine distance vis-à-vis de la politique "majoritaire" et de faire apparaître, comme déjà de vieux clichés, bon nombre de thèmes et de concepts revendiqués par les organisations alternatives, mondialistes et subversives récentes. C'est une tout autre idée de la politique, centrée sur les devenirs, que nous invite à méditer la politique deleuzienne de l'idiot. Elle nous ouvre à d'autres espérances, nouvelles, en lien avec un "peuple absent" qui naîtrait avec chaque devenir. (shrink)

The conceptual persona of the idiot recurs and evolves over the decades between Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition and his final book with Guattari, What is Philosophy?, shifting from a philosophical question to a nonphilosophical one that allies thought with literature and life. The great figure of this shock of literature is Antonin Artaud who, Deleuze argues, refinds thought’s creative capacity by putting it back in touch with its immanent outside – with a machinic and pre-personal ‘unthought’. This essay will argue (...) that by turning to works from later in Artaud’s œuvre, especially the 1946 poem-cycle Artaud le Mômo, the problem of idiocy meets a correlative problem concerning life and death. Artaud establishes a four-fold of thought-unthought-life-unlife which is problematically resolved in what he calls a ‘body’, a figure which I will argue requires that we rethink the relationship Artaud experiences between idiocy and suffering. (shrink)

As a political philosopher he’s very important as a kind of default position: everybody else takes up political philosophy where he leaves off and tries to brighten it up a bit in one way or another.

The field of spirituality and medicine has seen explosive growth in recent years, due in part to significant private support for the development of curricula in more than half of all U.S. medical schools, and for related residency training programs and research centers. While there is no single definition of " spirituality " in use across these initiatives, this article examines the definitions and learning objectives relevant to spirituality that are addressed in a 1999 report of the Medical School Objectives (...) Project, with special attention to their ethical implications. It concludes with several "diagnostic" case studies of religious consciousness from the medical literature and in literary texts, again with attention to ethical concerns. (shrink)

Châteillon a peut-être laissé un plus grand souvenir par son opposition à Calvin dans l'affaire Servet que par sa traduction française de la Bible. Après le rappel à grands traits de la vie de ce “ savoyard ” , J. Roubaud place son œuvre de traducteur sous le signe de cette affaire, de son adhésion à la Réforme et de son souci de s'adresser non seulement aux lettrés, à ceux qui connaissent la latin et le grec, mais surtout aux “ (...) idiots ”, c'est-à-dire à ceux qui ignorent les langues anciennes. Loin de considérer ces derniers comme gens stupides, il les rejoint dans leur créativité verbale, n'hésitant pas à utiliser le langage populaire, voire à créer des mots, de façon à rendre le texte biblique aussi direct que possible dans son expression, ce qui lui fit produire un chef d'œuvre du français du XVIe siècle.Châteillon has perhaps left a greater impression by his opposition to Calvin in the Servet affair than by his French translation of the Bible. After recalling the main lines of the life of this "Savoyard" , J. Roubaud puts his translation under the sign of the above affair, of his adhesion to the Reformation, and of his concern to write not only for the educated, for those who know Latin and Greek, but especially for the "idiots", that is to say for those who ignore ancient languages. Far from conside7ing the latter as stupid, he joins them in their verbal creativity, not hesitating to use popular language, indeed to create words in order to make the biblical text as direct as possible in its expression. This led him to produce a chef-d'oeuvre of French in the 16th century. (shrink)

In Bamboozled (2000), Spike Lee’s satire about a modern TV minstrel show, an auditioning actor named Honeycutt tells the show’s writer, Pierre Delacroix, “I even do Shakespeare shit. . . . To be or not to be, you know? That’s the motherfuckin’ question. . . . There’s a scene where this brother was—Laertes was asking the king, that he wanted to go to Paris and shit. The king asked his daddy, and his daddy say, ‘He hath, my lord, wrung from (...) me by laboursome petition. . . .’” Impatiently, Delacroix interrupts: “Was there any more to it, or was that pretty much . . . ?” Delacroix’s interruption of Honeycutt’s Polonius ironically echoes Polonius’s interruption of the speech of the First Player: “This is too .. (shrink)

This brief article, appearing in Issue #2 of The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics and Art, published online on 22 November 2022), explores Nietzsche's perspective on the perils of mass psychosis in modern society and the threat it entails in accommodating increasingly repressive systems of social control against the background of the COVID pandemic, and drawing on the example of Novak Djokovic's deportation from Australia in January 2022.