Resumen: Se sostiene que en la Ciencia de la Lógica Hegel distingue, mediante la categoría de “fin subjetivo”, una dimensión puramente instrumental de la actividad del concepto. Tras delinear una lectura de conjunto de la Doctrina del Concepto se reconstruyen sectores clave del capítulo dedicado a la Teleología con vistas a detectar tanto los rasgos fundamentales como las limitaciones de esta dimensión puramente instrumental del concepto. Se concluye que es posible verificar en el capítulo una “lógica de la actividad instrumental” (...) e interpretar en dicha clave la posición sistemática del capítulo. Además, se subrayan los rasgos críticos del tratamiento hegeliano en vista del problema general de una mecanización y desgaste del mundo y de la vida, lo que proyecta el problema al tránsito desde el capítulo Teleología a la sección Idea.: This paper seeks to show that, in the Science of Logic Hegel, through the category of “subjective end”, distinguishes a purely instrumental dimension of the activity of concept. After delineating a general interpretation of the Doctrine of Concept, key aspects of the chapter dedicated of Teleology are re-constructed with the aim of detecting both the fundamental features and the limitations of this purely instrumental dimension of the concept. It is concluded that, in the chapter, it is possible to verify a ‘logic of the instrumentally activity’ and from this standpoint, to interpret the systematic position of the chapter. In addition, critical features of the Hegelian analysis are emphasized in regard to the general problem of mechanization and wear of the world and life, which projects the problem to the transit from chapter on Teleology to the Idea section. (shrink)

Intentions matter. They have some kind of normative impact on our agency. Something goes wrong when an agent intends some end and fails to carry out the means she believes to be necessary for it, and something goes right when, intending the end, she adopts the means she thinks are required. This has even been claimed to be one of the only uncontroversial truths in ethical theory. But not only is there widespread disagreement about why this is so, there is (...) widespread disagreement about in what sense it is so. In this paper I explore an underdeveloped answer to the question of in what sense it is so, and argue that resolving an apparent difficulty with this view leads to an attractive picture about why it is so. (shrink)

The work of Giorgio Agamben could perhaps best be described as an original extension of the onto-theological critique that has dominated much of the last century’s philosophical endeavors. For him, this fundamental critical perspective extends itself toward the deconstruction of traditional significations, including the boundaries said to exist between the human and the animal as well as between the human and the divine. By repeatedly unveiling these arbitrary divisions as being a result of the state of ‘original sin’ in which (...) we dwell, Agamben aims to advance philosophical discourse ‘beyond representation’ and toward a ‘pure’ encounter with the myriad of faces always ever present before us. In this sense, he works toward redefining ‘revelation’ as being little more than an exposure of our animality, something which indeed lies now unveiled at the real root of our being. This animality is in fact locateable beyond the separation of being into form and content, a division which is rather indebted to the onto-theological representations that have governed the discourse of being.By focusing instead on the manner in which paradigms could be said to operate over and against the rule of representations, he articulates a movement from particularity to particularity that resists the temptation to universalize our language on being. In this sense, then, the analogical logic of the paradigm, expressed always through the absolutely singular, exposes the beings which we all are before another, rather than violently condense any given being into a formal representation. By thus determining the contours of the paradigmatic expression, this essay intends to unite several ‘loose’ strands of Agamben’s thought in order to demonstrate the consequence of this line of inquiry: that the end of representation, often criticized as a form of political nihilism, is the only way in which to develop a justifiable ethics, one beyond the traditional binary divisions of subject and object, or of universal and particular. In the end, as Agamben illustrates repeatedly, there is only the ‘thingness’ that each thing is, and which must be safeguarded in its precarity, thus paving the way for an ethical discourse to appear.It is a final gesture toward the messianic, then, toward a religiously-inflected terminology which hovers over his entire oeuvre, that will ultimately guide Agamben’s ‘political’ project back toward its canonical moment most clearly identifiable within the Christian heritage. As his reading of Benjamin’s relationship to Saint Paul indicates, there is much to be discerned for him in the transition from Judaic law to Christian ‘forms of life’ . Rather than be content with a simple re-affirmation of Christian claims, however, Agamben deftly maneuvers his own position toward one of exposing the logic of Christianity as that which reveals a deep investment in a pantheistic worldview, one which theology can no longer afford to ignore. (shrink)

