Within anthropology, as elsewhere in the human sciences, there is a tendency to divide knowledge making into two separate poles: conceptual (theory) vs. empirical (ethnography). In Theory Can Be More than It Used to Be, Dominic Boyer, James D. Faubion, and George E. Marcus argue that we need to take a step back from the assumption that we know what theory is to investigate how theory—a matter of concepts, of analytic practice, of medium of value, of professional ideology—operates (...) in anthropology and related fields today. They have assembled a distinguished group of scholars to diagnose the state of the theory-ethnography divide in anthropology today and to explore alternative modes of analytical and pedagogical practice. Continuing the methodological insights provided in Fieldwork Is Not What It Used to Be, the contributors to this volume find that now is an optimal time to reflect on the status of theory in relation to ethnographic research in anthropology and kindred disciplines. Together they engage with questions such as, What passes for theory in anthropology and the human sciences today and why? What is theory's relation to ethnography? How are students trained to identify and respect anthropological theorization and how do they practice theoretical work in their later career stages? What theoretical experiments, languages, and institutions are available to the human sciences? Throughout, the editors and authors consider theory in practical terms, rather than as an amorphous set of ideas, an esoteric discourse of power, a norm of intellectual life, or an infinitely contestable canon of texts. A short editorial afterword explores alternative ethics and institutions of pedagogy and training in theory. Contributors: Andrea Ballestero, Rice University; Dominic Boyer, Rice University; Lisa Breglia, George Mason University; Jessica Marie Falcone, Kansas State University; James D. Faubion, Rice University; Kim Fortun, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Andreas Glaeser, University of Chicago; Cymene Howe, Rice University; Jamer Hunt, Parsons The New School for Design and the Institute of Design in Umea, Sweden; George E. Marcus, University of California, Irvine; Townsend Middleton, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Deepa S. Reddy, University of Houston–Clear Lake; Kaushik Sunder Rajan, University of Chicago. (shrink)

Mitchell et al. contend that there is no need to posit a contribution based on the formation of associative links to human learning. In order to sustain this argument, they have ignored evidence which is difficult to explain with propositional accounts; and they have mischaracterised the evidence they do cite by neglecting features of these experiments that contradict a propositional account.

In this chapter, the author finds problematic the distinction between “public philosophy” and philosophy done within the classroom or within academia, especially where this distinction implies an incommensurable difference, a pure separation, a clean break. The “public” is always already operative within the academically cloistered spaces of the classroom, and philosophical thinking is always already occurring outside the walls of academia. Philosophy is more than engaging in abstract thought experiments. The irony is that Euro‐American philosophical domination and canon formation take (...) place within the context of white hegemony and racist terrorism, the enslavement and brutalization of Black bodies, and the history of white colonialism. Philosophically engaging such issues as, say, whiteness, is not an add‐on to a syllabus that is otherwise raceless. Warren understands the importance of active racial coalition‐building but reminds progressive and liberal whites that white racism is always insidiously operating in their lives. (shrink)

Quelle que fut la puissance avec laquelle Hegel concentrait par la pensee le monde phenomenal, il lui etait impossible cependant dans le cours d'un semestre de dominer entierement l'inepuisable matiere de l'histoire. [...] Son premier expose de l'hiver 1822-23 avait principalement pour fin l'evolution du concept de philosophie et voulait montrer comment celui-ci constitue en fait le fond de l'histoire [...]. La Chine et l'Inde n'etaient que des exemples pour montrer de quelle maniere on comprend philosophiquement un caractere national [...]. (...) Mais, c'est avec predilection qu'il s'arretait aux Grecs pour lesquels il conservait toujours un enthousiasme juvenil; et apres avoir brievement considere le monde romain, il cherchait enfin a ramasser en un petit nombre de lecons le moyen-age et les temps modernes, car [...] la ou dans le monde chretien, la pensee ne demeure plus cachee dans la foule des phenomenes, mais s'annonce elle-meme et se revele dans l'histoire, la philosophie peut concentrer son expose, n'ayant qu'a indiquer l'idee motrice. [...] Chez Hegel, chacune de ses lecons constituait un acte nouveau de la pensee, chacune n'exprime par suite que la forme philosophique qui animait l'esprit a ce moment. (shrink)

Authority is an uneasy, political notion. Heard with modern ears, it calls forth images of oppression and power. In institutional settings, authority is everywhere present, and its use poses problems for the exercise both of individual autonomy and of responsibility. In medical ethics, the exercise of authority has been located on the side of the physician or the health care institution, and it has usually been opposed by appeal to patient autonomy and rights. So, it is not surprising, though still (...) ironic, that ethics consultation, which develops from this patient rights-dominated ethic, should itself bring forth questions of authority. Nonetheless, it does.Insofar as authority has been discussed in ethics consultations, it has been understandably approached from the broad perspective of legitimation and power, which are common themes in social and political treatments of authority. These treatments have dominated twentieth-century discussions of authority, which primarily view authority as legitimate power. (shrink)

