In this comprehensive collection of essays, most of which appear for the first time, eminent scholars from many disciplines—philosophy, economics, sociology, political science, demography, theology, history, and social psychology—examine the causes, nature, and consequences of present-day consumption patterns in the United States and throughout the world.

The claim to rationality is disputed by two rival enlightenments, which collided in the dispute between Plato, Socrates and the Sophists, and which Marx united critically. He criticizes the capitalist system immanently as restrictive of production, and its market as not a case of freedom or equality. However, Marx is most concerned with ontological injustice, coerced alienation of the human into being a commodity. He retains Promethean Enlightenment values however: technology, creativity, democracy, which should be economic, participatory and international. Marx (...) criticized Hegel’s rationalization, idealization, ‘transfiguration and glorification’ of private property and the market. But he retains key elements of the idealist notion of human nature: that human is a ‘universal, therefore free being.’ The proletariat, with no other class to exploit, is therefore the philosophical ‘universal class.’ Freedom is class emancipation, justice is common ownership. There is an unwarranted skepticism about the rationality of such values and ideals. Rawls for instance misrepresents them by putting them in the same category as wants or preferences. Ideals, values, and enlightenments can and should be rationally argued over, in dialogue. (shrink)

The diverse essays in this volume speak to the relevance of phenomenological and psychological questioning regarding perceptions of the human. This designation, human, can be used beyond the mere identification of a species to underwrite exclusion, denigration, dehumanization and demonization, and to set up a pervasive opposition in Othering all deemed inhuman, nonhuman, or posthuman. As alerted to by Merleau-Ponty, one crucial key for a deeper understanding of these issues is consideration of the nature and scope of perception. Perception defines (...) the world of the perceiver, and perceptual capacities are constituted in engagement with the world – there is co-determination. Moreover, the distinct phenomenology of perception in the spectatorial mode in contrast to the reciprocal mode, deepens the intersubjective and ethical dimensions of such investigations. -/- Questions motivating the essays include: Can objectification and an inhuman gaze serve positive ends? If so, under what constraints and conditions? How is an inhuman gaze achieved and at what cost? How might the emerging insights of the role of perception into our interdependencies and essential sociality from various domains challenge not only theoretical frameworks, but also the practices and institutions of science, medicine, psychiatry and justice? What can we learn from atypical social cognition, psychopathology and animal cognition? Could distortions within the gazer’s emotional responsiveness and habituated aspects of social interaction play a role in the emergence of an inhuman gaze? -/- Perception and the Inhuman Gaze will interest scholars and advanced students working in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, psychology, psychiatry, sociology and social cognition. -/- Table of Contents -/- Introduction -/- Part I. The Gaze in Classical Phenomenology: Perspectives on Objectification -/- 1. Defending the Objective Gaze as a Self-transcending Capacity of Human Subjects -/- Dermot Moran -/- 2. Two Orders of Bodily Objectification: The Look and the Touch -/- Sara Heinämaa -/- 3. On Eliminativism’s Transient Gaze -/- Timothy Mooney -/- 4. Not wholly human. Reading Maurice Merleau-Ponty with Jacques Lacan. -/- Dorothée Legrand -/- 5. Disclosure and the Gendered Gaze in Simone de Beauvoir's Ethics -/- Christinia Landry -/- Part II. Vision, Perception and Gazes -/- 6. Inside the gaze -/- Shaun Gallagher -/- 7. Perception and its Objects. -/- Maurita Harney -/- 8. Technological Gaze: Understanding How Technologies Transform Perception -/- Richard Lewis -/- 9. The Inhuman Gaze and Perceptual Gestalts: The Making and Unmaking of Others and Worlds -/- Anya Daly -/- Part III. Psychiatry, Psychopathology and Inhuman Gazes -/- 10. Values and Values-based Practice in Psychopathology: Combining Analytic and Phenomenological Approaches -/- G Stanghellini and K.W.M. (Bill) Fulford -/- 11. The Inhuman and Human Gaze in Psychiatry, Psychopathology and Schizophrenia. -/- Matthew Broome -/- 12. Overcoming the Gaze: Psychopathology, Affect, and Narrative. -/- Anna Bortolan -/- 13. From excess to exhaustion : The rise of burnout in a post-modern achievement society. -/- Philippe Wuyts -/- 14. Blackout Rages: The Inhibition of Episodic Memory in Extreme Berserker Episodes -/- John Protevi -/- Part IV. Beyond the Human: Divine, Posthuman and Animal Gazes -/- 15. Wondering at the Inhuman Gaze -/- Sean. D. Kelly -/- 16. What Counts as Human/ Inhuman Right Now? -/- Rosi Braidotti -/- 17. Beyond Human and Animal: Metamorphosis in Merleau-Ponty -/- Dylan Trigg -/- Part V. Sociality and Boundaries of the Human -/- 18. Voice and gaze considered together in ‘languaging’. -/- Fred Cummins -/- 19. Ethics Beyond the Human: Disability and The Inhuman -/- Jonathan Mitchell -/- 20. Social Invisibility and Emotional Blindness -/- James Jardine -/- 21. What are you looking at? Dissonance as a window on the autonomy of participatory sense-making frames. -/- Mark James. (shrink)

