The Oxford Handbook of Carl Schmitt collects thirty original chapters on the diverse oeuvre of one of the most controversial thinkers of the twentieth century. Carl Schmitt was a German theorist whose anti-liberalism continues to inspire scholars and practitioners on both the Left and the Right. Despite Schmitt's rabid anti-semitism and partisan legal practice in Nazi Germany, the appeal of his trenchant critiques of, among other things, aestheticism, representative democracy, and international law as well as of his theoretical justifications of (...) dictatorship and rule by exception is undiminished. Uniquely located at the intersection of law, the social sciences, and the humanities, this volume brings together sophisticated yet accessible interpretations of Schmitt's sprawling thought and complicated biography. The contributors hail from diverse disciplines, including art, law, literature, philosophy, political science, and history. In addition to opening up exciting new avenues of research, The Oxford Handbook of Carl Schmitt provides the intellectual foundations for an improved understanding of the political, legal, and cultural thought of this most infamous of German theorists. A substantial introduction places the trinity of Schmitt's thought in a broad context. (shrink)

Nach Euklid: Raumgeschichten in Philosophie, Wissenschaft und Literatur der Moderne. Dieser Band rekonstruiert Raumentwürfe aus der Philosophie Husserls und Cassirers, der Gestaltpsychologie, der Kunstgeschichte Riegls und Einsteins, schließlich Rilkes und Musils literarische Räume. Um 1900 verliert die Geometrie ihre Anschaulichkeit: Mehrdimensionale und nicht-euklidische Räume lassen sich nicht mehr vor Augen führen. Welchen Effekt hat dieser epistemologische Bruch auf jene Disziplinen, für die bis dahin Euklids Geometrie als Modell eines exakten und zugleich anschaulichen Wissens galt? Wie verändern sich die Raumkonzepte in (...) Philosophie, Wissenschaft und Literatur, wenn sich ihre Weltbilder nicht mehr in einem dreidimensionalen, kartesischen Gehäuse unterbringen lassen? (shrink)

Over the last thirty years, the work of the political theorist Ernesto Laclau has reinvigorated radical political and social theory. Taking concepts previously ignored or unused within mainstream political theory, such as the political, hegemony, discourse, identity, and representation, he has made them fundamental to thinking about politics and social theory. Resisting the dead end of postmodern politics, his work has drawn in stimulating ways on Gramscian, poststructuralist and psychoanalytic theory. Laclau: A Critical Reader is the first full-length critical appraisal (...) of Laclau's work and includes contributions from several leading philosophers and theorists. The first section examines Laclau's theory that the contest between universalism and particularism provides much of the philosophical background to political and social struggle, taking up the important place accorded to, amongst others, Hegel and Lacan in Laclau's work. The second section of the book considers what Laclau's "radical democracy" might look like and reflects on its ethical implications, particularly in relation to Laclau's post-Marxism and thinkers such as Jurgen Habermas. The final section investigates the place of hegemony in Laclau's work, the idea for which he is perhaps best-known. This stimulating collection also includes replies to his critics by Laclau and the important exchange between Laclau and Judith Butler on equality, making it an excellent companion to Laclau's work and essential reading for students of political and social theory. (shrink)

_Laclau: A Critical Reader_ is the first full-length critical appraisal of Laclau's work and includes contributions from several leading philosophers and theorists. The first section examines Laclau's theory that the contest between universalism and particularism provides much of the philosophical background to political and social struggle, taking up the important place accorded to, amongst others, Hegel and Lacan in Laclau's work. The second section of the book considers what Laclau's 'radical democracy' might look like and reflects on its ethical implications, (...) particularly in relation to Laclau's post-Marxism and thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas. The final section investigates the place of hegemony in Laclau's work, the idea for which he is perhaps best-known. This stimulating collection also includes replies to his critics by Laclau and the important exchange between Laclau and Judith Butler on equality, making it an excellent companion to Laclau's work and essential reading for students of political and social theory. (shrink)

