This collection of essays by philosophers and educationalists of international reputation, all published here for the first time, celebrates Paul Hirst's professional career. The introductory essay by Robin Barrow and Patricia White outlines Paul Hirst's career and maps the shifts in his thought about education, showing how his views on teacher education, the curriculum and educational aims are interrelated. Contributions from leading names in British and American philosophy of education cover themes ranging from the nature of good teaching (...) to Wittgensteinian aesthetics. The collection concludes with a paper in which Paul Hirst sets out his latest views on the nature of education and its aims. The book also includes a complete bibliography of works by Hirst and a substantial set of references to his writing. (shrink)

There are major problems in the way in which the environmental 'ethics' question is now being framed – problems which could lead to growing confusion and disillusionment, unless they are rapidly addressed and understood. It is on such problems that this paper focuses. We point to three dimensions of the environmental 'phenomenon' which prevailing accounts of environmental ethics are tending to overlook. We then identify several ways in which incomplete ethical models tend to be reflected in actual environmental policy discourse. (...) Finally, we suggest three hitherto-absent ingredients which will need to be recognised if future models of the ethics question are to be able to reflect, and hence to engage adequately with, social reality. (shrink)

The articles in this special issue of Environmental Values have a shared significance. In one way or another, all of them reflect contemporary concerns about issues of trust, risk, uncertainty, and the cultural shaping of science.These are matters of mounting significance for the politics of the environment in countries like Britain, and indeed for politics more generally, as we have seen in a succession of recent controversies. The Brent Spar oil platform farrago, the hugely costly BSE-CJD upsets, the continuing uproars (...) around genetically modified plants and foods ­ central in all of these have been challenges to the political authority of official patterns of scientifically-backed reassurance, concerning the impacts of deep and open-ended trajectories of technological transformation.To understand what is likely to be at stake in such matters for the politics of industrial democracies in the 21st century, there is now an urgent need to develop richer pictures than those currently dominant, of the cultural and epistemological architecture on which our regulatory institutions have been coming to rely. The contributions to this special issue can be pictured as building blocks in such a process.The present article offers a complementary perspective ­ one grounded in a degree of more hands-on personal experience of related matters. (shrink)

The increasing effort, both lay and academic, to encourage a transition from an “I-It” to an “I-Thou” relation to nature is located within a typology of ways of “knowing nature.” This typology provides the context for a particular understanding of human conversation which sees the relation as a cyclical process of “immersion” and “realization” from which a model of the dialectic between “I-It” and “I-Thou” relations to nature can be developed. This model can be used to identify practical measures that (...) can be taken as first steps toward a balance between these relations, both in general and in the context of science-oriented nature conservation organizations such as English Nature in Britain (formerly, the Nature Conservancy Council). (shrink)

The increasing effort, both lay and academic, to encourage a transition from an “I-It” to an “I-Thou” relation to nature is located within a typology of ways of “knowing nature.” This typology provides the context for a particular understanding of human conversation which sees the relation as a cyclical process of “immersion” and “realization” from which a model of the dialectic between “I-It” and “I-Thou” relations to nature can be developed. This model can be used to identify practical measures that (...) can be taken as first steps toward a balance between these relations, both in general and in the context of science-oriented nature conservation organizations such as English Nature in Britain. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo further delineate risk and resilience factors contributing to trajectories of mental health symptoms experienced by college students through the pandemic.Participantsn = 183 college students.MethodsLinear mixed models examined time effects on depression and anxiety. Propensity-matched subgroups exhibiting “increased” versus “low and stable” depression symptoms from before to after the pandemic-onset were compared on pre-pandemic demographic and psychological factors and COVID-related experiences and coping strategies.ResultsStudents experienced worsening of mental health symptoms throughout the pandemic, particularly during Fall 2020 compared with Fall 2019. (...) The propensity-matched subgroup exhibiting relative resilience reported less alcohol use prior to the pandemic, greater use of active coping strategies, and less of an impact on their college progress.ConclusionsResults point to several potential targets of screening and intervention to decrease residual impacts of the pandemic. (shrink)