Mr Pettit has performed a useful service in setting out to explain and evaluate phenomenology, especially the difficult thought of Husserl. His book consists of an analysis of a course of five lectures, The Idea of Phenomenology, a more general essay on Husserl, a criticism of phenomenology as exclusively descriptive, an appeal for a particular methodology in philosophy.

Marx's thought about justice is essentialist and dialectical. It has been interpreted in terms of immoralism. It is rather a synthesis of the traditional natural law, based on the Aristotelian concept of nature as the potential for perfection or ideal fulfilment, radically different from the Hobbesian reductionist concept of nature as atomistic and mechanical; of the tradition of dialectics in its German idealist form; and of Feuerbach's humanism. Marx's explicitly realist idea of science reveals 'veiled wage-slavery'. Concentration on the market (...) exchange, to the exclusion of the subsequent exploitative use of labour power, deceives exclusively analytic observers into the belief that there is some justice in capitalism. Marx characterized the proletariat as the 'universal class', capable of bringing about the fulfilment of the human essence in a family-style mode of production , because it is the victim of total injustice . However, he criticized workers for not rising above such bourgeois selfishness as demanding 'a fair wage', which is not even a coherent concept. Capitalism is not only a moral injustice, but an ontological injustice, a violation of the worker's humanity. It is coercion into alienation, fetishism and idolatry. (shrink)

This is a very welcome addition to the invaluable Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Originally published in France as La Notion d’ a priori in 1959, this book is chronologically as well as logically central to Dufrenne’s thinking as it has been expressed from the time of Karl Jaspers et la philosophie de l’existence, written with Paul Ricoeur in 1947, through Phénoménologie de l’expérience esthétique in 1953, to Le Poétique and Jalons in 1963 and 1966. Perhaps it (...) cannot be fully understood without reference to these other books, which it must be hoped will be translated into English. Dufrenne has written several articles in English, as well as the Mahlon Powell Lectures for 1959, published as Language and Philosophy all of which are listed in a Dufrenne bibliography which the translator has appended to the present book. He has translated as preface Paul Ricoeur’s near-definitive review of the book in Esprit, March 1961. Apart from his own very helpful introduction and index the translator has done intensive research in tracking down sources which throw light on the often cryptic allusions sewn into the text in Dufrenne’s highly-condensed style, which in spite of his eulogy to the poetic offers no concessions to readability, and few to the imagination. (shrink)

