This article explores the representation of the hand in three recent fiction films by Naomi Kawase: Sweet Bean (2015), Radiance (2017) and True Mothers (2020). Extending current scholarship that discusses the director’s use of haptic visuality, I argue that Kawase’s haptic cinema further exhibits its hapticity by framing the hand as both a Derridean trace and conduit that leaves behind traces in objects such as bean paste, letters, photo cameras, and photographs. Kawase’s framing of these objects in close-up shots emphasizes (...) not only their materiality and haptic texture but also their foreshadowed physical absence. By reading Kawase through Jacques Derrida’s notion of trace, the article highlights not only the relevance behind understanding Kawase’s recent fiction films through a Derridean lens but also how the director’s own attitude towards cinema, as one that aims to simultaneously frame absence and presence, can also be read as a Derridean approach to cinema. (shrink)

What is the difference between a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and the symphony itself? What does it mean for musicians to be faithful to the works they perform? To answer this question, Goehr combines philosophical and historical methods of enquiry. She describes how the concept of a musical work emerged as late as 1800, and how it subsequently defined the norms, expectations, and behavior characteristic of classical musical practice. Out of the historical thesis, Goehr draws philosophical conclusions about the (...) normative functions of concepts and ideals. She also addresses current debates amongst conductors, early-music performers, and avant-gardists. (shrink)

This paper is an illustration of the case study of trying to create an awareness of human values at the Malaysian Airlines System (MAS) as part of its work culture. Some of the principles of this intervention and the key process used in developing a values-based culture are highlighted. A brief background of why MAS undertook a values journey is given along with the approach and the process used, based on the values clarification process (VCP). The development of other internal (...) processes customized to design in-house modules through the values awareness programme (VAP) and the values inculcation programme (VIP) are also outlined. The paper combines two perspectives in this case study: one of the authors was an internal consultant with MAS and the other an external consultant to parts of the process. The objective is to share insights from such an intervention to enable other organizations to benefit from this experience. (shrink)

Geography and religion -- Landscape of anxiety and fear -- Chinese cosmic space and places -- European sacred space and places -- A comparison with American Indian world-view -- Similar, yet different -- Apartness -- Order -- Wholeness and completion -- Sacred state -- Violence -- Ironies of piety -- God and morality -- From amoral energy to power for good -- Rise and fall of place specificity -- Traders and pilgrims -- Religious geography; or just human geography -- The (...) aesthetic sublime : vastness, place, and space -- Space vs. local place and custom -- Unbounded vastness and placelessness -- The aesthetic sublime : transiency and the eternal -- The ethical sublime : Buddhism -- The ethical sublime : Christianity -- Falling standard -- Geography and religion : fundamental questions -- From architectural and ritual to storytelling -- Community, self, and selflessness -- Placelessness and ethereality -- Religion of fear and privilege -- True religion -- Progress -- The ultimate test. (shrink)

This essay interrogates the motives of eighteenth-century European naturalists to alternately show and hide their laboring-class fossil suppliers. Focusing on rare moments of heightened visibility, I ask why gentlemen naturalists occasionally, deliberately, and even performatively made visible the marginalized science workers on whom they crucially depended but more typically ignored or effaced. Comparing archival fragments from elite works of natural history across a considerable stretch of time and space, including Italy, France, Switzerland, Britain, Ireland, Germany, Spain, and French, Spanish, and (...) British America, this essay sketches the contours of a disparate group of people I term ‘earth workers’: laborers of very low social rank, such as quarrymen, shepherds, ditch-diggers, and fieldworkers, whose daily labor in and on the earth enabled the discovery of subterranean specimens. At the same time, archival traces of laboring lives ultimately reveal more about the naturalists who created them than they do about the marginalized laborers whose lives they faintly record. Cultural norms of elite masculinity and scholarly self-presentation in the Republic of Letters help us to understand why some eighteenth-century naturalists felt they had to publicly disavow a form of labor that would come to be recognized as a crucial and skilled part of scientific fieldwork in the modern era. Compared to other kinds of invisible labor that historians of science have brought into view, the social meaning of earth work rendered it uniquely visible in some ways and uniquely invisible in others. (shrink)