When one takes an intersectional perspective on patterns of oppression and domination, it becomes clear that familiar forms of systemic injustice, such as misogyny and anti-Black racism, are inseparable. Some feminist theorists conclude, from this, that the systems behind these injustices cannot be individuated—for example, that there isn’t patriarchy and white supremacy, but instead only white supremacist patriarchy. This chapter offers a different perspective. Philosophers have long observed that a statue and a lump of clay can be individuated (...) although inseparable, and that statues and lumps of clay do different explanatory and predictive work for the same causal outcomes. This chapter suggests that the same is true of systems such as patriarchy and white supremacy. These systems, like the injustices they produce, are inseparable. But they can be individuated, and when they are individuated, they do different explanatory and predictive work. (shrink)

The national opioid epidemic is severely impacting Indian Country. In this article, we draw upon data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to describe the contours of this crisis among Native Americans. While these data are subject to significant limitations, we show that Native American opioid overdose mortality rates have grown substantially over the last seventeen years. We further find that this increase appears to at least parallel increases seen among non-Hispanic whites, who are often thought to be (...) uniquely affected by this crisis. We then profile tribal medical and legal responses to the opioid epidemic, ranging from tribally-operated medication-assisted therapy to drug diversion courts rooted in traditional tribal cultures. (shrink)

Gender, race, and sexuality are not just identities; they are also systems of social organization – i.e., systems of privilege and oppression. This article addresses two main ways privilege and oppression (e.g., racism, misogyny, heteronormativity) are relevant topics in and for philosophical aesthetics: (i) the role of the aesthetic in privilege and oppression, and (ii) the role of philosophical aesthetics, as a discipline and a body of texts, in constructing and naturalizing relations of privilege and oppression (i.e., white heteropatriarchy). (...) The first part addresses how systems of privilege and oppression use the aesthetic. I will discuss various ways race, gender, and sexuality, as both embodied identities and broader social institutions, work with and through “the aesthetic”. The second part addresses racism and (hetero) sexism in the discipline of aesthetics. Both in its history and its present practice aesthetics’apparent neutrality on questions of privilege and oppression is actually evidence of its investment in systems of privilege and oppression. (shrink)

The status of the body figures paradoxically in the interrelated discourses of whiteness, aesthetic taste, and hipness. While Richard Dyer’s analysis of whiteness argues that white identity is “in but not of the body,” Carolyn Korsmeyer’s and Julia Kristeva’s feminist analyses of aesthetic “taste” demonstrate that this faculty is traditionally conceived as something “of” but not “in” the body. While taste directly distances whiteness from embodiment, hipness negatively affirms this same distance: the hipster proves his elite status within (...) class='Hi'>white culture by positioning himself as, in the words of James Chance’s song title, “Almost Black.” The notion of hip contributes to my analysis of taste by focusing on both the gender politics of white embodiment, and how, by taking the social body as object of the prepositions “in” and “of,” these discourses of taste and hipness produce individual bodies as white, and maintain Whiteness as a socio-political norm. (shrink)

Media reports of the health hazards posed by nano-sized particles have turned a white hot spotlight on the risks of nanotechnology. Worried about the risks posed to workers producing nano-materials, the Washington Post has labeled nanotechnology a “seat-of-the-pants occupational health experiment.” This article examines our emerging knowledge base about the hazards of two types of exposure: inhalation of NSPs and topical application of products containing NSPs. It argues that a clear-eyed evaluation of the benefits and risks of nanotechnology is (...) made extremely difficult by the marriage of a complex science with a venture capitalist-like hype. It then suggests that, absent additional statutory authority, governmental regulators cannot readily address the risks posed by these products. This regulatory inaction leaves a significant role for the private insurance market, a role that regulators should support in tangible ways outlined in the article. (shrink)

