Tarot use has become increasingly popular in contemporary society. However, unlike the position afforded divination in some cultures, it is not culturally consecrated as a legitimate way of knowing in the so‐called Modern West—in large part, due to the attempted disenchantment of the world by the colonial project of modernity. This paper posits that engagement with tarot divination can be a decolonizing methodology. I explore how divination's dependence on chance, the imagination, and engagement with spirits can heal the (...) Cartesian mental models that underly modernity's hold on our society. Academic writing on divination has, until recently, largely been authored by people who are not also practitioners of divination themselves. Writing as both a scholar and practitioner of tarot, I use the cards as a form of “imaginal research” to directly assist in the creation of this paper—allowing the tarot itself to speak (as much as me speak about it). (shrink)

In this paper I give a reconstruction of Dummett’s main arguments concerning the theory of the occult origin of the Tarot, and discuss the reasons behind the success of the Tarot pack – in particular the Major Arcana – in the history of card games. I also provide some indication of the links between Dummett’s interest in the history of card games and aspects of his philosophical background. As I am not an expert on card games, this paper (...) is mainly a personal tribute to a side of Dummett’s work to which philosophers have in general paid little attention. (shrink)

For well over a decade Inna Semetsky has been at the forefront of an effort to introduce the thought of Gilles Deleuze into educational philosophy and theory. In her (2006) book, Deleuze, Education and Becoming, she set forth a sophisticated reading of Deleuze that drew enlightening parallels between his work and that of John Dewey and his Pragmatist predecessors. In Re-Symbolization of the Self (2011), she linked Deleuze to a very different tradition—that of Jungian psychology—and argued for the integration of (...) Jungian archetypal analysis with the hermeneutic practice of reading Tarot cards. Additionally, through a series of editorial projects, she has brought together scholars from a wide range of disciplines in research initiatives that have significantly enriched both Deleuze studies and educational theory. Now, with The Edusemiotics of Images: Essays on the Art–Science of Tarot (2013), Semetsky extends her previous work in provocative ways, integrating a dazzling array of sources .. (shrink)

What distinguishes evils from ordinary wrongs? Are some evils unforgivable? How should we respond to evils? Card offers a secular theory of evil--representing a compromise between classic utilitarian and stoic approaches--that responds to these and other questions.

La question de la religion - de son essence, de sa fonction, de son origine - a été centrale dans la sociologie et l'anthropologie classiques. Pour la tirer des impasses et de la stagnation où elle est reléguée de nos jours, Camille Tarot propose ici un bilan critique des œuvres des meilleurs comparatistes, à travers leurs théories si contradictoires de la religion. Huit auteurs principaux sont soumis à examen : Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Mircéa Eliade, Georges Dumézil, Claude Lévi-Strauss, (...) René Girard, Pierre Bourdieu et Marcel Gauchet. L'important en la matière est d'abord d'esquiver les faux irénismes comme les querelles stériles ou haineuses, pour confronter les doctrines en profondeur et systématiquement. Ensuite, de déceler l'impensé et les refoulements que produit chaque cadre théorique, pour proposer le modèle ou l'idéal-type de la religion qui paraît le mieux fondé. Au fil de cet examen, il apparaît que l'essence du fait religieux est à rechercher à l'intersection du symbolique et du sacré, à comprendre à partir des fondations d'Emile Durkheim et de Marcel Mauss, complétées par les apports de René Girard. La possible fécondité du modèle qui se dégage ainsi s'atteste par sa capacité à relire les sources et à renouveler en profondeur les vieux problèmes des fonctions de la religion, qui n'avaient guère avancé depuis Emile Durkheim. (shrink)

Information on more than 400 subjects, from angels and herbalism to tarot and vampires.

