This article advances a new account of Kant’s views on conceptualism. On the one hand, I argue that Kant was a nonconceptualist. On the other hand, my approach accommodates many motivations underlying the conceptualist reading of his work: for example, it is fully compatible with the success of the Transcendental Deduction. I motivate my view by providing a new analysis of both Kant’s theory of perception and of the role of categorical synthesis: I look in particular at the categories of (...) quantity. Locating my interpretation in relation to recent research by Allais, Ginsborg, Tolley and others, I argue that it offers an attractive compromise on this important theoretical and exegetical issue. (shrink)

This article examines the phenomenon of thought insertion, one of the most extreme disruptions to the standard mechanisms for self-knowledge, in the context of Kant's philosophy of mind. This juxtaposition is of interest for two reasons, aside from Kant's foundational significance for any modern work on the self. First, thought insertion presents a challenge to Kant's approach. For example, the first Critique famously held that " The 'I think' must be able to accompany all my representations " (Kant, KrV, B132). (...) Yet thought insertion raises the problem of representations which are 'mine' by many natural criteria, and yet which I am unwilling to self-ascribe. Ultimately, my argument will be that thought insertion simultaneously problematises, and yet to some degree also vindicates, the complex distinctions between activity and passivity which underlie Kant's system. Second, I argue that Kant's position contains resources that allow us to model thought insertion, and its broader implications for self-knowledge, in an interesting and distinctive manner. Kant himself held an extreme view of philosophy's competence in the study of mental disorder: in the Anthropology, he suggests that courts must refer such cases to philosophers, rather than medics (Kant, Anth, p.214). My aim is much more modest: to suggest that a Kantian treatment of thought insertion deserves consideration by both philosophers and clinicians. (shrink)

Critical Notice of Kant's Transcendental Deduction, by Henry Allison. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. Xv + 477.

The structure of this article is very simple. In the first half, I will introduce a sophisticated way of reading Heidegger as a relativist; I draw here on the work of Kusch and Lafont. In the second half, I present the counter-argument. As I see it, Heidegger is not a relativist; but understanding the relations between his approach and a relativistic one is crucial for an evaluation of both his own work and the broader trajectory of post-Kantian thought.

This article addresses three questions concerning Kant’s views on non-rational animals: do they intuit spatio-temporal particulars, do they perceive objects, and do they have intentional states? My aim is to explore the relationship between these questions and to clarify certain pervasive ambiguities in how they have been understood. I first disambiguate various nonequivalent notions of objecthood and intentionality: I then look closely at several models of objectivity present in Kant’s work, and at recent discussions of representational and relational theories of (...) intentionality. I argue ultimately that, given the relevant disambiguations, the answers to all three questions will likely be positive. These results both support what has become known as the nonconceptualist reading of Kant, and make clearer the price the conceptualist must pay to sustain her position. (shrink)

One of the strongest motivations for conceptualist readings of Kant is the belief that the Transcendental Deduction is incompatible with nonconceptualism. In this article, I argue that this belief is simply false: the Deduction and nonconceptualism are compatible at both an exegetical and a philosophical level. Placing particular emphasis on the case of non-human animals, I discuss in detail how and why my reading diverges from those of Ginsborg, Allais, Gomes and others. I suggest ultimately that it is only by (...) embracing nonconceptualism that we can fully recognise the delicate calibration of the trap which the Critique sets for Hume. (shrink)

Between 1927 and 1936, Martin Heidegger devoted almost one thousand pages of close textual commentary to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. This article aims to shed new light on the relationship between Kant and Heidegger by providing a fresh analysis of two central texts: Heidegger’s 1927/8 lecture course Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and his 1929 monograph Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. I argue that to make sense of Heidegger’s reading of Kant, one must resolve two (...) questions. First, how does Heidegger’s Kant understand the concept of the transcendental? Second, what role does the concept of a horizon play in Heidegger’s reconstruction of the Critique? I answer the first question by drawing on Cassam’s model of a self-directed transcendental argument, and the second by examining the relationship between Kant’s doctrine that ‘pure, general logic’ abstracts from all semantic content and Hume’s attack on metaphysics. I close by sketching the implications of my results for Heidegger’s own thought. Ultimately, I conclude that Heidegger’s commentary on the Critical system is defined, above all, by a single issue: the nature of the ‘form’ of intentionality. (shrink)

