Ecologists traditionally regard time as part of the background against which ecological interactions play out. In this book, Eric Post argues that time should be treated as a resource used by organisms for growth, maintenance, and offspring production. Post uses insights from phenology -- the study of the timing of life-cycle events -- to present a theoretical framework of time in ecology that casts long-standing observations in the field in an entirely new light. Combining conceptual models with (...) field data, he demonstrates how phenological advances, delays, and stasis, documented in an array of taxa, can all be viewed as adaptive components of an organism's strategic use of time. Post shows how the allocation of time by individual organisms to critical life history stages is not only a response to environmental cues but also an important driver of interactions at the population, species, and community levels. To demonstrate the applications of this exciting new conceptual framework, Time in Ecology uses meta-analyses of previous studies as well as Post's original data on the phenological dynamics of plants, caribou, and muskoxen in Greenland.--Back cover. (shrink)

This chapter examines: (1) the Black Notebooks in the context of Heidegger's political engagement on behalf of the National Socialist regime and his ambivalence toward some but not all of its political beliefs and tactics; (2) his limited "critique" of vulgar National Socialism and its biologically based racism for the sake of his own ethnocentric vision of the historical uniqueness of the German people and Germany's central role in Europe as a contested site situated between West and East, technological modernity (...) and the Asiatic. Heidegger did not break with radical right-wing Germanist thought, as some scholars have argued. He at most placed National Socialism within his narrative of the history of being, metaphysics, and technology, and thereby relativized it without addressing either its uniqueness or its totalitarian structures and practices. Heidegger formulated his own metaphysical and ontological version of Antisemitism during the National Socialist period. This vision was deeply connected with his understanding of the "history of being" and was intensified during and immediately after the Second World War. Heidegger could perceive no difference between the Shoah and the Allied bombing, defeat, and occupation of Germany. Heidegger's post-war philosophy (of home, history and technology) is deeply shaped by, and remained complicit with, his thinking during this period. (shrink)

This article explores thematic parallels between the book of Ecclesiastes and the reflections and memories of Holocaust survivors. The three themes touched on find expression in the post‐World War II existentialist literature which sought to respond to the incomprehensibility of the Holocaust : the role of extreme circumstances, absurdity, and the individual struggle with, or against, death and fate. It is existentialist philosophy, then, that provides the categories for the comparison.Although one cannot presume an experiential likeness between Qoheleth’s narrative (...) and the real suffering of Holocaust victims, Qoheleth’s observations and lamentation about the absurdity of his own experience resonate a great deal with the experience of the Holocaust ’s survivors. (shrink)

In this chapter, I reexamine how the interpretation of nothingness and negativity in Schopenhauer—within the wider nineteenth-century philosophical context, particularly in reference to his perceived rival Hegel and his heir and critic Nietzsche—informed his encounter with “oriental thought,” his reception of Buddhism as a philosophical and religious system centering on negativity, and trace how he construed the central Buddhist concept of emptiness in the context of Western ideas of nothingness. Nineteenth-century German philosophers are inadequately aware of the changing senses and (...) complex argumentative discourses concerning the Sanskrit expression śūnyatā and the Chinese term kong 空 and the problem of translating Buddhist emptiness as nothing or void. Relying on the same range of historical sources that were then becoming available in the German speaking world, Schopenhauer and other thinkers such as Hegel perceived similar philosophical questions in these sources, while arriving at conflicting diagnoses of their philosophical and practical significance. We consequently can trace how the reception of Buddhist emptiness becomes interculturally entangled with and a source in argumentation concerning the nature of being and nothingness in modern German philosophy. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger is one of the twentieth century's most important philosophers, and now also one of the most contentious as revelations of the extent of his Nazism continue to surface. His ground-breaking works have had a hugely significant impact on contemporary thought through their reception, appropriation and critique. His thought has influenced philosophers as diverse as Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Arendt, Adorno, Gadamer, Levinas, Derrida and Foucault, among others. In addition to his formative role in philosophical movements such as phenomenology, hermeneutics and (...) existentialism, structuralism and post-structuralism, deconstruction and post-modernism, Heidegger has had a transformative effect on diverse fields of inquiry including political theory, literary criticism, theology, gender theory, technology and environmental studies. The Bloomsbury Companion to Heidegger is the definitive textbook to Heidegger's life and work, in fifty-nine original essays written by an international team of leading Heidegger scholars. This new edition presents comprehensive coverage of Heidegger life and contexts, sources, influences and encounters, key writings, major themes and topics, and reception and influence, and includes a chapter addressing the controversial Black Notebooks, National Socialism, and Antisemitism. This is the ideal research tool for anyone studying or working in the field of Heidegger Studies today. (shrink)