Max Stirner has often been considered a Young Hegelian, or even the 'last Hegelian'. Such a reading implies that Stirner drew the logical conclusions of Hegel’s philosophy, thereby ignoring the way his thought marks a fundamental break with the philosophical tradition as a whole. Stirner’s notions of 'egoism', 'ownness' and 'Der Einzige' ('the ego') were not philosophical concepts but, in a Foucauldian sense, tools to dismantle the subject-object dichotomy and its social and political bearings in the wake of modernity. It (...) is argued, furthermore, that his ideas cannot be reduced to a traditional philosophy of the subject (existentialism). This chapter analyses both Stirner’s quest to 'dissolve' philosophy, as well as its radical implications for political theory as a whole. Stirner’s notion of Der Einzige not only questions the revolutionary subject in a strictly Marxist sense, but eventually any form of (political) subjectivity. Stirner’s radical criticism of the emancipatory claims of his contemporaries allows us to question and rethink the concepts of contemporary social and political theory, not only by criticizing the way political power is commonly conceived and by refraining from positing essentialist guarantees, but also by laying bare the problem of political subjectivity. (shrink)

Turning an anthropological eye toward cyberspace, Human No More explores how conditions of the online world shape identity, place, culture, and death within virtual communities. Online worlds have recently thrown into question the traditional anthropological conception of place-based ethnography. They break definitions, blur distinctions, and force us to rethink the notion of the "subject." Human No More asks how digital cultures can be integrated and how the ethnography of both the "unhuman" and the "digital" could lead to possible reconfiguring the (...) notion of the "human." This provocative and groundbreaking work challenges fundamental assumptions about the entire field of anthropology. Cross-disciplinary research from well-respected contributors makes this volume vital to the understanding of contemporary human interaction. It will be of interest not only to anthropologists but also to students and scholars of media, communication, popular culture, identity, and technology. (shrink)

The end of the world is a seemingly interminable topic; at least, of course, until it happens. Environmental catastrophe and planetary apocalypse are subjects of enduring fascination and, as ethnographic studies show, human cultures have approached them in very different ways. Indeed, in the face of the growing perception of the dire effects of global warming, some of these visions have been given a new lease on life. Information and analyses concerning the human causes and the catastrophic consequences of the (...) planetary crisis have been accumulating at an ever-increasing rate, mobilising popular opinion as well as academic reflection. In this book, philosopher Deborah Danowski and anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro offer a bold overview and interpretation of these current discourses on the end of the world, reading them as thought experiments on the decline of the West's anthropological adventure; that is, as attempts, though not necessarily intentional ones, at inventing a mythology that is adequate to the present. This work has important implications for the future development of ecological practices and it will appeal to a broad audience interested in contemporary anthropology, philosophy, and environmentalism. (shrink)

The question of whether or not children may be used as subjects in non-therapeutic research projects has generated a great deal of debate and received answers varying from 'no, never' to 'yes, if societal interests are served'. It has been claimed that a Kantian, deontological ethics would necessarily rule out such research, since valid consent would be impossible. The present paper gives a deontological argument for allowing children to be subjects in certain types of research.

Federal policies on human subjects research have performed a near‐about face. In the 1970s, policies were motivated chiefly by a belief that subjects needed protection from the harms and risks of research. Now the driving concern is that patients, and the populations they represent, need access to the benefits of research.

The chapter deals with the two most distinctive elements of the Introduction of the Naturrecht Feyerabend, namely the notions of an end in itself and autonomy. I shall argue that both are to be interpreted with regard to the aim of explaining the ground of right. In this light, I suggest that the notion of an end in itself counters a voluntarist conception like Achenwall’s with a claim whose necessity has a twofold ground: First, the representation of an unconditional worth (...) emerges as a structural element of the practical use of reason. Second, that representation concerns the necessary self-understanding of moral subjects. Finally, I argue that the other distinctive element, the occurrence of the notion of autonomy, is best understood as an application of that idea to a specific issue, which Kant addresses by showing that freedom is a self-regulating domain. (shrink)

The End of the World and Other Teachable Moments follows the remarkable itinerary of Jacques Derrida’s final seminar, “The Beast and the Sovereign”, as the explicit themes of the seminar—namely, sovereignty and the question of the animal—come to be supplemented and interrupted by questions of death, mourning, survival, the archive, and, especially, the end of the world. The book begins with Derrida’s analyses, in the first year of the seminar, of the question of the animal in the context of his (...) other published works on the same subject. It then follows Derrida through the second year of the seminar, presented in Paris from December 2002 to March 2003, as a very different tone begins to make itself heard, one that wavers between melancholy and an extraordinary lucidity with regard to the end. Focusing the entire year on just two works, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Martin Heidegger’s seminar of 1929–30, “The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics,” the seminar comes to be dominated by questions of the end of the world and of an originary violence that at once gives rise to and effaces all things. The End of the World and Other Teachable Moments follows Derrida as he responds from week to week to these emerging questions, as well as to important events unfolding around him, both world events—the aftermath of 9/11, the American invasion of Iraq—and more personal ones, from the death of Maurice Blanchot to intimations of his own death less than two years away. All this, the book concludes, makes this final seminar an absolutely unique work in Derrida’s corpus, one that both speaks of death as the end of the world and itself now testifies to that end—just one, though hardly the least, of its many teachable moments. (shrink)