Guilt and shame are self-conscious emotions with implications for mental health, social and occupational functioning, and the effectiveness of sports practice. To date, the assessment and role of athlete-specific guilt and shame has been under-researched. Reporting data from 174 junior elite cricketers, the present study utilized exploratory factor analysis in validating the Athletic Perceptions of Performance Scale, assessing three distinct and statistically reliable factors: athletic shame-proneness, guilt-proneness, and no-concern. Conditional process analysis indicated that APPS shame-proneness mediated the relationship between general (...) and athlete-specific distress. While APPS domains of guilt-proneness and no-concern were not significant mediators, they exhibited correlations in the expected direction with indices of psychological distress and well-being. The APPS may assist coaches and support staff identify players who may benefit from targeted interventions to reduce the likelihood of experiencing shame-prone states. (shrink)

Gender researchers have only recently begun to identify how women perceive and explain the costs and benefits associated with different femininities. Yet status hierarchies among historically white college sororities are explicit and cannot be ignored, forcing sorority women to grapple with constructions of feminine worth. Drawing on interviews with women in these sororities, we are able to capture college women’s attitudes toward status rankings that prioritize adherence to narrow models of gender complementarity. Sorority chapters were ranked according to women’s perceived (...) heterosexual appeal to elite men. Women believed that top-ranked sororities conferred social power whereas middle- and bottom-ranked sororities offered greater freedom from policing over members’ bodies, fashion, and socializing. However, middle- and bottom-ranked sororities sometimes sought to rise in the rankings. When this occurred, existing members were marginalized, and a new pledge class with a greater tolerance for socializing with high-status “rapey” fraternities was sought. Women’s discussions of sorority rankings show evidence of a hybrid femininity that fuses practices from traditional models of gender complementarity and more recent models of women’s empowerment. (shrink)

In the post-Newtonian world motion is assumed to be a simple category which relates to the locomotion of bodies in space, and is usually associated only with physics. Philosophy, God and Motion shows that this is a relatively recent understanding of motion and that prior to the scientific revolution motion was a much broader and more mysterious category, applying to moral as well as physical movements. Simon Oliver presents fresh interpretations of key figures in the history of western (...) thought including Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas and Newton, examining the thinkers' handling of the concept of motion. Through close readings of seminal texts in ancient and medieval cosmology and early modern natural philosophy, the book moves from antique to modern times investigating how motion has been of great significance within theology, philosophy and science. Particularly important is the relation between motion and God, following Aristotle traditional doctrines of God have understood the divine as the 'unmoved mover' while post-Holocaust theologians have suggested that in order to be compassionate God must undergo the motion of suffering. Philosophy, God and Motion suggests that there may be an authentically theological, as well as a natural scientific understanding of motion. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo apply a socioecological approach to identify risk and protective factors across levels of the “sports-ecosystem,” which are associated with mental health outcomes among athletes in para-sports and non-para sports. A further aim is to determine whether para athletes have unique risks and protective factor profiles compared to non-para athletes.MethodsA cross-sectional, anonymous online-survey was provided to all categorized athletes aged 16 years and older, registered with the Australian Institute of Sport. Mental health outcomes included mental health symptoms, general psychological distress, (...) risky alcohol consumption and eating disorder risk. Risk and protective factors across multiple levels of the socioecological model, including individual, microsystem, exosystem and macrosystem level factors were assessed via self-report.ResultsA total of 427 elite athletes participated in the study. No significant differences in the rates of mental health problems were observed between para and non-para athletes. Both differences and similarities in risk and protective factor profiles were found across the multiple levels of the sports-ecosystem. Weak evidence was also found to support the hypothesis that certain risk factors, including experiencing two or more adverse life events in the past year, sports related concussion, high self-stigma, inadequate social support and low psychological safety conferred a greater risk for poorer mental health outcomes for para athletes in particular.ConclusionRisk factors occurring across various levels of the sports ecosystem, including individual, interpersonal and organizational level risk factors were found to be associated with a range of poorer mental health outcomes. The association between mental ill-health and certain risk factors, particularly those at the individual and microsystem level, appear to be greater for para athletes. These findings have important implications for policy and mental health service provision in elite sports settings, highlighting the need for more nuanced approaches to subpopulations, and the delivery of mental health interventions across all levels of the sports ecosystem. (shrink)

