_The purpose_ of the article is to clarify the philosophical principle of the local in the context of modern political governance. _The theoretical basis_ of the research embraces scenario analysis, dialectical and existential approaches, as well as philosophical anthropology and philosophy of communication. Local communities are a specific reflection of the connection between a person and a place. The specifics of the formation of a special mode of being, which forms and reproduces relations of loyalty, mutual understanding, and a common (...) feeling in the locus, are established. _Originality._ The article for the first time focuses on the anthropological content of local existence, which is the matrix of civil culture and the prospects of its integration into the global cultural space. _Conclusions._ Local identity as an object of purposeful formation in the conditions of nation-building requires considering the philosophical provisions that were introduced in the anthropological discourse. At the current stage, Ukrainian civil culture strives to invent specific local meanings of political identity in the conditions of external aggression. Its main components will be consensus, mutual respect, integrity, and the will to unite in order to protect statehood. Interdisciplinary meanings of locality form subject-object relations within which modern political management should be carried out. Taking into account the ethnic, cultural, and socio-functional, and role aspects of locality promises to ensure effective decision-making and increase the well-being of modern local communities. The political context of locality is formed based on the interaction of local political actors and institutions. Their examination within the framework of the case studies approach allows for empirically substantiating the local priorities of political actions. It also indicates the specific functionality of local political and administrative structures. at the local level, the discussed source of locality is the question of the origin or authenticity of the local population. For political governance, this is one of the meaningful contexts for justifying local autonomy or even sovereignty. (shrink)

The place of man in Darwin's development of a theory of transmutation has been obscured by his manner of disclosure. Comparing the 1837–1839 period to his entire career as a theorist suggests that it was Darwin's practice to present himself and his work only before the most select scientific audiences, and then in accordance with their expectations. The negative implications of this rule for his publication on man are clear enough: finding no general invitation in science to publish as a (...) theorist and no contemporary scientific audience for the sorts of inquiries he was making on man, he was silent, at least until such time as he could publish on the strength of reputation alone. Now, with the availability of manuscripts from the early period, what was once hidden stands revealed. It is clear from Darwin's notebooks that man played a dual role in the formation of his theory: as a zoological species to be incorporated into the theory and as the primary vehicle for the study of behavior. On the first score, integrating man into the theory provoked Darwin to break with the traditional view of man's place in nature and to reject a major element in the scientific notion of progressive development. On the second score, the study of behavior led Darwin outside natural history and thence, unexpectedly, to Malthus and natural selection.One is left with the certainty that the subject of man was a central element in Darwin's formulation of his species theory. To an extent, then, the public judgment of Darwin was right all along, for the public had always sensed that Darwin spoke to a larger audience than that formed around science. On the basis of new evidence, we can add that Darwin drew from that larger audience as well. There are of course ironies to this conclusion: that Darwin the professional drew so heavily from fields where he was the amateur, that as a transparent man his inner life should prove so at odds with the manner in which he presented himself, and that his arrival at a strong sense of himself—the revolutionary “I” of his notebooks—should occur just as he stepped beyond science to engage the general culture. But when one considers the inherent difficulties of Darwin's subject and the magnitude of his claims respecting man, these ironies are perhaps not surprising at all but those of a kind which might be anticipated. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:To Bear Man's Greatness:On the Moral-Theological Message of a Recent Document of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Samaritanus Bonus1Andrzej KucinskiBackground and ObjectiveWhen, in 1582, Camillus de Lellis, the later-canonized founder of the Order of Camillians, the "servants of the sick," had the inspiration to found a society of men who would serve the sick for religious motives,2 the revolutionary nature of such a decision was clear. (...) An unprecedented hope broke into the world of the hopelessly marginalized, who did not have sufficient means to be cared for at home, and therefore had to go to hospitals, where they were often assisted only by untrained caregivers, who did so under obligation because they were either criminals or compelled by economic need to perform such menial service. This hope consisted in the message that the love of God urges the voluntary and sacrificial service of dedication to the sick, and especially to those who will not recover from their illness. However, this service should be holistic, because the welfare of the needy encompasses all the dimensions of the human person: the body and the soul, but also the spirit.The letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) Samaritanus Bonus, dated July 14, 2020—the liturgical day of commemoration of Camillus of Lellis—on the care of persons in the critical and [End Page 753] terminal phases of life, seeks to promote the same concern for comprehensive service to the sick out of respect for the divinely anchored dignity of the human person. The letter suggests that it is this dignity, and therefore the incomparable greatness of each human being, that makes it necessary, contrary to any logic of efficiency and a cost–benefit calculation, to persevere at the side of the (terminally) ill until their natural death.This article aims to highlight some (in the author's opinion) central elements of this letter, and to comment on them specifically against the background of the magisterial positions underlying the document. For this purpose, I will often quote Robert Spaemann, the German philosopher who died in 2018 and whose ethical views appear in parts as well suited to illuminate from the ethical point of view the foundations of thought of the universal Church magisterium with regard to the relevant topics and to prepare these foundations for a scientific discussion. However, it is explicitly not the aim here to engage in such a discussion or to analyze the already existing relevant contributions. Rather, it is to deepen the current Church teaching in certain aspects on the basis of this new document. In this sense, contributions from the press conference on its presentation on September 22, 2020, will also be drawn upon. After the exploration of what one could understand as "core" of the letter according to a certain reading of the document, some concretizations follow under the guiding perspective of the "Catholic" approach to the terminally ill.The Core of the DocumentThe structure of Samaritanus Bonus will be briefly described: An introduction, in which above all the need for magisterial intervention is justified, is followed by chapter 1, on the comprehensive character of the care which is always possible for persons in critical states, according to the principle that "the judgement that an illness is incurable cannot mean that care has come at an end" (8).3 Chapter 2 then further explicates the grounds of Christian hope in the face of approaching death, starting from the mystery of the Crucified, with special reference to those who stay around him at the moment of the Passion. Chapter 3 recalls the positive meaning of human life as an expression of inalienable human dignity and as the source of certain imperatives in dealing with it. A clear reference to the proclamation [End Page 754] of Pope Francis is made in chapter 4, which explains some "cultural obstacles" to the recognition of the "sacred value of every human life." Finally, chapter 5 (the longest) addresses individual bioethical, medical-ethical, legal, pastoral, and educational issues related to care at critical stages of life.In substance, the doctrine set forth in the new document... (shrink)

In today’s business world, the phenomenon of overqualification is widespread. Organizations need to consider – how to motivate the overqualified employees to utilize their qualifications, for example, promoting creative performance. Based on person-organization fit theory, this study explored when and how employees, who feel overqualified can engage in creative performance. Data were collected from 170 supervisor-subordinate dyads of 41 groups in 10 manufacturing companies across two timepoints in China. Results revealed that perceived overqualification is positively related to organizational identification when (...) employee development-oriented organizational culture is strong but negatively related to organizational identification when employee development-oriented organizational culture is weak, organizational identification is positively related to creative performance, the indirect relationship between perceived overqualification and creative performance via organizational identification is moderated by employee development-oriented organizational culture. We provide several theoretical contributions to the overqualification literature and make some suggestions to motivate the overqualified employees to use their surplus qualifications within the organizations. (shrink)

The first part of the article (§§ 1-3) illustrates the critical relation the authors establish with the leading figures of philosophical anthropology in terms of their engagement with “world-openness” (Weltoffenheit). This notion cannot be reduced to the objectivity that confronts man as a spiritual being, as in Max Scheler, but rather makes it possible to grasp the limits of distancing objectification; in Arnold Gehlen, the coercion to action derived from the indeterminacy of man’s relation with the world is (...) not sufficient to comprehend the role of culture for the constitution of the human animal itself; and with the biological means utilized by Helmuth Plessner it is not possible to account entirely for the human capacity to establish relations by means of society. Historical anthropology, as the second part (§§ 4-5) of the article shows, aims to respond to such deficiencies by bringing to light the numerous historical and cultural forms of openness to a plurality of worlds. Freeing itself of any abstract and binding anthropological norm that claims to define the essence of man, historical anthropology investigates human structures and phenomena through a series of transdisciplinary studies centering on themes such as the body, ritual, mimesis and the performative dimension in its entirety, performance and performativity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 28.2 (2004) 324-341 [Access article in PDF] Charles Lamb: Professor of Indifference Tim Milnes University of Edinburgh Nothing puzzles me more than time and space, and yet nothing puzzles me less, for I never think about them.1 I The name of Charles Lamb—essayist, poet, and notorious punster—does not loom large in studies of the philosophy of the English Romantics. The reasons for this initially unsurprising fact (...) range from the personal and obvious to the cultural and curious. Tied for most of his adult life to a clerk's desk at the East India Company, and to the care of his mentally ill sister at home, Lamb was rarely permitted the leisure even to dally in the expansive visionary landscapes explored in the epic works of consciousness of his friends Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth and Robert Southey. And yet, as the 1810 quip to Manning recorded above suggests, his reluctance to engage with philosophy is not merely attributable to the straitened life of the journeyman scribe. Such a remark is quite typical of Lamb's conscious attempt, in the face of a culture increasingly driven by the dissemination of knowledge, to cultivate an imaginative space the reverse of the knowing or "philosophical." It is this attitude that makes him more, not less, interesting alike for the intellectual historian and the philosopher.Lamb's avowed carelessness about matters philosophical is as familiar to his readers as the persona of "Elia" adopted for the essays he wrote for the London Magazine in the early 1820s. It is also just as beguiling and intriguing. Lamb's resistance to philosophy and his epistemic insouciance both trade on the suggestion that the desirable mind is the [End Page 324] ironic mind, reflecting—or, perhaps, refracting—a transitional and forever "imperfect" subjectivity. Correspondingly, his essays frequently invoke figures of liminality, of being in two or more states at once: whether between dreams and consciousness in "Witches, and other Night Fears" (1821); past and present in "Distant Correspondents" (1822); truth and lies in "Imperfect Sympathies" (1821); or literal and figurative selves in the imponderable relationship between "Lamb" of "On Christ's Hospital" (1813) and "Elia" of "Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago" (1820).2 Moreover, this self-styled figure of the writer as always between alternate and often contrary conditions, beliefs and identities—what Lamb termed his "bi-parted nature"—has itself become a stock descriptor among Lamb's commentators.3 It is not difficult, for example, to detect its presence in Coleridge's portrayal of his friend as "one hovering between earth and heaven,"4 as well as De Quincey's depiction of a sleeping Lamb as "the image of repose midway between life and death, like the repose of a sculpture."5 More recently, it has shaped Jane Aaron's exploration of his proclaimed "double singleness"6 and Seamus Perry's characterisation of his "borderland," "serious-non-seriousness."7Understandably, critics of a certain bent have sought to link these features of Lamb's work, arguing that the centrifugal properties of his writing display an aversion to categorical "difference" that is directly related to his suspicion of the dualisms of systematic belief-systems. Gerald Monsman, for example, argues that insofar as Lamb's essays undermine "all transcendental reconciliations or definitive closures," they "appear to be sly critiques of the central dogmas of romanticism."8 However, to class Lamb's writing as radically decentred or self-deconstructing is to miss the profound nostalgia it evinces at critical moments for a neutral ground and a sense of belonging. Lamb's indifference to knowledge, and to philosophy as the pursuit of certain knowledge, is constantly challenged by his fear of imaginative dissolution. Correspondingly, Lamb/Elia's indifferent location between the real and the fictive never quite manages completely to repress the desire for truth. And yet, "indifference," quite apart from being a term that both fascinated and repelled Lamb himself, aptly characterises both his attitude to philosophy and knowledge on one hand, and the liminal properties of his prose on the other. Freud provides a... (shrink)

