This chapter contains sections titled: The Philosophical Tale.

The feeling of clarity can be dangerously seductive. It is the feeling associated with understanding things. And we use that feeling, in the rough-and-tumble of daily life, as a signal that we have investigated a matter sufficiently. The sense of clarity functions as a thought-terminating heuristic. In that case, our use of clarity creates significant cognitive vulnerability, which hostile forces can try to exploit. If an epistemic manipulator can imbue a belief system with an exaggerated sense of clarity, then they (...) can induce us to terminate our inquiries too early — before we spot the flaws in the system. How might the sense of clarity be faked? Let’s first consider the object of imitation: genuine understanding. Genuine understanding grants cognitive facility. When we understand something, we categorize its aspects more easily; we see more connections between its disparate elements; we can generate new explanations; and we can communicate our understanding. In order to encourage us to accept a system of thought, then, an epistemic manipulator will want the system to provide its users with an exaggerated sensation of cognitive facility. The system should provide its users with the feeling that they can easily and powerfully create categorizations, generate explanations, and communicate their understanding. And manipulators have a significant advantage in imbuing their systems with a pleasurable sense of clarity, since they are freed from the burdens of accuracy and reliability. I offer two case studies of seductively clear systems: conspiracy theories; and the standardized, quantified value systems of bureaucracies. (shrink)

“Sorcerer Love” is the name that Luce Irigaray gives to the demonic function of love as presented in Plato's Symposium. She argues that Socrates there attributes two incompatible positions to Diotima, who in any case is not present at the banquet. The first is that love is a mid-point or intermediary between lovers which also teaches immortality. The second is that love is a means to the end and duty of procreation, and thus is a mere means to immortality through (...) which the lovers lose one another. Irigaray argues in favor of the first position, a conception of love as demonic intermediary. E.K. (shrink)

"Sorcerer Love" is the name that Luce Irigaray gives to the demonic function of love as presented in Plato's Symposium. She argues that Socrates there attributes two incompatible positions to Diotima, who in any case is not present at the banquet. The first is that love is a mid-point or intermediary between lovers which also teaches immortality. The second is that love is a means to the end and duty of procreation, and thus is a mere means to immortality through (...) which the lovers lose one another. Irigaray argues in favor of the first position, a conception of love as demonic intermediary. E.K. (shrink)

On the first page of 1984, Winston Smith is confronted with several posters featuring the face of Big Brother and the famous sentence, “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.” This may not seem like a promising way to seduce someone, but the seduction of Winston Smith by Big Brother in 1984 is a most unusual love story. I call it a seduction because Winston’s mind and heart are slowly won over in the aptly-named Ministry of Love. Moreover, in the final scene (...) of the novel, Winston gazes, with tears in his eyes, up at Big Brother on the telescreen. The last sentence of the book states, simply, “He loved Big Brother.” How does Big Brother seduce Winston Smith? He certainly does not employ stereotypical methods. Big Brother is not particularly sexy, and his incessant angry shouting does not seem calculated to foster adoration. On top of that, Winston never meets Big Brother in person. His only access is through media: posters, stories, and the telescreen. We all know that it’s hard to maintain a long-distance relationship. Long-distance seduction is even more challenging. So how does Big Brother manage it? To answer this question, I use the theory of seduction first articulated by the philosopher John Forrester (1990, p. 42), who argues that “the first step in a seductive maneuver could be summed up as, ‘I know what you’re thinking.’”. (shrink)

Like the broom in “The Sorcerer's Apprentice,” technologies take on a life of their own. To bring them under control, doctors must learn to tolerate ambiguity, resist the lure of the immediate, cease fearing uncertainty, and rechannel their response to wonder.

Many scholars agree that the Internet plays a pivotal role in self-radicalization, which can lead to behaviours ranging from lone-wolf terrorism to participation in white nationalist rallies to mundane bigotry and voting for extremist candidates. However, the mechanisms by which the Internet facilitates self-radicalization are disputed; some fault the individuals who end up self-radicalized, while others lay the blame on the technology itself. In this paper, we explore the role played by technological design decisions in online self-radicalization in its myriad (...) guises, encompassing extreme as well as more mundane forms. We begin by characterizing the phenomenon of technological seduction. Next, we distinguish between top-down seduction and bottom-up seduction. We then situate both forms of technological seduction within the theoretical model of dynamical systems theory. We conclude by articulating strategies for combatting online self-radicalization. (shrink)

