Concerned with the idea of the self, this text challenges what it perceives to be the bleak deconstructionist views of ceaseless change with a discussion and depiction of the self in new vocabulary - an action-oriented self defined by the ways in which it communicates.

Interweaves elements of Kristevan and Heideggerian thought in order to reconstruct a linguistically embedded, existentially and affectively rich, dialectical model of willed self-regulation.

Ramsey Eric Ramsey, The Long Path to Nearness: A Contribution to a Corporeal Philosophy of Communication and the Groundwork for an Ethics of Relief (reviewed by Patricia Huntington).

Patricia Joy Huntington reflects that loneliness does not only consist of the heartfelt absences of a friend, partner, spouse, or child, but rather stems from a radical breach in one's life journey. In this conceptually rigorous and warmly poetic book, Huntington develops a unique philosophy of receptivity and an original portrait of redemptive suffering. By fully exploring notions of pain, she also examines how the relation between the heart's musical attunement and meaning-filled life passages can lead one (...) to a more spiritual philosophy and a more independent life. Huntington reveals the maternal face of God and encourages the feminine divine in her poignant narrative of overcoming. This deeply philosophical meditation offers a nuanced view of religious experience, providence, and transcendence. (shrink)

My dissertation traces key aspects of the conceptual influence of Heidegger's work on feminist poststructuralist theories. This archeology enables me to indicate that poststructualism cannot provide the foundation necessary to forming three normative ideals requisite to a viable feminist theory: personal autonomy, heterogeneous community, and solidarity. I argue that certain versions of poststructuralism repeat Heidegger's abstraction from an hermeneutics of suspicion and his totalizing rejection of modernity. Without a theory of willed ignorance, post-Lacanian feminism undercuts women's agency. And, without tying (...) a vision of Sittlichkeit to ideology critique, feminist ethics falls prey to abstraction and antinormativism. ;In Part I, I recover a dialectical theory of autonomy that can account for the deliberate ways that subjects mediate their environment. In Part II, I flesh out Heidegger's and Irigaray's respective visions of heterogeneous community. In Part III, however, I show how neither Heidegger nor US appropriations of Irigaray yield either a sufficiently complex moral theory or a theory of solidarity. After delineating Heidegger's antinormative tendencies, I reveal similar deficiencies in the works of Irigaray and Drucilla Cornell. I demonstrate that the nominalist underpinnings of post-Lacanian feminism threaten to normalize a fragmented view of pluralism rather than tackle the hard problem of developing interactive models of universalism and of solidarity. ;I conclude by developing features of a feminist methodology that can support solidarity and avoid antinormativism. These features include: a hermeneutic of the symbolic order complex enough to address the overlap between race, class and gender; grounding theory in ideology critique; a model of critical social consciousness rooted in the ability to disdain the immiseration of others and to acknowledge one's own interests; and an interactionist basis for moral theory. (shrink)

One of the most pressing and urgent academic tasks of the day is to dismantle the persistent Eurocentrism of philosophy. In the quest to remedy the white, middle-class, heteronormative, and European biases of philosophy's initial expressions, feminist theorizing has cultivated culturally and ethnically specific forms, intersectional analyses, and global articulations. Buddhism beyond Gender and Women and Buddhist Philosophy breathe new vitality into these pursuits. Both books underscore the immense potential of the core doctrines of Buddhist philosophy, such as the nonsubstantialist (...) view of self, the nondualistic outlook, and the ontological premise of the interdependence of all beings, for overcoming Western hierarchies, reified conceptions of identity, and pernicious dichotomies. The two women represented in these books—Rita Gross herself and Kim Iryŏp, a Buddhist nun —ground philosophy in a narrative, existential journey and in their personal practices as Buddhists. In contrast with Gross's second-wave methodology and revisionist aims, Park's contribution to comparative feminist scholarship underscores the originality of Iryŏp's attempt to rethink Buddhist ideas in a contemporary feminist context. Particularly compelling is that Park unequivocally defends existential narrative as a genre of philosophy largely through an analysis of the Buddhist nun's love letters. (shrink)

