While many recent accounts of scientific representation have given a central role to the agency and intentions of scientists in explaining representation, they have left these agential concepts unanalyzed. An account of scientific, representational actions will be a useful piece in offering a more complete account of the practice of representation in science. Drawing on an Anscombean approach to the nature of intentional actions, the Means-End Account of Scientific, Representational Actions describes three features of scientific, representational actions: (I) the (...) final description in the means-end ordering of descriptions is some scientific aim; (II) that interaction with a vehicle distinct from its target stands as an earlier description which is ordered toward the final description as means to end; and (III) the means-end structure is licensed by scientific practice. After describing each of the components of the Means-End Account in greater detail through the example of the representational use of a mathematical model, I explain how it can demarcate scientific, representational actions from other sorts of actions. I close by describing some payoffs of the account, showing how it contributes to a more thorough understanding of the practice of representation in science and how it can be of use in understanding the close connection between representation and other forms of scientific activity. (shrink)

While many recent accounts of scientific representation have given a central role to the agency and intentions of scientists in explaining representation, they have left these agential concepts unanalyzed. An account of scientific, representational actions will be a useful piece in offering a more complete account of the practice of representation in science. Drawing on an Anscombean approach to the nature of intentional actions, the Means-End Account of Scientific, Representational Actions describes three features of scientific, representational actions: the final (...) description in the means-end ordering of descriptions is some scientific aim; that interaction with a vehicle distinct from its target stands as an earlier description which is ordered toward the final description as means to end; and the means-end structure is licensed by scientific practice. After describing each of the components of the Means-End Account in greater detail through the example of the representational use of a mathematical model, I explain how it can demarcate scientific, representational actions from other sorts of actions. I close by describing some payoffs of the account, showing how it contributes to a more thorough understanding of the practice of representation in science and how it can be of use in understanding the close connection between representation and other forms of scientific activity. (shrink)

There has been considerable work on practical reasoning in artificial intelligence and also in philosophy. Typically, such reasoning includes premises regarding means–end relations. A clear semantics for such relations is needed in order to evaluate proposed syllogisms. In this paper, we provide a formal semantics for means–end relations, in particular for necessary and sufficient means–end relations. Our semantics includes a non-monotonic conditional operator, so that related practical reasoning is naturally defeasible. This work is primarily an exercise (...) in conceptual analysis, aimed at clarifying and eventually evaluating existing theories of practical reasoning (pending a similar analysis regarding desires, intentions and other relevant concepts). (shrink)

“Myth theorists” have recently called the normative requirement of means-end rationality into question. I show that we can accept certain lessons from the Myth Theorists and also salvage our intuition that there is a normative requirement of means-end rationality. I argue that any appeal to a requirement to make our attitudes coherent as such is superfluous and unnecessary in order to vindicate the requirement of means-end rationality and also avoid the problematic conclusion that persons ought to (...) take the means to whatever ends they happen to intend. (shrink)

This article indicates a new direction for business ethics, which Lon Fuller pioneered with his work on social architecture. “Eunomics”, as Fuller called it, is “the theory or study of good order and workable arrangements”. How should we appraise the effects of the various ways of organizing and running a corporation, for example, with regard to the different structures and basic plans it can espouse? We should reject the “doctrine of the infinite pliability of social arrangements”, as some forms (...) of organization are unsound. They cannot be implemented in a proper fashion given the boundaries and the rules of the market established. A theory of business eunomics explains why each kind of legal process, including managerial direction, is better suited for the pursuit of a limited number of ends, and thus why we should not force a single institution to solve all ethical problems. (shrink)

From the beginning of the 16th century to the end of the 18th century, there were not less than ten philosophers who focused extensively on Venn’s ostensible analytical diagrams, as noted by modern historians of logic (Venn, Gardner, Baron, Coumet et al.). But what was the reason for early modern philosophers to use logic or analytical diagrams? Among modern historians of logic one can find two theses which are closely connected to each other: M. Gardner states that since the Middle (...) Ages certain logic diagrams were used just in order to teach “dull-witted students”. Therefore, logic diagrams were just a means to an end. According to P. Bernhard, the appreciation of logic diagrams had not started prior to the 1960s, therefore the fact that logic diagrams become an end the point of research arose very late. The paper will focus on the question whether logic resp. analytical diagrams were just means in the history of (early) modern logic or not. In contrast to Gardner, I will argue that logic diagrams were not only used as a tool for “dull-witted students”, but rather as a tool used by didactic reformers in early modern logic. In predating Bernhard’s thesis, I will argue that in the 1820s logic diagrams had already become a value in themselves in Arthur Schopenhauer’s lectures on logic, especially in proof theory. (shrink)

The paper analyses results from a questionnaire-based survey of ethical behavior of members of the Western Australian Senior Executive Service. Relating to definitions of deontology (duty) and teleology (ends over means) the study examines the validity of three hypotheses on ethical behaviour/decision making frameworks. Longitudinal data is related to the 1983–90WA Inc period. The study establishes that SES managers apply ethical frameworks in order to understand the meaning of: ethical behaviour and that there are groups of managers with (...) distinct understandings of what constitutes ethical behavior which is reflective of particular ethics theories. Three groups of managers are identified: (1) emphasises teleology (2) focuses on external influences (rules, standards and codes) and (3) encompasses both teleology and external influences and, to a lesser extent deontology. Only this latter group is regarded as having an appropriate repertoire of potential responses to any given ethical dilemma. There is no support for the view that those beginning employment in the public service post 1984 adversely affected the ethical decision making frameworks of other senior managers. (shrink)

I provide a novel, non-reductive, action-first skill-based account of active imagining. I call it the Skillful Action Account of Imagining (the skillful action account for short). According to this account, to actively imagine something is to form a representation of that thing, where the agent’s forming that representation and selecting its content together constitute a means to the completion of some imaginative project. Completing imaginative projects stands to the active formation of the relevant representations as an end. The account (...) thus bakes in the means-end order that some in action theory take to be definitional of intentional action. Moreover, in the spirit of this conception of intentional action, I hold that a central feature of the means-end order exhibited in active imagining is the agent’s direct non-observational knowledge both of her act of imagining and of its having this order. The agent knows that she’s actively imagining (that-)p and knows why she actively imagines this–to carry on the pretense, engage in the fiction, predict another’s behavior, reason about possibility or necessity, reason about contingent matters of fact, just imagine for its own sake, and so on. I show that the account accounts for the possibility of misimagining while holding onto the idea that we imagine what we intend to imagine. I likewise show that the account unifies imagining across types of imaginative project like those just listed in a way that tolerates conflict in the roles that imagining plays in the mental economy across those projects. Finally, I show that the account can accommodate passive imagining like involuntary and automatic imagining as well as mind wandering. (shrink)

BackgroundRespect for autonomy is a key concept in contemporary bioethics and end-of-life ethics in particular. Despite this status, an individualistic interpretation of autonomy is being challenged from the perspective of different theoretical traditions. Many authors claim that the principle of respect for autonomy needs to be reconceptualised starting from a relational viewpoint. Along these lines, the notion of relational autonomy is attracting increasing attention in medical ethics. Yet, others argue that relational autonomy needs further clarification in order to be (...) adequately operationalised for medical practice. To this end, we examined the meaning, foundations, and uses of relational autonomy in the specific literature of end-of-life care ethics.MethodsUsing PRESS and PRISMA procedures, we conducted a systematic review of argument-based ethics publications in 8 major databases of biomedical, philosophy, and theology literature that focused on relational autonomy in end-of-life care. Full articles were screened. All included articles were critically appraised, and a synthesis was produced.ResultsFifty publications met our inclusion criteria. Twenty-eight articles were published in the last 5 years; publications were originating from 18 different countries. Results are organized according to: (a) an individualistic interpretation of autonomy; (b) critiques of this individualistic interpretation of autonomy; (c) relational autonomy as theoretically conceptualised; (d) relational autonomy as applied to clinical practice and moral judgment in end-of-life situations.ConclusionsThree main conclusions were reached. First, literature on relational autonomy tends to be more a ‘reaction against’ an individualistic interpretation of autonomy rather than be a positive concept itself. Dichotomic thinking can be overcome by a deeper development of the philosophical foundations of autonomy. Second, relational autonomy is a rich and complex concept, formulated in complementary ways from different philosophical sources. New dialogue among traditionally divergent standpoints will clarify the meaning. Third, our analysis stresses the need for dialogical developments in decision making in end-of-life situations. Integration of these three elements will likely lead to a clearer conceptualisation of relational autonomy in end-of-life care ethics. This should in turn lead to better decision-making in real-life situations. (shrink)

