This paper provides a philosophical evaluation of the concept of handedness prevalent but largely unspoken in the scientific literature. This literature defines handedness as the preference or ability to use one hand rather than the other across a range of common activities. Using the philosophical discipline of phenomenology, I articulate and critique this conceptualization of handedness. Phenomenology shows defining a concept of handedness by focusing on hand use leads to a right hand biased concept. I argue further that a phenomenological (...) model based in spatial orientation rather than hand use provides a more inclusive concept of handedness. (shrink)

Silence, Implicite et Non-Dit chez Rousseau/Silence, the Implicit, and the Unspoken in Rousseau prend acte d'un grand nombre de publications ayant trait à l'analyse par Rousseau des langues et du langage, de la parole par rapport à l'écriture, de la voix (y compris la voix de la nature). Mais ce volume se consacre tout particulièrement au fonctionnement et aux effets du silence, de l'implicite et du non-dit dans la pensée de Rousseau. Son approche est à la fois polyvalente et cohérente, (...) et ses réflexions sur le silence sont associées à d'autres préoccupations esthétiques, politiques, et morales de son œuvre. Silence, Implicite et Non-Dit chez Rousseau/Silence, the Implicit, and the Unspoken in Rousseau capitalizes on a great number of publications dealing with Rousseau's analysis of languages and language, speech versus writing, of voice (including the voice of nature). But this volume is particularly dedicated to the study of the functioning and the effects of silence, the implicit and the unspoken in Rousseau's thought. His approach is both polyvalent and consistent, and his reflections on silence are associated with other aesthetic, political, and moral concerns in his work. (shrink)

90% of human beings are right-handed. Naturally, the human world is dexterocentric, or designed for encounter with the right hand. Moments of this right hand bias are widely recognized, and, through devices such as left-handed scissors, coffee mugs, and wooden spoons, non-right-handers fi nd accommodation. From the perspective of one-off accommodations, however, the extent of right hand bias is unclear. This paper offers a unifying framework for understanding right hand bias. It focuses not on which hand is used, but on (...) how the hands are used in space. This is a novel approach to laterality studies. I first argue that differences in how left and right-handers inhabit space entail dissimilar left and right-handed body comportments. I next argue that the norms governing spatiality conform to the right-handed comportment, yet apply to all. I conclude that right hand biased norms are pervasive. We can next ask if they are oppressive. (shrink)

Philosophers struggle to identify a conception of race in Descartes’s philosophy. Yet, Descartes was not wholly silent on matters of foreign ethnicity and identity. This paper compares Descartes’s various statements on savages and barbarians, which have never been methodically analyzed. A tensive view emerges across several texts wherein Descartes asserts that all persons are rational while simultaneously presuming the epistemic inferiority of the foreign other construed as “savage” or “barbarous.” Further examination indicates that prejudice against this foreign other is endemic (...) to both Descartes’s epistemology and his conception of the mind-body union. (shrink)

Philosophers struggle to identify a conception of race in Descartes’s philosophy. Yet, Descartes was not wholly silent on matters of foreign ethnicity and identity. This paper compares Descartes’s various statements on savages and barbarians, which have never been methodically analyzed. A tensive view emerges across several texts wherein Descartes asserts that all persons are rational while simultaneously presuming the epistemic inferiority of the foreign other construed as “savage” or “barbarous.” Further examination indicates that prejudice against this foreign other is endemic (...) to both Descartes’s epistemology and his conception of the mind-body union. (shrink)

This book delivers philosophy’s first sustained examination of handedness: being left-handed, right-handed, etc. It engages literature from phenomenology and continental philosophy, analytic philosophy, laterality studies, cognitive science and psychology, gender studies and feminist philosophy, sociology, political science, and more to provide a systematic accounting of the nature of handedness, its basis in lived experience, its effects on bodily performance, its role in varieties of inequality, and its part in oppression and liberation. As a radical asymmetry in the body, handedness plays (...) a key role in human flourishing. It informs both personal bodily movement and social life, from handshakes and high fives to high tech tools made for one hand or the other. Moreover, with left-handers making up just 10% of the population, handedness presents a significant inequality in lived experience. To live and live well, we must understand handedness. (shrink)

Tensions between sentiments and reason are a well-known feature of Rousseau’s moral theory. To explain these tensions, this paper appeals to Rousseau’s moral foundationalism. In this foundationalism, I argue, feeling and reason operate jointly to establish the content and normativity of moral law. This joint operation is not always smooth, and additionally there is much leeway in this theory, which explains the theory’s ability to accommodate various interpretations and emphases as well as its struggle to delimit specific moral laws, choices, (...) and actions. The most important element of this foundationalism is conscience, which does the work of voicing moral laws with content and normativity grounded in moral sentiments. (shrink)

Rousseau's Savoyard Vicar makes creative use of Descartes's meditative method by applying it to practical life. This ?misuse? of the Cartesian method highlights the limits of the thinking thing as a ground for morality. Taking practical philosophy as first philosophy, the Vicar finds bedrock certainty of the self as an agent in the world and of moral truths while distancing himself from Cartesian positions on the distinction, union and interaction of mind and body. Rousseau's Moral Letters harmonize with the Vicar's (...) view. Descartes would reject the Vicar's appropriation, as real-life problems cannot wait on meditation to answer them. (shrink)