This paper seeks to defuse two claims. On the one hand, I confront the Hildebrandian claim that Thomism, by placing the principium of love in the needs and desires of the lover rather than in the beloved, denies the possibility of transcendent love; on the other, I seek to refute the Thomistic objection that Hildebrand lacks a sufficient understanding of nature and its inherent teleology. In order to accomplish this, a distinction must be made between different kinds of (...) class='Hi'>principium or “for-its-own-sakeness.” Using St. Thomas’ theory of friendship-love, I show how every affective movement in fact has two fundamentally different principia: an “end-desired,” and an “end-for-whom” the former is desired. I next note that “value” and “bonum honestum” each encompass both of these types of “worthiness,” and that the failure to distinguish between these two has led to much of the misunderstanding between Thomists and Hildebrandians: for while the latter sometimes seem to include inanimate objects like sunsets under the higher “worthiness” (as “ends-for-whom”), the former often tend to classify even the beloved under the lower “worthiness” (as a mere “end-desired”), which are both untenable positions. It is shown, however, that for St. Thomas it is the higher, more ultimate sense of “worthiness” that is the foundation of friendship-love, and that thus love remains a truly “transcendent” or “ecstatic” phenomenon. Two objections are then addressed: 1) St. Thomas’ claim that substantial unity is the greatest cause of love, and 2) his claim that man’s primary end is Vision. In both these respects I argue that Aquinas’ position needs correction; still I maintain that neither claim should be taken to imply that, for Aquinas, man is his own center, his own chief “end-for-whom.” Finally, while Hildebrand emphatically denies that natural teleology can explain man’s transcendence (a Thomistic position), this denial seems to flow simply from confusing two ways in which “nature” can be invoked as an explanation: where he sees it invoked as the final cause, Thomists actually invoke it as simply the formal cause of our love for our true Final Cause. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to show how Spinoza’s conception of history could lead to a new formulation of the theory of democracy, in the context of Spinoza’s political philosophy. In this perspective, the analysis deals with the relations between historicity, on the one hand, and the notions of multitude and democracy, on the other, in the topic of Spinoza’s political thought. Into the horizon of historicity, the multitude’s (or the masses’) political activity could lead to the realisation of (...) a sustainable democratic regime. (shrink)

In my paper I raised the issue of time and focused on its recentivistic aspect. While discerning physical time from anthropological time I emphasized the meanings of "thymical" time. Such an aspect of time indicates not so much the relation of present time with the human as the direction of the lapse of time. Everything starts from and ends with our "now", our present as the only existing one. The recentivistic concept of time is a return to the source of (...) philosophy, source of philosophic considerations about the existence in view of contemporary "blurring" of philosophic deliberations. "Escape from the present" drives the humans into the cave of life through the past of the wasted chances or the future of the envisaged successes. The principal thesis of the deliberations conducted says there is no existence, thoughts, world, and, finally, the very human being without recens. Without recens there is even no present which continues the time. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to show how Spinoza’s conception of history could lead to a new formulation of the theory of democracy, in the context of Spinoza’s political philosophy. In this perspective, the analysis deals with the relations between historicity, on the one hand, and the notions of multitude and democracy, on the other, in the topic of Spinoza’s political thought. Into the horizon of historicity, the multitude’s (or the masses’) political activity could lead to the realisation of (...) a sustainable democratic regime. (shrink)

The concept of« multitude » opposes for a long time to that of the « people ». The people is a homogeneous unity, whereas the multitude is a network of peculiarities. The individuals who compose the multitude are not nevertheless atoms of one given but the result of a process of individuation. Of what consists this individuation which produces the individual from universal conditions ? One can tempt an answer by using Gilbert Simondon’s reflections and Russian psychologist L. Vygotskij. With (...) the aid of these authors one will end maybe in a more relevant comprehension of the Marxian concept of« social individual ». (shrink)

In response to contagion, competing and contradictory movements emerge that engender openness to new modes of life and reactionary defenses of old ones, that acknowledge mutual dependency and vulnerability and that heighten the policing and surveillance of borders. Through reading the Empire project, this article articulates these as struggles over measure that unfold on the terrain of sovereignty and biopolitical economy. We show that the passage from modern to imperial sovereignty hinges on the former’s inability to adequately impose calculatory regimes, (...) to which the latter’s flexibility and fluidity responds. This accompanies the passage from industrial to biopolitical command, from regulation through the wage to rearbitration through extractivism. Having articulated the contemporary coordinates within which the multitude finds itself, we then propose an educational weapon for the struggle against sovereignty and capital: stupidity. Turning to Jean-François Lyotard, we demonstrate just how fundamentally the rule of Empire depends on the outside of measure for its continual reproduction, and how Empire frames the communicative networks of biopolitical labor, a framing from which Hardt and Negri haven’t adequately broken. As the other of thought, as that which can’t be articulated, commanded, or absorbed by capital, stupidity remains totally useless and unproductive for Empire, which is exactly where its potency lies for the multitude. By critically engaging stupidity, we can refrain from reducing the pandemic to a need for heightened immunity and enclosure achieved through articulation. (shrink)