Tarot cards are one means to unlocking an image. In this article, the image is that of the Albanian writer and political dissident Musine Kokalari at her 1946 trial. Her photograph features in Albanian discourses about its communist past. I argue that the image provides clues as to the manner in which the country has faced up to its own history. For what is certain is that the Albanian account of the Enver Hoxha dictatorship remains incomplete. Drawing on (...) Walter Benjamin’s notion of ‘here-and-now in a flash’, and Roland Barthes’ and Italo Calvino’s reflections on photography and the power of the visual, we can identify at least two distinct memory regimes in the relevant historical, legal and political narratives. (shrink)

This book brings together an introduction to the social sciences of religions - intended for the general public, which generally ignores them - in a critical essay in order to update them in the face of a current situation that strongly challenges them and will continue to do so. Indeed, the news of globalization imposes the confusing spectacle of a world of religions caught between the two extremes of forms so exclusivist that they justify violence, even terrorism, and such irenic (...) forms that they seek a spirituality fit to go beyond all borders, even religious ones. The place given to Islam in this way is explained, among other things, because during the conflicts of Salafist jihadist and certain branches of Sufism, it illustrates this contradiction in a particularly strong, but by no means exclusive way. (shrink)

L’article de Mauss, « Une catégorie de l’esprit humain : la notion de personne, celle de “moi” » est justement célèbre pour son rôle pionnier et l’énorme influence qu’il a eue sur la recherche ethnographique dans ce domaine. Mais compte tenu de sa date, 1938, il appelle aussi une lecture contextuelle qui permet de saisir comment son auteur articule pensée scientifique et engagement politico-moral, depuis une tradition durkheimienne de réflexion sur l’individu et l’individualisme, souvent plus riche qu’on ne le dit, (...) mais aussi marquée d’un évolutionnisme que Mauss n’hésite pas à critiquer pour mieux réactualiser et enrichir ce qui reste valable dans l’héritage.The well-known pioneering article by Marcel Mauss, « A category of the human spirit : The notion of the person and ego », has enormously influenced research in ethnology. Given its date, a contextual reading is necessary to understand how Mauss articulated scientific thought with political and moral commitments drawn from a Durkheimian conception of individuals and individualism. The Durkheimian tradition, often richer than is recognized, bears the marks of an evolutionary approach that Mauss did not refrain from criticizing in an effort to update and enrich what is valid in this heritage. (shrink)

Social death, central to the evil of genocide, distinguishes genocide from other mass murders. Loss of social vitality is loss of identity and thereby of meaning for one's existence. Seeing social death at the center of genocide takes our focus off body counts and loss of individual talents, directing us instead to mourn losses of relationships that create community and give meaning to the development of talents.

The opportunities to become a good person are not the same for everyone. Modern European ethical theory, especially Kantian ethics, assumes the same virtues are accessible to all who are capable of rational choice. Character development, however, is affected by circumstances, such as those of wealth and socially constructed categories of gender, race, and sexual orientation, which introduce factors beyond the control of individuals. Implications of these influences for morality have, since the work of Williams and Nagel in the seventies, (...) raised questions in philosophy about the concept of moral luck. In The Unnatural Lottery, Claudia Card examines how luck enters into moral character and considers how some of those who are oppressed can develop responsibility. Luck is often best appreciated by those who have known relatively bad luck and have been unable to escape steady comparison of their lot with those of others. The author takes as her paradigms the luck of middle and lower classes of women who face violence and exploitation, of lesbians who face continuing pressure to hide or self-destruct, of culturally Christian whites who have ethnic privilege, and of adult survivors of child abuse. How have such people been affected by luck in who they are and can become, the good lives available to them, the evils they may be liable to embody? Other philosophers have explored the luck of those who begin from privileged positions and then suffer reversals of fortune. Claudia Card focuses on the more common cases of those who begin from socially disadvantaged positions, and she considers some who find their good luck troubling when its source is the unnatural lottery of social injustice. (shrink)

: Social death, central to the evil of genocide (whether the genocide is homicidal or primarily cultural), distinguishes genocide from other mass murders. Loss of social vitality is loss of identity and thereby of meaning for one's existence. Seeing social death at the center of genocide takes our focus off body counts and loss of individual talents, directing us instead to mourn losses of relationships that create community and give meaning to the development of talents.

This essay reflects on issues raised by commentators regarding my book, The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil (Oxford 2002). They are (1) Robin Schott's observation of the tension between my discussion of forgiveness and of castration fantasies; (2) Bat-Ami Bar On's questions regarding whether evil is ethical, political, or both; (3) Adam Morton's queries regarding the relative seriousness of evils and injustices; and (4) María Pía Lara's concerns regarding what is valuable in Kant's ethics.

