The psychedelic renaissance did not emerge from a void. While a tremendous upswell of interest in psychedelics can be observed today, there is scant acknowledgment of the current spiritual crisis that has led to this burgeoning enthusiasm. Having lost our sense of the sacred, we have—with disastrous consequences—become alienated from ourselves, others, and the natural environment. Secular psychotherapy and psychiatry have failed to address the myriad mental health problems that are prevalent right now, which has compelled people to desperately look (...) for alternatives to fill the void in their lives. Sacred medicines have been used for millennia in humanity’s traditional cultures as part of their spiritual practices. Now that psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (PAT) is being developed, we must avoid repeating the mistakes of modern psychology, which misguidedly seeks to situate entheogenic therapy on a desacralized foundation of materialism, reductionism, and scientism. Nevertheless, although the full benefit of entheogens can likely be gained only in the context of a sacred tradition, they may still have some measure of therapeutic value even when used in conjunction with secular psychotherapy. This article examines the metaphysical foundations of sacred psychology and argues that entheogenic therapy needs to be grounded on the same basis. The framework employed here is a “transpersonal” perspective that applies the insights found in the world’s great wisdom traditions. It will be argued that the adoption of psychedelics in mental health treatment presupposes a fully integrated psychotherapy that is possible only when it is rooted in a spiritually informed ontology. (shrink)

This article examines the ontology and politics of Peter Sloterdijk's Spheres trilogy, focusing in particular upon the notion of microspherical enclosure explicated in the first volume of this series. Noting Sloterdijk's unusual alignment of his philosophy with media theory, three main contentions are put forward. Firstly, that Sloterdijk's reconfiguration of Heidegger's fundamental ontology represents a largely unacknowledged renunciation of the primacy of Being-towards-death in the authentic existence of Dasein, foregrounding instead an originary co-belonging between mother and child. Secondly, that Sloterdijk (...) borrows from media theory a concern regarding the facticity of all communication, grounding philosophical discourse in the determinate locality of its origin, but does so while exalting a pre-natal communicative immediacy that would seem to disparage the everydayness of Dasein. Finally, that Sloterdijk's oft-justified scepticism regarding globalization often retreats into an anti-cosmopolitanism that, in its nostalgia for the comfort, security and immediacy of the matrixial co-belonging, evinces a covert but potentially noxious politics of exclusion. (shrink)

This article aims to compare notions of progress and evolution in the social theories of Freud and Spencer. It argues 1) that the two authors had similarly complex theories that contained mixed elements of positivism and teleology; 2) In its positivist elements, both authors made use of unified natural laws and, in its teleological aspect, they made use of notions of final cause in that progress and the evolution of civilization was understood as a linear path of progressive development with (...) an aim, 3) that that aim was both ethno- as well as - in Freud?s case in particular? self-centric and, finally, 4) that such understanding of natural law led to ethical commitments to the individual. (shrink)

Argues that truth, moral right, political right, and aesthetic value may be understood as arising out of a naturalist account of humanity, if naturalism is rightly conceived.

Philosophers, theologians, physicists, and psychologists join their efforts to reflect on the crucial issues of limit and infinity, time and eternity, empty space and material space. The volume offers an invaluable contribution to some of the most important issues of our times: questions on God and consciousness are discussed in parallel with quantum theory, black holes, the inflationary universe, the Big Bang, and string theory, from different perspectives and angles, ranging from neuroscience to AI.

Digital technology has revolutionized connectivity, but it has also overcome spatial obstacles that used to shield people from subjugating gazes and unlimited exercise of power. The home as an auratic space is dead, and this alienation has hindered our democratic capacities and created complex crises. The Death of Home aims to intellectually engage readers via enhancing spatial literacy to critically confront today’s crises.

We have long lived in a world made by global connections. Our products, our travels, our ideas--all of these have their origins in places and peoples both near and far. But when scholars narrate the history of the modern self, they ignore these connections and focus on changes in European science and philosophy. In this provocative new book, Avram Alpert argues that we need to rethink the story of the modern self as a global history. He first shows how canonical (...) European thinkers like Michel de Montaigne, René Descartes, and Immanuel Kant explicitly formed their ideas of selfhood in relation to the travel accounts flooding into Europe from colonial missionaries. He then pushes this history beyond Europe, showing how a diverse series of writers, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Léopold Senghor, Frantz Fanon, and D.T. Suzuki, critiqued these ideas of global selfhood with their own creative responses. Spanning four continents and four centuries, the book argues that all of these writers partake of a shared global history forged in the violence of colonial rule. The resulting narrative shows that the modern self is not a European invention, but a global, evolving, and fraught attempt to make ourselves the kinds of beings who can live with the complexity of a world that is at once connected and never fully knowable. (shrink)