The responses to this discovery, in the press and elsewhere, seem to focus on the act of passing judgment, a judgment that reopens with some urgency the question of the ethical implications of de Man’s work and, by extension, of the whole school of critical approach known as “deconstruction.”The discourse of moral judgment takes as its target three distinct domains of apparent ethical misconduct:1. the collaborationist political activities themselves;2. de Man’s apparent erasure of their memory—his radical “forgetting” of (...) his early past;3. the silence that de Man chose to keep about his past: the absence of public confession and public declaration of remorse.The question of ethics thus seems to be linked to the separate questions of the nature of political activities, of the nature of memory, and of the nature of silence. It is judged unethical, of course, to engage in acts that lent support to Germany’s wartime position; but it is also judged unethical to forget; and unethical, furthermore, to keep silent in relation to the war and to the Holocaust. The silence is interpreted as a deliberate concealment, a suppression of accountability that can only mean a denial of responsibility on de Man’s part. Shoshana Felman, the Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Yale University, is the author of The Literary Speech Act: Don Juan with Austin, or Seduction in Two Languages , Writing and Madness: Literature/Philosophy/Psychoanalysis , and Psychoanalysis in Contemporary Culture: Jacques Lacan and the Adventure of Insight . She is also the editor of Literature and Psychoanalysis: The Question of Reading—Otherwise . She is currently working on a book entitled Testimony in History, Literature and Psychoanalysis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS The Incarnation of God: An Introduction to Hegel's Theological Thought as Prolegomena to a Future Christology. By HANS Kii'NG. Translated by J. R. Stephenson. New York: Crossroad, 1987. Pp. 601. $37.50 (cloth bound). This is an imposing book (first German edition, 1970), not only in length, but in breadth of presentation. Kiing, in the introduction, outlines the philosophical, theological and cultural milieus out of which Hegel's (...) theology and philosophy emerged. In the next 400 pages (seven chapters), Kiing thoroughly articulates the historical development of Hegel's theological and philosophical thought as expressed in his successive writings, specifically examining and evaluating the christological elements. Kiing's final chapter interprets Hegel's Christology in light of recent biblical historical/critical methodology, by way of a prolegomenon to a future Christology. The book concludes with five integral historical/theological excursus which take up specific questions that arise out of this Hegelian enterprise, for example: "Does God suffer?," "The Dialectic of the Attributes of God," "Immutability of God?". In the preface to this English edition, Kiing states that the purpose of this work is to "provide theologians with an introduction to Hegel's theological and christological thought.... [It will be] a many-leveled 'invitation' into Hegel's life and 'thought, with particular reference to his religious world, and then into his theology and Christology " (p. ix). "Moreover,.this book is an introduction to Hegel's thought by way of 'prolegomena to a future Christology '. In ·these pages we endeavour to return... a provisional reply that will take us some way in the right direction" (p. x). Why did Kiing look to Hegel for the clue to a future Christology? His thesis is that "the biblical message concerning a God who is by no means separated from the world but rather operates within it, and who is by no means stuck immovable and immutable in an unhistorical and suprahistorical realm but rather performs living acts in hi&tory can be better understood [along the lines of Hegelian thought] than in terms of the metaphysics of either classical Greece or the middle ages" (p. xii). Any student of historical or philosophical theology/christology will be captivated by Kiing's treatment of.the development of Hegel's ilhought. Undoubtedly he has mastered Hegel's life, writings and 698 694 BOOK REVIEWS thought, and presents these in a clear, complete and engaging manner. Kiing notes that Hegel, beginning with his student days at Tiihingen, was influenced by three strong cultural and intellectual currents: the Enlightenment as it specifically culminated in the thought of Kant, the French Revolution, and the rise of the Romantic movement. Kiing shows that, while the young Hegel was acquainted with the Bible, and even,though he already displayed an interest in the role of religion (folk religion) as formative of society, nowhere was he "seized in a lively and inward fashion by the Christian faith, by the figure of Christ himself" (p. 54). To rthe contrary, Hegel's early experience of Christianity was lifeless and joyless. During his subsequent time in Bern, Hegel's evaluation of Jesus un· derwent a transformation. Hegel became fascinated with Greek religion, not because it was true, but because it embodied the culture and spirit of the people. Developing this train of thought, he stated that "The supreme end of man is morality, and his religious bent is pre· eminent among his aptitudes for promoting that end" (p. 69). In light of this, Hegel considered Jesus,to lack the humane and universal scope of Socrates, who was " the paradigm of a free, good and humane Hellenism and of harmony with nature, world and state " (p. 63). Jesus' teaching was too much an authoritarian imposition upon people rarther than, like Socrates', a nurturing of their inner spirit and life. Shordy, as reflected in his Life of Jesus, Hegel's view of Jesus was to change. Now he was placed above Socrates, not because he was acknowledged to be the eternal Son of God, nor because he reconciled mankind to God by his death on the cross, but rather because he per· sonified the divine ideal of virtue that is so necessary for social order. " Whart is... (shrink)

