How should pragmatists respond to and contribute to the resolution of one of America's greatest and most enduring problems? Given that the most important thinkers of the pragmatist movement—Charles S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead—said little about the problem of race, how does their distinctly American way of thinking confront the hardship and brutality that characterizes the experience of many African Americans in this country? In 12 thoughtful and provocative essays, contemporary American pragmatists connect ideas with (...) action and theory with practice to come to terms with this seemingly intractable problem. Exploring themes such as racism and social change, the value of the concept of race, the role of education in ameliorating racism, and the place of democracy in dealing with the tragedy of race, the voices gathered in this volume consider how pragmatism can focus new attention on the problem of race. Contributors are Michael Eldridge, Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Judith M. Green, D. Micah Hester, Donald F. Koch, Bill E. Lawson, David E. McClean, Gregory F. Pappas, Scott L. Pratt, Alfred E. Prettyman, John R. Shook, Paul C. Taylor, and Cornel West. (shrink)

In this article I reflect on meeting Professor Drucilla Cornell as a bachelor’s student at Rutgers University, working as her assistant, and the irreversible impact she had on my life. I argue that Cornell was a thinker of profound courage and that this virtue was crucial to her developing several ways beyond the philosophical anthropology of Euro-modern man. Cornell envisioned three main ways beyond what she called the “dead ends of man”: feminism, critical philosophy (including dialectics and (...) Marxism), and African humanism. These three traditions combine in an explosive, revolutionary way in Cornell’s writings; each are essential pillars of her thought. I also identify a dialectical or “productive” tension in her thinking between tendencies toward both idealist and materialist metaphysics. I conclude by recounting personal experiences with Cornell, exploring the consequences of her ethical philosophy, and posing questions that I think she could help us answer in the tumultuous times we are currently living through. (shrink)

When the COVID-19 surge hit New York City hospitals, the Division of Medical Ethics at Weill Cornell Medical College, and our affiliated ethics consultation services, faced waves of ethical issues sweeping forward with intensity and urgency. In this article, we describe our experience over an eight-week period (16 March through 10 May 2020), and describe three types of services: clinical ethics consultation (CEC); service practice communications/interventions (SPCI); and organizational ethics advisement (OEA). We tell this narrative through the prism of (...) time, describing the evolution of ethical issues and trends as the pandemic unfolded. We delineate three phases: anticipation and preparation, crisis management, and reflection and adjustment. The first phase focused predominantly on ways to address impending resource shortages and to plan for remote ethics consultation, and CECs focused on code status discussions with surrogates. The second phase was characterized by the dramatic convergence of a rapid increase in the number of critically ill patients, a growing scarcity of resources, and the reassignment/ redeployment of staff outside their specialty areas. The third phase was characterized by the recognition that while the worst of the crisis was waning, its medium- and long-term consequences continued to pose immense challenges. We note that there were times during the crisis that serving in the role of clinical ethics consultant created a sense of dis-ease as novel as the coronavirus itself. In retrospect we learned that our activities far exceeded the familiar terrain of clinical ethics consultation and extended into other spheres of organizational life in novel ways that were unanticipated before this pandemic. To that end, we defined and categorized a middle level of ethics consultation, which we have termed service practice communication intervention (SPCI). This is an underappreciated dimension of the work that ethics consult services are capable of in times of crisis. We believe that the pandemic has revealed the many enduring ways that ethics consultation services can more robustly contribute to the ethical life of their institutions moving forward. (shrink)