Suppose a certain man, Dion, has his foot amputated, and lives to tell the tale. That tale involves a well-known metaphysical puzzle, for most of us assume that there was, before the operation, an object made up of all of Dion’s parts except those that overlapped with his foot-- ”all of Dion except for his foot”, we might say, or Dion’s “foot-complement”. Call that object Theon. (Anyone who doubts that there is such a thing as Dion’s undetached foot-complement may imagine (...) that ‘Theon’ is a name for Dion’s undetached head. Surely there is such a thing as Dion’s head? And surely Dion could, in principle, survive if his head were detached from the rest of him and kept alive?) It seems obvious that Theon, like Dion, continues to exist after the operation, for you cannot destroy an object merely by changing its surroundings--merely by removing something that was never a part of it. The puzzle, then (which might be called the problem of undetached parts), is how Dion and Theon are related after the operation. The most common answer to this question is that Dion and Theon come to occupy just the same region of space and to be made of just the same matter after the operation. The next-mostpopular answer is that Dion and Theon are made up of temporal parts, and while those of their temporal parts that “occur” before the operation only partly overlap, Dion and Theon have the very same post-operative temporal parts. Much as two roads can merge and have spatial parts in common, Dion and Theon merge and have temporal parts in common. Less popular accounts of the relation between Dion and Theon involve relativizing identity to concepts or times, and denying that there is such a thing as Theon. Michael Burke has recently proposed an intriguing new solution (or resurrected an ancient one) to the problem of undetached parts. [1] He argues that, despite appearances, Theon-- Dion’s foot-complement--ceases to exist when Dion’s foot is removed.. (shrink)

The relationship that exists between the state and her citizens has been described by Jean Jacques Rousseau as “a social contract.” In this contractual agreement, citizens are bound to respect state authority while the state, in turn, has the bounden duty to protect her citizens and guide them in their aspirations. In fact, any state that does not perform this duty is guilty of violating the fundamental rights of her citizens. This, however, is not the case in most postcolonial societies (...) where the citizens see the state as an aggressive apparatus against their wellbeing because the state is not fulfilling its own part of the social contract, which requires them to protect the citizens and guide them in their aspirations. This unfortunate situation has laid the foundation for protest and anti-establishment writings in post-colonial societies – especially in Africa. Since literature, as a semiotic resource, is coterminous with its socio-political context, this attitude of the state has drawn inimical criticism from key postcolonial African writers such as Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Mongo Beti, and Nadine Gordimer. Using Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel and John Nkemngong Nkengasong’s Across the Mongolo, this essay shows the relationship between state-terrorism and the traumatic conditions of the citizens in contemporary Africa. From the perspective of trauma theory, the essay defends the premise that the postcolonial subjects/characters, in the novels under study, are traumatized and depressed because of their continuous victimization by the state. Due to this state-imposed terror and hardship, the citizens are forced to indulge in political agitation, radicalism and violence in response to their destitute and impoverished conditions. (shrink)

We present an axiomatic model of preferences over menus that is motivated by three assumptions. First, the decision maker is uncertain ex ante (i.e., at the time of choosing a menu) about her ex post (i.e., at the time of choosing an option within her chosen menu) preferences over options, and she anticipates that this subjective uncertainty will not resolve before the ex post stage. Second, she is averse to ex post indecisiveness (i.e., to having to choose (...) between options that she cannot rank with certainty). Third, when evaluating a menu she discards options that are dominated (i.e., inferior to another option whatever her ex post preferences may be) and restricts attention to the undominated ones. Under these assumptions, the decision maker has a preference for commitment in the sense of preferring menus with fewer undominated alternatives. We derive a representation in which the decision maker’s uncertainty about her ex post preferences is captured by means of a subjective state space, which in turn determines which options are undominated in a given menu, and in which the decision maker fears, whenever indecisive, to choose an option that will turn out to be the worst (undominated) one according to the realization of her ex post preferences. (shrink)

Kant’s philosophy is often treated as a closed system, without reference to how it was written or how Kant arrived at its familiar form, the critique. In fact, the style of the critique seems so artless that readers think of it as an unfortunate by-product—a style of stylelessness. In _Constituting Critique_, Willi Goetschel shows how this apparent gracelessness was deliberately achieved by Kant through a series of writing experiments. By providing an account of the process that culminated in his three (...) _Critiques_, this book offers a new perspective on Kant’s philosophical thought and practice. _Constituting Critique_ traces the stages in Kant’s development to reveal how he redefined philosophy as a critical task. Following the philosopher through the experiments of his early essays, Goetschel demonstrates how Kant tests, challenges, and transforms the philosophical essay in his pursuit of a new self-reflective literary genre. From these experiments, critique emerges as the philosophical form for the critical project of the Enlightenment. The imperatives of its transcendental style, Goetschel contends, not only constitute and inform the critical moment of Kant’s philosophical praxis, but also have an enduring place in post-Kantian philosophy and literature. By situating the _Critiques_ within the context of Kant’s early essays, this work will redirect the attention of Kant scholars to the origins of their form. It will also encourage contemporary critical theorists to reconsider their own practice through an engagement with its source in Kant. (shrink)