Nanotechnology is a subject about which we know less than we should, but probably more than we think we do at first glance. Like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's “known unknowns,” we have learned enough to know what we should be concerned with. Glimmers of risk cropped up recently when German authorities recalled a bathroom cleansing product, “MagicNano,” that purported to contain nanosized particles and was on the market for only three days. More than one hundred people suffered severe respiratory problems (...) – six of whom were hospitalized with pulmonary edema. Although a subsequent analysis of MagicNano found that the nanoliquid ingredient morphed in the production into “supersized” particles, the recall nonetheless turned a white hot spotlight on the risk of NSPs. Latching onto the risks posed to workers producing materials using nanotechnology, the Washington Post has labeled nanotechnology a “seat-of-thepants occupational health experiment.”. (shrink)

During an April 12, 1860, Senate debate, Senator Jefferson Davis spoke against a bill to fund Black education in Washington, D.C. Davis argued that the United States government was founded “by white men for white men” and “not for negroes.” According to Davis, the inequality of the white and black races was “stamped from the beginning.”Davis’s phrase forms the basis of Ibram X. Kendi’s 2016 National Book Award–winning study, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist (...) Ideas in America. Kendi currently serves as the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and as the founding director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research. Stamped from the Beginning has won a large... (shrink)

Eugene 'Gene' Vernier worked as a fashion photographer for British Vogue from 1954 to 1967, during one of the most exciting periods in fashion history. Shooting of-the-moment looks from the likes of Christian Dior and Emilio Pucci and top models including Celia Hammond, Jean Shrimpton, and current Vogue creative director Grace Coddington, Vernier worked with some of the biggest names in the industry. Yet he was relatively unconcerned with celebrity. Interested only in bringing out the very best in each frame, (...) Vernier was a true craftsman in the fashion photography trade. Featuring more than one hundred of Vernier's own favorite photographs drawn from Vogue's extensive photo archive, this lavishly illustrated volume reveals remarkable innovation in the use of props, backdrops, and location. Whether he was photographing his subjects by the sea, with a canine companion, or perfectly positioned atop a pale pink convertible, Vernier's careful composition enhanced the essence of his subject. Vernier shot mostly in black-and-white, and his trademark “look” is one of classic femininity. He sought to capture models when they were relaxed, enjoying the clothing, and confident that their photographer would show both only at their best. Providing commentary on the photographs are fashion history expert Becky Conekin and Vogue historian Robin Muir. This is first book to focus on Vernier's work at Vogue and it allows readers a rare glimpse of his inimitable blend of technical excellence and an eye for experimentation. (shrink)

Feminist, critical race, and postcolonial theories have established that social identities such as race and gender are mutually constitutive—i.e., that they “intersect.” I argue that “cultural appropriation” is never merely the appropriation of culture, but also of gender, sexuality, class, etc. For example, “white hipness” is the appropriation of stereotypical black masculinity by white males. Looking at recent videos from black male hip-hop artists, I develop an account of “postmillennial black hipness.” The inverse of white hipness, this (...) practice involves the appropriation, by black men, of stereotypical white gay masculinity and/or non-American, non-white femininity. I also argue that Shephard Fairey’s recent images of (mainly militant) non-Western women of color can be read as a new form of white hipness that revises the traditional logic in two ways: (1) by appropriating non-white femininity rather than masculinity, and (2) by adopting the practice of postmillennial black hipness itself. (shrink)

