The ongoing debate among African philosophers on the relation of the individual and the community has spawned radical, moderate, and limited communitarian views. In this paper we will insert the question of interpersonal communication into the individual-community conundrum and raise the discourse to the level of cross-cultural engagement. We will highlight the dominant perspectives in Afro-communitarianism with particular emphasis on the Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Gyekye and the Nigerian philosopher Ifeanyi Menkiti. Expanding the discourse into the domain of intercultural/comparative (...) philosophy, this paper will engage Gyekye and Menkiti’s Afro-communitarianism and Jean-Paul Sartre’s radical individualism and the resulting conflictual presentation of interpersonal relation. The paper adopts the conversational method. Keywords: Ifeanyi Menkiti, Kwame Gyekye, Afro-communitarianism, community, individual, Jean-Paul Sartre. (shrink)

The ongoing debate among African philosophers on the relation of the individual and the community has spawned radical, moderate, and limited communitarian views. In this paper we will insert the question of interpersonal communication into the individual-community conundrum and raise the discourse to the level of cross-cultural engagement. We will highlight the dominant perspectives in Afro-communitarianism with particular emphasis on the Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Gyekye and the Nigerian philosopher Ifeanyi Menkiti. Expanding the discourse into the domain of intercultural/comparative (...) philosophy, this paper will engage Gyekye and Menkiti’s Afro-communitarianism and Jean-Paul Sartre’s radical individualism and the resulting conflictual presentation of interpersonal relation. The paper adopts the conversational method. (shrink)

Populist leaders and their radical policies attract the interest of the media across borders. The aim of the current article is to uncover whether interviews centered on one populist leader, but involving interviewers located in different European countries, lead to the same production of populist equivocation across the EU. In addition, two types of journalistic elements that can explain potential differences are investigated: the broad interactions between the media and politicians in a given country, or the reporters belonging to a (...) specific media segment such as the tabloid press or public broadcasters. The research is based on interviews given by Viktor Orbán during the 2019 EU election campaign. Critical discourse analysis is carried out to investigate the equivocal populist narratives produced. (shrink)

The paper introduces the communication view on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), which regards CSR as communicatively constructed in dynamic interaction processes in today’s networked societies. Building on the idea that communication constitutes organizations we discuss the potentially indeterminate, disintegrative, and conflictual character of CSR. We hereby challenge established mainstream views on CSR such as the instrumental view, which regards CSR as an organizational instrument to reach organizational aims such as improved reputation and financial performance, and the political-normative view on (...) CSR, which highlights the societal conditions and role of corporations in creating norms. We argue that both the established views, by not sufficiently acknowledging communication dynamics in networked societies, remain biased in three ways: control-biased, consistency-biased, and consensus-biased. We discuss implications of these biases and propose a future research agenda for the communication view on CSR. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Y. Michael Barilan have described the conflictual aspects of human communication. Humans communicate through verbal language, body-language, and stereotypes. These 3 types of communication can be in harmony or conflict.Verbal and corporal communication are well known. During the past decade, I have examined the field of phatic communication. Phatic communication consists of laughing, crying, yawning, sighing, gasping, sneezing and hiccupping, actions that date back over 500 million years to the Reptilia class of the animal kingdom. During (...) the last million years, these biosemiotic actions have acquired psychological meanings in humans as a result of neocortex connections.The simultaneous presence of threatening verbal signs with empathic stereotype signs, such as violence with laughter or aggression with a smile, requires a rational / emotional effort to decide within milliseconds if the message is a threat or joke. (shrink)

The contemporary agonist thinker, Chantal Mouffe argues that conflicts are constitutive of politics. However, this position raises the question that concerns the survival of order and the proper types of conflicts in democracies. Although Mouffe is not consensus-oriented, consensus plays a role in her theory when the democratic order is at stake. This suggests that there is a theoretical terrain between the opposing poles of conflict and consensus. This can be discussed with the help of concepts and theories that seem (...) to be standing between the two, namely compromise, debate and the borders of democracy. I will argue that we can reveal this position with the theoretical analysis of compromise in the works of F. R. Ankersmit on the historical origin of representative democracy, and Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson on the role of compromise in divided communities. J. S. Mill’s view of colliding opinions offers a moderate agonistic understanding of politics, while the concept of debate plays a similar role for Márton Szabó, a contemporary Hungarian political theorist. Finally, Mouffe’s position stands at the conflictual end of this spectrum, although conflicts are delimited on the normative ground of democracy. (shrink)

The paper, which retains a hypothetical character, argues that Spinoza's propositions referring to God (or involving the use of the name ‘God’, essentially in the Ethics), can be read in a fruitful manner apart from any pre-established hypothesis concerning his own ‘theological preferences’, as definite descriptions of three ‘ideas of God’ which have the same logical status: one (akin to Jewish Monotheism) which identifies the idea of God with the idea of the Law, one (akin to a heretic ‘Socinian’ version (...) of Christianity) which identifies it with the idea of Human Love, and one (akin to a form of Cosmotheism, rather than ‘Pantheism’) which identifies it with Nature. Evidence of this analytic tripartition can be found in the letter of the texts themselves. If accepted (at least as a thought experiment), it would carry three interesting consequences: 1) to renew our understanding of the theory of the ‘three kinds of knowledge’, which have obvious affinities with the three possible ways of understanding the idea of God; 2) to emphasize the critical move associated by Spinoza with each of the three ideas of God (passing from an anthropomorphic legislator to an impersonal command, passing from an imaginary community of similarities to a practical community of singularities, and passing from a teleological and harmonious idea of nature to a causal, even conflictual, idea of its infinite power); 3) to locate the essential ethical and political questions associated with religion on the ‘vectors’ which lead from one idea to another, and represent themselves practical conatus: obedience, utility, order. It is also assumed that such a reading enhances the relevance of Spinoza's philosophy with respect to contemporary debates about religion and secularism. (shrink)