This paper addresses a number of closely related questions concerning Kant's model of intentionality, and his conceptions of unity and of magnitude [Gröβe]. These questions are important because they shed light on three issues which are central to the Critical system, and which connect directly to the recent analytic literature on perception: the issues are conceptualism, the status of the imagination, and perceptual atomism. In Section 1, I provide a sketch of the exegetical and philosophical problems raised by Kant's views (...) on these issues. I then develop, in Section 2, a detailed analysis of Kant's theory of perception as elaborated in both the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Judgment; I show how this analysis provides a preliminary framework for resolving the difficulties raised in Section 1. In Section 3, I extend my analysis of Kant's position by considering a specific test case: the Axioms of Intuition. I contend that one way to make sense of Kant's argument is by juxtaposing it with Russell's response to Bradley's regress; I focus in particular on the concept of ‘unity’. Finally, I offer, in Section 4, a philosophical assessment of the position attributed to Kant in Sections 2 and 3. I argue that, while Kant's account has significant strengths, a number of key areas remain underdeveloped; I suggest that the phenomenological tradition may be read as attempting to fill precisely those gaps. (shrink)

Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 115, Issue 3pt3, Page 235-253, December 2015.

Kant’s account of the sublime makes frequent appeals to infinity, appeals which have been extensively criticised by commentators such as Budd and Crowther. This paper examines the costs and benefits of reconstructing the account in finitist terms. On the one hand, drawing on a detailed comparison of the first and third Critiques, I argue that the underlying logic of Kant’s position is essentially finitist. I defend the approach against longstanding objections, as well as addressing recent infinitist work by Moore and (...) Smith. On the other hand, however, I argue that finitism faces distinctive problems of its own: whilst the resultant theory is a coherent and interesting one, it is unclear in what sense it remains an analysis of the sublime. I illustrate the worry by juxtaposing the finitist reading with analytical cubism. -/- . (shrink)

There are three obstacles to any discussion of the relationship between Heidegger’s philosophy and ethics. First, Heidegger’s views and preoccupations alter considerably over the course of his work. There is no consensus over the exact degree of change or continuity, but it is clear that a number of these shifts, for example over the status of human agency, have considerable ethical implications. Second, Heidegger rarely engages directly with the familiar ethical or moral debates of the philosophical canon. For example, both (...) Sein und Zeit (SZ) and the works that would have completed its missing third Division, works such as his monograph on Kant (Ga3), and the 1927 lecture course The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (Ga24), place enormous emphasis on the flaws present in earlier metaphysics or philosophies of language or of the self. But there is no discussion of what one might think of as staple ethical questions: for example, the choice between rationalist or empiricist meta-ethics, or between consequentialist or deontological theories. The fundamental reason for this is Heidegger’s belief that his own concerns are explanatorily prior to such debates (Ga26:236–7). By extension, he regards the key works of ethical and moral philosophy as either of secondary importance, or as not really about ethics or morals at all: for example, Ga24, when discussing Kant, states bluntly that “‘Metaphysics of Morals’ means the ontology of human existence” (Ga24:195). Essentially his view is that, before one can address ethics, construed as the question of how we ought to live, one needs to get clear on ontology, on the question of what we are. However, as I will show, the relationship between Heideggerian ontology and ethics is more complex than that simple gloss suggests. Third, the very phrase “Heidegger’s ethics” raises a twofold problem in a way that does not similarly occur with any other figure in this volume. The reason for this is his links, personal and institutional, to both National Socialism and to anti-Semitism. The recent publication of the Schwarze Hefte exemplifies this issue: these notebooks interweave rambling metaphysical ruminations with a clearly anti-Semitic rhetoric no less repulsive for the fact that it avoids the biological racism of the Nazis (see, for example, Ga95:97 or Ga96:243). In this short chapter, I will take what will doubtless be a controversial approach to this third issue. It seems to me unsurprising, although no less disgusting for that, that Heidegger himself was anti-Semitic, or that he shared many of the anti-modernist prejudices often found with such anti-Semitism Sacha Golob (sacha.golob@kcl.ac.uk) Forthcoming in the Cambridge History of Moral Philosophy (Cambridge University Press: 2016). 2 among his demographic group. The interesting question is rather: what are the connections between his philosophy and such views? To what degree do aspects of his work support them or perhaps, most extremely, even follow from them? Yet to answer this question, one needs to begin by understanding what exactly his philosophical commitments were, specifically his ‘ethical’ commitments. The purpose of this chapter is address that question. (shrink)