In the late 19th century, the questionnaire was one means of taking the case study into the multitudes. This article engages with Forrester’s idea of thinking in cases as a means of interrogating questionnaire-based research in early American psychology. Questionnaire research was explicitly framed by psychologists as a practice involving both natural historical and statistical forms of scientific reasoning. At the same time, questionnaire projects failed to successfully enact the latter aspiration in terms of synthesizing masses of collected data into (...) a coherent whole. Difficulties in managing the scores of descriptive information questionnaires generated ensured the continuing presence of individuals in the results of this research, as the individual case was excerpted and discussed alongside a cast of others. As a consequence, questionnaire research embodied an amalgam of case, natural historical, and statistical thinking. Ultimately, large-scale data collection undertaken with questionnaires failed in its aim to construct composite exemplars or ‘types’ of particular kinds of individuals; to produce the singular from the multitudes. (shrink)

Jean Vanier is the founder of two major international community-based organizations for people with intellectual disabilities: the L’Arche Communities and the “Faith & Light” movement. He is a great Catholic and a teacher of merciful love. His life is a message to the world that each person is an infinite value for who they are, not for what they can do, and that each person is unique and sacred, no matter of their health condition, disability or fragility. Each person is (...) created in God’s image and each one has an inner beauty, a capacity to love and to be loved, and possesses inherent qualities of belonging, bonding, friendship and spirituality. Persons with intellectual disabilities are a gift for the society. Thanks to the testimony of his life, Jean Vanier has developed the international network of L’Arche Communities all over the world. The communities are based on family-like residential communities, where people with and without intellectual disabilities share life together in the spirit of faith, dignity of every human being, understanding, love and joy. The L’Arche homes and communities are rooted in the ideas of “living with,” and not just “doing for” those with mental disabilities. Weakness carries a secret power within, it can open up the hearts to God’s grace. Our contemporary world strongly needs the weak, as they evangelize us, transform us and help us to be more human. They help us discover that the good news of Jesus is announced not to those who serve the poor, but to those who are themselves poor and need God’s merciful love and forgiveness. (shrink)

Politics 3.11 appears to show Aristotle at his most democratic, for in this chapter he defends the right of ordinary people to participate in government and he might even make a multitude of ordinary people authoritative in the polis. Contrary to the dominant interpretation, I argue, however, that this chapter concerns different multitudes at different points and that the first multitude forms a polity and the second is used as a moderating force and does not necessarily form a democracy — (...) Aristotle's focus here is not on typology but on the argument that power should be shared and not held exclusively by any one group. The article is, in effect, an extended discussion of what Aristotle means, in terms of governance shared by the multitude, by "authoritative". (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to give an interpretation of the free and harmonious play of faculties. The dominant interpretations focus on how the imagination is free from the determination of understanding, but say little about the harmony that can exist between imagination and understanding; thus, in this paper an attempt is made to account for the free and harmonious relationship between these two faculties. Some of Kant’s lectures are reviewed to show the inclinations of the power of imagination (...) and understanding, respectively. As the power of imagination is inclined towards making many representations, understanding is necessary to truncate the multitudes of those representations, so that unity of the representation is achievable. Taking inspiration from the traditional board game of Go, it is possible to draw an interpretation of the play of faculties that takes into consideration both the freedom and the harmony that is present within the play. (shrink)

In this brief article I expound some uses that Hobbes gave to the concept of multitude. Firstly, I explain the distinction between "people" and "multitude", the confusion of which was regarded in De Cive as a cause of sedition. The plural and disunited character of the multitude is highlighted, in comparison with the unity that constitutes the people. Secondly, I show that Hobbes, beyond the cited distinction, makes a relevant use in Leviathan of the principle of representation, in order to (...) show the way in which multitude becomes State. Finally, I highlight the two-fold use given by the author to such concept: on the one hand, by attributing a theoretical role to it, which should allow thinking of the rational construction of the State; on the other, by showing the historical reality of multitude, turned into a source of madness and sedition. (shrink)