This volume provides a comprehensive account of Wilhelm Röpke as a liberal political economist and social philosopher. Wilhelm Röpke was a key protagonist of transatlantic neoliberalism, a prominent public intellectual and a gifted international networker. As an original thinker, he always positioned himself at the interface between political economy and social philosophy, as well as between liberalism and conservatism. Röpke’s endeavors to combine these elements into a coherent whole, as well as his embeddedness in European and American intellectual networks of (...) liberal and conservative thinkers, are a central theme throughout the book. The volume includes papers by international experts from a conference in Geneva on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Röpke’s passing. The first part focuses on new biographical insights into his exile years in Istanbul and Geneva, while the second part discusses his business cycle theory in the context of the Great Depression, and the third part elaborates on his multifaceted social philosophy. Wilhelm Röpke was among the most important thinkers within the classical liberal revival post-WWII, with intriguing tensions between liberalism and conservatism. A highly recommended volume. –– Peter J. Boettke, 2016-2018 President of the Mont Pèlerin Society and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, George Mason University This important collection of papers provides an in-depth assessment of Wilhelm Röpke’s contributions, placing him in the context of his time. A fine contribution. –– Bruce J. Caldwell, Director of the Center for the History of Political Economy and Research Professor of Economics, Duke University. (shrink)

Today, the earth is an interconnected globe humming with electronic transmissions-a chattering planet nestled in the provident silence of space. The ethical question is whether this is contributing to authentic human development and helping individuals and peoples to be true to their transcendent destiny. The new media are powerful tools for education, cultural enrichment, commercial activity, political participation, intercultural dialogue and understanding. They also can serve the cause of religion. Yet the new information technology needs to be informed and guided (...) by solidarity in the service of the common good bridging the digital divide within and among nations. The value-laden message of Western secular culture to people and traditional societies in many cases ill-prepared to evaluate it leads to widespread crisis, for example, in regard to marriage and family life. This technology can be a means for solving human problems, promoting the integral development of persons, creating a world governed by justice, peace, and love. It also can help men and women in their age-old search for self-understanding. Like today's world itself, the world of media, including the Internet, has been brought by Christ, inchoately yet truly, within the boundaries of the kingdom of God and placed in service to the word of salvation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Books ReceivedThe Ambitions of Curiosity: Understanding the World in Ancient Greece and China. By G.E.R. Lloyd. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi + 175. Price not given.The Art of the Han Essay: Wang Fu's Ch'ien-Fu Lun. By Anne Behnke Kinney. Tempe: Center for Asian Studies, Arizona State University, 1990. Pp. xi + 154. Paper $10.00.The Autobiography of Jamgön Kongtrul: A Gem of Many Colors. By Jamgön Kongtrul Lodrön (...) Thayé and translated by Richard Barron (Chökyi Nyima). Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion Publications, 2003. Pp. xxii + 549. Price not given.Awesome Nightfall: The Life, Times, and Poetry of Saigyō. By William R. LaFleur. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. xiii + 173. Paper $14.95.Becoming the Compassion Buddha: Tantric Mahamudra for Everyday Life. By Lama Thubten Yeshe, edited by Robina Courtin, and foreword by Geshe Lhundub Sopa. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. xi + 194. Paper $14.95.Between Two Worlds East and West: An Autobiography. By J. N. Mohanty. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. ix + 134. Hardcover RS 525.00.The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ. Edited by Roman Malek, S.V.D. Sankt Augustin, Germany: Institut Monumenta Serica and China-Zentrum; and Nettetal, Germany: Steyler Verlag, 2002. Pp. 391. EUR 40.00.Chinese Medicine in Contemporary China: Plurality and Synthesis. By Volker Scheid. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002. Pp. xiv + 407. Hardcover $69.95. Paper $23.95.Confucian Feminist: Memoirs of Zeng Baosun (1893-1978). Translated and adapted by Thomas L. Kennedy. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2002. Pp. xxi + 170. Price not given.Consciousness Studies: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. By K. Ramakrishna Rao. Jefferson (North Carolina) and London: McFarland and Company, 2002. Pp. 367. Hardcover $65.00.Constituting Communities: Theravāda Buddhism and the Religious Cultures of South and Southeast Asia. Edited by John Clifford Holt, Jacob N. Kinnard, and Jonathan S. Walters. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Pp. viii + 224. Hardcover $65.50. Paper $21.95.Developments in Indian Philosophy from Eighteenth Century Onwards: Classical and Western. By Daya Krishna. Volume X Part 1 of History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization, edited by D. P. Chattopadhyaya. New [End Page 110] Delhi: Centre for Studies in Civilizations, 2001. Pp. xxiii + 417. Hardcover RS 1200.East and West: Identità e dialogo interculturale. By Giangiorgio Pasqualotto. Venezia: Marsilo Editori, 2003. Pp. 210. EUR 16.00.Effortless Action: Wu-wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China. By Edward Slingerland. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 352. Price not given.Encountering Kā lī: In the Margins, at the Center, in the West. Edited by Rachel Fell McDermott and Jeffrey J. Kripal. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. xviii + 321. Hardcover $55.00, £37.95. Paper $21.95, £15.95.Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy. Edited by Antonio S. Cua. New York and London: Routledge, 2003. Pp. xx + 1020. Hardcover $150.00.Essays on Indian Philosophy. By J. N. Mohanty and edited by Purushottama Bilimoria. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xxxvii + 347. Paper RS 525.00.Faith, Humor, and Paradox. By Ignacio L. Götz. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 2002. Pp. 136. Hardcover $61.95.Four Illusions: Candrakīrti's Advice for Travelers on the Bodhisattva Path. Translated by Karen C. Lang. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xv + 240. Price not given.The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory. By David R. Loy. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. 223. Paper $16.95.The Hidden History of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. By Bryan J. Cuevas. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 328. Price not given.Huang Di nei jing su wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese Medical Text. By Paul U. Unschuld. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 520. Hardcover $75.00, £52.00.In Dewey's Wake: Unfinished Work of Pragmatic Reconstruction. Edited by William J. Gavin. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Pp. vi + 249. Hardcover $71.50. Paper $23.95.Knowledge and Freedom in Indian Philosophy. By Tara Chatterjea. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2002. Pp. xvi + 159. Hardcover... (shrink)