What does it mean to ‘calculate’—today? The pause introduced by the dash in this question marks the inescapable necessity of historicizing the problem of calculation. In his provocative essay, ‘Toward a Critique of the Ineffectual: Heidegger’s Reading of Aristotle and the Construction of an Action without Ends’, Dimitris Vardoulakis proposes a philosophical and political programme in order to counter the negative effects of ‘Heidegger’s mistake’ (the conflation of causality and instrumentality through a mistranslation of Aristotle) that has led to (...) the theoretical fetishization of the ‘ineffectual’ (action without ends) in continental philosophy. In his conclusion, Vardoulakis advocates for a return to a politics and ethics of practical judgment that avoids the twin pitfalls of asserting either the impossibility or the absolute possibility of calculation. As he puts it, we need to acknowledge today ‘the exigency to calculate in the face of the provisional ends of instrumentality, or to perform the judgment that the Greeks called phronesis’ [2022: 244]. This is why we should keep in mind that Heidegger’s critique of technology in the 1950s was articulated in the context of the early Cold War, atomic warfare, and the rise of cybernetics. But, as many have recently argued, in the age of so-called ‘Big Data’, neoliberal rationality has increasingly replaced the epistemology of ‘causality’ with epistemologies of ‘correlation’: the algorithmic calculation of probabilistic relations between clusters of variables (based on information harvested by digital technologies designed for the total surveillance of human life). As Chris Anderson notoriously announced in his 2008 editorial, ‘The End of Theory’, ‘correlation supersedes causation, and science can advance even without coherent models, unified theories, or really any mechanistic explanation at all’. He calls this epistemology ‘dimensionally agnostic statistics’ (the amount of data available can no longer be visualized in its totality). This worldview, however, functions as a basic attack on one of the fundamental (and still often repeated) ground-truths of modern science: correlation is not causation. As Anderson puts it: ‘There is now a better way. Petabytes allow us to say: “Correlation is enough”’. In other words, the stakes of Vardoulakis’s argument must be tested against the rise of this neoliberal elimination of causality from corporate epistemologies that has led to an inversion of the terms of the Heideggerian critique of technology: as it turns out, technology has produced an ideology of pure instrumentality without causation. Today, there are only ends without causes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Out of the Order of Number”: Benjamin and Irigaray Toward a Politics of Pure MeansPeter Fenves* (bio)At the heart of the legal orders that arose in conjunction with the Enlightenment idea of law as rules of conduct universally applicable to all those who belong to a properly instituted political body lies a formula for the justification of the violence on which the law depends in order for (...) it to be an actual, effective, and therefore “living” law—and not merely an idea: violence is justified insofar as it is a means for the control of those violent acts that are not themselves means for the control of immediate threats of violence. As Walter Benjamin indicates in the opening paragraphs of his most explicit exposition of legal and political theory, “Toward the Critique of Violence” (1921), the justification of violence as a means is the point of contention around which arguments over the origin, nature, and purpose of the modern state endlessly circle. Justified violence is supposed to be of a different order than unjustified violence, and so in the context of legal reasoning it is no longer called “violence” but “coercion” or “punishment.” Yet as the formula for the justification of violence indicates, the violence of the legal order is not in general sanctioned for the purpose of subduing immediate threats to one’s own life—this is the justification for the extralegal violence of “private persons”—but for the purpose of preserving the law itself: the law is inviolable. As long as the legal order makes the law effective and thus gives it life, it, too, is inviolable, and all violence other than its own can henceforth be interpreted as an immediate threat not to life itself—however this may be understood—but to the legal order. The end of legally sanctioned violence, its purpose and function, is not to put an end to violence as such but, instead, to thwart all threats to the law in the name of which violence can be sanctioned. Everything that enters into the space over which the legal order imposes its sentence is therefore implicated in the disquieting—or, as Benjamin says, “rotten” [GS 2: 188; SW 242]—ambiguity of legal violence understood as a means whose justification lies in the application of the law: the legal order can justify its own violence only insofar as this violence is a means to an end, but the end it serves can never be separated from itself as means, for the law, by virtue of its universality, is at bottom unconcerned with the life of those upon whom the violence it justifies is exercised or with the life of those whom this violence is supposed to protect. The violence of the legal order is concerned solely with itself, with its own majesty—without, however, ceasing to present itself as a means and reverting to what all legal violence once was: immediate manifestation.Nothing that enters into the space of the legal order can escape the ambiguity of the violence through which the law comes to life. Or at least nothing can escape this ambiguity as long as the space on which the legal order founds itself runs counter to the sole space that accords with the strict universality of the law: a universally accessible, indivisible, and undivided space that is nevertheless capable of the greatest degree of discreteness, differentiation, and individuation. In place of this space the legal orders that arose in Europe over the course of the last five centuries set out something like its parody: [End Page 43] homogeneous and yet fully divided domains whose divisions from one another are momenta of the extralegal violence to which each legal order owes its origin. At least one species of being has always been seen to move outside the space of the legal order—a species whose specificity, speciesness, and spatiality have thus given rise to interminable analysis: the angels. The space that angels traverse—and, in particular, the ones who enter into Luce Irigaray’s writings—does not suffer division into homogeneous domains but does not therefore amount to an undifferentiated expanse, a yawning abyss, or a formless chaos; it is... (shrink)

BackgroundThis study aimed to identify the healthcare providers’ experience and perspectives toward end-of-life care decisions focusing on end-of-life discussion and physician’s order of life-sustaining treatment documentation in Korea which are major parts of the Life-Sustaining Treatment Act.MethodsA cross-sectional survey was conducted using a questionnaire developed by the authors. A total of 474 subjects—94 attending physicians, 87 resident physicians, and 293 nurses—participated in the survey, and the data analysis was performed in terms of frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation using (...) the SPSS 24.0 program.ResultsStudy results showed that respondents were aware of terminal illness and physician’s order of life-sustaining treatment in Korea well enough except for some details. Physicians reported uncertainty in terminal state diagnosis and disease trajectory as the most challenging. Study participants regarded factors (related to relationships and communications) on the healthcare providers’ side as the major impediment to end-of-life discussion. Study respondents suggested that simplification of the process and more staff are required to facilitate end-of-life discussion and documentation.ConclusionBased on the study results, adequate education and training for better end-of-life discussion are required for future practice. Also, a simple and clear procedure for completing a physician’s order of life-sustaining treatment in Korea should be prepared and legal and ethical advice would be required. Since the enactment of the Life-Sustaining Treatment Act, several revisions already have been made including disease categories, thus continuous education to update and support clinicians is also called for. (shrink)

Articulating an Augustinian treatment of the nature, limits, meaning, and end of work, this volume will push Augustinian studies toward a more-detailed engagement with issues of political economy. Settle argues that we inhabit a culture that insists that our life's meaning is bound up in our work; we experience constant pressures at work to be more efficient and productive; and we know the ways in which our work-structures contribute to a seemingly ever-growing, corrosive system of poverty and oppression. These cultural (...) assumptions regarding work, along with a cluster of other labor-related problems (i.e. automation, wage depression, wage theft, the rise of a flexible labor force, a lack of worker representation, over-work, and productivism) have rightfully raised a number of questions about the nature, meaning, and limits of our working lives and working structures. This book sets out the ways in which St. Augustine offers us-in piecemeal fashion-elements with which we can assemble an alternative vision. For example, by examining his understanding of the role of work in the context of the monastery, we see his understanding of both the ways we should undertake our work and the ends toward which we should direct that work during our lives in a sinful world. Settle draws on these piecemeal treatments of work scattered throughout St. Augustine's varied writings in order to develop and articulate a unified theology of work. (shrink)

Video games are currently available which permit the virtual murder of children. No such games are presently available which permit virtual paedophilia. Does this disparity reflect a morally justifiable position? Focusing solely on different player motivations, I contrast two version of a fictitious game—one permitting the virtual murder of children, the other virtual paedophilia—in order to establish whether the selective prohibition of one activity over the other can be morally justified based on player motivation alone. I conclude that it (...) cannot, for reasons discussed. (shrink)

In this article I am concerned with whether it could be morally significant to distinguish between doing something 'in order to bring about an effect' as opposed to 'doing something because we will bring about an effect'. For example, the Doctrine of Double Effect tells us that we should not act in order to bring about evil, but even if this is true is it perhaps permissible to act only because an evil will thus occur? I discuss these (...) questions in connection with a version of the so-called Trolley Problem known as the Loop Case. I also consider how these questions may bear on whether a rational agent must aim at an event which he believes is causally necessary to achieve an end he pursues. (shrink)

In this article I am concerned with whether it could be morally significant to distinguish between doing something 'in order to bring about an effect' as opposed to 'doing something because we will bring about an effect'. For example, the Doctrine of Double Effect tells us that we should not act in order to bring about evil, but even if this is true is it perhaps permissible to act only because an evil will thus occur? I discuss these (...) questions in connection with a version of the so-called Trolley Problem known as the Loop Case. I also consider how these questions may bear on whether a rational agent must aim at an event which he believes is causally necessary to achieve an end he pursues. (shrink)

_Order and History,_ Eric Voegelin's five-volume study of how human and divine order are intertwined and manifested in history, has been widely acclaimed as one of the great intellectual achievements of our age. In the fourth volume, _The Ecumenic Age,_ Voegelin breaks with the course he originally charted for the series, in which human existence in society and the corresponding symbolism of order were to be presented in historical succession. The analyses in the three previous volumes remain valid (...) as far as they go, Voegelin explains, but the original conception proved "untenable because it had not taken proper account of the important lines of meaning in history that did not run along lines of time." _The Ecumenic Age_ treats history not as a stream of human beings and their actions in time, but as the process of man's participation in a flux of divine presence that has eschatological direction. "The process of history, and such order as can be discerned in it," Voegelin writes, "is not a story to be told from the beginning to its happy, or unhappy, end; it is a mystery in process of revelation." In the present volume, Voegelin applies his revised conception of historical analysis to the "Ecumenic Age," a pivotal period that extends roughly from the rise of the Persian Empire to the fall of the Roman. The age is marked by the advent of a new type of political unit—the ecumenic empire—achieved at the cost of unprecedented destruction. Yet the pragmatic destructiveness of the age is paralleled by equally unprecedented spiritual creativity, born from the need to make sense of existence in the wake of imperial conquest. These spiritual outbursts gave rise to the great ecumenic religions and raised fundamental questions for human self- understanding that extend into our historical present. (shrink)

In this article I am concerned with whether it could be morally significant to distinguish between doing something 'in order to bring about an effect' as opposed to 'doing something because we will bring about an effect'. For example, the Doctrine of Double Effect tells us that we should not act in order to bring about evil, but even if this is true is it perhaps permissible to act only because an evil will thus occur? I discuss these (...) questions in connection with a version of the so-called Trolley Problem known as the Loop Case. I also consider how these questions may bear on whether a rational agent must aim at an event which he believes is causally necessary to achieve an end he pursues. (shrink)