continent. 2.2 (2012): 66–75 ~*~ We’re Doomed. Pessimism is the night-side of thought, a melodrama of the futility of the brain, a poetry written in the graveyard of philosophy. Pessimism is a lyrical failure of philosophical thinking, each attempt at clear and coherent thought, sullen and submerged in the hidden joy of its own futility. The closest pessimism comes to philosophical argument is the droll and laconic “We’ll never make it,” or simply: “We’re doomed.” Every effort doomed to failure, every (...) project doomed to incompletion, every life doomed to be unlived, every thought doomed to be unthought. Pessimism is the lowest form of philosophy, frequently disparaged and dismissed, merely the symptom of a bad attitude. No one ever needs pessimism, in the way that one needs optimism to inspire one to great heights and to pick oneself up, in the way one needs constructive criticism, advice and feedback, inspirational books or a pat on the back. No one needs pessimism, though I like to imagine the idea of a pessimist activism. No one needs pessimism, and yet everyone—without exception—has, at some point in their lives, had to confront pessimism, if not as a philosophy then as a grievance—against one’s self or others, against one’s surroundings or one’s life, against the state of things or the world in general. There is little redemption for pessimism, and no consolation prize. Ultimately, pessimism is weary of everything and of itself. Pessimism is the philosophical form of disenchantment—disenchantment as chanting, a chant, a mantra, a solitary, monophonic voice rendered insignificant by the intimate immensity surrounding it. In pessimism, the first axiom is a long, low, funereal sigh. ~*~ We’re Still Doomed. No one has time for pessimism. After all, there are only so many hours in a day. Whatever our temperament, happy or sad, engaged or disengaged, we know pessimism when we hear it. The pessimist is usually understood as the complainer, forever pointing out what is wrong with the world without ever once offering a solution. But more often than not pessimists are the quietest of philosophers, submerging their own sighs within the lethargy of discontent. What little sound it makes is of interest to no one—“I’ve heard it all before,” “tell me something I don’t know,” sound and fury, signifying nothing. In raising problems without solutions, in posing questions without answers, in retreating to the hermetic, cavernous abode of complaint, pessimism is guilty of that most inexcusable of Occidental crimes—the crime of not pretending it’s for real. Pessimism fails to live up to the most basic tenet of philosophy—the “as if.” Think as if it will be helpful, act as if it will make a difference, speak as if there is something to say, live as if you are not, in fact, being lived by some murmuring non-entity both shadowy and muddied. Had it more self-assurance and better social skills, pessimism would turn its disenchantment into a religion, possibly calling itself The Great Refusal. But there is a negation in pessimism that refuses even such a Refusal, an awareness that, from the start, it has already failed, and that the culmination of all that is, is that all is for naught. Pessimism tries very hard to present itself in the low, sustained tones of a Requiem Mass, or the tectonic rumbling of Tibetan chant. But it frequently lets loose dissonant notes at once plaintive and pathetic. Often, its voice cracks, its weighty words abruptly reduced to mere shards of guttural sound. ~*~ Maybe It’s Not So Bad, After All. If we know pessimism when we hear it, this is because we’ve heard it all before—and we didn’t need to hear it in the first place. Life is hard enough. What you need is a change of attitude, a new outlook, a shift in perspective... a cup of coffee. If we have no ears for pessimism, this is because it is always reducible to something as reliably mutable as a voice. If pessimism is so frequently disparaged, it is because it brings everyone down, determined as it is to view each day as a bad day, if only by virtue of the fact that it is not yet a bad day. For pessimism the world is brimming with negative possibility, the collision of a bad mood with an impassive world. In fact, pessimism is the result of a confusion between the world and a statement about the world, a confusion that also prevents it from fully entering the hallowed halls of philosophy. If pessimism is so often dismissed, this is because it is often impossible to separate a “bad mood” from a philosophical proposition (and do not all philosophies stem from a bad mood?) The very term “pessimism” suggests a school of thought, a movement, even a community. But pessimism always has a membership of one—maybe two. Ideally, of course, it would have a membership of none, with only a scribbled, illegible note left behind by someone long forgotten. But this seems unrealistic, though one can always hope. ~*~ Anatomy of Pessimism. Though it may locate itself at the margins of philosophy, pessimism is as much subject to philosophical analysis as any other form of thought. Pessimism’s lyricism of failure gives it the structure of music. What time is to the music of sorrow, reason is to a philosophy of the worst. Pessimism’s two major keys are moral and metaphysical pessimism, its subjective and objective poles, an attitude towards the world and a claim about the world. For moral pessimism, it is better not to have been born at all; for metaphysical pessimism, this is the worst of all possible worlds. For moral pessimism the problem is the solipsism of human beings, the world made in our own image, a world-for-us. For metaphysical pessimism, the problem is the solipsism of the world, objected and projected as a world-in-itself. Both moral and metaphysical pessimism are compromised philosophically; moral pessimism by its failure to locate the human within a larger context, and metaphysical pessimism by its failure to recognize the complicity in the very claim of realism. This is how pessimism makes its music of the worst, a generalized misanthropy without the anthropos . Pessimism crystallizes around this futility—it is its amor fati , rendered as musical form. ~*~ Melancholy of Anatomy. There is a logic of pessimism that is fundamental to its suspicion of philosophical system. Pessimism involves a statement about a condition . In pessimism each statement boils down to an affirmation or a negation, just as any condition boils down to the best or the worst. With Schopenhauer, that arch-pessimist, the thinker for whom the philosopher and the curmudgeon perfectly overlap, we see a no-saying to the worst, a no-saying that secretly covets a yes-saying (through asceticism, mysticism, quietism), even if this hidden yes-saying is a horizon at the limits of comprehension. With Nietzsche comes the pronouncement of a Dionysian pessimism, a pessimism of strength or joy, a yes-saying to the worst, a yes-saying to this world as it is. And with Cioran yet another variation, futile yet lyrical, a no-saying to the worst, and a further no-saying to the possibility of any other world, in here or out there. With Cioran one approaches, but never reaches, an absolute no-saying, a studied abandonment of pessimism itself. The logic of pessimism moves through three refusals: a no-saying to the worst (refusal of the world-for-us, or Schopenhauer’s tears); a yes-saying to the worst (refusal of the world-in-itself, or Nietzsche’s laughter); and a no-saying to the for-us and the in-itself (a double refusal, or Cioran’s sleep). Crying, laughing, sleeping—what other responses are adequate to a life that is so indifferent? ~*~ Cosmic Pessimism. Both moral and metaphysical pessimism point to another kind, a pessimism that is neither subjective nor objective, neither for-us nor in-itself, and instead a pessimism of the world-without-us. We could call this a cosmic pessimism ... but this sounds too majestic, too full of wonder, too much the bitter aftertaste of the Great Beyond. Words falter. And so do ideas. And so we have a cosmic pessimism, a pessimism that is first and last a pessimism about cosmos , about the necessity and possibility of order. The contours of cosmic pessimism are a drastic scaling-up or scaling-down of the human point of view, the unhuman orientation of deep space and deep time, and all of this shadowed by an impasse, a primordial insignificance, the impossibility of ever adequately accounting for one’s relationship to thought—all that remains of pessimism is the desiderata of affects—agonistic, impassive, defiant, reclusive, filled with sorrow and flailing at that architectonic chess match called philosophy, a flailing that pessimism tries to raise to the level of an art form (though what usually results is slapstick). ~*~ Song of Futility. An ethics of futility pervades pessimism. Futility, however, is different from fatality, and different again from simple failure (though failure is never simple). Failure is a breakage within the heart of relations, a fissure between cause and effect, a fissure hastily covered over by trying and trying again. With failure, there is always plenty of blame to go around; it’s not my fault, it’s a technical difficulty, it’s a miscommunication. For the pessimist, failure is a question of “when,” not “if”—failure as a metaphysical principle. Everything withers and passes into an obscurity blacker than night, everything from the melodramatic decline of a person’s life to the banal flickering moments that constitute each day. Everything that is done undone, everything said or known destined for a kind of stellar oblivion. When scaled up in this way, failure becomes fatality. Fatality is the hermeticism of cause and effect. In fatality, everything you do, whatever you do, always leads to a certain end, and ultimately to the end—though that end, or the means to that end, remain shrouded in obscurity. Nothing you do makes a difference because everything you do makes a difference. Hence the effects of your actions are hidden from you, even as you deceive yourself into thinking that, at last, this time you will outwit the order of things. By having a goal, planning ahead, and thinking things through carefully, we attempt, in a daily Prometheanism, to turn fatality to our advantage, to gain a glimpse of an order that seems buried deeper and deeper in the fabric of the universe. But even fatality has its comforts. The chain of cause and effect may be hidden from us, but that’s just because disorder is the order we don’t yet see; it’s just complex, distributed, and requires advanced mathematics. Fatality still clings to the sufficiency of everything that exists... When fatality relinquishes even this idea, it becomes futility. Futility arises out of the grim suspicion that, behind the shroud of causality we drape over the world, there is only the indifference of what exists or doesn’t exist; whatever you do ultimately leads to no end, an irrevocable chasm between thought and world. Futility transforms the act of thinking into a zero-sum game. ~*~ Song of the Worst. At the center of pessimism lies the term pessimus , “the worst,” a term as relative as it is absolute. The worst is about as bad as it gets, “the worst” as “the best” in disguise, shrouded by the passage of time or the twists and turns of fortune. For the pessimist, “the worst” is the propensity for suffering that gradually occludes each living moment, until it eclipses it entirely, overlapping perfectly in death... which, for the pessimist, is no longer “the worst.” Pessimism is marked by an unwillingness to move beyond “the worst,” something only partially attributable to a lack in motivation. In pessimism “the worst” is the ground that gives way beneath every existent—things could be worse, and , things could be better. “The worst” invariably implies a value judgment, one made based on scant evidence and little experience; in this way, pessimism’s greatest nemesis is its moral orientation. Pessimism’s propositions have all the gravitas of a bad joke. Perhaps this is why the true optimists are the most severe pessimists—they are optimists that have run out of options. They are almost ecstatically inundated by the worst. Such an optimism is the only possible outcome of a prolonged period of suffering, physical or metaphysical, intellectual or spiritual. But does this not also describe all the trials and tribulations of each day—in short, of “life?” It seems that sooner or later we are all doomed to become optimists of this sort (the most depressing of thoughts...) ~*~ Song of Doom. Rather than serving as a cause for despair, gloom and doom are the forms of consolation for any pessimist philosophy. Neither quite affects nor quite concepts, gloom and doom transform pessimism into a mortification of philosophy. Doom is not just the sense that all things will turn out badly, but that all things inevitably come to an end, irrespective of whether or not they really do come to an end. What emerges from doom is a sense of the unhuman as an attractor, a horizon towards which the human is fatally drawn. Doom is humanity given over to unhumanity in an act of crystalline self-abnegation. Gloom is not simply the anxiety that precedes doom. Gloom is literally atmospheric, climate as much as impression, and if people are also gloomy, this is simply the by-product of an anodyne atmosphere that only incidentally involves human beings. Gloom is more climatological than psychological, the stuff of dim, hazy, overcast skies, of ruins and overgrown tombs, of a misty, lethargic fog that moves with the same languorousness as our own crouched and sullen listening to a disinterested world. In a sense, gloom is the counterpoint to doom—what futility is to the former, fatality is to the latter. Doom is marked by temporality—all things precariously drawn to their end—whereas gloom is the austerity of stillness, all things sad, static, and suspended, a meandering smoke hovering over cold lichen stones and damp fir trees. If doom is the terror of temporality and death, then gloom is the horror of a hovering stasis that is life. At times I like to imagine that this realization alone is the thread that connects the charnel ground Aghori and the graveyard poets. ~*~ Song of Spite. There is an intolerance in pessimism that knows no bounds. In pessimism spite begins by fixing on a particular object of spite—someone one hardly knows, or someone one knows too well; a spite for this person or a spite for all of humanity; a spectacular or a banal spite; a spite for a noisy neighbor, a yapping dog, a battalion of strollers, the meandering idiot walking in front of you on their smart phone, large loud celebrations, traumatic injustices anywhere in the world regurgitated as media blitz, spite for the self-absorbed and overly performative people talking way too loud at the table next to you, technical difficulties and troubleshooting, the reduction of everything to branding, spite of the refusal to admit one’s own errors, of self-help books, of people who know absolutely everything and make sure to tell you, of all people, all living beings, all things, the world, the spiteful planet, the inanity of existence... Spite is the motor of pessimism because it is so egalitarian, so expansive, it runs amok, stumbling across intuitions that can only half-heartedly be called philosophical. Spite lacks the confidence and the clarity of hatred, but it also lacks the almost cordial judgment of dislike. For the pessimist, the smallest detail can be an indication of a metaphysical futility so vast and funereal that it eclipses pessimism itself—a spite that pessimism carefully places beyond the horizon of intelligibility, like the experience of dusk, or like the phrase, “it is raining jewels and daggers.” ~*~ Song of Sleep. A paraphrase of Schopenhauer: what death is for the organism, sleep is for the individual. Pessimists sleep not because they are depressed, but because for them sleep is a form of ascetic practice. Sleep is the askesis of pessimism. If, while sleeping, we have a bad dream, we abruptly wake up, and suddenly the horrors of the night vanish. There is no reason to think that the same does not happen with the bad dream we call “life.” ~*~ Song of Sorrow. Nietzsche, commenting on pessimism, once castigated Schopenhauer for taking things too lightly. He writes: ...Schopenhauer, though a pessimist, really —played the flute. Every day, after dinner: one should read his biography on that. And incidentally: a pessimist, one who denies God and the world but comes to a stop before morality—who affirms morality and plays the flute... what? Is that really—a pessimist? We know that Schopenhauer did possess a collection of instruments, and we also know that Nietzsche himself composed music. There is no reason to think that either of them would ever banish music from the Republic of philosophy. But Nietzsche’s jibes at Schopenhauer are as much about music as they are about pessimism. For the pessimist who says no to everything and yet finds comfort in music, the no-saying of pessimism can only be a weak way of saying yes—the weightiest statement undercut by the flightiest of replies. The least that Schopenhauer could’ve done is to play the bass. I’m not a big fan of the flute, or, for that matter, wind instruments generally. But what Nietzsche forgets is the role that the flute has historically played in Greek tragedy. In tragedy, the flute ( aulos ) is not an instrument of levity and joy, but of solitude and sorrow. The Greek aulos not only expresses the grief of tragic loss, but it does so in a way that renders weeping and singing inseparable from each other. The classicist Nicole Loraux calls this the mourning voice . Set apart from the more official civic rituals of funerary mourning, the mourning voice of Greek tragedy constantly threatens to dissolve song into wailing, music into moaning, and the voice into a primordial, disarticulate anti-music. The mourning voice delineates all the forms of suffering—tears, weeping, sobbing, wailing, moaning, and the convulsions of thought reduced to an elemental unintelligibility. In the collapsed space between the voice that speaks and the voice that sings, pessimism discovers its mourning voice. Pessimism: the failure of sound and sense, the disarticulation of phone and logos . Have we rescued Schopenhauer from Nietzsche? Probably not. Perhaps Schopenhauer played the flute to remind himself of the real function of the mourning voice—sorrow, sighs, and moaning rendered indistinguishable from music, the crumbling of the human into the unhuman. Failure par excellence of pessimism. ~*~ Song of Nothing. In Buddhist thought, the First Noble Truth of existence is encapsulated in the Pali term dukkha , conventionally translated as “suffering,” “sorrow,” or “misery.” The Buddhist teachings are clear, however, that this is an objective claim, and not simply one point of view among others. Existence is suffering and sorrow—and yet this is not, the teachings tell us, a pessimistic attitude. It is likely that Schopenhauer, reading the Buddhist texts available to him, recognized some filiation with the concept of dukkha . But dukkha is a multi-faceted term. There is, certainly, dukkha in the usual sense of the suffering, strife, and loss associated with living a life. But this is, in turn, dependent on the finitude and temporality of dukkha , existence as determined by impermanence and imperfection. And this ultimately points to the way in which both suffering and finitude are grounded by the paradoxical groundlessness of dukkha as a metaphysical principle—the insubstantiality and the emptiness of all that is. Beyond what is worse to me, beyond a world ordered for the worst, there is the emptiness of dukkha as an impersonal suffering... the tears of the cosmos. In this context, it is easy to see how Schopenhauer’s pessimism attempts to compress all the aspects of dukkha into a nothingness at the core of existence, a Willlessness coursing through the Will. Though one thing for certain is that with Schopenhauer we do not find the “ever-smiling” countenance of Buddhism—or do we? The texts of the Pali Canon also contain lists of the different types of happiness—including the happiness of renunciation and the strange happiness of detachment. But Buddhism considers even the different types of happiness as part of dukkha , in this final sense of nothingness or emptiness. Perhaps Schopenhauer understood Buddhism better than he is usually given credit for. Thus the experiment of Schopenhauer’s philosophy—the point at which a Western pessimus and an Eastern dukkha overlap or exchange glances. Empty sorrow, a lyricism of indifference. The result is a strange, and ultimately untenable, nocturnal form of Buddhism. ~*~ Cioran once called music a “physics of tears.” If this is true, then perhaps metaphysics is its commentary. Or its apology. ~*~ Pessimism would be more mystical were it not for its defeatism. Mysticism is much too proactive for the pessimist, and pessimism too impassive even for the mystic. At the same time, there is something enviable about mysticism—despite its sufferings. There is a sense in which pessimists are really failed mystics. ~*~ You, the Night, and the Music. In a suggestive passage, Schopenhauer once noted that, “music is the melody to which the world is the text." Given Schopenhauer’s view on life—that life is suffering, that human life is absurd, that the nothingness before my birth is equal to the nothingness after my death—given all this, one wonders what kind of music Schopenhauer had in mind when he described music as the melody to which the world is text—was it opera, a Requiem Mass, a madrigal, or perhaps a drinking song? Or something like Eine kleine Nachtmusik , a little night music for the twilight of thought, a sullen nocturne for the night-side of logic, an era of sad wings sung by a solitary banshee. Perhaps the music Schopenhauer had in mind is music eliminated to non-music. A whisper would suffice. Perhaps a sigh of fatigue or resignation, perhaps a moan of despair or sorrow. Perhaps a sound just articulate enough that it could be heard to dissipate. ~*~ Teach me to laugh through tears. ~*~ Pessimism always falls short of being philosophical. My back aches, my knees hurt, I couldn’t sleep last night, I’m stressed-out, and I think I’m finally coming down with something. Pessimism abjures all pretenses towards system—towards the purity of analysis and the dignity of critique. We didn’t really think we could figure it out, did we? It was just passing time, taking a piss, something to do, a bold gesture put forth in all its fragility, according to rules that we have agreed to forget that we made up in the first place. Every thought marked by a shadowy incomprehension that precedes it, and a futility that undermines it. That pessimism speaks, in whatever voice, is the singing testimony to this futility and this incomprehension—take a chance and step outside, lose some sleep and say you tried... ~*~ Is there a music of pessimism? And would such a music be audible? ~*~ The impact of music on a person compels them to put their experience into words. When this fails, the result is a faltering of thought and language that is itself a kind of music. Cioran writes: “Music is everything. God himself is nothing more than an acoustic hallucination.” ~*~ If a thinker like Schopenhauer has any redeeming qualities, it is that he identified the great lie of Western culture—the preference for existence over non-existence. As he notes: “If we knocked on the graves and asked the dead whether they would like to rise again, they would shake their heads.” In Western cultures it is commonly accepted that one celebrates birth and mourns death. But there must be a mistake here. Wouldn’t it make more sense to mourn birth and celebrate death? Strange though, because the mourning of birth would, presumably, last the entirety of that person’s life, so that mourning and living would the be same thing. ~*~ To the musical idea of the harmony of the universe corresponds the philosophical principle of sufficient reason. Like the music of mourning, pessimism gives voice to the inevitable breakdown of word and song. In this way, music is the overtone of thought. ~*~ The Patron Saints of Pessimism. The patron saints of pessimism watch over suffering. Laconic and sullen, the patron saints of pessimism never seem to do a good job at protecting, interceding, or advocating for those who suffer. Perhaps they need us more than we need them. Lest we forget, there do exist patron saints of philosophy, but their stories are not happy ones. There is, for instance, the fourth century Saint Catherine of Alexandria, or Catherine of the Wheel, named after the torture device used on her. A precocious fourteen year old scholar, Catherine was subject to continual persecution. After all forms of torture failed—including the “breaking wheel”—the emperor finally settled for her decapitation, a violent yet appropriate reminder of the protector of philosophers. There are also patron saints of music and musicians, but theirs too are sad stories. In the second century, Saint Cecilia was also subject to persecution and torture. As she knelt to receive the blade that would separate her head from her body, she ardently sang a song to God. It took three attempts before she was fully decapitated, all the while she continued, perhaps miraculously, to sing. Does pessimism not deserve its own patron saints, even if they are unworthy of martyrdom? But in our search, even the most ardent nay-sayers frequently lapse into brief moments of enthusiasm—Pascal’s love of solitude, Leopardi’s love of poetry, Schopenhauer’s love of music, Nietzsche’s love of Schopenhauer, and so on. Should one then focus on individual works of pessimism? We could include Kierkegaard’s trilogy of horror— Sickness Unto Death , The Concept of Dread , and Fear and Trembling —but all these are undermined by their fabricated and unreliable authors. Besides, how can one separate the pessimist from the optimist in works like Unamuno’s The Tragic Sense of Life , Shestov’s Postetas Clavium , or Edgar Saltus’ under-read The Philosophy of Disenchantment ? Even in cases where the entire corpus of an author is pessimistic, the project always seems incomplete—witness Cioran’s trajectory, from his first book, On the Heights of Despair , to the last unpublished notebooks of acrid and taut aphorisms. And this is to say nothing of literary pessimism, from Goethe’s sorrowful Werther, to Dostoevsky’s underground man, to Pessoa’s disquiet scribbler; Baudelaire’s spleen and ennui, the mystical Satanism of Huysmans and Strindberg, the hauntologies of Mário de Sá-Carniero, Izumi Kyoka, H.P. Lovecraft, grumpy old Beckett... even the great pessimist comedians. All that remains are singular, perhaps anomalous statements of pessimism, a litany of quotes and citations crammed into fortune cookies. Patron saints are traditionally named after a locale, either a place of birth or of a mystical experience. Perhaps the better approach is to focus on the places where pessimists were forced to live out their pessimism—Schopenhauer facing an empty Berlin lecture hall, Nietzsche mute and convalescent at the home of his sister, Wittgenstein the relinquished professor and solitary gardener, Cioran grappling with Alzheimer’s in his tiny writing alcove in the Latin Quarter. ~*~ There’s a ghost that grows inside of me, damaged in the making, and there’s a hunt sprung from necessity, elliptical and drowned. Where the moving quiet of our insomnia offers up each thought, there’s a luminous field of grey inertia, and obsidian dreams burnt all the way down. ~*~ If pessimism has any pedagogical value, it is that the failure of pessimism as a philosophy is inextricably tied to the failure of pessimism as voice. I read the following, from Shestov’s The Apotheosis of Groundlessness : When a person is young he writes because it seems to him he has discovered a new almighty truth which he must make haste to impart to forlorn humankind. Later, becoming more modest, he begins to doubt his truths: and then he tries to convince himself. A few more years go by, and he knows he was mistaken all round, so there is no need to convince himself. Nevertheless he continues to write, because he is not fit for any other work, and to be accounted a superfluous person is so horrible. (shrink)