Prominent positions in the contemporary theoretical field of the humanities tend to conceptualize late modern communities in general as aesthetic communities of taste. In regard to political communities, this means reducing the political to an implication of the aesthetic discourse. This article argues for addressing the aesthetic and the political as distinct discourses that are, on the other hand, always engaged with each other in a conflictual interplay. Both discourses draw on and appeal to the ability of judgement, but (...) according to their own distinct principles, and depending on their respective weight in the conflictual interplay, this entails quite different perspectives with regards to political practice and community formation. (shrink)

The frustration in Polish society arising from excessive costs of conducting court proceedings and lengthy delays for dispute resolution has resulted in a genuine limitation in access to judicial justice for citizens. This paper argues that the answer to the dilemma between ensuring both justice and efficiency lies in language being a tool for the active participation of the parties in building mutual trust and shaping solutions in conflictual circumstances. How should the postulate of effective communication leading to dispute (...) resolution in modern justice be achieved? The authors present the advantages of oral communication in proceedings on the way to finding agreement, pointing out the content and quality of language that make dispute resolution possible. (shrink)

The aim of this communication is to consider morphological processes in sociology, mainly through the study of the stability of forms of sociality. At the same time, it aims to study the regulation of constraints, related to an increasingly conflictual environment, through political organization. We use a specific theoretical framework: the catastrophe theory developed by René Thom in topology, further developed by Claude Bruter from a physics point of view, and reworked by Jacques Viret in biology. The idea is (...) to show the existence of archetypal processes organizing social forms. (shrink)

Digital innovations are rapidly changing the contemporary workplace. Big Tech companies marketing algorithmic management increasingly decide on the Future of Work. Political responses, however, often focus on managing the impact of these technologies on workers. They leave the question of how these technologies are designed or how workers can determine their own futures unanswered. This approach risks surrendering the Future of Work debate to techno-determinist imaginaries aligned with corporate interests. Using Cornelius Castoriadis’ early writings on worker struggles in French Tayloristic (...) factories and his later oeuvre on conflictual social imaginaries, I propose an agonistic approach to the Future of Work. Not merely companies implementing workplace technologies, but also workers themselves possess agency in determining the Future of Work. Workers’ frequent contestations against machinic surveillance and technologically mediated coordination of the labour process disclose an alternative Future of Work in which technologies are used to enhance worker autonomy rather than bureaucratic control. Worker struggles at Amazon Mechanical Turk illustrate this agonistic dynamic: Amazon mobilizes algorithmic management to fragment and control a workforce of globally dispersed remote workers, but the latter form online social communities and create counter-technologies to reappropriate control over the labour process. (shrink)

Comprendre les pratiques d'économie solidaire au regard de la notion d'espace public suppose de mettre en évidence les tensions que ces pratiques mettent en oeuvre : à partir des solidarités et de réciprocités éprouvées dans les « mondes vécus » et leurs espaces culturels, ces pratiques combinent des ressources du marché, de l'économie publique et de la réciprocité dans la visée d'une économie juste répondant à une délibération démocratique entre les acteurs concernés. Une telle perspective oblige à affronter une conception (...) pluraliste et agonistique des espaces publics où sont en tension l'agir stratégique des acteurs, leurs « mondes vécus », sources d'identités et conditions de l'autonomisation du sens de l'action, et des espaces d'argumentation et de débats où s'élabore un bien commun reconnu comme juste. Ces tensions doivent être aussi comprises dans leur ouverture conflictuelle aux espaces politico-administratifs institués et aux espaces d'influence d'acteurs poursuivant leurs intérêts particuliers dans le territoire local. Mais, sous couvert de partenariat et de coopération entre les acteurs, les nouvelles politiques locales entérinent les rapports inégalitaires entre les acteurs et conduisent la société civile à taire ses dissensions sous peine de voir se tarir leur légitimité politique et leurs financements publics.In order to evaluate the practices of civil and solidarity-based economy, it is necessary to be aware of the tensions that they generate. They combine market resources, public support, and ideas of reciprocity, aiming to create fair economies and to democratically mobilize those concerned. Such a perspective requires a pluralist and conflictual conception of public spheres. In this perspective, tensions become important between strategic action and identities. These tensions must also be understood as they arise in political and administrative arenas and in the context of local actors motivated by self-interest in the local community. Although there appears to be a partnership between all the actors concerned, new policies directed towards local communities confirm the existence of social inequalities between the various stakeholders. The result is often that civil society keeps silent about these tensions lest their political influence and sources of public finance should dry up. (shrink)

This study is based on a corpus of duel songs from the traditional Ammassalik culture, published by the anthropologists P.-É. Victor and J. Robert-Lamblin. In this culture, the duel is a moment in the development of a quarrel, originating in a conflictual event; one of the partners challenges the other to a song duel. Our study focuses upon the basic argumentative strategies of defense and counter attack used to reject the accusation. The charges range from what may seem to (...) us the most serious ones, to apparently the most frivolous. The defensive strategies range from serious replies to mere jokes, making fun of the opponent. Formally, the reproached action can be denied, or acknowledged and rejected on other grounds. The defendant often just counter-attacks, either by disqualifying the accuser, or by reversing the charge. The data shows that the duel song is not essentially a “court of assize”. Beyond its cathartic function, the duel is show given by the participants to a participating audience. (shrink)

On 25 May 2020, Officer Derek Chauvin asphyxiated George Floyd in Minneapolis — a murder that was captured in a confronting nine-minute bystander video that set off a firestorm of activity on online social networks, in the streets of the United States, and even worldwide. These protests captured the collective rage, dissatisfaction, and resentment personally and vicariously experienced towards the widespread systematic injustice and mistreatment of African Americans by police and vigilantes. The scale of these protests, both online and in (...) the streets, has been estimated to have far exceeded the civil rights marches of the 1960s (Buchanan et al. 2020). Considering the widespread extent of these protests, our research aims to analyse conflictual intergroup moral dynamics in terms of the reactive attitudes expressed by distinct online communities on Twitter. This paper examines the extent to which the Strawsonian (1962) reactive attitudes framework is applicable to the Twitter discourse around the Black Lives Matter protests reignited by the murder of George Floyd. In particular, we argue that the Strawsonian framework is inadequate to understand a range of prevalent attitudes expressed in this discourse — attitudes that we call reactionary as opposed to merely reactive. Reactionary attitudes include counter-indignation on behalf of the accused rather than Strawsonian indignation on behalf of the victim of a moral wrong. We document the expression of such attitudes among the right-wing participants in the online discourse about the Black Lives Matter movement. (shrink)