‘It comes together at the end’: the impact of a one‐year subject in Nursing Inquiry on philosophies of nursingThis paper reframes an interpretive study as critical inquiry as the researchers interrogate their roles and authority in the ‘reading’ of what is valued as reflective. Working from data collected in written philosophies and interviews within the context of a one‐year subject aimed at developing reflective practice and an appreciation of ways of knowing, this paper examines the change in philosophies of nursing (...) perceived by three university‐based educators and their students. The study reveals a growing appreciation of the complexity of nursing but a limited consideration of the dialectic of critical theorising and everyday engagement necessary to critical reflection and reconstruction of action. More importantly, the process of research collaboration raises questions of the soul‐searching necessary for university educators to act against the institutionalised political context that determines what is seen to be of value in student learning. (shrink)

Data subject rights provide data controllers with obligations that can help with transparency, giving data subjects some control over their personal data. To date, a growing number of researchers have used these data subject rights as a methodology for data collection in research studies. No one, however, has gathered and analysed different academic research studies that use data subject rights as a methodology for data collection. To this end, we conducted a systematic literature review that searched, compiled, and analysed 32 (...) academic studies that use data subject rights as a data collection method. We find that the right of access is the most commonly-used data subject right by researchers, most studies are interested in measuring data subject rights compliance, and that a variety of difficulties exist in conducting research studies with data subject rights. We conclude that researchers should explore other data subject rights for alternative purposes, ease the process of exercising data subject rights, and improve the scalability of these studies. (shrink)

Este trabajo propone un análisis de la actual crisis de las democracias y el giro autoritario a partir de una reflexión sobre las formas de subjetivación. En un primero momento describe lo que consideramos cierto ideal de transparencia, tanto en el modo institucionalista de pensar la democracia como en la utopía neoliberal, y su descuido de la dimensión de las subjetividades política. En un segundo momento se detiene en los estudios sobre la personalidad autoritaria de la primera generación de la (...) Escuela de Frankfurt, para mostrar que los fenómenos de autoritarismo social son “síntomas” que no pueden ser reducidos a su ubicación económica ni explicados solamente por un análisis de las relaciones de fuerzas políticas, sino que deben ser también indagados en la intersección entre ideología y subjetividad. Finalmente, ofrece algunas reflexiones sobre los procesos contemporáneos de subjetivación mediante los cuales se produce la aceptación y la justificación de las condiciones sociales y su rol en las formas sociales de autoritarismo. (shrink)

The question of modernity has provoked a vigorous debate in the work of thinkers from Hegel to Habermas. Our own self-styled postmodern age has seen no end to this debate, which now receives a major and wide-ranging intervention from the theorist and critic Anthony J. Cascardi. Offering an historical account of the origins and transformations of the rational subject or self as it is represented in Descartes, Cervantes, Pascal, Hobbes and the Don Juan myth, he carries his argument across the (...) fields of epistemology, literature, political science, religion and psychology. The modern subject proves to be positioned within conflicting discourses, in a culture characterised by its 'detotalised totality'. Max Weber's concept of 'world disenchantment' enables Cascardi to make a searching critique of modernity's sense of its absoluteness, divorced from an archaic, 'enchanted' world. He advocates in its place a more fruitful relationship between historical analysis and theoretical speculation, offering constructive new alternatives to current orthodoxy regarding subjectivity and modernity. (shrink)

Is the Right to the City (RTTC) still a useful framework for a transformative urban politics? Given recent scholarly criticism of its real-world applications and appropriations, in this paper, we argue that the transformative promise in the RTTC lies beyond its role as a framework for oppositional struggle, and in its normative ends. Building upon Henri Lefebvre's original writing on the subject, we develop a “radical-cooperative” conception of the RTTC. Such a view, which is grounded in the lived experiences of (...) the current city, envisions an urban society in which inhabitants can pursue their material and social needs through self-governed cooperation across social difference. Growing and diversifying spaces and sectors of urban life that are decoupled from global capitalism are, we argue, necessary to create space for this inclusionary politics. While grassroots action is essential to this process, so is multi-scalar support from the state. (shrink)