Despite decades of activism, resistance, and education, both feminists and gender rebels continue to experience personal, political, institutional, and cultural resistance to rights, recognition, and respect. In the face of these inequalities and disparities, Transgressing Feminist Theory and Discourse seeks to engage with, and disrupt the long-standing debates, unquestioned conceptual formations, and taboo topics in contemporary feminist studies. The first half of the book challenges key concepts and theories related to feminist scholarship by advocating new approaches for theorizing interdisciplinarity, (...) intersectionality, critical race theory, trans studies, and genetics. The second half of the book offers feminist critiques or explorations of timely topics such as the 2017 Women's March and Donald Trump's election as well as non-Western perspectives of family and the absence of women's perspectives in healthcare. Contributors comprise of leading scholars and activists from disciplines including gender and sexuality studies, African American studies, communication studies, sociology, political science, and media. Transgressing Feminist Theory and Discourse is a compelling examination of some of the most high-profile feminist issues today. It hopes to infuse future and current debates and conversations around feminism and feminist theory with intersectional, imaginative, provocative, and evocative ideas, inspiring bold cross-fertilizations of concepts, principles, and practices. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Scars of the Spirit: The Struggle Against InauthenticityChristopher S. SchreinerScars of the Spirit: The Struggle Against Inauthenticity, by Geoffrey Hartman; xii & 260 pp. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. $17.95 paper.Geoffrey Hartman is now an emeritus faculty member at Yale. All but the youngest readers of this journal will recognize him as a member of the now defunct Yale School of Criticism, which in its glory days included (...) Harold Bloom, Hillis Miller, Paul de Man, and Jacques Derrida. Among these accomplished individuals, Hartman distinguished himself as the one most engaged with discussing the role of style in theoretically propelled criticism, and this remains his lasting contribution. The question he kept asking was the following: what demands do the books we read and the theories we use make on our own critical practice, and in particular, on our style? Works such as Criticism in the Wilderness (1980) and Saving the Text (1981) were concerned with promoting a philosophical criticism that is as creative as the literature it seeks to criticize, in opposition to the Arnoldian standard of a disinterested criticism that respects and preserves the canonical hauteur of literary classics and doesn't seek to imitate them. Yet over the decades Hartman's own prose, except when it lapsed into copying Derrida's, seemed more that of the Doctor and less the Explorer, to borrow the terms Lionel Trilling used to describe Matthew Arnold's criticism. This is an irony we are grateful for.Hartman's most recent book, Scars of the Spirit, takes up the problem of authenticity in the context of postmodern culture, seeking to reestablish its legitimacy as a serious topic and unmask what merely poses as authentic in the global marketplace. Today his agenda ignominiously crosses paths with the likes of Jane Fonda, whose autobiography is replete with New Age claims to recover "the authentic me." One of the issues never resolved by Hartman's book and which taunts his project behind its back is whether his Continental erudition makes his project any more authentic than Fonda's celebrity psychobabble. Authenticity was the Heideggerian concept that Adorno ruthlessly and ironically attacked in his The Jargon of Authenticity, and it has an old-fashioned existential ring to it to this day. For those readers who haven't read Being and Time lately, authenticity (Jemeinigkeit) was the resolute impetus of making time one's own, taking it back from the instrumental public world that had appropriated it so that one can live a sincerely mortal life and die one's own death, as it were properly. Professors valiantly conjured an ethic out of this retrieval of selfhood, of one's personal property of time and destiny in the Lost and Found of culture, not fully cognizant of its Nietzschean roots. The absence of altruism in this existential ethic inspired Emmanel Levinas's patient attempt to persuade us to demote our egoism in an insatiable responsibility to and for others, for whom we can never do enough.There is surely irony in the fact that the anachrony of authenticity as a concept was accelerated by the deconstructive theory that Hartman helped [End Page 501] promulgate. Hence his new book reads a bit like someone having to gingerly retrace his steps in a field of landmines planted by the Yale School of Criticism. The question of propriety, what is right and proper, what is one's own, stamped with one's unique or authentic properties, was deconstructed by Derrida, and Hartman reverently recorded the results in the incongruously titled Saving the Text, an analysis of Derrida's attempt to promote textual intercourse between Hegel and Jean Genet by setting them in parallel columns on one page. In a nutshell, the original source of an event or text, its material advent, is untraceable due to its derivativeness, the forces of semiosis (or textuality) at play in and between texts. In parallel to this discovery, Jean Baudrillard spoke of the simulacrum as a media-generated version behind which the original "thing itself" was forever irrecoverable. The very idea of authenticity came to sound illusory, denoting a mirage sought in a hopeless regressive inquiry or Ruckfrage which Husserl (with... (shrink)

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

The legacy of colonial rule has permeated into all aspects of life and contributed to healthcare inequity. In response to the increased interest in social justice, medical educators are thinking of ways to decolonise education and produce doctors who can meet the complex needs of diverse populations. This paper aims to explore decolonising ideas of healing within medical education following recent events including the University College London Medical School’s Decolonising the Medical Curriculum public engagement event, the Wellcome Collection ’s (...) Ayurvedic Man: Encounters with Indian Medicine exhibition and its symposium on Decolonising Health, SOAS University of London’s Applying a Decolonial Lens to Research Structures, Norms and Practices in Higher Education Institutions and University College London Anthropology Department’s Flourishing Diversity Series. We investigate implications of ‘recentring’ displaced indigenous healing systems, medical pluralism and highlight the concept of cultural humility in medical training, which while challenging, may benefit patients. From a global health perspective, climate change debates and associated civil protests around the issues resonate with indigenous ideas of planetary health, which focus on the harmonious interconnection of the planet, the environment and human beings. Finally, we look further at its implications in clinical practice, addressing the background of inequality in healthcare among the BAME populations, intersectionality and an increasing recognition of the role of inter-generational trauma originating from the legacy of slavery. By analysing these theories and conversations that challenge the biomedical view of health, we conclude that encouraging healthcare educators and professionals to adopt a ‘ decolonising attitude ’ can address the complex power imbalances in health and further improve person-centred care. (shrink)

_Purpose._ This article seeks to analyze the transformation of culture and social relations in cities amidst the digital transformations of space and everyday practices. _Theoretical basis._ The research is anchored in the theoretical foundations provided by Manuel Castells and Marshall McLuhan, both of whom delve deeply into the intricacies of the information society and the interactions between humans and technologies. Our analysis also relies on contributions from urbanists and experts in the "Smart Cities" domain, augmenting our study with practical facets (...) of how digital innovations influence the urban milieu. We endeavor to understand how the interplay between humans and technologies within urban environments reconfigures one’s self-perception, their place in the world, and their interactions with their surroundings. _Originality._ The study evaluates the impact of digital transformations on urban settings, drawing from the theoretical notions of Manuel Castells and Marshall McLuhan, modern urbanistic principles, and empirical analysis of the urban environment. We emphasize that digitalization reconfigures concepts of time, space, and interpersonal interactions in cities, culminating in the emergence of a distinct social identity that manifests within a globalized and digitized urban existence. We illustrate the effects of digital innovations on social and cultural practices, and underscore the significance of striking a balance between individual freedom and technological control in urban landscapes. _Conclusions._ Our findings indicate that digital transformation, which bridges the tangible and the virtual, reshapes the identities and daily experiences of urban inhabitants. They engage in an existential struggle to preserve their sociocultural essence. In a networked society where the local and global intermingle, novel social practices arise that obscure boundaries between the individual and collective, and between the tangible and virtual. The urban milieu becomes a crucible for experiments in the social, economic, and cultural realms, with technologies introducing both conveniences and challenges. Digital transformation modifies societal interactions and has profound implications for the sociocultural fabric. (shrink)

