Between Feminism and Materialism is a bold attempt to make sense of the relationship between feminist theory and capitalism. Addressing a number of philosophical problems that have engaged feminists over the last few decades - universals and reason, nature and essentialism, identity and non-identity, sex and gender, power and patriarchy, local and global - this innovative book breaks through feminist waves and explains the paradoxes of feminist theory by demonstrating the on-going relevance of dialectics and the concepts of exploitation, ideology, (...) and reification. Drawing on first, second and third 'waves' of feminist theory, this exciting combination of existentialism, phenomenology and critical theory delivers a problem-based, micro-political and coalitional feminism ready to respond to the challenges presented by our thoroughly modern times. (shrink)

In the current academic climate, teaching is often seen as secondary to research. Teaching Philosophy seeks to bring teaching philosophy higher on the academic agenda.An international team of contributors, all of whom share the view that philosophy is a subject that can transform students, offers practical guidance and advice for teachers of philosophy. The book suggests ways in which the teaching of philosophy at undergraduate level might be facilitated. Some of the essays place the emphasis on individual self discovery, others (...) focus on the wider political context, many offer practical ideas for enhancing the teaching of philosophy through exercises that engage students in often unconventional ways. The integration of students' views on teaching provides a necessary reminder that teaching is not a one-way process, but a project that will ultimately succeed through cooperation and a shared sense of achievement amongst participants. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the idea ‘becoming-woman’ is an attempt to transform embodied experience but, because it is unable to concern itself with mechanisms, structures and processes of sexual differentiation, fails in this task. In the first section I elaborate the relationship between becoming-woman and Deleuze's ‘superior’ or ‘transcendental’ empiricism and suggest that problems can be traced back to an underlying Humean empiricism. Along with Hume, Deleuze, it seems, presumes a bundle model of the object which dissolves things (...) into episodic objects of perception and leaves the subject unable to distinguish between fanciful objects, erroneous perception and any other thing. The empiricist ontology thus has consequences for epistemology and leaves us unable to question the conservative tendencies of common sense. As an alternative to transcendental empiricism, the second section considers how transcendental realism, with its ontological commitment to the mind-independent character of things, may provide a more fruitful and productive line of enquiry. Given that there is such a choice, in the third section I speculate as to the specific desires that drive such philosophical abstraction; abstraction which culminates in the non sex-specific figure becoming-woman whilst disguising the mind-independent character of the mechanisms, structures and objects that affect the subject. So I conclude that, despite all appearances of radicalism, the philosophical model ‘becoming-woman’ – aligned as it is with schizo-processes and the philosophical loss of mind-independent things – is more of the same and sexual difference remains a hidden term. Due to this, I believe that feminists should view it with suspicion. (shrink)

Expressionism, Deleuze's philosophical commentary on Spinoza, is a critically important work because its conclusions provide the foundations for Deleuze's later metaphysical speculations on the nature of power, the body, difference and singularities. Deleuze and Spinoza is the first book to examine Deleuze's philosophical assessment of Spinoza and appraise his arguments concerning the Absolute, the philosophy of mind, epistemology and moral and political philosophy. The author respects and disagrees with Deleuze the philosopher and suggests that his arguments not only lead to (...) eliminativism and an Hobbesian politics but that they also cast a mystifying spell. (shrink)

This paper examines the problem of natural kinds, a key problem within feminist theory, and argues for a non-instrumental realist account of group identity. I suggest that a reconstructed theory of essence helps to make sense of group membership because it combines a conventional account of groups with a realist commitment to there being something responsible for the appearance of regularities in the world. The claim that natural kind membership is a matter of similarity relationships manages to avoid metaphysical, universal (...) property-based essentialism and, at the same time, points to interested generative mechanisms underlying the appearance of the regularities that make sense of kind membership. Finally, I suggest that the concepts 'real essence' and 'internal constitution' offer a new way to conceive 'sex' and 'gender', and that Adorno's notion of non-identity is a way to think group membership non-instrumentally. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the current academic debate on the nature of embodied, intentional consciousness, specifically the attempt to inaugurate a rapprochement between phenomenological existentialism and critical theory. This is accomplished through a critical comparison of the concepts of negative experience and nonidentity in Theodor Adorno's negative dialectics and Jean-Paul Sartre's early phenomenology. By comparing how each engages with Hegel, I suggest that Sartre offers a broad, anthropological account of negative experience and nonidentity helpful to critical theorists but that there (...) remains a critical deficit which Adorno's more restricted—and political—sense of nonidentity remedies. Sartre's anthropological portrayal of ‘persistent negation’ worries Adorno but I suggest that it can be understood as a pragmatic presupposition for problem-solving rather than as a transcendental condition of experience. (shrink)