Manussos Marangudakis traces the roots of environmental concern within both Left and Right political thought.1 He examines the anti-technological and occasionally authoritarian stances of Hamsun, Williamson, Haeckel and Heidegger, and their associations with National Socialism, and compares them to the more recent ideologies of Deep Ecology, Ecofeminism, Eco-Socialism and Social Ecology, and their politics of egalitarianism, equality and autonomy. He concludes that, insofar as ecologists have opted for nature as the prominent pole in the nature and culture divide, their politics (...) has become a pseudo-religion, with “the natural” providing the objective and transcendent source of a new politics and ethics:…. (shrink)

Modern natural science and philosophies of nature are often hostile to the notion of teleology in nature. Nevertheless, teleological orientation is ascribed to human behaviour because such behaviour is deliberative and intentional. This establishes a dualism between nature and culture, but also between intentional mind and inert matter. This essay argues that such dualisms are overcome by resisting a distinction between ‘extrinsic’ teleology and ‘intrinsic’ teleology, and by recovering Aristotle’s connection between teleology and form. Recent work on autopoiesis in the (...) philosophy of mind indicates overlap with Aristotelian form. Finally, the new category of cooperation applied first to human behaviour in the realm of game theory, and latterly to evolution, indicates ways in which normative descriptions of nature understood teleologically are once again possible. (shrink)

_The Radical Orthodoxy Reader _presents a selection of key readings in the field of Radical Orthodoxy, the most influential theological movement in contemporary academic theology. Radical Orthodoxy draws on pre-Enlightenment theology and philosophy to engage critically with the assumption and priorities of secularism, modernity, postmodernity, and associated theologies. In doing so it explores a wide and exciting range of issues: music, language, society, the body, the city, power, motion, space, time, personhood, sex and gender. As such it is both controversial (...) and extremely stimulating; provoking much fruitful debate amongst contemporary theologians. To assist those encountering Radical Orthodoxy for the first time, each section has an introductory commentary, related reading and helpful questions to encourage in-depth understanding and further study. (shrink)

This article seeks to place the theodicy of the Anglican theologian Austin Farrer, as expressed in Love Almighty and Ills Unlimited , within the context of philosophical and theological approaches to the so‐called “problem of evil”. Farrer's work is initially contrasted with the theodicies of John Hick and Richard Swinburne. This comparison reveals some of the rationalist and foundationalist moral assumptions of modern philosophical theodicy of which Hick and Swinburne are representatives. By contrast, it is argued that Farrer's approach is (...) thoroughly theological and begins not with a pre‐conceived ethics, but with God's self‐revelation in Jesus Christ. Farrer is thus deemed to have much in common with pre‐Enlightenment thinkers such as Augustine and Aquinas.Although Farrer's theodicy is seen to be theological , it is argued that he resists trends in recent theological approaches to theodicy that claim that God is passible . This article defends divine impassibility and argues that, although Farrer's later “metaphysical personalism” implies that God may be personal to the point that he could be said to suffer, his Augustinian notion of the nature of evil as privatio boni strongly implies impassibility. This Farrer is seen to avoid two anthropomorphic approaches to theodicy: one that judges God by the standards of a foundational secular morality, and the other that ascribes certain “personal” emotions to the divine.This article defends Farrer's theological approach to theodicy and his emphasis on ecclesiology and soteriology. However, the lack of a convincing and thorough dogmatic theology is seen to render his theodicy uncompelling. Despite this weakness, it is argued that Farrer's work points theodicy towards a theological encounter with particular narratives of evil and suffering and away from the consideration of a single “problem of evil” by means of “rational”, philosophical enquiry. (shrink)

Technologic advances mean automated, wearable cameras are now feasible for investigating health behaviors in a public health context. This paper attempts to identify and discuss the ethical implications of such research, in relation to existing guidelines for ethical research in traditional visual methodologies. Research using automated, wearable cameras can be very intrusive, generating unprecedented levels of image data, some of it potentially unflattering or unwanted. Participants and third parties they encounter may feel uncomfortable or that their privacy has been affected (...) negatively. This paper attempts to formalize the protection of all according to best ethical principles through the development of an ethical framework. Respect for autonomy, through appropriate approaches to informed consent and adequate privacy and confidentiality controls, allows for ethical research, which has the potential to confer substantial benefits on the field of health behavior research. (shrink)