Authority is an uneasy, political notion. Heard with modern ears, it calls forth images of oppression and power. In institutional settings, authority is everywhere present, and its use poses problems for the exercise both of individual autonomy and of responsibility. In medical ethics, the exercise of authority has been located on the side of the physician or the health care institution, and it has usually been opposed by appeal to patient autonomy and rights. So, it is not surprising, though still (...) ironic, that ethics consultation, which develops from this patient rights-dominated ethic, should itself bring forth questions of authority. Nonetheless, it does. Insofar as authority has been discussed in ethics consultations, it has been understandably approached from the broad perspective of legitimation and power, which are common themes in social and political treatments of authority. These treatments have dominated twentieth-century discussions of authority, which primarily view authority as legitimate power. (shrink)

Among the most influential parts of the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) were his ethics, his theory of the state, and his philosophy of history. The Philosophy of Right (Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts) (1821), the last work published in Hegel's lifetime, is a combined system of moral and political philosophy, or a sociology dominated by the idea of the state. Here Hegel repudiates his earlier assessment of the French Revolution as a "a marvelous sunrise" in the realization of liberty. (...) Rejecting the republican form of government, he espouses an idealized form of a constitutional monarchy, whose ultimate power rests with the sovereign. (shrink)

This article comprises a dialogue between two historians who have attempted, individually, to narrate the life of Lord George Gordon (1751 – 93), the Scottish prophet, revolutionary, and convert to Judaism. For modern cultural historians, Gordon's peregrinations between identities offer a kaleidoscopic view of Britain in the overlooked but crucial interstice between the upheavals of 1776 and 1789. Yet the partial nature of the evidence, the long omission of Gordon from the historiography of eighteenth-century Britain, and the complex, often (...) furtive nature of Gordon's activism create multiple ambiguities in his story. These ambiguities are compounded here by the authors' differing approaches. Marsha Keith Schuchard argues for a Gordon shaped by Scottish origins; Dominic Green, for a Gordon responding to English opportunities. They disagree over the likely date of Gordon's conversion to Judaism and, crucially, over whether he was a religious atavist or a Romantic pioneer. This dialogue is meant to illustrate the utility of a scholarship that acknowledges fuzziness rather than attempting to overclarify it. The article is also meant to show, however, that on the public stage fuzziness can be less benign: Gordon was a religious politician, who reworked his complexities and confusions into a violent, uncompromising critique of eighteenth-century British social order. (shrink)

The problematics of alienation have played a rather significant role in the discussions\nabout the sense and relevance of Marxism which have taken place in\nthe last twenty years. &dquo;Back to Marx&dquo; was at least one of the main slogans of\nthat ideological/intellectual movement, which evolved both in the East and\nWest from the mid-fifties and which is sometimes referred to as the trend of\n&dquo;humanist&dquo; Marxism. The idea of a &dquo;Marx-Renaissance&dquo; was undoubtedly\ndirected first of all against the completely petrified framework of institutionalized\nMarxism, turned into (...) a &dquo;religion of state&dquo; legitimating the domination\nof a bureaucratic apparatus over the population of East European societies.\nThe &dquo;rediscovery&dquo; and &dquo;rehabilitation&dquo; of the young Marx, the emphasis on\nthe continuity of his thought, meant not only a reintroduction of a number\nof categories, problems and ideas, which were thought fruitful in their critical\ninsight into contemporary conditions and which the impoverished and distorted\nversion of Marxism in official communist ideology (deliberately) failed\nto take into account: it also meant a global challenge to the appropriation of\nthe Marxian tradition by an apologetic ideology, which disguised its positivistic\ncontent through the form of an old-fashioned, dogmatic metaphysics; it\nwas an attempt to recover the critical/emancipatory meaning of this tradition\nwithin the realities of the twentieth century. It was in this context that the\nnotion of &dquo;alienation&dquo; again reappeared -- as a concept through which one\ncould articulate an attitude which was critical simultaneously of Western\ncapitalist and so-called &dquo;socialist&dquo; Eastern societies. Within the framework of\nEast European realities even the rather abstract character of this notion found\nin young Marx, was well suited to the theoretical vagueness and the practical\nlimitations of this new-found leftist criticism of home-societies. (shrink)

This book considers Karl Marx’s ideas in relation to the social and political context in which he lived and wrote. It emphasizes both the continuity of his commitment to the cause of full human emancipation, and the role of his critique of political economy in conceiving history to be the history of class struggles. The book follows his developing ideas from before he encountered political economy, through the politics of 1848 and the Bonapartist “farce,”, the maturation of the critique of (...) political economy in the Grundrisse and Capital, and his engagement with the politics of the First International and the legacy of the Paris Commune. Notwithstanding errors in historical judgment largely reflecting the influence of dominant liberal historiography, Marx laid the foundations for a new social theory premised upon the historical consequences of alienation and the potential for human freedom. (shrink)

