This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Feminist Turn Psyche and Soma Embodiment and Knowing The Body and Cognition Learning between the Biological and Symbolic Implications for Education Acknowledgement References.

In the 1970s and 1980s a strong opposition and anxiety towards biological and naturalizing knowledges was the norm in feminist discourse. In the past decades the certainties of that ‘anti-biologism’ have been challenged, in part because of a new recognition of the role of contingency in both biological determination and biological science. What seems to have survived the shift is a set of normative assumptions concerning the role of determinacy and contingency in the political implications of (...) ontological claims: an assumed political valorization of contingency. This article challenges those assumptions. It draws attention to the embrace of contingency and processuality on the part of supremacist biopolitical discourse, and suggests the need to think again about the politics of contingency and becoming. Focusing on the issue of racism and supremacist-specification, the article takes a genealogical look at ‘second-wave’ feminist anti-biologism. Monique Wittig’s materialist feminist attack on naturalizing ideology and ‘the myth of woman’ provides the historical example. The article draws attention to curious absences in Wittig’s anti-biologistic statements concerning early 20th-century biologistic feminism: the absence of a critique of eugenics, racism and supremacism. Arguably the condemnation of biology as a conservative ‘ideology of the status quo’ created masks for biopolitical ontology, obscuring the progressive, dynamic, processual character of biologism and of modern racism. While dislodging some powers of biologistic discourse, feminist anti-biologism might also have played a part in facilitating the revitalization of biopolitical racism within the constructivist culturalist rubric. The aim of the article is not to critique ‘second-wave’ feminism from the perspective of contemporary scholarship, but to help generate new ways of thinking and feeling about the role of ontology, contingency and temporality in the present politics of classification. (shrink)

Acknowledging the power of the id-drives, Freud held on to the authority of reason as the ego’s best tool to control instinctual desire. He thereby placed analytic reason at the foundation of his own ambivalent social theory, which, on the one hand, held utopian promise based upon psychoanalytic insight, and, on the other hand, despaired of reason’s capacity to control the self-destructive elements of the psyche. Moving beyond the recourse of sublimation, post-Freudians attacked reason’s hegemony in quelling disruptive (...) psycho-dynamics and, focusing upon the social domain, they sought strategies to counter the oppressive (repressive) social restrictions and conformist impositions impeding individual freedom that result from thwarted desire. Postmodern celebration of desire at the expense of reason and sublimation leaves the Enlightenment prospects altogether and moves psychoanalysis into a new terrain, where the very notion of rationality and an autonomous ego upon which much of Freudianism rests has been deconstructed. Thus the debate that begins with Freud’s social theories reflects the deeper divisions, which arose with postmodern ethics and discarded Cartesian–Kantian notions of personal identity. Here we consider the moral framework in which Freudian social theory sits and a contrasting understanding of agency that confronts his modernist conception. In that debate, we discern the larger humanist confrontation with postmodernity. Yet, all who engaged Freud shared some version of his utopian ethos, albeit radically restructuring the theory upon which social reform might occur. (shrink)

hope of obtaining a comprehensive and coherent understand ing of the human condition, we must somehow weave together the biological, sociological, and psychological components of human nature and experience. And this cannot be done indeed, it is difficult to even make sense of an attempt to do it-without first settling our accounts with Darwin, Marx, and Freud. The legacy of these three thinkers continues to haunt us in other ways as well. Whatever their substantive philosophical differences in other (...) respects, Darwin, Marx, and Freud shared a common, overriding intellectual orientation: they taught us to see human things in historical, developmental terms. Phil osophically, questions of being were displaced in their works by questions of becoming. Methodologically, genesis replaced teleological and essentialist considerations in the explanatory logic of their theories. Darwin, Marx, and Freud were, above all, theorists of conflict, dynamism, and change. They em phasized the fragility of order, and their abiding concern was always to discover and to explicate the myriad ways in which order grows out of disorder. For these reasons their theories constantly confront and challenge the cardinal tenet of our modern secular faith: the notion of progress. To be sure, their emphasis on conflict and the flux of change within the flow of time was not unprecedented; its origins in Western thought can be traced back at least as far as Heraclitus. (shrink)

'I very soon had an opportunity to interpret Dora's nervous coughing as the outcome of a fantasized sexual situation.'A Case of Hysteria, popularly known as the Dora Case, affords a rare insight into how Freud dealt with patients and interpreted what they told him. The 18-year-old 'Dora' was sent for psychoanalysis by her father after threatening suicide; as Freud's enquiries deepened, he uncovered a remarkably unhappy and conflict-ridden family, with several competing versions of their story. The narrative became a (...) crucial text in the evolution of his theories, combining his studies on hysteria and his new theory of dream-interpretation with early insights into the development of sexuality. The unwitting preconceptions and prejudices with which Freud approached his patient reveal his blindness and the broader attitudes of turn-of-the-century Viennese society, while his account of 'Dora's' emotional travails is as gripping as a modern novel.This new translation is accompanied by a substantial introduction which sets the work in its biographical, historical, and intellectual context, and offers a close and critical analysis of the text itself. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Shadows of Being: Encounters with Heidegger in Political Theory and Historical Reflection by Jeffery Andrew BarashRylie JohnsonBARASH, Jeffery Andrew. Shadows of Being: Encounters with Heidegger in Political Theory and Historical Reflection. Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2022. 260 pp. Paper, $42.00ELIZABETH C. SHAW AND STAFF*Composed of a series of unique yet thematically connected chapters, Jeffrey Andrew Barash's latest book carefully addresses the relationship between Martin Heidegger's thought and political (...) theory and how these are connected through the thematization of historical narrative. In light of the publication of the controversial Black Notebooks, Barash's book serves as a significant contribution to debates regarding Heidegger's political engagement with National Socialism. However, rather than simply rehash this engagement, Barash takes a critical approach, arguing that Heidegger's historical narrative, that is, the history of Being, buttressed a "political mythology" and "fatalism" that absolved human beings of historical, ethical, and political responsibility. Thus, through a confrontation with Heidegger, Barash demonstrates the danger of denying human agency in the future course of history, since "fatalism only makes more probable the outcome it claims to foresee."While invested in explicating the political and ethical implications of Heidegger's thought, Barash is critically oriented around demonstrating a presupposition within the Seinsfrage, or the question of being that motivated Heidegger's philosophy. Heidegger presupposed that reraising the question of being was the fundamental task of philosophy, one that rendered "subordinate" other forms of historical reflection. Consequently, Barash argues that Heidegger established a "strategy of interpretation" that privileged his own standpoint in the history of Western thought and allowed him to set aside contrary ethical, political, and historical interpretations. Ultimately, this resulted in the formulation of the myth of the history of Being that placed Heidegger himself at the culminating point of Western history. The essays that compose Barash's book address the various implications of Heidegger's presupposition.The book is separated into two parts. The first consists of direct interpretations of Heidegger's thought and is composed of six chapters. The second addresses the critical reception of that thought, reflected in such figures as Hannah Arendt and Emanuel Levinas, and is composed of chapters seven through ten. [End Page 541]Chapter 1 focuses on Heidegger's broad legacy today, which according to Barash is threefold: the prevalence of historical deconstruction, his complicity with "Germanic ideology," and his criticisms of Western scientific rationality, all of which Heidegger rendered into an effect of metaphysics and the forgetting of the Seinsfrage. Chapter 2 discusses Heidegger's metaphysics of memory, showing that his inversion of the traditional eternal view of memory in favor of one grounded in mortality obscured other forms of "collective remembrance." Through a reading of St. Paul and Spinoza, chapter 3 investigates Heidegger's presupposition by revealing that the radical separation of the ontological from the ontic matters of theology, politics, and ethics is in fact an ontic decision of the "ethical order." Chapter 4 extensively discusses Heidegger's understanding of race and its relationship to Nazi orthodoxy. Highlighting that Heidegger was certainly critical of biological racism, Barash nevertheless shows that Heidegger articulated a "metaphysical" racism at the level of the history of Being. Chapter 5 reflects on Heidegger's Being-historical interpretation of World War II. Barash shows Heidegger's fatalism whereby the war was not a matter of human choices but was "attributed to an abandonment of Being." Chapter 7 closes part 1 by discussing the status of mythology in Heidegger's thought. Criticizing mythology as a form of historical production, Heidegger nonetheless creates his own myth: the history of Being. This mythological dimension is perhaps the most problematic aspect of Heidegger's thought.In the second part, Barash changes the trajectory of his arguments, addressing the critical reception of Heidegger's legacy by other philosophers. In chapter 7, Barash discusses the influence of Heidegger on Hannah Arendt's view of the public world, a world that theoretically rests on Heidegger's Dasein. But while Heidegger failed to adequately grapple with the public, Arendt radicalized it, showing that political reflection served as the basis for the philosophical problem of truth. Chapter 8 reflects upon the influence that the... (shrink)