ABSTRACT What characterizes human reasoning is the ability of dealing with incomplete information. Incomplete logic is developed for modeling incomplete knowledge. The most distinctive feature of incomplete logic is its semantics. This is an alternative presentation of partial semantics. In this paper, we will introduce the general notion of incomplete logic (ICL), compare it with partial logic, and give the resolution method for it. We will also show how ICL can be applied to nonmonotonic reasoning. We define nonmonotonic derivation as (...) monotonic derivation in ICL from the database and some consistent assumptions. The mechanism of ICL makes it easy to assert the consistency of an assumption without asserting the assumption itself. (shrink)

As narrativas sobre mulheres, mesmo dentro dos estudos feministas, podem ser entendidas como normativas e colonizadoras, especialmente quando se dão a partir de um olhar ocidental sobre as mulheres do terceiro mundo. A partir da análise do pensamento da autora indiana Chandra Talpade Mohanty, este artigo busca relacionar seu discurso com exemplos de mulheres fotógrafas que buscaram desconstruir essa estrutura hierárquica do olhar, como Claudia Andujar, Graciela Iturbide, Nair Benedicto e Susan Meiselas, além das reflexões da artista interdisciplinar Grada Kilomba, (...) em diálogo com outros autores do campo da imagem. A fotografia pode ser considerada, assim, uma ferramenta de escrita de novas narrativas de resistência.Palavras-chave: Feminismo. Fotografia. Mulheres fotógrafas. AbstractNarratives about women, even within feminist studies, can be understood as normative and colonizing, especially when they are done from a western perspective on third world women. Based on the analysis of the thought of Indian author Chandra Talpade Mohanty, this article seeks to relate her discourse to examples of female photographers who sought to deconstruct this hierarchical structure of the gaze, such as Claudia Andujar, Graciela Iturbide, Nair Benedicto and Susan Meiselas, in addition to the reflections of the interdisciplinary artist Grada Kilomba, in dialogue with other authors in the field of image. Photography can thus be considered a tool for writing new narratives of resistance.Keywords: Feminism. Photography. Women photographers. (shrink)

L'interrogation sur le rôle que jouent aujourd'hui les convictions religieuses en philosophie des sciences peut paraître une démarche surprenante, car trop souvent la religion est rejetée hors du champ de l'enquête philosophique. Cet ouvrage ose au contraire demander dans quelle mesure les options religieuses d'un penseur influencent sa conception de l'ordre cosmique. L'examen du concept de loi de la nature s'inscrit dans une quête plus large : il permet de tester la façon dont les choix épistémologiques d'un individu dépendent de (...) sa vision du monde et ainsi de porter une attention particulière aux interactions entre science, épistémologie et religion. L'étude porte sur quatre figures des plus marquantes du débat contemporain sur les lois de la nature : David Armstrong, Nancy Cartwright, David Lewis et Bas van Fraassen. L'analyse de leurs écrits, approfondie d'entretiens personnels, fait ressortir pour chacun les liens qui existent entre sa posture religieuse et son compte rendu de la légalité naturelle. (shrink)

This book investigates the role of humor in the good life, specifically as discussed by three prominent French intellectuals who were influenced by Nietzsche's thought: Georges Bataille, Gilles Deleuze, and Clément Rosset. Lydia Amir begins by discussing Nietzsche's reception in France, and she explains why and how he came to be considered a "philosopher of laughter" in the French academe. Each of the subsequent three chapters focuses on the significance of humor and laughter in the good life as advocated (...) by Bataille, Deleuze, and Rosset. These chapters also explore the complex relationship between the comic and the tragic, and of humor and laughter to irony, satire, and ridicule. The Legacy of Nietzsche's Philosophy of Laughter makes an invaluable contribution to recent interpretive work done on Bataille and Deleuze, and offers further introduction to the relatively understudied Rosset. It illuminates the philosophies of these three thinkers, their connection to Nietzsche, and, overall, the significant role that humor plays in philosophy. (shrink)