In this study, I consider the viability of what is perhaps one of the more “obscure” transcendentals in Aquinas’s work—that is, the concept of multitudo transcendens. This strange notion is mentioned explicitly (as a member of the transcendentia, that is) on four occasions in Aquinas’s oeuvre. Despite its apparent difficulties, i.e., the clear difficulties associated with claiming that ens is really convertible with both unum and multitudo, I suggest that Aquinas’s affirmation of multitudo as a transcendental is a conceptually coherent (...) way of providing a compelling answer to a perennial problem in both ancient and modern philosophy: namely, the logical and metaphysical problem of doing justice to the seemingly equiprimordial notions of “the one” and “the many”—as harmonious perfections rather than competitive notions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Paradox of Disability: Responses to Jean Vanier and L’Arche Communities from Theology and the Sciences ed. by Hans S. ReindersAdam ClarkThe Paradox of Disability: Responses to Jean Vanier and L’Arche Communities from Theology and the Sciences Edited by Hans S. Reinders Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010. 191pp. $18.00Jean Vanier introduces this collection of essays with a concise articulation of the themes that define L’Arche communities: those with (...) impairments “cry out” for loving service, yet love involves the receptivity by which those without obvious impairments learn to claim their own good amid a vulnerability that [End Page 205] appears to be its negation. Subsequent essays expand upon these themes, drawing on a range of theological and social-scientific perspectives. Most could serve as introductions for undergraduate or graduate classes. The volume also invites disability scholars to examine whether and how this “Vanier school” has succeeded in its attempt to reimagine and serve both those with and those without obvious impairments.For Vanier’s “school,” such reimagining entails perceiving those with impairments as “teachers.” Executing this, however, is difficult. Xavier Le Pichon, for example, argues that “the disabled” help us recover positive views of dependency in “childhood innocence” and “aged suffering” (since they embody both stages). Focusing on the suffering that human beings experience before death, he claims that paleo-anthropological evidence suggests that societies evolved as their care of the disabled taught them to accept suffering. His argument, however, risks strongly identifying persons with their impairments, thus reinforcing the social construction of “disability” as a marginalizing category in discourse and policy.Moreover, this difficulty is not limited to associations with disvalue. Hans Reinders draws on Søren Kierkegaard and Hans Ulrich in a comparison of the severely disabled to the “teachers” of Matthew 6: the birds and lilies. The disabled, he argues, embody a positive image of “humanity” characterized by dependence on God and a lack of competition with others. Such an image of grace “frees” one from a political economy that drives toward rational mastery of self and world. Yet, do the severely impaired always experience and manifest such dependence? If not, are they not being used to create a “human” image for others in which they, in fact, do not appear?Kevin Reimer’s essay contains similar difficulties. For him, the instructive values are “trust” and “gracious openness.” Citing studies that demonstrate how these values sustain communities—even absent rational agreement—he argues that they should replace rationality as the chief marker of moral maturity (as exemplified, e.g., in Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development). Like Reinders, Reimer clearly wants those with cognitive impairments to be appreciated as teachers of values that displace the rationalist ones that deprecate them. However, like Reinder’s argument, this easily slides toward defining “humanity” under a certain ideal form, thereby still implicitly devaluing those who do not embody that ideal form. Also, one finds here the danger of romanticizing that is often identified with Vanier: one only sees the form and not the real person.William Gaventa and Brian Brock, however, provide a counterresponse, the first pivotal turn in the book. Gaventa argues that the discovery of another’s value as “teacher” occurs only when one has already acknowledged her as a person (104). In other words, any “form” taught must come only after one has encountered a “person,” which is understood as a complete image of human [End Page 206] value. Here Vanier’s argument for mutual receptivity becomes a fundamental anthropology that grounds an ethic. Love must serve both persons—the teacher with impairments and the learning respondent—along distinct lines of practical action (107). In addition, Gaventa argues that persons need sources of support that are both familial and private, on the one hand, and institutional and public, on the other—thus transcending the usual splits between conservatives and liberals.Brock develops a similar anthropological ethic drawing on Martin Luther. Being human together simply means “becoming neighbors” through the absolute (Christological) imputation of personal value. Brock criticizes practices that negate this neighborly bond. In particular, he rejects the view, often endorsed by genetic counselors, that bearing potentially impaired... (shrink)

In this article I propose the concept of ‘non-cinema’. The term points to that which is excluded from cinema, and accordingly I seek to explore the various reasons for these exclusions, in particular the political/ideological ones, together with how these exclusions are manifested on an aesthetic level. Instead of André Bazin's founding question regarding what is cinema, therefore, this essay asks what cinema is not – and why. This question is of redoubled importance in an age of technological change: not (...) only are nearly all films now not made using the traditional equipment of filmmaking (analogue cameras, linear editing systems, polyester film stock), but nor do they get exhibited in traditional theatrical venues (instead circulating on DVD and related formats, and online). On a related note, increasing numbers of filmmakers actively are moving away from feature filmmaking, e.g. into television. The essay focuses in particular on ‘non-cinematic’ works by Philippine director Khavn de la Cruz and American director Giuseppe Andrews. Formally, I argue that their films deliberately embrace that which is perceived as non-cinematic in order to put forward what Argentine philosopher Enrique Dussel might define as a ‘barbarian’ film-philosophical vision of the world, which is reminiscent of Antonio Negri's concept of multitude, and which also has an ethical dimension in that it proposes the inclusion of the overlooked and the dispossessed, and of the darkness that necessarily accompanies the light. (shrink)

