While many current analyses of democracy focus on creating a more civil, respectful debate among competing political viewpoints, this study argues that the existence of structural social inequality requires us to go beyond the realm of political debate. Challenging prominent contemporary theories of democracy, the author draws on John Dewey to bring the work of combating social inequality into the forefront of democratic thought. Dewey's 'pragmatic' principles are deployed to present democracy as a developing concept constantly confronting unique conditions obstructing (...) its growth. Under structurally unequal social conditions, democracy is thereby seen as demanding the overcoming of this inequality; this inequality corrupts even well-organized forums of political debate, and prevents individuals from governing their everyday lives. Dewey's approach shows that the process of fighting social inequality is uniquely democratic, and he avoids current democratic theory's tendency to abstract from this inequality. (shrink)

Easwaran has given a definition of transferability and argued that, under this definition, randomized arguments are not transferable. I show that certain aspects of his definition are not suitable for addressing the underlying question of whether or not there is an epistemic distinction between randomized and deductive arguments. Furthermore, I demonstrate that for any suitable definition, randomized arguments are in fact transferable.

On a certain reading, the respective theories of Freud and Nietzsche might be described as exploring the suffered relational histories of the subject, who is driven by need; these histories might also be understood as histories of language. This suggests a view of language as a complicated mode of identifying-with, which obliges linguistic subjects to identify the non-identical, but also enables them to simultaneously identify with each other in the psychoanalytic sense. This ambivalent space of psychoanalytic identification would be conditioned (...) by relational histories. On one hand, this might lead to conformity within a system of language as a shared, obligatory compromise formation that would defend against the non-identical; magical language, typified in Freud’s critique of animism and in Nietzsche’s critique of “free will” guided by absolute normative signifiers (“Good” and “Evil”), would be symptomatic of this sort of defense. On the other hand, given other relational histories, it may produce the possibility for more transitional modes of identification, and thereby modes of language that can bear its suffered histories, and lead to proliferation of singular compromise formations. It is suggested that while the former is historically dominant, Nietzsche and various psychoanalytic thinkers contribute to conceiving of the possibility of working ourselves towards the latter. (shrink)

The theme of the possibility or impossibility of the compatibility between Heideggerian philosophy and Freudian metapsychology has been taken up in various ways. Without going into the details of this body of commentary, it is argued that there is a clear difference between the ways in which Heidegger and Freud think cultural crisis. By examining texts of both thinkers from the early 1930s, it is shown that whereas Freud conceives of the possibility of amelioration of crisis in terms of a (...) grappling with material necessity, Heidegger's philosophical conception of crisis seeks to bring about freedom's performative coincidence with ontological necessity. Heidegger's approach, it is claimed, is blind to the confrontation with material necessity that is its own condition of possibility. This blindness is evident in his ontological understanding of suffering. Key Words: crisis • critique • Sigmund Freud • Martin Heidegger • materiality • necessity • questioning. (shrink)

In his most distinctly political book, The Public and Its Problems, John Dewey describes a never-ending process of achieving democratic governance, in which obstacles to such governance inevitably emerge, and are progressively overcome. However, even in that evidently political work, Dewey still emphasizes that there is a “distinction between democracy as a social idea and political democracy as a system of government. . . . The idea of democracy is a wider and fuller idea than can be exemplified in the (...) state even at its best” (143). The typical political bodies that exercise legislative, executive, administrative, and judicial power are not the only institutions that significantly impact how individuals live .. (shrink)

Philosophy and Working-through the Past defends the relevance to philosophy of the implications of Freud’s conception of object loss, especially his provocative discussions of mourning and melancholia. It engages with ongoing debates concerning the relevance of psychoanalysis to social theory, and suggests that emancipation from pathological culture be conceived as a mournful process of working-through the past.

Background: although cognitive behavioural therapy is the gold standard treatments for bulimia nervosa (BN) and binge eating disorder (BED), evidence for its long-term efficacy is weak. Empirical research support the efficacy of brief strategic therapy (BST) in treating BN and BED symptoms, but its statistical significance still need to be investigated. Objective: to statistically test the long-term efficacy of the BST treatment protocols for BN and BED through one-year post-treatment. Methods: a two-group longitudinal study will be conducted. Participants will be (...) sequentially recruited for inclusion in a state-funded community psychotherapy clinic. Multilevel growth curve modeling will be used to estimate the average growth trajectories from baseline to one year after treatment termination for the severity of the BN and BED features as measured by the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire. Discussion: findings from this study will clarify the impact of BST in treating BN and BED symtoms. Conclusions: translating research into practice may inform how to ensure high-quality patient care. (shrink)

Certain of Kant’s political essays suggest that the project of socio-political emancipation should be seen as a process of working ourselves out of affective attachments to pathological social relations. This aspect of Kant’s thinking is read through Marx’s materialist notion of commodity fetishism, which provides a paradigmatic approach to understanding the ways in which concrete forms of sociality either thwart or facilitate the process of emancipation. It is then suggested that Freud’s notion of the work of mourning can help to (...) clarify the possibility of breaking with the fixated attachments that contribute to our own domination. In this light, the author considers the respective accounts of the relationship between Freudian theory and Kantian cosmopolitanism given by Julia Kristeva and Judith Butler in light of Theodor Adorno’s materialist account of working-through the past. Reading Freud with Adorno offers a more coherent clarification of the concrete conditions of possibility of cosmopolitanism. (shrink)

In his most recent work on John Dewey, John Shook explores Dewey’s political thought in order to illuminate Dewey’s conception of democracy and demonstrate the interlocking quality of his democratic and educational theories. As the book’s subtitle indicates, Shook sees democracy and education as inseparable enterprises for Dewey, with democracy being fundamentally defined by the continuous education of individuals, and with specifically educational spaces serving to directly promote this definitive purpose of democracy. The particular educational goal that Shook identifies in (...) Dewey’s thought is the cultivation of “social intelligence,” a quality that allows individuals to effectively engage.. (shrink)

John Shook and James Good have each made significant contributions to the scholarly discussion of John Dewey's "permanent Hegelian deposit." In this collection, they come together to further develop their respective analyses of Dewey's Hegelianism. The volume combines two essays, one from each of the authors, in addition to the "definitive text" of Dewey's own 1897 lecture on Hegel, given at the University of Chicago, and entitled "Hegel's Philosophy of Spirit." In comparison to Shook's earlier, more comprehensive work on Dewey's (...) relationship to Hegel, Dewey's Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Reality (2000), and Good's similarly intensive treatment, A Search for Unity in Diversity: The "Permanent Hegelian .. (shrink)

The respective philosophies of Emmanuel Levinas and Theodor Adorno share a concern with articulating a critique of Husserlian phenomenology which would do justice to the materiality of the subject. With this commonality in mind, it is argued that Levinas reifies this materiality by endowing it with a metaphysical priority expressive of ethical universality. In contrast, Adorno eschews the philosophical obsession with the assertion of metaphysical priority, insisting on the complexly historical nature of material life. In place of the Levinasian concern (...) with the subject’s forgetting of her or his ethical responsibilities to ‘the Other’, Adorno’s notion of the primacy of the object helps to articulate the ways in which the subject is always already materially bound by singular social histories which are essentially exclusionary. Amelioration of our suffering would thus depend on a concrete break in material social life, rather than on an abstractly conceived revelation of transcendence. (shrink)