This is my translation of Gadamer's 1990 lecture "The Diversity of Languages and Understanding of the World." "In his lecture, Gadamer presents his views of language and world in a distinctively hermeneutical key. For example, he emphasizes language as that which 'belongs to conversation.' That is, language as conversation helps to bring about understanding and involves the play of dialogical exchange. 'Language is not proposition and judgment; rather, it is what it is, only when it is question and answer.' Language (...) involves another; it is on-the-way [unterwegs] to another. In fact, when addressing his question—what does world mean—Gadamer clarifies that humans and world are intimately connected; the world is that in which we are 'in the midst' and 'understanding is understanding oneself in the world.' But we are also in-the-world with others, and understanding ourselves in the world, means to understand ourselves with others. Gadamer goes so far as to say that our self-understanding as achieved in relation to others, as well as our understanding of others, should be taken in a moral and political sense. That is, the other is not there as merely a means to our ends or to exploit. Rather, 'the other indicates a principal limit to our self-love and self-centeredness. This is a general moral problem. It is also a political problem.' He goes on to emphasize the difficult task of achieving genuine solidarity with those from different cultures. Such a task requires language as conversation, the back-and-forth of dialogical exchange in which we come to understand the other and the other comes to understand us. Again and again, Gadamer underscores the task that each of has in light of our pluralistic world “to learn to bridge and reconcile the distances and differences between us and that means that we respect, look after, care for the other, and give one other a new hearing.” In contrast with the story of the Tower of Babel in which the people sought a pseudo-unity or 'oneness' driven by a will to dominate, Gadamer embraces both cultural and linguistic diversity and warns against reducing these multiple horizons 'by any special contrivance of unity [Einheitsmechanik].' He encourages us to seek out the open spaces that arise in our interactions with one another, to resist the levelling of language that information technology tends toward, and to 'cultivate language in its most distinctive possibilities.' In our present age of disinformation warfare, which threatens democracies worldwide and is a direct challenge to truth and the possibility of a meaningful dialogue with others, we would do well to linger with Gadamer’s hermeneutical and ethical insights and contemplate how we might bring these insights to bear on the global and political crises that we face today—Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, our climate catastrophe, and ever new forms of technical sophistry and disinformation that seek to erode our trust in truth, reality, and language itself.". (shrink)

Why does scholarship on transnational labor regulation (TLR) consistently fails to search for improvements in working conditions, and instead devotes itself to relentless efforts for identifying administrative processes, semantics, and amalgamations of stakeholders? This article critiques TLR from a pro-worker perspective, through the philosophical work of Georg Lukács, and the concepts of reification and commodification. A set of theoretically grounded criteria is developed and these are applied against selected contemporary cases of TLR. In the totality that is capitalism, reification of (...) social relations of production conceals completely the experiences of workers. In TLR, managerialist and process-oriented scholarship is dominant, verifiable outcomes and positive improvements in conditions of employment are not sought, and worse, meaningless procedures are celebrated as positive achievements. (shrink)

Current psychological research on causal inference is dominated by two basic approaches: the covariation approach and the mechanism approach. This article reviews these two approaches, evaluates the contributions and limitations of each approach, and suggests how these approaches might be integrated into a more comprehensive framework. Covariation theorists assume that cognizers infer causal relations from conditional probabilities computed over samples of multiple events, but they do not provide an adequate account of how cognizers constrain their search for candidate causes and (...) relevant evidence. Mechanism theorists assume that cognizers use their knowledge of potential mechanisms to infer the causes of individual events, but they do not account for the origins of this kind of knowledge. Theorists might integrate these approaches into a framework that overcomes these limitations by (1) examining important relations between cognizers' beliefs about the nature of causality, the logic of causal inference, and the processes cognizers use to make causal inferences, and (2) providing a more complete account of cognizers' conceptions of causality and the origins of those conceptions. (shrink)

At the time when existentialism was a dominant intellectual and cultural force, a number of commentators observed that some of the language of existential philosophy, not least its interpretation of human existence in terms of nothingness, evoked the language of so-called mystical writers. This book takes on this observation and explores the evidence for the influence of mysticism on the philosophy of existentialism. It begins by delving into definitions of mysticism and existentialism and then traces the elements of mysticism present (...) in German and French thought during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book goes on to make original contributions to the study of figures including Kierkegaard, Buber, Heidegger, Beauvoir, Sartre, Marcel, Camus, Weil, Bataille, Berdyaev, and Tillich, linking their existentialist philosophy back to some of the key concerns of the mystical tradition. Providing a unique insight into how these two areas have overlapped and interacted, this study is vital reading for any academic with an interest in twentieth-century philosophy, theology, and religious studies. (shrink)

CHAPTER TITLE AND SUBJECT OF THIS BOOK The words Dominations and Powers, here taken for a title, are not meant to be synonymous and the reduplication ...