Le Volontaire et l’Involontaire was published in 1950, as the first volume of Ricoeur’s La Philosophie de la Volonté. The whole project has a sweeping range, reflected even in this first volume. It is a philosophy of the will, taking in analysis of concepts of behaviour with a critique of scientific psychology: analysis of our moral experience: of our attitudes to our life and to the whole of reality: of our experience of evil and guilt and our dreams of innocence (...) and hopes of salvation. In the first volume Ricoeur imposes not only phenomenological brackets, examining our experience ‘descriptively’ and not causally, but also eidetic brackets, examining possible behaviour and not actual behaviour. This means that he suspends consideration of ‘the fault’, our experience of evil. This is left to the second volume Finitude et Culpabilité which in two parts, L’Homme Faillible and La Symbolique du Mal analyses the experience of evil, the latter part in a hermeneutic analysis of myth, a subject with which Ricoeur has come to the forefront of recent structuralist debate in his book De l’Interprétation A third volume of the Philosophy of the Will will deal with hermeneutic analysis of ‘transcendence’—of the dream of innocence, the hope of deliverance from evil, as expressed in poetry and myth. (shrink)

Cutting out all reference to the popular and polemical, psychological and ideological resonances evoked in and by Sartre, this study takes up the challenge of considering the impressive work of Sartre as the latest metamorphosis of the Western philosophical heritage. As Professor Hartmann explains, he has included sufficient exposition of Sartre’s views to enable the reader without extensive knowledge of Sartre to follow the interpretation, but expects him to be conversant with Hegel and, to a lesser extent, with Husserl and (...) Heidegger. If this does not suit the generality of English-speaking students of philosophy who usually know of Sartre, Heidegger, Husserl and Hegel in that order of detail, nevertheless the Hegelian bias of the lengthy critical exposition gives us a new, incisive, and it seems to me, definitive treatment of Sartre which will benefit those who have come to him through phenomenology. (shrink)

This, the second in the Psychological Series of Duquesne Studies, is a translation of the author’s classic Théorie du Champ de la Conscience, written in 1953, first published in 1957. The thesis of the book is that ‘every total field of consciousness consists of three domains, each domain exhibiting a specific type of organization of its own. The first domain is the theme, that which engrosses the mind of the experiencing subject, or as it is often expressed, which stands in (...) the “focus of his attention”. Second is the thematic field, defined as the totality of those data, co-present with the theme, which are experienced as materially relevant or pertinent to the theme and form the background or horizon out of which the theme emerges as the center. The third includes data which, though co-present with, have no relevancy to, the theme and comprise in their totality what we propose to call the margin’. The aim is ‘to bring out the structure of each of these domains’. We perceive a material thing in a context of other things, and if our mind is preoccupied with a problem we are also aware not only of its intellectual background and possible solutions, but of our actual environment and of ourselves as sitting in our room or walking in the street; all these data are experienced simultaneously. Consciousness here includes not only perceiving but remembering, imagining etc and its objects may be material things, mathematical relations, musical compositions or theoretical implications. These objects of consciousness are, however, objects understood descriptively, not as independent realities with causal relations to a mind but as they appear to a subject. It is the intentionality of consciousness, the bipolarity of the subject and its object which is shown to render inadequate Bergson‘s and William James’ correction of Humean empiricism in terms of temporal interpenetration of elements of the ’stream of thought‘, although the author uses concepts and theories of James’ to formulate and present problems to which a more Husserlian answer is given. Gestalt theory is explored and its phenomenological potential used to solve the problems of a theory of organization. (shrink)

Professor Campbell Garnett has here presented a history, critique and synthesis of several widely diverse philosophical methods and conclusions. With great simplicity he gives an account of the genesis of idealism and the early twentieth century reaction towards realism, highlighting William James’ ‘Does Consciousness Exist’ and G E Moore’s ‘Refutation of Idealism’. Two methods involved are singled out: introspection, emphasised by the ‘acknowledged master of this art’, James and Moore’s linguistic analysis, leading to the analysis of ordinary language (...) and the attempt to develop an ideal language. The author then proposes the analysis of mental life as the most important and central task of the philosopher.. In proof of the validity of this method, it is said that ‘All the various departments of philosophy are analyses of different parts or phases of mental life. Logic is an analysis of the processes of statements and inference; ethics is an analysis of the moral consciousness, and aesthetics of the aesthetic consciousness; epistemology is an analysis of the processes of perception and conception’. This seems to me misleading; the author has already associated analysis of mental life with armchair psychology; and can ‘analysis’ be used to cover critical evaluation? This characterisation of the task of philosophy leads to seeing phenomenology, as ‘a technique in which reflective analysis of the categories is sharpened by the setting aside of other questions’ which is very vague; ‘analysis of ordinary language’ is said to be ‘an analysis of meaning, not in the objective sense of the usage of words as described in the dictionary, but in the subjective sense of their use, of what the use means or intends to do by framing and uttering his sentences’. It also leads to that conflation of philosophy of mind and epistemology/ontology which leads to much confusion, and which it has been the achievement of contemporary philosophy on both sides of the linguistic divide to disentangle. (shrink)