The capacity of next-generation closed-loop or adaptive deep brain stimulation devices to read and write shows great potential to effectively manage movement, seizure, and psychiatric disorders, and also raises the possibility of using aDBS to electively modulate mood, cognition, and prosociality. What separates aDBS from most neurotechnologies currently used for enhancement is that aDBS remains an invasive, surgically-implanted technology with a risk-benefit ratio significantly different when applied to diseased versus non-diseased individuals. Despite a large discourse about the ethics of enhancement, (...) no empirical studies yet examine perspectives on enhancement from within the aDBS research community. We interviewed 23 aDBS researchers about their attitudes toward expanding aDBS use for enhancement. A thematic content analysis revealed that researchers share ethical concerns related to safety and security; enhancement as unnecessary, unnatural or aberrant; and fairness, equality, and distributive justice. Most researchers felt that enhancement applications for DBS will eventually be technically feasible and that attempts to develop such applications for DBS are already happening. However, researchers unanimously felt that DBS ideally should not be considered for enhancement until researchers better understand brain target localization and functioning. While many researchers acknowledged controversies highlighted by scholars and ethicists, such as potential impacts on personhood, authenticity, autonomy and privacy, their ethical concerns reflect considerations of both gravity and perceived near-term likelihood. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A New Culture of Energy: Beyond East and West by Luce IrigarayOliver Thorne (bio)A New Culture of Energy: Beyond East and West. By Luce Irigaray, translated by Stephen Seeley, Stephen Pluháček and Antonia Pont. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022. Pp. v + 121. Paperback $25.00, isbn 978-0-231177-13-9.A New Culture of Energy: Beyond East and West, Luce Irigaray's most recent contribution to the traditions and discourses of Eastern (...) and Western cultures, will not disappoint those who have followed her work through its many phases of development. The scope of Luce Irigaray's lifework is impressive. It ranges from a philosophical and psychoanalytic critique of Western patriarchal culture to the establishing of another subject, "woman," to a feminine culture of between-women with their own symbol, language, and values, to her ethics of sexuate difference--a world which recognizes that at least two different sexuate subjects exist--to finally, her most mature work, which is for the most part a timely engagement with what she calls the vegetal and nature, our most pressing shared ethical concern today.At the heart of Luce Irigaray's work is the ultimate philosophical question: "What does it mean to be a human being?" (p. 5). And how are we to fulfil our humanity, "in relation to myself as well as in relation to nature, to the world, to the other or others, and to a possible transcendence relative to human existence?" (p. 5). Her open and never-ending pursuit of meaning places her firmly in that existential philosophical tradition of which she is probably the last living exponent. The search for meaning is at the heart of her journey between and beyond traditions. Her search for mediations and bridges between cultures digs down into mythology to find insights into the relational nature of human beings. It is her idea that human beings cannot be thought of as objects, either analytically or in isolation which gives her style such depth and warmth.The main thesis of A New Culture of Energy develops out of Luce Irigaray's practice of Yoga within a European context, following the teachings of T.K.V. Desikachar (and several senior teachers) for over forty years. This practice helped her to develop her own position and unique way of interpreting and critiquing what she came to see as the Western tradition of philosophy. During this time, Luce Irigaray described herself as living between traditions--Between East and West (2002) being her first publication which focused on the East-West discourse. The essays in this text further develop--through autobiography, textual [End Page 1] interpretation, and analysis--a unique self-reflection on her own experience and writings, especially how her own philosophy has been influenced by yogic practice and techniques of breathing.Her fundamental thought of sexuate difference (originally sexual difference) is not prominent in this work, with only passing references to it. Justice cannot be done here to her thought of sexuate difference, but a brief note may help the reader who is not familiar with her work. Luce Irigaray claims that traditionally the European subject has always been a masculine-male subject, even though this subject presented as neutral. One of the aims of her early work was to critique this subject and their culture, which reduced women to an object dominated by men. Following on from this critique, Luce Irigaray wanted to develop a female-feminine subject position which was different to the neutral or the male-masculine subject. This was in some sense, but not limited to, a development of the work of Simone de Beauvoir's woman as other. Finally, her ethics of sexuate difference becomes possible as a culture between two subjects, that is, two subjects who are irreducibly different, each with their own symbol, language, embodiment, ways of perceiving and culture: one masculine-male, the other feminine-female.There are several dimensions to this process which she fleshes out throughout her works. The main criticism of sexuate difference is its essentialism, which Luce Irigaray denies. Her main response is the need to see the living-relational web of human beings, and not an interpretation based... (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Simone de Beauvoir Luce Irigaray Colette Guillaumin Hélène Cixous Julia Kristeva Monique Wittig Sarah Kofman Michèle Le Doeuff Christine Delphy Conclusion.