This paper presents Agassi’s views of morality and ethics. Agassi proposes a non-reductive psychological theory of moral judgments, complemented by duties, and a psychological hypothesis regarding the psychological and social conditions that invite openness to criticism. His opposition to moralism, his objection to justification, his emphasis on red lines and grey areas, and his rejection of abstract moral debates in favor of public moralism result in a distinct approach to moral philosophy that is in conflict with most of the mainstream (...) work in this field. Following Socrates, he takes education for autonomy as the critical rationalist life-style. (shrink)

This paper argues that Protagoras’ great myth depicts human nature as both Promethean and Epimethean: human foresight depends on the condition of oversight. If Protagoras’ praise of foresight betrays his desire to overcome this condition, Socrates embraces it. While Protagoras repeats Epimetheus’ mistake of forgetting his own nature by aiming to overcome the risks of oversight, Socrates’ foresight recognizes that oversight and perplexity are intrinsic to human nature.

_An exploration of philosophical and religious ideas about humor in modern philosophy and their secular implications._.

Donating money to a charity based on consumer purchase is referred to as cause-related marketing . In this research, we profile consumer psychographics for skepticism toward advertising in a CRM context. To be specific, this study investigates whether and how psychological antecedents and gender differences influence consumer skepticism toward advertising. An empirical study was conducted with 291 participants. Structural equation modeling was employed for hypothesis testing. The results suggest that a utilitarian orientation and an individualistic mindset are positively related to (...) skepticism toward advertising, while a hedonic orientation and a collectivistic mindset are negatively related to skepticism toward advertising. Gender differences are also found in the aforementioned relationships. The segmentational approach of gender and psychographics can assist marketers to explain consumer attitudes toward CRM and then to communicate with those CRM advocates better. (shrink)

This article brings to light how AI research has benefited from post-Wittgensteinian philosophy. My research shows that Wittgenstein’s work began to engage the attention of AI researchers not only in the 1970s down to the present but right from the early beginnings of computational research in the 1950s. More specifically, his later philosophy inspired a group of researchers called the Cambridge Language Research Unit (CLRU) to start one of the first programs in machine translation, information retrieval, mechanical abstracting, and knowledge (...) representation technologies in the early 1950s, all of which have later been claimed for AI and cognitive science. I focus on the philosophical work of CLRU founder Margaret Masterman and her extraordinary but forgotten contributions to ordinary language philosophy. (shrink)

Nurses and midwives are the majority of healthcare professionals globally, including Africa, and they provide care at all levels of the health system including community levels. Nurses and midwives contribute to the care of patients with rigid or dogmatic religious beliefs or those with suicidal ideations. This review paper discusses acute and chronic diseases that have suicidal tendencies such as terminal cancer, diseases with excruciating pain, physical disability, stroke, end-stage renal failure, and diabetics who are amputated. It was reiterated that (...) nurses and midwives taking care of these patients should be alert and observant to identify their suicidal tendencies. The paper also discusses religious or spiritual inclinations that negatively affect healthcare access and adherence, especially to biomedical or western medicine. It was emphasized that some religious beliefs do not allow their followers to employ biomedical treatment and nurses and midwives should not impose their faith on patients and their families. The paper ends with a discussion on the specific roles of nurses and midwives in the care of patients with suicidal ideations such as assessment, counseling, administering medication, observation, social interaction, ensuring safety measures, and providing an enabling environment for the family to part of the care and for the observation of religious coping strategies. Nurses and midwives should enhance their knowledge and skills on suicide and increase public education on suicide prevention and identification of those at risk. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to examine moral reasoning in a cross cultural Islamic context. The moral reasoning of female business students in the United Arab Emirates is described based on Kohlberg’s theory of Cognitive Moral Development (CMD). Business students were asked to participate in a brief individual interview which involved reading three moral dilemmas and answering open-ended questions. Results were analyzed based on each dilemma as well as acrossall three. Most students made their decisions at the first two (...) levels of Kohlberg’s stages, prioritizing how their decision would secure rewards for themselves and compliance with rules to maintain the social order. However, a fairly large percentage also scored at the highest stage of reasoning. Results are explored based on the sociocultural context and implications for ethics education are outlined, including an emphasis on examining conflicting cultural values and the use of context-specific dilemmas for teaching ethics. (shrink)