Even if political theorists rarely read him, Italian political thinker, Marsilius of Padua, presents one of the most radical theories of the multitude prior to Machiavelli and Spinoza. This article reconstructs Marsilius of Padua's political theory of the multitude in his Defender of Peace and pays special attention to two main sources from which Marsilius frames his theory: Aristotle and Ibn Rushd. Compared to Aristotle, Marsilius advances a more epistemic view of the multitude as a lawmaker. Marsilius’ ideas on the (...) multitude also depend on Ibn Rushd's theory of collective knowledge and, to a certain extent, on his position on natural law. (shrink)

Pasolini’s protean oeuvre focuses particularly on lives outside the conventional class system and its norms. This text examines how one might envisage the organization of the multitudes in light of the practices developed by Pasolini to treat these singular forms of life. It reveals the ethical coherency of the «free indirect discourse » that Pasolini deploys in the context of the ideological and linguistic normalization that emerged from Italian fascism and neocapitalism.

Massive open online courses take university lectures and other educational materials and make them available for free as online “courses.” Liberal and neoliberal MOOC supporters laud these courses for opening up education to the world while incorporating market dynamics to improve quality and drive down costs. Skeptics claim MOOCs are a bald attempt to privatize higher learning, thus creating an apartheid educational system with traditional universities serving the wealthy while everyone else is left with cut-rate online learning. This essay draws (...) on the political theory of autonomist Marxism, arguing that MOOCs are capital's defensive reaction to the threats of resistant universities on one side, and unmanageable Internet-based learning on the other. It then looks at which MOOC designs would support education for the “multitude,” which is the term used by autonomist Marxism to describe an autonomous, diverse, networked political body. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Elizabethan Bacchae STEPHEN ORGEL Euripides’s Bacchae, with its antic hero and celebration of the joys of revenge, would seem to be especially relevant to Elizabethan drama, an ancestor of The Spanish Tragedy or Hamlet. In fact, however, it seems to have been practically unknown to the Elizabethans. With the new ProQuest version of EEBO (Early English Books Online) it is now possible to search early English books for (...) specific references; so I paired the name Euripides with books printed in England before 1640 to see what came up. I got 474 hits. Many of these, of course, were duplicates, appearing in works that were issued in multiple editions—the actual figure, however, was still something over three hundred. Most of those, however, were cases in which Euripides’s name simply appears in a list of famous ancient authors. Citations which actually quoted Euripides for the most part indicated no knowledge of the work cited, but were only bits of wisdom that might have come from any of the multitude of collections of aphorisms and moral stories throughout the period. There was only one English edition of a play of Euripides in Greek, The Trojan Women, published by John Day in 1575— continental editions were, of course, easily obtainable, but it must be to the point that English publishers did not see a sufficient market to produce them domestically; and there were no subsequent editions of Day’s Trojan Women. As for The Bacchae, I found only a single case where I believe it is being cited, and in a context, moreover, that indicates some familiarity with the play. John Bishop’s Beautiful Blossoms, a collection of historical anecdotes published in 1577, recounting the history of Demetrius, king of Macedonia, says, “Then fled Demetrius unto Thebes, where one scoffingly applied vnto him that verse arion 28.3 winter 2021 64 the elizabethan bacchae of Euripides: he came vnto the Dyrcean springs, and Ismenus, his divine and goodly fourme and shape being chaunged in to a mortall.”1 This is a version of a bit of Dionysus’s opening speech, I am here at the springs of Dirce, the river Ismenos, Changing my shape from divine to mortal... There is no reason to assume that John Bishop (about whom I can learn nothing) knew the play, but he is certainly citing someone who did. The play, then, to the Elizabethans was either practically unknown or deliberately ignored. It was not translated into English until the 1780s, and then two translations were published within a year of each other—for the English, it was an enlightenment and romantic text. Schlegel’s Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature (delivered 1806, published 1846) and Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy (1872) were the works that established The Bacchae as the quintessential Greek tragedy, though for Nietzsche, ironically, the two destroyers of the Greek tragic sense, the two great cultural villains, were Euripides the ironist and Socrates the arch-rationalist. But Nietzsche sees Euripides, at the end of his life, having a major change of heart, realizing that Dionysus was simply too powerful to be expunged from art and society; and The Bacchae was thus the fullest expression of this tragic truth. The problems with this argument are manifold: Euripides the ironist is quite evident in The Bacchae, so it hardly represents a change of heart; and the claims of the irrational are fully present in his earlier plays, for example, in Hippolytus, where all the poetic energy is in expressing the uncontrollable violence of passion, and the virtues of morality and self-control are meagre indeed. The essay was soundly refuted in its own time, and Nietzsche withdrew and recanted it. Its celebrity is a modern phenomenon: whatever its historical defects, it speaks to the dangerous attractions of unreason. There is a perverse element in Nietzsche’s argument, too: Dionysus, as the embodiment of revelry, is surely as essential Stephen Orgel 65 to comedy as to tragedy; and one could press this further. At the end of The Symposium, Socrates tells Agathon and Aristophanes, tragic and comic dramatists, that their arts (or crafts: the word is techne) are essentially the same. Heavy weather has... (shrink)