Human-computer interaction today has got a touch of magic: Without understanding the causal coherence, using a computer seems to become the art to use the right spell with the mouse as the magic wand — the sorcerer's staff. Goethes's poem admits an allegoric interpretation. We explicate the analogy between using a computer and casting a spell with emphasis on teaching magic skills. The art to create an ergonomic user interface has to take care of various levels of skills for the (...) human operators. The problem of logical discontinuities as opposed to continuous control is the most serious obstacle for human-computer interaction. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s metaphor of seduction suggests that language catches philosophers in the trap of metaphysics. Nietzsche uses the poetic powers of language to fight against this metaphysical language. However, his use of the metaphor of truth as a woman seems to seduce him back in metaphysics. Metaphors become seductive because of their rhetorical and performative power. One must therefore be wary of the seduction of metaphors when attempting at revaluating the metaphysics of language. Hélène Cixous undertakes such a task, using a (...) poetic language in order to escape the metaphysical dualisms embedded in language without falling back into its traps. (shrink)

This article aims at making a case for the role of seduction in existential education, that is, education that focuses on the pupil’s life choices. First, the article attempts to show that the relationship between the teacher and the pupil can be understood as a form of seduction. Secondly, the article examines how such a relationship functions in practice. Thirdly, the article warns against dangerous aspects related to seduction, and lastly, the article offers five conditions for how seduction can be (...) used in a justifiable manner in existential education. (shrink)

In Aaron and Bachalo's work, Doctor Stephen Strange exemplifies the characteristics and methods of the natural philosophers in clashes with his mystical enemies, Lord Imperator and the Empirikul. It's easy to be distracted by Doctor Strange's fancy spells, unique job title, or flashy cape, but we should also recognize that he is a Sorcerer Supreme, who demonstrates both discipline and intellect. Like the historical philosopher‐scientists, Doctor Strange studies metaphysics and its relationship to the physical world. When intellectuals began to challenge (...) Aristotle's teleological world‐view, they faced opposition from both the Catholic Church, who found Aristotle's views consistent with scripture, and the scientific community. Historian Peter Dear's book Revolutionizing the Sciences helps situate the work of ancient philosophers, like Aristotle, in the context of the history of the scientific revolution. (shrink)

La relation fraternelle est un domaine encore peu étudié et dont on n’épuise pas le sens et la fonction en la pensant comme n’étant qu’une projection sur les pairs d’une problématique qui se jouerait, en fait, avec les ascendants. La séduction fraternelle peut s’analyser à lueur de la problématique parents-enfants ou à celle de l’identification mentale, les deux axes pouvant, pour un même cas, se trouver intriqués de façon complexe. À partir de cas cliniques, nous montrons qu’il convient de différencier (...) ces deux axes pour mieux saisir le sens et la fonction de la séduction fraternelle dans la construction psychique du sujet, dans la naissance des conflits et dans leur résolution. La séduction fraternelle est à mi-chemin de la découverte de la différence des sexes et de la relation incestueuse, à mi-chemin des jeux sexuels infantiles et de la découverte de la sexualité génitale. En ce sens, elle constitue à la fois un miroir, un révélateur et un enjeu dans la construction du sujet en devenir. (shrink)

& Explanations of psychological phenomena seem to genervs. with neuroscience) design. Crucially, the neuroscience inate more public interest when they contain neuroscientific..

The article deals with Le Collège de Sociologie, an elective organization founded in 1937 by a group of French thinkers, among whom were Georges Bataille, Roger Caillois and Michel Leiris. It tries to show how the notion of `force' or of `power', constitutive to the `new mythology' the members of the Collège wanted to create, was in fact deeply ambivalent in nature. This ambivalence can be traced back to the internal ambiguities of the Durkheimian theory of the `collective effervescence', which (...) is shown to have influenced not only the collegians' notion of the sacred, but also their conception of power. This ambiguous theoretical heritage is curiously reflected in the conflicting conceptions Bataille and Caillois held of the notion of power — one of the major controversies, which later led to the dissolution of the Collège. The thesis defended here is that the seeds of this controversy lie already in the internal ambiguities of the Durkheimian theory and that these ambivalences were in a certain manner reproduced not only in the dispute between Caillois and Bataille, but also in much of the contemporary social theory drawing its inspiration from the Durkheimian sociology of the sacred. (shrink)

La séduction est une constante de la relation humaine. Elle est à la fois prise de pouvoir sur l’autre et bénéfice narcissique pour le séducteur, qu’elle conforte dans l’estime qu’il a de lui-même. La séduction appartient aux deux sexes, mais, lorsqu’on cherche dans la littérature des exemples de séduction, on trouve curieusement plus de séducteurs que de séductrices. À partir d’exemples littéraires, l’auteur tente de définir les voies et les moyens de la séduction. Transgression et perversion avec Don Juan, plaisir (...) et instinct avec Casanova, stratégie et ruse avec Valmont. Sans oublier les plans élaborés de la carte du tendre, héritière au XVII e siècle de l’amour courtois du Moyen Âge, et la méthode très sophistiquée de séduction exposée par le philosophe danois Soeren Kierkegaard dans Le journal d’un séducteur. La séduction est de tous les temps et de toutes les époques. Organiquement liée à la sexualité, elle est « l’art des préliminaires ». (shrink)