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:14 Feminist Studies 46, no. 1. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Melissa Oliver-Powell Beyond the Spectacle of Suffering: Agnès Varda’s L’Unechante,l’autrepas and Rewriting the Subject of Abortion in France In the spring of 1971, three years after the revolutionary fervor of May 1968 in France, 343 women put their names to a courageous manifesto announcing that they were criminals of a particularly gendered nature. The authors of (...) Manifeste des 343 (Manifesto of the 343) comprised a large group of culturally eminent French women and activists declaring that they had all illegally undergone abortions, which at this point, despite growing decriminalization throughout much of Western Europe, were still outlawed within their republic. Though many of the revolutionary fires had now eased to embers, French feminists demonstrated that reproductive rights were still a vital and unresolved topic of social justice. Including names as weighty as Simone de Beauvoir, Jeanne Moreau, and Catherine Deneuve, the manifesto brought together exceptional women from the fields of academia, law, theater, film and literature, alongside grassroots activists. Their action was a bold challenge to the French authorities, daring them to arrest some of the country’s brightest thinkers and cultural innovators under a law the signatories felt was deeply unjust, sexist, and antithetical to the values of individual liberty and citizenship. It was a case of those with the broadest shoulders weaponizing their privilege to present a robust front line in the wider struggle for women’s rights. One of the signatories was filmmaker Agnès Varda. Her name, like those of several others on the list, demonstrates the symbiosis between Melissa Oliver-Powell 15 cultural production and gender politics that has often characterized French feminist thought. From the multidisciplinary writings of Beauvoir, to the novels of the écriture féminine movement, to the lyrical academic prose of Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and others, French and Francophone feminist writers have tended to connect art and politics with a great deal of fluidity. As a committed activist and a filmmaker, Agnès Varda falls very much within this tradition, often adopting and developing feminist practices within her cinema. This article examines how Varda’s 1977 film, L’Une chante, l’autre pas (One Sings, The Other Doesn’t) interacts with and participates in the feminist political project of reproductive rights as well as the ongoing intellectual and moral debates over abortion taking place in France throughout the late 1960s and 1970s. I look particularly at the adversarial construction of abortion narratives within these debates and the location of victimhood therein. Within mainstream cultural representations in and beyond France, abortion is typically constructed as either a traumatic or a transgressive moment. The same is often true on either side of political and social debates on abortion, which have tended either to characterize the women who get abortions as irresponsible and amoral or as sympathetic victims in need of protection. Though the transgressive element persists, it is the interaction with representations of trauma that interests me here. In approaching discussions of gendered injustice, it is common for feminist writers and activists to leverage pathos as a rhetorical strategy. While suffering can be a highly effective and galvanizing expression of oppression, such discourses also run the risk of producing excessive depictions of victimhood, which can displace the capacity for action from the subject of hardship onto the privileged oppressor. This risk is particularly at stake within the cultural form of film, as its visuality and identificatory mechanics have the potential to spectacularize the female victim and make her relatable only through suffering. This was often the case in earlier French films that featured abortion such as Les Mauvaises rencontres (1955), Des gens sans importance (1956), Journal d’une femme en blanc (1965), and Une femme en blanc se révolte (1966), all of which made their subjects sympathetic by entwining them in long narratives of victimization ending in death or disgrace. This article looks at how Varda’s L’Une chante, l’autre pas disengages from the spectacle of suffering that so often characterizes representations of women’s experiences 16 Melissa Oliver-Powell and rejects the idea that abortion narratives must... (shrink)