This paper will focus on a famous nineteenth century debate over the physiology of perception between Ewald Hering and Hermann von Helmholtz. This debate is often explained as a contest between empiricism (Helmholtz) and nativism (Hering) about perception. I will argue that this is only part of the picture. Hering was a pioneer of Lamarckian explanations, arguing for an early version of the biogenetic law. Hering explains physical processes, including perception, in terms of ‘organic memory’ that is supported by ‘vital (...) forces’ located throughout the body. Helmholtz, on the other hand, argues that vital forces are in direct conflict with the results he and others proved in the 1840s and 50s on the conservation of force. The battleground of the debate was the interpretation of Johannes Müller’s ‘law of specific nerve energies’, which Hering interpreted in terms of vital forces, and Helmholtz interpreted using a naturalized neo-Kantian approach. In the end, the debate revealed deep fissures in nineteenth century accounts of scientific explanation, as well as in the conception of how physiology, psychology, physics, and philosophy are related. (shrink)

How do firms make sense of creating shared value projects? In their sense-making processes, do they extend the meaning spectrum to include human rights? What are the dominant cognitive frames through which firms make sense of CSV projects, and are some frames more likely to have transformative power? We pose these questions in the context of small-scale firms in a low-to-middle income country—a context where CSV policies have been promoted extensively over the last decade in the expectation of improved economic (...) competitiveness, growth, and sustainable development processes. We employ a grounded theory approach to identify three dominant cognitive frames used by our respondents to make sense of CSV. The most prevalent frame prioritizes economic over social and environmental goals, and considers social, environmental, and human rights benefits to trickle down from economic growth and wealth generation. In the second frame, economic actors follow a win–win logic according to which environmental sustainability is pursued only if there are clear and foreseeable economic payoffs. The third frame is a niche that emphasizes the attainment of certain human rights goals, despite a perceived lack of immediate economic returns. Our work casts doubt on the capacity of CSV projects to stimulate sustainable development processes without radically changing entrepreneurs’ cognitive frames from growth first to humanizing the business. (shrink)

This paper investigates the claim that artificial Intelligence Systems cannot be held morally responsible because they do not have an ability for agential self-awareness e.g. they cannot be aware that they are the agents of an action. The main suggestion is that if agential self-awareness and related first person representations presuppose an awareness of a self, the possibility of responsible artificial intelligence systems cannot be evaluated independently of research conducted on the nature of the self. Focusing on a specific account (...) of the self from the phenomenological tradition, this paper suggests that a minimal necessary condition that artificial intelligence systems must satisfy so that they have a capability for self-awareness, is having a minimal self defined as ‘a sense of ownership’. As this sense of ownership is usually associated with having a living body, one suggestion is that artificial intelligence systems must have similar living bodies so they can have a sense of self. Discussing cases of robotic animals as examples of the possibility of artificial intelligence systems having a sense of self, the paper concludes that the possibility of artificial intelligence systems having a ‘sense of ownership’ or a sense of self may be a necessary condition for having responsibility. (shrink)

The most extensive descriptions of Gog and Magog in the Hebrew Bible appear in Ezekiel 38–39. At various stages of their political career, both Reagan and Bush have linked Gog and Magog to the bêtes noires of the USA, identifying them either as the ‘communistic and atheistic’ Russia or the ‘evil’ Iraq. Biblical scholars, however, seek to contextualise Gog of Magog in the historical literary setting of the ancient Israelites. Galambush identifies Gog in Ezekiel as a cipher for Nebuchadnezzar, the (...) Babylonian king, who acted as Judah’s oppressor in the 6th century BCE. More recently, Klein concludes that Gog, along with his companions, is ‘eine Personifikation aller Feinde, die Israel im Buch Ezechiel gegenüberstehen’. Despite their differences in detail, these scholars, such as Reagan and Bush, work with a dualism that considers only the features of Judah’s enemies incorporated into Gog’s characteristics. Via an analysis of the semantic allusions, literary position and early receptions of Ezekiel 38–39, this article argues that Gog and his entourage primarily display literary attributes previously assigned to Judah’s political allies. (shrink)