The first systematic analysis of the Frankfurt School’s research and theorizing on modern antisemitism. Although the Frankfurt School represents one of the most influential intellectual traditions of the twentieth century, its multifaceted work on modern antisemitism has so far largely been neglected. The Politics of Unreason fills this gap, providing the first systematic study of the Frankfurt School’s philosophical, psychological, political, and social research and theorizing on the problem of antisemitism. Examining the full range of these critical theorists’ contributions, from (...) major studies and prominent essays to seemingly marginal pieces and aphorisms, Lars Rensmann reconstructs how the Frankfurt School, faced with the catastrophe of the genocide against the European Jews, explains forms and causes of anti-Jewish politics of hate. The book also pays special attention to research on coded and “secondary” antisemitism after the Holocaust, and how resentments are politically mobilized under conditions of democracy. By revisiting and rereading the Frankfurt School’s original work, this book challenges several misperceptions about critical theory’s research, making the case that it provides an important source to better understand the social origins and politics of antisemitism, racism, and hate speech in the modern world. Lars Rensmann is Professor of European Politics and Society at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. His books include Arendt and Adorno: Political and Philosophical Investigations (coedited with Samir Gandesha). (shrink)

Human nature is frequently evoked to characterize our species and describe how it differs from others. But how should we understand this concept? What is the nature of a species? Some take our nature to be an essence and argue that because humans lack an essence, they also lack a nature. Others argue for non-essentialist ways of understanding human nature, which usually aim to provide criteria for sorting human traits into one of two bins, the one belonging to our nature (...) and the other outside our nature. This Element argues that both the essentialist and trait bin approaches are misguided. Instead, the author develops a trait cluster account of human nature, which holds that human nature is based on the distribution of our traits over our (actual and possible) life histories. One benefit of this account is that it aligns human nature with the human sciences, rendering the central concern of the human sciences to be the study of human nature. (shrink)

Este libro promete ser una contribución para el estudio de la teoría crítica en general y para el análisis de la historia de la Escuela de Frankfurt en particular. Todos los trabajos que están contenidos en este volumen hacen parte del amplio marco teórico de la teoría crítica de la sociedad. Muchos siguen las huellas de los fundadores de esta tendencia, mientras que otros se presentan como críticos de la misma y unos cuantos más tratan de vincular problemas y contextos (...) de relevancia a los conceptos más destacados que se empezaron a construir hace cien años en Frankfurt. Encontramos como buena excusa para su publicación precisamente el año centenario del Instituto de Investigación Social. Además, hemos creído conveniente organizar los materiales en secciones que van desde la historia de la Escuela de Frankfurt hasta la consideración de algunos interrogantes de actualidad motivados por el desarrollo de la teoría crítica. No obstante, con esto no pretendemos establecer límites absolutos de clasificación. Confesamos que nuestra forma de organizar los ensayos responde simplemente a criterios editoriales más que a cuestiones teóricas y conceptuales. Claramente las intersecciones entre los estudios aquí presentados son amplias y hacen que cada una de las propuestas pueda dialogar con las otras en función de sus evidentes parecidos de familia. (shrink)