Contemporary global politics poses urgent challenges – from humanitarian, migratory and environmental problems to economic, religious and military conflicts – that strain not only existing political systems and resources, but also the frameworks and concepts of political thinking. The standard cosmopolitan response is to invoke a sense of global community, governed by such principles as human rights or humanitarianism, free or fair trade, global equality, multiculturalism, or extra-national democracy. Yet, the contours, grounds and implications of such a global (...) class='Hi'>community remain notoriously controversial, and it risks abstracting precisely from the particular and conflictual character of the challenges which global politics poses. The contributions to this collection undertake to develop a more fruitful cosmopolitan response to global political challenges, one that roots cosmopolitanism in the particularity and conflict of global politics itself. They argue that this ‘contestatory’ cosmopolitanism must be dialectical, agonistic and democratic: that is, its concepts and principles must be developed immanently and critically out of prevailing normative resources; they must reflect and acknowledge their antagonistic roots; and they must be the result of participatory and self-determining publics. In elaborating this alternative, the contributions also return to neglected cosmopolitan theorists like Hegel, Adorno, Arendt, Camus, Derrida, and Mouffe, and reconsider mainstream figures such as Kant and Habermas. This book was originally published as a special edition of _Critical Horizons. _. (shrink)

Sartre's phenomenological ontology discloses that understanding consciousness and its mode of being requires an analysis of its relation with other consciousnesses. The primordial manner in which the Other relates to consciousness is through the look. Sartre claims that consciousness tends to adopt a pre-reflective fundamental project that leads it to view the Other as a threat to its pure subjective freedom. This creates a conflictual social relation in which each consciousness tries to objectify the Other to maintain its subjective (...) freedom. But Sartre also notes that consciousnesses can establish a social relation called the “we” in which each consciousness is a free subject. While certain commentators have noted that communication allows each consciousness to learn that the Other is not simply a threatening object but another subject, communication can only play this positive role if both consciousnesses have undergone a specific process called conversion. Only conversion brings consciousness to recognise, respect, and affirm the Other's practical freedom in the way necessary to create a we-relation. To support my argument, I spend significant time outlining what conversion and the social relations created post-conversion entail. (shrink)

The article first sketches a panorama of contrasting crisis-like processes that currently characterize the general understanding of freedom, such as the increase in restrictions on freedom against the background of man-made environmental changes, the strengthening of the freedom to dispose of one’s own life in the discussion on assisted suicide, the development of more complex views of the biological nature of human beings and their freedom, the disavowal of the connection between freedom and responsibility, and the increasing use of new (...) communication media and algorithmic technologies of observation, analysis, and modification of human behavior. Under this impression, new contours of a complex and conflictual order of freedom are drawn. They become apparent in at least three determinations of the relationship of freedom: in the relationship of freedom to human nature, in the relationship to others and to society, and in the relationship to extra-human nature. In all three relationships, the semantics of disposal and domination seem to have a highly destructive effect on a crisis-like moment and carry the risk of contributing to a long-term loss of freedom. (shrink)