Le Volontaire et l’Involontaire was published in 1950, as the first volume of Ricoeur’s La Philosophie de la Volonté. The whole project has a sweeping range, reflected even in this first volume. It is a philosophy of the will, taking in analysis of concepts of behaviour with a critique of scientific psychology: analysis of our moral experience: of our attitudes to our life and to the whole of reality: of our experience of evil and guilt and our dreams of innocence (...) and hopes of salvation. In the first volume Ricoeur imposes not only phenomenological brackets, examining our experience ‘descriptively’ and not causally, but also eidetic brackets, examining possible behaviour and not actual behaviour. This means that he suspends consideration of ‘the fault’, our experience of evil. This is left to the second volume Finitude et Culpabilité which in two parts, L’Homme Faillible and La Symbolique du Mal analyses the experience of evil, the latter part in a hermeneutic analysis of myth, a subject with which Ricoeur has come to the forefront of recent structuralist debate in his book De l’Interprétation A third volume of the Philosophy of the Will will deal with hermeneutic analysis of ‘transcendence’—of the dream of innocence, the hope of deliverance from evil, as expressed in poetry and myth. (shrink)

Professor Herbert Spiegelberg has pointed out that Ricoeur is ‘the best informed French historian of phenomenology’ and French philosophers have had the enormous benefit of his translation of Edmund Husserl’s Ideas I. Ricoeur’s introduction to this translation has been included in this volume of writings and gives an inkling of the advantage French students have had over English. One only regrets that it was not possible to include also the summaries and detailed notes which Ricoeur appended to his translation. The (...) collection includes a study of Husserl contributed to Brehier’s history of German philosophy; three articles from the Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, two on Husserl’s Ideas II and one on his Crisis of the European Sciences; studies on the Cartesian Meditations from the Revue Philosophique de Louvain and a long study on the important Fifth Cartesian Meditation contributed especially for this volume; a comparison of Kant and Husserl from Kantstudien; an article on existential phenomenology from the Encyclopédie Francaise; and the author’s highly relevant programmatic discussion of the relationship of phenomenology to his own work in progress, the Philosophy of the Will. (shrink)

Professor Löwith of the University of Heidelberg, former pupil and colleague of Martin Heidegger, whose Meaning in History and From Hegel to Nietzsche have already made a great impact on English-speaking philosophers concerned with existentialism, theology and Marxism, has here selected eleven essays. Eight of them first appeared in English between 1942 and 1954, when the author was Professor of Philosophy at Hartford Theological Seminary and later at the New School for Social Research. The other three essays were originally published (...) in German, but their date and place of publication are not given. It would have been helpful to have the details of original publication in a footnote with each essay; for instance, the pessimistic ‘Historical Background of European Nihilism’ was written in exile in 1943. It is a vividly documented reminder that ‘Nihilism as the disavowal of existing civilization was the only real belief of all truly educated people at the beginning of the twentieth century. Nihilism is not a result of the Great War but, on the contrary, its cause’—a salutary corrective of the stereotype of the nineteenth century as a century of blind belief in progress. That notion is historically and critically examined in ‘Nature, History and Existentialism’, which shows that ‘the quest for the meaning of history is in itself historically conditioned. It is a specifically Western, even Christian quest. It can be traced back to the Old and New Testaments’ faith in a purposeful story of salvation’, as contrasted equally with the Oriental and Greek concepts of nature and time. But, historically, the ‘modern’ concept of nature as a blind material mechanism, and of man as either just another mechanism or a denatured, homeless spirit is shown to have produced the tormented reactions of Pascal, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. ‘What remains is total and radical contingency of existence, existence without support, a thought which Kant felt to be intolerable for human reason, while its opposite, inner necessity, is undemonstrable. The difference between Kant and modern French existentialists is that the latter seem to have managed to find radical contingency tolerable and even liberating, and the demonstration of an inherent necessity unnecessary’. (shrink)