La séduction est un phénomène universel, présent en toute relation, notamment en toute action thérapeutique, où son analyse s’impose. La séduction narcissique et son emprise entraînent diverses réactions défensives, crises et ruptures, notamment annulation du désir sexuel chez l’un ou l’autre partenaire, du fait de la menace d’assujettissement et d’atteinte identitaire. C’est à ce niveau profond, d’accès difficile, que doit se situer l’analyse de l’intervention thérapeutique.

Dans les entretiens préliminaires avec les couples ou la famille, une séduction bien tempérée et réciproque est nécessaire pour permettre les mouvements d’illusion et de désillusion à l’origine des capacités créatives de transformations et des processus identificatoires. Le cadre lui-même, bien posé, favorise l’élaboration des effets de séduction. Mais ceux-ci génèrent parfois des défenses délétères du côté des analystes : fascination, domination, transgression. Deux exemples cliniques en illustrent les enjeux.

On considère souvent que l’apport de S. Freud sur la fratrie est mineur, car trop référé ou rabattu sur le couple parental et le complexe d’Œdipe. Nous montrons que cette idée répandue est en partie erronée : à partir des principales occurrences sur la fratrie et si nous nous préoccupons plus particulièrement de la question de la séduction, une théorie implicite du lien fraternel s’ouvre, donnant des éléments de compréhension essentiels concernant l’enfant et l’adolescent. Ceux-ci concernent notamment l’idée que, chez (...) l’enfant, la séduction est secondaire à la haine primitive ressentie à la naissance d’un puîné; et, au moment de l’adolescence, le frère ou la sœur constitue un viatique vers l’investissement de l’objet sexuel adéquat. (shrink)

No concept attracted as much controversy, or muddled ideological identifications so thoroughly, as ‘myth’ in interwar France. By the late 1930s, ‘la mythomanie’ was drawing systematic attention from existentialists, Surrealists, ethnologists, sociologists, and nascent fascist movements. This essay reconsiders this polemical and misunderstood moment in interwar thought. It focuses on the intellectuals most central to its notoriety: the members of the Collège de sociologie and their fascination with Georges Sorel. Though interwar mythomania has long been treated as an antiparliamentary cultural (...) politics designed to secure enthusiastic mass conformity, this essay argues that such accounts are incomplete. They misunderstand the deeper philosophical debate unfolding about the conditions of revolutionary agency in a desacralized society. Bringing this debate back into focus helps liberate mythomania from historiographic commonplaces. It emphasizes how, for better or worse, many of those who advocated for new political myths aimed to spur human agency, not confiscate it. (shrink)

Research suggests that people tend to overweight arguments accompanied by neuroscientific terminology, which is dubbed as the seductive allure of neuroscience explanations (SANE) in the literature. Such an effect might be of particular significance when it comes to physicians and mental health professionals (MHP), given that it has the potential to cause significant bias in their understanding as well as their treatment approaches toward psychiatric symptoms. In this study, we aimed to test the SANE effect among Turkish medical students, and (...) assess its uniqueness by comparing it with a discipline that still maintains an important role in contemporary psychiatric training in Turkey: psychoanalysis. 109 medical students with a basic level of knowledge of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience were asked to rate the credibility of explanations of differing quality (good vs. circular) for psychological phenomena, followed by three types of information: none, neuroscientific (SNI) or psychoanalytical (SPI). Our findings showed that SNI significantly increased the judged quality of explanations for both conditions with the effect being more prominent for circular explanations. On the other hand, SPI had no effect on good explanations but enhanced the judged quality of circular explanations in a level comparable to that of SNI. For the first time, the SANE effect was replicated among medical students and provided preliminary data in favor of a similar effect for psychoanalytically oriented information. (shrink)

"Sorcerer Love" is the name that Luce Irigaray gives to the demonic function of love as presented in Plato's Symposium. She argues that Socrates there attributes two incompatible positions to Diotima, who in any case is not present at the banquet. The first is that love is a mid-point or intermediary between lovers which also teaches immortality. The second is that love is a means to the end and duty of procreation, and thus is a mere means to immortality through (...) which the lovers lose one another. Irigaray argues in favor of the first position, a conception of love as demonic intermediary. (shrink)