Can Marxism still serve the American left? "History and Subjectivity" answers this question by synthesizing the conflict perspectives of traditional Marxism, Western and neo-Marxism, socialist-feminism, and various minority political movements into a comprehensive and original social theory. Roger Gottlieb argues convincingly that a properly transformed Marxism must understand how socialisation processes and political structures and experiences have joined the mode of production as socially primary. Drawing on resources from Marxist philosophy, political economy, feminism, Western Marxism, and from detailed historical (...) studies of racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and the American left, Gottlieb has produced a sweeping synthesis of existing Marxist thought and an original and compelling social theory. In this edition, Roger Gottlieb has added a new introduction addressing the central questions that have emerged since the book's first publication. These include the effect on Marxist theory of the fall of communism, the theoretical challenge of postmodernism, the environmental crisis, and the rise of modern spiritual movements. The book is challenging and complex, yet clearly written and accessible to advanced undergraduate and graduate students. It will provoke a strong response from any scholar concerned with the present status and future possibilities of Marxist theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.1 (2001) 142-143 [Access article in PDF] Wright, John P. and Paul Potter, editors. Psyche and Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xii + 298. Cloth, $72.00. The mind-body problem has a long history that begins well before Descartes made it extreme by presenting mind as unextended active (...) thinking and matter as unthinking passive extension. This absolute division was motivated in some part by the desire to present the soul as an entity that can survive the death of the body. This is difficult to maintain if the soul is merely the form or the vital force motivating a human body. But the advance of physiology has led more and more to the conclusion that the functions often attributed to the soul are actually carried out by the brain. Thinking may be as natural (and perhaps as determined) a function of the body as is digestion. And if digestion does not survive the death of the body, maybe thinking does not either.This collection of studies provides a detailed introduction to both medical and metaphysical views and theories concerning the relation of mind to body. In particular, the first article by Beate Gundert on Hippocratic Medicine sets the stage by showing that "mind and body in the Hippocratic writings, while distinguished empirically by being related to different types of phenomena, are both ultimately accounted for by the same explanatory model: Human nature (physis), which embraces the totality of bodily structures, physiological processes, and psychic events" (35). T. M. Robinson shows that Plato admits of no solution as to how mind and body interact, and Philip J. van der Eijk argues that "to detach the essence of man completely from his physical make-up would run counter to Aristotle's biological approach to man as a natural living being, the ultimate implication of his view on the divinity of nous is that the fullest realization of what it is to be a human being is to go beyond the limits of corporeality and mortality, and to become, if only temporarily, a god" (77). Heinrich von Staden covers Epicurus, Herophilus, Erasistratus, the Stoics, and Galen, concluding that "The discovery of the nerves entailed the first significant erosion of the vast territory ruled by the soul in Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, an erosion accompanied by an expansion of the rule of 'nature,' visible not only in medicine, but also in philosophy" (116). Theo K. Heckel discusses Saint Paul's insistence upon the whole person, and Gareth Matthews shows that, prior to Descartes, Augustine presents "a radically new argument for mind-body dualism... an internalist argument... that proceeds from what, allegedly, the mind can know concerning itself to the conclusion that the mind is incorporeal" (145). Emily Michael discusses Pomponazzi's view that we know the immortality of the soul only by faith and the scholastic attempts to show that the soul is a substantial form. Guillaume Lamy, for example, criticized Descartes for having a soul only of thinking, whereas the soul must be of life. Steven Voss shows how at the end of his life, Descartes did discuss in detail how thinking affects the body, particularly in the management of health and the curing of disease. But Descartes does not solve the problem of how this interaction takes place. Thomas Lennon discusses the views of Bayle on Leibniz's monadic forces and Locke's fideism. And Francois Duchesneu continues the discussion of Stahl and Leibniz, to [End Page 142] conclude that "Leibniz attempts to discover the formal foundation of the organism, which he locates in the capacity of perception-appetition proper to the dominant monad" (235).John P. Wright gives an exposition of a very important distinction between Cartesian dualism and the functional dualism that came to dominate medical thought, that is, the question of how the brain and vital organs interact. Roselyn Rey carries this discussion on to the development of theories... (shrink)

It has become commonplace within feminist theory to claim that women’s lives are constructed by multiple, intersecting systems of oppression. In this thesis, I challenge the consensus that oppression is aptly captured by the theoretical model of “intersectionality.” While intersectionality originates in Black feminist thought as a purposive intervention into US antidiscrimination law, it has been detached from that context and harnessed to different representational aims. For instance, it is often asserted that intersectionality enables a representational (...) politics that overcomes legacies of exclusion within hegemonic Anglo-American feminism. I argue that intersectionality reinscribes the political exclusion of racialized women as a feature of their embodied identities. That is, it locates the failure of political representation in the “complex” identities of “intersectional” subjects, who are constructed as unrepresentable in terms of “race” or “gender” alone. Further, I argue that intersectionality fails to supplant race- and class-privileged women as the normative subjects of feminist theory and politics. In Chapter One, I demonstrate that intersectionality illicitly imports unitary concepts of “race,” “gender,” and “class.” In Chapter Two, I argue that intersectionality lacks a theory of hierarchy: it is a “flat geography” which cannot capture vertical and horizontal lines of power. In Chapter Three, I explore the role of analogical reasoning in rendering racialized women invisible both as gendered and as racialized subjects in twentieth-century social movements. To concretize this argument, I turn to Simone de Beauvoir’s use of race-sex analogies to describe (white, bourgeois) “women’s” situation in The Second Sex. In Chapter Four, I advance a programmatic unified account of oppression. I suggest that the possibility of a unified theory (as opposed to an intersectional one) is intimated in the concrete articulation of race, class, and gender. My point of departure is a phenomenology of capitalism, which reveals that these are all fundamentally modes of exploitation and appropriation. In Chapter Five, I theorize how they are made visible (and invisible) on the body. I extend Frantz Fanon’s account of “epidermalization,” drawing upon the marxian concepts of “fetishism” and “mode of appearance” to elaborate four structures of gendered racialized perception: first, the “miscegenation taboo” structures perceptions of the “purity” of whiteness and the “polluting” effects of blackness. Whiteness, theorised as a “possessive investment” and as “property” is defined by the right to exclude. Second, the “episteme of tellable differences” produces the conviction that we can automatically “tell the difference” between a body placed in one “racial” or gender category, and another—while bodies that temporarily confound classification cause fear and consternation. Third, the “race/reproduction bind” names the axiomatic assumption that “race” is reproduced through (heterosexual) procreation and that “race” is, therefore, biologically inheritable. Finally, the “fear/criminalisation reflex” refers to the bidirectional equation of particular racialised-gendered bodies with crime, and of crime with those bodies; this a function of the discursive use of ‘crime’ as an alibi for “race’” the systemic racialisation of punitive carceral institutions, and the historical origins of “race” in transatlantic chattel slavery, which shaped perceptual-cognitive associations of freedom with whiteness and captivity with blackness. (shrink)

Acknowledging the power of the id-drives, Freud held on to the authority of reason as the ego’s best tool to control instinctual desire. He thereby placed analytic reason at the foundation of his own ambivalent social theory, which, on the one hand, held utopian promise based upon psychoanalytic insight, and, on the other hand, despaired of reason’s capacity to control the self-destructive elements of the psyche. Moving beyond the recourse of sublimation, post-Freudians attacked reason’s hegemony in quelling disruptive (...) psycho-dynamics and, focusing upon the social domain, they sought strategies to counter the oppressive (repressive) social restrictions and conformist impositions impeding individual freedom that result from thwarted desire. Postmodern celebration of desire at the expense of reason and sublimation leaves the Enlightenment prospects altogether and moves psychoanalysis into a new terrain, where the very notion of rationality and an autonomous ego upon which much of Freudianism rests has been deconstructed. Thus the debate that begins with Freud’s social theories reflects the deeper divisions, which arose with postmodern ethics and discarded Cartesian–Kantian notions of personal identity. Here we consider the moral framework in which Freudian social theory sits and a contrasting understanding of agency that confronts his modernist conception. In that debate, we discern the larger humanist confrontation with postmodernity. Yet, all who engaged Freud shared some version of his utopian ethos, albeit radically restructuring the theory upon which social reform might occur. (shrink)

Most philosophical discussion of the moral status of animals takes place within a context of traditional ethics. I argue that the conceptual apparatus of utilitarianism and rights theory is historically and logically tied to an individualistic, atomistic concept of society. The liberal-democratic tradition is thus an unsuitable framework for understanding, analyzing, and solving environmental problems, including themoral status of animals. Concepts such as stewardship or trusteeship are more appropriate for the development of an environmental ethic.

Music-based interventions (MBI) have become increasingly widely adopted for dementia and related disorders. Previous research shows that music engages reward-related regions through functional connectivity with the auditory system, but evidence for the effectiveness of MBI is mixed in older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). This underscores the need for a unified mechanistic understanding to motivate MBIs. The main objective of the present study is to characterize the intrinsic connectivity of the auditory and reward systems (...) in healthy aging individuals with MCI, and those with AD. Using resting-state fMRI data from the Alzheimer’s Database Neuroimaging Initiative, we tested resting-state functional connectivity within and between auditory and reward systems in older adults with MCI, AD, and age-matched healthy controls (N = 105). Seed-based correlations were assessed from regions of interest (ROIs) in the auditory network (i.e., anterior superior temporal gyrus, posterior superior temporal gyrus, Heschl’s Gyrus), and the reward network (i.e., nucleus accumbens, caudate, putamen, and orbitofrontal cortex). AD individuals were lower in both within-network and between-network functional connectivity in the auditory network and reward networks compared to MCI and controls. Furthermore, graph theory analyses showed that the MCI group had higher clustering and local efficiency than both AD and control groups, whereas AD individuals had lo... (shrink)

A neurologist presents evidence for locating the unconscious--Freud's concept--within the actual physiology of the brain, in a study that explains current knowledge about perception, memory, sleep, dreams, and Freud's theory of the unconscious.

With historical hindsight, it can be little questioned that the view of protozoa as unicellular organisms was important for the development of the discipline of protozoology. In the early years of this century, the assumption of unicellularity provided a sound justification for the study of protists: it linked them to the metazoa and supported the claim that the study of these “simple” unicellular organisms could shed light on the organization of the metazoan cell. This prospect was significant, given the state (...) of cytology circa 1910. In the wake of the major gains made in understanding nuclear division in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, cytology was suddenly confronted with many, seemingly less penetrable, problems. Several aspects of nuclear organization still remained unexplained, and recent research had revealed the presence in the cytoplasm of structures whose functions in cell life were unknown. Classical methods of cytology, relying on descriptive, morphological analysis, seemed ill equipped to resolve these questions.Hertwig's program for protozoology, grounded in the assumption of the fundamental unity of organization in protozoa and metazoa, offered a potential means for investigating these and other problems of cell theory. Linked to mainstream cytology, protozoology was advocated as a means of experimentally investigating key biolobical processes — reproduction, metabolism, and organelle morphology and physiology — less accessible in higher organisms. Protozoa were hailed as prime experimental organisms, in which cell structure and function could be more easily studied. Unlike the metazoan cell, they could be subjected to controlled experiments in which the external environment was modified and the effects monitored. Protozoa offered, in other words, a promising experimental means by which to investigate the cell — its structures and its processes.The success of this program within Germany was soon apparent. In contrast to the rather neglected state of the discipline in 1900, protozoology began to be recognized as more than a somewhat obscure area of study for specialists. In practical terms, this translated into greater numbers of students attracted to the field, increased institutional support for the discipline, and its elevation in status within the biological sciences as new developments, particularly in connection with medical applications, began to draw attention to the field.64The unicellular hypothesis also promoted the internal development of the science. It provided a rationale for introducing the various techniques used in cytology, embryology, physiology, and the new field of biochemistry as suitable research tools for protozoology as well. This vastly extended the research possibilities and facilitated the understanding of, among other things, protozoan organization, modes of reproduction, and evolutionary relationships. The new experimental grounding of the discipline in turn fitted in well with developments in biology at large: in contrast to the descriptive methodology that had predominated in the nineteenth century, this new experimental program placed protozoology at the forefront of the early twentieth-century movement to make biology an experimental science comparable to physics and chemistry.Yet the criticism of the unicellular hypothesis can also be seen as having served a valuable function within the development of the discipline. It focused attention on the study of protists as organisms in their own right, not simply as models for metazoan cells. More generally, it helped to remind biologists of the particular evolutionary assumptions that supported this conception. Dobell and other British critics pointed out, among other things, the association between the theory of recapitulation and the interpretation of protozoa as unicellular organisms. At the time when the recapitulation theory and the germ-layer doctrine were in decline, it was important to stress how these evolutionary ideas also entered into the contemporary concepts of subsidiary specialties. This was as true for protozoology as it was for cell theory itself. The chromidial theory, in its various guises, and the binuclearity hypothesis did in fact contain elements of recapitulationist reasoning, and they were open to criticism for the same kind of overly speculative theorizing that characterized this evolution theory. Dobell's critique forced protozoologists and cell theorists alike to review the theoretical postulates guiding their investigations.In the absence of further historical studies, it is hard to evaluate the consequences of this debate in later years. The issue was not whether protozoa were the precursors of metazoa — both sides accepted this. They disagreed over which particular protozoon had served as the ancestral form, and this, in turn, influenced their stance on the question of unicellularity. The situation is little changed today. Because the former question is still an open one, the latter remains so too. Both of the models for the origin of multicellular organisms — colonies of ciliates versus multinucleate protists — are still presented as possible mechanisms in modern textbooks of evolution. Unable to judge the dispute in terms of the ultimate validity of the competing conceptions, the historian requires other criteria. It perhaps becomes more important to evaluate the issues in the context of the internal and external stimulus they provided the discipline.65 In these terms, and from the present historical vantage point, Hertwig's research program for protozoology, based upon the unicellular hypothesis, appears to have been a successful one. (shrink)