As a work of a scholarship it seems to me to compare favourably with the best books on the subject, including those by Marcus Singer and Onora Nell.' Prof.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Social, the Outer and the ReflexiveSome More Dimensions of Subjectivity, Schizophrenia, and Its RecoveryThe author reports no conflicts of interest.First of all, I want to express my gratitude to the Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry, Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, and the Karl Jaspers Award Committee for their recognition of my paper "Institution or individuality? Some reflections on the lessons to be learned from personal accounts (...) of recovery from schizophrenia" (Wannberg, 2024). I am also very thankful for Dr. Paul B. Lieberman's (2024) and Pr. Elizabeth Pienkos' (2024) stimulating comments on the paper.In the original paper, I used the case of the first person accounts of recovery from schizophrenia as a paradigm to elucidate the components of subjectivity more generally, as well as their logical relations. My main point was that considering the "recovery claim" as potentially endowed with a meaning sufficiently close to the official definition of the "personal" sense of recovery at stake—that is, in brief, having "become oneself" despite recurring or residual symptoms—invites us to question current phenomenological, narrative and constructionist approaches of the self in psychopathology. By contrast to these, I stressed the need of a conception of the self more sensible to its social and interpersonal dimensions, which I attempted to sketch out notably by resorting to Wittgenstein's (1953/1997) idea of "grammar." I am very happy that both Lieberman and Pienkos see the appeal to the social as a welcome move with regard to prevailing approaches to schizophrenia and its recovery. But what does it really mean for the subjective or the individual to be socially and interpersonally constituted, and how are we to account for that? [End Page 75]At a first glance, appealing to the social seems to be in line with current trends in psychopathology, including, as Pienkos points out, in the phenomenological tradition. She elsewhere announces a "shift in emphasis" currently taking place within phenomenological psychopathology, characterized by an increasing interest in the situated and dated aspects of subjectivity (Pienkos et al., 2023). This is a valuable turn. However, I am quite dubious that the well-known distinction between an "experiential" and a "narrative" self to which Pienkos appeals is apt to do all the conceptual work required to attain a satisfactory conception of the self and its social dimensions. In my original paper, I took the "recovery account" to challenge both these notions. As concerns the experiential dimension, I held that this type of account questions the phenomenologist's assumption that subjectivity is ultimately grounded in lived (self-)experience. Provided that typical symptoms of schizophrenia (e.g., thought insertion) are expressions of a disorder situated at this most "fundamental" level of the self and provided that they are stemming, at least according to one of the most widespread phenomenological models, from a trait-like disposition present before the onset of psychosis (e.g., Henriksen et al., 2019), it is quite natural to think that these symptoms persist in some form in the context of recovery (e.g., as intrusive thoughts or as "thoughts spoken out loud"). This is indeed the case for several of the authors "in recovery" in the Schizophrenia Bulletin's archives (e.g., Greenblat, 2000), which provided the main source of my analysis. But if this is so, we cannot see their recovery claim as an expression of a "whole" self, so to speak. So we must either say that "personal" recovery from schizophrenia is an illusion or a contradiction, or else we must revise the foundational status of the experiential dimension (other possible options are left aside for the purposes of this brief comment). I argue for the revisionist option. For the equation between the subjective and the experiential does not only lead to an unwelcomed skepticism about the recovery account. There are also more straightforward philosophical reasons for refusing it. Wittgenstein (1980) made a first important step by inviting us to better take into account the variability of the psychological concepts. He notably made a crucial categorical distinction between "lived experiences" (like sensations and mental images) and "attitudes" (like beliefs and intentions) such that all concepts which, when used in the first person... (shrink)