It is generally believed that one argument advanced by Aristotle in favor of the political authority of the multitude is that large groups can make better decisions by pooling their knowledge than individuals or small groups can make alone. This is supported by two analogies, one apparently involving a “potluck dinner” and the other aesthetic judgment. This article suggests that that interpretation of Aristotle’s argument is implausible given the historical context and several features of the text. It argues that Aristotle’s (...) support for the rule of the multitude rested not on its superior knowledge but rather on his belief that the virtue of individuals can be aggregated and even amplified when they act collectively. This significantly alters our understanding of Aristotle’s political thought and presents a powerful alternative to the epistemic defenses of mass political activity popular today. (shrink)

The phrase that titles the present article is radical for understanding how Spinoza comprehend the political problems, using Quinto Curcio Rufo’s quote, the dutch philosopher transmit to us, not as a political advice, but in a critical way, demonstrating that superstition is a political-affective dispositive that determine a specific form of practicing power through the affective manipulation and the perpetuation of the passives forms that this imply. Although there is no systematic treatment about this term, our analysis proposes an history (...) and etymology of superstitio, to then examine what Spinoza’s says about it, and finally our thesis that propose to think superstition as a determined affective configuration that operates in a parasitic way, because this could not exist except in relation with others affects, joined to power forms, overlapping the others in a meta-affective way. Of this way it is propose explaining the political efficacy of superstition in a renewed time, the one of the contemporaneity of capitalism as an ars affectandi that, just like theology, seats his power in superstition, considering also the ethical, political, epistemics and aesthetics consequences. (shrink)

This essay follows the assumption that the first principle of classical metaphysics has its counterpart in political sovereignty as suprema potestas. Therefore, both can be equally described as arché. Their epitome is the God of so-called ontotheology, who thus proves to be what I call the Ur-Arché. In contrast to current post-metaphysical approaches, however, I suggest overcoming ontotheology through a different metaphysics, which emphasizes the self-transcending surplus character of being. I regard early Christian martyrdom as an eminent way in which (...) the surplus of being is manifested. This has two interwoven aspects, one ontological and one political, both arising from the excessive idea of the Christ event, or the notion that there is life beyond life unto death. I will analyse the mechanism allowing early Christian martyrs to counteract Roman imperial sovereignty. Finally, I will relate this to contemporary life systems in which sovereignty has become anonymous biopower. (shrink)

The paper aims at the explanation of the author´s personalistic-evolutionary ontology by means of postmodern philosophy. This philosophy brought him to a binary understanding of reality as the reality in the frame of the ontological structure on one hand and the reality transcending this frame on the other hand. The paper also gives an outline of the methodology of the historical transcendence of postmoder_nity, as well as evry postmodern plurality. Every ontological and cultural unit has its own representative personal ground. (...) It is the selftranscendence, which makes the selfidentification of these units possible and by means of which they approach the transcendent, teandric horison. There is a variety of understanding this horison in various cultures. Their convergence to it is of hic et nunc character, the acceptance of this horison being its condition. (shrink)

The human microbiome has become one of the dominant biomedical frameworks of the contemporary moment that may be understood to be post-Pasteurian. The recognitions the human microbiome opens up for thinking about the biological self and the individual have ontological and epistemological ramifications for considering what and who the human being is. As this article illustrates, the microbiopolitics of the human microbiome challenges the immunitarian Pasteurian model in which the organismic self shores itself up and defends itself against a microbial (...) non-self or other. Instead, this theory presents the human organism as comprised of multiple ecosystems and as a multitude, suggesting that the thanatopolitical attempts to wipe out microbial others (evident in the overuse and misuse of antibiotics, for example) are giving way to an affirmative microbiopolitics grounded in generative multispecies relationality. This article sets out to make the case for this affirmative microbiopolitics. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that what has been called Leibniz’s “aggregate argument” for unities in things in fact comprises three quite distinct lines of argument, with different concepts being advanced under the name ‘unity’ and meriting quite different conceptual treatment. Two of those arguments, what I call the Borrowed Reality Argument and the Multitude Argument, also appear in later writings to be further elaborated into arguments not just for unities but for simples. I consider the arguments in detail. I (...) suggest that one of the two, the Borrowed Reality Argument, is philosophically more promising and has the stronger evidence for being central in Leibniz’s thought as he argues for the existence of simple substances. (shrink)