Freud's Mass Psychology examines one of the key concepts in the theory of the psyche. Surprenant treats it as an epistemological issue rather than exclusively as a socio-political issue. Focusing on this neglected concept enables the author to raise anew the question of the 'application' of psychoanalysis, beyond a mechanistic understanding of this term and of Freud's writings. This study brings together important topics associated with psychoanalysis, recent French philosophy, and political thought. The original arguments (...) that it develops should interest anyone preoccupied with the relevance of psychoanalytic concepts in philosophy and in related disciplines, notably in the field of literary studies. (shrink)

The status quo: dogmatism, the biopsychosocial model, and alternatives -- What there is: of mind and brain -- How we know: understanding the mind -- What is scientific method? -- Reading Karl Jaspers's General Psychopathology -- What is scientific method in psychiatry? -- Darwin's dangerous method: the essentialist fallacy -- What we value: the ethics of psychiatry -- Desire and self: Hellenistic and Islamic approaches -- On the nature of mental illness: disease or myth? -- Order out of (...) chaos: from insanity to DSM-III to a pluralistic nosology -- A theory of DSM-IV: ideal types -- Dimensions versus categories -- The perils of belief: psychosis -- The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune: depression -- Life's rollercoaster: mania -- Being self-aware: insight -- Calvinism or hedonism? -- Truth and statistics: problems of empirical psychiatry -- A climate of opinion: what remains of psychoanalysis -- Being there: existential psychotherapy -- Beyond eclecticism: teaching psychotherapy in the twenty-first century -- Bridging the biology/psychology dichotomy: the hopes of integrationism -- Why it is hard to be pluralist. (shrink)

This dissertation examines Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis with particular regard to the problem of nihilism, and the philosophy of history that Edmund Husserl and Georg Lukacs argue is needed in its wake to restore reason's capacity to give order and direction to human life. I understand nihilism not merely as the theory that life is devoid of value, but rather as an historical crisis in the sense of autonomy that results from the separation of fact and value in (...) the thoroughly rationalized modern world. How, I ask, does Freud respond to this crisis? And how does his response stand in relationship to those offered by philosophers? Does psychoanalysis too provide a philosophy of history? ;To answer these questions, I first examine the development of psychoanalysis in response to the suffering of neurotics as a crisis in the authority of science to address human needs. I then explicate the problem of nihilism as it is registered by both Husserl and Lukacs, examine the philosophies of history that they each construct in response to it, and consider Freud's theory of civilization in relationship to them. ;By constructing philosophical methodologies to defend reason's teleology, I argue that both Husserl and Lukacs implicitly disavow the problem that they purport to address by presupposing the autonomy of reason, and treating the problem of nihilism as the result merely of a misconception concerning its place and function in the world. As late as 1923 Freud too presupposes reason's autonomy from the terror expressed in religion. However, with his subsequent recognition of the problem presented by the unconscious sense of guilt, Freud no longer treats the rational overcoming of illusion as an intrinsic good. He sees civilization too as radically ambivalent and revises his social theory as a critique of the discontent that immanently plagues it. Rather than a philosophy of history, I argue that Freud constructs a critique of the problem presented by the persistent demand for teleological orientation in a post-historical world. (shrink)

Resumen En este artículo me propongo revisitar de manera sucinta y sistemática los li-neamientos centrales de la teoría de la subjetividad de Sigmund Freud, persiguiendo el objetivo de mostrar la vigencia filosófica y teórico-social de la misma. Para ello, procedo en tres pasos: en primer lugar expongo el modo en que el autor construye su concepción del "sujeto del Inconsciente" a través de un enfrentamiento con la noción de "sujeto cartesiano". Luego, examino la tensión entre natura y nurtura que (...) puede rastrearse en su tratamiento del problema de la "pulsión" [ Trieb]. Y, finalmente, reseño su descripción de la estructura tripartita del aparato psíquico, poniendo especial énfasis en su noción de la subjetividad escindida y en el análisis del origen intersubjetivo del "Superyó" [Über-Ich].In this paper, I intend to systematically revisit the main lines of Sigmund Freud's theory of subjectivity, with the aim of showing its current relevance within the fields of philosophy and social theory. In order to do so, I will proceed in three steps. First, I will scrutinize the way Freud elaborates his account of the "subject of unconsciousness" arguing against the conception of the "Cartesian subject". Then, I will examine the tension between nature and nurture, which can be found in his treatment of the problem of "drives" [Triebe]. Finally, I will sketch out his description of the three-fold structure of the psychical apparatus, putting special emphasis on his conception of the "split subjectivity" and on his analysis of the intersubjective origin of the Superego [Über-Ich]. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Oppression, Normative Violence, and VulnerabilityThe Ambiguous Beauvoirian Legacy of Butler’s EthicsLisa C. KniselyJudith Butler’s most recent writings are a sophisticated theorization of the significance of human vulnerability as a resource for “a non-violent ethics... that is based upon an understanding of how easily human life is annulled” (Butler 2004, xvii). Butler argues that recognition of the constitutive vulnerability of human existence provides the condition of possibility through (...) which we can respond to an ethical “appeal” or “call” for nonviolence (Butler 2009, 165, 170). This recent work carries on the feminist theoretical tradition of theorizing nonviolence via an attention to human vulnerability that has been strongly present in feminist care ethics (Held 2006; Kittay 1999; Ruddick 1989; Noddings 1984; Gilligan 1982). However, rather than turning to the care ethicists to think through the ethical relationship between vulnerability and violence, Butler produces an innovative feminist ethics by turning to a variety of thinkers in continental philosophy and psychoanalysis, such as Hegel, Freud, Cavarero, and especially Levinas. Butler’s recent discussion of the ethical import of human vulnerability therefore extends a long-standing feminist tradition of arguing for nonviolence while also helping to expand the theoretical resources feminists have used for this task.This article places Butler’s recent ethical focus on nonviolence1 in conversation with Simone de Beauvoir’s earlier existentialist feminist ethical writings2 [End Page 145] concerning the ethico-political import of violence. Together, these two thinkers reorient the dominant feminist conversation about violence away from an emphasis on women’s violent and oppressive victimization and toward an idea of gendered actors who are simultaneously ethically enabled and constrained by the bodily, historical, and political situations out of which they act. Ultimately, however, Beauvoir’s argument that ethics are always deeply contextual and are thus normatively ambiguous is a preferable feminist alternative to Butler’s attempt to delineate a specifically nonviolent ethics. This is because Beauvoir gives thorough attention to contexts of oppression as a major mitigating factor that shapes our ethical possibilities.For Beauvoir, there is no guarantee that a nonviolent response to vulnerability is a priori the most ethical response. Beauvoir does not insist on a nonviolent ethics because the ethicality of violence must be derived from within the embodied situations out of which people are acting. Ethicality cannot be determined prior to, or outside of, the lived contexts in which people are situated. Beauvoir’s ethics remind contemporary feminist theorists that both vulnerability, and responses to vulnerability, whether violent or nonviolent, are always contextually mediated by the forces of history, politics, and circumstance. This reminder is essential if we do not wish feminist ethical claims to override the feminist political goal of lessening oppression. Beauvoir’s attention to contextual specificity shows us that our possible responses to vulnerability are ethically ambiguous in the sense that no normative claim about how one ought to respond to human vulnerability, taken in the abstract, can be elucidated without the risk of making our ethics potentially oppressive.By returning to Beauvoir’s ethics, especially Beauvoir’s attention to oppression and freedom, the discussion here is meant to echo the concerns of a growing number of contemporary feminist theorists who express hesitation about the recent “turn” to vulnerability in feminist theory (Bergoffen 2001; Butler 2004, 2005, 2009; Fineman 2008; Oliver 2008)3 and more generally about moral claims that are made in the name of feminism (Murphy 2009; Dean 2008; Halley 2008; Mills 2007; Brown 1995). In addition, the emphasis on Beauvoir’s ethics here is meant to help return the contemporary feminist discussion of violence toward a more general emphasis on the importance of thinking about freedom as a primary feminist concern (Zerilli 2005; Willett 2001, 1995). Beauvoir’s ethics demonstrate that the ethicality of our responses to vulnerability cannot be judged without a thorough attention to the ethical freedom4 of oppressed ethical actors.Feminist ethicists have tended to undervalue attention to specific historico-political contexts in their discussions of violence as they develop normative arguments against violence. As Kimberly Hutchings notes in her article “Simone de Beauvoir and the Ambiguous Ethics of Political Violence,” there are two contemporary feminist positions on violence... (shrink)