.As editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard in the early 1840s, Lydia Maria Child was responsible for keeping the abolitionist movement in the United States informed of relevant news. She also used her editorial position to philosophize. Her column entitled “Letters from New York” is particularly philosophical, including considerations of infinity, free will, time, nature, art, and history. She especially turned to German philosophers and intellectuals such as Kant, Schiller, Bettina von Arnim, Karoline von Günderrode, Jean Paul, Herder, and (...) Hegel in an attempt to guide her readers to a rejection of slavery for the right philosophical reasons. I consider the influence of German philosophy on three particular themes in her writings: a Romantic-Spinozistic view of humans and nature; a Kantian conception of conscience; and a Hegelian description of the philosophy of history. (shrink)

This article evaluates the significance of the personal liberation that Santayana offers in relation to previous proposals in Western modern philosophy. These include the ideas of liberation present in the philosophies of Spinoza, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. I argue that Santayana endorses Spinoza’s project, as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche did, of a philosophic redemption as an alternative to an established religion. Yet, he also follows Schopenhauer in rectifying Spinoza’s attempt of recapturing the philosophic truth of Christianity, a project undertaken in Medieval times (...) for Judaism and Islam, but not for Christianity. The result is an explicit philosophic reconstruction of the esoteric truth of Christianity. This, I argue, is the content of the lay religion and the deliverance it provides that Santayana sees as genuine philosophy and that is exemplified by the work of his hero and master, Spinoza. (shrink)

Arguments for the effectiveness, and even the indispensability, of mathematics in scientific explanation rely on the claim that mathematics is an effective or even a necessary component in successful scientific predictions and explanations. Well-known accounts of successful mathematical explanation in physical science appeals to scientists’ ability to solve equations directly in key domains. But there are spectacular physical theories, including general relativity and fluid dynamics, in which the equations of the theory cannot be solved directly in target domains, and yet (...) scientists and mathematicians do effective work there (McLarty 2023, Elder 2023). Building on extant accounts of structural scientific explanation (Bokulich 2011, Leng 2021), I argue that philosophical accounts of the role of equations in scientific explanation need not rely on scientists’ ability to solve equations independently of their understanding of the empirical or experimental context. For instance, the process of formulating solutions to equations can involve significant appeal to information about experimental contexts (Curiel 2010) or of physically similar systems (Sterrett 2023). Working from a close analysis of work in fluid mechanics by Martin Bazant and Keith Moffatt (2005), I propose an account of heuristic structural explanation in mathematics (Einstein 1921, Pincock 2021), which explains how physical explanations can be constructed even in domains where basic equations cannot be solved directly. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic swept through New York City swiftly and with devastating effect. The crisis put enormous pressure on all hospital services, including the clinical ethics consultation team. This report describes the recent experience of the ethics consultants and Columbia University Irving Medical Center during the COVID-19 surge and compares the case load and characteristics to the corresponding period in 2019. By reporting this experience, we hope to supplement the growing body of COVID-19 scientific literature and provide details of the (...) human toll the virus took on our hospitals and communities. We also aim to highlight the role of the clinical ethics consultant as well as areas of policy and law that may need to be addressed in order to be better prepared for a future public health crisis. (shrink)