After hearing Donald Trump's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention held in Cleveland, Ohio, Newt Gingrich was interviewed live on CNN about the menacing tone of the address. Gingrich not only defended Trump's nearly apocalyptic vision of America if he was not elected, the former Speaker of the House swiped aside the clear data that indicated that the criminalized landscapes portrayed in Trump's speech might just be the work of a frenzied and fearful imagination rather than based in fact. (...) "'People feel more threatened,'" Gingrich insisted. "'As a political candidate, I'll go with what people feel '". Commenting in Forbes shortly thereafter, Ethan Siegel, a scientist and science... (shrink)

Though scholars of political science and moral philosophy have long analyzed the justifications for and against waging war as well as the ethics of warfare itself, the problem of _ending_ wars has received less attention. In the first book to apply just war theory to this phase of conflict, Eric Patterson presents a three-part view of justice in end-of-war settings involving order, justice, and reconciliation. Patterson’s case studies range from successful applications of _jus post bellum,_ such as the (...) U.S. Civil War or Kosovo, to challenges such as present-day Iraq. (shrink)

How should we think about justice at war’s end in the case of Afghanistan in 2022 and beyond? The basic principles of jus post bellum include order, justice, and conciliation; and there have been numerous policy attempts to realize these principles since the fall of the Taliban and flight of al Qaeda in December 2001. With the precipitous abandonment of Afghanistan by the Biden Administration and other allies in 2021, we have a sober opportunity to reflect on three periods (...) of jus post bellum efforts: an initial humanitarian and human security phase ; the surprising resilience of the Taliban and efforts at some sort of national grand bargain circa the 10-year mark ; and now a future based upon Western withdrawal and the re-emerging dominance of the Taliban. (shrink)

Testing the other. It is nowadays a commonplace of academic discourse on social sciences, especially when it comes to such disciplines as anthropology and semiotics, to oppose the old (and old-fashioned) methods of the “structuralists” to post-modern and post-structural epistemological attitudes. Structuralism, it is said, was based on the idea that it is possible to apprehend the meaning of cultural productions from an exterior and therefore objective standpoint, just by making explicit their immanent principles of organization. Today, on (...) the contrary, a totally distinct approach of cultural productions would stem from the consciousness of a strict interdependence, or even of an identity in nature between subject and object at all levels of the process of knowledge, at least in the area of the humanities. However, such a crude opposition proves insufficient when one observes the effective practices of current research. The example here analysed is the account given by the American anthropologist Paul Rabinow of his first mission abroad: Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco. The analysis, based on the use of a semiotic modelling of interaction, consists in exploring the variety of positions respectively adopted by the anthropologist and his informants according to circumstances and contexts. Four regimes are in principle distinguishable: programmation, based on regularity and predictability of the actors’ behaviour, manipulation, based on some kind of contractualization of their relationships, adjustment, based upon reciprocal sensitivity and various strategies permitting to both partners of the interaction to test one another, and a regime of consent to the unexpected or the unforeseeable. The main result of the analysis resides in the possibility of showing that at each of these styles of pragmatic interaction corresponds a specific regime at the cognitive level as well. This leads tostressing the complexity, if not heterogeneity, of the strategies of knowledge involved at various stages of anthropological research, from the collection ofdata to the cooperative production of new forms of understanding. Taking the risk of generalization, one might also consider the interactional device, which ishere tested through the reading of P. Rabinow’s report as a metatheoretical model describing the various epistemological stances at work and at stake in thepractices of research in social sciences at large. (shrink)