In this paper we will explore how Albert Camus has much to offer philosophers of education. Although a number of educationalists have attempted to explicate the educational implications of Camus’ literary works (Denton, 1964; Oliver, 1965; Götz, 1987; Curzon-Hobson, 2003; Marshall, 2007, 2008; Weddington, 2007; Roberts, 2008, 2013; Gibbons, 2013; Heraud, 2013; Roberts, Gibbons & Heraud, 2013) these analyses have not attempted to extrapolate pedagogical guidelines to develop an educational framework for children’s philosophical practice in the way Matthew Lipman (...) did from John Dewey’s philosophy of education, which informed his philosophy for children curriculum and pedagogy. To this end we offer comparisons and contrasts between Camus and the pragmatist educational discourse centred on communities of philosophical inquiry (or, more broadly, collaborative philosophical inquiry). In particular we focus on the phenomenology of inquiry, namely, that “inquiry must begin with a problem, question, or doubt and must aim at a solution or resolution, both of which are genuinely felt—something in which the inquirer actually has a stake” (Gregory & Granger, 2012: 13). We conclude that what Camus calls lucidity has implications for the notion of reconstruction, prominent in Dewey’s thoughts on education, and central to Lipman’s focus on philosophy functioning educationally. (shrink)

This essay responds to the helpful criticisms of Valuing Health: Well-Being, Freedom, and Suffering, which have been offered by Elselijn Kingma, Adam Oliver, Anna Alexandrova, Alex Voorhoeve, Erik Nord and James Wilson. I am extremely grateful to Jonathan Wolf and especially James Wilson for arranging a one-day conference on my book, Valuing Health: Well-Being, Freedom, and Suffering [Hausman, D.. Valuing Health: Well-Being, Freedom, and Suffering. Oxford: Oxford University Press.], and for publishing this symposium. I am also grateful to the (...) wonderful six scholars who took the time to study my work and to offer perceptive and helpful criticisms. Without unduly trying the patience of readers, I cannot respond to all their remarks, but I hope that in what follows I have replied to the most important of their comments on the arguments and conclusions of Valuing Health. Before I begin these replies, a brief synopsis of Valuing Health may be helpful to the reader. (shrink)

It has been shown that the thirteenth-century Dominican friar, St Thomas Aquinas, was an important theological influence on John Owen, the seventeenth-century English puritan theologian, chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, especially in the areas of the divine being, grace and Chalcedonian Christology. Suzanne McDonald has argued that, while Aquinas is unmistakably a source for Owen's doctrine of the beatific vision, Owen surpassed Aquinas's doctrine in a manner she judges to be correct, theologically speaking, and which (...) exposes the deficiency of Aquinas's account. Owen achieved this particular ‘Reforming’ or rather ‘re-forming’ of Aquinas's doctrine, she argues, by way of a ‘Christological re-orientation of the doctrine’ in terms of what is seen in the beatific vision and how it is seen, that is, its content and means. This article replies to McDonald from a Catholic and Thomist perspective, in response to her suggestion that Owen's account of the beatific vision opens up possibilities for ecumenical dialogue. The article attempts to achieve this first by reassessing the Christological contrasts McDonald draws between Owen and Aquinas in terms of content and means, and then by offering several suggestions as to why one might want to prefer Aquinas's account over Owen's. (shrink)

Im zweiten Buch seiner rechtstheologischen Summe De legibus ac Deo legislatore aus dem Jahre 1612 entwickelt Francisco Suárez seine Theorie des Naturrechts. Dabei gelingt Suárez die kritische Überarbeitung der lex-naturalis-Theorien des Augustinus und Thomas von Aquin und damit eine kritische Kontinuität mittelalterlicher Rechtstheologie. Suárez formuliert aber darüber hinaus eine für das frühe 17. Jahrhundert eigenständige Konzeption, die als innovatives Modell von Naturrecht mit den Entwürfen Hugo Grotius’ und Thomas Hobbes’ zu konkurrieren vermag. Die Einflüsse dieses genuin politisch-theologischen Naturrechtskonzepts reichen bis (...) zu Pufendorf und Wolff. Der Band erschließt diesen Schlüsseltext des frühneuzeitlichen Naturrechts im Sinne eine kooperativen Kommentars. Mit Beiträgen von Oliver Bach, Nobert Brieskorn, Simon Eultgen, Holger Glinka, Frank Grunert, Dominik Recknagel, Stefan Schweighöfer, Kurt Seelmann und Gideon Stiening. (shrink)