This article advances a new analysis of stupidity as a distinctive form of cognitive failing. Section 1 outlines some problems in explicating this notion and suggests some desiderata. Section 2 sketches an existing model of stupidity, found in Kant and Flaubert, which serves as a foil for my own view. In section 3, I introduce my theory: I analyse stupidity as form of conceptual self-hampering, characterised by a specific aetiology and with a range of deleterious effects. In section 4, I (...) show how this proposal meets the desiderata and I clarify how it diverges from existing accounts. My position is close to a 'public health approach', in contrast to the virtue/vice framework employed by Engel or Mulligan. (shrink)

In Sein und Zeit Heidegger makes several claims about the nature of ‘assertion’ [Aussage]. These claims are of particular philosophical interest: they illustrate, for example, important points of contact and divergence between Heidegger's work and philosophical movements including Kantianism, the early Analytic tradition and contemporary pragmatism. This article provides a new assessment of one of these claims: that assertion is connected to a ‘present-at-hand’ ontology. I also indicate how my analysis sets the stage for a new reading of Heidegger's further (...) claim that assertion is an explanatorily derivative phenomenon. I begin with a loose overview of Heidegger's position and then develop a sharper formulation of the key premises. I go on to argue that existing treatments of the supposed link between assertion and the ‘present-at-hand’ are unsatisfactory, and advance a new, ‘methodological’, interpretation of that link. Finally, I sketch the implications of my interpretation for the further claim that assertion is explanatorily derivative. (shrink)

Heidegger’s debt to Aristotle is, of course, vast: Volpi went so far as to ask whether Being and Time was a translation of the Nicomachean Ethics. In this chapter, I want to investigate a fundamental divergence between the two, a rejection by early Heidegger of one of the central tenets of Aristotelian ethics. This rejection begins in the years before Being and Time and the forces behind it extend into the post-war period. I will focus in particular on Ga18, 1924’s (...) Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy: what Heidegger’s Aristotle rejects there, in effect, is the notion of character. -/- What makes this rejection so complex and so revealing is that Heidegger’s interpretative approach forces him to present disagreement as discovery, as an insight into a true Aristotle who has remained concealed. My claim here is not the familiar one that Heideggerian history of philosophy is exegetically ‘violent’ or that it frequently tells us more about Heidegger than about its supposed target. Rather, it is more specific. Texts such as Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy present a unique exegetical situation. This is because Heidegger lacks several of the interpretative tools that will justify his radical reading of Kant just a few years later: I will examine in particular his changing conception of “philology”. The result is that, whilst commentators routinely talk of Heidegger’s “appropriation” of Kant, Heidegger’s early use of Aristotle is simultaneously more complex and less refined. “Perversion” is, one might think, scarcely a rigorous term, but it is, I will argue, the best description of what follows. (shrink)

This paper examines Heidegger’s position on a foundational distinction for Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy: that between acting ‘in the light of’ a norm and acting ‘merely in accordance with it’. In section 1, I introduce the distinction and highlight several relevant similarities between Kant and Heidegger on ontology and the first-person perspective. In section 2, I press the Kantian position further, focusing on the role of inferential commitments in perception: this provides a foil against which Heidegger’s account can be In (...) section 3, I contrast this Kantian approach with Crowell’s highly sophisticated reading of Heidegger on care: I argue that, subject to certain conditions on how we view explanation, the two approaches are compatible and indeed mutually supporting. I close in section 4 by addressing an importantly distinct dimension of normativity, that marked by critique, broadly construed. I argue that we ultimately need to locate Heidegger in a context that. (shrink)

This paper proposes a new reading of the interaction between subjectivity, reflection and freedom within Foucault’s later work. I begin by introducing three approaches to subjectivity, locating these in relation both to Foucault’s texts and to the recent literature. I suggest that Foucault himself operates within what I call the ‘entanglement approach’, and, as such, he faces a potentially serious challenge, a challenge forcefully articulated by Han. Using Kant’s treatment of reflection as a point of comparison, I argue that Foucault (...) possesses the resources to meet this challenge. The key, I contend, is to distinguish two related theses about reflection and freedom: Foucault’s position is distinctive precisely because he accepts one of these theses whilst rejecting the other. I conclude by indicating how this reading might connect to the longstanding question of Foucault’s own right to appeal to normative standards. (shrink)

Reviews of Heidegger on Concepts, Freedom and Normativity, Sacha Golob (Cambridge University Press) • Crowell (Rice), Philosophy in Review, pages 2-7. • Cregan (Oxford), International Journal of Philosophical Studies, pages 8-13. • Campbell (Nazareth College of Rochester), Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, pages 14-18. • Keiling (Freiburg), Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, pages 19-21.