Since the dawn of Romanticism, artists and intellectuals in Germany have maintained an abiding interest in the gods and myths of antiquity while calling for a new mythology suitable to the modern age. In this study, George S. Williamson examines the factors that gave rise to this distinct and profound longing for myth. In doing so, he demonstrates the entanglement of aesthetic and philosophical ambitions in Germany with some of the major religious conflicts of the nineteenth century. Through readings (...) of key intellectuals ranging from Herder and Schelling to Wagner and Nietzsche, Williamson highlights three crucial factors in the emergence of the German engagement with myth: the tradition of Philhellenist neohumanism, a critique of contemporary aesthetic and public life as dominated by private interests, and a rejection of the Bible by many Protestant scholars as the product of a foreign, "Oriental" culture. According to Williamson, the discourse on myth in Germany remained bound up with problems of Protestant theology and confessional conflict through the nineteenth century and beyond. A compelling adventure in intellectual history, this study uncovers the foundations of Germany's fascination with myth and its enduring cultural legacy. (shrink)

The concept of suture has long been an important and controversial concept in investigations of the relationships between narrative, diegesis, character, and spectator. The dominant understanding of suture has paid more attention to its Lacanian derivation – and to the account given by Daniel Dayan – than to the work of Jean-Pierre Oudart which first introduced suture into Film Studies. This article, however, follows the recent work of George Butte, who argues that the way Oudart understands suture is very (...) illuminating for the study of the complex forms of intersubjectivity that cinema so readily, and so richly, dramatises – famously by means of shot/reverse shot figures. It argues that certain key moments in Ridley Scott's Alien activate ideas of corporeality, desire, and intersubjectivity in ways that contribute to a wider thematic and figurative nexus at work in the film directed at the exploration of impossible intersubjectivities. The article also proposes that, via this nexus, the film offers an intriguing instantiation of Nietzsche's notion of the “human, all too human”, thereby demonstrating that there is much more in Nietzsche of relevance to Alien than the xenomorph's superhuman “will-to-power”. The android Ash's admiration for the alien's lack both of conscience and consciousness ironically indicates his own all-too-human recognition of the superfluity but inescapability of his own consciousness. The article concludes by drawing briefly on the work of Stanley Cavell on acknowledgment, proposing that much of the horror of Alien lies not only in how bodies are ruptured but in the fact that some subjectivities cannot even be sutured. (shrink)

The so-called person?situation debate in psychology, which pits internal, personality-based explanations of behavior against external, environment or situation-based explanations seems headed for a resolution that will somehow include elements of both perspectives. These two alternative views of human behavior have also been applied to that subset of human behavior thought of as leadership, and in this domain a rapprochement also seems well underway. In the domain of ethical leadership, however, especially as applied to military misconduct, public discussion of such events (...) is dominated by strictly situation-based explanations, while institutional developments within the military are showing signs of integration, paralleling developments in the broader academic domain. The public discussion of such events thus lags behind the approach to ethical conduct in war taken by the military, which increasingly integrates personal and situational factors in the moral and ethical development of soldiers and leaders. Potential consequences of overreliance on situationist approaches to military ethics are discussed. (shrink)

Physics and chemistry underlie the nature of all the world around us, including human brains. Consequently some suggest that in causal terms, physics is all there is. However, we live in an environment dominated by objects embodying the outcomes of intentional design (buildings, computers, teaspoons). The present day subject of physics has nothing to say about the intentionality resulting in existence of such objects, even though this intentionality is clearly causally effective. This paper examines the claim that the underlying physics (...) uniquely causally determines what happens, even though we cannot predict the outcome. It suggests that what occurs is the contextual emergence of complexity: the higher levels in the hierarchy of complexity have autonomous causal powers, functionally independent of lower level processes. This is possible because top-down causation takes place as well as bottom-up action, with higher level contexts determining the outcome of lower level functioning and even modifying the nature of lower level constituents. Stored information plays a key role, resulting in non-linear dynamics that is non-local in space and time. Brain functioning is causally affected by abstractions such as the value of money and the theory of the laser. These are realised as brain states in individuals, but are not equivalent to them. Consequently physics per se cannot causally determine the outcome of human creativity, rather it creates the possibility space allowing human intelligence to function autonomously. The challenge to physics is to develop a realistic description of causality in truly complex hierarchical structures, with top-down causation and memory effects allowing autonomous higher levels of order to emerge with genuine causal powers. (shrink)

Everyone has felt those tingling, tickly sensations occurring spontaneously all over the body in the absence of stimuli. But does anyone know where they come from? Here, right-handed subjects were asked to focus on one hand while looking at it and while looking away and subsequently to map and describe the spatial and qualitative attributes of sensations arising spontaneously. The spatial distribution of spontaneous sensations followed a proximo-distal gradient, similar to the one previously described for the density of receptive units. (...) The intensity and spatial extent of the reported sensations were modulated by the focusing condition, especially in respect of the left hand. Convergent focusing acted upon the conscious perception of sensations by enhancing or suppressing them. To our knowledge, this is the first ever study of spontaneous sensations, and it offers considerable insight into their sources. The presence of the proximo-distal distributional gradient is a clear sign that receptive units are involved. The enhancement/suppression effects also confirm the involvement of attention. Finally, left-hand dominance suggests several right-hemisphere processes may be involved, such as spatial and tactile perception, and probably interoception. (shrink)