Avant-garde theatre is often invoked as the bellwether for a society that has become postdramatic – fragmented, alienated, and critical of efforts to create collectively shared meanings. A theatre whose sequenced actions have no narrative (so the story goes) mirrors a social world where the most conflictual situations no longer appear as drama but merely as spectacle: a society where audiences look on without any feeling or connection. Because only half right, these theses about postdramatic theatre and society are (...) fundamentally wrong. As modern societies have expanded and differentiated, the elements that compose performances have become separated and often fragmented in both theatre and society. If they can be brought back together again, performances are viewed as authentic and meaningful. If (re)fusion cannot be achieved, performances fail to communicate meaning. The aim of this essay is to demonstrate that a shared ambition to (re)fuse fragmented performative elements has defined the most important strain of avant-garde theatre over the last two centuries. Most radical theatrical innovation has sought to open live drama back up to the telos of myth and ritual. Neither in theatre nor social life can the world transcend dramaturgy; it is fundamental to the search for meaning in a world beyond cosmological religion. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Theology as Interdisciplinary Inquiry: Learning with and from the Natural and Human Sciences eds. by Robin W. Lovin and Joshua MauldinSara A. WilliamsTheology as Interdisciplinary Inquiry: Learning with and from the Natural and Human Sciences Edited by Robin W. Lovin and Joshua Mauldin grand rapids, mi: eerdmans, 2017. 202 pp. $32.00How can Christian theology engage in fruitful dialogue with fields of inquiry such as cognitive science, anthropology, and (...) law? Might discoveries in the natural and human sciences open creative possibilities for theology, and vice versa? Can Christian theology maintain its integrity while integrating insights from other disciplines? Theology as Interdisciplinary Inquiry takes up these questions as its central aim. This volume of six essays emerges from a three-year Templeton Foundation initiative that brought an interdisciplinary set of scholars together at the Center for Theological Inquiry to explore how their research might collaboratively push theology in new directions. These conversations centered on three themes: evolution and human nature, religious experience and moral identity, and law and religious freedom.In the first essay, Celia Deane-Drummond proposes an alternative approach to traditional readings of the Genesis creation account that looks to "resonances" between von Balthasar's notion of "theo-drama" and niche construction theory. Her argument allows for human agency while drawing theology into a complementary, rather than conflictual, relationship with evolutionary science. The next three essays take up the theme of religious experience and moral identity. Michael Spezio proposes that both theology and cognitive science look to moral exemplars as the phenomenological basis for more realistic and mutually informative moral theology and cognitive models of learning. Colleen Shantz draws on cognitive science to demonstrate how the material [End Page 192] and relational are constitutive of cognitive processes, arguing that it is precisely through "development and change" that we bear the imago Dei (66). Andrea Hollingsworth offers a rereading of Nicholas of Cusa's De visione Dei to demonstrate how a medieval mystical text echoes elements of contemporary neurocognitive processes of self-transformation. The final two essays center on law and religious freedom. John Burgess examines the privileging of religious freedom for canonizing martyrs in post-Soviet Russian Orthodoxy, arguing that this provides theological grounding for the legal right to religious freedom. Mary Ellen O'Connell proposes aesthetics as a more adequate modern grounding for legal authority than science. She argues that aesthetics takes us beyond the limits of self-interest, drawing us into concern for the good of others through the contemplation of beauty.What holds these essays together is the pursuit of "transdisciplinarity": "paying close attention to the other discipline(s) in a way that has a substantial and mutual impact, but at the same time retaining a clear sense of disciplinary integrity" (14–15). Lovin and Mauldin argue for humility and hope as virtues that enable us to navigate the tension between openness and integrity. While humility enables us to recognize the limits of disciplinary boundaries and assumptions, hope propels us forward, promising that however incomplete our knowledge remains, by the grace of God we will make advances in understanding our world and ourselves.Just as Christian Scharen and Aana Marie Vigen's Ethnography as Christian Theology and Ethics argues for the value of engagement with ethnography and its related disciplines to produce theology and ethics grounded in lived reality, this volume argues for the value of engagement with the natural and human sciences to produce "theological realism" that accounts for the complexity of "human personality and community" (xviii). It is unsurprising, then, that both volumes respond to objections from the neo-Radical Reformation and Radical Orthodoxy camps. In his conclusion, Douglas Ottati argues that these camps cannot account for the ways in which theological production inevitably interacts with natural and cultural processes. He argues further that insulating Christian theology is a form of cultural accommodation because it mirrors the formation of discrete modern disciplines, the very limitation these essays seek to transcend.This volume advances the live discussion in Christian ethics about the promise and risks of engaging natural and social sciences. It is a valuable resource on this topic, and its essays are suitable for use in seminary course discussions... (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyze the idea of the event conceived as crisis and conflict in Patočka and Maldiney’s philosophies. The event is what tears the horizon of the meaningful world apart and opens a new world: it represents the opening of a crisis in the human existence and at the same time the condition of any future crisis to come. By reading Maldiney’s texts on the “pathique” and psychosis along with Patočka’s descriptions of historical existence, we (...) shall then discover that human existence is exposed to this chaotic and conflictual dimension. In fact, what defines existence—the individual existence as well as the historical, shared existence —is the exposure to such a conflict and to the critical event, i.e. to the possibility of its own shaking. Furthermore, the event appears as the root of both the krisis and the “koine”, whether in the form of the encounter or the community cohesion. (shrink)

This book examines the contentious relationship between psychoanalysis and anthropology as it has played out in disputes surrounding the Oedipus complex. Here, Eric Smadja explores the complicated historical and epistemological conditions leading up to the emergence of the conflict between the two disciplines. He considers the origins of each science, the "creation" of the Oedipus complex, and the place, role and influence of Freud's key and controversial work Totem and Taboo, both in the history of psychoanalysis and as it connects (...) with anthropology internationally. Focusing on such key figures as Bronislaw Malinowski, Ernest Jones, Franz Boas, Georges Devereux, Emile Durkheim, Claude Levi-Strauss and Jacques Lacan, Smadja charts the course of the debate as it unfolded during the twentieth century and tracks its contemporary status of the debate, with a focus on figures in both France and the United States. Discussing the divergences and convergences between the two fields, he compares and contrasts their historical, epistemological and methodological features and reflects on the new "acculturative" disciplines emerging from their interaction. The book concludes with a look at what the conflictual history of these two human sciences can tell us about the history of ideas and their processes and modes of communication. Exploring a dispute which reaches back to the very beginnings of psychoanalysis and anthropology, The Oedipus Complex will appeal to psychoanalysts in practice and in training, psychotherapists and academics and students of psychoanalytic studies, anthropology and the history of ideas. (shrink)

This book brings together a number of important essays on the intersection of servant leadership and social entrepreneurship, examining them through a shared focus on ‘the will to serve’. This combination bears out the insight that inspiring social and economic leaders are able to transform a conflictual human settlement into a collaborative and caring human community. The book seeks to answer the question of whether we can induce from their ‘way of doing things’ a model of civic entrepreneurship (...) and leadership that can inspire people in profit, non-profit and public organizations. It also examines the extent to which the will to serve is compatible with the will to maximize profit or the will to gain economic, political or religious power. Furthermore, it asks how far different spiritual traditions create different models and examples of servant leadership and social entrepreneurship. This book will be of interest to researchers working in the fields of business ethics, business spirituality and corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