Decision theory, understood as providing a normative account of rationality in action, is often thought to be an adequate formalization of instrumental reasoning. As a model, there is much to be said for it. However, if decision theory is to adequately account for correct instrumental reasoning, then the axiomatic conditions by which it links preference to action must be normative for choice. That is, a choice must be rationally defective unless it proceeds from a preference set that satisfies the axiomatic (...) conditions. -/- The crucial feature of standard decision theory for present purposes is that it conceives rational action as maximizing, as doing the best that one can in terms of satisfying one’s preferences. For maximizing to be possible, the preference set in question must completely order a person’s options. But I have argued elsewhere that that condition is often unmet by actual preference sets, so maximizing is not always available. Given that it is not, satisficing deserves attention, both as the most important alternative to maximizing and for the lessons it can yield with respect to goal-directed action. With those lessons in hand, standard maximizing decision theory is reconsidered, with the aim of showing that it does not adequately represent the normative distinction between means and ends. (shrink)

The relation between narratives and agency can be sometimes considered as mutually constitutive. There are cases in which telling a story expresses higher degrees of agency, and respectively, agency is shaped as a narrative that expresses the agent’s reasons. From henceforth, I will contend that a narrative theory, beyond the personal identity problem, can also enlighten how the agent attains giving reasons for the action by making sense of sequences of events. In order to explain how agency is constituted (...) from understanding and control, we must assume a primitive competence for narratives. Agency supposes an ordering that cannot be reduced to temporality, but expresses a certain sense of accomplishment that can be narratively constituted. In this context, I will examine Welleman’s theory of emotions as an ordering framework of the events in structures of means-ends. A possible objection to his explanation of the agential narratives is that emotions themselves need to be understood as narrative processes. I suggest then that an enactivist approach would be a way of explaining the narrative constitution of agency. One virtue of this approach is that it harmonizes the biological and cultural components of the agency from the most basic layers to the ordinary folk-psychological narratives. (shrink)

In this article I am concerned with whether it could be morally significant to distinguish between doing something 'in order to bring about an effect' as opposed to 'doing something because we will bring about an effect'. For example, the Doctrine of Double Effect tells us that we should not act in order to bring about evil, but even if this is true is it perhaps permissible to act only because an evil will thus occur? I discuss these (...) questions in connection with a version of the so-called Trolley Problem known as the Loop Case. I also consider how these questions may bear on whether a rational agent must aim at an event which he believes is causally necessary to achieve an end he pursues. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Crystal Order That Is Most Concrete:The Wittgenstein HouseHui Zou (bio)IntroductionIn the instruction of architectural history, some historical references have to be mentioned in terms of the relationship between building and language. In Chapter I, Book II, of The Ten Books on Architecture, the ancient Roman theorist Vitruvius discussed the "origin of the dwelling house." According to him, the "primitive hut" originated from the gathering of men around (...) a fire through communicating in language.1 In the primitive hut, the origin of architecture was co-presented with the origin of language; the language helped establish a harmonic relationship, which developed builders' construction collectivity. Such a language-collectivity relationship was witnessed in the record of the Tower of Babel in the biblical scripture where the Lord decided to stop the human beings' construction of the tower by "confus[ing] their language there."2 During the Renaissance, the alphabetic language and the design of buildings were correlated through the application of geometry that was supposed to embody the "divine proportion." In the Franciscan professor Luca Pacioli's book On Divine Proportion, letters of the alphabet were geometricized to become objects of contemplation for tracing "God's light."3 In Chinese gardens, there has been a long tradition of naming a specific view with a poetical phrase that thematicized the scene into a meaningful unity of the view and the viewer—jing.4 In all these historical cases, language and building were integrated into a cosmological picture grounded in divine transcendence.After the modernism in architectural history of the 1960s and 1970s, a loss of meaning in architecture was widely observed,5 and the interrelationship between language and architectural design began to emerge as a prominent issue. Several trends in architectural theories during the 1960s and 1970s studied how meaning was created through architectural design. One was the post-modern development in architecture that sought to apply classic architectural elements to the facades of new buildings as gestures to [End Page 22] the past.6 Another trend was phenomenological, which attempted to discover a common language of building contexts that led to building humanized living environments.7 Yet another trend was to apply linguistic approaches to the rational methodology of architectural analysis.8 The analogy of building with language was provoked by an impelling sense of the crisis that the traditional embodied order was being lost in the prevalent instrumentalized practice of architecture.The predicament of the loss of meaning in contemporary architecture can be traced as far back in philosophy as the splitting of mind and body proposed by René Descartes in the seventeenth century. This split began to distance architecture from its traditional embodiment of transcendental meanings in the second half of the eighteenth century9 and finally led to the division of the metaphysical and physical parts in modern architecture, especially after the industrialization of the nineteenth century. Correspondingly, language became an instrumental means for architecture to impose posterior "ideas" to the material bodies of buildings rather than acting as an inherent component of architectural design for the creation of meaning in architecture. The desire for meanings in modern architecture, based on the split of the metaphysical and physical, theoretically catered to linguistic research, such as semiotics, and tended to define architecture as a symbol. The linguistic structure of signifier-signified was, however, coarsely transplanted into architectural theory and reduced architectural symbolism to a simple dualism of idea and form in which the former was usually arbitrarily applied to the latter by a designer. Such an arbitrary imposition of external "meanings" onto an architectural form through language intensified their separation, which in turn produced nihilism in architecture.The lessons learned from the transplantation of linguistic studies into architectural theories remind us that we need to pay close attention to the historical events that could open up the interaction between language and building and reveal the "fundamental linguistic character of our experience of the world" in Gadamer's sense.10 A house designed and built by Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) provides a unique case for us to contemplate this issue. My historical study of the Wittgenstein House is not to understand Wittgenstein's subjective intentions... (shrink)

The recent trend toward privately owned and operated prisons calls attention to a variety of issues involving human rights. The growing number of corporatized correctional institutions is especially notable in the United States, but it is also a global phenomenon in many countries. The reasons cited for privatizing prisons are usually economic; the opportunity to outsource prison services enables local political leaders to save tax revenue, and local communities are promised a chance to create new jobs and bring in a (...) new industry. This article will address the history of prisons and the recent trend toward privatizing prisons and the perception of prisons as a for-profit enterprise. This new economic order brings with it a set of human rights concerns, including the relationship of for-profit prisons to increased numbers of incarcerated persons and increased sentences, racism and classism. The contractual relationship between political leaders and prison corporations will be addressed, noting that conditions of liability frequently mean that prison administrations lack motivation to safeguard the human rights of prisoners. The human rights issues often extend outside of the private prison itself, having a negative effect on the local community. (shrink)

Many major historical figures in philosophy have provided an answer to the question of what, if anything, makes life meaningful, although they typically have not put it in these terms. Consider, for instance, Aristotle on the human function, Aquinas on the beatific vision, and Kant on the highest good. While these concepts have some bearing on happiness and morality, they are straightforwardly construed as accounts of which final ends a person ought to realize in order to have a significant (...) existence. Despite the venerable pedigree, it is only in the last 50 years or so that something approaching a distinct field on the meaning of life has been established in analytic philosophy, and it is only in the last 25 years that debate with real depth has appeared. Concomitant with the demise of positivism and of utilitarianism in the post-war era has been the rise of analytical enquiry into non-hedonistic conceptions of value grounded on relatively uncontroversial (but not universally shared) judgments or “intuitions,” including conceptions of meaning in life. Englishspeaking philosophers can be expected to continue to find life's meaning of interest as they increasingly realize that it is a distinct line of enquiry that admits of rational enquiry to no less a degree than more familiar normative categories such as well-being, right action, and distributive justice. (shrink)

If you developed Alzheimer disease, would you want to go all the way to the end of what might be a decade‐long course? Some would; some wouldn't. Options open to those who choose to die sooner are often inadequate. Do‐not‐resuscitate orders and advance directives depend on others' cooperation. Preemptive suicide may mean giving up years of life one would count as good. Do‐it‐yourself methods can fail. What we now ask of family and clinicians caring for persons with dementia, and of (...) patients given no better option than to go on with lives they may not want, is unacceptable. To explore how one might better control one's own dying and avoid burdening others with overwhelming care and morally painful choices, we propose a thought experiment: an advance directive implant that would enable persons with early dementia, while competent, to arrange their own deaths without the subsequent intervention of anyone else. (shrink)

The essay explores the philosophical concept of disaster within the Kantian ethical and religious thought. Kant’s notion of a «perverse end of all things» can in fact be seen as a focal point in the entire ethical and moral philosopher reflection, through the link placed in several of his writings between «morality» and «terror». The philosophical meaning of this relationship emerges in all its importance in the analysis of the feeling of the sublime, here analyzed in some Kant’s works, from (...) the pre-critical Observations on the Feeling of Beautiful and Sublime, to his Critique of Judgment, Critique of Practical Reason and The End of All Things, in order to show how this reflection is undergoing a marked revaluation both in the contemporary philosophical debate and in performing arts. (shrink)

The conceptual changes of Jian儉 in the pre-Qin period were the results of changes in the social and political structure. It originally referred to Jian virtue, which was a kind of political norm of clan states. This required the aristocrats to be moderate in accordance with the patriarchal hierarchy and generously share their wealth with their own clansmen. The opposite of Jian virtue is Tan and Chi. In the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period, many states formed their politics (...) based on ministerial families. The aristocrats glorified greed and extravagance as Fu, and stigmatized Jian virtue as Pin. After the collapse of the clan-based state order, the states in the Warring States Period gradually developed into territorial states, and the institutional political norm became a new, abstract concept, indicated by the compound Jian Yue and was used to describe the consumption attitudes of individuals and families. Meanwhile, with the increase of social mobility, the pursuit of riches was highly popular in the ideological world. The new expression of “means-ends” advocated by Legalists, which stipulated that individuals and families acquire wealth through Jian Yue, took shape and endures to this day. (shrink)