An intellectual genealogy of the postmodern spirit, this book shows that postmodernism's infatuation with fascism has been widespread and not incidental. It calls into question postmodernism's claim to have inherited the mantle of the left - and suggests that postmodern thought has long been smitten with the opposite end of the political spectrum.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 30.1 (2000) 78-88 [Access article in PDF] Kierkegaardian seduction, or the aesthetic actio(nes) in distans Begonya Saez Tajafuerce The one who cannot seduce people cannot save them either. --Søren Kierkegaard, Papirer IX A 383 Being an heir of Romanticism, Søren Kierkegaard appropriates the figure of seduction in his works and thought, yet he does so in a critical and unconventional manner. For Kierkegaard, seduction can no longer be (...) described or conceived of as an exclusively aesthetic undertaking, as the sheer fulfillment of pleasure and desire, as the factual consolidation of immediacy and sensuousness, but, on the contrary, seduction must be redescribed and reconceived within the realm of ethics or, to be more precise, within the confinium or border area between ethics and aesthetics. In this sui generis no-man's-land, which to a certain extent is formally inaugurated and categorially established by the notion of aesthetic action, as we will see--resides the ethical seduction.In effect, such a reconception of seduction presupposes an organic and dialectic recomprehension of the well-known Kierkegaardian theory of the stages, according to which any significant relation between the aesthetic and the ethical is not grounded on the evident divergences between both but, on the contrary, on their coadjuvancy. The point is that neither the aesthetic nor the ethical can or should be understood if disconnected, if incommensurably read, if seen only in the light of (an) Either/Or [E/O 1, 2].Forged within the aforementioned ambivalent frame, the Kierkegaardian figure of seduction becomes more than just a category, a sheer theoretic or analytic tool to reflect upon existence: it becomes a literary strategy as well, of philosophical and specifically ethical signification.Through an examination of some texts of E/O 1 (especially "The Seducer's Diary") and of Kierkegaard's journals and papers, I will pursue a typology of seduction with three modes: the musical seduction, or Don Juan's; the linguistic seduction, or Faust's; and the literary seduction, or Johannes's. The johannesque seduction will be stressed as the first janus frontis of the dilemma between the aesthetic and the ethical stages, to blur the conventional differences between both. Then I will bring Johannes, the seducer, and A, the aesthete, close to each other in order to illuminate what might be understood as [End Page 78] the aesthetic action. It will be argued that the aesthetic can no longer be deprived of all pragmatic connotations. Therewith, not only are the limits or chiasm between aesthetics and ethics blurred, but a common categorial space is established. The paradigmatic action in this context will be the johannesque actio(nes) in distans, that is, the second janus frontis of our dilemma. Finally, I will briefly consider Søren Kierkegaard's own aesthetic action or actio(nes) in distans, that is, his own literary practice. Seducers: Don Juan and Faust A typological consideration of the figure of seduction in E/O 1 quickly makes it clear that Kierkegaard's main source of inspiration, or rather of conceptual kleptomania, is to be found in Romanticism. 1 In this spirit, A, the aesthete, would let himself be brought from reflection to reflection, from insight to insight, and from glimpse to glimpse, by the experienced guiding hands of (his colleagues) Don Juan and Faust.In 1836, several years before the publication of E/O, where Don Juan and Faust are characterized as and related to the phenomenological realm of the demonic (det dœmoniske), Kierkegaard significantly writes in his journals that both cases, or figures, incarnate two "ideas," that is, two paradigmatic vital ideals or even two conceptions of life, which take shape "beyond the religious" [Pap I A 150]. 2 Consequently, seduction presupposes a nonreligious conception and/or way of life. It seems unclear, however, whether seduction presupposes, as Judge Wilhelm claims it does, a full rejection of the ethical. In E/O 2 Wilhelm states that all seducers share the virtue of holding the "ethical determinations" in check [SKS 3: 196], but he is by no means aware of what the game may... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Seductiveness of Virtue: Abraham Joshua Heschel and John Paul II on Morality and Personal Fulfillment by John J. FitzgeraldMatthew R. PetrusekThe Seductiveness of Virtue: Abraham Joshua Heschel and John Paul II on Morality and Personal Fulfillment John J. Fitzgerald new york: bloomsbury t&t clark, 2017. 240 pp. $114The Seductiveness of Virtue offers a close study of the twentieth-century Polish-American rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, and the first Polish (...) pope, St. John Paul II, on the relationship between being good and being happy. Overall the book advances the conversation on the meaning and continued relevance of virtue in contemporary ethics, though its eagerness to build bridges across competing religious and philosophical traditions opens the argument to both methodological and substantive criticisms. [End Page 206]Fitzgerald divides the book into an introduction and four chapters. Chapter 1, "The Meaning of Our Question," establishes the definitions of concepts that Fitzgerald addresses throughout the rest his argument, including "happiness," "meaning," "freedom," "personal fulfillment," "good and evil," and "doing." Fitzgerald locates each term within the theologies of Heschel and John Paul II and provides his own definitions. Chapter 2, "Heschel and the 'Joys of Mitsvah,'" enters more deeply into Heschel's theology, arguing that, despite some ambiguity about whether morality will always lead to personal fulfillment, Heschel establishes a firm theological and practical connection between following the law (mitzvah) and being happy. Chapter 3, "John Paul II and the Good We Must Do to Have Eternal Life," engages in a similar analysis of John Paul's thought (including his writings before becoming pope) and, despite using different theological categories (chief among them "Christ"), arrives at a similar conclusion: there is a necessary connection between being good and being happy. Chapter 4, which also functions as a conclusion, places the comparison between Heschel and John Paul into a wider comparative context, examining how their respective conclusions on morality and the good relate to insights from other contemporary perspectives, including the Dalai Lama, Peter Singer, and present-day "positive psychology." Fitzgerald concludes by offering five reasons why it is important to continue, in his words, an "interworldview" and "interdisciplinary" dialogue on how virtue relates to happiness.The book is richly sourced—containing 199 footnotes, bibliography, and detailed index—and serves as a good addition to the libraries of those working on John Paul II, Abraham Heschel, virtue theory, or comparative ethics more broadly. Yet its breadth on the comparative front also highlights its vulnerabilities, particularly on the question of what defines the relationship between virtue and happiness from a normative perspective. While providing lucid descriptive accounts of different conceptions of God and the good, for example, Fitzgerald acknowledges near the book's conclusion, "whether one finds [any] author persuasive will depend in large part on one's prior conclusions about the existence and nature of God and the afterlife" (184) and notes that this topic "cannot be resolved or even explored here" (185). However, these "prior conclusions" themselves are ultimately most meaningful for answering the book's central question.This reticence to engage in meta-ethical questions also leads the text to a problematic epistemological and ethical equalizing of each perspective, one that allows Fitzgerald to claim, for example, "while there is much common ground between Heschel, John Paul II, and [Peter] Singer on the relationship between morality and fulfillment, there are also key differences" (174). Here Fitzgerald understates the contrast: one of the "key" differences between Singer's utilitarian materialism and John Paul II's gospel of life is that Singer's position could serve as a paradigmatic representation of the "culture of death" [End Page 207] that John Paul spent his papacy resisting. Thus, while providing an excellent analysis of each thinker individually, the book's argument would benefit from establishing a firmer and more transparent standard for evaluating ethical claims across traditions.Matthew R. PetrusekLoyola Marymount UniversityCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