Although the exclusion of LGBTs from the rites and rights of marriage is arbitrary and unjust, the legal institution of marriage is itself so riddled with injustice that it would be better to create alternative forms of durable intimate partnership that do not invoke the power of the state. Card's essay develops a case for this position, taking up an injustice sufficiently serious to constitute an evil: the sheltering of domestic violence.

This book argues that a conscientiously objecting medical professional should receive an exemption only if the grounds of an objector's refusal are reasonable. It defends a detailed, contextual account of public reasonability suited for healthcare, which builds from the overarching concept of Rawlsian public reason. The author analyzes the main competing positions and maintains that these other views fail precisely due to their systematic inattention to the grounding reasons behind a conscientious objection; he argues that any such view is plausible (...) to the extent that it mimics the 'reason-giving requirement' for conscience objections defended in this work. Only reasonable objections can defeat the prior professional obligation to assign primacy to patient well-being, therefore one who refuses a patient's request for a legally available, medically indicated, and safe service must be able to explain the grounds of their objection in terms understandable to other citizens within the public institutional structure of medicine. The book further offers a novel policy proposal to deploy the Reasonability View: establishing conscientious objector status in medicine. It concludes that the Reasonability View is a viable and attractive position in this debate. A New Theory of Conscientious Objection in Medicine: Justification and Reasonability will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in bioethics, medical ethics, and philosophy of medicine, as well as thinkers interested in the intersections between law, medical humanities, and philosophy. (shrink)

: Although the exclusion of LGBTs from the rites and rights of marriage is arbitrary and unjust, the legal institution of marriage is itself so riddled with injustice that it would be better to create alternative forms of durable intimate partnership that do not invoke the power of the state. Card's essay develops a case for this position, taking up an injustice sufficiently serious to constitute an evil: the sheltering of domestic violence.

What distinguishes evils from ordinary wrongs? Is hatred a necessarily evil? Are some evils unforgivable? Are there evils we should tolerate? What can make evils hard to recognize? Are evils inevitable? How can we best respond to and live with evils? Claudia Card offers a secular theory of evil that responds to these questions and more. Evils, according to her theory, have two fundamental components. One component is reasonably foreseeable intolerable harm -- harm that makes a life indecent and impossible (...) or that makes a death indecent. The other component is culpable wrongdoing. Atrocities, such as genocides, slavery, war rape, torture, and severe child abuse, are Card's paradigms because in them these key elements are writ large. Atrocities deserve more attention than secular philosophers have so far paid them. They are distinguished from ordinary wrongs not by the psychological states of evildoers but by the seriousness of the harm that is done. Evildoers need not be sadistic:they may simply be negligent or unscrupulous in pursuing their goals. Card's theory represents a compromise between classic utilitarian and stoic alternatives (including Kant's theory of radical evil). Utilitarians tend to reduce evils to their harms; Stoics tend to reduce evils to the wickedness of perpetrators: Card accepts neither reduction. She also responds to Nietzsche's challenges about the worth of the concept of evil, and she uses her theory to argue that evils are more important than merely unjust inequalities. She applies the theory in explorations of war rape and violence against intimates. She also takes up what Primo Levi called "the gray zone", where victims become complicit in perpetrating on others evils that threaten to engulf themselves. While most past accounts of evil have focused on perpetrators, Card begins instead from the position of the victims, but then considers more generally how to respond to -- and live with -- evils, as victims, as perpetrators, and as those who have become both. (shrink)

In this contribution to philosophical ethics, Claudia Card revisits the theory of evil developed in her earlier book The Atrocity Paradigm, and expands it to consider collectively perpetrated and collectively suffered atrocities. Redefining evil as a secular concept and focusing on the inexcusability - rather than the culpability - of atrocities, Card examines the tension between responding to evils and preserving humanitarian values. This stimulating and often provocative book contends that understanding the evils in terrorism, torture and genocide enables us (...) to recognise similar evils in everyday life: daily life under oppressive regimes and in racist environments; violence against women, including in the home; violence and executions in prisons; hate crimes; and violence against animals. Card analyses torture, terrorism and genocide in the light of recent atrocities, considering whether there can be moral justifications for terrorism and torture, and providing conceptual tools to distinguish genocide from non-genocidal mass slaughter. (shrink)