This second volume of Voegelin's magisterial _Order and History, The World of the Polis,_ explores the ancient Greek symbolization of human reality. Taking us from the origins of Greek culture in the Pre-Homeric Cretan civilizations, through the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey,_ Hesiod, and the rise of philosophy with the Pre-Socratics Parmenides and Heraclitus, this masterful work concludes with the historians of the classical period. In _The World of the Polis,_ Voegelin traces the emergence of the forms of the city-state and of (...) philosophy from the ancient symbolism of myth. He maintains that the limits and ultimate goals of human nature are constant and that the central problem of every society is the same—"to create an order that will endow the fact of its existence with meaning in terms of ends divine and human." Thus, Voegelin shows how "the meaning of existence" achieved concrete expression in the typical political, social, and religious institutions of Greece and in the productions of its poets and thinkers. He deals with more than fifty Greek writers in the course of his analysis of the rise of myth and its representation of the divine order of the cosmos as the first great symbolic form of order, one later supplanted by the leap in being reflected in the emergence of philosophy. The book is a tour de force, a virtuoso performance by a scholar and philosopher of great power, learning, and imagination that places its subject matter in a new light. The editor's critical introduction places _The World of the Polis_ in the broader context of Voegelin's philosophy of history. Scholars and students of political science, philosophy, and the history of ideas will find this work invaluable. (shrink)

At least phenomenologically the way communicative acts reveal intentions is different from the way non-communicative acts do this: the former have an "addressed" character which the latter do not. The paper argues that this difference is a real one, reflecting the irreducibly "conventional" character of human communication. It attempts to show this through a critical analysis of the Gricean programme and its methodologically individualist attempt to explain the "conventional" as derivative from the "non-conventional". It is shown how in order (...) to eliminate certain counterexamples the Gricean analysis of utterer's meaning must be made self-referential. It is then shown how this in turn admits an "ontological difference" which undercuts all methodological individualism: meaning something by an utterance must then have a certain intrinsic, irreducible "conventionality" and "intersubjectivity". Objections to this claim are raised and dealt with. It is suggested that any problem of origin might be resolvable by rejecting the semantic reductionism of Grice's programme. An internal relation between self-consciousness, intersubjectivity and language is suggested. The paper ends by speculating that the self-conscious subject is intrinsically embodied and related to other subjects in that for it its body is essentially a medium of signs with which to express its "inner states" to others. (shrink)

The idea that ‘Western’ politics had witnessed a post-Second World War ‘end of ideology’ carried great weight among mid-twentieth-century liberal European and US intellectuals. Almost as soon as this idea was broadcast, however, it became the object of intense debate: what represented to some a welcome reprieve from ‘extreme’ and destructive political doctrines, and the conflict between them, struck others as an order of complacency that stifled vigorous political debate and meaningful visions of a better future. It remains exceedingly (...) difficult to locate a clear meaning to the phrase, ‘the end of ideology’. Nonetheless, the most prevalent definition aligned it with a very moderate social-democratic perspective that was anti-Communist and allied with anti-Soviet Cold War policies, dedicated to the promise of the postwar ‘welfare state’, and tinged with a culturally conservative disposition that was suspicious of disruptive protest movements and avant-garde culture. (shrink)

The word “grammatology” literally signifies the “science of writing.” One must acknowledge, however, that this science has never existed. Derrida's book Of Grammatology proposes to elaborate and to implement just such a project. Why has this grammatological project never been accomplished? For Derrida, “writing”1 can no longer simply designate a technique for the notation of speech. A distinction should be made, then, between “narrow” and “enlarged” meanings of writing. Indeed, is the extension of the concept of writing the work of (...) writing itself or must one suppose that the “modifiability” of the concept is not of the order of writing? This essay will propose that an original modifiability, not reducible to the single operation of writing, is initiated from the beginning as well. I call this modifiability “plasticity.” “Plasticity of writing” would then be the paradox inherent in the redefinition of writing itself that may explain the “failure” of any “grammatology.”. (shrink)

Patients with a life-threatening illness can be confronted with various types of loneliness, one of which is existential loneliness (EL). Since the experience of EL is extremely disruptive, the issue of EL is relevant for the practice of end-of-life care. Still, the literature on EL has generated little discussion and empirical substantiation and has never been systematically reviewed. In order to systematically review the literature, we (1) identified the existential loneliness literature; (2) established an organising framework for the review; (...) (3) conducted a conceptual analysis of existential loneliness; and (4) discussed its relevance for end-of-life care. We found that the EL concept is profoundly unclear. Distinguishing between three dimensions of EL—as a condition, as an experience, and as a process of inner growth—leads to some conceptual clarification. Analysis of these dimensions on the basis of their respective key notions—everpresent, feeling, defence; death, awareness, difficult communication; and inner growth, giving meaning, authenticity—further clarifies the concept. Although none of the key notions are unambiguous, they may function as a starting point for the development of care strategies on EL at the end of life. (shrink)