Architecture and Deconstruction Case of Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi -/- Introduction Towards deconstruction in architecture Intensive relations between philosophical deconstruction and architecture, which were present in the late 1980s and early 1990s, belong to the past and therefore may be described from a greater than before distance. Within these relations three basic variations can be distinguished: the first one, in which philosophy of deconstruction deals with architectural terms but does not interfere with real architecture, the second one, in (...) which a collaboration between Jacques Derrida and a group of architects interested in his concepts is commenced, and the third one, in which completed or only designed objects or new concepts of deconstruction created by architects gain their supremacy over philosophy. The following book analyses these three possible ways, first of all with the reference to Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi. -/- Peter Eisenman -/- Misreading… and Other Errors -/- The issue of relations between Peter Eisenman’s work and philosophy of deconstruction may be referred to his activity more than ten years preceding his direct collaboration with Jacques Derrida (in 1985) and organisation of the exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture at Museum of Modern Art in New York (in 1988). As soon as at the stage of designing the first houses (House I-III, 1967-1970), which almost entirely inscribed in formalistic aesthetics of Modernism, the architect analysed the problem of architecture dependence on its assumptions. All his later designs may be treated as consequence of this initial interest in relations between practice and theory, and at the same time as an introduction to manipulations later on led at the level of metaphysics of architecture. Beginning with the issue of presence, considered in comments to House VI (1972), the number of ideas having their analogies in philosophy of deconstruction increased. The text entitled The End of the Classical: The End of the Beginning, The End of the End (1984), in which Eisenman criticised questions of representation in architecture, its delusive strive for truth and comparably unattainable attempts at ultimate definition of elementary rules, should be acclaimed the breaking point. This attitude was extended by numerous strategies disturbing architecture rules defined at metaphysical level in an essay Moving Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors: an Architecture of Absence (1986). The issue of Eisenman’s passage from formalism to deconstruction has already been much discussed in the literature (Rosalind Krauss, Thomas Patin among others), still it should be mentioned that the threads similar to Derrida’s concept included in Eisenman’s writing reveal untranslatability of architecture and philosophy. -/- Choral Works or Separate tricks -/- In 1985-1986 a series of seven disputes between Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman took place. The pretext for them were designs concerning Parc de la Villette in Paris. The situation of many months of collaboration between a notable philosopher of the second half of the 20th c. and an architect that already had a huge theoretical oeuvre, ended up with a publication of a large volume entitled Chora L Works and it became at the same time a vast study area for historians of contemporary architecture and philosophers. Derrida’s contribution to concept works were his considerations over the idea of chôra, the properties related to this concept were about to be reflected in shapes of the park. Therefore, Chora L Works became an example of the abilities of contemporary art, both in its capability of translation from philosophical ideas to artistic forms and its resistance to tradition of representing in architecture some phenomena and values originating outside this discipline. In the final period of their collaboration both interlocutors started to polemicise with each other more decidedly, what became a separate part of their thought exchange. The exchange of letters between Derrida and Eisenman at the turn of 1989 ended up the period of their direct contacts, nevertheless, at this time precisely a large group of experts in issues of deconstruction joined the discussion and extended the revealed in the former dispute problems into more than ten years of further considerations and publications. Except for a long text by Jeffrey Kipnis, who had participated in the meetings of the philosopher and the architect, there appeared also comments of researchers of artistic theories (K. Michael Hays, Thomas Patin), philosophers (Andrew Benjamin), and even experts in Greek literature (Maria Theodorou or Ann Bergren). Following these debates a contemporary reflection on architecture has saturated with indeed numerous concepts originating in philosophy of deconstruction. -/- Architecture which imitates mute philosophy -/- The series of Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman meetings, which took place in the period of 1985-1987, induced many authors to make comments. Some of them (Jeffrey Kipnis, Ann Bergren, Maria Theodorou) developed the subject of chôra which was introduced to the discussion by Derrida. The problem that was about to be solved was the question of tying up the concept of chôra with architecture, including Eisenman’s architecture and the series of meetings within frames of Chora L Works project. Kipnis on this occasion paid attention to chôra and its character of anachronia which infects any being created within chôra. In other words any event has its counterpart (analogon) in another, earlier event. He demonstrated the similarity of structure of many events and statements from the times of Derrida and Eisenman’s meetings to the almost identical behaviour of figures in Plato’s dialogue Timaeus. The loss of beginning present in this phenomenon was appropriate to both features of chôra and the effects of typical analyses of philosophy of deconstruction. Bergren’s analyses focused on accentuating gender of chôra, which, according to this author, had been neglected hitherto in discussions. She collated chôra descriptions with characteristics of women in myths, early Greek epic and philosophy and she arrived at a conclusion that chôra has features of a single woman and a married one at the same time. And yet Theodorou’s studies showed that in the Homeric epics chôra is not treated as an idea but is related with single things and events. The other part of the comments (represented by Andrew Benjamin and K. Michael Hays’ utterances) concerns Eisenman’s attitude to tradition which was treated as a variety of iteration understood philosophically. Benjamin commenced his considerations at the point of closeness between a definition of tradition and a concept of chôra understood as perpetuation (placement). A problematic issue was for him Eisenman’s complex relation to tradition based on its contest and affirmation at the same time. Overcoming the simple subordination to tradition – according to Benjamin – was based on awareness of the role of repetition in culture not known before. Hays made an attempt to explain the pleasure and torment of repetition with the support of Sigmund Freud and Roland Barthes’ concepts. According to Hays repetitions are attempts of a single being to a certain primal state perceived as free of any tension. In a similar way Rosalind Krauss explained a motif of a grate present in Modernistic art and also exceptionally frequent in Eisenman’s work. -/- Annex Architecture is still writing Balzac novels. Peter Eisenman and literature -/- Architecture’s approach to writing, script or literature, present within Peter Eisenman’s work, is an exceptional phenomenon, furthermore a complex one. The article considers four possible relations. The first one relates to Eisenman’s characteristics as a person extremely gifted with the ability to wordplay, which very ‘play’ reveals skills to create architectural images. In the second approach the attention has been paid to Eisenman’s interests – in the first period of his oeuvre – in linguistic works by Noam Chomsky and his transformational-generative grammar. The third kind of relations applied to overcoming the need for autonomy of architecture (and of modernist aesthetics at the same time) and renew interests in questions of meaning in architecture. The fourth sort of relations occurred when Eisenman started to create reflections of historic or literary narrations in architecture – ‘stone stories’ and architectural fictions of their kind. -/- Bernard Tschumi -/- From perversion to deconstruction In Bernard Tschumi’s writings from the 1970s and 1980s we can find a transposition of important threads of post-structuralist ideas deriving from Georges Bataille, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida’s works. The analysis of the architect’s writings also shows roots in Phillippe Sollers, Michel Foucault and Denis Hollier’s works. The analysis of borrowed elements from the beginnings of Tschumi’s theoretical activity may be helpful in explaining the contents of his later writings motre inspired by philosophy of deconstruction. The set of his earliest views was inspired by Marxism, Neo Marxism and French Structuralism, mainly by the writings of Henri Levebre and Guy Debord. From the thought of Levebre Tschumi took interest for city as not only a question of urbanistics but also a political issue. From Debord’s concepts he borrowed a conviction about the role of situational violation for changes in the society structure. Some of these beliefs were preserved in his own concepts of architecture as an event. From this period derived also his will to change conservative elements of social structure not by means of political revolution but of theoretical and creative activity. Tschumi acknowledged that the effective way of the proceedings towards achieving his aims would be accepting the role of both a critical intellectualist and architecture expert who would not hide away his left-wing orientation. The speculations defined by the architect as ‘revolting analyses’ were about to characterise contradictions which tear the society apart, penetrate architecture and constitute the basis of culture. Spreading away of the conscience of false assumptions hidden away in various disciplines could have weakened cohesion of a conservative society and influence the will to change among the elites. This way the beginnings of political revolution were rooted in philosophy of architecture. In 1977 Tschumi published his text entitled The Pleasure of Architecture inspired by Roland Barthes’s The Pleasure of the Text, it also included some concepts derived from Georges Bataille and Jacques Derrida. First of all the author used Barthes’s concept which made an assumption that literary activity is pervaded by the spirit of resistance towards social rules, and Tschudi transferred this remark onto architecture. From the ideas of Bataille, acquainted via Holier’s work, he derived his belief that two concepts of space, a conceptual one (defined as Pyramid) and a sensual one (defined as Labirynth), not losing their distinct features, they join in the concept of experienced space which exceeds contradictions. The exceeding itself was defined as the basic rule of architecture and it was referred to situations in which architecture not only negates social needs, but also disavows its own tradition. Crossing the borders applies not only to political issues or permanent rules of the very discipline but also interfering with other fields (especially literature and film). The fact that architecture is associated with organising events turned Tschumi’s attention to questions of violence that result from upsetting architectural order of a given building by its users and the one hand, and on the other from forcing the users to specific acts imposed by this very order. The analysis of the concepts used by Tschumi in his early writings indicates that they are close to definitions that would occur in his reflection in the following years influenced by philosophy of deconstruction. -/- Approaching deconstruction Tschumi in his theories developed in the 1980s presumed that the current social world had undergone a deep process of decay, and the reaction against which ought to be based on ordering-up actions, and also preserving the main outline of disintegration of the whole and its elements in the state of conflict. The statements concerning the nature of the contemporary to Tschumi social relations were applied by him to the world of architecture, this led him to coming up with designing strategies that took into consideration the destabilised character of conditions in which works of architecture were created. New ways of conduct invented by Tschumi drew their inspiration from literature and research on literature, psychoanalysis, structural linguistics, structuralism and post structuralism, and eventually also deconstruction philosophy. The proposed methods were opposed by their author both to functionalism continuity trends and postmodern architecture. Tschumi’s proposals contradicted any forms of conservatism or traditionalism in political sphere as well as in reference to tendencies in architecture. They were not simple contradictions of social or architectural rules, they intrude them from the inside, weaken or escalate the already existing incongruities, they move the boundaries between the areas. Revolutionary illusions about the possibility of radical changes were replaced with strategies which completed, tainted or test former rules in the series of formal games of permutation and combination. Quite different from avant-garde formalism Tschumi’s games were not about maintaining the autonomy of a given area, but on the contrary – polluting it with other areas’ influences. Tschumi enjoyed demonstrating illusions of architecture concerning simple relations between form and function, or between form and meaning. Making use of Freud, Lacan and Foucault’s research he introduced a category of “madness” into architecture allowing an observation that the recognised norms are nothing but merely ones of many possible principles of behaviour, and their recognised status resulted from unjustified hindering innovativeness which is crucial for architecture. To reborn architecture’s capability of changing Tschumi also made use of Barthes’s discoveries concerning rules of narration and works by writers who applied in their writing knowledge on linguistics. Making a work’s author unclear by various mechanical transformations of its elements was however apparent only, and formal rigours imposed on the process of designing liberated possibilities difficult to obtain in more traditional creative action. Another mode of acting introduced by Tschumi was combining his work of elements deriving from outside architecture; joining space records with notation of motion and events accompanying architectural objects among others. These architectural and extra-architectural elements were not unified, on the contrary their heterogenous and conflictual character was stressed. This is how shock, anxiety and instability, typical for live in great metropolises, infiltrated architecture. Taking some ideas of deconstruction philosophy as a pattern Tschumi also took into critical consideration in his essays traditional in architecture oppositions between form and figuration, or theory and practice. By combining various inspirations he eventually worked out an idea of architectural event, which he understood as a series of actions contesting its own field, redefining its sources, principles and elements. An event, understood in this way, was not so much producing works as rather creating conditions of their production and at the same time designing the society different from a hierarchic one. -/- Park of deconstruction Among numerous philosophical strategies of deconstruction most frequently used was questioning the practice of strong opposition of two reasons. In many cases Bernard Tschumi’s writings just consider functioning of the conflict juxtaposition of the ideas of structure and ornament or theory and practice in history of architecture. Violation of traditional relations between terms of this kind, both old and modern, raised Jacques Derrida’s objections, when he was induced for the first time to co-operate with architects’ milieu. During this long lasting thought exchange the philosopher eventually acknowledged Bernard Tschumi’s arguments for reasoning the encroachment of architecture’s fundamental rules. Deconstruction applied in architecture was not a simple transposition or analogy of practices that had been applied by philosophy of deconstruction. We may even say that considering architectural terms became an important formula of deconstruction. Architecture understood in philosophical way became something beyond the practice and theory of its own discipline, a sort of metaphysics of both philosophy and architecture. The deliberate encroachment of simplicity of dividing architecture into theory and practice, for the first time became a clear aim for Tschumi in his drawings and texts entitled The Manhattan Transcripts. The contents of this series of works was a record of characteristic features of this New York district in such a way that not only objects were the subject of the record but also relations between objects, people and events. The record was about to take into consideration a conflict character of elements of this representation and at the same time to avoid applying to them the rule of mimetism. The record became a form of reflection over the very record by an increased control over the ways of representation. Architecture which was considered in the The Manhattan Transcripts was not directed to fulfill the needs of inhabitation or production, it was rather related with hitherto usually marginalised liminal situations: building ostentatiously big monuments, religious cult, war etc. Architecture operating in these relations focused also the attention on the included in it continuous tendency to overpass its own restrictions, the role of violence as its not recognised factor, or the meaning of excess and shock in its operation. Architecture moving from reason towards madness became even more visible in the design of Parisian Parc de la Villette, whose pavilions were defined as folies (in French it means both small park buildings and follies). The park was supposed to be on the one hand a reflection of traditional society disintegration while on the other it questioned basic rules of producing a work of architecture. The traditional rules of designing, based on ordering up, were replaced with the strategies of dysfunction and dissociation. In Tschumi’s opinion methods of this kind may be equivalent of what Derrida named différance. Instead of aiming at mergence, any diversity, plays or variations were strengthen. Tschumi’s texts, in which he explained his attitude, were completed by Derrida’s extent statement entitled Point de folie – Maintenant l’architecture. Derrida’s article is the most significant of all his statements on architecture as a form of thinking and activity. According to the philosopher, architecture should divide space (in French defined as espacement), what enables both thinking and action – it arranges the space of an event. Tschumi’s buildings, defined as folies, in an essential way destabilise any created order, and at the same time they refresh it. Derrida’s statement suggests that architecture may become both metaphor of an order merging a language or a society but also of inner forces which deconstruct and reconstruct it. Therefore architecture is at the same time a construction, a deconstruction and a reconstruction. Parc de la Villette stands out in this system with its attempt to step beyond the scheme of an easy repetition and its heading for chances of achieving more radical otherness. -/- Conclusion Destruction as construction. Paradoxes of deconstruction in architecture -/- Scepticism about persistence and common importance of fundamental values of human culture evinced in philosophers and writers’ works as early as in Greek antiquity, nevertheless it was not expressed so strongly as in the second half of the 20th century. Especially in Heidegger’s work Being and Time (although originated in 1927, still influential in all later philosophy) the following states were characterised: the state of losing the ground (Abgrund), of being out of sight (Unheimlichkeit) and of being out of dwelling (Un-zuhause-sein) – as the basis of self-confidence of conscious being there (Dasein). The entire criticism of philosophy of home and dwelling draws the inspiration from this early writing of the German philosopher, it combines crisis of basic terms of metaphysics with social conditions which are dictated by living in large metropolis. The crisis of both metaphysical foundation and home appears to be similar to the situation of weakening the relations between a man and his dwelling in extensively expanding cities. Whereas philosophy, as well as many disciplines of social sciences, have diagnosed for a long time the destabilisation of fundamental ideas of Western culture and crucial changes in the ways of dwelling, architecture itself occurred to be “the last fortress of metaphysics” (J. Derrida). Among contemporary architects, Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi were the ones who engaged most decidedly in the issues of critical analysis of architecture foundation and its social role. Both the architects noticed new formulas of contemporary social and individual existence, tremendously different from the entire history, and at the same time they affirmed lack of adequacy of architecture concepts to new situations. Both Eisenman and Tschumi used to describe the existing architecture as a tool for consolidation of highly integrated and hierarchised societies, and also as a discipline extremely uncoincidental with the current character of social life based on ideas of freedom and diversity. The means to transform architecture and make a factor of further social changes out of it, was a concept that accentuated revealing the inner contradictions of this discipline, and considering them in designing strategies. Eisenman’s activity, in regard of what has just been noticed, was focused on questioning the basic rules of traditionally comprehended architecture, especially the rule of purpose. The American architect noticed that the concept of architecture as fulfilment the need of location, hides away the fact that the location has to be constantly reconsidered, and hence it is overtaken by change (dislocation). Therefore new concept of architecture propounded architectural activity to translocate the concept of location – more than before – but also to change its status perpetually. Such comprehended architecture should claim, as its main purpose, the constant revision of this purpose and create itself anew permanently. Even Eisenman’s earliest designs of houses nos. I-IV broke with such values as the sense of safety, closeness and familiarity, and just on the contrary they accentuated senses of strangeness, homelessness and loss of confidence. The contradictions within architecture noticed by Tschumi referred to combination of intellectual and sensual values in architecture, when their non-appropriation was defeated by an additional condition, namely the way of experience based on pleasure of excess, marked by insanity. The features of folly were especially visible in his designs of gardens, where the order of planning was mixed with sensual experience introduced by particular elements (both the ones created by nature, and the buildings defined as folies). Parc de la Villette designed by the French architect in Paris put in question not only the common understanding of purpose in architecture but also the ideas of order and integrity, as its plan was based on the combination of independent layers with records of grids of points, various lines and planes. The architecture that collides inadequate elements with each other was supposed to be a kind of an event with no beginning and no end. The architecture treated as an event became a form of a space weakened articulation that maintains its diversity and lack of accordance of the elements building it up. The analyses of Eisenman and Tschumi’s theoretical writings indicate how much the aims of architecture have actually changed; instead of supporting social persistence, the architecture is rather intensifying contradictions, and instead of providing people with the sense of safety, it sublimes danger. From simple acts of defamiliarisation, increasing the distance to itself and enhancing the role of theory, through discomfort, anxiety, not feeling someone at home, weirdness, excess, shock and violence, architecture reached the edge of stability and uncertainty, only to make an attempt at penetrating what is impossible and unutterable, and recording what cannot become the subject of any records. -/- . (shrink)