This reflection considers my dawning realization that Zapatista insurgency reflects not only opposition to racist devaluation of the cultures of indigenous peoplesbut more fundamentally a struggle to overcome spiritual deracination. I contest two basic assumptions of much contemporary social theory: that race and deracination are entirely socio-cultural phenomena and that the central role played by dialogical accord in Zapatista communities can be understood without a spiritual conception of human existence. I propose that only a spiritual understanding of these three pivotal (...) issues—race, deracination, and dialogue (or accord)—aptly captures the core intuitions that inform Zapatista insurgency. (shrink)

This reflection considers my dawning realization that Zapatista insurgency reflects not only opposition to racist devaluation of the cultures of indigenous peoplesbut more fundamentally a struggle to overcome spiritual deracination. I contest two basic assumptions of much contemporary social theory: that race and deracination are entirely socio-cultural phenomena and that the central role played by dialogical accord in Zapatista communities can be understood without a spiritual conception of human existence. I propose that only a spiritual understanding of these three pivotal (...) issues—race, deracination, and dialogue (or accord)—aptly captures the core intuitions that inform Zapatista insurgency. (shrink)

One central point of contention between Hegel’s feminist critics and his defenders centers on whether he provides a model of ethical community that could effectuate harmony between the two sexes. Hegel’s account of Antigone is taken as the centerpiece of this debate because it assigns Antigone and Creon to two independent moral laws, the divine and human respectively. Many feminists argue, first, that in accepting the sexed assignment of women to the separate moral sphere of the family with its attendant (...) religious duties, Hegel subscribes to a dubious naturalistic assumption that women have a different ethical sensibility from men; and second, that this assumption leads Hegel to misconstrue women’s ethical agency. Irigaray alternatively holds that, while there is a natural difference between the sexes, Hegel’s Antigone nonetheless projects a male fantasy about woman’s ethical orientation. In contrast to both positions, Nadine Changfoot demonstrates that the logic of Hegel’s account points beyond the Greek war between the sexes to a model of ethical community that prizes divine and human law equally without necessarily perpetuating the assignment of women and men to these two, separate social spheres. The dialectic calls for, without realizing, gender equality. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger's commitment to the idea that _Dasein_ is ultimately gender neutral, as well as several other major aspects of his thought, raises significant questions for feminist philosophers. The fourteen essays included in this volume clearly illustrate the ways in which feminist readings can deepen our understanding of his philosophy. They illuminate both the richness and the limitations of the resources his work can provide for feminist thought. This volume engages the full scope of Heidegger's writings from_ Being and Time (...) _through his latest work, from his readings of the ancient Greek poets to his critique of modern technology. At the same time, it reflects a wide range of contemporary feminist concerns: the significance of gender difference; the role of the body in philosophical thought; the relationship between philosophy and the natural world, and between philosophy and the domestic realm; and the aspiration to move forward into a new, more just, political world. Included in this volume are important new essays by Ellen Armour, Carol Bigwood, Jack Caputo, Tina Chanter, Trish Glazebrook, Jennifer Gosetti, Luce Irigaray, Dorothy Leland, Mechthild Nagel, Gail Stenstad, and the editors—as well as a valuable historical and theoretical Introduction by Patricia Huntington, the first of Jacques Derrida's "Geschlecht" articles, and an important 1997 essay by Iris Marion Young. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore loneliness as a primordial call to find accord with the self that, as Kierkegaard claims, is born of spirit. I put Kierkegaard’s Anti-Climacan formula, “the more consciousness, the more self,” to work by examining lamentation over loss of the innocent days of youth as symptomatic of primordial loneliness. In loneliness, I argue, we confound loss of naivete (a developmental change) with loss of innocence (a spiritual failing). While each person is fated to lose naivete, no (...) person loses innocence by developmental necessity. Each person loses innocence by his or her own hand in freedom. (shrink)

This is a unique book. It is excellently written, crammed with information, wise and a pleasure to read.' ---Daniel C. Dennett, Tufts University.

