This essay speaks to a certain kind of difficulty that stands in the way of doing phenomenology. I argue that this difficulty has its source in the sort of institutional structures many of us think and write under, which gives rise to a kind of attitude that tends to obscure or diminish the worth and promise of attending to the things themselves, phenomenologically. I refer to this attitude as the “exegetical attitude.” In attempting to make this attitude more manifest, I (...) hope to further phenomenological investigations of the lived world. (shrink)

This essay offers a critique of the culture of specio-vocationalism in American higher education by first drawing on Edmund Husserl’s conception of “world” and connecting this notion to education conceived as a “world-disclosing” activity. The essay will then give an account of how the trends of vocationalization and specialization manifest themselves in contemporary university culture, and how they work together to “de-world” the lives of our students and deprive them of possibilities that are part of what it means to be (...) human. After showing how this impoverishment undermines the world-disclosing function of higher education, the essay will then suggest one way to counter this “de-worlding of world”: the teaching of the situated finitude of the human condition by reminding our students that our knowledge or sense of the world is always only partial. It is this realization that has the potential of placing our students once again before the vastness of the world in wonder and curiosity. In this realization they will gain a better sense of the world as a distant horizon still to be explored in all of its inexhaustible complexity and meaning. At the same time, coming to grips with their own ignorance will imbue them with an intellectual humility that will shield them not only from their own finitude, but the finitude of others as well. (shrink)

In recent years a burgeoning bicycle culture has reanimated the city of Detroit. The following essay analyzes this reanimation through the themes of embodiment, mobility, spatiality, and the intersubjective creation of place, using the techniques of phenomenology. The description that emerges is an evolving social ontology with implications for cities like Detroit. In such cities any plan for re-urbanization must re-conceptualize both transportation schemas and public space on terrain once dominated by the automobile. The provisional phenomenological description on offer here (...) should be thought of as just one tool in this project, as Detroit and cities like it negotiate the reconstitution of their communities. (shrink)

Of all of the various forms of political dissent, the most dramatic as a form of expression is that which places lived bodies in tension with the prevailing social order. Bodies so presented—in marches, strikes, sit-ins, demonstrations and other mass assemblies—are just the opposite of Foucault’s docile bodies. They are a collective will concretized, an intersubjective mass animated by a common purpose that fills a public space and obstinately makes their shared demand. The presence of such dissenting bodies assembled in (...) various public spaces have at times been essential in dramatizing grievances and re-constituting the meaning of a political landscape. Though such dissenting bodies have often been met with the full force of the state, the political efficacy of such bodies has been seriously undermined in recent years due to more subtle strategies to suppress such dissent, and counterstrategies meant to circumscribe these efforts at suppression. The goal of this essay is to explore these developments through phenomenological analysis. Preliminary considerations of (1) different forms of political potency and (2) the lived body and its movement through space, will be followed by (3) an investigation of what it means to be a dissenting body witnessed within a public place, and (4) what happens when dissenting bodies are consigned to circumscribed spaces or retreat to the “virtual.” This analysis will show how these developments have rendered dissenting bodies far less politically effective than they have been in the past, which dangerously weakens the democratic traditions of free speech and open dissent. This, in turn, supports a call (5) for a re-assertion of the embodied subject into the practice of political dissent. (shrink)

In this essay I endeavor to provide such an account, and describe at a pretheoretical level an embodied subjectivity at odds with its own state of embodiment, and on the other hand, to explore the limited agency induced by constraints that fall upon an embodied subject who is compelled to live a body which is free to engage the various possibilities of the world in every respect except one, within the context of an intercorporeal social reality. This description will provide (...) a sound ontological foundation where the central place of embodiment in the abortion debate can be re-asserted and properly taken into account. What this description will reveal is the ontological drama of such “aversely pregnant subjectivities” at a time when ever more legislation is being passed that poses ever more restrictions on reproductive rights of women in the United States. This investigation is all the more pertinent in light of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s recent announcement that he is retiring from the U.S. Supreme Court, which may well put the right to legal abortions in jeopardy. My highest ambition, however, is to convey the significance of these restrictions to those who have never been and never can become pregnant, but who by and large determine the polices that play a substantial role in shaping such subjectivities. (shrink)

This paper offers a phenomenological description of torture that delves beneath its mere physical effect on the human body, in order to demonstrate that bodily pain is only one dimension of the experiential structure of torture. In fact, this paper’s central claim is that torture is better understood as a radical ontological violation of a lived world through the body. This claim is supported through Merleau-Ponty’s theory of the embodied subject. The main purpose of this paper is to show that (...) no matter how physically “unscarred” a survivor of torture may be, their lived world remains irretrievably damaged. (shrink)

In this paper, I sketch out the way our bodies are engaged while commuting in order to elucidate several key aspects of the bodily experience of “in-between-ness.” I discover that within the rhythm and movement of the in-between, our bodies can open to a specific kind of conceptual creativity—an insight that I unfold in reference to the unanticipated innovation and transformation that accompanies other bodily experiences of in-between-ness more generally. This sketch, however, also demands that I reflect on phenomenological methodology, (...) and our ontological presuppositions about the “things” that we intend to “go back to.” I conclude by suggesting that while Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizomatic ontology helps us explain the findings of my phenomenological sketch of commuting, Merleau-Ponty’s embodied phenomenology can help to flesh out Deleuze and Guattari’s suggestion that all the work happens in “the logic of the AND”. While the method I call on in this paper is decidedly phenomenological, the conclusions I reach invite me to explore further the promise of a more “rhizomatic phenomenological” practice. (shrink)

The volume under review originated as a lecture course given by Martin Heidegger during the winter semester of 1929–30 at the University of Frieburg. The declared thesis of this tripartite-structured course was to determine the essence of philosophy through an interrogation of metaphysics.