Earth system science (ESS) has identified worrying trends in the human impact on fundamental planetary systems. In this conceptual article, we discuss the implications of this research for business schools and management education (ME). We argue that ESS findings raise significant concerns about the relationship between business and nature and, consequently, a radical reframing is required to embed economic and social activity within the global sustainability of natural systems. This has transformative implications for ME. To illustrate this reframing, we apply (...) the ESS lenses of social-ecological interdependence, multiscalar relations, environmental governance, and environmental values to the ME functional domains of institutional purpose, social context and engagement, pedagogical practice, curricular design, and research focus. Our work contributes to the literature on business education for sustainability and the business-society-nature nexus. We explore and apply key ESS findings and concepts, discuss normative implications of these ideas, and offer guidance on transformational pathways for business schools and ME. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Future of Sexual Difference: An Interview with Judith Butler and Drucilla Cornell*Pheng Cheah (bio) and Elizabeth Grrosz (bio)EG:Luce Irigaray’s writings have always figured strongly in your works, probably more than in the work of other American feminist theorists. Out of all the feminist theorists you both interrogate, she seems to emerge as a kind of touchstone of the feminist ethical, political, and intellectual concerns to which you (...) seem to aspire. Could each of you briefly outline how she figures in your work, whether your relations to her have changed, and if so, how?JB:I think that probably early on, when I started working on French feminism as a graduate student in the early ‘80s, I was not interested in her at all because she seemed to me to be an essentialist and that was a term we used quite easily then, when we thought we knew what it meant. In the late ‘80s, I started to rethink my objections to her on that basis and found that she was, among the feminist theorists I had read, perhaps the most versed in philosophy and that her engagement with philosophy was a curious mixture of both loyalty and aggression. And it became very interesting to me when I started thinking about her whole practice of critical mimesis—what she was doing when she was reading Freud, what was she doing when she was reading Plato—and I read Speculum again and again, frightened by its anger, compelled by the closeness of the reading, confused by the mimetism of the text. Was she enslaved to these texts, was she displacing them radically, was she perhaps in the bind of being in both positions at the same time? And I realized that whatever the feminine was for her, it was not a substance, not a spiritual reality that might be isolated, but it had something to do with this strange practice of reading, one in which she was reading texts that she was not authorized to read, texts from which she was as a woman explicitly excluded or explicitly demeaned, and that she would read them anyway. And then the question is: what would it mean to read from a position of radical deauthorization in order to expose the contingent authority of the text? That struck me as a feminist critical practice, a critical reading practice that I could learn from, and from that point on, highly influenced by both Drucilla’s work and Naomi Schor’s work [see Schor], I started to read her quite thoroughly.PC:Is this kind of relationship that she has with the philosophers she reads a sexual relationship? I am thinking of some of the sexualized terms you just used: loyalty and aggression.JB:Yes, there is no doubt that there is an eros of a certain kind, usually the kind that frightens me, quite frankly. I think Carolyn Burke has made this argument that Irigaray [End Page 19] has a romance with the philosophers [see Burke]. I think she has a certain masochistic-sadistic erotic engagement with the philosophers.EG:Do you think it is sado-masochistic?JB:Well, I think it was much more aggressive in Speculum of the Other Woman than it became in An Ethics of Sexual Difference. There, I think there is an engagement that is still very difficult, but at least there is evidence of a more loving engagement.PC:I hope that we can return to the question of love at the end. Is this the kind of relationship that you have to her texts?JB:No, I’m probably too frightened. [Everybody laughs.] And I don’t engage them that closely, probably because I find it frightening to be in that particular knot. She doesn’t actually have a chapter in any of my books. I think I can’t quite devote a chapter to her....EG:No, but you devote large sections of chapters....JB:That’s true, but I can’t stay there for a prolonged period of time [laughs], whatever that’s worth.EG:I’d like to come back to this later, because I think it is a really interesting... (shrink)

(1938). The radiant heat spectrum from herschel to melloni.—I. The work of herschel and his contemporaries. Annals of Science: Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 119-137.

(1938). The radiant heat spectrum from Herschel to Melloni.—II. The work of Melloni and his contemporaries. Annals of Science: Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 402-416.

The sixteen essays in Gender Struggles address a wide range of issues in gender struggles, from the more familiar ones that, for the last thirty years, have been the mainstay of feminist scholarship, such as motherhood, beauty, and sexual violence, to new topics inspired by post-industrialization and multiculturalism, such as the welfare state, cyberspace, hate speech, and queer politics, and finally to topics that traditionally have not been seen as appropriate subjects for philosophizing, such as adoption, care work, and the (...) home. (shrink)

Taking Emerson as his starting point, Cornel West’s basic task in this ambitious enterprise is to chart the emergence, development, decline, and recent resurgence of American pragmatism. John Dewey is the central figure in West’s pantheon of pragmatists, but he treats as well such varied mid-century representatives of the tradition as Sidney Hook, C. Wright Mills, W. E. B. Du Bois, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Lionel Trilling. West’s "genealogy" is, ultimately, a very personal work, for it is imbued throughout with the (...) author’s conviction that a thorough reexamination of American pragmatism may help inspire and instruct contemporary efforts to remake and reform American society and culture. "West... may well be the pre-eminent African American intellectual of our generation."—The Nation "_The American Evasion of Philosophy_ is a highly intelligent and provocative book. Cornel West gives us illuminating readings of the political thought of Emerson and James; provides a penetrating critical assessment of Dewey, his central figure; and offers a brilliant interpretation—appreciative yet far from uncritical—of the contemporary philosopher and neo-pragmatist Richard Rorty.... What shines through, throughout the work, is West's firm commitment to a radical vision of a philosophic discourse as inextricably linked to cultural criticism and political engagement."—Paul S. Boyer, professor emeritus of history, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Wisconsin Project on American Writers Frank Lentricchia, General Editor. (shrink)

This article offers a justification for accommodating claims of conscience. The standard justification points to the pain that acting against one’s conscience entails. But that defense cannot make sense of the state’s refusal to accommodate individuals where the law interferes with their deeply meaningful but nonmoral projects. An alternative justification, we argue, arises once one recognizes the connection between conscience and moral address: One’s lived moral convictions determine when and with what force one can hold others to account. Acting against (...) one’s convictions can undermine one’s standing to blame others who act in similar ways. When the state compels someone to act against conscience, it renders her complicit in conduct she takes to be wrong and thereby impairs her ability to condemn similar conduct in the future, in a manner akin to the hypocrite. The reason the state should not compel people to act against conscience, then, is that doing so would undercut their moral standing. (shrink)