Cutting out all reference to the popular and polemical, psychological and ideological resonances evoked in and by Sartre, this study takes up the challenge of considering the impressive work of Sartre as the latest metamorphosis of the Western philosophical heritage. As Professor Hartmann explains, he has included sufficient exposition of Sartre’s views to enable the reader without extensive knowledge of Sartre to follow the interpretation, but expects him to be conversant with Hegel and, to a lesser extent, with Husserl and (...) Heidegger. If this does not suit the generality of English-speaking students of philosophy who usually know of Sartre, Heidegger, Husserl and Hegel in that order of detail, nevertheless the Hegelian bias of the lengthy critical exposition gives us a new, incisive, and it seems to me, definitive treatment of Sartre which will benefit those who have come to him through phenomenology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Fallacy in the Intentional FallacyJames DowneyAccording to a famous argument by W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, the intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard by which to judge the success of a work of literary art. I wish to focus on the former allegation. The author's intention is not available as a standard by which to judge a work's success, it is (...) argued, because "If the poet succeeded in doing it [the intention], then the poem itself shows what he was trying to do. And if the poet did not succeed, then the poem is not adequate evidence, and the critic must go outside the poem."1The intent of this reasoning is not entirely clear. It is intended to pose a dilemma for intentionalism, but what is the dilemma supposed to be? What difficulty is there for intentionalism if the poem itself shows what the author's intention was? Perhaps it is supposed to follow that somehow intentionalism would be purposeless. Perhaps the point is Socratic: if the intention is successful, then the reader automatically knows it was intended, so that the intention cannot be sought. Or, perhaps it is the success which cannot be sought. The idea may be that one automatically knows the extent of success precisely to the extent that one recognizes the intention. Perhaps both points are intended.On the other side of the dilemma, suppose the intention is not successful and the critic "must go outside the poem." Is this supposed to imply that whatever meaning is thereby discovered will not be the poem's meaning? Or, is the idea that being forced to go outside the poem for evidence of its meaning violates some essential goal of intentionalism? [End Page 149]It is not my main concern, however, to question the implications of the argument's premises. I wish to challenge the basic premise, itself, that if an intention is successful then the work would show that it was the author's intention. I will assume that this means, at least, that the reader would understand a certain intention and know that it was the author's intention, and that the work would provide this knowledge.Sometimes an author deliberately composes without thematic intentions. I take my example from cinematic art because it is a particularly striking example, and the point clearly holds for other forms of art. Furthermore, the intentional fallacy is usually thought to apply to other forms of art in addition to literary art. So, let us consider the method which Salvador Dalí claims that he and Luis Buñuel used when creating Un Chien Andalou, to put together whatever images came to their mind without any particular intentions directing them. Indeed, Dalí claimed, if there was even a pause between the artists, a mere moment when it seemed as though some directed thought might be beginning to take hold of them, he and Buñuel immediately discarded that idea. They retained only those ideas which arose with no thematic intentions, or intentions as to larger meaning. (We may set aside the fact that there were still formal intentions, such as what images to present, in what order, etc.—although even this can be eliminated to some degree, as when an artist cuts up bits of sound tapes and splices them together willy-nilly, and so forth.) In such a work of art, it is not possible that any such intentions be shown, since there are none.But there is still a definite intention behind such art, namely, the intention to compose with no thematic intentions. This intention could be successfully shown to an audience through a work, certainly. However, Dalís often intend otherwise (so they say). They may intend not to reveal whether or not there are certain, or even any, thematic intentions (perhaps that is an intentional anti-religious theme in that scene in Un Chien Andalou, after all; we do not know.) Perhaps, even, Dalí does not want us to know whether he wants us not to know. An intention not to reveal might apply to the intention not to reveal. What a grand game... (shrink)

In this book the author explores the shifting philosophical boundaries of modern medical knowledge and practice occasioned by the crisis of quality-of-care, especially in terms of the various humanistic adjustments to the biomedical model.