The 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol are the main legal documents governing the movement of refugee and asylum seekers across international borders. As the number of displaced persons seeking refuge has reached unprecedented numbers, states have resorted to measures to circumvent their obligations under the Convention. These range from bilateral agreements condemning refugees to their vessels at sea to the excision of certain territories from national jurisdiction. While socio-economic developments and the rise of the worldwide web have led (...) to deterritorialization of vast domains of the economy and the media which enable them to escape from state control, territorial presence, whether on terra firma or on vessels at sea which are functional surrogates for territorial sovereignty, continues to be the basis for the entitlement to human and citizens’ rights. We are facing a dual movement of deterritorialization and territorialization at once, both of which threaten the end of the 1951 Convention. This article is an exercise in non-ideal theory which, nonetheless, has implications for a seminal question in ideal democratic theory as to how to define and justify the boundaries of the demos. If the demos refers to the constitutional subject of a self-determining entity in whose name sovereignty is exercised, regimes of sovereignty, including those which govern the movement of peoples across borders, define the prerogatives as well as obligations of such sovereign entities under international law. The period ushered in by the 1951 Convention was such a sovereignty regime which today may be nearing its end. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.3 (2005) 209-214 [Access article in PDF] Body-Subjects Martin Wyllie Keywords embodied subjectivity, dialectical relationships, body-subject A complete description of melancholic ex-perience and the experience of suffering can only be given by considering the human being as an embodied subject (body-subject) that is already and always situated in the world (body-subject-in-the-world). A full understanding of the body-subject eliminates the mutual exclusivity of certain conceptual categories. (...) There is no need to preserve the dichotomies of subject/object, inner/outer, mind and body within the field of psychopathology because body and mind and world may be reconciled through the concept of the body-subject. The concept of the body-subject provides a means of evolving a common language that could unify many descriptive levels of explanation into a single integrative descriptive framework.Each of the four excellent commentaries moves the debate forward and I attempt to do the same by engaging in some of the issues raised. Without doubt there is more to lived time than outlined within my paper. For example, the useful "implicit/explicit" distinction of temporality (Fuchs 2005) and "cognitive temporal experience" (Kupke 2005) are important for any developing description of lived time. Kupke identifies that the processes and structures in relation to lived time, intersubjective time (subject–other) and cognitive temporal experience (subject–object) as articulated, in my paper, remain ambiguous. This short reply attempts to clarify some of this ambiguity by placing the concept of lived time within a wider "body-subject-in-the-world" framework (Wyllie 2003). This "body-subject-in-the-world" framework attempts to integrate the universal structures of embodiment, lived time, lived space, and intersubjectivity into a unified description of human experience. Concentrating on some of the problems with this framework, I attempt to clarify some of the ambiguity and show how this slowly developing framework can be of benefit in describing psychopathologic phenomena.One problem in articulating any developing conceptual framework, particularly within the domain of philosophical phenomenology, is attempting to find language that is neutral and does not carry with it a large theoretical payload. This "view from nowhere" approach is, however, doomed to failure as one has to inevitably build on and appropriate meanings, concepts and terms that are already given. Broome (2005) clearly demonstrates the importance of scientific models and outlines how scientific explanatory models are necessary and complementary companions to phenomenological models of melancholia. Matthews (2005) argues that "causal relationships" and causal terms are more appropriate to a scientific understand of melancholia and that the use of reductive subject/object, cause/effect language may be inappropriate because I attempt to holistically understand the phenomena of melancholia. Nonetheless, such a holistic approach ultimately includes the language of the molecular (scientific), the subjective [End Page 209] (intentional), and the communal (intersubjective). There flows from Matthews's point the rational for attempting to evolve a common language that could unify descriptive "phenomenological" and prescriptive "scientific" levels of "explanation" into a common integrated explanatory framework. This, however, is no easy task because one has in developing an inclusive description of melancholia to liberate both the "objective" and "subjective" without losing the force of either polarity. For this to occur something in addition to causal relationships needs to be considered when attempting to describe melancholia. A small part of this "something in addition" may be supplied by considering dialectical relationships.The concept of a causal relationship, as opposed to a dialectical relationship, attempts to understand processes in an atomistic fashion and this may be a wholly inadequate way of characterizing the phenomenology of melancholia or, for that matter, human experience. For example, the objects of my immediate experience only constitute a small minority of that which I can experience in that moment, and this is because I can have the experience of absent objects, impossible objects, future objects, past objects, and ideal objects. The directedness of my experience at those moments toward these objects is not brought about because I am causally influenced by the spatial world proximity of the objects in question. It maybe argued my relation to these... (shrink)

When E. M. Forster published the novel Howards End in 1910, it was at the height of ‘the inheritance society’, and the gulf between rich and poor was great and problematic; a fact that Forster was very well aware of. Yet in spite of this, the main character in Howards End, Margaret Schlegel, is a financially independent rentier living off of the wealth of her ancestors, and her wealth increases when she is named the ‘spiritual heir’ of Ruth Wilcox and (...) thus inherits the house of Howards End. In this study, I argue that Forster shifts the focus from inherited money to inherited values in order to pardon a society of great inequality. Drawing on an aristocratic principle, Forster thus deals with inheritance as an inalienable and spiritual subject rather than as a legal and economic one. (shrink)

Kant's over‐reliance on universal reason and his subjection of free will to the moral law can be seen as normalising a particular and restrictive view of autonomous human existence—a view implicit in liberal accounts of education. Drawing on Nietzsche's critique of Kantian thought, this paper argues that the transcendental and unattainable realm of Kantian reason is insufficient as a sole basis for moral thought and action or as the basis of respect for others as ‘ends‐in‐themselves’. For Nietzsche, the possibility for (...) each individual goes well beyond compliance with any imposed system of values, his metaphorical ‘death of God’ leaving room for creativity and difference. (shrink)

An end-desire is a desire for something for itself. This paper argues that such desires are subject to rational criticism.

Book synopsis: There should no longer be any doubt: global capitalism is fast approaching its terminal crisis. Slavoj Žižek has identified the four horsemen of this coming apocalypse: the worldwide ecological crisis; imbalances within the economic system; the biogenetic revolution; and exploding social divisions and ruptures. But, he asks, if the end of capitalism seems to many like the end of the world, how is it possible for Western society to face up to the end times? In a major new (...) analysis of our global situation, Žižek argues that our collective responses to economic Armageddon correspond to the stages of grief: ideological denial, explosions of anger and attempts at bargaining, followed by depression and withdrawal. For this edition, Žižek has written a long afterword that leaves almost no subject untouched, from WikiLeaks to the nature of the Chinese Communist Party. (shrink)

