LET ME BEGIN this inquiry with the simple but fundamental fact that the flow of time, or passage, as it is also known, is given in experience, that it is as indubitable an aspect of our perception of the world as the sights and sounds that come in upon us, even though it is not the peculiar property of a special sense. Consider, by way of illustration, that I am now sitting at the desk in my study. This particular event (...) was not present at any earlier time, nor will it be present shortly as I become involved in other activities. The present, as I experience it, is regularly associated with later and later events. It does not hop about capriciously from here to a later time, to a previous time, and then to a much later time, or trace out some other such indiscriminate pattern; instead I find it always in association with the next moment, and as I look backward and inward, so to speak, I find that the prior moment was present and that this next-later moment is present. Quite often this condition is expressed by means of imagery. We are asked to envision either a moving present racing along a fixed track of moments or events from earlier to later, or alternatively a fixed present through which stream a series of moments or events, first the earlier and then the later ones. One is in truth hard-pressed to find references to passage which do not employ quasi-poetical tropes and metaphors, and while these do help in some sense to say what we mean, great caution is required when handling them because of their ready tendency to draw us away from the actual phenomenon requiring explanation. (shrink)

Only a few studies explore the lifeworld of the spouses of persons affected by early-onset Alzheimer disease. The aim of this study is to explore the lifeworld of spouses when their partners are diagnosed with AD, focusing on spouses’ lived experience. The study employs an interpretative phenomenological framework. Ten in-depth interviews are performed. The results show that spouses’ lifeworld changes with the diagnosis. They experience an imprisoned existence in which added obligations, fear, and worry keep them trapped at home, both (...) physically and mentally. In their longing for freedom, new strategies and attitudes helps the spouses to create an extended “lived space” with their partner. The findings stress the importance of paying attention to the lifeworld of spouses and making clinical recommendations on this basis. Most importantly, the lifeworld perspective has implications for how we understand what care is. We hope to challenge all different healthcare professionals and invite them to discuss the deep meaning of care and the definition of being professional in encounters with vulnerable others from a lifeworld perspective. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article examines the professional boundaries and obstacles encountered by Eritrean graduates of a medical interpreter course in Israel. Through a series of personal interviews held about a year after their graduation, we identified professional and personal boundaries as a recurring theme. Drawing on the inspiring work of Erving Goffman, we discuss the tension between their “normative roles” and “typical roles.” By deploying two heuristic two-way typologies—in reference to the service provider or the patient, and in reference to formal or (...) informal interpreting settings—we propose that the tension between the normative and the typical manifests most clearly within formal interpreting settings and vis-à-vis the service providers, and is least present outside formal settings and vis-à-vis the patients. Recognizing that the role of the interpreter tends to extend well beyond its formal setting, we conclude by reflecting on how the circumstances of marginalization and lack of support—incurred by t... (shrink)

The long-standing conflict between the two theories centers about the question whether time can exist independently of that which is in it. Those who advocate absolute time answer in the affirmative while the relationists take the opposite position claiming that temporal relations, and thus time, have no reality apart from the things and events which they order. In the terminology of Paul Weiss, relational time is "concrete." The considerable emphasis placed upon this issue of the concreteness of time has adversely (...) affected the absolute theory, leading to presentations of the absolutist position that are confusing, if not erroneous. Absolute time, as interpreted by philosophers such as Broad, Gunn, and Whitehead, posits the existence of abstract moments which are arranged in serial order one before the other by virtue of relations of precedence between them. Things and events participate in time only vicariously, so to speak, being joined to their respective moments by another kind of relation which Whitehead calls "occupation." The overall structure presented by the absolute theory is therefore thought to be as follows: one event is before another if both are respectively bound by relations of occupation to moments which are in turn so related as to be one before the other. Relational time mercifully simplifies this picture by a neat bit of surgery, cutting away the abstract moments and tying the relations of precedence directly to things and events themselves. As a consequence, the parasitic relations of occupation wither away. (shrink)

Since the late 1980s, the affinity between irony and postmodernity has been addressed in several studies that apply semiotic approaches to cultural postmodernity generally and to postmodern literature specifically. The following article contributes to the branch of semiotics of postmodern literature by proposing the notion of bi-paradigmatic irony as a special postmodern sign. Whereas mono-paradigmatic irony establishes its ironic contrast within the same paradigm, in bi-paradigmatic irony, said and meant meanings belong to two different paradigms. On the basis of two (...) semiotic paradigmatic perspectives and three semiotic paradigmatic ideologies , six types of bi-paradigmatic irony are possible. Two of the six types of postmodern irony are applied to theoretical-literary texts by Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes as well as to literary texts by the Austrian writers Christoph Ransmayr and Hans Carl Artmann. (shrink)

First it will be necessary to examine the argument, and the meaning of the argument, by which Mr. Ingram-Pearson is led to uphold such an unusual position. Using the statement, "fairies do not exist," as his example, he observes: "In order to achieve its obvious status as a denial this statement must have some object of reference for its subject term; for denials which are denials of nothing are not denials in any sense at all." What, then, is the designate (...) of the term "fairies"? It is, we are told, "an existent [italics mine] which at least one person believes to be present in the world and which another person at the same time and in the same context believes is not there." To say that "fairies do not exist" is therefore to say that "certain entities, designated by the term 'fairies,' are not present in the world," or "specific entities, designated by the term 'fairies,' are really absent from the world." The latter statement is positive, and Mr. Ingram-Pearson tells us explicitly that positive statements cannot "succeed in making intelligible" something made intelligible by negative statements about non-existents; but he has in mind such "ordinary" positive statements as "fairies are imagined beings." In other words, it is not that negative statements about. (shrink)

In this paper I shall examine creation and annihilation in time rather than solipsism of the moment. The argument will focus upon a difficulty raised by the creationist's qualification of the solipsist's denial of past and future. The solipsist maintains that the words "past" and "future" have no object of reference; hence, statements denying their existence, like such statements as "Fairies do not exist" and "Santa Claus does not exist," convey the idea that there simply are no existents to which (...) the subject terms refer. At no point can we accuse the solipsist of making the absurd claim that some existents do not exist, and yet that is precisely the claim which the creationist makes; for his subject term refers to some existent—something which does exist or did exist—and then he denies the existence of that existent. Indeed, he cannot express himself without granting existence, on the one hand, and denying it, on the other, so that he appears at the very outset to be involved in a contradiction. If the following argument is correct, it will prove that the contradiction is not merely apparent but real, and that the creationist is confronted by it as soon as he says what he wants to say in whatever idiom he chooses to say it. (shrink)

The article discusses three uses of the term »postmodern« by Rudolf Pannwitz, which first appeared in his 1917 book Die Krisis der europäischen Kultur. Whereas Wolfgang Welsch interpreted this concept as a new version of Nietzsche's ideal of the Übermensch, the article instead proposes to regard the »postmodern man« as an update of Nietzsche's letzter Mensch and therefore as a negative image of a threatening development towards superficiality and a lack of creativity, both of which prevent the overcoming of the (...) modern intellectual crisis based on nihilism and decadence. Although Pannwitz had no subsequent influence on postmodernity discourses, he had thus already sketched the concept of postmodernity-as-posthistoire. Furthermore, the article presents two additional and so far overlooked instances of »postmodern« in Pannwitz's work, namely from his 1921 autobiography Grundriss einer Geschichte meiner Kultur and from his 1951 article Der Nihilismus und die werdende Welt. The three examples arise from a relatively coherent array of cultural-philosophical concepts that delve into issues of modernity, classicism, romanticism, and naturalism. (shrink)