I intend to explore the relationship between the history of historians and the public use of history. This relationship, in my opinion, is both conflictual and convergent. As we shall see later on, this assertion is anything but obvious; among historians the idea of a neat opposition prevails, with no possibility of reconciliation, between professional practices of history (the profession of historians) and the extremely vast and confused domain of its “public use.”Before undertaking an analysis, I must explain what (...) I mean by the public use of history. I have adopted, at least initially, a purely extrinsic definition of the term. By the “public use of history” I am referring to all that is developed outside the domain of scientific research in its strictest sense, outside the history of historians which is usually written by scholars and intended for a very limited segment of the population. Public use of history includes not only the various means of mass communication, each with its own particularities (journalism, radio, television, cinema, theater, photography, advertisement, etc.), but also the arts and literature; public places such as schools, history museums, monuments and urban spaces, etc., and finally institutions, formal or otherwise (such as cultural associations, parties, and religious, ethnic and cultural groups, etc.), which, with more or less clearly partisan objectives, endeavor to promote a more or less polemic reading of the past as compared to the generally accepted common sense of history or historiography, a polemical reading based on the memory of their respective groups. Indeed, politicians have a large role in the most visible and most talked about manifestations of the public use of history and they have a particular responsibility in its degeneration (I shall return to this point in my conclusion). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 29.4 (1999) 128-134 [Access article in PDF] Anderson's Utopia Partha Chatterjee Imagined Communities was, without doubt, one of the most influential books of the late twentieth century. In the years since it was published, as nationalism unexpectedly came to be regarded as an increasingly unresolvable and often dangerous "problem" in world affairs, Benedict Anderson has continued to analyze and reflect on the subject, adding two brilliant chapters to (...) his highly acclaimed book and writing several new essays and lectures. Some of these have been brought together, along with a series of essays on the history and politics of Southeast Asia, in The Spectre of Comparisons. The publication of this volume provides an opportunity for other scholars in the field to reassess the work of, and pay tribute to, a major intellectual of our time. 1 Theoretically, the most significant addition that Anderson has made to his analysis in Imagined Communities is his attempt to distinguish between nationalism and the politics of ethnicity. He does this by identifying two kinds of seriality that are produced by the modern imaginings of community. One is the unbound seriality of the everyday universals of modern social thought: nations, citizens, revolutionaries, bureaucrats, workers, intellectuals, and so on. The other is the bound seriality of governmentality: the finite totals of enumerable classes of population produced by the modern census and the modern electoral systems. Unbound serialities are typically imagined and narrated by means of the classic instruments of print-capitalism, namely, the newspaper and the novel. They afford the opportunity for individuals to imagine themselves as members of larger than face-to-face solidarities, of choosing to act on behalf of those solidarities, of transcending by an act of political imagination the limits imposed by traditional practices. Unbound serialities are potentially liberating. As Anderson quotes from Pramodeya Ananta Toer's novel Dia Jang Menjerah, which describes such a moment of emancipation experienced by one of its characters:By now, Is knew the society she was entering. She had found a circle of acquaintances far wider than the circle of her brothers, sisters and parents. She now occupied a defined position in that society: as a woman, as a typist in a government office, as a free individual. She had become a new human being, with new understanding, new tales to tell, new perspectives, new attitudes, new interests--newnesses that she managed to pluck and assemble from her acquaintances. [qtd. in Spectre 41] Bound serialities, by contrast, can operate only with integers. This implies that for each category of classification, an individual can count only as one or zero, never as a fraction, which in turn means that all partial or mixed affiliations to a category are ruled out. One can only be black or not black, Muslim or not Muslim, tribal or not tribal, never only partially or contextually so. Bound serialities, Anderson suggests, are constricting and perhaps inherently conflictual. They produce the tools of ethnic politics. [End Page 128]I am not sure that the distinction between bound and unbound seriality, despite its appearance of mathematical precision, is the appropriate way to describe the differences in political modalities that Anderson wants to demarcate. It is not clear why the "unbound" serialities of the nationalist imagination cannot, under specific conditions, produce finite and countable classes. Explaining unbound seriality, Anderson says it is that which "makes the United Nations a normal, wholly unparadoxical institution" [29]. But surely, at any given time, the United Nations can have only a finite number of members. And that is because, with its explicitly laid-down procedures and criteria of membership, the imagining of nationhood has been reduced to the institutional grid of governmentality. Again, if by revolutionaries we mean those who are members of revolutionary political parties, then the number of revolutionaries in a country, or even in the whole world, will also be finite and countable, in the same way that the census claims to provide a figure for, let us say, the number of Hindus in India. It is also not clear in what sense the serialities of governmentality are "bound." The series for Christians or English... (shrink)

Objective: The present work aims to conduct the first naturalistic empirical investigation of the process and outcome assessment of functional psychotherapy treatment. The FP model of psychotherapy is rooted in psychoanalysis and integrates the verbal communication approach founded on transference and countertransference dynamics with the analysis of bodily processes.Method: The study sample included ten patients recruited on a voluntary basis and treated by clinicians in their private practices. Each patient received FP with an average duration of 40 h. Therapies had (...) weekly sessions, were audio-recorded with the patient’s written consent, and lasted for an average of 10 months. Outcome and process tools included the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 and the Luborsky’s the Core Conflictual Relationship Theme, used to assess therapeutic benefit, and the Metacognition Assessment Scale and the Italian Discourse Attributes Analysis Program system, used to evaluate therapeutic benefit and process. The MMPI-2 was used also in the follow-up assessment.Results: Results show that FP had a positive therapeutic outcome on the patients assessed in this study, and that the therapeutic benefits were maintained over time. Some specific features of the FP approach were found to contribute more than others to the observed therapeutic benefits.Conclusion: The current investigation constitutes a first step toward assessment of the therapeutic effectiveness of FP. Future developments should apply the methodology to a larger sample, possibly introducing different methodologies to enable detection of specific bodily oriented processes and techniques. (shrink)

This article discusses pilot data for a major research project into the discursive construction of identity in three-generation families living in border communities where each generation has experienced fundamental changes in their socio-political environment. The oral data on which the analysis is based were triggered by photographs from the communities in question, and are being analysed with discourse-analytical procedures. The article demonstrates how an innovative method of using symbolically-charged photography as triggers for oral narratives can solve a major dilemma for (...) discourse analysts interested in oral data. It also demonstrates the processes of identity construction under highly conflictual circumstances. Using examples mainly taken from the narratives of three individuals from three different generations, living in a town on the border between the former GDR and West Germany, the article discusses the discursive means of coming to terms with different kinds of difficulties encountered by each generation in constructing for themselves an identity in the new Germany. (shrink)