The authors focus on the European Union both as a regional organization with distinctive norms and practices, and as a grouping of states that reflect specific individual traditions and views. The chapter describes two core paradigms: the national and the post‐national. The national paradigm is recognizably realist and state‐centric in approach. It suggests that the focus of external behaviour should be the promotion of order via traditional power‐political means and for traditional state‐based normative ends. The post‐national paradigm, however, (...) reflects a more cosmopolitan understanding of global society in which Europe's institutional and substantive understanding of justice questions can be reflected in its policies beyond EU borders. These propositions are tested in three issue areas. The authors conclude that while the EU may have the capacity to shape an order/justice agenda beyond its borders, its members have not yet agreed what that agenda should be. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.1 (2001) 139-141 [Access article in PDF] Helen S. Lang. The Order of Nature in Aristotle's Physics: Place and the Elements. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xii + 324. £40. This is an unsuccessful book. Some of the reasons for its failure are complex, others are more simple. I cannot address all, but shall simply discuss the fundamental claims about four (...) large topical units—about nature, place, void and elemental motion—indicating why they are untenable.Discussing the celebrated definition of nature in Physics II.1, Lang contends that in it the verb kineisthai should be taken in the passive voice, that nature should be understood as a principle or cause of being moved and of being at rest, and not just blandly as a principle of motion and rest. Since Aristotle asserts in Book VIII of the Physics that the elements contain a passive principle of motion (255b30f), Lang's contention would mean that the elements in this respect do not differ from other natural entities. This is highly unlikely, given the systematic contrast of self-moving composite natural entities and simple, unarticulated elemental natures at 255a5-18. Lang goes so far as to assert [End Page 139] that "kineisthai is always passive, not middle (or reflexive), in both Plato and Aristotle" (42). Fortunately, we need not accept this on her word: although kineisthai can be both passive and middle, in some instances (notably in aorist and future), passive and middle forms are different. Accordingly, Lang's claim must be rejected on the basis of the very first passage she helpfully quotes as an "additional example" in n.24 on p.42: Physics VII.1 242a37f employs the middle voice future, kinesétai, and not the passive form, kinethésetai. The passage, teeming with different forms of the verb kineisthai, describes an entity which contains the principle of motion in itself, which moves naturally. This indisputably shows that Lang's contention is wrong.Lang, contrary to the well-entrenched scholarly consensus, claims that place is not the first (=innermost) extremity or first unmoved boundary of the containing body, but the extremity of the first body, i.e., of the celestial sphere. (The transposition of the qualification "first" happens in several, non-conclusive installments, see e.g. 99f, or 106f.) This transposition, however, runs counter to several of Aristotle's stipulations about place. Lang's all-encompassing extremity can only be the common (koinos) place of everything there is, whereas Aristotle is keen on finding the proper or particular (idios) place, a location which contains nothing but the entity itself (209a32-b1). The entirety of the discussion in Physics IV.4-5 attests that it is this latter place which Aristotle defines here: the first place is neither smaller, nor bigger than the thing in place (211a1f, a23-29, a31-33, etc.). Aristotle repeatedly stresses that the extremities of the contained body and its container are "in the same" (211a33f, b11f). This remark surely would be out of place about the remote extremity of the first containing body. It is also repeatedly set out that the direction of explanation is bottom-up, and not top-down, as Lang's all-encompassing universal place would require: it is by being in a particular locus that we can be said to be in (the sphere of) air, and by this in the heaven (209a33-b1, 211a23-26).Lang's proposal is not just theoretically unappealing. The traditional should not be rejected recklessly, without an attentive discussion. After all, it "apparently beg[a]n immediately with Theophrastus," as Lang rather uncannily admits (105), and it was Theophrastus, and not Lang, who studied and worked for decades with Aristotle.A key assertion of the chapter on void also rests on a grave philological blunder. Lang argues that interpreters switched from Aristotle's expression "that through which" (to di' hou) to "medium," thereby surrendering the original net of notions, in which the natural activity of the element impeded the progression of the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE MEANING OF VIRTUE IN THE CHRISTIAN MORAL LIFE: ITS SIGNIFICANCE FOR HUMAN LIFE ISSUES RoMANUS CESSARIO, O.P. Dominican House of Stuaies Washington, D.a. RCENTLY, AN International Congress of moral theology convened in Rome brought together some three hundred academicians. They participated in an open forum devoted to current questions in moral theology and bioethics. Held at the Lateran University, the Congress, "Humanae vita,e: 20 Anni Dopo," was divided (...) into two parts. Although a majority of the presentations concerned the relevance of the Church's teaching on artificial contraception, the membership did devote the second part of the Congress to a sustained discussion of some new issues raised by Donum vitae (1987), the recent instruction of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on " Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation." To be sure, both documents emphasize the Church's constant teaching concerning the providence of God in human life and the dignity of the human person. Nevertheless, procedures such as GIFT (gamete intra.-fallopian transfer), LTOT (low tubal ovum transfer ), TOT (tubal ovum transfer) provide the moral theologian with new challenges to interpret the Church's position which insists on identifying the procrea.tive and unitive aspects of Christian marriage. The following article discusses the papal documents from the perspective of a realist moral theology. First of all, I would like to recall a principle which Paul VI, however obliquely, enunciated in the course of Humanae Vitae, for I consider the principle an axiomatic one in the present discussion. At the beginning of section 8 entitled "Pastoral 178 174 ROMANUS CESSARIO, O.P. Directives," we find a statement of theological purpose which should guide all Catholic moral practice. Hence, I would like to quote this text as a way of introducing the meaning of virtue in the Christian moral life. The Church, in fact, cannot have a different conduct toward men [and women] than that of the Redeemer: she knows their weaknesses, has compassion on the crowd, receives sinners; but she cannot renounce the teaching of the law which is, in reality, that law proper to a human Zife restored to its original truth and conducted by the Spirit of God.1 I am especially struck by the phrase " that law proper to a human life restored to its original truth," for I believe it actually describes the kind of life which develops in those who practice the virtues. Yet, before speaking about the implications of a virtue-centered morality for the difficult issues of bioethics, I would like to remark briefly on the way certain contemporary theologians misinterpret what Paul VI calls the " law proper to a human life restored to its original truth." In order to do so I have divided this paper into three parts. Thus, the first section of the paper examines several themes in contemporary moral methodology. The second section provides a general statement about the relationship between moral theology and the sa,cra domrina. Finally, the third section briefly considers why the life of virtue remains the only legitimate means for fulfilling the " law proper to a human life restored to its original truth." First, then, to contemporary themes. I Proportionate Reason and the Ethics of Personal Responsibility In an earlier draft of this paper, I titled this section "St. Ignatius, St. Alphonsus, and St. Elsewhere." I had considered actually outlining the moral methodologies of two Roman theo1 Paul VI, Humanae vitae, n. 20. VIRTUE THEORY AND HUMAN LIFE ISSUES 175 logians, the German Jesuit Josef Fuchs 2 and the Redemptorist Bernard Haring.3 These authors have influenced most leading revisionist moral theologians in America, especially Charles Curran.4 One could argue, therefore, that they figure among the principals in the current debate over bioethical norms. Upon reflection, however, it seemed rpreferable simply to signal two or three basic themes which appear in most revisionist moral theology, especially as it has been developed in the United States. In brief, these themes focus principally on (1) the freedom of the individual, and (2) the consequences or end results of an action. Revisionist moral theologians receive their name from the fact that their announced purpose... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Meanings and Function of Anti-System Ideology in the Weimar RepublicBen LiebermanThere are few, if any, ideological terms in the extensive historiography of the Weimar Republic so omnipresent and yet at the same time so obscure as the word “system.” Historical accounts of the Weimar Republic are strewn with references to the “system.” In recent works on the Weimar Republic Hagen Schulze points to the opposition of bourgeois (bürgerliche) (...) parties to the “Weimar ‘system,’ “ Detlev Peukert notes “hatred of ‘the system,’ the political and social order of the Republic”; Knut Borchardt observes the loss of faith in the capacity of “the system” to satisfy expectations; and Hans Mommsen refers to the “political system,” the “party system” and the “parliamentary system.” 1Historians, whatever their other differences, agree that mounting opposition to the System weakened the Weimar Republic, but the usefulness of this observation requires analysis of the meaning or meanings of the System. What, then, was the Weimar System? Surprisingly, many accounts of the Weimar Republic do not even attempt to provide a definition of the System, and the term receives only cursory treatment in several specialized works on ideology of the Weimar era. 2 Anti-System politics does receive attention, but Thomas [End Page 355] Childers’s insightful and pioneering essay on “anti-system politics” concentrates on mobilization against the System rather than on the problem of defining it. 3The best existing analysis of the System in Kurt Sontheimer’s valuable study of anti-democratic thought in the Weimar Republic suggests that historians cannot take the meaning of the term as a given. Sontheimer establishes that the System formed part of the array of anti-democratic thought of the Weimar Republic, but he also notes that the term’s meaning cannot easily be pinned down. The System conveyed a variety of political and economic meanings and ultimately formed a “nationalist counter myth.” 4During the Weimar Republic, attacks against the System emanated from a wide range of sources, most notably from a variety of nationalists as well as from Communists. Nationalists of many leanings detested the System. The DNVP (German National People’s Party), the largest political party of the right for most of the Weimar Republic, hated the System. So, too, did conservative revolutionaries and völkisch (ethnic or racist nationalist) groups including nationalist associations and the National Socialists. At the other end of the political spectrum, attacks against the System also surfaced in the pronouncements of the KPD (German Communist Party). 5No single ideological line of attack doomed the Weimar Republic, but use by an extraordinarily broad range of political groups lent tremendous force to anti-System discourse. Adopted by foes who sometimes agreed on little else, the System was the targets of repeated attacks spread across the German political spectrum and called into question Weimar legitimacy. Analyzing this broad pattern of use raises several tasks. As a prelude to investigating anti-System terminology, it is necessary to map out the patterns of use of the System during the Weimar Republic. The very ability of rival groups to adopt anti-System suggests that the System incorporated varied meanings.Beyond investigating the meaning or meanings of the System, an analysis of anti-System terminology should also explore the appeal and influence of anti-System terminology. Why did such a broad range of groups adopt anti-System discourse, and how did acceptance of anti-System terminology help to discredit the Weimar Republic and designate alternatives for Germany’s future? [End Page 356]Describing Weimar’s perceived failings, anti-System terminology simultaneously provided a partial guide to a presumably-better Germany without the System. The System came to envelop many institutions of German public life, but attention should also be paid to spaces left unoccupied by the System. What, if any, institutions or structures of public life were left untainted by the broad wave of attacks against the System? If the hated System could be swept away, what would be left in its place? It is noteworthy that the many enemies of the System generally desired a strong state.Exploring the effects of broad attacks against the System, analysis of the System should also... (shrink)

At least phenomenologically the way communicative acts reveal intentions is different from the way non-communicative acts do this: the former have an “addressed” character which the latter do not. The paper argues that this difference is a real one, reflecting the irreducibly “conventional” character of human communication. It attempts to show this through a critical analysis of the Gricean programme and its methodologically individualist attempt to explain the “conventional” as derivative from the “non-conventional”. It is shown how in order (...) to eliminate certain counterexamples the Gricean analysis of utterer’s meaning must be made self-referential. It is then shown how this in turn admits an “ontological difference” which undercuts all methodological individualism: meaning something by an utterance must then have a certain intrinsic, irreducible “conventionality” and “intersubjectivity”. Objections to this claim are raised and dealt with. It is suggested that any problem of origin might be resolvable by rejecting the semantic reductionism of Grice’s programme. An internal relation between self-consciousness, intersubjectivity and language is suggested. The paper ends by speculating that the self-conscious subject is intrinsically embodied and related to other subjects in that for it its body is essentially a medium of signs with which to express its “inner states” to others. (shrink)

According tothe rationality thesis, the possession of propositional attitudes is inextricably tied to rationality. How in this context should we conceive of rationality? In one sense, being rational is contrasted with being non-rational, as when human beings are described as rational animals. In another sense, being rational is contrasted with being irrational. I shall call rationality in this latter senseevaluative rationality. Whatever else it might involve, evaluative rationality surely has to do with satisfying requirements of rationality such as, presumably, the (...) following:(1) That one avoid inconsistency in beliefs.(2) That one not adopt new beliefs unless what one knows entails or is evidence for the truth of those beliefs.(3) That one not have φing as a goal yet do nothing necessary for one to φ. (Means/end requirement.). (shrink)

Herein I offer a model for understanding the traditional distinction between essentially and accidentally ordered causal series and their function in traditional proofs for the existence of God. I argue that, like the traditional proofs, my model of the causal series in question permits an infinite regress of the accidentally ordered series but not of the essentially ordered series. Furthermore, I argue that on the basis of this model one can avoid Edwards’s criticism that no matter how we conceive of (...) the causal series (as accidental or essential) we still have to deal with the suggestion that arriving at a first cause does not mean that we have an uncaused first cause. Finally, I end with a short speculation on what a successful proof for an uncaused first cause might lead to. (shrink)

While sport is often pursued more for reasons of meaning than morality, philosophers have had far less to say about the former. How are the ends of sport related to meaning and morality? I address the question through the case study of boxing. One reason for this approach is that the moral status of boxing is contested, which makes it an interesting candidate for immoral, meaningful activity. Drawing on Wolf’s hybrid account of meaning in life, I argue that boxing can (...) be a meaningful pursuit insofar as it fosters positive self-transformation and interpersonal connection. I then consider a structural obstacle facing the pursuit of meaning in competitive sport and look at the instructive case study of Tyson Fury. I make use of Setiya’s distinction between telic and atelic ends in order to diagnose the problem. Finally, I address the likely objection that the goals of boxing are either absurd or immoral and, therefore, unsuited to the pursuit of a meaningful life. (shrink)