This essay argues that important critical and political perspective can be gained on Deleuze's famous essay, ‘Bartleby; or, The Formula’ by viewing it as an attempt to move beyond the Sartrean framework of ‘bad faith’. The argument comprises four sections. In section one, I contextualise Deleuze's essay in terms of contrasting readings of Bartleby, from a prior account by Georges Perec, to contemporary accounts indebted to Deleuze, from Hardt and Negri's Empire to Gisèle Berkman's recent L'Effet Bartleby. The argument of (...) this section is that a problematically reductive image of Bartleby has emerged in the wake of Deleuze's essay, but that this can be challenged in favour of a more nuanced and politically significant reading by contextualising the essay as an attempt to overcome bad faith. In section two, I develop this by drawing out the nature and relevance of the threat posed by bad faith through a focus on Sartrean, Deleuzian and Badioucan critiques of Bartleby, before arguing, in section three, that attention to the concept of a ‘logic of presuppositions’ developed in Deleuze's essay shows how bad faith can be overcome. These sections all build towards the fourth and longest section, which draws out the wider political significance of what it means to overcome bad faith. To do so, I pay attention to how logics of presupposition function in Bartleby's story, and consider Deleuze's essay in relation to his work on ‘control societies’ and ‘collective assemblages of enunciation’. (shrink)

1735 veröffentlichte Johann Georg Zur Linden in Jena die "Ratio meditationis hermeneuticae imprimis sacrae methodo systematica proposita". Sein Werk ist das Resultat eines unerwarteten Bündnisses zwischen der wolffschen Aufklärung und dem Pietismus nach dem harten Zusammenstoß dieser beiden Richtungen, der seinen Höhepunkt in der Verbannung Wolffs aus Halle fand. In den folgenden Jahren trat eine neue kulturelle Figur in Erscheinung, der Aufklärer-Pietist oder umgekehrt, der die Hoch- und Spätaufklärung beherrschte und zu dessen ersten Repräsentanten Zur Linden zählt. Obgleich die Ratio (...) von den Vorschriften der logischen Hermeneutik ausgeht, beruht sie auf einer Aufwertung der Themen der antiken Rhetorik und konzipiert die Hermeneutik als eine auf die Mittel-Zweck-Rationalität gestützte Technik, der die Aufgabe zukommt, die besten Mittel für das Verstehen von Texten und Reden festzulegen. Die heilige Hermeneutik von Zur Linden zeichnet sich durch wenigstens vier innovative Aspekte aus: 1. Den Vorschlag einer allgemeinen Hermeneutik probabilistischer Art. 2. Eine eingehende Untersuchung der verschiedenen Sinnbegriffe und ihrer Wechselbeziehungen. 3. Die Kritik am Besserverstehen als Auslegungsziel. Die kritischen Punkte des Textes dürfen nicht zugunsten seiner Nichtwidersprüchlichkeit ausgemerzt werden, weil jede Verbesserung leicht in eine Manipulation des Sinns ausarten kann. 4. Die mögliche Nichtübereinstimmung zwischen dem, was der Autor sagen will, und dem, was er tatsächlich sagt. Für Zur Linden hat der Textsinn unzweifelhaft Vorrang und bildet den einzigen möglichen Zugang zum Autorsinn. Seine autorbezogene Texthermeneutik stellt sich noch heute als originelle, beachtenswerte Leistung dar. In 1735 Johann Georg Zur Linden published his "Ratio meditationis hermeneuticae imprimis sacrae methodo systematica proposita" in Jena. His work was the result of an unexpected alliance between the Wolffian Enlightenment and Pietism, after the fierce clash between these two trends which had culminated in Wolff’s banishment from Halle. In the years that followed a new cultural figure appeared, the Enlightener-Pietist, or vice versa, who was to dominate the high and late Enlightenment and of whom Zur Linden was one of the first examples. Although the Ratio takes as its starting-point the rules of logical hermeneutics, it is based in an evaluation of the themes of classical rhetoric, and conceives hermeneutics as a technique, grounded in means-end rationality, the task of which is to determine the best method for understanding texts and speech. Zur Linden’s sacred hermeneutic theory is distinguished by at least four innovative aspects: 1. The proposal of a general hermeneutics of a probabilistic type. 2. An intensive examination of the different concepts of sense and their interrelationships. 3. The critique of better understanding as the goal of exegesis. The critical points of the text should not be obliterated in favour of its consistency. 4. The possible lack of agreement between what the author intends to say and what he actually says. For Zur Linden the sense of the text takes undoubted precedence and constitutes the only possible access to the author’s sense. His author-related textual hermeneutics can still be seen today as an original and noteworthy achievement. (shrink)