My point of departure in this essay is Smith’s definition of government. “Civil government,” he writes, “so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.” First I unpack Smith’s definition of government as the protection of the rich against the poor. I argue that, on Smith’s view, this is always part of (...) what government is for. I then turn to the question of what, according to Smith, our governors can do to protect the wealth of the rich from the resentment of the poor. I consider, and reject, the idea that Smith might conceive of education as a means of alleviating the resentment of the poor at their poverty. I then describe how, in his lectures on jurisprudence, Smith refines and develops Hume’s taxonomy of the opinions upon which all government rests. The sense of allegiance to government, according to Smith, is shaped by instinctive deference to natural forms of authority as well as by rational, Whiggish considerations of utility. I argue that it is the principle of authority that provides the feelings of loyalty upon which government chiefly rests. It follows, I suggest, that to the extent that Smith looked to government to protect the property of the rich against the poor, and thereby to maintain the peace and stability of society at large, he cannot have sought to lessen the hold on ordinary people of natural sentiments of deference. In addition, I consider the implications of Smith’s theory of government for the question of his general attitude toward poverty. I argue against the view that Smith has recognizably “liberal,” progressive views of how the poor should be treated. Instead, I locate Smith in the political culture of the Whiggism of his day. (shrink)

In this work, McGilvray explains Noam Chomsky's rationalist view of human nature.

Competing perspectives on the nature of emotion are illustrated with latent and emergent variable models. Latent variable models draw from classical test theory, assuming that the measured indicators of emotion covary by virtue of some common executive, organizing neural circuit or network in the brain. By contrast, emergent variable models draw from a theory-driven, operational definition tradition, positing that emotions do not cause, but rather are caused by, the measured indicators of emotion, assuming no executive neural circuit or network, and (...) requiring no covariation among indicators. I suggest that the emergent variable model may be more compatible with the extant literature on the nature of emotion, especially in the age of affective neuroscience. (shrink)

Evidence that confirms a scientific hypothesis is said to be ‘novel’ if it is not discovered until after the hypothesis isconstructed. The philosophical issues surrounding novel confirmation have been well summarized by Campbell and Vinci [1983]. They write that philosophers of science generally agree that when observational evidence supports a theory, the confirmation is much stronger when the evidence is ‘novel’... There are, nevertheless, reasons to be skeptical of this tradition... The notion of novel confirmation is beset with a theoretical (...) puzzle about how the degree of confirmation can change without any change in the evidence, hypothesis, or auxiliary assumptions... There have not yet appeared any obviously satisfactory solutions to these problems Much of the literature on novel confirmation relies on the Bayesian analysis of conditional probabilities. Let H represent a hypothesis, E an event that confirms the hypothesis, and B some relevant background information. Denote by Pr the conditional probability of x given y. There are various plausible measures of the degree of support that E lends to H. Among these are: Degree of support = Pr Degree of support = Pr – Pr Degree of support = Pr – Pr Degree of support = Pr – Pt In the work cited, Campbell and Vinci offer a somewhat more involved Bayesian interpretation. Formula is discussed by Gardner [1981] who points out that under this formulation there can be no role for novelty. 'The function Pr contains no third slot in which to insert a temporal relation between the invention of H and the inventor's learning E. Obviously, then, this relation could not possibly affect E's support of H.' Formula, on the other hand, suggests a role for novelty. Bayes's Theorem allows us to rewrite the formula as Degree of support = Pr x [Pr – 1] We can use 1/Pr as a measure of the novelty of E. Then shows that the degree of support increases with novelty of E. In the paper already cited, Campbell and Vinci discuss shortcomings of this analysis. Formula expresses an alternative offered by Howson [1984]. In that formula, Pr represents the probability of H assuming that only B – {E} is known. This allows for the possibility of non-novel facts generating support for hypotheses. Niiniluoto [1984] argues for a variant along the lines of, in which we account for the possibility that the theorist was unaware that his hypothesis entails E. One problem in deciding among these approaches is that the choice of a definition for the degree of support appears arbitrary. What kind of argument could justify the choice of one definition over another? It is our position that there can be no basis for addressing this question in the absence of an explicit model of the process by which hypotheses are generated. Only in the presence of such a model can the various conditional probabilities be given meaningful interpretations. We provide such models in Sections 1, 2 and 4. The simple model of Section 1, incorporating strong assumptions, yields the conclusion that novelty is irrelevant. When these assumptions are relaxed in the later sections, novelty becomes relevant for a variety of reasons. It is at least potentially the case that scientists have more information about their own abilities than is publicly available, and this information might influence their decisions about whether even to attempt novel prediction. If this is so, then it should be incorporated into the model of hypothesis generation. This requires an explicit discussion of how scientists respond to incentives and how the incentives themselves evolve, which in turn takes us into the realm of economic theory. We have addressed these issues in another paper, written for an audience of economists. The results of this research are summarized in Section 3. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION The present volume is a study of the extant commentaries on a number of Plato's dialogues which were written by Neoplatonist philosophers of ...