PLEASE NOTE: This is the corrected 2nd eBook edition, 2021. ●●●●● _Critique of Impure Reason_ has now also been published in a printed edition. To reduce the otherwise high price of this scholarly, technical book of nearly 900 pages and make it more widely available beyond university libraries to individual readers, the non-profit publisher and the author have agreed to issue the printed edition at cost. ●●●●● The printed edition was released on September 1, 2021 and is now available through (...) all booksellers, including Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and brick-and-mortar bookstores under ISBN 978-0-578-88646-6. ●●●●● In light of the length of this book, readers who would like to have a more detailed description of the book's objectives and method may find it helpful to read the detailed and clearly written Wikipedia entry about this work: From the Wikipedia search page, use the search phrase "Critique of Impure Reason". At least at the time of this writing (11/29/2021), the Wikipedia entry is well-researched and accurate. ●●●●● In addition, a "Primer on Bartlett's CRITIQUE OF IMPURE REASON" has been made available by the author. It is available under its title through PhilPapers and other philosophy online archives. ●●●●● COMMENDATIONS OF THIS WORK, from the back cover of the published edition: ●●●●● “I admire its range of philosophical vision.” – Nicholas Rescher, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, author of more than 100 books. ●●●●● “Bartlett’s _Critique of Impure Reason_ is an impressive, bold, and ambitious work. Careful scholarship is balanced by original analyses that lead the reader to recognize the limits of meaning, knowledge, and conceptual possibility. The work addresses a host of traditional philosophical problems, among them the nature of space, time, causality, consciousness, the self, other minds, ontology, free will and determinism, and others. The book culminates in a fascinating and profound new understanding of relativity physics and quantum theory.” – Gerhard Preyer, Professor of Philosophy, Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, author of many books including _Concepts of Meaning_, _Beyond Semantics and Pragmatics_, _Intention and Practical Thought_, and _Contextualism in Philosophy_. ●●●●● “[This work’s] goal is of a unique and difficult species: Dr. Bartlett seeks to develop a formal logical calculus on the basis of transcendental philosophical arguments; in fact, he hopes that this calculus will be the formal expression of the transcendental foundation of knowledge.... I consider Dr. Bartlett’s work soundly conceived and executed with great skill.” – C. F. von Weizsäcker, philosopher and physicist, former Director, Max-Planck-Institute, Starnberg, Germany. ●●●●● “Bartlett has written an American “Prolegomena to All Future Metaphysics.” He aims rigorously to eliminate meaningless assertions, reach bedrock, and place philosophy on a firm foundation that will enable it, like science and mathematics, to produce lasting results that generations to come can build on. This is a great book, the fruit of a lifetime of research and reflection, and it deserves serious attention.” — Martin X. Moleski, former Professor, Canisius College, Buffalo, NY, studies of scientific method, the presuppositions of thought, and the self-referential nature of epistemology. ●●●●● “Bartlett has written a book on what might be called the underpinnings of philosophy. It has fascinating depth and breadth, and is all the more striking due to its unifying perspective based on the concepts of reference and self-reference.” – Don Perlis, Professor of Computer Science, University of Maryland, author of numerous publications on self-adjusting autonomous systems and philosophical issues concerning self-reference, mind, and consciousness. ●●●●● ●●●●● The _Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning_ comprises a major and important contribution to philosophy. Thanks to the generosity of its publisher, this massive 885-page volume has been published as a free open access eBook (3.75MB) as well as an open access printed edition. It inaugurates a revolutionary paradigm shift in philosophical thought by providing compelling and long-sought-for solutions to a wide range of philosophical problems. In the process, the work fundamentally transforms the way in which the concepts of reference, meaning, and possibility are understood. The book includes a Foreword by the celebrated German philosopher and physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. ●●●●● In Kant’s _Critique of Pure Reason_ we find an analysis of the preconditions of experience and of knowledge. In contrast, but yet in parallel, the new _Critique_ focuses upon the ways—unfortunately very widespread and often unselfconsciously habitual—in which many of the concepts that we employ _conflict_ with the very preconditions of meaning and of knowledge. ●●●●● This is a book about the boundaries of frameworks and about the unrecognized conceptual confusions in which we become entangled when we attempt to transgress beyond the limits of the possible and meaningful. We tend either not to recognize or not to accept that we all-too-often attempt to trespass beyond the boundaries of the frameworks that make knowledge possible and the world meaningful. ●●●●● The _Critique of Impure Reason_ proposes a bold, ground-breaking, and startling thesis: that a great many of the major philosophical problems of the past can be solved through the recognition of a viciously deceptive form of thinking to which philosophers as well as non-philosophers commonly fall victim. For the first time, the book advances and justifies the criticism that a substantial number of the questions that have occupied philosophers fall into the category of “impure reason,” violating the very conditions of their possible meaningfulness. ●●●●● The purpose of the study is twofold: first, to enable us to recognize the boundaries of what is referentially forbidden—the limits beyond which reference becomes meaningless—and second, to avoid falling victims to a certain broad class of conceptual confusions that lie at the heart of many major philosophical problems. As a consequence, the boundaries of _possible meaning_ are determined. ●●●●● Bartlett, the author or editor of more than 20 books, is responsible for identifying this widespread and delusion-inducing variety of error, _metalogical projection_. It is a previously unrecognized and insidious form of erroneous thinking that undermines its own possibility of meaning. It comes about as a result of the pervasive human compulsion to seek to transcend the limits of possible reference and meaning. ●●●●● Based on original research and rigorous analysis combined with extensive scholarship, the _Critique of Impure Reason_ develops a self-validating method that makes it possible to recognize, correct, and eliminate this major and pervasive form of fallacious thinking. In so doing, the book provides at last provable and constructive solutions to a wide range of major philosophical problems. ●●●●● CONTENTS AT A GLANCE ▪▪▪▪▪ Preface ▪▪▪▪▪ Foreword by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker ▪▪▪▪▪ Acknowledgments ▪▪▪▪▪ Avant-propos: A philosopher’s rallying call ▪▪▪▪▪ Introduction ▪▪▪▪▪ A note to the reader ▪▪▪▪▪ A note on conventions ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART I ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ WHY PHILOSOPHY HAS MADE NO PROGRESS AND HOW IT CAN ▪▪▪▪▪ 1 Philosophical-psychological prelude ▪▪▪▪▪ 2 Putting belief in its place: Its psychology and a needed polemic ▪▪▪▪▪ 3 Turning away from the linguistic turn: From theory of reference to metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 4 The stepladder to maximum theoretical generality ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART II ▪▪▪▪▪ THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE ▪▪▪▪▪ A New Approach to Deductive, Transcendental Philosophy ▪▪▪▪▪ 5 Reference, identity, and identification ▪▪▪▪▪ 6 Self-referential argument and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 7 Possibility theory ▪▪▪▪▪ 8 Presupposition logic, reference, and identification ▪▪▪▪▪ 9 Transcendental argumentation and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 10 Framework relativity ▪▪▪▪▪ 11 The metalogic of meaning ▪▪▪▪▪ 12 The problem of putative meaning and the logic of meaninglessness ▪▪▪▪▪ 13 Projection ▪▪▪▪▪ 14 Horizons ▪▪▪▪▪ 15 De-projection ▪▪▪▪▪ 16 Self-validation ▪▪▪▪▪ 17 Rationality: Rules of admissibility ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART III ▪▪▪▪▪ PHILOSOPHICAL APPLICATIONS OF THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE ▪▪▪▪▪ Major Problems and Questions of Philosophy and the Philosophy of Science ▪▪▪▪▪ 18 Ontology and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 19 Discovery or invention in general problem-solving, mathematics, and physics ▪▪▪▪▪ 20 The conceptually unreachable: “The far side” ▪▪▪▪▪ 21 The projections of the external world, things-in-themselves, other minds, realism, and idealism ▪▪▪▪▪ 22 The projections of time, space, and space-time ▪▪▪▪▪ 23 The projections of causality, determinism, and free will ▪▪▪▪▪ 24 Projections of the self and of solipsism ▪▪▪▪▪ 25 Non-relational, agentless reference and referential fields ▪▪▪▪▪ 26 Relativity physics as seen through the lens of the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 27 Quantum theory as seen through the lens of the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 28 Epistemological lessons learned from and applicable to relativity physics and quantum theory ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART IV ▪▪▪▪▪ HORIZONS ▪▪▪▪▪ 29 Beyond belief ▪▪▪▪▪ 30 _Critique of Impure Reason_: Its results in retrospect ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ SUPPLEMENT ▪▪▪▪▪ The Formal Structure of the Metalogic of Reference ▪▪▪▪▪ APPENDIX I ▪▪▪▪▪ The Concept of Horizon in the Work of Other Philosophers ▪▪▪▪▪ APPENDIX II ▪▪▪▪▪ Epistemological Intelligence ▪▪▪▪▪ References ▪▪▪▪▪ Index ▪▪▪▪▪ About the author. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to explore the close link between technology and death in the philosophical writings of Lewis Mumford. Mumford famously argued that throughout the history of western civilization we find intertwined two competing forms of technics; the democratic biotechnic form and the authoritarian monotechnic form. The former technics were said to be strongly compatible with an organic form of life while the latter were said to be allied to a mechanical power complex. What is perhaps less (...) well known is the extent to which Mumford characterizes the authoritarian technical form as being a technics of death. This article will argue that the connection between death and technics is a key theme in Mumford’s philosophy of technology. In addition to elaborating this theme and detailing how it informs Mumford’s other positions on the nature of technology, this article will also argue that Mumford’s theory of a technics of death bears witness, both implicitly and explicitly, to the influence of Sigmund Freud’s theory of the death instinct. Freud’s account of the death instinct will be outlined briefly and its influence on Mumford’s writings will be explained. Death, in Mumford’s technological writings, has a generally negative function and serves to warn humanity of the perilous course that its technological civilization is set upon. However it also has a positive function in that it encourages man to transcend its biological existence in acts of creativity and purpose. Death, in this positive sense, serves the purpose of life whereas, in the negative sense, it hinders it. The role of death, in both aspects, will be explored and related to Mumford’s overall perspective on technics and life. It is argued that Mumford’s philosophy of technology cannot be fully understood without an awareness of his views on death and its role in the life of technological society. (shrink)