I distinguish between the nineteenth- to twentieth-century (modernist) tendency to rehabilitate (white) femininity from the abject popular, and the twentieth- to twenty-first-century (postmodernist) tendency to rehabilitate the popular from abject white femininity. Careful attention to the role of nineteenth-century racial politics in Nietzsche's Gay Science shows that his work uses racial nonwhiteness to counter the supposedly deleterious effects of (white) femininity (passivity, conformity, and so on). This move—using racial nonwhiteness to rescue pop culture from white femininity—is (...) a common twentieth- and twenty-first-century practice. I use Nietzsche to track shifts from classical to neo-liberal methods of appropriating “difference.” Hipness is one form of this neoliberal approach to difference, and it is exemplified by the approach to race, gender, and pop culture in Vincente Minnelli's film The Band Wagon. I expand upon Robert Gooding-Williams's reading of this film, and argue that mid-century white hipness dissociates the popular from femininity and whiteness, and values the popular when performed by white men “acting black.” Hipness instrumentalizes femininity and racial nonwhiteness so that any benefits that might come from them accrue only to white men, and not to the female and male artists of color whose works are appropriated. (shrink)

Malevich’s main Suprematist works, such as ›Black Square‹, ›Black Circle‹, and ›Black Cross‹ from 1915, consist of black shapes on white ground. Surprisingly this series of shapes strongly resembles scientific black-and-white images used for research on colour theory, physiological optics, and psychology throughout the 19th century. This paper examines the parallels between Malevich’s paintings and the scientific drawings in three steps: It first characterizes black-and-white images in general, using Edmund Husserl’s definition of the term ›contrast‹. Secondly, the (...) paper investigates the development and function of black-and-white images as tools of perception in the sciences. It finally discusses the specific knowledge generated through Malevich’s art and through scientific black-and-white images, following Max Scheler’s phenomenological identification of knowledge. (shrink)

I argue that sound-centric scholarship can be of use to feminist theorists if and only if it begins from a non-ideal theory of sound; this article develops such a theory. To do this, I first develop more fully my claim that perceptual coding was a good metaphor for the ways that neoliberal market logics (re)produce relations of domination and subordination, such as white supremacist patriarchy. Because it was developed to facilitate the enclosure of the audio bandwidth, perceptual coding is (...) especially helpful in centring the ways that patriarchal racial capitalism structures our concepts and experiences of both sound and technology. The first section identifies sonic cyberfeminist practices that function as a kind of perceptual coding because they subject ‘sound’ and/or ‘women’ to enclosure and accumulation by dispossession. The second section identifies a type of sonic cyberfeminism that tunes into the parts of the spectrum that this perceptual coding discards, building models of community and aesthetic value that do not rely on the exclusion of women, especially black women, from both humanist and posthuman concepts of personhood. Here I focus especially on Alexander Weheliye’s ‘phonographic’ approach to sound, technology and theoretical text. This approach, which he develops in his 2005 book of that title and in recent work in collaboration with Katherine McKittrick, avoids fetishising tech and self-transformation and focuses on practices that build registers of existence that hegemonic institutions perceptually code out of circulation. I conclude with examples of such phonographic compression, including Masters At Work’s ballroom classic ‘The Ha Dance’ and Nicki Minaj’s ‘Anaconda’. (shrink)

The concept of yinyang lies at the heart of Chinese thought and culture. The relationship between these two opposing, yet mutually dependent, forces is symbolized in the familiar black and white symbol that has become an icon in popular culture across the world. The real significance of yinyang is, however, more complex and subtle. This brilliant and comprehensive analysis by one of the leading authorities in the field captures the richness and multiplicity of the meanings and applications of yinyang, (...) including its visual presentations. Through a vast range of historical and textual sources, the book examines the scope and role of yinyang, the philosophical significance of its various layers of meanings and its relation to numerous schools and traditions within Chinese philosophy. By putting yinyang on a secure and clear philosophical footing, the book roots the concept in the original Chinese idiom, distancing it from Western assumptions, frameworks and terms, yet also seeking to connect its analysis to shared cross-cultural philosophical concerns. (shrink)