Torture is like slavery (and unlike murder and genocide) in that it is not inconceivable that torture might be justifiable. But the circumstances that would make it tolerable are unrealistic in philosophically interesting ways. It is unrealistic to think we can predict when torture will be effective and containable; unwarranted to suppose that humane alternatives are impossible; disastrous to remove motivations to create alternatives; unacceptable to be satisfied with available evidence regarding suspects’ identity, knowledge of critical detail, ability to recall (...) it, or reasons for not providing it. Most importantly, the costs of even successful interrogational torture would negate the gains sought. Or so this essay argues. (shrink)

This article argues that practitioners have a professional ethical obligation to dispense emergency contraception, even given conscientious objection to this treatment. This recent controversy affects all medical professionals, including physicians as well as pharmacists. This article begins by analyzing the option of referring the patient to another willing provider. Objecting professionals may conscientiously refuse because they consider emergency contraception to be equivalent to abortion or because they believe contraception itself is immoral. This article critically evaluates these reasons and concludes that (...) they do not successfully support conscientious objection in this context. Contrary to the views of other thinkers, it is not possible to easily strike a respectful balance between the interests of objecting providers and patients in this case. As medical professionals, providers have an ethical duty to inform women of this option and provide emergency contraception when this treatment is requested. (shrink)

Current mainstream approaches to conscientious objection either uphold the standards of public health care by preventing objections or protect the consciences of health‐care professionals by accommodating objections. Public justification approaches are a compromise position that accommodate conscientious objections only when objectors can publicly justify the grounds of their objections. Public justification approaches require objectors and assessors to speak a common normative language and to this end it has been suggested that objectors should be required to cast their objection in terms (...) of public reason. We provide critical support for such a public reason condition and argue that it would be neither too demanding nor too permissive. We also respond to objections that it unfairly favours secular over religious objectors and that public reasons cannot be held with the kind of sincerity thought to characterize conscientious objections. (shrink)

Fifteen essays address subjects ranging from the history of feminist ethics to the logic of pluralist feminism and present feminist perspectives on such topics as terrorism, bitterness, women trusting other women, and survival and ethics. Paper edition, $14.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Nel Noddings, in Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education, presents and develops an ethic of care as an alternative to an ethic that treats justice as a basic concept. I argue that this care ethic is unable to give an adequate account of ethical relationships between strangers and that it is also in danger of valorizing relationships in which carers are seriously abused.

This essay argues that current advocacy of lesbian and gay rights to legal marriage and parenthood insufficiently criticizes both marriage and motherhood as they are currently practiced and structured by Northern legal institutions. Instead we would do better not to let the State define our intimate unions and parenting would be improved if the power presently concentrated in the hands of one or two guardians were diluted and distributed through an appropriately concerned community.

For years, mainstream feminist ethics focused criticism on male supremacy. Feminist philosophers in this volume adopt a less male-focused stance to look closely at oppression's impact on women's agency and on women's relations with women. Examining legal, social, and physical relationships, these philosophers confront moral ambiguity, moral compromise, and complicity in perpetuating oppression. Combining personal experience with philosophical inquiry, they vividly portray their daily engagement with oppression as both victims and perpetrators. They explore such issues as how pornography silences women (...) and radical feminist politics' complicity in racism. Among these insightful essays, Sandra Bartky argues that women share guilt for racism when they benefit from it without protest; Susan Brison reflects on uses of narrative in trauma recovery from such experiences as being targeted for rape or murder; Joan Callahan examines fallout of derogatory speech directed at lesbians; Virginia Held proposes carrying care into marketplaces and governments; and, in her introduction, Claudia Card draws on Primo Levi's conception of "gray zones" in exploring dangers of character damage to victims of misogyny. A fitting companion to Card's highly regarded Feminist Ethics, this volume interweaves observations on character, political ethics, violence, and love into an accessible sourcebook for students. It tackles some of feminism's most pressing issues and helps readers to identify and then overcome the real damage caused by oppression. (shrink)

Martha Nussbaum's work has been characterized by a sustained critique of Stoic ethics, insofar as that ethics denies the validity and importance of our valuing things that elude our control. This essay explores the idea that the very possibility of morality, understood as social or interpersonal ethics, presupposes that we do value such things. If my argument is right, Stoic ethics is unable to recognize the validity of morality (so understood) but can at most acknowledge duties to oneself. A further (...) implication is that moral luck, so far from undermining morality as some have held, is presupposed by the very possibility of morality. (shrink)

Margaret Walker's Moral Understandings offers an “expressive-collaborative,” culturally situated, practice—based picture of morality, critical of a “theoretical-juridical” picture in most prefeminist moral philosophy since Henry Sidgwick. This essay compares her approach to ethics with that of John Rawls, another exemplar of the “theoretical-juridical” model, and asks how Walker's approach would apply to several ethical issues, including interaction with animals, social reform and revolution, and basic human rights.