Simon Oliver argues that the modern culture-nature divide is bound to collapse, because of the relentless expansion of technology into culture and nature.1 This breakdown could lead to a new appreciation of both, but only if the divide is replaced by a truly transcendental theology. Otherwise, culture and nature will continue to be seen as subjects and objects. Oliver raises issues crucial to the understanding of predominant cognitive categories: the durability of the culture-nature divide; its theological foundations (...) and the prospect of changing them by means of an alternative theology; and the role of objective (e.g., technological diffusion) and subjective…. (shrink)

Many research fields concerned with the processing of information contained in human faces would benefit from face stimulus sets in which specific facial characteristics are systematically varied while other important picture characteristics are kept constant. Specifically, a face database in which displayed expressions, gaze direction, and head orientation are parametrically varied in a complete factorial design would be highly useful in many research domains. Furthermore, these stimuli should be standardised in several important, technical aspects. The present article presents the freely (...) available Radboud Faces Database offering such a stimulus set, containing both Caucasian adult and children images. This face database is described both procedurally and in terms of content, and a validation study concerning its most important characteristics is presented. In the validation study, all frontal images were rated with respect to the shown facial expression, intensity of expression, clarity of expression, genuineness of expression, attractiveness, and valence. The results show very high recognition of the intended facial expressions. (shrink)

This bestselling dictionary is written by one of the leading philosophers of our time, and it is widely recognized as the best dictionary of its kind. Comprehensive and authoritative, it covers every aspect of philosophy from Aristotle to Zen. With clear and concise definitions, it provides lively and accessible coverage of not only Western philosophical traditions, but also themes from Chinese, Indian, Islamic, and Jewish philosophy. New entries on philosophy of economics, social theory, neuroscience, philosophy of the mind, and moral (...) conceptions, bring this authoritative third edition up to date. It is the ideal introduction to philosophy for anyone with an interest in the subject, and it is an indispensable work of reference for students and teachers. (shrink)

Simon Critchley's first book, The Ethics of Deconstruction, was originally published to great acclaim in 1992. This edition contains three new appendices and a new preface where Critchley reflects upon the origins, motivation and reception of The Ethics of Deconstruction.

“Father” Zachary Hale Comstock is a self‐professed prophet, religious zealot, and racist, who has kept his “heir” under lock and key in the floating city of Columbia. Booker DeWitt is a washed‐up, disgraced ex‐Pinkerton agent haunted by his participation in the Wounded Knee Massacre. He enters Columbia to rescue Elizabeth in exchange for having his gambling debts settled. After much bloodshed, Booker saves Elizabeth and kills Comstock. In the past, Booker attended a baptism to assuage his guilt over Wounded Knee. (...) In some worlds he rejected the baptism, got married, had a daughter, Anna, and ended up as an indebted alcoholic ex‐Pinkerton agent. In the Comstock world, Anna is renamed Elizabeth in order to conceal her true origins. BioShock Infinite paints a metaphysical picture that treats the many‐worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics as reality. (shrink)

Diffeomorphism invariance is sometimes taken to be a criterion of background independence. This claim is commonly accompanied by a second, that the genuine physical magnitudes (the ``observables'') of background-independent theories and those of background-dependent (non-diffeomorphism-invariant) theories are essentially different in nature. I argue against both claims. Background-dependent theories can be formulated in a diffeomorphism-invariant manner. This suggests that the nature of the physical magnitudes of relevantly analogous theories (one background free, the other background dependent) is essentially the same. The temptation (...) to think otherwise stems from a misunderstanding of the meaning of spacetime coordinates in background-dependent theories. (shrink)

In “The Book of the Crown (_Kitāb al-Iklīl_) of pseudo-Rhazes” Oliver Kahl and Henrietta Sharp Cockrell offer a facsimile edition, with annotated English translation and introductory study, of a unique and highly unusual medieval Arabic medical text.