Gender, Teaching and Research in Higher Education presents new insights and research into contemporary problems, practical solutions, and the complex roles of teaching and learning in the international academy. Drawing together new research from contributors spanning a range of international and interdisciplinary perspectives, this book discusses topics of particular importance in the UK, USA, Australasia and South Africa, including: curriculum, boundary disciplines and research assessments, the Higher Education institution, educational practice, authority and authorization, teaching and counselling. Discussion of quality audits, (...) curriculum modifications, teaching certificates and other key topics, add to this book's value in informing current debate and providing valuable research aids for education into the 21st Century. (shrink)

Many philosopers and social theorists pursue the notion that recognition is a fruitful framework for engaging with a social analysis of moral and political life, and – more critically – that the failure of recognition is a feature of alienation. This article argues that the thrust of these arguments can be properly attuned by deploying a dual model of recognition that draws especially on Sartre’s work. Where there is struggle for recognition between subjects, the object of struggle is not the (...) recognition of identity, or even of difference, but the recognition of non-identity. The claim will be that this practical attitude of recognition designates inter-subjective attitudes that can institute normative practices whereby agents’ claims are motivated by the epistemic virtue of non-identity. (shrink)

This chapter examines the relationship between feminist theory and critical theory in Gillian Howie’s Between Feminism and Materialism, and the relation of both to philosophy. The chapter suggests that the relation between feminist theory and critical theory is a contradictory one in which the partners are at the same time close and yet estranged. It examines how Howie characterises this state of affairs and affirms her aim of 'putting Critical Theory to work for feminist theory’, explaining how (...) her return to a set of revivified Marxist categories does this. However, it also argues that Howie’s specific attempt to bring a certain aspect of critical theory to bear on the understanding of sex and gender is limited by its relation to feminist philosophy. But it ends by suggesting that the work undertaken in Between Feminism and Materialism can be extended in another direction to begin the project of a critical theory of sex and a critique of the gender industry. (shrink)

Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?—Marilynne RobinsonMarilynne Robinson, Gilead (London: Virago Press, 2004), p. 280.Preamble: Going the Bloody Hard WayThe writings of Pamela Sue Anderson and Gillian Howie have been, and continue to be, important in helping to shape the development of my own philosophical vision. Yet my commitment to (...) (a fairly traditional) theism marks a point of departure between my work and theirs. Given their quite reasonable disinclination to persist with traditional theism, especially its concept of divine transcendence,Not only does an uncritical approach to the theistic conception of divine transcendence serve to sacralise hierarchical relationship between men and women, such that the latter is subordinate to the former, it also, as Anderson reminds us, sustains epistemic and practical norms that quietly yet pot. (shrink)

Over three decades, Gillian Howie wrote at the forefront of philosophy and critical theory, before her untimely death in 2013. This interdisciplinary collection uses her writings to explore the productive, yet often resistant, interrelationship between feminism and critical theory, examining the potential of Howie's particular form of materialism. The contributors also bring to this debate a serious engagement with Howie's late turn towards philosophies of mortality, therapy and 'living with dying'. The volume considers how differently embodied (...) subjects are positioned within public institutions, discourses and spaces, and the role of philosophy, art, film, photography, and literature, in facing situations such as sexual oppression and life-limiting illness. (shrink)

The present special issue of Sophia on ‘feminist philosophy of religion’ is dedicated to Gillian O. Howie who died in 2013. This essay is a short obituary touching on Howie’s philosophical and personal legacy. The intention is to give a brief overview of Howie as a courageous woman with boundless intellectual curiosity and passionate commitments to feminist activities; these include writing and living her philosophical vision for creating a just society with collective political action. Howie (...) inspired both women and men in philosophy—especially, but not only, feminist philosophers of religion—with her work on the critical role of sexual difference in life today. (shrink)