In this paper I defend the Reasonability View: the position that medical professionals seeking a conscientious exemption must state reasons in support of their objection and allow those reasons to be subject to evaluation. Recently, this view has been criticized by Jason Marsh as proposing a standard that is either too difficult to meet or too easy to satisfy. First, I defend the Reasonability View from this proposed dilemma. Then, I develop this view by presenting and explaining some of the (...) central criteria it uses to assess whether a conscientious objection is proper grounds for extending an exemption to a medical practitioner. (shrink)

: Margaret Walker's Moral Understandings offers an "expressive-collaborative," culturally situated, practice-based picture of morality, critical of a "theoretical-juridical" picture in most prefeminist moral philosophy since Henry Sidgwick. This essay compares her approach to ethics with that of John Rawls, another exemplar of the "theoretical-juridical" model, and asks how Walker's approach would apply to several ethical issues, including interaction with (other) animals, social reform and revolution, and basic human rights.

For more than two millennia the development of philosophy in what is called the West has been the province of men who trace their intellectual heritage to men in ancient Greece. Within “the development of philosophy” I include the training of philosophers as well as publishing and preserving philosophical work in libraries. Thus I regard philosophy as a very material as well as spiritual enterprise. My focus here is on the spiritual impact, actual and potential, of recent changes in the (...) material base of philosophy and the material impact of recent changes in the spiritual focus of philosophers. Before the Twentieth Century, the most significant transitions in the development of Western philosophy were its coming under the domination of Christian religious institutions and then its becoming relatively freed from such domination. Since the advent of the Twentieth Century, the most significant transitions may come from the increasing access to academic institutions of the middle and working classes, of people of color with histories of oppression by white societies, and of women from all classes and ethnic backgrounds—people who do not always or only trace their intellectual heritages to men of ancient Greece. What differences might these changes make to, and call for in, the development of philosophy?What I have thought about most are differences made by women and differences that have drawn in women to academic philosophy in Western democracies, such as the United States. Twentieth Century women in these contexts have published substantial bodies of philosophical inquiry with feminist agendas . I want to comment on two features of such inquiry that often make it attractive to women less readily engaged by the traditions defined by privileged men. These features are holism and what I call “historical particularism.” I begin with “particularism.”. (shrink)

Simone de Beauvoir was a philosopher and writer of notable range and influence whose work is central to feminist theory, French existentialism, and contemporary moral and social philosophy. The essays in this 2003 volume examine all the major aspects of her thought, including her views on issues such as the role of biology, sexuality and sexual difference, and evil, the influence on her work of Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Husserl, and others, and the philosophical significance of her memoirs and fiction. New (...) readers and nonspecialists will find this the most convenient and accessible guide to Beauvoir currently available. Advanced students and specialists will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of Beauvoir. (shrink)

This essay examines how rape of women and girls by male soldiers works as a martial weapon. Continuities with other torture and terrorism and with civilian rape are suggested. The inadequacy of past philosophical treatments of the enslavement of war captives is briefly discussed. Social strategies are suggested for responding and a concluding fantasy offered, not entirely social, of a strategy to change the meanings of rape to undermine its use as a martial weapon.

Defenders of medical professionals’ rights to conscientious objection (CO) regarding emergency contraception (EC) draw an analogy to CO in the military. Such professionals object to EC since it has the possibility of harming zygotic life, yet if we accept this analogy and utilize jurisprudence to frame the associated public policy, those who refuse to dispense EC would not have their objection honored. Legal precedent holds that one must consistently object to all forms of the relevant activity. In the case at (...) hand, then, I argue that these professionals must also oppose morally innocuous practices that may prevent pregnancy after fertilization. These results reveal that such objectors cannot offer a plausible and consistent objection to harming zygotic life. Additionally, there are good reasons to reject the analogy itself. In either case, these findings call into question the case supporting refusals of EC based on scruples. (shrink)