The process of ecclesiastical discipline evokes feelings of guilt and shame. Whilst literary study suggested this to be the case, the empirical research confirmed it. It is clear that the three-fold process was a traumatic and shocking experience for ministers. Most upsetting was the way that the process was handled. It was done in a non-professional way and without brotherly or sisterly love. The process triggered guilt and shame emotions in a number of ways, not least by the lack of (...) support and guidance. Respondents indicated that they had positive and negative experiences of guilt and shame during the discipline process. Most respondents took action to amend their mistakes, and thereby used the guilt feeling functionally, whilst the use of defence mechanisms showed that they did not manage and process the feelings of shame. It is unsettling to realise that the Dutch Reformed Church fails her ministers in time of need. Only a few parishioners and ministers from other denominations provided some sort of comfort during the discipline process. The church gave no support and guidance in the processing of the feelings of guilt and shame. The church lacked in every aspect, even to show a basic understanding of the trauma, and none of the church councils offered any basic or interventive help. To remedy the situation, it is proposed that the church should take its task as caregiver during the ecclesiastical discipline of ministers very serious and give guidance in an official and professional way. (shrink)

It is natural for us — living after the Darwinian Revolution and the neo-Darwinian synthesis — to consider the adoption of evolution by natural selection as unconditionally rational, because it now seems the best theory or explanation of many phenomena. Nonetheless, if we take historical inquiry seriously, as allowing us to probe into the ground of our knowledge, the roots of even this “rational” Darwinism might be unearthed. Darwinian doctrine betrays a deceptive desire for unity and simplicity of principle, and (...) belief that the mechanistic aspect of nature is of the highest significance. Such crucial but questionable presuppositions are more easily discerned historically, insofar as they chronologically preceded Darwin's particular theoretical conviction and were even set off as a metaphysics of divine law.We have seen how Darwin's teaching about nature emerged within that theistic metaphysics. It emerged in a prior metaphysical debate in his mind between the contemporary belief in special creations and the belief in a designed hierarchy of physical laws. One can hardly deny that Darwin favored the superior side in this contest; but the contest was a narrow one whose basic premises he never clearly criticized. On the one hand, of course, his conviction about a lawful genesis inspired him to take a broad view of things and to seek out important general phenomena. But, on the other hand, it ensured that his new empirical notions would be easily drawn into the preferred cosmology. Historically, this seems to have occurred in Darwin's adoption of Malthus' principle of population and his extension of it to the whole account of descent: Malthusianism was readily attached to an ultimate scheme of things. Consequently, the key concepts that Darwin developed out of his Malthusian views — “perfect adaptation” and “selection” — reflect his cosmological prepossession, his desire to express a total and teleological process of creation. Perhaps our most valuable, and most undervalued, token of Darwin's metaphysical orientation is his reliance on a human technique (selective breeding) to explain “Nature's” way. In sum, to understand Darwin's faith in his “grand view of life,” we should not ignore the metaphysics that preceded and structured it, the metaphysics that linked the principles of contemporary science to primordial creation. Nor should we fail to see that such a metaphysics leads natural philosophy into a shadowy realm, where system can come to look like science, and one insight like an absolute. (shrink)

How does philosophy relate to the Afro-American experience? This question arises primarily because of an antipathy to the ahistorical character of contemporary philosophy and the paucity of illuminating diachronic studies of the Afro-American experience. I will try to show that certain philosophical techniques, derived from a particular conception of philosophy, can contribute to our understanding of the Afro-American experience. For lack of a better name, I shall call the application of these techniques to this experience, Afro-American philosophy. I will examine (...) historical sources of these techniques and explore the way in which they underscore the feasibility of an Afro-American philosophy. Finally, I will attempt to show what results such a philosophy should yield. (shrink)

This Article draws attention to a conceptual point that has been overlooked in recent discussions about the theoretical foundations of contract law. I argue that, rather than enforcing the obligations of promises, contract law concerns complaints against promissory wrongs. This conceptual distinction is easy to miss. If one assumes that complaints arise whenever an obligation has been violated, then the distinction does not seem meaningful. I show, however, that an obligation can be breached without giving rise to a valid complaint. (...) This Article illustrates the importance of this conceptual distinction by focusing first on the doctrine of substantive unconscionability. I claim that the doctrine can be best explained by the way in which a party who engages in exploitative behavior may lose her moral standing to complain. It is because such a party has lost her moral standing to complain that the law, through unconscionability doctrine, bars her from bringing a legal complaint. This explanation avoids the oft-issued charge of paternalism and it also offers benefits over an alternative state-oriented account developed recently by Seana Shiffrin. Using the conceptual distinction behind this account of unconscionability, this Article further argues that recent theoretical debates about the relationship between contract law and morality have been largely misconceived. Those debates have focused on whether contract law and morality impose parallel obligations. Once one appreciates the difference between imposing obligations and recognizing complaints, the comparison looks quite different. Contract law recognizes valid complaints against broken promises, much as morality recognizes moral complaints. (shrink)