With fifty-four chapters charting the development of moral philosophy in the Western world, this volume examines the key thinkers and texts and their influence on the history of moral thought from the pre-Socratics to the present day. Topics including Epicureanism, humanism, Jewish and Arabic thought, perfectionism, pragmatism, idealism and intuitionism are all explored, as are figures including Aristotle, Boethius, Spinoza, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Mill, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre and Rawls, as well as numerous key ideas and schools of thought. Chapters (...) are written by leading experts in the field, drawing on the latest research to offer rigorous analysis of the canonical figures and movements of this branch of philosophy. The volume provides a comprehensive yet philosophically advanced resource for students and teachers alike as they approach, and refine their understanding of, the central issues in moral thought. (shrink)

Irene McMullin’s Existential Flourishing (Cambridge University Press, 2018) weaves together virtue ethics and existential phenomenology: the influence of Heidegger and Levinas, in particular, is clear throughout. This paper provides a summary of McMullin’s elegantly argued position and raises a number of possible concerns, particularly regarding the interaction of Aristotelian and Phenomenological assumptions. I focus specifically on the role of the 2nd-person perspective, on the links between exemplars and socialisation, and on the problem of those who, as Nietzsche put it, “are (...) both evil and happy – a species on which the moralists are silent”. (shrink)

In the context of a history of the emotions, Martin Heidegger presents an important and yet challenging case. He is important because he places emotional states, broadly construed, at the very heart of his philosophical methodology—in particular, anxiety and boredom. He is challenging because he is openly dismissive of the standard ontologies of emotions, and because he is largely uninterested in many of the canonical debates in which emotions figure. My aim in this chapter is to identify and critique the (...) distinctive role which Heidegger allots to the emotions, focusing on Sein und Zeit's famous treatment of anxiety. Having outlined his position, I close by considering a number of challenges, both methodological and substantive, to Heidegger's approach. (shrink)

As a face in the mirror, so the morals of men are easily corrected with an exemplar.As Christopher Janaway observed, “the topic of Schopenhauer as Educator is really education rather than Schopenhauer.”2 Indeed, Nietzsche described it as addressing a “problem of education without equal”.3 This article reconstructs the pedagogical challenge and solution presented by Nietzsche in that text. It is obvious that Schopenhauer’s example is meant to underpin Nietzsche’s new pedagogy; what is less obvious is how exactly that exemplary role (...) is meant to work. I concentrate on three issues: the exact nature of the pupil’s relationship to the exemplar, the institutional context of education, and... (shrink)

This article juxtaposes two of the most influential thinkers of the previous century, Georges Bataille and Martin Heidegger: my overarching claim will be that a contrastive approach allows a better understanding of two central dynamics within their work. First, I show that both were deeply troubled by a certain methodological anxiety; namely, that the practice of writing might distort and deform their insights. By employing a comparative strategy, I suggest that we can gain a better understanding of the very specific (...) form this fear takes in them: in each case, it is articulated and justified in terms of the ‘chose’ or ‘Ding’ (‘thing’) or the ‘objet’ or ‘Objekt’ (‘object’). Second, I argue that close textual comparison allows us to identify an important, new dimension in their reactions to this shared anxiety: the thing or object which was originally the site of the anxiety gradually becomes, through series of ontological and textual shifts, the solution to it. I track this transformation across a range of case studies including Heidegger’s later work on the term ‘Ding’ and Bataille’s treatment of prostitution. I close by indicating how these results might create avenues for further research. (shrink)

This paper aims to advance our understanding of Heidegger's politics as it is laid bare within the 'Schwarze Hefte'. Yet my interest is not in Heidegger's first order political views, but rather in his conception of the political sphere per se. Beginning from a close analysis of the earliest volume of the notebooks, Gesamtausgabe Bd.94, I suggest that the dominant characterisation of the political space within Heidegger's text is as a threat-to philosophy and to ontology. Underlying that characterisation, however, it (...) is simultaneously possible to identify another pattern, one on which the political is itself gradually suppressed or occluded by the ontological. This tacit occlusion has, I suggest, a number of deeply problematic consequences. I close by indicating how the argument might be extended to the question of a Heideggerian ethics. (shrink)

he relationship between decadence and aesthetics is an intimate and complex one. Both the stock figure of the aesthete and the aestheticism of ‘art for art’s sake’ are classic decadent tropes with obvious sources in figures such as Théophile Gautier, Walter Pater, Joris-Karl Huysmans. Yet the links between aesthetics and decadence are more conflicted than might first appear: historically, aesthetics has served both as a site for the theorisation of decadence and as the basis of an attempt to stem it. (...) The purpose of this chapter is to examine these intricate ties. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