Transhumanism is a means of advocating a re-engineering of conditions that surround human existence at both ends. The problem set before us in this chapter is to inquire into what determined its appearance, in particular in the humanism it seeks to overcome. We look at the spirit of overcoming itself, and the impatience with the Self, in order to try to understand why it seeks a saving power in technology. We then consider how the evolutionary account of the production of (...) organisms does not set them against a perfect standard, but rather injects in them a contingency that seems to be near to the heart of the problem. We then try to assess the objective basis for improvements and manipulation of nature, and although we do not find it forbidden on all occasions, it seems that the criteria for such alterations are impossible to detach from a form of eugenics. We finally open a window toward a theological account of the problem, and find that the desire of autonomy and independence is inevitably going to be challenged by the Christian dogma of creation. (shrink)

I argue that scientific and poetic modes of objectivity are perspectival duals: 'views' from and onto basic natural forces, respectively. I ground this analysis in a general account of objectivity, not in terms of either 'universal' or 'inter-subjective' validity, but as receptivity to basic features of reality. Contra traditionalists, bare truth, factual knowledge, and universally valid representation are not inherently valuable. But modern critics who focus primarily on the self-expressive aspect of science are also wrong to claim that our knowledge (...) is or should be ultimately mediated by ourselves. In objective science, we represent nature as a field of phenomena determined by and within explanatorily-basic physical structures that encode the causal impact of elemental physical forces. These causally-basic forces hence ground the possibility of objective scientific theory, even though (I argue) they are systematically excluded from its representational contents. I show how my notions of force and field emerge partly through my effort to naturalize concepts of 'God' and 'Laws' in 17th-century natural philosophy. In science, we use the structure of basic forces' impact to see corresponding objects. We do not see these forces themselves—and this relates to the 'transcendence' of 'God'. I supplement this historical analysis by critiquing standard accounts of objectivity, and by synthesizing elements from neo-Kantian epistemology and current 'structural' realism into a view that I call 'dynamic structuralism'. Finally, I argue that physics systematically relies on passive characterizations of phenomena like inertia and impressed force. Dynamic alternatives that are just as empirically adequate are possible, but they are non-scientific. Poetic objectivity involves a direct presentation of nature as an order of interacting forces. I elaborate first by developing a novel theory of the relation between beauty and sublimity, mediated by a basic category of 'sensory force' (e.g. a 'singing' tone in a beautiful melody). I then describe the interaction between sensory and affective dimensions of aesthetic experience, in relation to an original historical analysis of passion and 'disinterestedness' in Kant, Schiller and Nietzsche. I synthesize these lines of analysis into a critique of the role of 'expression' in art. I also resist 'spectator'-centric aesthetics, in this connection, by developing an account of artistic objectivity in dialogue with Ruskin's critique of the 'pathetic fallacy'. I contrast artistic objectivity with Romantic ideals of self-expression, while elaborating its positive relation to certain currents within Victorian and Modernist aesthetics, including Imagists' stress on 'exteriority'. My project creatively extends Nietzsche's view that philosophical and scientific theories are 'perspectival' expressions of theorists' drives. It is a virtue of Nietzsche's account that he takes the outlet of strong human drives in creative acts of theorizing to be just one among many higher modes of 'will to power' in nature—many of which are totally impersonal. But Nietzsche is still too focused on self-expression or willing one's own power. Objective science involves external forces' 'expression' in and through us, not just 'expressing' our own powers. And Nietzsche's vitalistic 'will to power' must be replaced by a basic ontology that better accommodates inorganic phenomena, like the 'lawful' order of celestial motions. Thus I aim to de-anthropomorphize and 'de-organicize' post-Kantian notions of willful striving and organic development, while preserving for force the primary ontological and evaluative status that theorists from Schiller and Goethe to Schelling and Schlegel to Emerson and Nietzsche attributed to will or to life. (shrink)