Argues for postcoloniality as a model for philosophical practice. In this ambitious book, Namita Goswami draws on continental philosophy, postcolonial criticism, critical race theory, and African American and postcolonial feminisms to offer postcoloniality as a model for philosophical practice. Moving among and between texts, traditions, and frameworks, including the work of Gayatri Spivak, Theodor Adorno, Barbara Christian, Paul Gilroy, Neil Lazarus, and Hortense Spillers, among others, she charts a journey that takes us beyond Eurocentrism by understanding postcoloniality as the pursuit (...) of heterogeneity, that is, of a non-antagonistic understanding of difference. Recognizing that philosophy, feminism, and postcolonial theory share a common concern with the concept of heterogeneity, Goswami shows how postcoloniality empowers us to engage more productively the relationships between these disciplines. Subjects That Matter confronts the ways Eurocentrism, an identity politics that considers difference as inherently oppositional, relegates minority traditions to a diagnostic and/or corrective standpoint to prevent their general implications from playing a critical and transformative role in how we understand subjectivity and agency. Through unexpected, often surprising, and thought-provoking analytic connections and continuities, this book’s interdisciplinary approach reveals a postcolonial pluralism that expands philosophical resources, confounds and limits our habitual disciplinary lexicons, and opens up new areas of inquiry. “This is a groundbreaking contribution to a number of distinct but intersecting fields.” — Amy Allen, author of The End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory. (shrink)

Rooted in real world observations, this book questions the concept of tradition In his introduction, Nezar AlSayyad discusses the meanings of the word 'tradition' and the current debates about the 'end of tradition'. Thereafter the book is divided into three parts. The three chapters in Part I explore the inextricable link between 'tradition' and 'modern', revealing the geopolitical implications of this link. Part II looks at tradition as a process of invention and here the three chapters are all concerned with (...) the making of landscapes and landscape myths, showing how the spectacle of history can be aestheticized and naturalized. Finally, Part III shows how tradition is a regime, programmed and policed and how it has been deployed, resisted, and reworked through hegemonic struggles that seek to create both built environments and citizen-subjects. (shrink)

The educational doctrine of The Great Didactic as one of the “grand narratives” suffered its complete setback as a result of events that took place in Paris in 1968. Students stopped believing in the correctness of the entrenched education system with its goals and ideals, and from the inside they “blew up” the “walls” of universities, which continued to follow the traditional teaching methods and content of the learning process. According to the author of this study, the ideological explosion inside (...) the society in the form of a revolutionary riot of students of the Parisian universities in May 1968, who protested against the existing education system as a whole and against the current structure of the relationship between the actors of the educational process, served as a symbolic and actual end of the didactic era of John Amos Comenius and as a beginning of a new poststructuralist didactics. It is important to note that the destruction of the boundaries of the traditional educational space, which led to the emergence of a new type of university, was precisely due to the forces within the classroom curriculum. Today pedagogy is unable autonomously, through its own theories and scientific instruments to determine whom to teach because the student from the subject turns into a subject+, virtually migrating in the cyber-educational space through all sorts of gadgets, which form the prosthetic skeleton of the modern learners - schoolchildren, students. The trajectory of child’s education should not be rigidly determined by curricula and programmes. Teaching in the school should be organized by a teacher on the principle of “ad hoc.”. (shrink)

The author presents a history of the attempts to find the final "theory of everything," gives a forceful argument that one can never be found, and a warning that the compromises necessary to produce a final theory may well undermine the rules of doing good science. At the heart of the story is the rise of the particle physicists and their attempts to reach far out into the cosmos for a unifying theory. Unable to subject their findings and theories to (...) experimental scrutiny, they have moved into a world governed entirely by mathematical and highly speculative theories, none of which can be empirically verified. "Does physics then become a branch of aesthetics?" Lindley asks. For an opposing viewpoint, see Stephen Weinberg's Dreams of a Final Theory. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

It has become increasingly common for philosophers to distinguish between objective and subjective rightness, and there has been much discussion recently about what an adequate theory of subjective rightness looks like. In this article, I propose a new theory of subjective rightness. According to it, an action is subjectively right if and only if it minimizes expected objective wrongness. I explain this theory in detail and argue that it avoids many of the problems that other theories of (...) subjective rightness face. I end by responding to some objections. (shrink)