This chapter argues that in addition to being a hilarious stoner comedy, one of the most beloved cult films of all time, and a trenchant genre critique of film noir detective cinema, as well as American Westerns, Ethan and Joel Coen’s film, The Big Lebowski (1998, TBL), also presents reflections on several important philosophical themes. First, as a matter of feminist and gender philosophy, TBL examines and criticizes prominent ideals of masculinity, especially as they appear in US cinema, exploring the (...) question of what a better kind of man might be. Second, that project is woven together with an investigation of virtue as exemplified by the film’s protagonist, Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski. TBL portrays in The Dude a man whose virtues include Epicurean-like excellences related to contented poverty, equality, community, and friendship. Friendship is also a virtue among Aristotelians, and The Dude’s culture of friendship, from an Aristotelian perspective, bears significant political import. By positioning The Dude at a mean between the extremes of his friend Walter Sobchak’s excess and the nihilists’ deficiencies, TBL explores the way rules and rule-following properly fit into virtuous moral life. In The Dude, the film shows how moral virtue not only requires intellectual excellences but also the right kind of character. And third, perhaps most centrally, TBL engages the problem of modern European nihilism and the effect it has had upon US culture. By means of the “abiding” virtues it valorizes, existential repetition, comedy itself, and the way its characters inhabit time, TBL confronts the death, despair, and disillusionment nihilism yields. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Menkiti's Moral Man by Oritsegbubemi Anthony OyowePolycarp IkuenobeOYOWE, Oritsegbubemi Anthony. Menkiti's Moral Man. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2022. xii + 221 pp. Cloth, $100.00Oyowe critically examines the various threads in, issues raised by, and implications of Menkiti's maximal conception of personhood, against the backdrop of various criticisms, including his own. He indicates that, as "a repentant critic," he does "not deny the merits of these criticisms," but he (...) is "convinced that there are resources in Menkiti's general account for tackling them."In chapter 1, Oyowe examines how Menkiti uses the idea of community to foreground his normative view of personhood, in order to illuminate the African idea that one is a person because of, and through relationships with, other persons in a community. This indicates that one's existence or [End Page 356] identity has necessary external elements of cultural belonging, in addition to internal intrinsic elements. These cultural elements require ontological progression that involves a process of social-moral incorporation into communal practices and norms. Oyowe argues that while this conception is plausible, it raises questions regarding oppressive cultures and their effects on individuals. He indicates that the kind of person that emerges from this conception is a "soft" social entity.Chapter 2 examines the issue of the nature of the relationship between persons (as soft social entities) and community, and the implications for individual autonomy, practical reasoning, and moral agency. Oyowe argues that the pertinent issue is not whether the individual should have moral or ontological priority over the community or vice versa, but the aspect of individuality that is conducive to what we cherish about the community. This is because Menkiti presupposes that in order to be a maximal person, one must have intrinsic capacities for moral agency to take on communal functions and duties. But the community creates the conditions for individuals to express individuality and autonomy, engage in practical reasoning, and make the choice to conform with communal norms in order to be recognized as persons.So, the maximal conception of personhood raises issues about the nature of entities that deserve a moral status. Chapter 3 examines the moral status of infants, people with cognitive impairment, the senile, nonhuman animals, and the moral duties that people have toward these entities. If we understand personhood as failing to extend moral status to these entities, such a view might be charged with speciesism and anthropocentrism. Oyowe argues that a plausible interpretation of personhood, in the context of the communal priority of duties, suggests that people have certain responsibilities toward human and nonhuman nonpersons. This interpretation is grounded in Menkiti's distinction between "deserving justice"—which is not based on having certain intrinsic properties, moral capacities, or cognitive abilities—and "being a person." Because Menkiti insists that persons ought to be able to use their capacities to perform requisite communal duties, personhood must involve an obligation to consider the interests of nonpersons and a community of respect for those who deserve justice.Chapter 4 examines the dilemma created by the social architecture of a community's cultural traditions, institutions, expectations, norms, and practices that are necessary for personhood and social identity. While such architecture is capable of supporting the achievement of personhood, it could also be restrictive. He uses Chinua Achebe's novel, Things Fall Apart, to illuminate how the structures for recognizing persons that are oppressive of and biased against women could be disguised. Although Menkiti does not address this issue, his conception of personhood highlights the problem of social justice for women because relevant social architecture may exclude women from equal and full communal recognition and participation. An appreciation of this problem [End Page 357] introduces an alternative way of understanding social justice in terms of communal recognition or lack thereof.In chapter 5, Oyowe uses the intuitions underlying Locke's distinction between "person" and "human being" to illuminate Menkiti's account of personhood. Person and human being are not identical because they have different persistent conditions. Persons persist by virtue of mental capacities and practical relevance that are developed after one is identified as a human organism. This raises the issues of (a) whether being a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Queering Buen AmorGregory S. Hutcheson (bio)The naturalization of both heterosexuality and masculine sexual agency are discursive constructions nowhere accounted for but everywhere assumed....—Judith Butler, Gender TroubleAmérico Castro’s España en su historia: Cristianos, moros y judíos (1948) not only instigated the “culture wars” that rocked Hispanism in the mid-twentieth century, but also made the fourteenth-century Libro de buen amor a centerpiece of debate.1 In a crucial chapter of his study, (...) Castro tackles head-on Eurocentric readings of the Libro de buen amor by arguing for its cultural hybridity, or in more extreme terms, its fixedness in the cultural prerogatives of Arabic-speaking al-Andalus. “Los métodos usados para entender la poesía románico-cristiana fallan,” he affirms in an opening salvo, “porque el Libro de Buen Amor es un reflejo castellano de modelos árabes [The methods used to comprehend Romance-Christian poetry are doomed to failure because the Libro de buen amor is a Castilian reflection of Arabic models]...” [España en su historia 355]. By relocating the author’s poetic impulse in the Arab world, Castro seeks to explain not only the Libro de buen amor’s open, “arabesque” structure—its spontaneous gliding from holy to profane, serious to comical, generic-abstract to concrete-sensible—but also the ambiguous nature of buen amor. For Castro, buen amor is the simultaneous compulsion toward spiritual transcendence and sexual fulfillment, best understood within the context of an Islamic theological system in which sexual desire is not categorically opposed to godliness.Not surprisingly, Castro’s scholarship was judged harshly by his critics as historical revisionism of the most pernicious sort, a deliberate erosion of those values and certainties that make it possible to read Spain as a full player in the march of Western civilization. Most vehement in his attack was Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz, who authored the two volumes of his España: Un enigma histórico (1956) as both an explicit defense against the “magnetic seduction” [1: 9] of Castro’s prose and a reaffirmation of national consciousness. Sánchez-Albornoz’s take on the Libro de buen amor falls neatly in line with the thinly disguised nationalism of his opus as a whole. He rejects soundly Castro’s claims of cultural hybridity in favor of a Libro de buen amor located safely on this side of the cultural “abyss” between Latin Christendom and the Islamic world. What is more, he resists the queernesses that spin out of Castro’s scholarship, the threat of contamination of the national character in unspeakable ways. If Spain had been exposed to the cultural proclivities of al-Andalus, Sánchez-Albornoz argues, so too would it have been exposed to al-Andalus’s “ambiguous” notion of love, a love “que no excluía las ‘amistades particulares,’ ni la sentimental inclinación, e incluso la pasión carnal, de varón a varón [that did not exclude ‘special friendships,’ nor sentimental inclination–and even carnal passion [End Page 104] –between one man and another]” [458].2 Here Sánchez-Albornoz slams the closet door shut by constructing Spain as the bastion of straight desire and Juan Ruiz as its virtual posterboy: “En el clérigo de Hita triunfaba la robusta, natural y simplista concepción heterosexual del amor de la Castilla de su época [There triumphed in the cleric of Hita a robust, natural, uncomplicated heterosexual concept of love characteristic of the Castile of his period]” [458–59].I begin with the Castro/Sánchez-Albornoz polemic because it exposes the presence and functions of “normativity” in Libro de buen amor studies throughout much of the twentieth century. With few exceptions, readings prior to Castro’s overlooked what was odd about the Libro de buen amor in order to engage in an obsessive archaeology of sameness, a plotting of conventional values and meanings that served to render the work as familiar, if not necessarily equal to other master works of the Western canon. Félix Lecoy emerged as the doyen of this critical school, publishing in 1938 an excruciatingly detailed study of the work’s language, structure, and sources whose primary objective was... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Queering Buen AmorGregory S. Hutcheson (bio)The naturalization of both heterosexuality and masculine sexual agency are discursive constructions nowhere accounted for but everywhere assumed....—Judith Butler, Gender TroubleAmérico Castro’s España en su historia: Cristianos, moros y judíos (1948) not only instigated the “culture wars” that rocked Hispanism in the mid-twentieth century, but also made the fourteenth-century Libro de buen amor a centerpiece of debate.1 In a crucial chapter of his study, (...) Castro tackles head-on Eurocentric readings of the Libro de buen amor by arguing for its cultural hybridity, or in more extreme terms, its fixedness in the cultural prerogatives of Arabic-speaking al-Andalus. “Los métodos usados para entender la poesía románico-cristiana fallan,” he affirms in an opening salvo, “porque el Libro de Buen Amor es un reflejo castellano de modelos árabes [The methods used to comprehend Romance-Christian poetry are doomed to failure because the Libro de buen amor is a Castilian reflection of Arabic models]...” [España en su historia 355]. By relocating the author’s poetic impulse in the Arab world, Castro seeks to explain not only the Libro de buen amor’s open, “arabesque” structure—its spontaneous gliding from holy to profane, serious to comical, generic-abstract to concrete-sensible—but also the ambiguous nature of buen amor. For Castro, buen amor is the simultaneous compulsion toward spiritual transcendence and sexual fulfillment, best understood within the context of an Islamic theological system in which sexual desire is not categorically opposed to godliness.Not surprisingly, Castro’s scholarship was judged harshly by his critics as historical revisionism of the most pernicious sort, a deliberate erosion of those values and certainties that make it possible to read Spain as a full player in the march of Western civilization. Most vehement in his attack was Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz, who authored the two volumes of his España: Un enigma histórico (1956) as both an explicit defense against the “magnetic seduction” [1: 9] of Castro’s prose and a reaffirmation of national consciousness. Sánchez-Albornoz’s take on the Libro de buen amor falls neatly in line with the thinly disguised nationalism of his opus as a whole. He rejects soundly Castro’s claims of cultural hybridity in favor of a Libro de buen amor located safely on this side of the cultural “abyss” between Latin Christendom and the Islamic world. What is more, he resists the queernesses that spin out of Castro’s scholarship, the threat of contamination of the national character in unspeakable ways. If Spain had been exposed to the cultural proclivities of al-Andalus, Sánchez-Albornoz argues, so too would it have been exposed to al-Andalus’s “ambiguous” notion of love, a love “que no excluía las ‘amistades particulares,’ ni la sentimental inclinación, e incluso la pasión carnal, de varón a varón [that did not exclude ‘special friendships,’ nor sentimental inclination–and even carnal passion [End Page 104] –between one man and another]” [458].2 Here Sánchez-Albornoz slams the closet door shut by constructing Spain as the bastion of straight desire and Juan Ruiz as its virtual posterboy: “En el clérigo de Hita triunfaba la robusta, natural y simplista concepción heterosexual del amor de la Castilla de su época [There triumphed in the cleric of Hita a robust, natural, uncomplicated heterosexual concept of love characteristic of the Castile of his period]” [458–59].I begin with the Castro/Sánchez-Albornoz polemic because it exposes the presence and functions of “normativity” in Libro de buen amor studies throughout much of the twentieth century. With few exceptions, readings prior to Castro’s overlooked what was odd about the Libro de buen amor in order to engage in an obsessive archaeology of sameness, a plotting of conventional values and meanings that served to render the work as familiar, if not necessarily equal to other master works of the Western canon. Félix Lecoy emerged as the doyen of this critical school, publishing in 1938 an excruciatingly detailed study of the work’s language, structure, and sources whose primary objective was... (shrink)