Feminist theory, broadly construed, lacks a comprehensive theory of misogyny. While there has been a great deal of feminist work dedicated to analysing the social, cultural, political, and institutional effects of misogyny, the ancillary theories of misogyny these analyses produce are only ever partial, fragmented, vague or conceptually inconsistent. This article engages and critiques these theories by focusing on three separate but related issues within existing feminist scholarship on misogyny: the conflation of misogyny with (...) sexism, the elision of misogyny's affective elements and the supplanting of misogyny with gendered violence. Through my identification and critique of these issues, I argue that misogyny should be understood as a profoundly complicated and emotional social dynamic. Moreover, I argue that to attempt to cleanse misogyny of its affective/emotional complexity or conflate misogyny with sexism and/or violence is to rob theorists of possible loci of apprehension and intervention. My hope is that this article will stimulate feminist theorists to work collectively towards a more comprehensive feminist understanding of misogyny – one that grapples with the interpersonal and affective complexities of how misogyny emerges, circulates and self-perpetuates. (shrink)

The use of certain performance-enhancing drugs (PED) is banned in sport. I discuss critically standard justifications of the ban based on arguments from two widely used criteria: fairness and harms to health. I argue that these arguments on their own are inadequate, and only make sense within a normative understanding of athletic performance and the value of sport. In the discourse over PED, the distinction between “natural” and “artificial” performance has exerted significant impact. I examine whether the distinction (...) makes sense from a moral point of view. I propose an understanding of “natural” athletic performance by combining biological knowledge of training with an interpretation of the normative structure of sport. I conclude that this understanding can serve as moral justification of the PED ban and enable critical and analytically based line drawing between acceptable and nonacceptable performance-enhancing means in sport. (shrink)

Although this study inspects context in general, it is even intended as a prerequisite for a meta-study of contextual time&space in zoo-communication. Moving the scope from linguistics to culture, communication, and semiotics may reveal new similarities between context-perceptions. Paradigmatic historical moves and critical context theories are inspected, asking whether there is a least-common-multiple for perceptions of context. The short answer is that context is relational – a bi-product of attention from a position, creating a focused object, and hence an obscured (...) (back-)ground – the attention’s context. A more comprehensive one is that when the focused phenomenon is culture, semiotics, or communication, context becomes embodied. This recognition triggers new questions: What is the relation between embodied, immanent context and this perception’s external, physical context (its surroundings)? If utterances are regarded as constituted by the triad form-content-act and the dyadic chronotope time&space, what and where is then context? Which challenges will empirical (zoo-)communicational research face if context is split in internal and external versions of context? These questions raise some epistemological and methodological issues. These are discussed based on a framework that regards communication as a micro-macro interplay between utterance and genre. Genres are kinds of communication. More specifically animal genres related to their basic life-functions are called life-genres. A conclusion is that life-genres function as both mental and situational contexts. This complicates empirical research on communication in general, and zoo-communication in particular. The paper concludes that contexts’ relational and embodied nature and the ‘situational’ characteristics of life-genres challenge researchers to validate continuously, shifting between contextualising, decontextualising, and recontextualising. (shrink)

The article unveils the intellectual indebtedness of Hans J. Morgenthau's realist theory of international power politics to Freudian meta- and group psychology. It examines an unpublished Morgenthau essay about Freudian anthropology written in 1930, placing this work within the context of Morgenthau's magna opera, the 1946 Scientific Man vs. Power Politics and the 1948 Politics among Nations. The article concludes that Morgenthau's international theory is ultimately based on the early instinct theory of Sigmund Freud. Freud (...) is thus to be seen as one of Morgenthau's intellectual fathers. A second main argument refers to the theoretical tradition that Morgenthau has founded within International Relations (IR), namely: political realism. By investigating its core principles, it is argued that realism also may be rooted in Freudian thought. Throughout, the article calls upon IR, Morgenthau scholarship, and international-political theory to take Freud seriously. (shrink)

According to the Differences of Sex Development Regulations of the International Association of Athletics Federations, Caster Semenya and other athletes with heightened testosterone levels are considered non-eligible for middle distance running races in the women’s class. Based on an analysis of fair equality of opportunity in sport, I take a critical look at the Semenya case and at IAAF’s DSD Regulations. I distinguish between what I call stable and dynamic inequalities between athletes. Stable inequalities are those that athletes cannot impact (...) or control in any significant way such as inequalities in biological sex, body size and chronological age. Dynamic inequalities, such as inequalities in strength, speed and endurance, or in technical and tactical skills, can be impacted and to a certain extent controlled by athletes. If stable inequalities exert significant and systematic impact on performance, they provide a rationale for classification. If high testosterone level is an inborn, strong and systemic driver of performance development, inequalities in such levels can provide a rationale for classification. As is emphasised by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, this leads to a dilemma of rights: the right of Semenya to compete in sport according to her legal sex and gender identity, and the right of other athletes within the average female testosterone range to compete under fair conditions. I conclude with providing conditional support of the CAS decision in the Semenya case and of IAAF’s DSD Regulations. (shrink)