In recent years, feminist and queer theory have effectively disavowed both “the human” and revolutionary politics. In the face of massive geopolitical crisis, posthumanists have called for us to reconsider fundamentally the superiority and centrality of mankind and “the human,” and question how Man can presume to change the world by revolutionary action, particularly when Marx’s dreams seem to have been swept into the dustbin of history. This provocative book reaffirms what is most basic in feminism – the attack on (...) the “universality” and sovereignty of Man – but contends that the only way this can mean anything other than pessimistic rhetoric is to embrace human agency and the struggle against colonialism and capitalism. In a series of “creolized” readings – Foucault with Ali Shari’ati, Lacan with Fanon, and Spinoza with Sylvia Wynter – the authors demonstrate what is at stake in the ongoing debate between humanism and posthumanism, putting this debate in the context of contemporary global crises and the possibilities of revolution. In its defense of “political spirituality,” this book pushes for a new trajectory in response to the gross inequalities of today, one that offers us a very different view of revolution and its present-day potential. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A PARABLE OF SCANDAL: SPECULATIONS ABOUT THE WHEAT AND THE TARES IN MATTHEW 13 John F. Cornell St. John's College, NM I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things kept secret since the foundation of die world" (Matthew 13:35) The title ofone of René Girard's path-breaking books, Things Hidden since the Foundation ofthe World, is of course drawn from this passage. Few scholarly writings compare (...) to this discussion ofmimetic rivalry and collective persecution for conveying a sense of the Bible's depths and secrecy, and for deciphering the wisdom inscribed in its images. Yet it is curious that Girard eschews the parables said to be the repositories of scriptural secrets. Both in Things Hidden (189) and in Quand ces choses commenceront (171-172), he distances himself from the parables as conceding too much to the human desire for a mythical God ofretribution. In light of all we have learned from Girard about our traditional misreadings of the Gospel, we might well question even the strongest impressions left by some of its figures. Might the parables' language of apocalyptic vengeance conceal a different revelation, just as an innocent death on a cross should disclose not the bloodlust ofa deity but the violence ofmen? Matthew's Jesus tells a story about a sowerwhose crop was infested by his enemy's weeds, weeds to be uprooted and destroyed at the harvest. And, granted, when Jesus translates the parable for the disciples he describes divine violence at the end ofhistory. The enemy is the devil and the sower is the Son ofMan who sends out his angels to discern the unrighteous ofhumanity and cast them into the furnace. But something does not seem quite right. Isn't Jesus' reduction of his own parable a little too obvious? And is there not John F. Cornell99 something grotesque—or at least simple-minded—about the teacher who warned about dirowing pearls ofwisdom now turning around and broadcasting the solution to one of the great mysteries? If we look closely at the very parable that surrounds the suggestion of "things hidden since the foundation ofthe world," we may see, however, that something is indeed hidden, hidden in the text. And what is hidden there confirms Girard's insight about the dominion ofmimetic rivalry since the world began. The Wheat and Tares is more than amyth ofdivine punishment. It is a parable ofthe essential human malady, a parable ofscandal. Here is the main text of the parable of the Wheat and the Tares, from Matthew chapter 13, in the New King James Version.1 "The kingdom ofheaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field (agroi) but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. But when the grainhad sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. So the servants of the [master of the house] (oikodespotou) came and said to him, 'Sir, did you not sow good seed inyourfield? How then does it have tares?' He said to diem, 'An enemy, [a man,] has done this.' The servants said to him, 'Do you want us then to go and gather them up?' But he said, 1No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time ofharvest I will say to the reapers, "First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to bum them, but gather the wheat into my bam.'"" (Matthew 13: 24-30) Andhere is the explanation ofdie Wheat and die Tares that follows soon after: All these things Jesus spoke to the multitude in parables; and without a parable He did not speak to them, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet saying: "1 will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things kept secret [since] the foundation ofthe world." 1 Minor corrections, necessary to reflect the Greek, are indicated by brackets. The source for the Greek text is the Nestle-Almond Novum Testamentum Graece. 100A Parable ofScandal Then Jesus sent the multitude away and went into the house (oikiari). And His... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Personal Narratives: Parenting Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders Through the Transition to AdulthoodCatherine Cornell, Julie Herren, Susan Osborne, and Kelly WeissTransition years: From Learning, Living and Loving to Maintenance and MediocrityCatherine CornellWhat does every parent of an autistic child worry about the most? For those of us with severely affected children, the answer to that question is: “Who will care for my child and keep her safe when (...) I am gone?”I drove my daughter back to her “group home” for a scheduled drop off on Saturday. There was only one car in the driveway and the house van was gone. Lily was not happy about returning “home.” Agitated, she opened the door to the car, almost before it was stopped, ran to the back of the house, and up the fire escape stairs to the door of her third floor bathroom, as if she was avoiding going through the main living rooms of the house. I called up to her that there was no one at home and she came back down and pushed through the unlocked door. Racing ahead of me, she was already shed of her clothes and in the shower: her self–calming method that she used whenever returning to the house. Thirty minutes later, after three attempts to leave the shower and throwing up in the shower, she dressed and ran back out to our car. I played her favorite music, attempting to calm her anxiety. This transition, from home to “group home,” was increasingly difficult due to recent changes in staff and housemates. Having no one there to greet her was ratcheting up the anxiety level for both of us.When the on–call manager came, Lily was so distraught that I asked for her medications and took her back home with me. Two days later she was calm enough and I was reassured enough to return her to the house. Somehow the house manager made the incident my fault. Perhaps I did react strongly, but on reflection, what triggered the strong reaction in me was the insecurity I felt at finding no one home. It seemed like a breach of trust. Like we were left, abandoned, our plans shattered and at the mercy of fate. Strong emotions for a little mix–up in communications (if that is what it was) but, nevertheless, there it is—how I felt and more to the point how my daughter felt.I relate this story because it illustrates what has changed the most about our lives since Lily left her school and entered the world of adult services: missing is the feeling of trust and security that responsible caring people would keep Lily safe when my husband and I cannot.My 25–year–old daughter Lily has severe autism. She was the most beautiful and easy baby imaginable and appeared to develop normally until she began to lose speech and have night terrors at 15 months of age. She was diagnosed initially with atypical autism, then pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified, and finally with autism at age four.From age four to twenty–two, she attended a specialized school for autism where she received age level academics, therapies for speech, and training in self–care and independent living. She did not do well in academics nor did she regain her lost speech. She did learn to care for herself with assistance and, as important, she gained social and behavioral skills and learned to live with others in a social way. She [End Page E1] also learned recreational and vocational skills that would be transferrable to the community, such as bicycle riding, rollerblading, swimming and jogging. The philosophy of her school was to build self–esteem and confidence by teaching music, art and physical skills—in small steps, ensuring success, and then building on those skills.In her last year at school, Lily was a happy and well–adjusted member of her small group of five young women living in a town house with support from trained school staff. She participated in job programs, earning money by recycling and working for Meals–On–Wheels. She went out into the community with her group... (shrink)