This article investigates a tension that arises in Hegel’s aesthetic theory between theoretical and practical forms of reason. This tension, I argue, stems from Hegel’s appropriation of an Aristotelian framework for a historically unfolding social teleology which puts practical reason to work for the aims of theoretical reason. Recognizing that this aspect of Hegel’s dialectic is essential in overcoming problems left in Kant’s transcendental idealism, the appearance of incongruence does not lessen. Grouped together with absolute spirit, Hegel positions art as (...) a transitory mode of mind, a vehicle, which aims to raise spirit to the higher cognition of philosophy. When the unfolding absolute concept becomes too complex for articulation in the material, art must end, as spirit’s message can be expressed only through the non-material form of philosophy. This study focuses on the ambivalence found in Hegel’s writings regarding his account of historical completion. Though Hegel sees in the Absolute a metaphysical solution to the unity of subject and object, the practical aspects of the unity appear to falter when philosophy becomes the dominant mode of expression at the close of a historical cycle. In Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel links his notion of the Absolute, albeit with modification, to Aristotle’s nous. As described in De Anima, this entails a progression in which active and possible intellect rise to the level of the eternal, while passive intellect, the imaginative element, passes on with the body. Because the architecture of Aristotle’s nous, which is not in line with his defense of poetry, is integrated into the blueprint of Hegel’s absolute, an unresolved tension emerges in the spirit of art. A divergence of aims is forced to the surface through Hegel’s application of a template for achievement of theoretical knowledge, with an end in the universal, to a form of practical knowing which has an end in the particular. (shrink)

There is disagreement among contemporary theorists regarding human well-being. On one hand there are “substantive good” views, according to which the most important elements of a person’s well-being result from her nature as a human, rational, and/or sentient being. On the other hand there are “agent-constituted” views, which contend that a person’s well-being is constituted by her particular aims, desires, and/or preferences. Each approach captures important features of human well-being, but neither can provide a complete account: agent-constituted theories have difficulty (...) accounting for the normativity of their claims, and substantive good theories have difficulty accounting for how a person’s actually adopted aims shape what is good for her and hence what she has reason to do. I articulate and defend a hybrid view that equals these approaches in systematicity and completeness of explanation yet seeks to surpass them in coherence with our ordinary judgments about what human well-being consists in. This hybrid view maintains, with agent-constituted theories, that a person’s well-being is (1) significantly constituted by her actually adopted aims; (2) deeply contingent; (3) agent-relative; (4) significantly dependent on spatially and temporally remote events; and (5) significantly independent of her experiences. The hybrid view also maintains, with substantive good theories, that a person’s well-being is (6) in part determined by facts independent of her aims, desires, and preferences; (7) such that all her aims are subject to critical evaluation and revision; and (8) constituted by her aims only if these aims are choiceworthy. (shrink)

This chapter explains a key tenet of the moral theory that I call Kantsequentialism. That tenet is Kantian Telicism: the view that a subject’s will along with the value of things determine their legitimate ends, which include all their discretionary ends (say, mastering kung fu or traveling the world) as well as the following four obligatory ends: (a) never manifesting a lack of recognition respect for a person, (b) the well-being of every other existing sentient being, (c) the maximization of (...) the impersonal good, and (d) the minimization of the risk of any personal or impersonal disaster. This tenet is crucial because, on Kantsequentialism, what an agent morally ought to do is a function of what's best in terms of achieving their legitimate ends. (shrink)

Context: The integration of data measured in first- and third-person frameworks is a challenge that becomes more prominent as we attempt to refine the ties between the dimensions we assume to be objective and our experience itself. As a result, cognitive science has been a target for criticism from the epistemological and methodological point of view, which has resulted in the emergence of new approaches. Neurophenomenology has been proposed as a means to address these limitations. The methodological application of this (...) discipline, even in its mildest form, enriches the methodology typically used in cognitive sciences. Problem: Nowadays psychological studies are difficult to replicate. As a way to achieve replication of results published in a previous study in order to develop a methodological adaptation suitable for electroencephalographic measurements in a subsequent experiment, first-person accounts from the participants in our pilot study were included in the experiment construction. This study’s objective is to show the benefit of including a mild-neurophenomenology-inspired approach in the adaptation from an original paradigm, which requires, foremost, the ability to replicate the original results. Method: Interviews with open and semi-structured questions were carried out at the end of an Approach-Avoidance Task (AAT. The first-person reports, together with the behavioral outcomes of each pilot, were taken into account for the development of the next piloting phase until replication of the original results was achieved, and the final experimental design was elaborated. Results: A sequence of four pilots, where the integration of third- and first-person information derived from subjects’ behavior and reported experiences while carrying them out rendered the behavioral replication we sought to achieve, providing support for a first-person enriched cognitive science paradigm. Implications: Including first-person accounts systematically during the development and performance of classic cognitive paradigms ensures that those paradigms are measuring what they claim to measure. This is the next logical step to improve replication rates, to refine the explanation of the results and avoid confounding third-person data interpretation. Constructivist content: Including first-person experiences and acknowledging the active role that participants’ experiences regarding the paradigm had in the modeling of its final version is in concordance with a constructivist standing. (shrink)