"Brower explores the way philosophers were inspired by entomological social systems and communication to reflect on human psyche, social behavior, community organization, communication, and inter-individual relationships. His essay rehearses the swarms of insects embedded in contemporary philosophy and literary theory, not only showing how many of the major concepts (or philosophemes) in continental philosophy – sexuality, politics, thinking, time, interdependence, and language – draw lessons from the world of insects, but also illustrating again how the insect world spurred human reflection.".

This chapter will discuss a profound and fundamental interrelationship between mind, body and technology in terms of what it means to be ‘human’, or, what ‘being’ human might mean. One historical, yet enduring, theory of the human subject is René Descartes’s philosophy of the mind distinct from the body – this is termed ‘Cartesian dualism’. Whilst this is a classical, if outmoded, model of conceiving of a philosophy of the subject, it also provides a useful conceptual framework through which to (...) critique, and arrive at, a different concept of how the terms ‘mind’ and ‘body’ might operate. For example, the mind/body binary distinction can be interrogated and deconstructed to accommodate the role of technology as having an ontologically embedded position within the very definition of ‘humanity’. Indeed, ‘anthropogenesis’ – the very becoming of humanity – might instead incorporate the role of technological prosthesis to any mind/body dualism in defining the ‘human subject’. We will propose that this ‘dualism’ should be reconsidered for a fundamentally entangled mind-body-technology ‘trialism’ in the emergence of a distinct human being. However, at the same time, this interconnected relationship is also the object of power and control. (shrink)

The ArgumentDespite the enormous historical attention psychoanalysis has attracted, its popularization in Britain (as opposed to the United States) in the wake of the Great War has been largely overlooked. The present paper explores the sources and fate of the sudden “craze” for psychoanalysis after 1918, examining the content of the books through which the doctrine became widely known, along with the roles played by religious interests and the popular press. The percolation of Freudian and related language into everyday English (...) was effectively complete by the 1930s. Crucially, it is argued that in Britain the character of psychoanalytic theory itself demonstrably converged with the psychological needs of the British population in the postwar period. The situation in Britain was clearly different in many respects from that in the United States. This episode bears on numerous questions about scientific popularization, the distinctiveness of British psychoanalysis, and though it is treated here only peripherally the epistemological status or nature of psychoanalysis. More generally the present paper may be read as an exercise in reflexive disciplinary historiography, in which the levels of discipline (“Psychology”) and subject matter (“psychology”) are viewed as interpenetrating and mutually constitutive. (shrink)

Purpose. Research of the phenomenon of human destructiveness in the context of metaphysical images and violence practices of late Modernism. Theoretical basis. The problem is that the philosophical reflection of violence as objectified, realized destructiveness of man is usually contextual in nature and is on the periphery of understanding its external manifestations. Accordingly, anthropological crisis remains behind the scenes, as evidenced by the devaluation of the humanistic potential of modern culture. That is why one should turn the focus from the (...) obvious, objectively conditioned incarnations of violence in the XXI century to the internal factors that are in the realm of existential. The departure from the consideration of violence as an abstract, faceless or ideologically colored evil allowed us to focus on man, his way of thinking, life and social orientations, feelings and internal contradictions, which find their expression in one or another form of destructiveness. Originality. Based on the works of M. Scheler and E. Fromm defining for philosophical anthropology and psychoanalysis, for the first time the conceptualization of positive and negative forms of manifestation of human destructiveness against the background of sociocultural transformations of late Modernism was carried out. It has been proved that its ontological principles are rooted in specifically human existence and relations with other members of society, while anthropological ones are directly connected with the endless struggle of the life, the vital with the spirit in man. Conclusions. Violence is a tool and a product of man’s transition to more mature and complex forms of existence. The interdependence of the violence and nonviolence practices ensures the progressive movement of humanity towards society humanization. This progress is accompanied by a natural internal conflict of personality, which can be both progressive and regressive. At the metaphysical level, destructiveness appears as a connection between the entropy of world existence as a whole and the instability of human existence itself, which is a complexly organized and open to the world system. Self-transcendence as an anthropological prerequisite for human destructiveness has a dual nature and combines negative and positive characteristics, the content and significance of which were revealed in the study. The authors are convinced that there is no other way to overcome the negative, malignant destructiveness, except for the incessant, daily gathering of life meanings around them and their development. After all, the loss of such core structures of the existence as the meaning, purpose and value of life has become a truly global problem for the modern world. Emphasis is placed on the need to keep in harmony the trinity of body-soul-spirit, which will allow a person in any social transformation to preserve and increase his integrity. (shrink)