'The sheer range of West's interests and insights is staggering and exemplary: he appears equally comfortable talking about literature, ethics, art, jurisprudence, religion, and popular-cultural forms.' - Artforum Keeping Faithis a rich, moving and deeply personal collection of essays from one of the leading African American intellectuals of our age. Drawing upon the traditions of Western philosophy and modernity, Cornel West critiques structures of power and oppression as they operate within American society and provides a way of thinking about human (...) dignity and difference afresh. Impressive in its scope, West confidently and deftly explores the politics and philosophy of America, the role of the black intellectual, legal theory and the future of liberal thought, and the fate of African Americans. A celebration of the extraordinary lives of ordinary Americans, Keeping Faithis a petition to hope and a call to faith in the redemptive power of the human spirit. (shrink)

In this paper, I will try to show the ways in which Nietzsche prefigures the crucial moves made recently in postmodern" American philosophy. I will confine my remarks to two of Nietzsche's texts: Twilight of the Idols and The Will To Power. The postmodern American philosophers I will examine are W.V. Quine, Nelson Goodman, Wilfred Sellars, Thomas Kuhn and Richard Rorty. The three moves I shall portray are: the move toward anti-realism or conventionalism in ontology; the move toward the demythologization (...) of the Myth of the Given or anti-foundationalism in epistemology; and the move toward the detranscendentalization of the subject or the dismissal of the mind as a sphere of inquiry. I then shall claim that Nietzsche believed such moves lead to a paralyzing nihilism and ironic skepticism unless they are supplemented with a new world view, a new "countermovement" to overcome such nihilism and skepticism. Lastly, I will suggest that postmodern American philosophy has not provided such a "countermovement," settling instead for either updated versions of scientism (Quine and Sellars), an aristocratic resurrection of pluralistic stylism (Goodman), a glib ideology of professionalism (Kuhn), or a nostalgic appeal to enlightened conversation (Rorty). Such weak candidates for a "countermovement" seem to indicate the extent to which postmodern American philosophy—similar to much of postmodern thought in the West—constitutes a dead, impotent rhetoric of a declining and decaying civilization. (shrink)

In this article I review Amaryta Sen’s powerful critique of transcendental institutionalism and his own ‘realization-focused comparison’ as an alternative way to think about justice. While deeply sympathetic with his critique of John Rawls I also argue that the role of the Kantian imagination is extremely important in figuring ideals of justice, which must guide ‘realization-focused comparison’. To do so I turn to Kant’s Critique of Judgment and his development of what he calls ‘aesthetic ideas’ as ways of representing the (...) great ideals such as freedom and equality, which can be aesthetically represented but never fully known. (shrink)

What I want to argue is that when we talk about contemporary crisis in culture, the one way of beginning to come to terms with this is having to historicize and pluralize and contextualize the postmodernism debate. How does that relate to the vocation of the intellectual, given the challenge of the technical intelligentsia, given the challenge of the middlebrow journalist? What kind of role and function can the humanistic intellectual have in advanced capitalist society, given his or her placement (...) within the academic’s life of the professional managerial class of this particular society? (shrink)

The increasing interest in Hegel among legal scholars can be attributed to three recent developments. First, there is a slow but sure historicist turn in legal studies that is unsettling legal formalists and positivists. This turn—initiated by legal realists decades ago and deepened by the Critical Legal Studies movement in our own time—radically calls into question objectivist claims about procedure, due process, and the liberal view of law. Second, there are a growing number of serious reexaminations of the basic assumptions (...) and fundamental presuppositions of dominant forms of liberalism not only among critics but also by many prominent liberal thinkers themselves. These reexaminations take the form of immanent critiques of liberalism as well as creative revisions of liberalism. Third, a new emerging subject matter has seized the imagination of some legal theorists: the complex cultures of liberal societies (including the subcultures of the liberal legal academy). For the first time in American legal studies, the crucial roles of race and especially gender are receiving wide attention as legitimate spheres of legal inquiry into what constitutes the ways of life that circumscribe the operations of power in the legal systems of liberal societies. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to explore how nurses perceive patient participations of patients over 75 years old undergoing hemodialysis treatment in dialysis units, and of their next of kin. Ten nurses told stories about what happened in the dialysis units. These stories were analyzed with critical discourse analysis. Three discursive practices are found: (1) the nurses’ power and control; (2) sharing power with the patient; and (3) transferring power to the next of kin. The first and the predominant (...) discursive practice can be explained with an ideology of paternalism, in which the nurses used biomedical explanations and the ethical principle of benefice to justify their actions. The second can be explained with an ideology of participation, in which the nurses used ethical narratives as a way to let the patients participate in the treatment. The third seemed to involve autonomous decision-making and the ethical principle of autonomy for the next of kin in the difficult end-of-life decisions. (shrink)