Through an engagement with Sylvia Wynter, this article explores how black feminist critiques of the human can inform critical genealogies of religion. Specifically, the article develops a theoretical framework to interrogate how the modern construction of religion and the secular also produces racial identities and hierarchies. To draw attention to the global dimensions of this project, the article foregrounds the seminal work of Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm in his book, The Invention of Religion in Japan. The article argues that studies (...) like Josephson-Storm's show how religion helps transform existing forms of social organization within a bio-evolutionary conception of the nation, and is used by the state to differentiate between who can be considered fully human and who cannot. In this process “superstition” or “irrationality” is rewritten as a biological threat to the health and well-being of “the people,” and political domination is represented as a struggle to purify the nation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The individual-community relationship has always been one of the most fundamental topics of social sciences. In sociology, this is known as the micro-macro relationship while in economics it refers to the processes, through which, individual actions lead to macroeconomic phenomena. Based on philosophical discourse and systems theory, many sociologists even use the term "emergence" in their understanding of micro-macro relationship, which refers to collective phenomena that are created by the cooperation of individuals, but cannot be reduced to (...) individual actions. "Emergence" theories attempt to explain the nature of society as a complex system by examining how individuals and their relationships lead to the creation of integrated and macro-social phenomena such as markets, educational systems, cultural beliefs, and shared social practices. As a prelude to activity, every researcher has to answer the question from the methodological point of view, how is it possible to study the behavior of social groups and how can we gain knowledge about the laws related to social groups? Anyone who deals with humanities and social sciences or any reality and phenomenon that affects human beings, inevitably deals with the reality that is emerging. In fact, emergence occurs when one level of reality emerges radically from another level. Examples of emergent levels of reality include how the mind emerges from the body; or the way society emerges from human beings. Therefore, when there is an emerging factor, different scientific disciplines should be used, because it is inevitable to talk about social affairs, psychology and neurobiology, as well as physical and even chemical. -/- INTRODUCTION Since its beginning in the 19th century, sociology has faced the fundamental question of what a social phenomena stands for? At a glance, sociologists deal with the study of social groups, collective behavior, institutions, social structures, social networks, and social dynamics, and ultimately all such phenomena are composed of individuals. Therefore, social phenomena seem to have no independent ontological status, and in this case, sociology is ultimately about reducible individuals. Different approaches about the micro-macro relationship, using the concept of "emergence", argue that although collective phenomena are created by individuals, they cannot be reduced to individual action. The term "emergence" is used to distinguish "emergent results" from " Procedural results". Results are called Procedural that can only be calculated by adding or subtracting the causes that act together. On the contrary, they are emergent outcomes that are qualitatively novel compared to the causes from which they originate. An example of such emergent results is mental characteristics that emerge from neural processes, but are not considered among the characteristics of neural processes of components - which are their origin. Philosophical debates about emergentism and reductionism focus on the mind-brain relationship, but as many philosophers have noted, they can be generalized to apply to any hierarchical set of features. The cognitive revolution reactivated a 19th century controversy between theorists of Identity and dualism. The theorists of Identity believe in reductionist materialism and elimination of metaphysics, according to which the mind is nothing more than the biological, while the dualists believe that the mind and the brain are distinct from each other. Emergence has been considered as a third way between the theories of Identity and dualism. -/- METHODOLOGY Interdisciplinarity Is fundamentally indicated by the dominance of open systems as well as social and emerging systems at different levels. Therefore, as long as we are facing a new emergentism, there will necessarily be different fields and an interdisciplinary method. The commonality of social sciences and cognitive sciences on the issue of emergence provides the possibility of interaction and exchange of concepts between these two for deeper research. Therefore, in this research, apart from the concepts of Subvenience and downward causation, we have used multiple realization and wildly disjunctive, which are used to explain the emerging concept in cognitive sciences, including neurobiology, psychology, and philosophy. For analytical and interdisciplinary approaches, after examining the concepts of subvenience, and wildly disjunctive, Individualistic and collectivist emergentism have been reviewed. And then their adequacy is criticized and evaluated in meeting strong emergence conditions. -/- FINDINGS Philosophers of the mind have been able to define the conditions of irreducibility and downward causation, which are essential for strong emergence, by using the principle of subvenience with the help of multiple realization and wildly disjunctive principles. Therefore, by definition, emergentist individualism suffers from the problem of how to explain downward causality and irreducibility, and emergentist collectivism faces the challenge of reification. The analysis of the challenges facing the two methodological approaches of individualism and collectivism leads us to three unresolved issues about the emerging phenomenon, which are realism, downward causality, and mechanism. Despite the differences in the stances of these two approaches regarding the aforementioned triple problems, individualists and collectivists both agree that some social characteristics are reducible; and some others are irreducible due to their complexity, the determination of which, depends on the case study of the mechanism of emergence of each social characteristic. -/- CONCLUSION An emergence that is consistent with reductionism is called a weak emergence. And strong emergence includes the principle of irreducibility and downward causality. According to strong emergence, the characteristics of social phenomena have downward causal power, which cannot be reduced to the causal forces. The principle of subvenience, together with multiple realization and wildly disjunctive, can provide the conditions of irreducibility and downward causality, which are essential conditions of strong emergence. Based on the philosophical analysis of two methodological approaches, individualist and collectivist, it can be concluded that emergentist individualism suffers from the problem of how to explain downward causality and irreducibility, and reification collectivism faces the challenge of reification. The analysis of the problems faced by these two approaches leads us to three unresolved issues, which are realism, downward causality, and mechanism. individualist emergentists acknowledge the existence of emergent social characteristics, but despite this, they believe that these characteristics are not real but merely analytical constructs that require explanation based on individuals and their mutual actions. But collectivists argue that emergentism yields a categorical ontology and supports social realism. They accept the dependence of social characteristics on individuals, but claim that social entities and structures are ontologically independent. Individualists and collectivists both agree that some social characteristics are reducible; and others are irreducible due to their complexity; and the only way to recognize this is to engage in empirical studies of the mechanisms and temporal processes of "emergence" that create social characteristics. -/- NOVELTY The newness of this compact article is as follows: a) Presenting an interdisciplinary approach using the analysis of philosophy of cognitive sciences, including the philosophy of mind, neurobiology and psychology to formulate the issue of social emergence; b) Criticizing individualist and collectivist methodological approaches to the issue of social emergence and explaining the sufficiency and shortcomings of both in providing weak and strong emerging conditions; c) Explaining and categorizing the challenges facing methodological approaches in explaining the phenomenon of social emergence, in three categories: realism, downward causality, and mechanism. BIBLIOGRAPHY Beckermann, A., Flohr, H., & Kim, J. (eds.) (1992). Emergence or reduction? Essays on the prospects of nonreductive physicalism. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Bhaskar, R. (1979). The possibility of Naturalism. New York: Routledge. Bhaskar, R., Danermark, B. & Price, L. (2018). Interdisciplinarity and wellbeing: A critical realist general theory of interdisciplinarity. London and New York: Routledge. Blau, P.M. (1981). Introduction: diverse views of social structure and their common denominator. In Blau, P.M. & Merton, R.K. (eds.), Continuity in Structural Inquiry (pp. 1–23). Beverly Hills: Sage. Blau, P.M. (1987). Microprocess and macrostructure. In K.S. Cook (ed.), Social Exchange Theory (pp. 83–100). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Brooks, R.A., & Maes, P. (eds). (1994). Artificial life IV; proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Clark, A. (1997). Being there: Putting brain, body, and world together again. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Coleman, J. S. (1987). Microfoundations and macrosocial behavior. In: J. C. Alexander, B. Giesen, R. Munch, & Neil J. Smelser (Eds.). The Micro-Macro Link (pp. 153–73). Berkeley: University of California. Coleman, J. S. (1990). Foundations of social theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Elster, J. (1985). Making sense of Marx. New York: Cambridge University Press. Fodor, J.A. (1974). Special sciences (Or: The disunity of science as a working hypothesis). Synthese, 28(2), 97–115. Fodor, J.A. (1989). Making mind matter more. Philosophical Topics, 17, 59-79. Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hempel, C.G. (1965). Aspects of scientific explanation and other essays in the philosophy of science. New York: The Free Press. Horgan, T. (1993). From supervenience to superdupervenience: meeting the demands of a material world. Mind, 102, 555-586. Humphreys, P. (1997). How properties emerge”. Philosophy of Science, 64, 1-17. Kim, J. (1999). Making sense of emergence. Philosophical Studies, 95, 3–36. Kincaid, H. (1997). Individualism and the unity of science. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Lewis, D.K. (1986). The plurality of worlds. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nigel, G., & Conte, R. (eds.) (1995). Artificial societies; The computer simulation of social life. London: UCL Press. O’Connor, T. (1994). Emergent properties. American Philosophical Quarterly, 31, 91-104. Popper, K.R. (1968). Conjectures and refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. New York: Harper & Row. Sawyer, R. K. (2001). Emergence in sociology: contemporary philosophy of mind and some implications for sociological theory. American Journal of Sociology, 107, 551-585. Sawyer, R. K. (2004). The mechanisms of emergence. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 34, 260–282. Sawyer, R. K. (2005). Social emergence: societies as complex systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sawyer, R.K. (2003). Nonreductive individualism: Part 2, Social causation. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 33, 203–224. Winch, P. (1993). The idea of a social science and its relation to philosophy‭ (SAMT, Trans.). Tehran, Iran: SAMT. (shrink)