This article starts by identifying the phenomena that Hume thought to explain the need, hence utility, of a rudimentary system of property. Then, and prominently, it considers Hume’s arguments for believing that only a system of private property is justifiable. Hume argues that only in a society with adequate but not absolute abundance and altruism does property have a point or purpose. Property’s basic job, then, is that of addressing conflict and disagreement among persons of limited altruism and means, and (...) so property’s primary purpose is regulative and adjudicative. This point is not disturbed by fluctuations in altruism or the extent of abundance that might result from differing social arrangements. Thus Hume’s explanation of property is logically separable from the question of what kind of system of ownership is justifiable. This raises the central topic of the paper: Does Hume provide arguments showing not only that a system of private property is justifiable but that only such a system will suffice to avoid a condition of chaos and savagery? As argued here, while Hume’s arguments to this conclusion repay careful consideration, they fail and to show that only a system of ownership dominated by private property is justifiable. (shrink)

The role of metaphysics in critique stands as a defining issue for the Frankfurt School theorists. Max Horkheimer himself claims that metaphysics serves as an instrument of domination, leading him to develop an interdisciplinary mate- rialism as a postmetaphysical alternative. Critics such as Georg Lohmann con- tend, however, that Horkheimer’s critique of instrumental reason is aporetic insofar as it undermines all metaphysical claims while implicitly making them. Since Horkheimer narrowly equates metaphysics with identity thinking, this article argues that his appeal (...) to nonidentity thinking as the foundation for critique is better understood as a form of antimetaphysics. This, however, leaves Horkheimer no better situated, since antimetaphysics remains a variant of metaphysics. While Horkheimer reproduces the techniques of domination he sought to avoid, this lapse into metaphysics warns of the difficult path that postmetaphysical thinking must navigate between the antipodes of metaphys- ical and antimetaphysical positions. (shrink)

The modern idea of emancipation is linked to the goal of overcoming dependencies and domination. However, as argued in the article, negative dialectics of emancipation must also be problematized. The project of emancipation, as it was formulated in the Age of Enlightenment, was often particular and was associated with the establishment of new forms of domination. Especially the project of liberation from the constraints of nature through technical development led to the domination of nature. In view of the ecological crisis, (...) the dark side of this project is becoming apparent today. The ecological base of human development is at risk. It is therefore necessary to pursue the idea of a reflexive emancipation, which also takes nature into account in order to enable a sustainable technology development. Emancipatory Technology Studies should therefore support an emancipatory technology policy which promotes a positive dialectical movement that overcomes the contrast between submission to nature and technical mastery of nature. (shrink)

The dominant school of logic, semantics, and the foundation of mathematics construct its theories within the framework of set theory. There are three strategies by means of which a member of this school might attempt to justify his ontology of sets. One strategy is to show that sets are already included in the naturalistic part of our everyday ontology. If they are, then one may assume that whatever justifies the everyday ontology justifies the ontology of sets. Another strategy is to (...) show that set theory is already part of logic. In this case, the ontology of sets would be justified in the sam way logic is justified. The third strategy is to show that set theory plays some unique role in theoretical work. If it does, then its ontology would be justified pragmatically. In this paper it is shown that none of these strategies is successful. One properly constructs foundations, not within set theory. bit within an intensional logic that takes properties, relations, propositions as basic. (shrink)

These few pages will attempt to analyze the relationships created in the chronically delirious person between himself and his own biography, such as he knows and has experienced it, to which he attaches himself and which dominates him without his knowing it. A few remarks to clarify our vocabulary before getting into the development of this question. We prefer the expression “chronic deliria“, in the plural, to the word “psychosis”, used in the singular. The former term is clinical, and therefore (...) empirical, whereas the second derives from theories; and, especially, the former does not immediately imply a unity of process as opposed to the effective diversity of semiotic appearances. Moreover, the nominal adjective “psychotic“ runs the risk of both clandestinely bringing in hidden presuppositions and of re-establishing the old presumed unity with mental alienation, which had, indeed, been exorcised by J. P. Falret by the middle of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

Among the most influential parts of the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) were his ethics, his theory of the state, and his philosophy of history. The Philosophy of Right (Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts) (1821), the last work published in Hegel's lifetime, is a combined system of moral and political philosophy, or a sociology dominated by the idea of the state. Here Hegel repudiates his earlier assessment of the French Revolution as a "a marvelous sunrise" in the realization of liberty. (...) Rejecting the republican form of government, he espouses an idealized form of a constitutional monarchy, whose ultimate power rests with the sovereign. (shrink)