This article gives an overview of some recent debates about the relationship between reasons and rational requirements of coherence - e.g. the requirements to be consistent in our beliefs and intentions, and to intend what we take to be the necessary means to our ends.

Leading invasion biologists sometimes dismiss critics and criticisms of their field by invoking “the straw man” fallacy. Critics of invasion biology are also labelled as a small group of “naysayers” or “contrarians”, who are sometimes engaging in “science denialism”. Such unfortunate labels can be seen as a way to possibly suppress legitimate debates and dismiss or minimize reasonable concerns about some aspects of invasion biology, including the uncertainties about the geographic origins and complex environmental impacts of species, and the control (...) programs against species perceived as “invasive”. In assessing the quality of the debate in this area, we examine the validity of the use of various strategies, including the “straw man” concept, and explore a range of potential logical fallacies present in some recent prominent discussions about invasion biology and so-called “invasive” species. The goal is to add some clarity to the concepts involved, point out some problematic issues, and improve the quality of the debates as the discussions move forward. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Although dominant discourses of various kinds are frequently reproduced on talk radio, the fundamentally collaborative nature of the medium also means that it is able to serve as a channel through which to challenge these discourses. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, this article examines how neoliberal ideology structures discussions around ‘service delivery protest’ on South African talk radio, and explores some of the roles that talk radio is, and is not, able to play in constructing resistance to neoliberal ideology. Our (...) analysis yielded two discourses, namely: naturalisation of the commodification of everyday life, and market over welfare – both of which seemed to cohere with neoliberal frameworks and rationalities in different ways. We conclude by suggesting how radio can be used to denaturalise neoliberalism’s impulse towards making common sense conditions that enable economic oppression and exploitation. (shrink)

Recent flashpoints in Black-Jewish relations--Louis Farrakhan's Million Man March, the violence in Crown Heights, Leonard Jeffries' polemical speeches, the O.J. Simpson verdict, and the contentious responses to these events--suggest just how wide the gap has become in the fragile coalition that was formed during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Instead of critical dialogue and respectful exchange, we have witnessed battles that too often consist of vulgar name-calling and self-righteous finger-pointing. Absent from these exchanges are two vitally important and (...) potentially healing elements: Comprehension of the actual history between Blacks and Jews, and level-headed discussion of the many issues that currently divide the two groups. In Struggles in the Promised Land, editors Jack Salzman and Cornel West bring together twenty-one illuminating essays that fill precisely this absence. As Salzman makes clear in his introduction, the purpose of this collection is not to offer quick fixes to the present crisis but to provide a clarifying historical framework from which lasting solutions may emerge. Where historical knowledge is lacking, rhetoric comes rushing in, and Salzman asserts that the true history of Black-Jewish relations remains largely untold. To communicate that history, the essays gathered here move from the common demonization of Blacks and Jews in the Middle Ages; to an accurate assessment of Jewish involvement of the slave trade; to the confluence of Black migration from the South and Jewish immigration from Europe into Northern cities between 1880 and 1935; to the meaningful alliance forged during the Civil Rights movement and the conflicts over Black Power and the struggle in the Middle East that effectively ended that alliance. The essays also provide reasoned discussion of such volatile issues as affirmative action, Zionism, Blacks and Jews in the American Left, educational relations between the two groups, and the real and perceived roles Hollywood has play in the current tensions. The book concludes with personal pieces by Patricia Williams, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Michael Walzer, and Cornel West, who argues that the need to promote Black-Jewish alliances is, above all, a "moral endeavor that exemplifies ways in which the most hated group in European history and the most hated group in U.S. history can coalesce in the name of precious democratic ideals." At a time when accusations come more readily than careful consideration, Struggles in the Promised Land offers a much-needed voice of reason and historical understanding. Distinguished by the caliber of its contributors, the inclusiveness of its focus, and the thoughtfulness of its writing, Salzman and West's book lays the groundwork for future discussions and will be essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary American culture and race relations. (shrink)

Recent critics have called attention to the alienation of contemporary academics from broad currents of intellectual activity in public culture. The general complaint is that intellectuals are finding a professional home in institutions of higher learning, insulated from the concerns and interests of a wider reading audience. The demands of professional expertise do not encourage academics to work as public intellectuals or to take up social, literary, or political matters in imaginative and perspicuous ways. More problematic is the relative absence (...) of religion in the writings of those who aspire to work as public intellectuals. This essay reviews recent attempts by William Dean, Cornel West, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Stephen Carter, and Robin Lovin to remedy the problem of academic alienation and to address the place of religion in American life. (shrink)