Despite advances in feminism, the "law of the father" remains the dominant model of Western psychological and cultural analysis, and the law of the mother continues to exist as an underdeveloped and marginal concept. In her radical rereading of the Greek myth, _Oresteia_, Amber Jacobs hopes to rectify the occlusion of the mother and reinforce her role as an active agent in the laws that determine and reinforce our cultural organization. According to Greek myth, Metis, Athena's mother, was Zeus's first (...) wife. Zeus swallowed Metis to prevent her from bearing children who would overthrow him. Nevertheless, Metis bore Zeus a child-Athena-who sprang forth fully formed from his head. In Aeschylus's _Oresteia_, Athena's motherless status functions as a crucial justification for absolving Orestes of the crime of matricide. In his defense of Orestes, Zeus argues that the father is more important than the mother, using Athena's "motherless" birth as an example. Conducting a close reading of critical works on Aeschylus's text, Jacobs reveals that psychoanalytic theorists have unwittingly reproduced the denial of Metis in their own critiques. This repression, which can be found in the work of Sigmund Freud and Melanie Klein as well as in the work of more contemporary theorists such as André Green and Luce Irigaray, has resulted in both an incomplete analysis of Oresteia and an inability to account for the fantasies and unconscious processes that fall outside the oedipal/patricidal paradigm. By bringing the story of Athena's mother, Metis, to the forefront, Jacobs challenges the primacy of the Oedipus myth in Western culture and psychoanalysis and introduces a bold new theory of matricide and maternal law. She finds that the Metis myth exists in cryptic forms within Aeschylus's text, uncovering what she terms the "latent content of the Oresteian myth," and argues that the occlusion of the law of the mother is proof of the patriarchal structures underlying our contemporary social and psychic realities. Jacobs's work not only provides new insight into the Oresteian trilogy but also advances a postpatriarchal model of the symbolic order that has strong ramifications for psychoanalysis, feminism, and theories of representation, as well as for clinical practice and epistemology. (shrink)

The concept ofgroundingis accepted and common among dance movement therapists and body psychotherapists. It expresses a stable physical and emotional presence – “supported by the ground.” The assumption is that embodied emotional knowledge is expressed through the manner of physical holding and in the emotional experience in the world. However, along with the clinical use of the term, an empirical tool for examining grounding is lacking. The goal of the study was to examine the reliability and validity of an observation (...) tool for assessing the quality of grounding, the Grounding Assessment Tool (GAT), which was created for the present study on the basis of theory, research, and clinical knowledge in the field. Forty three adult participants (age,M= 28.2 years, SD = 8.54) were recruited for an experimental and controlled session, the session included guided movement for approximately 10 min. The movement was recorded on video. The quality of the movement was rated by two raters and was scored using the GAT. The study findings indicated that the GAT is a reliable and valid tool – with good internal consistency (α = 0.850) and high interrater and intrarater reliability (Kendall’s ’range from 0.789 to 0.973 and intraclass correlation coefficient range from 0.967 to 1.00, respectively). The exploratory factor analysis showed that four factors are involved in the assessment of grounding quality: fluid and rhythmic movement, emotional expression in movement, pattern of foot placement, and lack of stability and weightiness. The results of this study expand the theoretical understanding of the concept of grounding. They contribute to the understanding of the benefits of body focus, dance and movement in psychotherapy and to validating body psychotherapy and dance movement therapy (DMT). The existence of a reliable and valid tool is essential for assessment and diagnostic processes, for formulating therapeutic goals focused on the body, and for examining their effectiveness. (shrink)

The paper departs from an analysis of the case of Michelle Dumaresq, a transgender female downhill mountain biker who experienced marginalization within her sport. The analysis is based on Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition. The Dumaresq case is particularly relevant to Honneth’s ideas of solidarity, which provide insight into the dynamics of social integration. Honneth’s theory of recognition also provides a conceptual framework and a methodology that gives new perspectives on the ethical significance of sport. In the (...) paper, an analysis is presented of the lack of solidarity experienced by Dumaresq. The argument is made that sport has a particular potential for realizing solidarity among its practitioners. Realizing solidarity however depends to a large degree upon that the rules of sport are perceived as fair and just. In the Dumaresq case, challenges to solidarity came from what her competitors considered to be unfair classification rules. Summing up, it is argued that, as long as the rules of a spor.. (shrink)

Even today the "immaterialist" philosophy of George Berkeley , the Irish bishop, has the power to fascinate: with its apparent idiosyncratic and uncompromisingly idealistic colouring. However, with respect to his radically subjectivist, possibly even solipsist understanding of the time issue, even sympathizers of the philosopher normally share George Pitcher's opinion, according to which this element of his theory constitutes "a total disaster". – The following article entails a résumé of Berkeley's theory of time. The obviously courageous attempt (...) is made, then, to give a text-based interpretation with the aim to avoid "disastrous" consequences. This plan proves to be a difficult task indeed, but nevertheless in the end it is shown that a theistic interpretation in union with a 'Kantian' reading of a central statement of Berkeley's can avoid the aforesaid consequences. – From a historical perspective, this philosophy of time turns out to be a counterpart to Leibniz's critique of the Newtonian perspective of time, as both are documented above all in the famous correspondence with Newton's friend Samuel Clarke. That Berkeley and Leibniz really share common philosophical ground is also shown by the latter's marginal note in his personal edition of the formers Principles of Human Understanding: "Much of this is correct and just as I'd have said". (shrink)

Elisabeth Young-Bruehl illuminates the psychological and intellectual demands writing biography makes on the biographer and explores the complex and frequently conflicted relationship between feminism and psychoanalysis. She considers what remains valuable in Sigmund Freud's work, and what areas - theory of character, for instance - must be rethought to be useful for current psychoanalytic work, for feminist studies, and for social theory. Psychoanalytic theory used for biography, she argues, can yield insights for psychoanalysis itself, (...) particularly in the understanding of creativity. (shrink)

What does Husserlian phenomenology have to offer feminist theory? More specifically, can we find resources within Husserl’s account of the living body ( Leib ) for the critical feminist project of rethinking embodiment beyond the dichotomies not only of mind/body but also of subject/object and activity/passivity? This essay begins by explicating the reasons for feminist hesitation with respect to Husserlian phenomenology. I then explore the resources that Husserl’s phenomenology of touch and his account of sensings (...) hold for feminist theory. My reading of Husserl proceeds by means of a comparison between his description of touch in Ideas II and Merleau-Ponty’s early appropriation of this account in the Phenomenology of Perception, as well as through an unlikely rapprochement between Husserl and Irigaray on the question of touch. Moreover, by revisiting the limitations in Husserl’s approach to the body—limitations of which any feminist appropriation must remain cognizant—I attempt to take Husserl’s phenomenology of touch beyond its initial methodologically solipsistic frame and to ask whether and how it can contribute to thinking gendered and racialized bodies. The phenomenology of touch, I argue, can allow us to understand the interplay between subjective, felt embodiment and social-historical context. In opening up Husserl’s account of touch to other dimensions—intersubjective and affective—sociality is revealed as residing within, and structuring of, touch. Such touch can allow us to think embodiment anew. (shrink)

Data access committees (DAC) gatekeep access to secured genomic and related health datasets yet are challenged to keep pace with the rising volume and complexity of data generation. Automated decision support (ADS) systems have been shown to support consistency, compliance, and coordination of data access review decisions. However, we lack understanding of how DAC members perceive the value add of ADS, if any, on the quality and effectiveness of their reviews. In this qualitative study, we report findings from 13 (...) semi-structured interviews with DAC members from around the world to identify relevant barriers and facilitators to implementing ADS for genomic data access management. Participants generally supported pilot studies that test ADS performance, for example in cataloging data types, verifying user credentials and tagging datasets for use terms. Concerns related to over-automation, lack of human oversight, low prioritization, and misalignment with institutional missions tempered enthusiasm for ADS among the DAC members we engaged. Tensions for change in institutional settings within which DACs operated was a powerful motivator for why DAC members considered the implementation of ADS into their access workflows, as well as perceptions of the relative advantage of ADS over the status quo. Future research is needed to build the evidence base around the comparative effectiveness and decisional outcomes of institutions that do/not use ADS into their workflows. (shrink)

The Psychoanalytic Century examines and celebrates Freuds extraordinary influence on modern analysis and Western culture as a whole. The book comprehensively covers the evolution of our understanding of hysteria as the diagnostic entity through which Freud invented psychoanalysis; and the assessment of the contribution of Freud and his successors to the theory of love and clinical approaches to love relations, as well as to literature, the visual arts, international diplomacy, and race. In this volume we celebrate Freud's (...) legacy, and explore the scope of his impact on psychoanalysis, society, and culture. The contributions of many distinguished colleagues follow the evolution of analysis as his ideas move beyond historical artifact to become living internal objects, embedded in Western culture. David Scharff, from his introduction. (shrink)

BackgroundAs suggested by Shook and Giordano, understanding and therefore addressing the urgent international governance issues around globalizing bio-medical/technology research and applications is limited by the perception of the underlying science.MethodsA philosophical methodology is used, based on novel and classical philosophical reflection upon existent literature, clinical wisdoms and narrative theory to discover a meta-science and telos of humankind for the development of a relevant and defendable global biomedical bioethics.ResultsIn this article, through pondering an integrative systems approach, I propose a (...) biomedical model that may provide Western biomedicine with leadership and interesting insight into the unity beyond the artificial boundaries of its traditional divisions and the limit between physiological and pathological situations. A unified biomedicine, as scientific foundation, might then provide the basis for dissolution of similar reflected boundaries within bioethics. A principled and communitarian cosmopolitan bioethics may then be synonymous with a recently proposed principled and communitarian cosmopolitan neuroethics based on a novel objective meta-ethics. In an attempt to help facilitate equal and inclusive participation in inter-, multi-, and transdisciplinary intercultural discourse regarding the aforementioned international governance issues, I offer: a meta-science derived through considering the general behaviour of activity, plasticity and balance in biology and; a novel thought framework to encourage and enhance the ability for self-evaluation, self-criticism, and self-revision aimed at broadening perspective, as well as acknowledging and responding to the strengths and limitations of extant knowledge.ConclusionsThrough classical philosophical reflection, I evolve a theory of medicine to discover a telos of humankind which in turn provides an ‘internal’ moral grounding for a proposed global biomedical bioethics. (shrink)

Sigmund Freud's 1905 Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality is a founding text of psychoanalysis and yet it remains to a large extent an "unknown" text. In this book Freud's 1905 theory of sexuality is reconstructed in its historical context, its systematic outline, and its actual relevance. This reconstruction reveals a non-oedipal theory of sexuality defined in terms of autoerotic, non-objectal, physical-pleasurable activities originating from the "drive" and the excitability of erogenous zones. This (...) book, consequently, not only calls for a reconsideration of the development of Freudian thinking and of the status of the Oedipus complex in psychoanalysis but also has a strong potential for supporting contemporary non-heteronormative theories of sexuality. It is as such that the 1905 edition of Three Essays becomes a highly relevant document in contemporary philosophical discussions of sexuality. This book also explores the inconsistencies and problems in the original theory of sexuality, notably the unresolved question of the transition from autoerotic infantile sexuality to objectal adult sexuality, as well as the theoretical and methodological shifts present in later editions of Three Essays. It will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and those with an academic interest in the history of psychoanalysis and sexuality. (shrink)