This paper argues that Heidegger’s ‘history of being’ is a debunking narrative, characterised by both analogies and disanalogies to genealogy, at least in its Nietzschean form. I begin by defining such narratives in terms of non-truth-tropic explanation. In §2, I argue, contra Foucault, that the debate is not best approached via the idea of an “origin” or “Ursprung.” Instead, having flagged some classic features of at least Nietzschean genealogy, I examine two case studies from Heidegger’s ‘history of being’. The first, (...) I argue, is not a debunking history. The second is and its target is ironically Nietzsche himself. I highlight Heidegger’s psychological and epistemic claims, and I draw a comparison with MacIntyre’s discussion of ‘dead-end’ problems. I conclude that Heidegger’s history of being is a debunking history, but not a genealogy, at least in the Nietzschean sense: amongst other things, Heidegger’s method differs in its stance on truth and on the role of polemical writing. (shrink)

The phenomenological tradition developed sophisticated techniques to draw attention to pre-theoretic or pre-reflective experience. This article examines how one of the most famous, Heidegger’s ‘broken tool’, might work in a pedagogical context. I contend that it can be highly effective there, fleshing out his vision of teaching as ‘letting learn’ with a distinctive educational method. At the same time, that context suggests fundamental changes to the standard reading of the ‘broken tool’, shifting the focus towards what I call ‘information tools’. (...) My conclusions link to recent research stressing disruption in the learning process, and I close by contrasting my position with ‘bricolage’ theories and work by Applebaum and others. (shrink)

MacIntyre characterises liberal societies as suffering distinctive, structural forms of malaise: they are a ‘disaster’, a ‘moral calamity’, sites of ‘barbarism and darkness’. I argue that, whilst we well understand why MacIntyre thinks liberalism is false, it is unclear why this falsity should imply such moral catastrophe. I begin by motivating the question and distinguishing it from the classic liberal-communitarian debates (§§1-2). In particular, I highlight liberalism’s ability to offer ‘workarounds’, accommodating at least some of MacIntyre’s commitments and so forestalling (...) the prospect of moral disaster. I then introduce two arguments which supply the missing premises, in each case juxtaposing MacIntyre with other critics of liberalism. First, I argue that liberalism’s conception of the private sphere systematically marginalizes MacIntyre’s vision of pedagogy (§3). I compare the argument and the attendant conception of privacy with Adorno’s (§4). In §5, I introduce the second premise: I argue that liberalism espouses a conception of maturity that actively undermines MacIntyre’s model of development, subverting liberal ‘workarounds’. I contrast this claim with recent attacks on liberalism by Deneen. I close with some methodological implications: MacIntyre’s case against liberalism should be seen as a form of external, not immanent, critique. (shrink)

In this article I respond to Sacha Golob's critique of my stance on Kantian nonconceptualism, objectivity, and animal perception of spatial particulars.

Given its scope and the size of many Cambridge Histories, this volume is short. It is 751 pages long. The main text consist of 54 chapters of between 12 and 14 pages each. For comparison, The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy is 968 pages long. One might ask why the present volume could not be allowed a similar length. 200 more pages could have made for a much more useful book, as I will suggest below. The brevity of the chapters (...) makes room for a large cast of characters, and avoids concentration on the best-known texts in the history of ethics. The chapters cover not only Aristotle, Hume, and Kant, but also medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophers, Descartes, Pascal, Bayle... (shrink)

Volume 27, Issue 6, December 2019, Page 1239-1240.

Volume 27, Issue 6, December 2019, Page 1239-1240.