Since Ranke, German historiography has been dominated by historicism. History defies conceptualism and systematic analysis; it requires empathetic understanding of the individualities which compose history, a narrative account of the intentions and actions of great individuals and states. Value judgments are to be suspended; military power and foreign policy are stressed. Defeat in World War I had little impact on German historical scholarship. Hintze's attempts at structural analysis and Kehr's efforts to study foreign policy within the framework of domestic history (...) met opposition. Traditional methodological and political assumptions remained important after 1945 in the work of G. Ritter, H. Rothfels, and others; at the same time these assumptions were increasingly questioned by a new generation of historians committed to democratic values who sought to integrate the methods of political science, sociology, and economics with those of history. (shrink)

Wang Yangming (1472-1529) and his School of Mind dominated the intellectual world of sixteenth-century Ming China (1368-1644), and his Confucian philosophy has since remained an essential component of East Asian philosophical discourse. Yet, the volume of publications on him in the Western-language literature has consistently paled in comparison to the volume of scholarship on classical Chinese philosophy, modern Chinese philosophy, Buddhism, and Daoism. Studying Wang Yangming: History of a Sinological Field explains the history of writing in the West about the (...) famed Ming dynasty scholar-official. From eighteenth-century French Jesuit books to English-language publications in 2020, this book provides a historical overview and summary of a literature published by scholars attempting to grapple with one of the most influential Confucians in the history of China, East Asia, and the world. (shrink)

In the United States people of Middle Eastern descent are legally/politically categorized as white, but in social encounters and popular representations Middle Eastern people are treated as a nonwhite inferior collective. In the absence of explicit systemic recognition through a protected class status, Middle Eastern Americans are not just vulnerable to the social-systemic violence that accompanies racialization; that violence is being tacitly permitted. I address this problem by describing the historical and political conditions that afford this racialization in the United (...) States. I argue that the racialization of Middle Easterners, best understood from a historical perspective, is rooted in the repetitive treatment of certain peoples as objects of war to be degraded, exploited, dominated, and destroyed. To be treated as inferior and disposable is a general function of racism, which is afforded by racialization; but, the historical conditions of the mistreatment of Middle Eastern peoples create a unique set of problems and tensions that assign specific meanings which must be addressed in combating racism. Included among these tensions is a problematic narrative that claims Middle Eastern peoples are an almost naturally warlike and thus fragmented collective. The problem of disunity results from being created and treated as objects of war. Thus, social recognition, or solidarity, is needed along with systemic recognition. As a more effective means of countering the repetitious practices of subjugation, I plea for a solidarity among Middle Eastern Americans in response to Orientalist-racist scripts that claim disunity and war are the preferred condition of Middle Eastern peoples. (shrink)

… power is never uni dimensional; it is exercised not only as a mode of domination, but also as an act of resistance or even as an expression of a creative mode of cultural and social production outside the immediate force of domination.The point is important in that the behavior expressed by subordinate groups cannot be reduced to a study of domination or resistance.Clearly, in the behavior of subordinate groups there are moments of cultural and creative expression that are informed (...) by a different logic, whether it be existential, religious, or otherwise.Our faith is ultimately in individuals and their potentialities.In saying this, I do not mean what is sometimes called individualism as opposed to association.I mean rather an individuality that operates in and through voluntary associations.If our outward scene is one of externally imposed organization, behind and beneath there is working the force of liberated individualities, experimenting in their own ways to find and realize their own ends.The testimony of history is that in the end such a force, however scattered and inchoate, ultimately prevails over all set institutionalized forms, however firmly established the latter may be. (shrink)

The essay is a critical revision of various of Marx’s approaches in his analysis of capitalism in “Das Kapital”. One can distinguish immanent, normative critiques from transcendental and objectivistic ones. The review of the normative standards used in each case leads to the questions of how Marx determined and used the relationships of justice and law and the capitalist mode of production. Orthodox Marxist views (most recently C. Menke) claim that Marx did not criticise capital as unjust and understood the (...) law of capital only as private law that stabilised domination. Against this, it is shown that he certainly bases his “critical presentation” on an (almost Kantian) constitutional (“rechtsstaatliches”) concept of private law and public law. Thus the “popular prejudice” of “human equality”, defined by Marx as an epochal and systematic condition of the capitalist exchange of goods, becomes apparent as a covert reference to the historical (America, French Revolution),public-lawdeclarations of human rights. And in the chapter “Struggle for the length of the working day” Marx presents the decisions of this dispute between “equal rights” first and foremost in the systematic historical actions of the constitutional powers (legislature, executive and judiciary). At the same time, however, he attempts to ironise and defame this public-law and deliberative, democratic dispute and then to misinterpret it as a violent “civil war”. Because Marx in his further presentation ignores this legal-democratic dispute, including a potential human-rights critique and (possible!) future regulation of capitalism, focussing instead on objectivist concepts of history and development, he can only insufficiently grasp the still challenging relationship between democracy and capitalism. (shrink)

Here we propose a new theory for the origins and evolution of human warfare as a complex social phenomenon involving several behavioral traits, including aggression, risk taking, male bonding, ingroup altruism, outgroup xenophobia, dominance and subordination, and territoriality, all of which are encoded in the human genome. Among the family of great apes only chimpanzees and humans engage in war; consequently, warfare emerged in their immediate common ancestor that lived in patrilocal groups who fought one another for females. The reasons (...) for warfare changed when the common ancestor females began to immigrate into the groups of their choice, and again, during the agricultural revolution. (shrink)