This paper approaches the question of Spinoza and education via the work of Louis Althusser. One important aim is to show how Spinoza’s description of the imagination underpins Althusser’s description of the ideological ‘infrastructure’ of educational practices and institutions. To achieve this, I begin by addressing Spinoza’s treatment of the physiological foundation of the imagination: by showing that the realm of ‘individual consciousness’ is more like the effect of an anonymous field, or process, Spinoza, we see, becomes a kind of (...) immanent cause for the Althusserian claim that ‘ideology has a material existence’. I go on to examine, in detail, Althusser’s description of ‘educational apparatuses’, locating these as the expressions of a Spinozistic ontology. However, Althusserian anti-humanism can also appear to negate transformative agency; and in the specific context of the classroom, Althusser suggests, apparently ‘heroic’ teachers seem almost doomed. Hence a ‘return’ to Spinoza, enacted, here—that is, an examination of Spinozistic potentialities, mainly adumbrated in the unfinished Political Treatise. My article concludes by suggesting that, in light of these, the foundational unit of pedagogical practice—the group, the class—might still be reconfigured as a collective subject, rather than the mere object of ideology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Occupy Religion:Theology of the Multitude and Interreligious DialogueJoerg RiegerOne of the big questions for the present is how to bring the different liberation movements together. The different liberation theologies, as is well known, have addressed various forms of oppression along the lines of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, and other factors. What is it that brings us together without erasing our differences? This question has important implications for interreligious (...) dialogue, as we shall see.In our book Occupy Religion Kwok Pui-lan and I use the term “multitude” to reflect on unity and difference.1 This term, made prominent by political scientists and philosophers Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri,2 has deep roots in our theological traditions. Several decades ago, Korean Minjung theology noted the prominence of the notion of the multitude (this is how the term minjung can be translated into English) in the Bible. In the Gospels, the so-called ochlos (the Greek term for the masses or the common people) does not describe only the ones who are the recipients of Jesus’ transformative ministry; the ochlos also describes the participants in it and the agents of change. In addition, our Latin American colleagues have highlighted the importance of Greek term laos in the biblical traditions, which is also used to designate the common people rather than the elites.There is a distinct difference between the Greek notions of democracy and laocracy or ochlocracy. Democracy describes the rule of the demos, which is constituted by the elite citizens of a city-state. Lower-class citizens, women, and slaves are not part of this rule. Laocracy and ochlocracy, on the other hand, describe the rule of the common people, including the proverbial “least of these” of which Jesus speaks frequently. These common people include all those who have been and are being marginalized on the basis of their gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and class. In the ministry of Jesus, which is informed by the ministry of Moses, Miriam, Hannah, and the prophets, the common people are organized and become agents. God values their diverse contributions to life. In the world of laocracy and ochlocracy, there are different ways of being productive in the community, and all of them are acknowledged and needed. As Hardt and Negri remind us, the multitude is not the uniform entity of what has often [End Page 167] been called “the people” in various nationalisms or fascisms. Neither is the multitude the undifferentiated mass or the mob.3What brings the various liberation movements together, therefore, is not uniformity or a request to surrender difference. What brings us together is “deep solidarity,” the recognition that we are all in the same boat under the conditions of global capitalism.4 This insight is related to the topic of class, which has consistently been pushed underground in the United States but which has recently reemerged in the context of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The now-familiar notion of the 99 percent versus the 1 percent is a reminder that the majority of people are benefitting less and less from the neoliberal market economy. This includes even members of the middle class, as they have seen their retirement accounts dwindle, their job security take ever-more severe hits, their benefits erode, and their political power fade. Furthermore, the aspects of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity are closely linked to class, as they all increase the disadvantages of people in the neoliberal market economy, thus boosting the reality of deep solidarity. Deep solidarity ties together members of the 99 percent across the lines of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity, and it thrives on difference, as they can now work together and make use of their various opportunities and gifts.Deep solidarity differs from conventional ideas of solidarity, which were often based on the idea that those who are privileged place themselves on the side of those without privilege. While it is still possible for members of the 1 percent to place themselves on the side of the 99 percent, the majority of us are now part of the 99 percent, and thus belong to classes that have something to gain from liberation. Class struggle, as... (shrink)