In our digital world, we are confused by privacy – what is public, what is private? We are also challenged by it, the conditions of privacy so uncertain we become unsure about our rights to it. We may choose to share personal information, but often do so on the assumption that it won't be re-shared, sold, or passed on to other parties without our knowing. In the eighteenth century, philosopher Jeremy Bentham wrote about a new model for a prison called (...) a Panopticon, where inmates surrounded the jailers, always under watch. Have we built ourselves a digital Panopticon? Are we the guards or the prisoners, captive or free? Can we be both? When Kim Kardashian makes the minutiae of her life available online, which is she? With great rigour, this important book draws on a Kantian philosophy of ethics and legal frameworks to examine where we are and to suggest steps – conceptual and practical – to ensure the future is not dystopian. Privacy is one of the defining issues of our time; this lively book explains why this is so, and the ways in which we might protect it. (shrink)

'The Laws of Evolution' questions our current understanding of the laws that govern our universe and its evolution.

De Montesquieu à Posner, de Durkheim à Foucault, la recherche d'un schéma de causalité qui expliquerait synthétiquement les variations entre les systèmes historiques de pénalité sur une échelle unique d’observation est une entreprise ambitieuse à l'intersection de la sociologie du droit et d'une matière peu à peu décriée : la philosophie de l'Histoire. Aujourd'hui, deux corps théoriques complexes et éclatés prétendent au titre de sciences de l'évolution pénale. Le premier est fondé sur une analogie poussée entre évolution culturelle et évolution (...) biologique, et emprunte à l'analyse économique du droit ainsi qu’aux dernières révolutions des sciences naturelles. Le second trouve ses racines dans la pensée marxiste et perçoit le système pénal comme une machine d'oppression qui évolue au gré des passations de pouvoir. Ces deux courants semblent à première vue théoriser l’évolution pénale d’une façon satisfaisante. Mais en imprimant leur volonté normative sur des considérations descriptives, ces doctrines occultent certaines discontinuités historiques et en façonnent d'autres, nous forçant à voir des ruptures matérielles là où il n'y a que des changements d'intention. En voulant présenter une histoire cohérente et intelligible, elles ont délaissé les contradictions et les rouages manquants de l'évolution pénale, tout ce qui, dans cette histoire, ne ressemblait pas à une machine dont les Hommes contrôlent la direction. En rejetant ce paradigme, la forme de l'histoire pénale se métamorphose, sa chronologie se redéfinit, et l’évolution pénale présente des problématiques nouvelles telles la porosité des législations, la concurrence des normes dans la fonction d’exclusion, la persistance des châtiments physiques ou les superpositions identifiables entre histoire juridique, histoire technique et histoire sacrée. (shrink)

This article presents conceptual bridges that exist between the philosophy of G.W.F Hegel and a feminist ethics of care. To do so, it engages with Slavoj Žižek’s contemporary reading of Hegel in concert with existing feminist interpretations of Hegel’s thought. The goal of doing so is to demonstrate how both Žižek and a selection of critical feminist thinkers interpret Hegel’s perspective on the nature of subjectivity, intersubjective relations and the relationship between the subject and the world it inhabits, in a (...) way that can further our thinking on the feminist ethics of care as a relational and contextualist ethics that foregrounds vulnerability as a condition of existence. These readings of Hegel highlight the radical contingency of human subjectivity, as well as the relationship between human subjectivity and the external world, in a way that is compatible with the feminist ethics of care’s emphasis on the particularity, fluidity, and interdependency of human relationships. I argue that this confrontation between care ethics and mainstream philosophy is valuable because it offers mutual contributions to both care ethics as a moral and political theory and the philosophy of Hegel and Žižek. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is a relationship between understandings of anorexia nervosa (AN) and how the ethical issues associated with involuntary treatment for AN are identified, framed, and addressed. By positioning AN as a construct/discourse (hereinafter “AN: the diagnosis”) several ethical issues are revealed. Firstly, “AN: the diagnosis” influences how the autonomy and competence of persons diagnosed with AN are understood by decision-makers in the treatment environment. Secondly, “AN: the diagnosis” impacts on how treatment and treatment efficacy are defined (...) and the ethical justifiability of paternalism. Thirdly, “AN: the diagnosis” can limit the opportunity for persons with AN to construct an identity that casts them as a competent person. “AN: the diagnosis” can thus inherently affirm professional knowledge and values. Postmodern professional ethics can support professionals in managing these issues by highlighting the importance of taking responsibility for professional knowledge, values, and power and embracing moral uncertainty. (shrink)

Early childhood education and care settings in England and the people who work in them constitute an important sphere of influence, shaping young children's characters and values. But the values and dispositions expected of the early years workforce are missing from statutory policy documentation despite its clear requirement that practitioners will espouse and promote particular 'universal' values in their work. The expectations for young children's achievement by the age of five also reveal a complex approach combining a structuralist and postmodern (...) duality of individualistic and collectivist values. These present challenges and dilemmas for the sector. (shrink)

This volume examines the problems of legal and linguistic diversity in the EU legal system. In a union of 27 member states, with 23 different languages, how can the coherence of EU law be guaranteed? Is there a common understanding between lawyers from different national backgrounds as to the meaning and domestic application of EU law? The volume addresses these central questions from a range of theoretical and practical perspectives.