Purpose. The paper considered the explication of the concept of "Sinn des Lebens" within the framework of Western philosophy and psychology of the ХІХ-ХХІ centuries. On the basis of this, the role of this concept in contemporary theoretical discussions and psychological and psychotherapeutic practices is understood. Theoretical basis. The authors believe that understanding the concept of "Sinn des Lebens" is possible only based on the synthesis of modern analytical philosophy methods with the methodological guidelines of modern psychology, in particular logotherapy. (...) Originality. The authors have proved that the problem of "meaning of life" is not an "eternal problem" of philosophy, but arises only in the early nineteenth century as a reflection on European secularization and widespread individualistic values and becomes extremely relevant gaining different interpretations at the beginning of the twentieth century based on the crisis of the sensory values of modern man. Conclusions. The concept of "Sinn des Lebens" originated in the philosophy of the German Romantics and gained philosophical significance only in the works by Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Russian philosophy and literature give priority to the meaning of life in ethical and anthropological studies, focusing on its religious intentions. Analytical philosophy and existentialism appear to be diametrically opposed to the life-purpose anthropological problems, but they attempt to solve this problem by understanding the absurdity of human existence and language from different angles of view. The most reasonable concept of meaning in psychology can be considered Frankl’s logotherapy, which, despite certain drawbacks, remains the most significant in modern Western psychology. Modern philosophical studies on the problems of the meaning of life, despite their prudent analyticity and systematic nature, have not found credible criteria and means of human life self-reflection yet and have further incentives to develop their methodological and philosophical considerations. However, the diversity of interpretations of the concept of "meaning of life" that exists in modern scientific literature needs further reflection. (shrink)

Argues that a coherent theory of ethics requires an account of selfhood.

A Touch of Doubt traces the theme of touch in the evolution of skepticism through Platonism, German idealism, Continental philosophy and psychoanalysis. Haptic Scepticism, the field of ethics emerging from this study, explores the grasp-ability of contradiction. Contradiction is a haptic marvel. We can cup it in our palms, press it against our lips, dip our toes into its coolness, and, if we are not careful, we may even burn ourselves on its surface.

This is the Introduction to a collected volume.

Tracing the leading role of emotions in the evolution of the mind, a philosopher and a psychologist pair up to reveal how thought and culture owe less to our faculty for reason than to our capacity to feel. Many accounts of the human mind concentrate on the brain’s computational power. Yet, in evolutionary terms, rational cognition emerged only the day before yesterday. For nearly 200 million years before humans developed a capacity to reason, the emotional centers of the brain were (...) hard at work. If we want to properly understand the evolution of the mind, we must explore this more primal capability that we share with other animals: the power to feel. Emotions saturate every thought and perception with the weight of feelings. The Emotional Mind reveals that many of the distinctive behaviors and social structures of our species are best discerned through the lens of emotions. Even the roots of so much that makes us uniquely human—art, mythology, religion—can be traced to feelings of caring, longing, fear, loneliness, awe, rage, lust, playfulness, and more. From prehistoric cave art to the songs of Hank Williams, Stephen T. Asma and Rami Gabriel explore how the evolution of the emotional mind stimulated our species’ cultural expression in all its rich variety. Bringing together insights and data from philosophy, biology, anthropology, neuroscience, and psychology, The Emotional Mind offers a new paradigm for understanding what it is that makes us so unique. (shrink)

A collective volume in memoriam Mihail Radu Solcan.

: By clarifying the psychoanalytic notion of sexual difference (and contrasting it with a feminist analysis of gender as social reality), I argue that the symbolic dimension of psychical life cannot be discarded in developing political accounts of identity formation and the status of women in the public sphere. I discuss various bridges between social reality and symbolic structure, bridges such as body, language, law, and family. I conclude that feminist attention must be redirected to the unconscious since the political (...) cannot be localized in, or segregated to, the sphere of social reality; sexual difference is an indispensable concept for a feminist politics. (shrink)

Academic dishonesty is a persistent problem in the American educational system. The present investigation examined how reports of academic cheating related to students' emphasis on their moral identities and their sensitivity to social evaluation. Seventy college students at a large southeastern university completed a battery of surveys. Symptoms of social anxiety were positively correlated with recall of academic cheating. Additionally, relative to students who placed less importance on their moral identities, students who placed more importance on their moral identities recalled (...) significantly fewer instances of cheating. In summary, these findings suggest that students are less likely to cheat on their school work when they place greater emphasis on their moral identity and are less sensitive to social evaluation. Practical interventions to rampant cheating in American schools are discussed. (shrink)