Philosopher, theologian, educational theorist, feminist and political pamphleteer, Mary Astell was an important figure in the history of ideas of the early modern period. Among the first systematic critics of John Locke's entire corpus, she is best known for the famous question which prefaces her Reflections on Marriage: 'If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves?' She is claimed by modern Republican theorists and feminists alike but, as a Royalist High Church Tory, the (...) peculiar constellation of her views sits uneasily with modern commentators. Patricia Springborg's study addresses these apparent paradoxes, recovering the historical and philosophical contexts to her thought. She shows that Astell was not alone in her views; rather, she was part of a cohort of early modern women philosophers who were important for the reception of Descartes and who grappled with the existential problems of a new age. (shrink)

In the early years of the twentieth century, Gottlob Frege and David Hilbert, two titans of mathematical logic, engaged in a controversy regarding the correct understanding of the role of axioms in mathematical theories, and the correct way to demonstrate consistency and independence results for such axioms. The controversy touches on a number of difficult questions in logic and the philosophy of logic, and marks an important turning-point in the development of modern logic. This entry gives an overview of that (...) controversy and of its philosophical underpinnings. (shrink)

La filosofía desde la teoría general del derecho, por H. Cairns.--Teoría jurídica integralista, por J. Hall.--Más allá del pragmatismo jurídico, por T.A. Cowan.--La tecla para una ciencia jurídica estimativa, por A.H. Pekelis.--Palabras y música, por J. Frank.--Teoría de los intereses sociales de Pound, por E.W. Patterson.--La metamorfosis de la idea de justicia, por H. Kelsen.--Sobre la naturaleza del derecho natural, por A.-H. Chroust.

The Effect: An Introduction to Research Design and Causality is about research design, specifically concerning research that uses observational data to make a causal inference. It is separated into two halves, each with different approaches to that subject. The first half goes through the concepts of causality, with very little in the way of estimation. It introduces the concept of identification thoroughly and clearly and discusses it as a process of trying to isolate variation that has a causal interpretation. Subjects (...) include heavy emphasis on data-generating processes and causal diagrams. Concepts are demonstrated with a heavy emphasis on graphical intuition and the question of what we do to data. When we "add a control variable" what does that actually do? (shrink)

This essay contrasts Damaris Masham and Catharine Trotter Cockburn’s respective moral philosophies. It argues that their views are both remarkably innovative, yet strikingly similar. By focusing on Masham and Cockburn’s accounts of agency and virtue, it is demonstrated that both thinkers take human nature as a sort of guide to moral behavior – i.e., it shows that the moral agent operates under the perception of moral principles as arising from human nature. While both thinkers are known to have been directly (...) influenced by John Locke, it is also argued that both of their moral philosophies bear significant dissimilarities to Lockean morality. (shrink)

The history of the recovery movement began with a pushback against treatment, and the philosophies that it was founded upon still have relevant applications to contemporary social work practice. Financial aspects of service provision for people with serious mental illnesses have enabled other actors in the medical model of psychosis treatment to benefit, while disempowering and dehumanizing the consumers of those services. Since then, other movements like Psychopolitics and the Mad Movement have helped empower psychosis survivors to advocate for their (...) right to self-determination amid the epistemological pressure to identify as disabled. Social workers would like to believe that the field has moved beyond the philosophies that perpetuated institutionalization of people with serious mental illnesses. Contemporary examples, however, reveal how social services in the US maintain the status quo of sanism for psychosis survivors. (shrink)

The papers from the 2000 symposium of the Royal Society of Canada explore the crucial relationship between science and ethics.

Imagining Dewey' features productive (re)interpretations of 21st century experience using the lens of John Dewey's 'Art as Experience', through the doubled task of putting an array of international philosophers, educators, and artists-researchers in transactional dialogue and on equal footing in an academic text. This book is a pragmatic attempt to encourage application of aesthetic learning and living, ekphrasic interpretation, critical art and agonist pluralism.0There are two foci: (a) Deweyan philosophy and educational themes with (b) analysis and examples of how educators, (...) artists, and researchers envision and enact artful meaning making. This structure meets the needs of university and high school audiences, who are accustomed to learning about challenging ideas through multimedia and aesthetic experience.00Contributors are: James M. Albrecht, Adam I. Attwood, John Baldacchino, Carolyn L. Berenato, M. Cristina Di Gregori, Holly Fairbank, Jim Garrison, Amanda Gulla, Bethany Henning, Jessica Heybach, David L. Hildebrand, Ellyn Lyle, Livio Mattarollo, Christy McConnell Moroye, Maria-Isabel Moreno-Montoro, Maria Martinez Morales, Stephen M. Noonan, Louise G. Phillips, Scott L. Pratt, Joaquin Roldan, Leopoldo Rueda, Tadd Ruetenik, Leisa Sasso, Bruce Uhrmacher, David Vessey, Ricardo Marin Viadel, Sean Wiebe, Li Xu and Martha Patricia Espiritu Zavalza. (shrink)