The Homo naledi discovery introduced questions that had not been previously posed regarding fossil finds. This is because, apart from their fascinating physiology, they seemingly deliberately disposed of their dead in a ritualised way. Although this theory may still be disproved in future, the present article provisionally accepts it. This evokes religious questions because it suggests the possibility of causal thinking, wilful and cooperative behaviour, and the possibility that this behaviour entails traces of proto-religious ideas. This poses the challenge to (...) develop a hominin hermeneutics that endeavours to reconstruct the possible motivation behind this action. The relatively larger brain with its enlarged Broca's area suggests the possibility of a sophisticated communication system and an enhanced way of dealing with emotion. We know that almost all life forms have some form of awareness and that more sophisticated degrees of consciousness may be present in the higher primates. Various 'clues' are investigated to try and understand the H. naledi phenomenon: lessons from chimpanzee studies, the implications of tool making for hominin development, the possibility of a proto-language and the role symbol formation may have played. The H. naledi case also indicates on a theological level that religion is natural. Some attention is given to this thesis. Biological and environmental factors come into play to illuminate biological factors like emotion and higher cognition without which religion would not be possible. Sophisticated cognition is coloured by affect and this makes some form of reflection on the fate of loved ones who have died a strong possibility. (shrink)

Karl Jaspers’ Axial Age concept is used to depict the way humans interact with their environment. The first Axial Age (800-200 BC) can be typified among others as the age in which humans started to objectify nature. Nature was dispossessed of spirits, gods and vital forces that humans previously feared and used as explanation for the origin of things. Secularised and objectified nature became a source of wealth for humans to use and abuse as they like. This has peaked in (...) the post-industrial era which also introduced the Second Axial Age in which we presently live. The Second Axial Age can be typified by a new approach to nature mediated among others by insights from the side of the natural sciences, especially developments in cosmology, our understanding of the quantum world and new insights into the nature of consciousness. Another development in the Second Axial Age is the emergence of the nonhuman turn, new materialism, panpsychism, the notion of the post-human and theological concepts like the ‘entangled God’. These developments are discussed with reference to leading thinkers. The nonhuman turn is welcomed as it introduces respect for nature which may contribute to the survival of our planet. (shrink)

A fundamental valuation of present day technology requires an investigation of its supporting metaphysics. Although technology ostensibly is the exact opposite of any kind of metaphysics, its metaphysical foundations, which co-determine its influence on values and worldview formation, can be indicated. Western technology is reconsidered from the perspective of Heidegger's critique on technology. Technology need not determine values in a deterministic way. We are challenged as created co-creators to give a human face to technology. Africa can be considered relatively free (...) of the influence of high technology. The way technology is imbedded in African metaphysics, myth and worldview is investigated from the perspectives of life force and ubuntu. Although the African example may be foreign to Westerners, it proves that it is possible to live in a technological world without losing the values indispensable to humanity. S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.22(2) 2003: 173–183. (shrink)

Context: The idea for this article sprang from a desire to revive a conversation with the late Ernst von Glasersfeld on the heuristic function - and epistemological status - of forms of ideations that resist linguistic or empirical scrutiny. A close look into the uses of humor seemed a thread worth pursuing, albeit tenuous, to further explore some of the controversies surrounding the evocative power of the imaginal and other oblique forms of knowing characteristic of creative individuals. Problem: People generally (...) respond to humor, i.e., they are inclined to smile at things they find funny. People like to crack jokes, make puns, and, starting at age two, human infants engage in pretense or fantasy play. Research on creativity, on the other hand, has mostly scorned the trickster within. Cognitivists in particular are quick to relegate wit, whimsy, and even playfulness to the ranks of artful or poetic frivolities. Method: We use the emblems of the craftsman, the trickster, and the poet to highlight some of the oblique ways of knowing by which creative thinkers bring forth new insights. Each epitomizes dimensions intrinsic to the art of “possibilizing.” Taken together, they help us better understand what it means to be playful beyond curious, rigorous beyond reasonable, and why this should matter, even to constructivists! Results: The musings characteristic of creative individuals speak to intelligent beings’ ability to use glitches intentionally or serendipitously as a means to open up possibilities; to hold on to a thought before spelling it out; and to resist treating words or images as conventional and arbitrary signs regardless of their evocative power. To fall into nominalism, Bachelard insisted, is a poet’s nightmare! Implications: Psyche is image, said Jung, and when we feel alive we rely on the imaginal to guide our reason. Note that image is not here to be understood as a picture in the head or a photographic snapshot of the world. The imaginal does not represent, it brings forth what we understand beyond words. It does not lock us into a single mode. Instead, it is a call to be mindful, in Ellen Langer’s sense: in the present, mentally alert, and on the outlook for our psyche’s own surprising wisdom (sagacity. Constructivist content: Debates on the heuristic function and epistemological status of oblique ways of knowing have long occupied constructivist scholars. I can only guess whether my uses of Jung’s imaginal or Bachelard’s anti-nominalism would have amused or exasperated Ernst! I do know that, on occasion, Ernst the connoisseur, bricoleur, and translator allowed the rationalist-within to include the poet’s power to evoke as a legitimate form of rationality. He himself has written about oblique knowing as legit! (shrink)