Once the preserve of philosophy and theology, what Weber called `the problem of theodicy' - the problem of reconciling normative ideals with the reality in which we live - recurs in the social sciences in the secular form of `sociodicy'. Within a functionalist framework, sociodicies have offered legitimizing rationalizations of social adversities, inequalities and injustice, but seldom address the existential meaning and ethical implications of human affliction and suffering in social life. We suggest that an apparent indifference to these questions (...) in social theory reflects a deeper tension between modernity's millennial expectations of moral progress and the escalating history of violence, exploitation and suffering in the modern world. The task of sociodicy, we argue, should be reconstructed as a critique of the decivilizing implications of this tension, not just to document the consequences of suffering on people's lives, but in order to reassess the experience of modernity at the end of one of the most disturbed and violent centuries the world has known. (shrink)

Taking as its point of departure Leder's phenomenological discussion of the `absent' body, this article explores the nature of human corporeality as a site of transgression. The body, I argue, using a process metaphysic, is first and foremost excessive, driven by human desire rather than animal need: a sensual mode of existence organized around the pleasure/pain axis. To be excessive/transgressive, however, implies the crossing of boundaries or limits which vary according to history and culture, time and place. These issues are (...) illustrated through a range of thinkers from Bakhtin to Kristeva, Irigaray to Deleuze and Guattari. A full-scale endorsement of the poststructuralist position is, however, rejected in favour of an approach which steers a middle ground between these transgressive, more fluid arguments and a foundationalist ontology of the emotional body as an ongoing structure of lived experience. The article concludes with some reflections on the complex pattern of corporeal `appearances', some more pleasant than others, which characterize our bodily-being-in-the-world. (shrink)

This paper will articulate an underappreciated side of the psychoanalytical Deleuze: his relation to Melanie Klein, particularly as it appears in The Logic of Sense. Deleuze's engagement with Klein largely follows his familiar strategy of re-reading a thinker off of a twist in one or two of that thinker's key concepts. With Klein, this twist involves re-reading her story of psychic development on the basis of disjunction rather than negation, so that the psychic surface that emerges generates a persistent non-correspondence (...) between self and other and between concept and thing. Deleuze thereby makes Klein a central figure in his ontology of sense and his analysis of how the physical surface of bodies generates a metaphysical surface of thought. However, Deleuze's ultimate turn is a Nietzschean one towards overcoming, the thought of eternal return, and the demolition of the Oedipal Law. As this final turn makes clear, even in his early writings that engaged more directly and affirmatively with psychoanalytical thought, Deleuze was already on an anti-Oedipal path. (shrink)

This paper discusses Merleau-Ponty’s use of idea of ambivalence and its role in psychological conflicts. Merleau-Ponty affirms ambivalent conflicts as lived and social rather than biologically determined, as one might have in some developmental accounts, or hidden, as in some psychoanalytic accounts. With this concept, the paper takes up feminist considerations of the conflicts experienced by mothers in breastfeeding. It argues that the Merleau-Pontian and feminist approach to considering breastfeeding provides a nuanced model for thinking about development that is better (...) suited to cases where both the child and the parent are co-evolving. (shrink)

ABSTRACTJacques Lacan studied Chinese classics and received much inspiration from Zhuangzi. This paper concentrates on the comparative study of morality in those two thinkers from three connecting levels, namely, nature as the source of ethical codes, reason as the means to arrive at the ethical state, and pleasure as the ultimate purpose of morality. The investigation into the topic is enlightening for posthuman morality. Zhuangzi’s idea of the poetics of oneness inspires the Lacanian concept of the Real and ushers us (...) into a new territory to rethink animal rights. (shrink)

This article argues for an alternative interpretation of the happy fish scene in The Zhuangzi: the fish are not happy. The fish undergo an unpleasant experience while the philosophers debate animatedly over the joy of the fish. The dramatization of the fish scene compels us to contemplate anthropocentrism and species communication. Moreover, the contrast between the fish-bird becoming and the subsequent human narrations reinforces the anthropocentric usurpation of nonhuman agency. To get away from anthropocentrism, Zhuangzi proposes a posthumanist approach to (...) deal with species communication in three interconnected stages: to acknowledge the limits of human cognition, to forget anthropocentric prejudice, and to de-obscure childlike innocence. (shrink)

Jacques Lacan has creatively grafted Zhuangzi’s concept of the subject on the Western tradition of Logo-centrism. Lacan rewrites the triangle positions of the subject as the Real, the Imaginary, the Symbolic, expresses them in the vocabulary of detective stories, and achieves his scholarly reputation. The insufficiency of his theory could be redressed by Zhuangzi’s idea of ‘the poetics of oneness.’ For Zhuangzi, a man can forget his ‘Social I’ and ‘Corporeal I,’ arrive at the phase of ‘the equality of things’ (...) in his symbiotic fusion with the surrounding things. These two thinkers complement each other and enrich our understanding of the subject. (shrink)

This is a semifinal draft of a forthcoming paper. Kant’s account of the pain of remorse involves a hybrid justification based on self-retribution, but constrained by forward-looking principles which say that we must channel remorse into improvement, and moderate its pain to avoid damaging our rational agency. Kant’s corpus also offers material for a revisionist but textually-grounded alternative account based on wrongdoers’ sympathy for the pain they cause. This account is based on the value of care, and has forward-looking constraints (...) much like Kant’s own account. Drawing on both Kant’s texts and recent work in empirical psychology, I argue that experiences of remorse which conform to the sympathetic account may fulfill Kant’s forward-looking goals better than those conforming to his own account. (shrink)