This paper refines a number of theoretical distinctions relevant to deceptive play, in particular the difference between merely misleading actions and types of simulation commonly considered beyond the pale, such as diving. To do so, I rely on work in the philosophy of language about conversational convention and implicature, the distinction between lying and misleading, and their relation to concepts of seduction and bullshit. The paper works through a number of possible solutions to the question of what is wrong with (...) simulation and its difference from strategic fouling, including the argument that games and their rules operate like contracts. I conclude that the wrongness lies in the injustice of unfair advantage gained through actions that silence opposition by resort to unanswerable play. (shrink)

In Tess of the d’Urbervilles, the innocent Tess is the object of Alec d’Urberville’s dishonorable intentions. Alec uses every wile he can think of to seduce the poor and ignorant Tess, who works keeping hens in his mother’s house: he flatters her, he impresses her with a show of wealth, he gives help to her family to win her gratitude, and he reacts with irritation and indignation when she nonetheless continues to repulse his advances, causing her to feel shame at (...) her own ingratitude and confusion as to what is right. Tess, anchored both by her own sense of virtue and her distrust of Alec’s character, continues to hold out until one fatal night when, through Alec’s machinations, they are lost together in a wood. At Tess’s insistence Alec leaves her to scout out the path home. When he returns, he finds her asleep under a tree. Hardy does not go into detail at this critical juncture. Rather, he reflects “why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive; why so often the coarse appropriates the finer thus, the wrong man the woman, the wrong woman the man, many thousand years of analytical philosophy have failed to explain to our sense of order.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:La séduction de la fiction by Jean-François VernayDiana MistreanuVernay, Jean-François. La séduction de la fiction. Hermann, 2019. 214pp.Published in Hermann’s prestigious “Savoirs Lettres” book series founded by Michel Foucault, Jean-François Vernay’s latest work is a compelling neurophenomenology of literary fiction. This makes it a valuable contribution to the burgeoning field of cognitive literary studies pioneered in Anglo-Saxon research in the late 1970s, but which French academia, with a (...) few notable exceptions such as Jean-Marie Schaeffer, Pierre-Louis Patoine, Alexandre Gefen, Catherine Grall, or Françoise Lavocat, is still largely reluctant to embrace. The author is a lecturer in Australian studies at the Global Institute in Sydney, and he is a bilingual literary scholar whose recent research explores the complex interface between fiction and human cognition.Vernay’s book starts by restating a narratological cliché: in the words of Paul Valéry, stories accompany humans from the cradle to the tomb, as monsters, pirates, fairies, and other fantastic creatures fascinate children’s minds from the first years of their lives (7). A truism follows this cliché: the origin of any story is the human brain (16), as the author reminds us by underlining the bio-anthropological origins of fiction in pages that cite the works of Umberto Eco and Nancy Huston (the writer who coined the notion of “espèce fabulatrice,” “the tale-teller species” [2008]), and that echo the research of scholars such as Mark Turner (1996) and Jean-Marie Schaeffer (1999). Indeed, oral and written stories are not only created, but also interpreted by human minds, triggering states and emotions that range from extreme boredom to excitement and inviting identification with fictional characters. Nevertheless, the mechanisms of the interaction between the human mind and brain and one of its most sophisticated products, namely fiction, are largely still understudied in the field of literature. Placing fiction under the sign of seduction (8) – which allows us to read between the lines an homage to Roland Barthes, the theorist of the “plaisir du texte” referenced later in the book (85-86) – Vernay defines works of fiction as catalysts of a sensori-affective experience [End Page 151] that engages almost all our senses and arouses emotions (“le vecteur d’une expérience sensori-affective qui sollicite la quasi-totalité de nos sens et suscite des émois” [19]). Characterized by the interdisciplinarity that forms the core of cognitive approaches to fiction, Vernay’s study investigates the literary phenomenon in its complexity, asking not only how fiction seduces us, but also why it sometimes fails to do so. Drawing on state-of-the-art research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, the book manages to eschew over-simplified or reductionist analyses. Our engagement with and consumption of literary fiction is thus analyzed by discussing marketing strategies and editorial choices, the activity of reading as a solitary pleasure versus a professional obligation, as well as the interplay between society, politics, and educational curricula. The author answers his multi-layered research question in nine different chapters, each of them exploring one facet of the relationship between literature and the human mind.The first chapter, “Émois livresques,” highlights the marketing value of books, as well as their status as objects of consumption, in the capitalistic sense of the word. Books are presented here as the targets of our desire, since in financial terms, the notion of reader, the author reminds us, is a mere euphemism for that of consumer (20-22). As we are entering the era of what Yves Citton, often quoted in this essay, calls “cognitive capitalism,” a system in which society is conceptualized as a set of machines that process information (21), fictional literature, along with the arts, is devalued. To counterbalance this trend, Vernay explains, the book industry has to adopt effective strategies that create a desire for consumption. Thus, this chapter addresses the editorial and marketing techniques designed to attract our attention and trigger our impulse to buy and read. From the smell and color of books to the blurb and the careful mention of literary prizes, no detail is overlooked or considered redundant.After addressing the... (shrink)