It is a familiar criticism of Subject-Sensitive Invariantism that the view makes incorrect predictions about cases in which the attributor of knowledge is in a high-stakes situation and the subject of the attribution in a low-stakes situation. In a recent paper in this journal, Brian Kim has argued that the mentioned type of case should be ignored, since the relevant knowledge ascriptions are inappropriate in virtue of violating an epistemic norm of presupposing. I show, pace Kim, that the mentioned utterances (...) do not carry factivity presuppositions. To this end I discuss a phenomenon known as presupposition suspension, which is widely associated with the presuppositions of epistemic factives such as know that p or discover that p. I argue further that the problem of unknown presuppositions discussed by Kim can be circumvented by slightly amending the cases at hand. In particular, I demonstrate that factivity presuppositions are unobjectionable in problem cases in which the high-stakes ascriber knows the presuppositions at issue to be true. (shrink)

Against the background of degeneration and the perceived threat to the nation’s health and stock, family politics came to constitute an important site for eugenic discourses and interventions. Eugenic regulation of reproductive sexuality and marriage was not only pursued through ‘negative’ eugenics but also through educational policies targeted at young adults and youth. Switzerland serves as a useful case to explore a general idea, namely the limitations for eugenicists of exploiting the concept of a rational subject in order to achieve (...) their ends. Practices of ‘positive eugenics’ crucially hinged on the utilitarian principle of rationality underpinning positive eugenics which this paper seeks to elaborate. Eugenicists devised tools to deal efficiently with social problems on a collective as well as an individual basis by deploying technologies of government which conceived individuals to be members of a population who were each held responsible for the generation of healthy future generations. As a form of ‘sustaining, multiplying and ordering life’ eugenics thus relied on the premise that its ideas would be adopted through an appeal to rationality and, where this was insufficient, through a series of coercive measures. Relying on conviction and education about the merits of eugenics, however, posed particular problems to positive eugenic thinking and practice. (shrink)

The Liverpool Care Pathway for the Dying has recently been the topic of substantial media interest and also been subject to the independent Neuberger Review. This review has identified clear failings in some areas of care and recommended the Liverpool Care Pathway be phased out. I argue that while the evidence gathered of poor incidences of practice by the Review is of genuine concern for end of life care, the inferences drawn from this evidence are inconsistent with the causes for (...) the concern. Seeking to end an approach that is widely seen as best practice and which can genuinely deliver high quality care because of negative impressions that have been formed from failing to implement it properly is not a good basis for radically overhauling our approach to end of life care. I conclude that improvements in training, communication, and ethical decision-making, without the added demand to end the Liverpool Care Pathway would have resulted in a genuine advance in end of life care. (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)

Departing from Bourdieu's collective habitus, this essay develops a theory of the subjectivity of habitus, meaning the social-psychological processes comprising the agent and fueling deliberation. By incorporating George Ainslie's theory of the will and deliberation as the intertemporal bargaining of a population of interests, I theorize the “saturated agent” composed of an economy of interests, analogous to Bourdieu's “economy of practices” invested and saturated with cultural capital. Here culturally saturated interests negotiate strategically within the agent, with the ending balance constituting (...) the habitus. Additionally, reflexivity becomes amenable to habitus as “desaturation” or suspending the commitment to a set of culturally saturated interests as a result of a crisis, followed by “resaturation”, the restructuring of the economy of interests. (shrink)

For decades, worries about undue inducement have Pervaded clinical research, and are especially common when research is accompanied by payment or conducted in developing countries. Few ethical judgments carry as much moral opprobrium or are thought to undermine the ethical soundness of a clinical trial as thoroughly as undue inducement. Indeed, the admonition to prevent undue inducement is one of the few explicit instructions in the Common Rules requirements for informed consent.Despite their long history and pervasiveness, charges of undue inducement (...) in clinical research are almost always mistaken. Indeed, I will advance an even more radical claim: Aresearch trial that otherwise fulfills the fundamental ethical requirements for human subjects research inherently cannot create the possibility of undue inducement because substantial risk of serious harm isprecluded. Charges of undue inducement tend to express displaced and mislabeled ethical concerns about other aspects of human subjects research. Consequently, claims of undue inducement should rarely be made, and when they are advanced should be treated with skepticism, placing a heavy burden of proofon those advancing such charges. (shrink)

For decades, worries about undue inducement have Pervaded clinical research, and are especially common when research is accompanied by payment or conducted in developing countries. Few ethical judgments carry as much moral opprobrium or are thought to undermine the ethical soundness of a clinical trial as thoroughly as undue inducement. Indeed, the admonition to prevent undue inducement is one of the few explicit instructions in the Common Rules requirements for informed consent.Despite their long history and pervasiveness, charges of undue inducement (...) in clinical research are almost always mistaken. Indeed, I will advance an even more radical claim: Aresearch trial that otherwise fulfills the fundamental ethical requirements for human subjects research inherently cannot create the possibility of undue inducement because substantial risk of serious harm isprecluded. Charges of undue inducement tend to express displaced and mislabeled ethical concerns about other aspects of human subjects research. Consequently, claims of undue inducement should rarely be made, and when they are advanced should be treated with skepticism, placing a heavy burden of proofon those advancing such charges. (shrink)