Human Specialization in Design and Technology explores emerging trends in learning and training-standardization, customization, personalization-with a unique focus on human needs and conditions. Analyzing evidence from current academic research as well as the popular press, this concise volume defines and examines the trajectory of instructional design and technologies toward more human-centered and specialized products, services, processes, environments, and systems. Examples from education, healthcare, business, and other sectors offer real-world demonstrations for scholars and graduate students of educational technology, instructional design, ICT, (...) and business development. (shrink)

Introduction to the Institutional Logics Perspective -- Precursors to the Institutional Logics Perspective -- Defining the Inter-institutional System -- The Emergence, Stability and Change of the Inter-institutional System -- Micro-Foundations of Institutional Logics -- The Dynamics of Organizational Practices and Identities -- The Emergence and Evolution of Field-Level Logics -- Implications for Future Research.

Biopolitics and Utopia explores the intersection of biopolitics and utopian thought. As an interdisciplinary work, it addresses many salient biopolitical issues (state and medical interventions in the body, fears over scientific progress, resistance to state biopower, and ethical concerns), while also engaging in the utopian drive behind biopolitical efforts. The book is structured into four main sections: Actions, Speculations, Reactions, and Reflections. The chapters in Actions examine the practices of direct, medical intervention to 'normalize' citizens' bodies. The next section, Speculations, (...) approaches the intersection of utopia and biopolitics through a literary lens, reviewing science fiction texts as expressions of cultural and social fears about scientific progress. Reactions outlines potential acts of resistance in the face of biopower. Finally, Reflections offers a more philosophical essay, which engages the reader in the potential for creating an ethics for scientific standards. (shrink)

Overview -- Locke's internal sense and Kant's changing views -- Personal identity amd its problems -- Rationalist metaphysics of mind -- Consciousness, self-consciousness, and cognition -- Strands of Argument in the Duisburg Nachlass -- A transcendental deduction for a priori concepts -- Synthesis : why and how? -- Arguing for apperception -- The power of apperception -- "I-think" as the destroyer of rational psychology -- Is Kant's theory consistent? -- The normativity objection -- Is Kant's thinker (as such) a free (...) and responsible agent? -- Kant our contemporary. (shrink)

One way to discuss personal identity is by distinguishing between specific and numerical types of similar things. Some of the ways in which the individuality of each clone comes out are found in the alterations they make to their alphanumeric designations, uniforms, and living environments. In his important article “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” Harry G. Frankfurt explains that what makes humans unique according to his concept of personhood is their “capacity for reflective self‐evaluation.” The (...) activation of the Fett clones' inhibitor chips with Order 66 represents the intention of the Empire to deprive all the chipped clones of their freedom of action and will. As Frankfurt states, “Suppose, however, that he enjoys both freedom of action and freedom of the will. Then he is not only free to do what he wants to do; he is also free to want what he wants to want.”. (shrink)

Zachariah's description of a wonderful fornicating life for Sam and Dean captures some truth but it also misses the importance women play in shaping the Winchesters' moral decisions. In general, important women in the lives of Sam and Dean fall into three broad categories: mothers, lovers, and monsters. Sam and Dean are all too familiar with this philosophy of utilitarianism. Many times they have sacrificed relationships with women for the sake of their mission. Throughout Supernatural the objectification of the Winchesters (...) is contrasted with a happy domestic life. Sam and Dean are mistaken in thinking that their only value resides in the roles they play in the larger battles of good and evil; if they looked deeper they would see that they both would prefer a loving relationship with a woman. (shrink)