_Pragmatic Perspectives in Phenomenology_ offers a complex analysis of the pragmatic theses that are present in the works of leading phenomenological authors, including not only Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, as it is often the case within Hubert Dreyfus’ tradition, but also Husserl, Levinas, Scheler, and Patocka. Starting from a critical reassessment of existing pragmatic readings which draw especially on Heidegger’s account of Being-in-the-world, the volume’s chapters explore the following themes as possible justifications for speaking about the pragmatic turn in phenomenology: (...) the primacy of the practical over theoretical understanding, criticism of the representationalist account of perception and consciousness, and the analysis of language and truth within the context of social and cultural practices. Having thus analyzed the pragmatic readings of key phenomenological concepts, the book situates these readings in a larger historical and thematic context and introduces themes that until now have been overlooked in debates, including freedom, alterity, transcendence, normativity, distance, and self-knowledge. This volume seeks to refresh the debate about the phenomenological legacy and its relevance for contemporary thought by enlarging the thematic scope of pragmatic motives in phenomenology in new and revealing ways. It will be of interest to advanced students and scholars of phenomenology who are interested in moving beyond the analytic-continental divide to explore the relationship between practice and theory. (shrink)

Beyond the Pleasure Principle is Freud's most philosophical and speculative work, exploring profound questions of life and death, pleasure and pain. In it Freud introduces the fundamental concepts of the "repetition compulsion" and the "death drive," according to which a perverse, repetitive, self-destructive impulse opposes and even trumps the creative drive, or Eros. The work is one of Freud's most intensely debated, and raises important questions that have been discussed by philosophers and psychoanalysts since its first publication in (...) 1920. The text is presented here in a contemporary new translation by Gregory C. Richter. Appendices trace the work's antecedents and the many responses to it, including texts by Plato, Friedrich Nietzsche, Melanie Klein, Herbert Marcuse, Jacques Derrida, and Judith Butler, among many others. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Postmodern Assumptions of Philosophy of PsychiatryThe author reports no conflicts of interest.This paper makes claims for relevance of philosophy to psychopathology, as inspired in part by the work of Karl Jaspers. Yet there is no such thing as philosophy, in a general sense; there are philosophies, or as Jaspers would prefer, there is philosophizing (Ehrlich & George, 1994; Jaspers, 1951). Jaspers' approach to philosophy was akin to Freud's (...) approach to psychology: the goal was to make unconscious assumptions conscious. The unconscious assumption in the present paper is that there is such a thing as philosophy, which could then be useful for psychopathology. In effect, the author is probably meaning academic philosophy, or mainstream thinking in current philosophy of psychiatry. If that is the meaning, then Jaspers' question would be: What are the unconscious underlying assumptions of modern academic philosophy of psychiatry? The author's paper does not ask that question. But if we do, my answer would be that current mainstream philosophy of psychiatry has a basic worldview, another concept very central to Jaspers' thinking (Rindermann, 2021). Its worldview is postmodernist relativism about truth and skepticism about science, especially biology as applied to psychiatry. This unconscious assumption in modern philosophy of psychiatry is a major impediment in any benefits it might provide to psychiatry and psychopathology, as will be explained in the rest of this commentary.The paper refers to major depressive disorder (MDD) without appreciating that the term itself makes assumptions which the paper wishes to argue should be in the province of philosophy to analyze. The term MDD is not the same as depression, although the paper synonymizes the two. This synonym is an unanalyzed assumption, namely, that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) diagnostic system validly defines psychopathology. It clearly does not, for reasons that modern philosophy of psychiatry has not accurately analyzed (Ghaemi, 2014).About a decade ago, when DSM-5 was being developed, colleagues in the field of philosophy of psychiatry had worked for decades on psychiatric diagnosis, and there was initial hope that the time had come for an impact (Kendler et al., 2008). The leader of the prior edition of DSM was unhappy [End Page 17] with the fifth revision. A set of essays were published where philosophers and psychiatrists engaged the former DSM leader about psychiatric diagnosis (Frances, 2013). His response, with a somewhat derisive reference to "philosophyland," was eye opening to me. He explicitly stated that DSM revisions were not based on science or facts, but on "pragmatism," on the beliefs of DSM leaders about what was best for the profession or society. In short, it was admitted that DSM was a social construction, just as postmodern thinking had said about psychiatric diagnosis since Foucault. Yet this admission was made unconsciously; DSM leadership does not use that phrase, nor does it understand its conceptual foundations. Surprisingly to me, colleagues in the world of philosophy and psychiatry also failed to make the obvious connection, or if they did, they seemed to have little problem with it (Phillips et al., 2012). Social constructionism was their worldview too.In effect, philosophy of psychiatry had nothing to provide; it did not analyze or critique the philosophical worldview of DSM leadership; it shared that worldview and participated in it (Kendler, 2013).The result, in my view, is that mainstream philosophy of psychiatry has failed in the role which it could have played, the role of making the unconscious postmodern assumptions of psychiatry conscious, and criticizing those assumptions. Instead, it applauded them.My broader critique of mainstream philosophy of psychiatry gets played out in papers such as this one in relation to the DSM term MDD, which should be dropped because it is not a scientifically sound term; it has many conceptual and scientific falsehoods within it, which both a philosophical analysis and a scientific analysis would demonstrate.The term MDD was invented in the DSM-III process in the late 1970s to get votes for passage of that third revision by the American Psychiatric Association in 1980 (Decker, 2013). It literally was a social construction. To the extent that it had any scientific basis, it had its roots in the... (shrink)

Conrad Hal Waddington was a British developmental biologist who mainly worked in Cambridge and Edinburgh, but spent the late 1930s with Morgan in California learning about Drosophila. He was the first person to realize that development depended on the then unknown activities of genes, and he needed an appropriate model organism. His major experimental contributions were to show how mutation analysis could be used to investigate developmental mechanisms in Drosophila, and to explore how developmental mutation could drive evolution, his other (...) deep interest. Waddington was, however, predominantly a thinker, and set out to provide a coherent framework for understanding the genetic bases of embryogenesis and evolution, developing his ideas in many books. Perhaps his best-known concept is the epigenetic landscape: here a ball rolls down a complex valley, making path choices. The rolling ball represents a cell’s development over time, while the topography represents the changing regulatory environment that controls these choices. In its later forms, the role of each feature in the landscape was controlled by the effects of sets of interacting genes, an idea underpinning contemporary approaches to systems biology. Waddington was the first developmental geneticist and probably the most important developmental biologist of the pre-molecular age. (shrink)

"This book explores the religious underpinnings of psychoanalysis and examines how the tenets of Judaism and Christianity specifically influenced the theories and practices of Freud and Jung, respectively. It demonstrates that secular psychoanalysis is in large measure a revision of religious principles contained within the Judeo-Christian ethic and questions whether Freud's and Jung's approaches may best be suited to the psychological configurations of their fellow religionists." -- Back cover.

There has been considerable work in bioethics addressing injustice and gender oppression in the provision of healthcare services, in the interaction between client and healthcare professional, and in allocation of healthcare services within a particular hospital or health service. There remain several sites of continued injustice that can only be addressed adequately from a broader analytical perspective, one that attends to the social and political contexts framing healthcare policy and practice. Feminist bioethicists have a strong track record in (...) providing this kind of analysis. Using current Australian aged care and welfare policy this paper demonstrates some of the ways in which issues of gender, age, and social inequity shape bioethical debate, policy, and practice in the areas of aged care and welfare provision. The author develops an argument that demonstrates the gender injustice underlying health care and welfare policy. This argument recognises the inevitability of human dependency relations, and questions the adequacy of current political theories to address the requirements for full and equal citizenship. The author shows that an adequate analysis of the ethics of aged healthcare depends on sufficient consideration of the social and political context within which healthcare policy is framed and an adequate understanding of human dependency. (shrink)

Freud completed his last book, on Moses and Monotheism, in 1939, while in his London exile. Its publication was deemed untimely, as its two main theses could be construed as a form of Jewish self-hatred. The first claim questions Moses’ Jewish origins and contends that the founder of the Jews was in fact an Egyptian; the second suggests that the Jews killed Moses and then created his myth as a coping mechanism for concealing their terrible deed. In this article, I (...) contend that Moses and Monotheism can be read as Freud’s intervention in debates on the ‘Jewish Question’. After revisiting Freud’s original argument (I), I assess its reception among leading Jewish intellectuals of the 20th century (II). I then use Freud’s arguments to look at the two key themes of the Jewish Question: understanding the defining features of Jewish identity (III) and the pervasiveness of antisemitism in Western culture (IV). (shrink)

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, declared that religion is a universal obsessional neurosis in his famous work of 1927, The Future of an Illusion. This work provoked immediate controversy and has continued to be an important reference for anyone interested in the intersection of philosophy, psychology, religion, and culture. Included in this volume is Oskar Pfister's critical engagement with Freud's views on religion. Pfister, a Swiss pastor and lay analyst, defends mature religion from Freud's "scientism." (...) class='Hi'>Freud's and Pfister's texts have been updated in Gregory C. Richter's translations from the original German. (shrink)

Feminist theory is a central strand of cultural studies. This book explores the history of feminist cultural studies from the early work of Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, through the 1970s Women's Liberation Movement. It also provides a comprehensive introduction to the contemporary key approaches, theories and debates of feminist theory within cultural studies, offering a major re-mapping of the field. It will be an essential text for students taking (...) courses within both cultural studies and women's studies departments. (shrink)

Despite the ubiquity of “levels of organization” in the scientific literature, a nascent “levels skepticism” now claims that the concept of levels is an inherently flawed, misleading, or otherwise inadequate notion for understanding how life scientists produce knowledge about the natural world. However, levels skeptics rely on the maligned “layer-cake” account of levels stemming from Oppenheim and Putnam’s defense of the unity of science for their critical commentary. Recourse to layer-cake levels is understandable, as it is arguably the default (...) conception of levels in philosophy. However, relying on this conception of levels undermines the initial plausibility of general dismissals of the concept, because the problems skeptics identify within the “basic idea” of the concept “levels” are merely ones already widely acknowledged in this conception. I illustrate this “guilt by association” by looking at the embedded role of “levels” in articulating intertheoretical reductionism during the latter part of the 20th century. I conclude by suggesting a methodological framework focusing on local usage patterns as a promising means for future analysis of the levels concept. (shrink)

Theoretical paradigms, the frameworks within which thinking occurs, never capture the complexity of reality and are necessarily selective. Factors most important to understanding the phenomenon in question will be included and explained in a coherent, meaningful manner. But facts and ideas inconsistent with underlying assumptions may then appear less plausible, and, indeed, may be systematically overlooked or ignored. Health-related paradigms have practical importance because they influence what counts as a fact, what theories appear plausible and important, what research (...) questions should be pursued, and, therefore, what health-care interventions make sense. They also contain implicit underlying ideas about .. (shrink)

The book stands somewhat apart from the rest of Freud's writings as a study of normal, rather than pathological psychology, and, although it contains the most closely reasoned accounts of complicated psychological processes that Freud ever gave, it remains one of his most readable works. It includes a rich collection of jokes, particularly those of Jewish folk tradition, in which Freud clearly revelled.