This essay traces the notion of abstraction through the works of Gillian Howie as a means of thinking through the nature of critique within philosophy of religion. In particular, it argues that Howie’s recovery of a more productive conception of abstraction in her late Between Feminism and Materialism is closely linked to the resurgence of real abstraction in recent Marxist theory. From these shifts, one can derive both an enriched conception of religion as real abstraction and a (...) method of critical history that offers a genuine alternative within the contemporary study of philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Judaism and Modernity: Philosophical Essays challenges the philosophical presentation of Judaism as the sublime 'other' of modernity. Here, Gillian Rose develops a philosophical alternative to deconstruction and post-modernism by critically re-engaging the social and political issues at stake in every reconstruction.

In Mourning Becomes the Law, Gillian Rose takes us beyond the impasse of post-modernism or 'despairing rationalism withour reason'. Arguing that the post-modern search for a 'new ethics' and ironic philosophy are incoherent, she breathes new life into the debates concerning power and domination, transcendence and eternity. Mourning Becomes the Law is the philosophical counterpart to Gillian Rose's highly acclaimed memoir Love's Work. She extends similar clarity and insight to discussions of architecture, cinema, painting and poetry, through which (...) relations between the formation of the individual and the theory of justice are connected. At the heart of this reconnection lies a reflection on the significance of the Holocaust and Judaism. Mourning Becomes the Law reinvents the classical analogy of the soul, the city and the sacred. It returns philosophy, Nietzsche's 'bestowing virtue', to the pulse of our intellectual and political culture. (shrink)

The article traces the origination of the psychological concept of the ‘herd instinct’, popularized by British surgeon Wilfred Trotter, locating this in a distinctive moment of dialogue between the natural and human sciences. It challenges the incorrect association of Trotter’s model with the crowd theory of Gustave Le Bon and negative commentaries on mass culture. In contrast, it shows that Trotter’s model rests on imitation and suggestion not as the sign of a derogated culture but as the ground of associated (...) life, with altruism as its highest expression. His argument that individuals possessed an inherent capacity for association and a disposition to act in the interests of the social group was designed to challenge the hierarchical models of Social Darwinism. Instead, he highlighted the evolutionary importance of variability and innovation and proposed a horizontal model of cooperation as the basis of adaptation. Trotter’s narrative of human potential pre-dated and informed Freud’s own collective psychology, as well as providing an influential challenge to his theory of repression. The widespread take-up of Trotter’s model of the herd instinct in the context of futures thinking, forming the basis of an egalitarian approach to governance that proposed human fulfilment and social progress as complementary aims, supports the article’s argument that psychological approaches to collectivity were well established prior to the First World War rather than formed in response to it, and that these were embedded within social thinking across the political spectrum, rather than derived for instrumentally conservative purposes. (shrink)

As global business operations expand, managers need more knowledge of foreign cultures, in particular, information on the ethics of doing business across borders. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to share the Islamic perspective on business ethics, little known in the west, which may stimulate further thinking and debate on the relationships between ethics and business, and to provide some knowledge of Islamic philosophy in order to help managers do business in Muslim cultures. The case of Egypt illustrates some (...) divergence between Islamic philosophy and practice in economic life. The paper concludes with managerial implications and suggestions for further research. (shrink)

Nancy Cartwright's 1983 book How the Laws of Physics Lie argued that theories of physics often make use of idealisations, and that as a result many of these theories were not true. The present paper looks at idealisation in logic and argues that, at least sometimes, the laws of logic fail to be true. That might be taken as a kind of skepticism, but I argue rather that idealisation is a legitimate tool in logic, just as in physics, and recognising (...) this frees logicians up to use false laws where these are helpful. (shrink)