The paper is an analytic retrospective of the author?s work during the preceding research period, involving the study of role, meaning and place of stereotypes in identity discourses. In order to explain the reasons for and ways of dealing with stereotypes, she reviews the evolution of her own research approach and the alternative approaches to the topic from the perspective of various scholarly disciplines. Seeking to avoid the trap of?interpreting stereotypes stereotypically?, the author chooses not to follow the usual (...) method whereby ethnic stereotypes are?deconstructed? as false and generalizing image of oneself and others, and exposed to social-psychological and political-anthropological critique. Instead, the author looks at stereotypes primarily in terms of their linguistic and social?semiotics? and their theoretical and practical usability. Stressing the necessity of relativizing the binary structure of discourse, the author argues that stereotypes, though indispensable as elements of the?economy? of language and thought, should be socially conceptualized and historicized in analysis. U ovom tekstu autorka daje pregled svog rada tokom proteklog projektnog perioda u kome je istrazivala ulogu, znacenje i mesto stereotipa u identitetskim diskursima. Da bi objasnila razloge i nacine svog bavljenja stereotipima, ona se osvrce kako na evoluciju sopstvenog istrazivackog postupka, tako i na alternativne pristupe temi iz perspektiva razlicitih naucnih disciplina. U nastojanju da izbegne zamku?stereotipnog tumacenja stereotipa?, autorka ne sledi uobicajeni postupak?dekonstrukcije? etnickih stereotipa, kao lane i uopstavajuce predstave o sebi i?drugom?, te njihove socijalno-psiholoske i politicko-antropoloske kritike, vec se prevashodno bavi dimenzijama jezicke i socijalne?semiotike? stereotipa i njihovom teorijskom i prakticnom upotrebljivoscu. Polazeci od neophodnosti stereotipa u?misaonoj ekonomiji?, autorka se u svom postupku zalaze za relativizaciju binarne strukture diskursa, kao i za socijalnu kontekstualizaciju i istorizaciju stereotipa u teorijskoj analizi. (shrink)

This edited volume takes a close look at Nicos Poulantzas’s thought as a means of understanding the dynamics of the capitalist, neoliberal state in the 21st century. Nicos Poulantzas has left us with one of the most sophisticated theories of the state in the second half of the 20th century. Poulantzas’s influential theory draws inspiration from Marx, Lenin, Weber, and Foucault, among other thinkers, conceiving of the relationship between capitalism and the state as particularly original. This book aims to (...) use Poulantzas’s theory of the capitalist state in order to understand important political and economic trends that have taken place since Poulantzas’s death in 1979. By entering into a dialogue with current Marxist and critical research in diverse fields such as political science, philosophy, sociology, history, and geography, this volume purports to evaluate the actuality of Poulantzas’s thought. (shrink)

Constitutional dialogue has become an influential concept to understand the relationship between courts and other the institutional branches of the state, with the primary focus being on legislatures. More recently, the place of dialogue within the constitutional literature has been challenged as vague; providing a potential to over-reach or overstate the judicial role and distorting the reality of practices which in fact shape the relationship between courts and other institutions. Critics have placed into focus the question: should constitutional scholarship abandon (...) ‘constitutional dialogue’ as a way of understanding the relationship between courts and other institutions within the constitutional order? This article seeks to respond to this question by arguing that constitutional dialogue remains an important aspect of understanding the development of constitutional understanding about inter-institutional roles but does so by acknowledging the criticisms levelled against constitutional dialogue. Developing this approach, the argument made in this article seeks to recast the theoretical foundations of dialogue in constitutional theory by shifting the understanding of dialogue away from its normative and descriptive tethers. In its place, constitutional dialogue should be considered in the context of a philosophical understanding of language and the role that it plays to create constitutional meanings and experiences. Dialogue has a deeper and more significant register than a metaphor conveying a ‘conversation’, ‘communication’ or a ‘deliberative rationality’ between the institutions of the constitutional order—dialogue must be understood through the perspective of language as disclosing a world of common meaning and experience. (shrink)

Patients with a life-threatening illness can be confronted with various types of loneliness, one of which is existential loneliness (EL). Since the experience of EL is extremely disruptive, the issue of EL is relevant for the practice of end-of-life care. Still, the literature on EL has generated little discussion and empirical substantiation and has never been systematically reviewed. In order to systematically review the literature, we (1) identified the existential loneliness literature; (2) established an organising framework for the review; (...) (3) conducted a conceptual analysis of existential loneliness; and (4) discussed its relevance for end-of-life care. We found that the EL concept is profoundly unclear. Distinguishing between three dimensions of EL—as a condition, as an experience, and as a process of inner growth—leads to some conceptual clarification. Analysis of these dimensions on the basis of their respective key notions—everpresent, feeling, defence; death, awareness, difficult communication; and inner growth, giving meaning, authenticity—further clarifies the concept. Although none of the key notions are unambiguous, they may function as a starting point for the development of care strategies on EL at the end of life. (shrink)