This article examines the notorious mid-nineteenth-century American trial of Amelia Norman, who was acquitted - very much against the weight of the evidence - of attempting to kill the man who seduced her. In particular, we explore the role in the trial and its aftermath of the affective energies and cultural expectations set in motion by best-selling American sentimental novels like Hannah Foster's "The Coquette" and Susanna Rowson's "Charlotte Temple." In Norman's case, once newspapers, defense lawyers, and reformers such as (...) Lydia Maria Child recast the defendant as a sentimental heroine, the trial became about seduction, not attempted murder. The sentimental emplotment of Norman's life marshaled a powerful set of emotional responses and moral judgments on her behalf. For example, Norman claimed insanity. And since sentimental heroines are supposed to go mad when they are seduced and abandoned, the jury was prepared to interpret her symptoms according to her lawyers' very strategy for establishing her innocence. Ultimately, however, Norman embodied the plight of the sentimental heroine at the same time that she contested her fictional counterpart's fate. In this way, her trial spectacularized the disparity which the sentimental novel conjures up and displaces but never resolves. Going further, the common law theory of coverture, which severely limited the legal personhood of married women, has received a great deal of scholarly attention. Cases like Norman's remind us that unmarried women were also subject to draconian constraints on their legal personhood. The tort of seduction is a key example. Legal historians trace the development of the seduction tort from its common-law origins, when men's property interest in women's bodies formed the basis of the cause of action, to 1851, when Field Code authors (including Norman's lawyer, David Graham) persuaded several states to grant seduced women standing to bring their own cause of action. Consequently, courts were forced to reckon with the seduced woman as a moral agent capable of consenting to sex. As trials like Norman's demonstrate, sentimental novels helped lay the groundwork for this shift in the law by elucidating a subjectivity for the seduced woman. Yet the doctrinal implications of Norman's precedent-setting trial had a second, more ambiguous strain. Other women facing similar charges used the same legal strategy to gain acquittals in a substantial number of cases. Indeed, Norman's sentimental strategy proved so powerful that men on trial for killing their wives' seducers appropriated it to bring their own stories before juries and to reinforce male sexual norms through the so-called honor defense. In the end, then, Norman's trial fostered legal reform, but it also suggested - as Lydia Maria Child's fictionalization of the case in "Rosenglory" recognized - that only sustained and multifaceted efforts to change cultural as well as legal norms could improve the sexual status of women. In addition to its legal, literary, and historical insights that it provides, we also intend this article to contribute to debates on the nature of scholarship in law and literature. Scholars such as Wai Chee Dimock have argued for a focus on the historical and historically shifting relations between law and literature - a view we endorse. Where we differ from Dimock is in our diversion of attention away from abstract ideas of law laid out by treatise writers and philosophers in favor of law experienced and manipulated by individuals. So, too, we are interested less in representations of concepts such as justice in legal and literary texts than we are in the ways in which literature (broadly conceived) can create provisional and fragile opportunities for concrete instantiations of justice and even generate legal change (for good or ill). We would argue that to the extent legal change motivates rather than simply mirrors cultural change, it needs literature to be effective. This project, then, responds to Gregg Crane's call for attention to the complex and slippery historical interactions of law and literature that shape and are shaped by an ever changing cultural idiom of justice. The extended story of Amelia Norman, in short, not only constitutes a case study in the inescapable interaction between the overlapping and interdependent discourses of law and literature, but also reveals the literary and legal consequences of that interaction. (shrink)

By meshing psychology with literary analysis, this book inspires us to view the reading of fictional works as an emotional and seductive affair between reader and writer. Arguing that current teaching practices have contributed to the current decline in the study of literature, Jean-François Vernay's plea brings a refreshing perspective by seeking new directions and conceptual tools to highlight the value of literature. Interdisciplinary in focus and relevant to timely discussions of the vitality between emotion and literary studies, particularly within (...) the contexts of psychology, affect studies, and cognitive studies, this book will open up a space in which the formation of our emotions can be openly examined and discussed. Jean-François Vernay has published extensively in the field of Literary Studies both in French and in English. His books, Water from the Moon: Illusion and Reality in the Works of Australian Novelist Christopher Koch andA Brief Take on the Australian Novel, focus on Australian fiction. Carolyne Lee is a Senior Fellow in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She has published four books, the latest being Our Very Own Adventure. (shrink)

This book, the product of a lifetime of research by one of the founders of developmental psychology, takes on the powerful assumptions behind these questions- ...

The death of Jean Baudrillard in 2007 brought about a resurgence of feminist scholarship on his work. But in all recent feminist scholarship on Baudrillard, save for Victoria Grace’s Baudrillard’s Challenge: A Feminist Reading (2000), feminists focus on Baudrillard’s later theory of simulation, forestalling any reconsideration of his earlier text Seduction (1979). In this article I argue that a theory of seduction facilitates the unveiling of a hitherto unnoticed strain of feminist writing that proposes an ongoing challenge to masculine power (...) and politics. This strategy of seduction is one that can be traced through a history of modern feminism, from Joan Rivière’s concept of ‘womanliness’ in ‘Womanliness as Masquerade’ to Hélène Cixous’s écriture féminine in ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ to Virginia Woolf’s ‘mulberry tree’ in Three Guineas. (shrink)

In this paper it is argued that we have three dispositions, each of which is very laudable in itself: a preference for the positive, constructive and creative aspects of human endeavours; a desire to be open‐minded and tolerant concerning ideas and beliefs; and an admiration of profundity. I have suggested that these dispositions can, if exaggerated or employed uncritically, seduce us into intellectual positions that are very dubious. These arguments are applied to some of the debates within the philosophy of (...) nursing. (shrink)

The archive can take many forms but all are marked by a connective sequence: archive, memory, the past, narrative. The author explores this sequence through an account of her engagement with four different types of archive, constructing a phenomenology of the archive which highlights the promises and seductions offered to the researcher. Postmodern questioning may throw in doubt older conceptions, whereby the archive is used to legitimate knowledge claims about the past of a nomological nature. However, in a context where (...) intellectuals become interpreters rather than legislators, the role of the archive as repository of inert meanings is strengthened rather than weakened; using the archive helps us to understand the dialectical nature of the relationship between past and present and our own positioning within this. (shrink)

La séduction apporte du liant aux relations humaines, du lien social à la relation amoureuse. Mais elle comporte aussi une ambiguïté structurelle, que l’auteur analyse ici à partir des outrances de la séduction.