The traditional Christian teaching is that engaging in sexual activity, whether heterosexual or homosexual, outside the marriage of one man and one woman is sinful. In direct contrast, there are those in the Church who quite recently have begun to insist that the traditional teachings concerning sexual sin need to be changed. In particular, the effort is being made to have the Church accept homosexual behavior as not sinful or problematic in any way—at least not for committed homosexuals, as comparable (...) to committed heterosexuals in a marriage. As we all know, this relatively recent view has been promoted heavily in the media and popular culture, and even by our national government. As we make our observations, we will particularly focus on traditional Orthodox Christianity as the fullness of the truth and, thus, the source of the true alternative to this “new” outlook that is gripping much of popular Western culture today. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:AQUINAS AND THE LIBERATIONIST CRITIQUE OF MARITAIN'S NEW CHRISTENDOM I. RADITIONALLY CHRISTIANS have understood hat God's Kingdom is not of this world. It is not surprising, then, that history evinces some Christian difficulty in relating to thi's world. One aittitude takes ·a merely indirect interest in the world. Temporal activity is directed to the Church and its mission of saving souls. In this attitude the world has only an (...) instrumental value.1 Another attitude consists in a naive and innocent forgetfulness of temporal exigencies.2 A final one encompaisses 1 a disdain for temporal involvement.8 With its need for economic and political reform, the present century calls for a radical temporal engagement. For example, an indirect engagement by Catholics in the interest of the Church will not suffice. The Church shows an ability, even a resiliency, to exist in quite deficient temporal regimes. If the deficiencies of the present are to be remedied, it will be through the efforts of persons ·acknowledging more than an instrumental value to the temporal. Jacques Maritain, a Catholic layman, labored to establish the intellectual underpinnings for a radical Catholic engagement in the temporal. The masterpiece of this work is his In1 See Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, trans. by Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (New York: Orbis Books, 1973), pp. 53-54. Jacques Maritain understands this "Political Augustinianism" as an unfortunate false inference from a medieval non-interest in the material order; see Integral Humanism, trans. by Joseph W. Evans (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973), p. 12. As will be seen, Maritain wishes to transcend a merely instrumental valuation of the world; for example, see, ibid., pp. 176-7. 2 Maritain, op. oit., pp. 14-15, so characterizes the Middle Ages. 8 Ibid., pp. 102-3. 247 248 JOHN F. X.!{NASAS tegral HumaniMn. The text understands" humanism" in terms of a this-worldly perfection. Maritian says, Humanism tends essentially to render man more truly human, and to manifest his original greatness by having him participate in all that which can enrich him in nature and in history...; it at once demands that man develop the virtualities contained within him, his creative forces and the life of reason, and work to make the forces of the physical world instruments of his freedom.4 That human nature contains such temporal capacities, Maritain later calls the "ontosophic truth." In his Peasant of the Garonne, Maritain speaks of the natural end of the world. By " world " Maritain especially understands " our human universe, the universe of man, of culture and history in their development here below." 5 The end of this world is three-fold.6 First is the mastery of nature by man and also the securement of freedom from servitude to other men. Second is the development of the spiritual activities of man, especially knowledge in the forms of wisdom and natural Finally, of " the manifestation of all the potentialities of human nature." How does a Christian come to make a radical commitment to the realization of these temporal capacities? It is not through any forsaking of his eternal destiny. Rather, for Maritain the temporal engagement follows in and through a deeper appreciation of that eternal destiny. The focus of this deeper appreciation is Christian sanctity. For Maritain only the saint is the true humanist. Why? Maritain concedes that sanctity is first and foremost a love of God. But because God has made 4 Ibid., p. 2. 5.Jacques Maritain, The Peasamt of the Garonne, trans. by Michael O'uddih(Y and Elizabeth Hughes (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968), p. 39. 6 Ibid., pp. 40-1. See also Maritain's, On the Philosophy of History (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1957), pp. 125-7. Another apparent reference to the ontosophic truth is Maritain's discussion of "felicite en mouvement," or "l'imparfaite felicite," in N euf Legons sur les Notions Premieres de la Philosophie Morale (Paris: Chez Pierre Tequi, 1949), pp. 99-102. For a diagrammatic rendering of the temporal and eternal planes, see Maritain, On Philosophy of History, p. 129. LIBERATIONIST CRITIQUE OF MARITAIN'S CHRISTENDOM 249 all in his likeness, the saint's... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:AQUINAS AND THE LIBERATIONIST CRITIQUE OF MARITAIN'S NEW CHRISTENDOM I. RADITIONALLY CHRISTIANS have understood hat God's Kingdom is not of this world. It is not surprising, then, that history evinces some Christian difficulty in relating to thi's world. One aittitude takes ·a merely indirect interest in the world. Temporal activity is directed to the Church and its mission of saving souls. In this attitude the world has only an (...) instrumental value.1 Another attitude consists in a naive and innocent forgetfulness of temporal exigencies.2 A final one encompaisses 1 a disdain for temporal involvement.8 With its need for economic and political reform, the present century calls for a radical temporal engagement. For example, an indirect engagement by Catholics in the interest of the Church will not suffice. The Church shows an ability, even a resiliency, to exist in quite deficient temporal regimes. If the deficiencies of the present are to be remedied, it will be through the efforts of persons ·acknowledging more than an instrumental value to the temporal. Jacques Maritain, a Catholic layman, labored to establish the intellectual underpinnings for a radical Catholic engagement in the temporal. The masterpiece of this work is his In1 See Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, trans. by Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (New York: Orbis Books, 1973), pp. 53-54. Jacques Maritain understands this "Political Augustinianism" as an unfortunate false inference from a medieval non-interest in the material order; see Integral Humanism, trans. by Joseph W. Evans (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973), p. 12. As will be seen, Maritain wishes to transcend a merely instrumental valuation of the world; for example, see, ibid., pp. 176-7. 2 Maritain, op. oit., pp. 14-15, so characterizes the Middle Ages. 8 Ibid., pp. 102-3. 247 248 JOHN F. X.!{NASAS tegral HumaniMn. The text understands" humanism" in terms of a this-worldly perfection. Maritian says, Humanism tends essentially to render man more truly human, and to manifest his original greatness by having him participate in all that which can enrich him in nature and in history...; it at once demands that man develop the virtualities contained within him, his creative forces and the life of reason, and work to make the forces of the physical world instruments of his freedom.4 That human nature contains such temporal capacities, Maritain later calls the "ontosophic truth." In his Peasant of the Garonne, Maritain speaks of the natural end of the world. By " world " Maritain especially understands " our human universe, the universe of man, of culture and history in their development here below." 5 The end of this world is three-fold.6 First is the mastery of nature by man and also the securement of freedom from servitude to other men. Second is the development of the spiritual activities of man, especially knowledge in the forms of wisdom and natural Finally, of " the manifestation of all the potentialities of human nature." How does a Christian come to make a radical commitment to the realization of these temporal capacities? It is not through any forsaking of his eternal destiny. Rather, for Maritain the temporal engagement follows in and through a deeper appreciation of that eternal destiny. The focus of this deeper appreciation is Christian sanctity. For Maritain only the saint is the true humanist. Why? Maritain concedes that sanctity is first and foremost a love of God. But because God has made 4 Ibid., p. 2. 5.Jacques Maritain, The Peasamt of the Garonne, trans. by Michael O'uddih(Y and Elizabeth Hughes (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968), p. 39. 6 Ibid., pp. 40-1. See also Maritain's, On the Philosophy of History (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1957), pp. 125-7. Another apparent reference to the ontosophic truth is Maritain's discussion of "felicite en mouvement," or "l'imparfaite felicite," in N euf Legons sur les Notions Premieres de la Philosophie Morale (Paris: Chez Pierre Tequi, 1949), pp. 99-102. For a diagrammatic rendering of the temporal and eternal planes, see Maritain, On Philosophy of History, p. 129. LIBERATIONIST CRITIQUE OF MARITAIN'S CHRISTENDOM 249 all in his likeness, the saint's... (shrink)

Abstract In The Descent of Man (1879), Charles Darwin proposed a speculative evolutionary explanation of extended benevolence—a human sympathetic capacity that extends to all nations, races, and even to all sentient beings. This essay draws on twenty-first century social science to show that Darwin’s explanation is correct in its broad outlines. Extended benevolence is manifested in institutions such as legal human rights and democracy, in behaviors such as social movements for human rights and the protection of nonhuman animals, and in (...) normative attitudes such as emancipative values and a commitment to promote the rights or welfare of animals. These phenomena can be substantially explained by cultural evolutionary forces that trace back to three components of what Darwin called the human “moral sense”: (1) sympathy, (2) our disposition to follow community rules or norms, and (3) our capacity to make normative judgments. Extended benevolence likely emerged with “workarounds,” including political ideologies, that established an inclusive sympathetic concern for sentient life. It likely became as widespread as it is now due to recently arisen socio-economic conditions that have created more opportunities for people to have contact with and take the perspective of a broader cross-section of humanity, as well as other species. (shrink)

In this collection of closely interrelated essays, Robert Young emphasizes the scope of the nineteenth-century debate on 'man's place in nature' at the same time as he engages with the approaches of scholars who write about it. He is critical of the separation of the writing of history from writing about history, historiography, and of the separation of history from politics and ideology, then or now. Dr Young challenges fellow historians for reimposing the very disciplinary boundaries that the nineteenth-century debate (...) showed were in the service of ideological forces in that culture. Rather, he proposes that the full weight of the contending forces should be made apparent and debated openly so that neither nineteenth-century nor contemporary issues about the role of science in culture should be treated in a narrow perspective. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

In The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin proposed a speculative evolutionary explanation of extended benevolence—a human sympathetic capacity that extends to all nations, races, and even to all sentient beings. This essay draws on twenty-first century social science to show that Darwin’s explanation is correct in its broad outlines. Extended benevolence is manifested in institutions such as legal human rights and democracy, in behaviors such as social movements for human rights and the protection of nonhuman animals, and in normative attitudes (...) such as emancipative values and a commitment to promote the rights or welfare of animals. These phenomena can be substantially explained by cultural evolutionary forces that trace back to three components of what Darwin called the human “moral sense”: sympathy, our disposition to follow community rules or norms, and our capacity to make normative judgments. Extended benevolence likely emerged with “workarounds,” including political ideologies, that established an inclusive sympathetic concern for sentient life. It likely became as widespread as it is now due to recently arisen socio-economic conditions that have created more opportunities for people to have contact with and take the perspective of a broader cross-section of humanity, as well as other species. (shrink)

At the end of the second millennium, we seem to be somewhat nervous agairn. Twentieth-century scientific developments have opened up fascinating new fields of study both in the micro- and macrocosmos. Yet none of the new codes, paradigms, and ideologies appear to bring us nearer to some new and generally shared creed. Life without work for many, not only in the Third World, the successful integration of Europe, armed conflicts on local battlefields, as well as superficialities on TV screens, are (...) our near-to-be contemporaneity. The seeming unlimited technical possibilities of artificial intelligence, the relativtatim of civic values, and a cartoon-like culture portend risks for the fiiture. Yet, while secular and lacking a binding sense of responsibility, postmodem society epitomizes spiritual hunger. Nurtured by good family traditions, the spiritual quest promises an open-ended, post-Godotian future. (shrink)