Translated by Drew S. Burk and Anthony Paul Smith. Excerpted from Struggle and Utopia at the End Times of Philosophy , (Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing, 2012). THE END TIMES OF PHILOSOPHY The phrase “end times of philosophy” is not a new version of the “end of philosophy” or the “end of history,” themes which have become quite vulgar and nourish all hopes of revenge and powerlessness. Moreover, philosophy itself does not stop proclaiming its own death, admitting itself to be half dead (...) and doing nothing but providing ammunition for its adversaries. With our sights set on clearing up this nuance, we differentiate philosophy as an institutional entity, and the philosophizability of the World and History, of “thought-world,” which universalizes the narrow concept of philosophy and that of “capital.” We also give an eschatological and apocalyptical cause to this end, of “times” or “ages” rather than those of philosophical practice. Last but not least, it is the Future itself in the performativity of its ultimatum that determines this end times, reversing these times from the Identity the Future accorded to it, withdrawing the thought-world from the lie of its death. Why this style of axioms and oracles, these more or less subtle distinctions, old and debased, with an appeal to the ultimata , to end times and last words? We fight to give, parallel to the concept of Hell, its new theoretical position, for its philosophical return and its non-philosophical transformation. No more so than any other word, Hell is not a metaphor here, just the Principle of Sufficient World. Every man, no doubt, has his “hell” readily available, connivance, control, conformism, domestication, schooling, alienation, extermination, exploitation, oppression, anxiety, etc. We have our little list that the Contemporaries established in the previous century in the same way one used to construct lists of virtues and vices or honors and wealth. They invented it for us without knowing it, for us-the-Futures who have as our responsibility to invent its use. In the Christian and Gnostic tradition, the struggle of the End Times takes place “on earth.” The most sophisticated of believers have it taking place in Heaven as well, above all in Heaven. The various kinds of gnosis imagine infinite falls and vertiginous highs, the vertigo of salvation. On Earth as in Heaven, a hell is available. The Marxists have the law of profit and the control of production, the class struggle Capital imposes on man. The Nietzscheans, the dull grumble of the struggle in the foundations of World and History, the domestication of man, the society of control. The phenomenologists, the capture of being, the most superficial amongst them, the age of suspicion. But all of these “hells” are taken from World, History, Society, and Religion. What we call Hell is no longer of the order of these specific and total intra-worldly generalities, it is both more singular and more universal, no longer being at all of the same order, it is the determinant Identity of these small hells strung out through history but unified here in the name of the last Humaneity. It is even found within the French idiom for hell [ enfer ], en-fer literally means “in-irons.” We are as much “in-irons” as we are “alive” [ en-Vie ]. We believe in Hell but as non-philosophers and it is even because we are non-philosophers that we can believe in it outside of any sort of religion. Hell is less mythological than ideological, it combines philosophizability with universal capital. Under what form? A single term could work for them without being a metaphor or something they would participate in by analogy, a more innovative and conjectural term than control, more universal than profit. It would denote the growing and permanent extortion of a surplus-value of communication, of speed and of urgency in change, in productivity and in work, in the pressure of images and slogans. It would be worse than solicitation, more tenacious than capture, more active and persecutory than control, softer and more insidious than a frontal attack, just as perverse as questioning and accusation, less brutal and offensive than extermination, less ritualized than inquisition, it would be soft and dispersed, instantaneous and vicious, it would be a crime without declared violence. Collusion and conformism, it would be afraid to show itself. Related to rumor, from which it borrows its infinite and tortuous ways. It is harassment. As a modernized form of Hell, perhaps harassment has a long future in front of it, of innocent torture, slow assassination, in short the fall, but radical with no way of recovering and which tolerates only salvation. THE PHILOSOPHICAL PAST OF NON-PHILOSOPHY Non-philosophy is thus Man as the utopian identity of the philosophical form of the World, a utopia destined to transform it. We still have to understand these equations, in particular that of the being-uni-versed from Man, and this book adheres to this by re-exposing non-philosophy in a different way via one of its new possibilities. It uses this opportunity to once again take up formulations that lead to objections answering certain external critics, as well as revisiting diverging interpretations specific to non-philosophers. A portion of this book is devoted to going through these theories via a strict or “lengthy” presentation of non-philosophy, and its defense against more expeditious solutions. This work of rectification is the occasion, merely the occasion, for refocusing non-philosophy on Man (the “Man-in-person,” “Humaneity”), and in a more innovative manner, on its utopian vocation established since the book Future Christ . As for this “occasion,” it is quite obvious. A school of posture, not to say a school of thought, supposes a minimum of closure from the most liberating of knowledge, a heritage, its utilization, and its no less certain dispersal. Within its development, a variety of interpretations will no doubt appear, deviations that are as much normalizations, and a struggle against this multiplication of divergent tendencies. These are perhaps not inevitable evils, especially here, merely a normal development according to the twisting paths of history. But the problem is made worse by the fact that this school of non-philosophers is that of utopia. Not the former attempts devoted to commenting on the worst authoritarian and criminal forms of the past and the present, but utopia as the determinant principle for human life, or to put it another way, of the Future as an irreducible presupposition of (for) thinking the World and History. Non-philosophers are engaged in an aleatory navigation between the respect for the most rigorous utopia, whose rules are not that of the reproductive imagination but those from the Future determining imagination itself, as well as the temptations, diversions, and remorse of history. Little by little, we will begin to understand that the Future as we understand it no longer has any temporal consistency or positive content, without being an empty form or a nothingness, but that it is foreclosed to past and present History, just as it is foreclosed to the place of places, the World, and that it is the only method for establishing the practice of thinking in a non-imaginary instance. Because it is the World and History that are imaginary and have a terrible materiality, it is not necessarily utopia. We will overlap two objectives here: the defense of non-philosophy against the (non-) philosophers that we are, only occasionally, and the introduction of philosophy to a rigorous future. Together they set out to definitively render, without any possible return to philosophical conformism or towards the facilities of the past and present, the non-philosophical enterprise understood as utopia or uchronia. Imagination and speculation, left to themselves and thus undistinguished, are quite good for participating in the grand game of History but have little value or worse for the Future which is unimaginable and unintelligible and must be maintained as such. MAN-IN-PERSON AS SUSPENSION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL CHORA The point where philosophical resistance is concentrated is without a doubt the invention of the Name-of-Man, first name, oracular as much as axiomatic, of the determining cause for the non-philosophical posture. And that which concentrates the differends is the style of non-philosophy as identity that possesses the dual aspect, of discipline and of the oeuvre, of the theorem and of the oracle. But the real difficulty in understanding the simplicity of non-philosophy is profoundly hidden in the depths of philosophy itself. Because philosophy, from Parmenides to Derrida, even Levinas, continues to be a divided gesture, without a veritable immanence, transforming its thematic contents of transcendence in also forgetting to transform the operative transcendence in the element from which the ontology of surface is established which we will call, in memory of Plato, the chorismos. The general effect of the chora literally gives place to philosophy, demanding binding and sutures to which we will once and for all “oppose” the Man-in-person, his power of cloning, and his future being. All philosophy contains a hinter-philosophy in which it deploys its operations and weaves its tradition like an understudy of a topographical nature and in the best of cases being itself topological. Philosophy as well consists of two levels, its pre-ontological operative conditions on the one hand, and its superficial theme on the other, it too has its presupposed, but is not aware of it or erases it within the unity of appearance named Logos. Rightly, the Logos, and its flash or lightning nature, possesses a “dark precursor,” the chora, which is as much a virtual image, and philosophy, dazzled by its own lightning flash, seems to completely forget about it at the same time it sets itself up within it. Non-philosophy risks taking this same path, of confusing what it believes to be the real with its phantom double, contenting itself to working on the thematic level of philosophy, not its surface objects and its idle chatter (we stopped talking about this a long time ago and in any case they are merely simple materials for inducing a work of transformation), but the transcendence-form of its objects. In the end it risks, through precipitation, taking back up the heritage of philosophy, a heritage of a misunderstood presupposed, even more profound than the play of transcendences. This is what the imperative of the radicality of immanence meant, to treat immanence in an immanent manner, not to make a new object out of it. And from here we get non- (philosophy) and its refusal of the Platonic chorismos , symbol of all abstraction, and thus all transcendental appearance. There are no illusions. The message will leave a heritage in tattered pieces and interpretations. But it was difficult not to dispute the differend to its core. There will be complete confusion of the multiple, possible, and necessary effectuations of non-philosophy with its interpretations. The non-philosophical or human freedom of philosophical effectuation and the philosophical freedom of interpretation. Effectuations demand non-philosophy to return to zero from the point of view of its philosophical material and thus also but within these limits the formulation of its axioms , but in no way providing from the outset divergent interpretations of the aforementioned axioms. They are divergent because they do not take into account the material from which these axioms are derived within non-philosophy, and because they do not see themselves as symptoms of another vision of the World. The utterances of non-philosophy are not mathematical theorems and pure axioms, they merely have a mathematical aspect . They are, by their extraction or origin, mathematical and transcendental. And by their determined function in-Real, within non-philosophy, they are identically in-the-last-Humaneity entities which have an aspect of an axiom and an aspect of interpretation (or an oracular aspect as we say) that attempts (sometimes it is ourselves who provide the occasion) to isolate and transform, in complete freedom of interpretation. There will be an opportunity to complain about the complex character of the language of non-philosophy, an idiom saturated with classical references, sophisticated in a contemporary way. Its freedom of decision up against the whole of philosophy demands these effects of “complication” and “privatization,” as the saying goes. But it also demands fighting against the drift [ dérive ] of the pedagogical-all and the mediatic-all that leads philosophy into the shallow depths of opinion, which is the site of its impossible death. The noble idealism of “pop-philosophy” has been consumed into a “philo-reality;” against this we propose philo-fiction. Parricide, which is at the bottom of these interpretations and which we can judge as being quite fertile, although it has informed tradition, only takes place once or within one lone meaning. In regards to Parmenides, it was possible; Plato introduced the Other as non-being and language, bringing into existence the philosophical system of the World, but is it possible to repeat it again with the same fecundity in regards to non-philosophy, this time in introducing (non) religion or (non) art, still mixing them without taking into account this mixture, alternatively as a philosophical or religious resentment? If philosophy begins via a crime, it is no doubt obliged to continue down similar pathways, to the effect that the crimes of philosophy, once the founding crime has been committed, are a reaction of self-defense. It is undoubtedly from this that we get Marx’s declaration that history begins by tragedy and repeats itself or ends in farce. The preservation of rigor and fecundity is, in every respect, a psychologically difficult task within a theory such as non-philosophy. Having posited an essential objective of liberation in regards to philosophy and its services, one has often understood this objective as an authorization of providing particular interpretations of its axioms and ends up obliterating their scope. This ends up confusing, on one hand, two kinds of freedoms in regards to non-philosophy, the freedom of its interpretations and the freedom of its effectuations. On the other hand, any defense of “principles” against precipitated interpretations is immediately taxed with a will to orthodoxy, a prohibitive objection when we are dealing with, as is the case here, a heretical theory of thought. Nevertheless, it is time to stop confusing heresy as the cause of thought with an ideology of heresies, which is certainly not at all our object, but rather a form of normalization. As for the “disciplinary” aspect, which is not the only aspect, it demands something other than philosophical “answers to objections,” a precision in the definition and use of its procedures in the formation of utterances, since non-philosophy is neither a supplementary doctrine interior to philosophy nor a vision of the world but one whose priority is a “vision of Man,” or rather Man as “vision” that implies a theory and a practice of philosophy. In the end, struggle is only one aspect of non-philosophy, not its whole or telos, struggle coming only from its materiality. In particular, if the discipline of non-philosophy is inseparable from struggle, it is not a question of reducing the monomaniacal obsession of its “marching orders.” This would reduce its complexity and kill its indivisibility, deploying it in a “long march” and a form of Maoization whose philosophical presuppositions no longer have any pertinence here, a case of the One and the Two, which are now cloned and no longer tied together. More generally, non-philosophy is a complex thought composed of a multitude of aspects, which is to say, unilateral interpretations, of a philosophical origin but reduced by their determination in-the-last-instance . The “liberalism” of non-philosophy is merely one of the aspects of which it is capable, not an essence. Similarly, it is only capable of having a “Maoist” aspect. Let us generalize. The weakness of non-philosophy is due to a specific cause, the determination-in-the-last-Humaneity of a subject for the World. Everything that has a right to the philosophical city can be said about it in turn and in a retaliatory mode since Man contributes nothing of himself that Man takes from the World. We can consider non-philosophy as being pretentious, absurd, idealistic, empty, materialistic, formalistic, contradictory, modern, post-modern, Zen, Buddhist, Marxist; it endures or tolerates, perhaps “appeals” to, or at least renders possible, sarcasms, ironies, and insults without even talking about the misunderstandings, partly for the same reason as psychoanalysis. All of this goes beyond simple “deviations.” They are its aspects, which is to say, its “unilateral” philosophical interpretations in both senses of the word, being either sufficient coming from the mouth of philosophers, or reduced to their absolute dimension of sufficiency and totality in the mouths of non-philosophers, and both times due to the weakness and strength of Man-in-person as their determination only in-the-last-instance. The non-philosopher is certainly not a Saint Paul fantasizing about a new Church. The non-philosopher is either a (Saint) Sebastian whose flesh is pierced with as many arrows as there are Churches, or a Christ persecuted by a Saint Paul. What is engaged in here is the practice of retaliation. A negative rule of the non-philosophical ethics of outlawed discussion by way of argumentation (the sufficient is you, the orthodox one is always you, you are the fashionable one, and when a master you are someone else) that is founded on the confusion of effectuations of non-philosophy and of its overall interpretations. Retaliation is the law but as with any too-human law, it must acquire a dimension that displaces it, or rather emplaces it and takes away its authority but not all of its effectiveness. If the non-philosopher is only authorized by himself, which is to say by philosophy but limited by the Real-of-the-last-instance, its critique of other non-philosophers can merely be retaliatory under the same conditions, only by the Real limited in-the last-instance. THE TREE OF PHILOSOPHICAL SAINTLINESS The thematic horizon or material of these debates is in the relationships between philosophy, religion as gnosis, and non-philosophy. It is inevitable, regarding non-philosophers in general (whether they are non-philosophers by name or simply its neighbors) that we often end up evoking Marx’s Holy Family and imagining, arranged on the neighboring branches of the tree of philosophy and annexed, sometimes abusively, to non-philosophy, authors who would quite evidently and quite rightly refuse this label. So it is that we find, for example, a Saint Michel, a Saint Alain, a Saint Gilles 1 without even mentioning the youngest who aspire as well to the freedom of “saintliness” and who make their muted voices heard here. If there is a Holy Family of non-philosophers, it extends completely beyond these three, provided that the sectarian spirit can save us. This book is organized in the following manner: To begin, in order to recall the essential part of the problematic, we have organized a Summary of Non-Philosophy , a vade-mecum of notions and basic problems, in a classical style. Secondly, there is Clarifications On the Three Axioms of Non-Philosophy , designed to posit their proper use as much as to elucidate their meaning. Thirdly, an analysis of Philosophizability and Practicity , both being extreme constituents of philosophical material or the contents of the third axiom. Fourthly, the heart of this work: Let us Make a Tabula Rasa of the Future or of Utopia as Method . Fifthly, we have a theoretical outline of a non-institutional utopia, The International Organization of Non-Philosophy, L’Organisation Non-Philosophique Internationale, (ONPHI) already created in practice but under the conditions of possibility and functioning from which here we put into question “de jure,” thus not without a perplexity concerning “facts,” in any case, without the capability of “getting to the bottom of things.” Sixthly, an essay characterizing The Right and the Left of Non-Philosophy , a brief topology of several philosophizing and normalizing positions of proponents or tenants of this problematic. Seventhly, Rebel in the Soul: A Theory of Future Struggle , a systematic discussion starting from a confrontation of non-philosophical gnosis and non-religious gnosis to the extent that they pose, posed or perhaps still will pose themselves as rivals to non-philosophy in a mixture of fidelity and infidelity. Despite the fact that it can also be read as putting non-philosophy into perspective: it pits against a standard Platonism two contemporary appropriations of Gnosticism. On the basis of the paradigm of Man who never ceases to come as the Future-in-person, each one of these moments strives to reestablish not the “true” non-philosophy and its orthodoxy, but the minimal conditions to respect in order to allow for its maximum fecundity. And in order to bring about one of the last possibilities of its development, making explicit Humaneity as a utopia-for-the-World. In introducing these considerations in the form of a “testament” and “ultimatum,” we want to indicate two things: First, that this is the last time we will intervene in order to caution non-philosophers against the temptation of returning and looking backwards towards philosophy. Only a disillusioned nostalgia for the former World and its traditions barely remain permissible to us.… Secondly, that non-philosophy is also a sort of ultimatum for considering one’s life and transforming one’s thought from the perspective of a uni-version rather than a conversion. Man as future is this ultimatum in action, not an impatient self-proclaimed genius, and philosophy is his testament. It is obviously the ultimatum that determines this testament as “old” with a view towards a life that is, itself, non-testamentary. In and of itself, the “old” can never bear a veritable eschaton. Thus, this book intersects according to the logic of this paradigm, under the sign of the ultimate or “last” as future, philosophy as testament and cautionary note for maintaining the non-philosophical oeuvre as “future” or “utopian.” We will see that between these two dimensions it cradles a theory of struggle. In the end, this book envisions non-philosophers in multiple ways. It inevitably sees them as subjects of knowledge, most often academics insofar as life in the world demands, but above all as close relatives of three great human types. The analyst and political militant are quite obvious, for non-philosophy is close to psychoanalysis and Marxism insofar as it transforms the subject in transforming philosophy. Here again, one must have a sense not of certain nuances but of aspects (of the interpretations, albeit unilateralized) and not in order to construct a simple proletarization or militarization of thought as theory. To be rigorous, rather than authoritarian or spiteful, is its task. And lastly, non-philosophy is a close relative of the spiritual but definitely not the spiritualist. Those who are spiritual are not at all spiritualists, for the spiritual oscillate between fury and tranquil rage, they are great destroyers of the forces of Philosophy and the State, which are united under the name of Conformism. They haunt the margins of philosophy, gnosis, mysticism, science fiction and even religions. Spiritual types are not only abstract mystics and quietists; they are heretics for the World. The task is to bring their heresy to the capacity of utopia, and their utopia to the capacity of the paradigm. NOTES We will recognize allusions, and sometimes references, to closely related or distant themes, but which are related, in the work of Michel Henry, Alain Badiou and via the representative of “non-religious” gnosis of a Platonic origin, in Gilles Grelet. It goes without saying that these discussions are current and local, neither concerning the ensemble of doctrines nor prejudging the eventual evolution of certain amongst them. This concerns defining certain proximities with non-philosophy (rather than adversaries which in some sense they are) and typological and emblematic differends (rather than conflicts with a certain author). (shrink)