Because music communicates extra-propositionally, philosophers often use musical concepts and metaphors to discuss implicit and/or affective knowledges. Music is a productive means to philosophically analyze affect, but only when these analyses are grounded in rigorous studies of actual musical works and practices. When we don’t ground our study of music in musical practices, works, and theories, “music” just becomes a mirror of whatever assumptions and biases we already have. I show how the overly-abstract treatment of music and sound in Jean-Luc (...) Nancy’s Listening leads to significant philosophical and political problems. By following his musical metaphors all the way through, I show how his theory of listening naturalizes maleness/masculinity, and, like liberal multiculturalism, values “difference” only as a way to re-center whiteness and patriarchy. As an alternative, I use R&B/electropop singer Kelis’s 2010 single “Acapella” (sic) to develop an alternative account of music, affect, and the politics of difference. (shrink)

Because music communicates extra-propositionally, philosophers often use musical concepts and metaphors to discuss implicit and/or affective knowledges. Music is a productive means to philosophically analyze affect, but only when these analyses are grounded in rigorous studies of actual musical works and practices. When we don’t ground our study of music in musical practices, works, and theories, “music” just becomes a mirror of whatever assumptions and biases we already have. I show how the overly-abstract treatment of music and sound in Jean-Luc (...) Nancy’s Listening leads to significant philosophical and political problems. By following his musical metaphors all the way through, I show how his theory of listening naturalizes maleness/masculinity, and, like liberal multiculturalism, values “difference” only as a way to re-center whiteness and patriarchy. As an alternative, I use R&B/electropop singer Kelis’s 2010 single “Acapella” to develop an alternative account of music, affect, and the politics of difference. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTranslated into English in 2004, Vladimir Jankelevitch’s book Music and the Ineffable has made a significant impact in anglophone musicology. I argue that the figure of the feminine is central to his understanding of music and musical ineffability, and use feminist philosophers’ interpretations and critiques of the figure of the feminine in his close friend and colleague Emmanuel Levinas’s work to unpack the gender politics of Jankelevitch’s book and the secondary literature on it. I focus on the figure of the (...) feminine in Time and the Other and Totality and Infinity, which are works we have evidence Jankelevitch read. There, Levinas describes the feminine as a “form of being” that is “inexhaustible, infinite” and thus “refuses thematization positively”. This is nearly identical to Jankelevitch’s definition of musical ineffability as “fertile inexplicability”. Not only is Jankelevitch’s concept of musical ineffability identical to Levinas’s concept of the feminine, it is also couched in gendered terms throughout Music and the Ineffable. “Musical ineffability” in Jankelevitch’s sense is thus a parallel to Levinas’s concept of the feminine. I then read Jankelevitch and his interpreters in musicology through feminist scholarship on Levinas to show how the former two succumb to the same ultimately patriarchal flaws as the latter. For example, just as Levinas prioritizes paternity and the reproduction of patriarchy, muiscologist Carolyn Abbate uses Jankelevitch as the white masculine other in which musicology recognizes itself as both different and the same. (shrink)

This paper affirms the continuing importance of full employment, as the best prospect for most people of the goods of meaningful work and of self-respect, and welcomes the failure of new technology in Western societies to engender mass unemployment, despite predictions to the contrary. It also replies to criticismsfrom John White (in Education and the End of Work) of a previous paper of mine, 'Work and the Human Essence (1984). Employing a different sense of 'meaningful work related to agents (...) major goals in life. White claims that little work is meaningful, or capable of becoming so, and that social policy shouldrecognise this and exonerate most people from expectations of employment. His argument embodies a distinctive understanding of human flourishing, and a critique of my earlier argument from the human essence. This paper defends that argument, plus a separate argument of my earlier paper from self-respect,which White apparently ignores, for meaningful work as crucial to human flourishing. Most employment, I maintain, is capable of being modified so as to become meaningful work, and since this is most peoples best prospect ofthat good, policies of full employment should not be discarded, either in the West or in the Third World. (shrink)