This is a community based research project using a case study of 20 people living in middle America who are food insecure, but do not use food pantries. The participants’ rate of actual hunger is twice that of food insecure community members who use food pantries. Since most of the participants are not poor, the Asset Vulnerability Framework is used to classify causes of food insecurity. The purpose of the study is to identify why participants are food insecure and why (...) they do not use food pantries. Findings reveal that the participants restrict the quality and quantity of food eaten as a strategy to manage their budget. Following AVF, this strategy allows them to offset lower returns to labor assets, cover rising costs of human capital investment, protect their two most important productive assets of housing and transportation, and compensate for household relationships that increase their vulnerability. In addition, food insecurity itself inhibited social capital formation, further increasing vulnerability. The main reasons the participants do not use food pantries is to protect their social capital assets: almost all of the participants hid their hunger from colleagues, friends, relatives, and even the people they lived with. The participants described fear of societal shaming and blaming as motivations for hiding their hunger. However, using food pantries could reduce their food insecurity. Therefore, there was a feedback loop between food insecurity and social capital: food insecurity reduced social capital and efforts to protect social capital prevented participants from improving food security by using food pantries. (shrink)

Dignity is man’s creation, not respected by nature or life. It is part of what has been sometimes considered as dangerous hubris or human pride. The inevitable fall from hubris leads either to humility or to humiliation – a middle stage between hubris and humility. When pride is hurt and dignity impaired by the very nature of indomitable, indif­ferent and secretive life, awareness of humiliation as a preferred stage is crucial. It is crucial because it permits to avoid humility, for (...) all those who feel that humility is beyond their power or below their will, while keeping the fighting and ambitious spirit of hubris. Moreover, awareness of our humiliation enables us to apprehend an important, though painful, truth about the human condition. (shrink)

Because the demand for health services outstrips the available resources, priority setting is one of the most difficult issues faced by health policy makers, particularly those in developing countries. Priority setting in developing countries is fraught with uncertainty due to lack of credible information, weak priority setting institutions, and unclear priority setting processes. Efforts to improve priority setting in these contexts have focused on providing information and tools. In this paper we argue that priority setting is a value laden and (...) political process, and although important, the available information and tools are not sufficient to address the priority setting challenges in developing countries. Additional complementary efforts are required. Hence, a strategy to improve priority setting in developing countries should also include: (i) capturing current priority setting practices, (ii) improving the legitimacy and capacity of institutions that set priorities, and (iii) developing fair priority setting processes. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom suggests that aesthetic experiences - those moments when the senses come to life - are important only after more basic needs have been met. In this inspiring wealth of provocative ideas, Yi-Fu Tuan demonstrates that feeling and beauty are essential parts of life and society. The aesthetic is shown to be not merely one aspect of culture but its central core - both its driving force and its ultimate goal. Beginning with the individual and the physical world, (...) the author's exploration progresses from the simple to the complex. Tuan starts by examining the building blocks of aesthetic experience - sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste - and gradually expands his analysis to include the most elaborate of human constructs, including art, architecture, literature, philosophy, music, and landscape. This leads him to the realm of politics, where he grapples with the fundamental question of the relationship between goodness and beauty, and of how the aesthetic can become a moral force within society. To guide the reader along this journey, the author describes how the aesthetic operates in four widely disparate cultures: Australian aboriginal, Chinese, medieval European, and modern American. Yi-Fu Tuan, one of our most influential and original thinkers, brilliantly conveys the profound fascination of multisensory reality, and in so doing enables us to make connections among even the most diffuse elements of our lives. While Tuan does not ignore human folly, Passing Strange and Wonderful is a celebration of the world around us, our experiences, and our creations. (shrink)

As an introduction to the six essays written in honor of Joseph Agassi’s last book, I explain the book structure and Agassi’s purpose in writing it. To the contrary of what I had in mind when I invited Agassi to pen this manuscript—his Cynic- and Zen-like educational practices, on which I have elaborated elsewhere and which required further clarification—Agassi chose to write on the intersection of the philosophy of life with academic philosophy. Following Socrates, he called for an active collaboration (...) of both. By explaining why “philosophy is nothing … if it is not the advocacy of reason,” Agassi summed up his entire philosophy in what turned out to be his clearest and most insightful work, his testament. (shrink)

As editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard in the early 1840s, Lydia Maria Child was responsible for keeping the abolitionist movement in the United States informed of relevant news. She also...