Dans le christianisme d’aujourd’hui, les textes spirituels sont lus et appréciés pour la saveur de la vie chrétienne qu’ils révèlent, et l’élan à vivre la foi qu’ils communiquent. L’adjectif « spirituel » qualifie des textes qui traitent de la vie de foi dans la prière ou dans l’action. Il renvoie explicitement à l’Esprit qui conduisait Jésus de Nazareth selon les Écritures. Les textes spirituels nous feraient voir ainsi comment il est possible de mener une existence chrétienne. Dire cela ne doit (...) pas masquer la situation dans laquelle nous lisons ces textes aujourd’hui : ils se trouvent au carrefour d’intérêts et de démarches tantôt complémentaires, tantôt conflictuelles, situés sur une ligne qui semble départager la foi de l’absence de foi en Jésus Christ. Aussi, parler à l’intérieur du christianisme de la relation des textes spirituels à l’existence chrétienne suppose de s’inscrire en ce lieu de divergences herméneutiques. Ainsi nous a-t-il paru fécond, dans le contexte de ces lectures plurielles, de nous interroger sur la relation qui s’instaure entre les lecteurs et ces textes. Nous montrerons dans un premier temps quels problèmes surgissent de la constitution du corpus des textes spirituels pour préciser les types d’interprétations qui ont cours. Nous pourrons nous demander dans un second temps ce qui se donne à lire dans ces textes afin de dégager, dans une troisième partie, la manière dont ils peuvent être lus aujourd’hui au sein de la foi chrétienne. In Christianity today, spiritual texts are read and appreciated for the vivid intensity of Christian life that they reveal and the impetus to living faith that they communicate. The adjective “spiritual” describes texts that deal with the life of faith in prayer or action. It refers explicitly to the Spirit which led Jesus of Nazareth according to the Scriptures. Spiritual texts thus help us to see how it is possible to lead a Christian existence. However, saying this must not mask the context in which we read these texts today: they stand at a crossroads of interests and approaches that may be complementary or conflictual, on what appears to be the dividing line between the absence of faith and faith in Jesus Christ. Endeavouring to speak from inside Christianity of the relation between spiritual texts and Christian existence supposes that we situate ourselves inside this realm of hermeneutical divergences. It thus appeared fruitful, in the context of this plurality of readings, to explore the relationship that gradually takes shape between readers and these texts. We shall first outline the problems that arise from the way the corpus of spiritual texts is brought together in order to show the types of interpretation commonly to be found. Then, we can look into the content of these texts in order, in the third part, to bring out the ways in which they can be read today within the framework of Christian faith. (shrink)

The article deals with the specifics of pagan and Christian beliefs in the worldview of Ukrainians of the 17–18 centuries. The term “interreligious dualism” has been proposed to refer to the phenomenon of synthesis of religious beliefs. The research is based on the analysis of samples of the spiritual culture of early modern Ukraine. The purpose is to outline the specifics of interreligious dualism in the worldview of Ukrainians of the 17th–18th centuries. The research has been conducted with the use (...) of methods of analysis and generalization. The phenomenon of interreligious dualism lies precisely in the parallel and synthetic existence of Christian and archaic points of view. Enlightened progressive clergy attempted to overcome magical mysticism, emphasizing the superstitious nature and the falsehood of man’s magical powers. From the standpoint of Christianity, the magical power of man and his attempts to manifest it condemned as sinful communications with the devil. And from a secular standpoint, magical abilities were perceived as the knowledge and skills of individual members of the community who can influence nature, the elements, the harvest, health, relationships. The average Ukrainians focused on preserving and using traditional pre-Christian beliefs in everyday life. Resistance was not caused by Christian ideas themselves, but by strict church formality and rituality. The phenomenon of interreligious dualism in the 17th and 18th centuries looks like the search for a non-conflictual combination and compromise between the archaic and the Christian views. (shrink)

Jürgen Habermas’s opus magnum, Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie, synthesises his impressive work of the last half century. His thesis is that the modern project of the normativity of “rational freedom” can be reconstructed as a learning process of the conflictual dialogue between reason and faith, philosophy and religion in the West. Furthermore, under conditions of a world society, cross-cultural communication across lifeworlds, based on such normative principles, is possible. I argue that Habermas’s argument recapitulates a claim first made (...) in The Phenomenology of Spirit by Hegel, who presented the normativity of modernity through a narrative unfolding between two epistemological standpoints, namely, that of consciousness and “we.” Just like Hegel, in order to defend the idea of a Lernprozess, Habermas too must presuppose a unified subject called “we;” furthermore the development of such subjectivity unfolds in a homogeneous temporal process that is then assumed to be the same for all mankind. I call this a form of “historicism,” and juxtapose recent historical writing that presents the narrative of modernity and the emergence of world-society as a much more diverse and fractured process than Hegel’s and Habermas’s methodology. “Die Einbeziehung der Anderen,” I argue, must involve including the voices of those others who do not experience the normative of modernity as a process like the one unfolding between faith and reason in the West. Nevertheless, I conclude that this plea for a more complex narrative that “provincialises Europe,” is not a rejection of the normative legacy of modern rationality and freedom that are based on the ideals of fallibilism, refutability and revisability through a rational community of inquirers. (shrink)

From the seventh to the fourteenth century, the Muslim world’s key actors were free peasants working limited and scattered cultivated areas, whose communities paid heavy taxes. A distinct nomadic mode of production dominated the arid lands and their warlike pastoral tribes. Wealthy merchants and artisans controlled urban ideological production, living next to actual ruling classes, who drew exceptional material privileges from their proximity to the state. Since the latter’s status contradicted the contractual community’s values, political power was socially alienated (...) and needed support from paid soldiers and often co-opted religious notables. The author describes Islamic social formations as real flesh-and-blood beings who developed original features on the same tributary mode of production’s skeleton. He shows that comparable dialectical oppositions enlivened them, stemming from uneven and combined development processes. Thus, their states and villages, barren lands and city markets, contractual ideology and monarchical powers were permanently in conflictual interaction. (shrink)

From the mystical experiences of religious visions to the most degenerate forms of violence and pornography, the image, be it perceptual or conceptual, has imposed itself as a powerful form of human expression. The evocative, emotional and communicative power of images has been at the centre of a complex, often conflictual relationship in different societies, between exterior and internal forms of representation. Western history has passed alternately through periods of iconophilia and iconophobia, while various cultures have accorded different significance (...) to the capacity of vision to express and reinforce both the ideological and the political sphere. Referring to various examples, the article suggests that the pervasive presence of vision, far from being a self-evident, given element, is at the core of a problematic work of interpretation within the cultural contexts of societies. What appears to the eye can be considered the mirror of true reality or, alternatively, an ambiguous and superficial representation of it, in a dialectic confrontation between the iconic and the mental. (shrink)