Socioeconomic differences in behaviour are pervasive and well documented, but their causes are not yet well understood. Here, we make the case that a cluster of behaviours is associated with lower socioeconomic status, which we call “the behavioural constellation of deprivation.” We propose that the relatively limited control associated with lower SES curtails the extent to which people can expect to realise deferred rewards, leading to more present-oriented behaviour in a range of domains. We illustrate this idea using the specific (...) factor of extrinsic mortality risk, an important factor in evolutionary theoretical models. We emphasise the idea that the present-oriented behaviours of the constellation are a contextually appropriate response to structural and ecological factors rather than a pathology or a failure of willpower. We highlight some principles from evolutionary theoretical models that can deepen our understanding of how socioeconomic inequalities can become amplified and embedded. These principles are that small initial disparities can lead to larger eventual inequalities, feedback loops can embed early-life circumstances, constraints can breed further constraints, and feedback loops can operate over generations. We discuss some of the mechanisms by which SES may influence behaviour. We then review how the contextually appropriate response perspective that we have outlined fits with other findings about control and temporal discounting. Finally, we discuss the implications of this interpretation for research and policy. (shrink)

A radical new assessment of Hegel revealing the problems and limitations of sociological method.

This paper examines beliefs about four aspects of ethical leadership – Character/Integrity, Altruism, Collective Motivation and Encouragement – in Germany and the United States using data from Project GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness) and a supplemental analysis. Within the context of a push toward convergence driven by the demands of globalization and the pull toward divergence underpinned by different cultural values and philosophies in the two countries, we focus on two questions: Do middle managers from the United States (...) and Germany differ in their beliefs about ethical leadership? And, do individuals from these two countries attribute different characteristics to ethical leaders? Results provide evidence that while German and US middle managers, on average, differed in the degree of endorsement for each aspect, they each endorsed Character/Integrity, Collective Motivation and Encouragement as important for effective leadership and had a more neutral view of the importance of Altruism . The findings are reviewed within the social-cultural context of each country. (shrink)

This paper examines beliefs about four aspects of ethical leadership –Character/Integrity, Altruism, Collective Motivation and Encouragement– in Germany and the United States using data from Project GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness) and a supplemental analysis. Within the context of a push toward convergence driven by the demands of globalization and the pull toward divergence underpinned by different cultural values and philosophies in the two countries, we focus on two questions: Do middle managers from the United States and Germany (...) differ in their beliefs about ethical leadership? And, do individuals from these two countries attribute different characteristics to ethical leaders? Results provide evidence that while German and US middle managers, on average, differed in the degree of endorsement for each aspect, they each endorsed Character/Integrity, Collective Motivation and Encouragement as important for effective leadership and had a more neutral view of the importance of Altruism. The findings are reviewed within the social-cultural context of each country. (shrink)

The book investigates the ways in which state-centred approaches to international relations have limited our understanding of global, political, economic and cultural processes. By assessing a wide range of such state-centred work, Youngs identifies the challenges we must address to grasp the complexity of the contemporary world.

Why is it important for people to agree on and articulate shared reasons for just laws, rather than whatever reasons they personally find compelling? What, if any, practical role does public reason play in liberal democratic politics? We argue that the practical role of public reason can be better appreciated by examining the confluence of normative and positive political theory; the former represented here by liberal social contract theory of John Rawls and others, and the latter by rational choice or (...) game theory. Citizens in a diverse society face a practical as well as a moral problem. How can they have confidence that others will reciprocate their commitment to supporting governing principles that depart from their own ideal conceptions of truth and value in order to be reasonable to all? Citizens face a practical problem of mutual assurance that public reason helps them solve, and solve as a matter of common knowledge. The solution, on both views, requires citizens’ reciprocal commitment to basing law on a system of shared reasons. Both views place public reason at the core of liberal democratic politics in conditions of diversity, and for quite similar reasons. Our argument illustrates the complementary roles of positive and values-based analysis in constitutional design. (shrink)

Egypt, a less affluent, predominantly Muslim country, suffers from numerous forms of environmental pollution, some severe. This study investigates pro-environmental behaviors of citizens in Cairo, Egypt’s largest metropolis, and studies the relationship between pro-environmental behavior and demographic variables, beliefs, values, and religiosity. Analysis shows that three types of pro-environmental behavior are present: Public Sphere, Private Sphere, and Activist Behavior, with the latter occurring less frequently. Importantly, the study identifies an ecocentric value among respondents which is correlated with Public Sphere Behavior. (...) It also confirms earlier research that characterized Egyptians’ perceptions of the environment as being set in the context of health and cleanliness. Religious teachings and religiosity are shown to be associated with pro-environmental behavior, thus lending support to the presence of an Islamic environmental ethic. (shrink)