Physicians, philosophers, and theologians consider how to address death and dying for a diverse population in a secularized century.Most of us are generally ill-equipped for dying. Today, we neither see death nor prepare for it. But this has not always been the case. In the early fifteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church published the Ars moriendi texts, which established prayers and practices for an art of dying. In the twenty-first century, physicians rely on procedures and protocols for the efficient management (...) of hospitalized patients. How can we recapture an art of dying that can facilitate our dying well? In this book, physicians, philosophers, and theologians attempt to articulate a bioethical framework for dying well in a secularized, diverse society.Contributors discuss such topics as the acceptance of human finitude; the role of hospice and palliative medicine; spiritual preparation for death; and the relationship between community, and individual autonomy. They also consider special cases, including children, elderly patients with dementia, and death in the early years of the AIDS epidemic, when doctors could do little more than accompany their patients in humble solidarity.These chapters make the case for a robust bioethics—one that could foster both the contemplation of finitude and the cultivation of community that would be necessary for a contemporary art of dying well.ContributorsJeffrey P. Bishop, Lisa Sowle Cahill, Daniel Callahan, Farr A. Curlin, Lydia S. Dugdale, Michelle Harrington, John Lantos, Stephen R. Latham, M. Therese Lysaught, Autumn Alcott Ridenour, Peter A. Selwyn, Daniel Sulmasy. (shrink)

Philosophical practice or counseling has been described as a cluster of meth­ods for treating everyday problems and predicaments through philosophical means. Not­withstanding the variety of methods, philosophical counselors seem to share the following tenets: 1. The counselee is autonomous; 2. Philosophical counseling differs from psychological counseling and 3. Philosophical counseling is effective in solving predicaments. A critical examination shows these to be problematic at both theoretical and practical levels. As I believe that philosophical practice is a valuable contribution both to (...) philosophy and to psychology, though not devoid of potential dangers and misuses, I suggest that philosoph­ical counselors reconsider the theoretical and empirical validity of their tenets. Using my experience as a philosophical counselor, I attempt in this paper to contribute to this task while introducing the reader to what are, in my opinion, the main problems in the field. (shrink)

I trace Shlomit Schuster’s main ideas about the practice of philosophy, and fol­low with a critical characterization of her thought which bears on philosophy’s relation to psychology and psychiatry, on the one hand, and to religion, on the other, as well as on her basis of claiming philosophy’s suitability for non-philosophers. I argue that Shlomit could be unnecessarily uncompromising in implementing her either/or yet not sufficiently discerning of philosophy’s difference with religion. The most conspicuous tenet of Shlomit’s thought – the (...) relation between philosophy and the therapeutic disciplines – has been abundantly debated within the practical philosophy movement. As far as I know, the tacit assumption of her thought regarding the relation of religion with philosophy and its prac­tice, in contradistinction, has not been addressed within this movement. Shlomit’s life and death urges us to tackle this delicate yet significant subject. (shrink)

Laughter is a significant topic for Renaissance and seventeenth‐century philosophers. Still, the latter rarely approved of laughter but endorsed it as useful mockery for theological or philosophical purposes. Benedict Spinoza’s view of laughter stands out as an exception to this attitude as well as to previous and later ones. Spinoza differentiates between mockery and laughter, denounces the former as evil, and characterizes the latter as “pure joy”: laughter is about oneself rather than another and originates in noticing something good, rather (...) than base or ugly. In contrast to melancholy, cheerfulness is “always good” and is a precondition of our liberation as it furthers the use of reason. Not only is Spinoza’s view original, but it is an important source of the eighteenth‐century notions of good‐natured laughter and good humor through a more than probable influence on their proponent, the Earl of Shaftesbury. Whilst Spinoza’s view of cheerfulness is briefly addressed in recent studies, his view of laughter goes unnoticed in most commentaries and is misrepresented in humor studies. Contrary to what is assumed in the philosophy of laughter, I argue that the most important defense of laughter comes not from a British Enlightenment thinker, but from the Dutch Jewish seventeenth‐century philosopher. (shrink)