This research examines whether religious conceptions of guilt in Protestant and Roman Catholic groups account for constructive or non-constructive guilt-reactions and for different guilt-frequency. Participants in three groups filled in the Leuven Guilt and Shame Scale, the Leuven Emotion Scale and the Post Critical Belief Scale. Protestants were expected to experience more non-constructive guilt than Catholics, who were expected to experience more constructive guilt. Both were expected to have a higher frequency of guilt experience than the control group. Differences between (...) the groups were found: Catholics show more constructive guilt reactions than the other groups. Differences in non-constructive guilt reactions were not found. The Protestant and Catholic group experienced guilt more frequently than the control group. (shrink)

The duality of attention is explored by turning our focus to the political and cultural conceptions of automatic attention and deliberate attention, with the former being associated with animality and “uncivilized” behavior and the latter with intelligence and self-mastery. In this article, I trace this ongoing dualism of the mind from early race psychology in the late nineteenth century to twentieth century psychological models including those found in psychoanalysis, behaviorism, neo-behaviorism, and behavioral economics. These earlier studies explicitly or implicitly maintained (...) a deficiency model of controlled attention and other mental processes that were thought to differ between racial groups. Such early models of attention included assumptions that Black and Indigenous peoples were less in control of their attention compared to whites. This racialized model of attention, as seen in the law of economy in the nineteenth century, with similar manifestations in psychoanalysis and neo-behaviorism in the twentieth century, can now be seen in present-day dual-process models as used in current psychological research and behavioral policy. These historical connections show that attention is not a value-neutral term and that attention studies do not stand outside of race and structural racism. (shrink)

The theory of revealed preference, which lies at the core of the neoclassical economic method, asserts that people's preference orderings are revealed by their actions. This assertion has two possible meanings, of which one is a truism and the other false. When a person joins a riot against the government, he reveals through this action that he would rather riot than not. This is the sense in which the assertion is a truism. But if one means that the person must (...) want a change of government, this is certainly false. His decision to riot could mean only that he considers it dangerous to stay on the sidelines. (shrink)

Acknowledging the power of the id-drives, Freud held on to the authority of reason as the ego’s best tool to control instinctual desire. He thereby placed analytic reason at the foundation of his own ambivalent social theory, which, on the one hand, held utopian promise based upon psychoanalytic insight, and, on the other hand, despaired of reason’s capacity to control the self-destructive elements of the psyche. Moving beyond the recourse of sublimation, post-Freudians attacked reason’s hegemony in quelling disruptive psycho-dynamics and, (...) focusing upon the social domain, they sought strategies to counter the oppressive (repressive) social restrictions and conformist impositions impeding individual freedom that result from thwarted desire. Postmodern celebration of desire at the expense of reason and sublimation leaves the Enlightenment prospects altogether and moves psychoanalysis into a new terrain, where the very notion of rationality and an autonomous ego upon which much of Freudianism rests has been deconstructed. Thus the debate that begins with Freud’s social theories reflects the deeper divisions, which arose with postmodern ethics and discarded Cartesian–Kantian notions of personal identity. Here we consider the moral framework in which Freudian social theory sits and a contrasting understanding of agency that confronts his modernist conception. In that debate, we discern the larger humanist confrontation with postmodernity. Yet, all who engaged Freud shared some version of his utopian ethos, albeit radically restructuring the theory upon which social reform might occur. (shrink)

On the one hand, according to Richard Rorty, Paulo Freire and others, education is the practice of freedom. On the other hand, according to Michael Foucault, Mary Midgley and others, ethics is the practice of freedom. How, then, are education and ethics related to one another and what do these authors mean by ‘the practice of freedom’? In this piece, I argue that education and ethics are two mutually constitutive aspects of the practice of freedom. Individuals who are able to (...) engage in this practice can most properly be said to be the authors of their lives, that is, individuals who, to borrow from Neil MacGregor, are able to find their ‘place in things’. To find our ‘place in things’ is to do the necessary educative work required for becoming the authors of our lives, that is, for self-actualization. To take on the authorial role is, moreover, to be able effectively to take control of our lives, to organize them into unities for which we are individually responsible. This, according to Midgley, is precisely what it is to be ethical. This work, moreover, requires ongoing development, that is, education, in Dewey’s sense. I further argue that professional education and skills training cannot be understood properly in isolation from these broader educational aims and I criticize mainstream educational practices for not paying sufficient attention to the intimate relationship between the vocational and non-vocational aspects of education. (shrink)

According to a widely accepted conceptual model, principles play essential roles in moral reasoning: it is asserted that they hold universally and cannot be avoided in the justification of human action and belief. This paper challenges that view. It argues that, though some principles play such substantive roles, most do not. They can be characterized instead as being fragile or defeasible, i.e., they are capable of being weakened, voided or undone. The claim is made that it is the pressures exerted (...) by particular cases of moral dilemmas that are the sources of such fragility. The paper contains detailed examples illustrating how the process of defeasibility, including a retreat into moral vacuity, arises from such pressures. (shrink)