How is one to distinguish a true lover of peace from a mere appeaser, a pacifist, and a warmonger? Distinguishing them can be sometimes confusing, as they will often appropriate each other’s language. The criterion for the above distinction does not only lie in outward behavior, as knowledge of inward attitudes is also required. A right understanding of these attitudes and motivations involve at least an implicit grasp of the true nature of peace, which is investigated as something more than (...) the mere absence of war, insofar as peace is primarily a work of two moral virtues: justice and charity. It is in the spirit of justice and charity that the true lover of peace must then distinguish—both in one’s own life and with nations—between what can be ignored and / or forgiven, and what must be redressed. Furthermore, the distinction between the lover of peace and the pacifist, with the possibility of pacifism being a distinct tradition from just war philosophy, is investigated. The argument is made that pacifism should not be considered outside the context of just war because one needs that context to address if and who demands restitution. (shrink)

The chapter presents Anselm’s incompatibilist account of human freedom within the context of his theodicy and presents two arguments against his account. Both arguments aim to show there is a genuine conflict between his account of freedom and the role of God’s grace in making agents just. The first argument, the problem of harmonization, highlights the conflict within the soteriological context where an agent changes from being unjust to being just. The second argument, the problem of just creation, highlights the (...) conflict within the context of the creation of agents prior to the presence of evil. Holding fixed his incompatibilist account and the necessity of divine grace, the upshot of both arguments is that Anselm must endorse a version of Pelagianism. (shrink)

Critics of exclusionary borders might be tempted to appeal for more hospitality, but this essay argues that such an approach is misguided and develops an alternative framework called solidarity borders. The ongoing legacies of imperialism, the functioning of global capitalism, and insights from democratic theory show that we need to problematize two key presuppositions of hospitality: a clear distinction between hosts and guests, and the exclusive right of the former to impose conditions. Moreover, Jacques Derrida provides limited guidance as to (...) how to enact necessarily conditional hospitality in the most just manner. By contrast, Iris Marion Young’s social connection model highlights the shared responsibility that actors bear to reduce structural injustice. Drawing out the implications of Young’s work for migration and borders, I argue that solidarity borders would build upon, expand, and modify the existing refugee regime. (shrink)