Parent–teacher relations are often characterized as highly conflictual in the educational literature, with scant empirical evidence of how the disagreements occur in everyday talk. Close analysis of a teacher's account of an intense conflict with a student's mother over the National Honor Society grounds the abstract discourses of merit and difference in the worlds of parents, teachers and students. Narrating primarily through reported speech, in a ‘she said, I said’ fashion, the teacher recreates her conversations about the National Honor (...) Society and the graduation ceremony. Creating the social milieu through reported speech and the inner reality by telling what she left unspoken, she captures the derision between parents and teachers. Moreover, the adult struggles obscure the adolescents' initial concerns about elitism. Exposed to reform debates, the teacher reveals her consciousness about diversity and privilege. The mother's understanding reflects traditions of individualism and meritocracy without regard to barriers created by race, sex, class and disability. The encounter ends without opportunity for fuller articulation. Notwithstanding these tendencies, the individual parent–teacher conference remains the most widely employed format in US schools, emblematic of an extremely privatized notion of that relationship. The author frames the conflict in terms of school community and public education at large to identify possibilities for more generative communication. (shrink)

The Law has always been an instrument to exorcise different kinds of fear, primarily the fear of differences, through the distribution of shares of power. Perhaps, this system, inherently conflictual, is behind the failure of the multicultural policies of many countries, that have divided the society in as many separate communities as are the elements that differentiate each human being. The Law has also recognized to men a total power over Nature, feeding its illusion of control, that in recent (...) decades has shattered in front of several natural disasters. Ecuador, Buthan and South Africa have introduced in their Constitutions ideas belonging to the indigenous cultural tradition (buen vivir, buddhism and ubuntu), which express harmony between men and Nature. The paper analyzes these experiences in order to propose a new model of eco-friendly constitutionalism. (shrink)

This article introduces the conflictual theory of law as a new way of understanding laws as struggles over meaning, in which actors create and circulate social knowledge to justify their interpretation of rights. The theory addresses law-production processes and underlying knowledge/power constructs, for example, in legislative deliberations and interactions between politicians and the media. It shares pragmatist commitments to a highly participative version of democracy, attained through the active involvement of all members of society in democratic processes and rejects (...) claims of universally applicable legal “truths” in favour of the constant negotiation of laws between members immediately affected by a law. Pragmatism’s antifoundationalism challenges the dualism between citizens and non-citizens, facilitating the inclusion of the latter in legislative deliberations. (shrink)

The problem of “dirty hands” has become an important term, indeed one of the most important terms of reference, in contemporary academic scholarship on the issue of torture. The aim of this essay is to offer a better understanding of this problem. Firstly, it is argued that the problem of “dirty hands” can play neither within rule-utilitarianism nor within absolutism. Still, however, the problem of “dirty hands” represents an acute, seemingly irresolvable, conflict within morality, with the moral agent understood, following (...) Nagel, as necessarily holding mixed, absolutist-consequentialist moral intuitions, pulling in opposite directions. Secondly, a distinction is drawn between real situations of “dirty hands,” and other conflictual scenarios, which are commonly, but unjustifiably placed under the metaphorical title of “dirty hands.” Finally, it is suggested - utilizing Nagel’s own ideas, as developed in his later work, and Sen’s notion of evaluator relativity—that the moral “blind alley” manifested in the problem of “dirty hands” may not be totally blind after all, at least from the situated agent’s own internal point of view (as opposed to that of an external observer trying to put herself in the agent’s position by way of moral simulation). Thus, contrary to Walzer’s approach, it is possible for a person (politician) acting in a situation of “dirty hands,” not to believe herself to be guilty, but still be a moral person. (shrink)

Telling a patient that the outcome of his illness is not good, or even hopeless, requires sensitivity and the ability to communicate with him in the setting of a hospital which is an unnatural environment divorced from family and friends. It is a task which must be taught and learned by doctors and nurses.

Are contemporary philosophers to follow Pyrrho of Elis in adopting his skeptic craft or at least core aspects of it as a reaction to the fact that, since immemorial times, persons have been engaged in disputes in metaphysics? Over the last 2500 years or so, most Western philosophers have not done so in being more influenced by Aristotle’s dogmatic craft than by Pyrrho’s skeptic one. Over the last fifty years or so, a few Brazilian neo-Pyrrhonist philosophers, such as Oswald Porchat, (...) Otávio Bueno and Plínio Junqueira Smith, have done the opposite in aiming to spell out the pertinence of Ancient Pyrrhonism to contemporary philosophy. On its part, this essay makes a case for the claim that one is to react to the stated fact by adopting a conflictual craft that promotes a synthesis of Pyrrho’s skeptic craft and the dogmatic craft. This synthesis: brings to light the core features of the skeptic and of the dogmatic craft; problematizes the dogmatic craft by means of the skeptic one and vice-versa so that the shortcomings of these crafts are avoided; and aims to keep certain positive aspects both of the skeptic craft and of the dogmatic one. (shrink)

Telling a patient that the outcome of his illness is not good, or even hopeless, requires sensitivity and the ability to communicate with him in the setting of a hospital which is an unnatural environment divorced from family and friends. It is a task which must be taught and learned by doctors and nurses.

This article argues against the concept of integration as the main mechanism allowing various sociocultural groups to live together and instead proposes ‘radical inclusivity’ as a better, less oppressive model of a pluralistic society. Through analytical and reflective research on the non-cohesion-based approach to integration or inclusion, this article is devoted to examining the affordances and limitations of integration through various forms of spatial interventions. As an example, we will discuss the Ellesmere Green Project in Sheffield (UK) as a typical (...) small urban regeneration executed in a highly diverse part of Sheffield. This piece aims to bring forward the significance of moving beyond the community-as-cohesion model in urban politics and planning for integration. (shrink)