A poetry anthology in which fourteen American poets of varied ethnic backgrounds explore their own origins and the process of assimilation that has helped shape this country.

Comprehensive work on philosophy of religion and religions in India.

"By combining recent advances in the physical sciences with some of the novel ideas, techniques, and data of modern biology, this book attempts to achieve a new and different kind of evolutionary synthesis. I found it to be challenging, fascinating, infuriating, and provocative, but certainly not dull."--James H, Brown, University of New Mexico "This book is unquestionably mandatory reading not only for every living biologist but for generations of biologists to come."--Jack P. Hailman, Animal Behaviour , review of the first (...) edition "An important contribution to modern evolutionary thinking. It fortifies the place of Evolutionary Theory among the other well-established natural laws."--R.Gessink, TAXON. (shrink)

Currently, an emphasis is being placed on the integration of ethical issues into the business curriculum. This paper investigates the viability of using student group interaction to induce an upward movement in the stages of moral development as advanced by Kohlberg. The results of a classroom experiment using graduate business law students suggest that formulating groups that mix stages of moral development can provide a robust environment for upward movement. In addition, the results suggest strategies for formulating effective groups, based (...) upon entry levels as measured by the Defining Issues Test. (shrink)

(1979). My Case Stands: the sociology of education and the training of teachers—a reply to Culley & Demaine. Educational Studies: Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 191-194.

A number of authors have drawn attention to the contributions to geology of Robert Hooke, and it has been pointed out that in several ways his ideas were more advanced than those of Steno, who is sometimes taken to be the founder of geology as a scientific discipline. Moreover, it has been argued that in a number of instances Hooke should receive the credit for ideas which are usually believed to have originated in the work of James Hutton. This recognition (...) of the significance of Hooke's work is regarded by the present writer as being well founded. But, by contrast, the relationship between Hooke's geological ideas and his views on the proper methods for conducting scientific enquiries has been largely overlooked, and his views on the methodology of science, as revealed in his Posthumous works, have received little discussion. Moreover, on one of the few occasions on which they were discussed, by William Whewell, they were belittled. Whewell regarded Hooke's methodological contribution as merely ‘an attempt to adapt the Novum organon to the age which succeeded its publication’, 5 and he implied that the ‘same imperfections’ were to be found in the writings of both Hooke and Bacon. The influence of Bacon is, to be sure, most obvious in Hooke's general philosophy. Nevertheless, it will be argued that Hooke had a much clearer idea than did Bacon of the importance of so-called ‘hypothetico-deductive’ methods in science, and that in many ways his methodological views represent a significant advance on those of Bacon. (shrink)

Offers a comprehensive nonmathematical treatment regarding the design and analysis of experiments, focusing on basic concepts rather than calculation of technical details. Much of the discussion is in terms of examples drawn from numerous fields of applications. Subjects include the justification and practical difficulties of randomization, various factors occurring in factorial experiments, selecting the size of an experiments, different purposes for which observations may be made and much more.

Ethical guidelines for conducting clinical trials have historically been based on a perceived therapeutic obligation to treat and benefit the patient-participants. The origins of this ethical framework can be traced to the Hippocratic oath originally written to guide doctors in caring for their patients, where the overriding moral obligation of doctors is strictly to do what is best for the individual patient, irrespective of other social considerations. In contrast, although medicine focuses on the health of the person, public health is (...) concerned with the health of the entire population, and thus, public health ethics is founded on the societal responsibility to protect and promote the health of the population as a whole. From a public health perspective, research ethics should be guided by giving due consideration to the risks and benefits to society in addition to the individual research participants. On the basis of a duty to protect the population as a whole, a fiduciary obligation to realise the social value of the research and the moral responsibility to distribute the benefits and burdens of research fairly across society, how a public health perspective on research ethics results in fundamental re-assessments of the proper course of action for two salient topical issues in research ethics is shown: stopping trials early for reasons of efficacy and the conduct of research on less expensive yet less effective interventions. (shrink)

In this paper I contend that the 'superfluity' of triangles is only apparent; all those specified are indeed required for the smallest sub-units, so long as the symmetry of the final body to be constructed is taken into account at earlier stages.

One of the arguments against conducting human subject trials in the Third World adopts a distributive justice principle found in a commentary of the CIOM'S Eighth Guideline for international research on human subjects. Critics argue that non-participant members of the community in which the trials are conducted are exploited because sponsoring agencies do not ensure that the products developed have been made reasonably available to these individuals. I argue that the distributive principle's wording is too vague and ambiguous to be (...) used to criticize any trial. Furthermore, the mere fact that an experiment does not fulfill this particular distributive justice principle does not entail that it is unethical. (shrink)