Recent reviews show a rapid increase in the corporate social responsibility communication literature. However, while mapping the literature and the field of CSR communication, they do not fully capture the evolutionary character of this emerging interdisciplinary endeavour. This paper seeks to fill this gap by presenting a follow-up study of the CSR communication literature from a dynamic perspective, which focuses on micro-discursive changes in the field. A bibliometric approach and frame theory are used to examine continuities in the development of (...) field ‘frames’ in three consecutive periods between 2002 and 2016. The article highlights the growing fragmentation of the CSR communication field over time and the existence of 11 distinct frames during the field’s emergence, whereby the two most prominent in the three time periods are the reporting and business case frames. Regardless, they are subjected to discursive changes as well. For example, they become split into stakeholder-focused, business case and institutionalisation frame and contested by the constitutive logic, respectively. The paper argues that interdisciplinary fields like CSR communication can rarely exist without contestation. It also shows that micro-framing processes such as fragmentation, merging and extension visibly shape the identified field frames and the overall discursive dynamic of the CSR communication field while investigating their value for sustaining the field’s polyphonic state and further development. The study findings suggest that additional cross-fertilisation processes between the CSR communication literature and sustainability and digital communication research hold the potential to influence the next stage of the field’s discursive evolution. (shrink)

In our digital world, we are confused by privacy – what is public, what is private? We are also challenged by it, the conditions of privacy so uncertain we become unsure about our rights to it. We may choose to share personal information, but often do so on the assumption that it won't be re-shared, sold, or passed on to other parties without our knowing. In the eighteenth century, philosopher Jeremy Bentham wrote about a new model for a prison called (...) a Panopticon, where inmates surrounded the jailers, always under watch. Have we built ourselves a digital Panopticon? Are we the guards or the prisoners, captive or free? Can we be both? When Kim Kardashian makes the minutiae of her life available online, which is she? With great rigour, this important book draws on a Kantian philosophy of ethics and legal frameworks to examine where we are and to suggest steps – conceptual and practical – to ensure the future is not dystopian. Privacy is one of the defining issues of our time; this lively book explains why this is so, and the ways in which we might protect it. (shrink)

Engaging in a chronological retrospection of my professional and personal transdisciplinary practice of walking-based research over the past decade, and embedding some elements of arts-based writin...

We agree with Cushman that rationalizations are the product of biological adaptations, but we disagree about their function. The data available do not show that rationalizations allow us to reason better and make better decisions. The data suggest instead that rationalizations serve reputation management goals, and that they affect our behaviors because we are held accountable by our peers.

Well-intended natural resource policies that ignore the complexity of socio-ecological systems too often threaten local values and opportunities for sustainable development. Upland areas throughout Indonesia provide examples of complex socio-ecological systems experiencing rapid socio-economic and environmental transformations in response to interactions between development policies and local agendas. Broad natural resource policies influence socio-ecological systems in different ways. In some cases, there are converging national and local goals, while in others the goals of national policy conflict with local aspirations. This study (...) identifies how broadscale policies could respond to the unique characteristics of upland areas to optimise development outcomes and avoid unintended risks for people and the landscape. The theory of reflexive modernity is utilised to illustrate how two national policies, the Community Forestry initiative and the Irrigation Reservoir program, largely discount the complexity of local values in the uplands of Pagar Alam, Indonesia. We identify local farmer aspirations through an analysis of development narratives and relate how they are impacted upon by the two policies. Our findings indicate that dominant development goals and associated sustainability pathways diverge in a range of ways from local farmer values and aspirations. We suggest that policymakers take more consideration of four interacting elements, namely: local ecological traits; local values and institutions; the multiple development pathways; and exogenous market drivers that affect local development, to promote sustainability and increase the likelihood of achieving all desired policy outcomes. (shrink)