According to Husserl’s self-description, his phenomenological project was “completely apolitical.” Husserl’s phenomenology did not provide a political philosophy in the classical sense, a normative description of a functioning social order and its respective institutional structures. Nor did Husserl have much to say about the day-to-day politics of his time. Yet his reflections on community and culture were not completely without political implications. This article deals with an often-neglected strand of Husserl’s philosophy, namely his critique of liberalism. In this article, liberalism (...) is understood in the manner of Leo Strauss, as a tradition of individualist philosophy emerging from Hobbes’s political thought. As the article shows, Husserl followed many of his contemporaries in criticizing Hobbes’s abstract individualism, which could provide only a preventative function for political institutions. More importantly, Husserl’s engagement with Hobbes can be understood as a kind of ethical counterpart to his analysis of Galileo in the Crisis, as a critique of formal apriorism in the political domain. What Galileo did for physical nature with his “garb of ideas,” Hobbes did for human nature, reducing human sociality to interactions between atomistic individuals. In doing so, Hobbes ended up presenting a “mathematics of sociality” in an empirical garb. Going against the liberal view of the human person, Husserl presented his theory of social ethics founded on an original co-existence of subjects and a theory of human renewal. (shrink)

In this article, I examine how gay Christian men constructed compensatory manhood acts. Based on more than 450 hours of fieldwork in a southeastern LGBT Christian organization, I analyze how a group of gay men, responding to sexist, heterosexist, and religious stigma, as well as the acquisition of a new pastor, constructed identities as gay Christian men by emphasizing paternal stewardship, stressing emotional control and inherent rationality, and defining intimate relationships in a Christian manner. These subordinated men, regardless of their (...) intentions, collaboratively drew on and reproduced cultural notions that facilitate and justify the subordination of women and sexual minorities. Specifically, their compensatory manhood acts symbolically positioned them as superior to supposedly promiscuous, self-centered, and effeminate others. In conclusion, I draw out implications for understanding how groups of gay Christian men engage in compensatory manhood acts, and the consequences these actions have for the reproduction of inequality. (shrink)

Abstract:Scholars have long been interested in how people experienced places in the past, often relying for their evidence either on modern engagements with surviving landscapes, buildings and objects, or on contemporary descriptions of the ritualised or required activities that took place in and around them. This article argues that both approaches risk eliminating the subjectivity of historical agents and, thus, the ground of experience itself, assuming an unjustifiable uniformity either among historical persons or between historical persons and modern scholars. Historians (...) thus need to find ways to return the specificity and individuality of historical subjects to their accounts of the experience of place.This article proposes that they should turn to recent work in archaeology, literary studies and cognitive science to find methodologies for describing the ‘historical phenomenology’ of a place, combining knowledge of material conditions, cultural and social environments and particular embodied encounters to produce ‘ecological’ accounts of specific place experiences in the past. It applies such an approach to an account of a pilgrimage made by a Florentine merchant in 1411 to ‘St Patrick's Purgatory’, a small but continentally renowned building on an island in northwest Ireland. By reading ‘among’ a broad range of sources, including a letter he sent describing the phenomena of his experience of the Purgatory, contemporary pilgrimage literature, medieval soteriological doctrines and the physical qualities of the Purgatory itself, this article is able to describe both critical elements of his phenomenological ecology and their dynamics as they combined in an embodied experience of place. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World by Zakiyyah Iman JacksonBernabé S. Mendoza (bio)Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World New York: By New York University Press, 2020, 320 pp. ISBN 978-1-4798-9004-0the radical work of black feminism is to upend Western dualistic ways of thinking that structure our understanding of what it means to be human. In Becoming Human: Matter and (...) Meaning in an Antiblack World, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson troubles the dominant dualistic distinction of the human and the animal. Jackson argues that antiblackness undergirds Enlightenment discourses on the human-animal divide such that blackness cannot be extricated from the very concept of the animal because both “are not only interdependent representations but also entangled concepts” (28). Central to Jackson’s argument on the animalization of blackness is the notion of “ontologized plasticity,” which posits the being of black(ened) people as infinitely malleable and mutable matter and further points to the fluidification of form and “fleshly existence.” Far from seeing the human as a category that has “ontological integrity,” as scholars in the fields of animal studies, new materialisms, and posthumanism presuppose, Jackson instead seeks to redefine the concept of the human through the theorization of blackness (16). She points out that such theorization has been, for such scholars, a lacuna and the “space of the unthought,” which thus marks her intervention in these fields. [End Page 211]The author offers a sustained engagement with the knowledge claims of science and philosophy, reading them through and against the intellectual contributions of black feminist writers and artists. She draws from such luminaries as Toni Morrison, Nalo Hopkinson, Octavia Butler, Audre Lorde, and the artist Wangechi Mutu to show the ways in which they reject an enclosed notion of the human that is defined only by keeping the racialized other at bay and in a degraded animalized and liquified state. As such, she showcases how black feminist visual and literary culture “theorizes and philosophizes” and reveals the faulty, antiblack premises upon which science and philosophy establish their claims of knowledge on the human.Offering a materialist theory of black ontology and temporality, Jackson poses three main arguments on the racialization of the human-animal distinction. The first is the aforementioned notion of ontologized and black(ened) plasticity that speaks to the constant modulation and manipulation of black matter as it relates to gender, sexuality, and sexual reproduction. Reading US slavery as an experimental playground for testing the limits of the human, Jackson argues that “black female f lesh... functions as the limit case of ‘the human’ and is its matrix-figure” (4). She defines plasticity as a “praxis that seeks to define the essence of a black(ened) thing as infinitely mutable in antiblack, often paradoxical sexuating terms as a means of hierarchically delineating sex/gender, reproduction, and states of being more generally” (11). There is, in other words, an inversion that takes place in that it is only through opposition and the imposed instability and illegibility of blackness—of black matter and the black mater(nal) situated as “chaos by design”—that such categories as “woman,” “mother,” and “female body” can themselves take hold and become intelligible forms (11). Jackson engages with the work of Hortense Spillers and Sylvia Wynter in order to argue that “Man,” as the object of analysis within liberal humanism, “produces an untenable dichotomy—‘the human’ versus ‘the animal,’ whereby the black(ened) female is posited as the abyss dividing organic life into ‘human’ or ‘animal’ based on wholly unsound metaphysical premises” (12). This claim on the centrality of the black female in the plasticization of blackness is given support in chapter 2, which focuses on Nalo Hopkinson’s speculative novel Brown Girl in the Ring, where plasticity gives way to opacity.In this chapter, Jackson explores the ways in which the black female body, as that which is opaque and nonrepresentable within the “dominant grammar of representation,” shatters what she argues is Heidegger’s metaphysical and hierarchical ordering of human, animal, and world. In exploring “how our received conceptions of being hinges on our im/perception of black mater... (shrink)

This group of essays concerns man, history, and culture--particularly the interdependence of the philosophical vocation and the supporting culture. Scheler's writing is engaging and lively, but unsystematic in presentation. The translation is good.--L. S. F.

Pulp Fiction is pulp and transcends pulp. As such, it is an authentic film. It is of its time, aware of the concrete reality of its historical context, teaming with cultural allusions. It is a self-conscious, postmodern pastiche, with a nonlinear narrative. But Pulp Fiction also transcends all of this. It celebrates morality, mercy, and forgiveness, and rewards authenticity of the deepest kind, requiring acknowledgment of our finite realities, our infinite nature, and God’s grace. Pulp Fiction is postmodern, but (...) it is also modern. By embodying this duality and challenging the viewer to engage with it themselves through the distinct attitudes of the main characters, Pulp Fiction is able to present an engaging, compelling, complex, and opinionated meditation on human life as a struggle for self-knowledge and authenticity. (shrink)

Ostensibly, Heidegger’s notion of Befindlichkeit isn’t one of the really enigmatic concepts in his oeuvre—for everyone knows that on Heidegger’s account, this phenomenon, which bears at least some connection to what we normally call emotion, provides a basic disclosure of “the Dasein’s” worldly engagement. Nonetheless, there are enigmas here, given that Heidegger connects the phenomenon of Befindlichkeit with the disclosure of the Dasein’s past, as well as to its “thrownness” and its cultural heritage, none of which seems transparently (...) true of emotions. Some clarification is called for, then—and as I attempt to demonstrate in this article, this is possible only by interpreting the notion of Befindlichkeit in the context of an element of Husserl’s account of time- and self-consciousness that Heidegger incorporated as a central feature of his own, amended account of temporality—namely, Husserl’s notion of the protentional fulfillment that, on his reckoning, lies at the heart of this consciousness. Interpreting Heidegger’s account of Befindlichkeit in this fashion, I also show how, so interpreted, it can help us to make headway in both contemporary emotion studies and the currently developing critical theories of affect. (shrink)

Since their enslavement in the U. S. Black Americans have longitudinally suffered some of the most heinous crimes against humanity. Yet, despite cultural policies intended to discriminate against, marginalise, oppress, and subjugate them, Black folx have unfailingly demonstrated remarkable creative resilience. This conceptual article explores three research questions: (1) in what ways have exclusionary U. S. cultural policies discouraged Black Americans’ cultural engagement, (2) how have Black Americans responded to exclusionary cultural policies in the U. (...) S. and (3) what longitudinal impacts might exclusionary cultural policies have on Black Americans’ creative and expressive lives, and the U. S. creative sector? This article used Critical Race Theory (CRT) and interpretive policy analysis to identify the ways in which racism has and continues to shape Black Americans’ creative and expressive lives. I conclude this article by making the case for a research agenda that comprehensively investigates Black Americans’ cultural engagement as well as other historically and continuously oppressed groups. (shrink)

The paper attempts to consider the problem of W. H. Auden’s political engagement in the 1930s in the context of his famous decision to leave England and settle down in the USA. The transatlantic journey of the eponymous member of so-called “Auden generation” prompted certain critics to set up a distinct caesura between the “English” and the “American” Auden, giving primacy to the accomplishments of the former and downplaying the works of the latter. As it is argued, America was (...) not the place of the poet’s radical volte-face, but only a certain important, logical stage in his personal and poetic evolution. His entanglements with politics were often mythologized, and occasional public and semi-political verse he “committed” often tended to subvert any attempts to pigeonhole the author in terms of his ideological stance. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.1 (2002) 83-104 [Access article in PDF] Reluctant Modernism: Moses Mendelssohn's Philosophy of History Matt Erlin In a well-known passage from the second section of Jerusalem (1784) Moses Mendelssohn takes his old friend Lessing to task for his recent treatise on The Education of the Human Race (1780). His respect for the author notwithstanding, Mendelssohn has little sympathy for Lessing's view of human (...) progress. Opposing the attempt to force the entire species into a single framework of linear development, Mendelssohn claims that, as a species, humankind has always oscillated between cultivation and barbarism. Borrowing the "ages of man" metaphor that Lessing employed in his own discussion, he writes that at almost any point in human history, man is "child, adult, and old man at the same time, though in different places and regions of the world." 1 Against Lessing's concept of global progress Mendelssohn proposes a model in which each individual follows his own trajectory of self-cultivation, a trajectory that begins before birth, intersects more or less briefly with the plane of historical time, and then continues after death into eternity.Mendelssohn's resistance to the Geschichtsphilosophie articulated here by Lessing and later appropriated by Kant, Schiller, and Hegel has been subject to a variety of interpretations. Not surprisingly, more recent commentators have stressed the philosopher's defense of particularity, his opposition to a totalizing theory of history that threatens to grant the individual nothing more than a bit part in the realization of some future state of human perfection. Norbert Hinske, for example, has argued that Mendelssohn's late writings engage in a conscious confrontation with Kant's understanding of historical progress. 2 [End Page 83]According to Hinske, especially Mendelssohn's short text On the Ideal Constitution indicates that the author "must have recognized spontaneously that Kant's proposed solution, whether intentionally or unintentionally, degraded the individual to a mere means of social progress...." 3Mendelssohn's concern for the individual is certainly central to his rejection of a species-based historical teleology, but one should also keep in mind the ethnic and cultural implications of such a model. As both Kant's and Hegel's later writings reveal, any attempt to understand human history in terms of a coherent, linear narrative, especially one that culminates in the rise of Christian Europe, is necessarily troubled by the continued existence of Judaism. In other words it is not just the individual who suffers an implicit reduction in status in late eighteenth-century theories of progress; entire cultures become vestigial once their historical function has been fulfilled. 4 Although the texts containing the most striking hostility toward Judaism were published after the appearance of Jerusalem, a somewhat surprising anti-Jewish bias is already evident in Lessing's explorations of the topic. Lessing does after all refer to the Jews in the period of Egyptian exile as "the most rude and the most ferocious" people imaginable. 5 Moreover, although he grants them a crucial role as educators of humanity, this role lasts only until the appearance of Jesus Christ, an event that simultaneously marks the end of the childhood of humankind. As Hans Liebeschütz has remarked, Lessing's adoption of this position must have been quite a blow to Mendelssohn. 6Each of these reasons for Mendelssohn's skepticism is significant in its own right; taken together, they also raise fundamental questions regarding his relationship to modernity and modern historical consciousness more generally. In one respect, of course, the topic of Mendelssohn's modernity has been much debated. Ever since Alexander Altmann's 1973 biography addressed the philosopher's complex relation to the "two disparate worlds of Judaism and modern Enlightenment," scholars have sought to untangle the strands of tradition and innovation in his work. 7 Most recently, Allan Arkush has depicted Mendelssohn as a radical deist whose observance of Jewish law was largely [End Page 84] strategic, while David Sorkin has emphasized the more conservative aims of his long neglected Hebrew works. 8In light of this interest... (shrink)