Led by the conviction that Beauvoir's The Coming of Age (1970) has been overshadowed by The Second Sex for too long, this book sets out to redress that neglect and to bring Beauvoir's reflections on old age into dialogue with different perspectives and approaches in feminist philosophy. It does so superbly. Several secondary works on Beauvoir discuss The Coming of Age, including The Cambridge Companion to Beauvoir, Stella Stanford's How to Read Beauvoir, and (from a literary perspective) Oliver Davis's (...) Age Rage and Going Gently, but there is no similarly comprehensive treatment of Beauvoir's philosophy of age. [...]. (shrink)

The article seeks to stress the importance of two main innovations in Ernesto Laclau's recent work: what his theory of populism in On Populist Reason provides in terms of theoretical innovations is , a political theory of naming, and , a political theory of the heterogeneous. Furthermore, it is asked what it means to name, as Laclau himself does, the subject of the political "the people" and to define populism as the logic of all politics. It is argued against potential (...) criticism that these rather strong claims, far from being overstretched, in fact must be understood in the light of Laclau's new ideas on political naming and the heterogeneous, since his notions of populism and "the people" are the outcome of political nomination, that is, a political wager on Laclau's part , and the name of "the people," like every political name, will always cast a shadow on the heterogeneous as that which cannot be named. (shrink)

I intend to argue that good friendship sometimes requires epistemic irresponsibility. To put it another way, it is not always possible to be both a good friend and a diligent believer.

_Skepticism and Cognitivism_ addresses the fundamental question of epistemology: Is knowledge possible? It approaches this query with an evaluation of the skeptical tradition in Western philosophy, analyzing thinkers who have claimed that we can know nothing. After an introductory chapter lays out the central issues, chapter 2 focuses on the classical skeptics of the Academic and Pyrrhonistic schools and then on the skepticism of David Hume. Chapters 3 through 5 are devoted to contemporary defenders of skepticism—Keith Lehrer, Arne Næss, and (...) Peter Unger. In chapter 6, author Oliver A. Johnson dons the mantle of skeptic himself and develops and adds theories to the skeptical arsenal. He closes with an examination of the relationship between skepticism and cognitivism, reaching and defending conclusions on the nature and extent of possible human knowledge. (shrink)

English has plural terms as well as singular terms. But our standard formal languages, e.g., the predicate calculus, feature only singular terms. How can the plural idiom be formalized?‘Changing the subject’ is by far the most common plurals strategy among both philosophers and linguists: a plural term is replaced by a singular term standing for some complex object that ‘contains’ the individuals to which the plural term alludes. For example, one might simply replace ‘A, B imply C’ with ‘{A, B} (...) implies [singular] C’. We uncover a surprising variety of ways to change the subject, of ever‐increasing complexity and ingenuity. Our question is whether any can made to work. (shrink)

Provides an accessible account of the changing world of archaeological theory. It charts the emergence of the new emphasis on relations as well as engaging with current theoretical trends and the thinkers archaeologists regularly employ. This book will be an essential guide to cutting-edge theory for students and for professionals wishing to reacquaint themselves with this field. Oliver J.T. Harris is lecturer in archaeology in the School of Archaeology & Ancient History, University of Leicester. Craig N. Cipolla is lecturer (...) in historical archaeology in the School of Archaeology & Ancient History, University of Leicester"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Abstract:Drawing on Marxist and psychoanalytic frameworks, I collect notes and reflections about the experience of contingent work in the Writing Center at Amherst College, a private liberal arts college in the United States. Taking the tradition of workers' inquiry as a source of inspiration and point of departure, I chart the material relations of the job alongside its social and affective dimensions. Connecting the form that writing takes (in classrooms and scholarly publishing) to the political economic relations of higher education, (...) I reframe writing as a means to make sense of experience rather than as a mode of professionalized conversation. (shrink)