One currently popular methodology of metaphysics has it that ‘intuitions’ play an evidential role with respect to metaphysical claims. This chapter defends a realist methodology of metaphysics that implies that any rational being, simply in virtue of being rational, is necessarily capable of grasping the essences of at least some mind-independent entities. The notion of essence in play here is Aristotelian, whereby an entity’s essence is captured by an account of what that entity is, or what it is to be (...) that entity. Concepts are just ways of thinking of things and, as such, may or may not be adequate to the real natures — the essences — of the things being thought of. Our ‘intuitions’, particularly as revealed by aptly constructed thought experiments, may cast interesting light on some of our concepts, but they are not and cannot be reliable guides to mind-independent truths of essence. (shrink)

Taking Parenting Public makes a compelling case that parenting has become dangerously undervalued in America today. It calls for a new investment—both personal and public—into the work of raising children and argues that we are all "stockholders" in the next generation. With a foreword by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Cornel West, Taking Parenting Public crosses boundaries to bring together thinkers from diverse fields spanning the political spectrum. It features contributions from distinguished experts in economics, political science, public policy, child development, (...) public health, history, and the media. While recent books have focused on working mothers or absent fathers, Taking Parenting Public is the first volume to take a comprehensive look at the common struggles of parents. These essays go beyond the usual chest-beating about busy parents torn between work and family demands to suggest bold solutions. Instead of the typical call for "parent replacement"—more child care, more after school programs and more mentors—the contributors offer fresh strategies for "parent replenishment," ways to put mothers and fathers back into the lives of their children not only as economic providers, but also as emotional and moral providers. (shrink)

Luck looms large in numerous different philosophical subfields. Unfortunately, work focused exclusively on the nature of luck is in short supply on the contemporary analytic scene. In his highly impressive recent book Epistemic Luck, Duncan Pritchard helps rectify this neglect by presenting a partial account of luck that he uses to illuminate various ways luck can figure in cognition. In this paper, I critically evaluate both Pritchard’s account of luck and another account to which Pritchard’s discussion draws our attention—viz., that (...) due to Nicholas Rescher. I also assess some novel analyses of luck that incorporate plausible elements of Pritchard’s and Rescher’s accounts. (shrink)

The essays collected in this volume all explore the problem of the relation between moral philosophy and modernity. Charles Larmore addresses this problem by attempting to define the way distinctive forms of modern experience should orientate our moral thinking. Charles Larmore wonders whether the dominant forms of modern philosophy have not become blind to important dimensions of the moral life. The book argues against recent attempts to return to the virtue-centered perspective of ancient Greek ethics. As well as exploring the (...) differences between ancient and modern ethics, the author examines such topics as the roles of reason and history in our moral understanding, the inadequacy of philsophical naturalism, and the foundations of modern liberalism. There are also extended discussions of a number of leading contemporary philosophers: Rawls, Habermas, Williams and Rorty. (shrink)

Looking Beneath the Surface explores Arab-Islamic and Western perspectives on medical ethical issues: genetic research and treatment, abortion, organ donation, and palliative sedation and euthanasia. The contributions in this volume discuss the state of the art, the role of laws, counseling, and spiritual counseling in the decision-making process. The different approaches to the ethical issues, ways of moral reasoning, become clear in these contributions, especially the role of tradition for Islam and the importance of autonomy for the West. Beneath the (...) differences, however, the reader will also discover common values, such as the role of dignity and the value of life, and similar practices. Some of the main differences are sociocultural in nature, rather than religious as such. Well-known experts in the fields of medicine and ethics have contributed to this volume from different religious and secular backgrounds. The book offers a carefully written introduction and final chapter on intercultural comparisons. Looking Beneath the Surface is more than a collection of writings on issues in medical ethics: it helps the reader to compare different paradigms of accountability and moral reasoning. (shrink)

The moral doctrine of Hobbes, in many ways the most interesting of our major British philosophers, is, I think, commonly seen in a false perspective which has seriously obscured its real affinities. This is, no doubt, largely due to the fact that most modern readers begin and end their study of Hobbes's ethics with the Leviathan , a rhetorical and, in many ways, a popular Streitschrift published in the very culmination of what looked at the time to be a permanent (...) revolution, and do not pay such attention to the more calmly argued statements of the same doctrine contained in the Elements of Law , circulated before the outbreak of the Civil War, or the De Cive. (shrink)

This collection of essays by one of the most prominent and internationally respected philosophers of action theory is concerned with deepening our understanding of the notion of intention. In Bratman's view, when we settle on a plan for action we are committing ourselves to future conduct in ways that help support important forms of coordination and organization both within the life of the agent and interpersonally. These essays enrich that account of commitment involved in intending, and explore its implications for (...) our understanding of temptation and self-control, shared intention and shared cooperative activity, and moral responsibility. The essays offer extensive discussions of related views by, among others, Donald Davidson, Hector-Neri Castañeda, Christine Korsgaard, Harry Frankfurt, and P. F. Strawson. This collection will be a valuable resource for a wide range of philosophers and their students. (shrink)