Journal of International Political Theory, Ahead of Print. Joseph Carens develops one of the most prominent cases for open borders in the academic literature on the basis of freedom and equality. Yet the implementation of his social membership theory would mean that immigrants who have not yet lived in a country long enough to become members would be excluded from political and social rights, thus raising the possibility of their domination and subordination by citizens. Given that these problems arise because (...) Carens aims to balance the freedom of individuals with the “claims of belonging” to a political community, can we theorize the relationship between freedom and community differently? French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy does just that, by showing how to think freedom and community as mutually constitutive. Nancy thus offers the resources for an alternative case for open borders, grounded on the claim that the freedom of community entails openness to the outside. Drawing also on Nancy’s account of the common and of democratic politics, my Nancean argument for open borders challenges Carens’s exclusion of nonmembers from the rights of citizens, emphasizing instead the need for an ongoing political struggle to expand who is eligible to claim rights as well as the scope of the rights themselves. (shrink)

This article profiles Modern Language studies in United Kingdom universities in a sometimes polemical way, drawing on the author’s experiences, insights and reflections as well as on published sources. It portrays the unique features of Modern Languages as a university discipline, and how curricula and their delivery have evolved. As national and international higher education contexts change more fundamentally and more rapidly than ever before, it seeks to draw on recent and current data to describe the impact of student choice (...) and to identify trends, particularly with regard to the place of literature. (shrink)

800x600 In our book _Global Insanity_ we argued that the existential predicament faced by humanity is a predictable consequence of Western Enlightenment thinking and the resulting world model, whose ascendance with the Industrial Revolution entrained development of the global consumer Economy that is destroying the biosphere. This situation extends from a dominant mindset based on the philosophy of reductionism. The problem was recognized and characterized by Robert M. Hutchins. In 1985, Hutchins ideas were discussed by Robert Rosen in Chapter 1 (...) of _Anticipatory Systems: Philosophical, Mathematical & Methodological Foundations_._ _Building on Hutchins' ideas, Rosen laid the foundation for an entire new, non-reductionist paradigm, which he called "complexity theory". This new paradigm is what we are further developing here. One has to recognize that a paradigm shift is needed to overcome the entrenched mindset and world model that reductionism has created. Here we explore the myriad interconnected ways-psychological, social, cultural, political, and technological-that the Western world model and consumer economy works as a complex system to thwart, neutralize, or co-opt for its own ends any effort to bring about the kind of radical change that is needed to avert global ecological catastrophe and societal collapse. This resistance to change stems from the need, inherent in the Western model, to continually grow the consumer economy. The media's continued portrayal of consumptive economic growth as a good thing, the widely held belief that the Economy is paramount, and current political and technological trends all manifest the system's active resistance to change. From the perspective of the mature economic system, any work that does not serve to grow the Economy is counterproductive, and viewed as unnecessary, a luxury, or subversive. The potential for real change is thus inversely related to the viability of the Economy, which will eventually decline as the system develops into senescence. To the extent that the fragile metastability of senescence affords opportunity for radical change, economic decline can be viewed as a hopeful sign. But taking maximum advantage of that opportunity will be extraordinarily difficult, as it will require widespread recognition of the problem, major voluntary sacrifice by the relatively large numbers of people who still benefit from the system, and concerted "grassroots" efforts. It can be expected that the system will resist those efforts until the end, becoming increasingly reliant on media-enabled distraction and divisive politics, as well as violent coercion, to maintain itself. Investment in education and science is widely touted as necessary for improving our situation, but this is misguided as long as the educational system and scientific enterprise continue to work in collusion with the larger system, as they currently do. Until the reductionist mindset and world model that drives the system is effectively challenged, there can be little hope for the kind of change needed to avert the catastrophic collapse of civilization. Normal 0 false false false EN-AU X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4. (shrink)

Ekphrasis has been a popular topic in recent years among scholars of both classical and later literature. The latter have been particularly interested in the modern definition of ekphrasis as a description of artwork and the development of global definitions and theories. Ancient ekphrasis, however, was much broader in scope. By examining Hephaestus' automaton handmaids and the shield of Achilles in the Iliad, along with the Pandora stories in the works of Hesiod, we can illustrate the nature and character of (...) ancient ekphrasis in ways that call into question modern theories and demonstrate the vibrancy and complexity of even its earliest examples in Greek literature. (shrink)