Starting from the birthplace of childhood, this text elucidates, using Giorgio Agamben, Heraclitus, and Paulo Freire, the coexistence of childhood and time. These authors contribute to the idea that childhood, be it chronological or not, is an inspiration without which it is impossible for us to be inventive in relation to history, philosophy, and education. It thus bases itself upon the hypothesis that childhood and time are conceptually indefinable and dilutive of the idea of stability, which escapes the understanding of (...) continuity, since it is not an absolute event. Thus, this text in based on the reading of childhood as a fundamental condition of the existence of human history, which makes possible the movement from language to thought. To think about the understanding of childhood that is at issue in this text, we consider a certain experience of time different from the traditional one, the result of an understanding conceived as chronology and completion, which is present in various readings of childhood. Upon raising these considerations, several questions arise: is there something like a childhood of thought? Can childhood offer a way of not giving up to a new concept of a childlike experience of time? (shrink)

Although task-unrelated thinking has been increasingly investigated in recent years, the content and correlates of everyday off-task thought in clinical d...

The philosopher replies to reactions provoked by his book about Gilles Deleuze in 1997, that were published by Futur Antérieur.

High-quality education has been considered important for social justice, although what good education means is contested. A project aimed at identifying varieties of conceptions of ethical competence was presented as well as another that focused on a fiction-based approach to ethics education. A multidimensional ethical competence mediated through a multitude of narratives was shown as a strong contribution to EE. The aim was to discuss as to what extent such a multidimensional ethical competence mediated through a multitude of narratives could (...) be understood as powerful knowledge. Sweden, where national tests lately have been understood as a tool to increase achievements, but where an unclear understanding of desired knowledge in EE exists, was the setting. Methodologically, the article drew on Michael Young’s definition of powerful knowledge, a hermeneutic meta-study on the findings of EthiCo concerning conceptions of ethical competence, as well as Mark Tappan’s sociocultural perspective on moral development. These perspectives were brought together to discuss powerful knowledge in EE as a contribution to education for social justice. Whether a multidimensional ethical competence mediated through a multitude of narratives could be understood as powerful knowledge was shown to be dependent on the definition. Whilst Young’s powerful knowledge is restricted to an academic language, Tappan stresses vernacular language as characteristic for a functional moral discourse. One conclusion was the centrality of fiction in EE for the development of moral discourses that transcend reality and shape ‘knowledge of possibilities’ – powerful in the shaping of societal justice. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 30, Issue 2, pp 223 - 235 Scholarship on _Leviathan_ has not fully explored the distinctive pattern of language that Hobbes used to invoke the central conceit of the treatise—“that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH.” This note highlights an earlier instance of that rare linguistic construction, one that presented a similar image of political monstrosity several years before Hobbes’s metaphor was published. _Verses in Honour of the Reverend and Learned Judge of the Law, Judge Jenkin_ celebrated the (...) jurist David Jenkins as a royalist martyr in the fight against “That Giant monster call’d a multitude.” It is possible that the pamphlet might have circulated among the network of English exiles in France, offering Hobbes a linguistic model with which to reconceptualize the early modern understanding of political community. (shrink)

Since the late 1960s there has been a resurgence of interest in Spinozism in France: Gilles Deleuze was among the first who gave life to a ‘new Spinoza’ with his seminal book Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. While Deleuze was primarily interested in Spinoza’s ontology and ethics, the contemporary French philosopher Étienne Balibar focuses on the political writings. Despite their common fascination for Spinoza’s relational definition of the individual, both thinkers have drawn very different consequences from the Spinozist inspiration regarding the (...) relevance of his philosophy for a contemporary ethical and political thought. Deleuze draws from Spinoza an ethics of the encounter, an ‘ethology’ that is concerned with the composition of bodies on a plane of immanence. Balibar, on the contrary, deals with the modes of communication that we institute between one another and that are always effectuations on two levels at once: the real and the imaginary. Whereas Deleuze emphasizes the conception of a... (shrink)

Corrupt behavior presents major challenges for organizations in a wide range of settings. This article embraces a complexity theoretical perspective to elucidate the causal patterns of factors underlying consumers’ unethical judgments. This study examines how causal conditions of four distinct domains combine into configurational causes of unethical judgments of two frequent forms of corrupt consumer behavior: shoplifting and fare dodging. The findings of fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analyses indicate alternative, consistently sufficient “recipes” for the outcomes of interest. This study extends prior (...) work on the topic by offering new insights into the interplay and the interconnected structures of multiple causal factors and by describing configurational causes of consumers’ ethical evaluations of corrupt behaviors. This knowledge may support practitioners and policy makers to develop education and control approaches to thwart corrupt consumer behaviors. (shrink)