There has been broad interest in the so-called rise of women farmers in United States (US) agriculture. Researchers have elucidated the diverse ways farmers ‘perform’ gender, while also examining how engaging in a masculine-coded industry like agriculture shapes individuals’ gendered identities as well as their social and mental wellbeing. While illuminating, this work is mostly focused on sustainable or direct-market farmers, with surprisingly little research examining women on conventional row crops operations. This paper works to fill this empirical gap and (...) further theorize gender-agriculture intersections through analyzing interviews with Iowa women row-crop farmers to understand the ways they perceive their gendered identities, and how they see them shaping their farming experience and mental wellbeing. Deploying a conceptual understanding of gender as both discursive and embodied as well as relational and fluid, I find respondents see themselves operating in a somewhat liminal gender identity, where they feel adept at moving between masculinized spaces of agriculture and more feminized domains of homes and office jobs. Critically, while women rarely expressed stress about doing “masculine” coded agricultural labor, they had more complex feelings towards either disliking or imperfectly completing feminized care and reproductive labor. Younger women expressed particular ambivalence about assuming the identity of farmer while also fulfilling gendered norms around (heterosexual) marriage and childbearing. The liminality of women’s gender performance also cut both ways, and while they feel able to access different gendered spaces some feel they are not fully accepted in either. I conclude by reflecting on what these particular forms of gendered subjectivity might mean for women’s mental wellbeing and how agencies might better support gender equity in agriculture. (shrink)

The author engages the enigmatic Green Man, a mythical figure of uncertain and even independent global arisings, to connect postindustrial people with their evolutionary origin and their kinship with all life. He traces the stream of ecologically oriented cultural critiques from Lynn White, Thomas Berry, Paul Shepard, and on through the school of Deep Ecologists, as they explore how modern humanity has alienated itself from the Earth. Green Man's spiritual path of sensory integration with our earthly habitat can help (...) disenfranchised earthlings return to their planetary home, relate to their biodiverse kin, and discover their own true nature. (shrink)

The acclaimed American sociologist and cultural philosopher Philip Rieff gained great academic prestige with his thesis on the emergence of 'Psychological Man' in western culture and with his classic book, Freud: The Mind of the Moralist, published in 1959. In this work and the later The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966) he not only offered a highly original interpretation of the work of Sigmund Freud, but critically evaluated the enormous influence of psychotherapeutic thinking on Western culture. However, Rieff's later (...) work on the theory of culture did not garner the same attention, and his most recent writings have received very little critical engagement. In Sociology and the Sacred, Antonius A.W. Zondervan sets out to remedy this neglect, arguing that Rieff's work is ripe for intellectual reconsideration. (shrink)

The questions ‘What is man?’ and ‘What is Europe?’ were among the main interests of Thomas Mann. In dozens of his essays and speeches as well as in some of his major novels Mann searched for the essence of European culture. In this paper we discuss Mann’s ideas about humanism, which he considered to be the core of the European identity. In both Mann’s novels and his essays he investigates the opposition between Enlightenment values and Romantic thinking. Mann believed in (...) the necessity of a fusion of these two, a synthesis in which a belief in reason, morality and the possibility of progress go hand in hand with an awareness of the dark and tragic side of the human condition. ‘Dostoevsky in moderation’, as one of his essays is titled. This synthesis, which he named a ‘humanism of the homo Dei’, is Mann’s proposal for a renewed European identity. Mann’s ideas about a revived humanism as the foundation for the European identity are both interesting in the context of his literary oeuvre as well as inspiring in the light of our contemporary debates on European and Western values and identity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On the Way to Ethical CultureThe Meaning of Art as Oscillating between the Other, Il y a, and the ThirdRossitsa Varadinova Borkowski (bio)Who can suppose that a poet capable of effectively introducing into his scenes rhetoricians, generals and various other characters, each displaying some peculiar excellence, was nothing more than a droll or juggler, capable only of cheating or flattering his hearer, and not of instructing him?Are we all (...) agreed that the chief merit of a poet consists in his accurate representation of the affairs of life? Can this be done by a mere driveller, unacquainted with the world?The excellence of a poet is not to be measured by the same standard as that of a mechanic or a blacksmith, where honor and virtue have nothing to do with our estimate. But the poet and the individual are connected, and he only can become a good poet who is in the first instance a worthy man.— Strabo, The Geography of StraboAfter Emmanuel Levinas showed the need for radically positing the Ethical as the original structure of human inwardness and as art is a fundamental aspect of being human, a reexamination of the meaning of the Artistic and its relation with the Ethical is necessary.1 Throughout [End Page 195] the history of Western thought and culture, the meaning of art has been regarded either as imitation of the world and nature (Plato and Aristotle), objective self-expression of the Absolute Spirit (Hegel) or Being (Heidegger), a subjective “free play of imagination” and judgment (Kant and the Romanticists), or as inevitable engagement with social issues and political position (the Marxists and Sartre). In spite of the variety of theories and views about the essence and value of art, it is unquestionable that the Artistic has transformational power over humans, which points to art’s connection with ethics. Therefore, following Levinas, instead of asking the general ontological questions about the gist of art “What is art?” or “Why is there art instead of something else?” we should seek an answer to the ethical question about the meaning of art: “How can the existence of art be justified?”The answers could be sought in two directions. The first already quite well beaten path explores Levinas’s own vision on art, which most critics find hesitant or even ambiguous.2 The impression of this hesitation is significant on the background of Levinas’s rigorous clarity about the Ethical. Overlooking this impression would lead to conclusions that would deviate our attention from the main question about how the existence of art can be justified. A possible explanation would be that Levinas’s seemingly fragmentary thoughts about art are woven into the fabric of his ultimate meta-ethical project — that is, his approach to art is instrumental, subjected to the Ethical. For example, commentators agree that Levinas’s early article “Reality and Its Shadow” (1948) is the only one exclusively focused on art and use it as a starting point to assemble the fragments of his aesthetic views into an aesthetic theory. Although this move might be justified methodologically, Levinas is clear that the discussion of art in this article is subordinated to the more general (and more serious) question about the nontruth of being (LR 132). Positing art as mythological and mystical, thus incapable of transmitting a meaningful message if separated from philosophical criticism (142), Levinas puts “in brackets” the discussion about the artistic and focuses on the reason qua knowledge (philosophy) and its relation with the Other. The impression of his hesitation about art’s [End Page 196] independent capability to dephase the instant, to breach the ontological gravity, and to expose the human spirit to the Ethical comes from those texts where Levinas applies his own vision about the integrative role of philosophical criticism — i.e., texts that work as philosophical criticism of art: “Transcendence through poetry — is this serious?”3 (PN 175n12), “if poetry can contain teachings” (165; emphasis added). Therefore, on one hand, Levinas exhaustively scrutinizes all possibilities of ethics of philosophy and comes to the clear position that in order for reason to function humanly it should be dethroned by the Other. He is... (shrink)

Leandra Medine indicates that she wants the Man Repeller multi-author blog to ‘serve as an open forum for women to draw their own conclusions’ instead of making ‘any sort of feministic statement’. Medine renders feminism as amorphous and an individual choice but she has been widely lauded for offering a feminist engagement in fashion. Her practices and position, as I argue throughout this article, allow her to fashion feminism, including associating feminism with the man repeller style and replacing aspects (...) of second wave and rights-based feminisms with the purportedly more equitable and liberating website ethos of choice and equality feminism. Yet in replacing ‘feministic’ critiques with promises of stylish cultural change and clothing that reportedly repels men, Medine and other Man Repeller authors elide how systemic oppression functions. This ambivalent relationship to feminism, and dearth of intersectional advocacy, prompted a backlash in 2020. Critics interrogated Medine's facile statement about #BlackLivesMatter, the company's lack of diversity and the unsuccessful restructuring of the blog. As a means of analysing Man Repeller, I employ textual analysis, feminist and queer literature and media theory. I define fashioning feminism as a collaborative and ongoing process of producing feminist positions and thinking, including the negation of certain forms of feminism. I assert that attending to the fashioning of feminism can foreground central and developing feminist theories; the appeal, unstylishness and effacement of feminism; and the connection between style and politics. This includes readers’ interrogations of Man Repeller's politics, which are occurring along with contemporary examinations of racism. Since fashioning feminism is a collaborative and ongoing process of producing feminist positions and thought, engaging with its concepts and debates can further the critical study of feminism, nurture feminist conversations and advocate for social change. (shrink)

The article explicates the significance of M. Weber’s works for understanding of calling as an important world view idea of the European culture. The author observes Weber’s analysis of forming of the notion of calling in the times of ancient Egypt state and Judaic captivity as well as in the Old Testament and its interpretations by M. Luther. Particularly significant for the understanding of social processes during the Reformation in Europe and then in America became Weber’s analysis of the transformation (...) of the religious meaning of calling as “task” and “mission” of a man in the world into the motivation for a practical professional activity. The study shows the ways of implementation of Weber’s theory of social action and political leadership within the concept of calling. The internal collision of the experience of calling is explicated by the examples of charismatic leadership, responsibility of a politician and ethos of a scientist. Combination of affective motivation, value and target oriented rationality in the calling forms the problem for a decision, although this complexity is a driving force of the realization of calling by a person. The philosophical and theological substratum of the Weber’s concept of calling is his looking for the integration of temporal and eternal dimensions in human existence. Calling as an idea of postreformational European culture serves for finding and realization of the meaning of personal life as well as for legitimation of social action. Especially this idea grounds the possibility and necessity of conciliation of the ethics of conviction and the ethics of responsibility in individual as well as in social existence and morality. (shrink)

This article is written from the perspective of Josef Šmajs’ evolutionary ontology and considers physical activity in humans. It focuses in detail on a particular form—physical exercise. In the author’s opinion, current physical exercise (sport activity) and any other human form of activity is part of the internal autopoietic processes of the sociocultural system, which displays an ever-increasingly destructive tendency towards its natural environment—towards the host system of the biosphere. The author attempts to establish the degree and manner to which (...) the anti-nature activity of physical exercise varies, but also seeks to point out how they contribute to a potential biophilic transformation of culture. (shrink)