We live in an age when the dominant technologically utilitarian worldview is undergoing a transformation. To increase our awareness of this change, Turning Toward Technology introduces readers to the possibility of an alternative technological worldview by examining foundational concepts to Asian thought. The early Eastern philosophical treatment of technology was not ethical, but ontological, exhibiting sensitivity to how human existence was defined and determined in its relation to technology and to reality as a whole. Within the Eastern cultural orientation, technological (...) development was guided by a singular aesthetic sensibility to the useful, the good, the beautiful, the true, and the holy. Instead of controlling the shape of future technology by systems of rational management, George Teschner and Alessandro Tomasi recommend a view of technology that arises from questioning fundamental assumptions within Western culture about knowledge, reality, and human nature. Turning Toward Technology aims to stimulate awareness of an alternative technological paradigm, and thus a different mode of social action that can establish an optimistic future for global civilization. (shrink)

Purpose – This paper furnishes an inaugural reading of abjective consumption by drawing on Kristeva’s psychoanalytic theory of abjection within the wider terrain of consumer cultural research. It offers a conceptual framework that rests on three pillars, viz. irrationality, meaninglessness, dissolution of selfhood. Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative research design that adopts a documentary ethnographic approach, by drawing on a corpus of 50 documentary episodes from the TV series “My Strange Addiction” and “Freaky Eaters”. Findings – The findings from this analysis point (...) to different orders of mediatized discourse that are simultaneously operative in different actors’ frames (e.g. moralizing, medical), in Goffman’s terms, yet none of which attains to address the phenomenon of abjective consumption to its fullblown extent. Research limitations/implications – Although some degree of bias is bound to be inherent in the data because of their pre-recorded status, they are particularly useful not in the least because this is a “difficult sample” in qualitative methodological terms. Practical implications – The multi-order dimensionalization of abjective consumption opens up new vistas to marketers in terms of adding novel dimensions to the message structure of their communicative programs, in line with the three Lacanian orders. Social implications – The adoption of a consumer psychoanalytic perspective allows significant others to fully dimensionalize the behavior of abjective consumption subjects, by becoming sensitive to other than symbolic aspects that are endemic in consumer behavior. Originality/value – This paper contributes to the extant consumer cultural research literature by furnishing the novel conceptual framework of abjective consumption, as a further elaboration of my consumer psychoanalytic approach to jouissance consumption, as well as by contrasting this interpretive frame vis-à-vis dominant discursive regimes. (shrink)

The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Bio-medical and Behavioral Research ended its work by substantially endorsing the status quo which places primary reliance on local Institutional Review Boards for subject protection. This was predictable because of the commission's researcher-dominated composition which permitted it to assume that research is good; experimentation is almost never harmful to subjects; and researcher-dominated IRBs can adequately protect the interests of human subjects. The successor Presidential Commission can learn much by reexamining these (...) premises. (shrink)

This chapter addresses questions such as what is unique about human beings, and what makes humans human. It begins exploration of such questions by looking back on some of the major events and themes of the past 1000 years in Western civilization and the primitive human instincts they illustrate. The second millennium opened with holy wars: local wars, such as the Spanish Reconquista to retake Spain from the Moors, and the broader multi‐state Crusades to take the Holy Lands from the (...) Muslims. Many scholars date postmodernism from Hiroshima and the Holocaust, one an instantaneous annihilation, the other a systematic one. Like space exploration, work on human genetics is dominated by governmental agencies and commercial interests. The chapter argues that genocidal proclivity of the past millennium could lead to genocide on an even more horrible scale if we create a new or “better” human species (or subspecies) through genetic engineering. (shrink)

The article examines how Hegel’s negative view of Byzantium is different from the Enlightenment’s critique and especially from Voltaire’s criticism of medieval history. In order to account for the Hegelian specificity of interpretation an effort is made to translate the chapter on Byzantium from the Philosophy of History in terms of the analysis of the Phenomenology of the Spirit and, more precisely, on the basis of the chapters on sensible certitude and on the domination and servitude. Considering that for Hegel (...) every philosophical school possesses an autonomous value, one has to wonder why the Byzantine moment of the Spirit is destined to stagnation. The question about Hegel’s Neoplatonism, especially his affiliation with Proclus’s system, shows how the distance separating the Hegelian system from the Proclusian one explains the inadequacy of the latter as to drawing the consequences from the Byzantine spiritual stagnation. (shrink)

Prof. Lodge explores the use of ideology as a concept to understand ethical issues. He observes an ideological transition occurring in the United States, one that has been under way for some 80 years from what he refers to as Individualism to Communitarianism. Many ethical questions depend for an answer on which ideology is dominant or which is appropriate.