Aristotle’s 'Metaphysics' defends a number of theses about oneness ['to hen']. For interpreting the 'Metaphysics'’ positive henology, two such theses are especially important: 'to hen' and being ['to on'] are equally general and so intimately connected that there can be no science of the former which isn’t also a science of the latter, and to hen is the foundation ['archē'] of number qua number. Aristotle decisively commits himself to both and. The central goal of this article is to improve our (...) understanding of what the 'Metaphysics'’ endorsement of their conjunction amounts to. To this end we explore three manners of being one which enter into Aristotle’s 'Metaphysics': I call them 'unity, uniqueness', and 'unit-hood'. On the view the article defends, it’s unity that’s at issue in Aristotle’s endorsement of and unit-hood that’s at issue in his endorsement of. The 'Metaphysics'’ positive henology as whole, I suggest, is best interpreted by positing a theory-internal distinction between unity, uniqueness, and unit-hood. (shrink)

The aim of the present research was to test whether involvement in a 14-days training program in the performing arts could reduce implicit biases. We asked healthy participants to complete an Implicit Association Test to assess biased attitudes to physical illness in two separate sessions, before and after the training program. Two separate control groups matched by age, gender and educational level completed the two IAT sessions, separated by same number of days, without being involved in the training program. Results (...) showed that participants who were involved in the training program reduced their implicit bias toward illness measured through IAT in the second session. This reduction in IAT measures was not observed in the control samples, despite the two IAT measures being matched in temporal delay with the experimental group. These findings suggest that an interventional program based on the performing arts could be effective in reducing levels of implicit biases among the general population. (shrink)

Language is a rewarding field if you are in the prediction business. A reader who is fluent in English and who knows how academic papers are typically structured will readily come up with several possible guesses as to where the title of this section could have gone, had it not been cut short by the ellipsis. Indeed, in the more natural setting of spoken language, anticipatory processing is a must: performance of machine systems for speech interpretation depends critically on the (...) availability of a good predictive model of how utterances unfold in time (Baker, 1975; Jelinek, 1990; Goodman, 2001), and there is strong evidence that prospective uncertainty affects human sentence processing too (Jurafsky, 2003; Hale, 2006; Levy, 2008). The human ability to predict where the current utterance is likely to be going is just another adaptation to the general pressure to anticipate the future (Hume, 1748; Dewey, 1910; Craik, 1943), be it in perception, thinking, or action, which is exerted on all cognitive systems by evolution (Dennett, 2003). Look-ahead in language is, however, special in one key respect: language is a medium for communication, and in communication the most interesting (that is, informative) parts of the utterance that the speaker is working through are those that cannot be predicted by the listener ahead of time. (shrink)

Today it is very important to communicate with people close to each other by interests, ideas, values. Their realization serves the enlightenment of mankind in relation to a multitude of problems that can be solved only if humanity is oriented toward progress towards a new perfection and a return to God. Because the One, all inclusive life is always a self-excelling and poetic Renaissance and perfection of all principles in the Cosmos.

This article rests on the theoretical assumptions of feminist post-structuralist thought and aims at exploring some of their implications. It discusses the notion of nomadic feminist subjectivity and it addresses some of the tensions implicit in this notion. The emphasis falls on two central ideas: on the one hand on bodily materialism and hence also sexuality and sexual difference. On the other hand the necessity is also stressed to nomadize all differences, in order to avoid the recomposition of molar formations (...) the feminist subject. The article concludes by arguing for the need to understand the becoming-woman of the subject as a project that is both political and ethical, and hence requires an open and concrete approach. (shrink)

Corrupt behavior presents major challenges for organizations in a wide range of settings. This article embraces a complexity theoretical perspective to elucidate the causal patterns of factors underlying consumers’ unethical judgments. This study examines how causal conditions of four distinct domains combine into configurational causes of unethical judgments of two frequent forms of corrupt consumer behavior: shoplifting and fare dodging. The findings of fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analyses indicate alternative, consistently sufficient “recipes” for the outcomes of interest. This study extends prior (...) work on the topic by offering new insights into the interplay and the interconnected structures of multiple causal factors and by describing configurational causes of consumers’ ethical evaluations of corrupt behaviors. This knowledge may support practitioners and policy makers to develop education and control approaches to thwart corrupt consumer behaviors. (shrink)

This study presents a theory of causally complex configurations of antecedent conditions influencing the adoption versus non-adoption of international supplier ethical certification-standards. Using objective measures of antecedents and outcomes, a large-scale study of exporting firms in the cut-flower industry in two South American countries supports the theory. The theory includes the following and additional propositions. No single -antecedent condition is sufficient for accurately predicting a high membership score in outcome conditions; the outcome conditions include a firm’s adoption or rejection of (...) a product certification. No single -antecedent condition is necessary for accurately predicting high scores in the outcome condition. A few complex antecedent conditions are sufficient but the occurrence of each is not necessary for accurately predicting high scores in an outcome condition. Causal asymmetry of antecedent conditions indicating adoption versus non-adoption of specific ethical standards occurs—that is, causal conditions leading to rejection are not the mirror opposites of causal conditions leading to adoption. (shrink)