I have previously argued that human flourishing partly consists in the ability to exercise essential human capacities, many of which are non-distinctive and shared with other animals. The concept of flourishing is itself species-specific. Thus, the development of essential capacities (human and nonhuman) comprises a large part of the goods that we ought to promote. Problems about the definition of ‘essential’ are discussed, as are related issues about whether there are necessary and sufficient conditions for the correct use of sortal (...) universal terms. The relation of the exercise of essential capacities to basic needs is investigated, and the essential nature of the human capacity for meaningful work, which has been disputed by John White, is defended. Finally, some suggestions are offered about what the proponents of the capabilities approach might derive from that of essential capacities. (shrink)

An interdisciplinary reappraisal of Lynn White, Jr.’s “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis” reopens several issues, including the suggestion by Peter Harrison that White’s thesis was historical and that it is a mistake to regard it as theological. It also facilitates a comparison between “Roots” and White’s earlier book Medieval Technology and Social Change. In “Roots,” White discarded or de-emphasized numerous qualifications and nuances present in his earlier work so as to heighten the effect of (...) certain rhetorical aphorisms and to generalize their scope and bearing well beyond what the evidence could bear. The meaning of Genesis and other biblical books proves to be just as important in White’s thesis as their historical reception. In “Roots,” White presents, alongside other contentions, the claims that Christian doctrines have all along been both anthropocentric and despotic, especially in the West, and that this is where the real roots of the problems are to be found. These claims, however, conflict with most of the relevant evidence. An adequate reappraisal of White’s work needs to recognize that there is a cultural determinism parallel to the technological determinisms alleged by R. H. Hilton and P. H. Sawyer, to endorse Elspeth Whitney’s “single-cause” critique of links between religion and technological change in the Middle Ages, and to treat sympathetically Whitney’s claim that White and some of his eco-theological critics (despite their disagreements) have in common both their valorizing of individual beliefs and values and their neglect of economic and institutional factors. Nevertheless, our ecological problems need to be understood through explanations turning on beliefs and values as well as on economics and institutions. (shrink)

George Yancy gathers white scholarship that dwells on the experience of whiteness as a problem without sidestepping the question’s implications for Black people or people of color. This unprecedented reversion of the “Black problem” narrative challenges contemporary rhetoric of a color-evasive world in a critically engaging and persuasive study.

The authors relate the major groups involved in the desegregation of Boston's public schools to divergent understandings of rights in America's political and religious traditions. After an initial historical review, the authors suggest that the desegregation controversy may be understood as a conflict between a natural law theory of rights which requires remedial action to correct injustices and a traditionalist theory which sanctions prevailing liberties. In Boston, one natural law position is represented by black parents and the Federal court's desegregation (...) orders. Another position is represented by many white parents, who base their opposition to desegregation on a traditionalist notion of natural law. The authors suggest that any permanent resolution of the conflict must address these divergent understandings of natural law, as well as the political realities peculiar to Boston. (shrink)

What value does genomics hold for industry? Ten years after the White House Press conference where the human genome sequence was first presented, we ask in which ways and to what extent the developments in genomics have been integrated into industry. This enables us to assess whether this integration has been as successful as expected, but also which unexpected developments in genomics advances have triggered additional benefits for industry. Genomics has contributed to the beginning of a global transition to (...) a bio-based economy, but there have been and there still are hurdles to be cleared. The hurdles are not merely of a technological nature, since the objectives are a complex between economic progress, environmental and global climate concerns, and energy security. Therefore, they are at the same time technological, societal and environmental in nature. These categorisations fall short of articulating the many issues that arise, such as economic development (for emerging economies), public opinion formation and scientific and technological progress. We argue that to make this transition happen, industrialists, policy makers and the wider public have to be prepared to be more actively involved in the debate, weighing the pros and cons and taking responsibility in creating the desired sustainable world.This paper will examine the advances of genomics in the industrial context, the role of these advances in current attempts to find sustainable solutions to a variety of problems, the enthusiasm with which they have been picked up, the implications for industrial innovation and the accompanying discussion about possible consequential social and ethical issues. It will also sketch out the nature of this ongoing establishment of a bio-based economy, the parties that are currently at the negotiation table, and whether the current situation has an impact on the way societal debates emerge. (shrink)