We live in a world in which one of every five persons does not get enough to eat. Each day more than ten thousand people die of starvation; thousands more, both adults and children, suffer brain damage and other functional abnormalities because of malnutrition. Often there is simply not enough drinking water or not enough food available. Some people must do without. A drought has come and some are allowed to die. Or, less food has been grown because less fertilizer (...) was imported and hundreds or thousands die. (shrink)

: This paper examines the nature of the harm-benefit tradeoff in early clinical research for interventions that involve remote possibility of direct benefit and likelihood of direct harms to research participants with fatal prognoses, by drawing on the example of gene transfer trials for glioblastoma multiforme. We argue that the appeal made by the component approach to clinical equipoise fails to account fully for the nature of the harm-benefit tradeoff—individual harm for social benefit—that would be required to justify such research. (...) An analysis of what we label "collateral affective benefits," such as the experience of hope or exercise of altruism, shows that the existence of these motivations reinforces rather than mitigates the necessity of justification by reference to social benefit. Evaluations of social benefit must be taken seriously in the research ethics review process to avoid the exploitation of research participants' motivations of hope or altruism and to avoid the possibility of inadvertent exploitation of high-risk research participants and the harms that would associate with such exploitation. (shrink)

In recent years, housing costs have outpaced incomes in the United States, resulting in millions of eviction filings each year. Yet no study has examined the link between eviction and voting. Drawing on a novel data set that combines tens of millions of eviction and voting records, this article finds that residential eviction rates negatively impacted voter turnout during the 2016 presidential election. Results from a generalized additive model show eviction’s effect on voter turnout to be strongest in neighborhoods with (...) relatively low rates of displacement. To address endogeneity bias and estimate the causal effect of eviction on voting, the analysis treats commercial evictions as an instrument for residential evictions, finding that increases in neighborhood eviction rates led to substantial declines in voter turnout. This study demonstrates that the impact of eviction reverberates far beyond housing loss, affecting democratic participation. (shrink)

Pietroski successfully dismantles the idea of a formal semantic theory based on direct truth conditions and offers new and formally constrained alternatives. In this paper, I summarize the arguments but also provide a number of test cases to show that refusing to accept Pietroski's conclusions condemns the field to constantly restating and technically evading its own self‐created paradoxes. In the final section, I offer some positive proposals in the spirit of the Pietroskian enterprise with respect to thematic roles.

Facial appearance changes with age and health affecting skin color as well as facial and head hair. Yet somehow the brain is able to see past shared structure and dynamic deformations to focus on subtle details that distinguish one face from another. This article argues that the brain takes an efficient approach to this problem using prior knowledge about the structure of faces in its analysis. It employs intrinsic norms to focus on subtle variations in the shared face configuration that (...) differentiate one face from another. The study reviews evidence that the brain uses multiple norms to extract face identity that these norms are shaped by visual experience, and that norm-based coding is well-suited to meeting the challenges of image-based face perception mentioned above. By encoding faces with reference to stored perceptual norms the visual system can focus on what is unique to each individual, allowing for the discrimination of thousands of faces despite their similarity. (shrink)

Some writers object to logical pluralism on the grounds that logic is normative. The rough idea is that the relation of logical consequence has consequences for what we ought to think and h...

This article focuses on the experiences of becoming and being mothers for lesbian co-parents who have children via donor insemination. Rather than the presence of children incorporating lesbians into the mainstream as “honorary heterosexuals,” the author argues that lesbian parenting represents a radical and radicalizing challenge to heterosexual norms that govern parenting roles and identities. It undermines traditional notions of the family and the heterosexual monopoly of reproduction. The same-sex context together with successful collaboration with donors supports the refashioning of (...) kinship relationships. An attentiveness to the gender dynamics of sexuality illuminates further contestations. The author argues that their structural similarities as women place them in contradiction with dominant gender practices enacted in heterosexual relationships. This facilitates the evaluation and negotiation of more egalitarian approaches to work and parenting, and through their operationalization, much of the logic supporting conventional divisions of labor is undermined. (shrink)