A key part of Hegel?s practical philosophy is his theory of civil society and the idea of a rational regulation of the market. This is the foundation of Hegel?s theory of a social state. The copyright on the notion of a modern society of freedom and a rational, social state belongs to Hegel. Hegel proves himself to be the thinker who until now has provided the most convincing foundation for freedom in modernity. The theoretical foundation and at the same time (...) bone of contention of Hegel?s political thought is to be found in his concept of ethical life, in particular in his theory of civil society. The current shipwreck of deregulated capitalism does not mean the foundering of our journey towards a free society. Nevertheless the deficiencies and unsustainability of both traditional models - socialist collective ownership and market fundamentalism - exhibit two contradictory claims to a share of the wealth of nations. To take up Hegel?s project is, in essence, to aim at a new conception of an environmentally and socially sustainable and just society, and a corresponding world order. It is to further Hegel?s philosophy of freedom. nema. (shrink)

Why do relationships of friendship and love support partiality, but not relationships of hatred or commitments of racism? Where does partiality end and why? I take the intuitive starting point that important cases of partiality are meaningful. I develop a view whereby meaning is understood in terms of transcending self-limitations in order to connect with things of external value. I then show how this view can be used to distinguish central cases of legitimate partiality from cases of illegitimate partiality (...) and how it puts pressure on the traditional way of thinking about partiality. (shrink)

Context: The thoroughly second-order cybernetic underpinnings of naturalist theatre have gone almost entirely unremarked in the literature of both theatre studies and cybernetics itself. As a result, rich opportunities for the two fields to draw mutual benefit and break new ground through both theoretical and empirical investigations of these underpinnings have, thus far, gone untapped. Problem: The field of cybernetics continues to remain academically marginalized for, among other things, its alleged lack of experimental rigor. At the same time, the (...) field of theatre studies finds itself at an impasse between post-structuralist semioticians and embodied cognitivists regarding key onto-epistemological issues. A program of research framing and utilizing naturalist theatre as a second-order cybernetic/cybersemiotic laboratory holds much promise in addressing both matters and lending credence to Ross Ashby’s assertion that “the discovery that two fields are related leads to each branch helping in the development of the other.” Method: After establishing the nature of the onto-epistemological deadlock within theatre studies, this article examines the application of cybernetic heuristics within naturalistic theatre, leading to a second-order cybernetic analysis of its processes of production and reception and the outline of an experimental program for exploring these processes further. Results: Foundations for a model of naturalist theatre as a cybersemiotic laboratory grounded in a novel operationalization of Gordon Pask’s conversation theory. Implications: The proposed laboratory could result in the generation of quantitative and qualitative research pertaining to several dimensions of second-order cybernetics; particularly cybersemiotics, which, as a result, may end up better positioned to help dissolve onto-epistemological deadlocks between constructivists and realists of all stripes across the academy and beyond. Constructivist content: I argue that an analysis of naturalistic theatre’s processes of meaning-making filtered through the constructivist ontological agnosticism of second-order cybernetics offers a productive middle way forward for those on both sides of the social constructivist/embodied cognitive realist divide, within and beyond theatre studies. The article draws upon the works of Gregory Bateson, Søren Brier, Ranulph Glanville, Heinz von Foerster, and Niklas Luhmann. (shrink)

In 1964, anesthesiologists at Harvard Medical School studied a group of patients about to undergo major abdominal surgery. Half the patients got the standard preoperative visit. The other half received an enhanced visit dealing with postoperative pain. That half were told that pain is normal and expected, that they would receive medications as ordered by their physicians, that they could also use several self-help techniques to relieve pain, and that nurses and physicians would be standing by to assist them if (...) needed. The enhanced-visit group ended up requesting half as many opioid analgesics as the other group, and they were discharged an average of two days earlier, despite successful blinding (Egbert et al.... (shrink)

The idea of basic action is a fixed point in the contemporary investigation of the nature of action. And while there are arguments aimed at putting the idea in place, it is meant to be closer to a gift of common sense than to a hard-won achievement of philosophical reflection. It first appears at the stage of innocuous description and before the announcement of philosophical positions. And yet, as any decent magician knows, the real work so often gets done in (...) the set-up. I argue that the seemingly innocent idea of basic action is, in fact, bound up with a wide-spread conception of the nature of bodily or physical action (section 3). Its legitimacy is vital to the intelligibility of the causal theory of action, according to which physical action consists of a mere event and a condition of mind joined (in the right way) by the bond of causality. Left unchecked, means-end reason threatens to permeate physical action, and thus threatens the sovereignty of the sphere of material events at the center of the causal theory: such events, including the movements of one’s body when one intentionally moves it, are thought to be constitutively independent of the subject’s rational capacities. Basic action is a necessary countermeasure, a sort of metaphysical containment wall needed to preserve the separate jurisdictions of the mind of the acting subject and what merely happens. I argue that so long as action theory proceeds under the assumption that there must be basic action, it must regard our relation to the progress of our own deeds as not different in principle from Marx’s understanding of the relation of the non-worker (Nichtarbeiter) to the material processes that realize his own ideas, namely the work done on the factory floor. Each is alienated from the progress, or getting done, of his deeds. In each the process of doing something intentionally turns out to be a case of delegating tasks to another power. How the process comes to completion is not willed, and at best watched: the causal work is not the agent’s work, his knowledge not self-knowledge (section 5). We should find this unacceptable. And if this is right, it should be a pressing question whether there must be basic action. I argue that we have no good reason to think so: basic action is not forced on us by argument (sections 2 and 4). It is open to us to consider an alternative, one on which action is not, in the fundamental case, barren of means- end structure, but instead permeated by it: we register as a force in nature not at the limit of the means-end order but precisely in its constitution. [from article introduction]. (shrink)