In a scene from Neil Strauss’ The Game, Ross Jeffries turns his “Speed Seduction” techniques on a waitress. Jeffries evokes remembered feelings of sexual attraction in the waitress, then hypnotically “anchors” these feelings to himself. He thereby seduces her, and in a morally problematic way. To see this, consider subliminal advertising. Subliminal advertising creates consumer demand by purposefully altering motives using means that bypass rational capacities. Jeffries creates demand in the waitress for sex with him using similar means. As we (...) frown upon subliminal advertising, so should we frown upon such unsavory seduction. But it is not generally morally problematic to purposefully alter someone else’s motives to get her to do what you want. And it is not generally morally problematic to motivate someone else by bypassing her rationality. So where is the problem with unsavory seduction? Here I develop and assess one possible answer to this question. (shrink)

According to sexual liberals, sexual activity is an activity like any other, properly governed by rules drawn from the set of justified moral rules governing all human activities, sexual and non-sexual alike. There are sexual liberals who claim that all sexual activity involving none of force, fraud, or taking advantage of the desperate circumstances of another is morally unproblematic. Here I shall argue that sexual liberalism ought not to be so permissive. Appealing to considerations of autonomy and consistency, I shall (...) argue that that sexual liberals ought to regard some sexual seduction involving none of force, fraud, or taking advantage of the desperate circumstances of another as prima facie immoral always, and as on-balance immoral at least sometimes. (shrink)

From the older handbooks to the more recent scholarly literature, Gorgias's professions about his art are taken literally at their word: conjured up in all of these accounts is the image of a hearer irresistibly overwhelmed by Gorgias's apagogic and psychagogic persuasions. Gorgias's own description of his art, in effect, replaces our description of it. "His proofs... give the impression of ineluctability" . "Thus logos is almost an independent external power which forces the hearer to do its will" . "Incurably (...) deceptive," logos has an "enormous power" that acts upon opinion, which is "easy to change" . Surprisingly, the urge to describe or paraphrase Gorgias's art has caused commentators to overlook the very best witness of it that we have: its enactment, which is to say the performative value of Gorgias's writings, especially the speeches. For if Gorgias's literary remains do nothing else, they demonstrate how one can do things with words without being explicit about what is being done, even if this means contradicting, performatively, what is being said-as for instance in his statements, so unconvincingly made, about the ostensible aims of rhetoric. Was Gorgias persuasive in practice? Was persuasion even the goal? Is logos the solitary arbiter of reality that it is so often made out to be? Through close examination of Gorgias's Helen and parts of On Not-Being, I attempt to show that persuasion is manifestly not the goal of his arguments, which in the first instance are aporetic paradoxes that expose the difficulties of defining the nature of either language or reality, and which in the last instance are instruments of cultural demystification. The only deception at work in Gorgias's writings is that of the self-deception of their audience. It is this that gives these curiously revealing documents of fifth-century Greek culture their "dissuasive," not persuasive, character. (shrink)

Both 'persuasion' and 'rational convincing' play a major role in argumentative discourse but only the latter is said to constitute argument and be amenable to traditional logical analysis. I argue against this assumption by showing that there are many paradigmatic instances of persuasion which are best understood as implicit arguments. So understood, acts of persuasion can conform to well recognized argument schemata and are best assessed accordingly. I shall argue that the attempt to distinguish arg ument and persuasion is fraught (...) with difficulties. I contrast my conclusions with those of authors like Gilbert, Johnson, and Johnson and Blair. (shrink)

The influence of Aśvaghoṣa on the later tradition of kāvya was largely passed over in the South Asian tradition, even though the debt to his influence is clear in processional scenes developed by Kālidāsa and the attempted seduction of Arjuna developed by Bhāravi in his Kirātārjunīyam. We know from the testimony of the Chinese pilgrim Yijing that the Buddhacarita was a revered object of study in the Sumatran capital Śrībhoga near the close of the seventh century CE. It thus perhaps (...) comes as no surprise that three tropes or themes developed by Aśvaghoṣa were developed by several important composers of kakawin, the Old Javanese literary genre comparable to the kāvya of South Asia. This paper looks at the development of the themes of processions, divine battles and attempted seductions in a long history beginning with Aśvaghoṣa and closing with the work of the Javanese author Mpu Tantular, who completed the Buddhist kakawin Sutasoma c. 1365–1389 CE. This paper is partly based on a revised perspective on the history of the Shailendra and Sañjaya dynasties of central Java developed by examining the role of the “Shailendra royal preceptors” in bringing Sanskrit learning to Central Java in the period 778–847 CE. (shrink)