This Derridean reading of Freud asks the question of how we should read Freud with respect to sexual difference and what Derrida considers a radicalized concept of trace, a "scene of writing" of differance ---that is, how we should read Freud with respect to phallogocentrism. Throughout I consider the possible relationships between the "mainstyles" of various psychoanalyses, deconstructions, and feminisms. By analyzing what is most original for Freud---the cause of hysteria, the navel of the dream, the perceptual identity, the primal (...) phantasies, for example---I find that Freud consistently seeks a single origin, a "caput Nili," on which to base a grand narrative. At first this narrative is an etiology of hysteria, but it evolves into a masterplot of sexual development and later into one of humanity. The establishment of an oedipal origin and telos, and the masterplot based on them, moves psychoanalysis toward a totalizing theory, and therefore its openness to chance and something beyond what that theory can master is greatly reduced. ;I approach these topics in terms of a question of the ethics of psychoanalysis. This appropriative or reductive process of Freud's masterplotting is based on what Derrida calls "castration-truth" in his reading of Lacan, "Le facteur de la verite." In contrast to some theorists who appeal to the radical spirit of Freudian theory as a basis for their radicalization of psychoanalysis---specifically Barnaby B. Barratt's Psychoanalysis and the Postmodern Impulse---I argue that Lacan's phallogocentric "return to Freud" is actually a more faithful one since I find both "mainstyles" of these psychoanalyses based on a logic of lack or "castration-truth." I argue throughout that the radical spirit of Freud is at times overemphasized or exaggerated by Derridean theorists---and even Derrida himself, though rarely---and that the dominant specter of Freud is an "establishment" or appropriative one, rather than one which is radical or "other-wise." I connect this trend of Derridean thinkers claiming too much debt to psychoanalysis to these thinkers not taking seriously Freud's commitment and interest in an idealized phylogenetics: "phylo-'genetics.'" Since my establishment of this establishment specter of Freud as the "mainstyle" of Freudian theory itself risks reproducing exactly the kind of appropriative discourse I hope to problematize, I attempt to avoid such a reproduction by considering what remains of the radical spirit of Freudian theory in what might be called a deconstructive "technology of iterability;" a "cyborg-analysis;" or what I call "post-psychoanalysis.". (shrink)

The importance of _naturalization_—the establishment of species introduced into foreign places—to the early development of Darwin’s theory of evolution deserves historical attention. Introduced and invasive European species presented Darwin with interpretive challenges during his service as naturalist on the HMS _Beagle_. Species naturalization and invasive species strained the geologist Charles Lyell’s creationist view of the organic world, a view which Darwin adopted during the voyage of the _Beagle_ but came to question afterward. I suggest that these phenomena primed Darwin to (...) question the “stability of species.” I then examine the role of introduced and invasive species in Darwin’s early theorizing and negotiation with Lyell’s ideas, recorded in his post-voyage “transmutation notebooks.” Therein, the subject was an inflection point in his contention with Lyell’s views and moreover, his theorizing on invasive species occasioned some of his earliest inklings of natural selection. Finally, I examine how naturalization was crucial to Lyell’s own eventual conversion to evolutionism. I conclude with brief reflections on the implications of this narrative for our understanding of Darwin’s reasoning, his intellectual relationship to Lyell, and the historical context that shaped his theory. (shrink)

We investigate whether age profiles of ethnobiological knowledge development are consistent with predictions derived from life history theory about the timing of productivity and reproduction. Life history models predict complementary knowledge profiles developing across the lifespan for women and men as they experience changes in embodied capital and the needs of dependent offspring. We evaluate these predictions using an ethnobiological knowledge assessment tool developed for an off-grid pastoralist population known as Choyeros, from Baja California Sur, Mexico. Our results indicate that (...) while individuals acquire knowledge of most dangerous items and edible resources by early adulthood, knowledge of plants and animals relevant to the age and sex divided labor domains and ecologies (e.g., women’s house gardens, men’s herding activities in the wilderness) continues to develop into middle adulthood but to different degrees and at different rates for men and women. As the demands of offspring on parents accumulate with age, reproductive-aged adults continue to develop their knowledge to meet their children’s needs. After controlling for vision, our analysis indicates that many post-reproductive adults show the greatest ethnobiological knowledge. These findings extend our understanding of the evolved human life history by illustrating how changes in embodied capital and the needs of dependent offspring predict the development of men’s and women’s ethnobiological knowledge across the lifespan. (shrink)

The article discusses some of Heinz Post's views on correspondence and whether revolutions occur in science a la Kuhn. For example Post points out that the periodic table of the chemical elements has withstood any revolutions. Specific issues examined include the Paneth-Fajans controversy, the extent to which quantum mechanics provides an explanation for the periodic table and ab initio calculations in quantum chemistry.

Just War Thinking reconsiders the intersection between morality and pragmatics in foreign policy and modern warfare. The book argues that a political ethic of responsibility should motivate the contemporary application of military force by states in order to protect international security and human life, considering the challenges posed by today's new wars: targeted killing, humanitarian intervention, terrorism, jus post bellum, and the influences of public opinion and supranational institutions.

In 1924, not quite two years after receiving his doctorate from the University of Vienna, Eric Voegelin was named a Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fellow and thus given the opportunity to pursue postdoctoral studies in the United States. For the next twenty-four months, Voegelin worked with some of the most creative scholars in America and at several of the country's great universities, an experience that undoubtedly influenced his scholarly and personal perspectives throughout his life. A more immediate result was (...) the publication in 1928 of _On the Form of the American Mind,_ the young philosopher's first major work, in which his acute perceptions and analyses combine with a conceptual vocabulary struggling to find its own coherence and form. Voegelin begins his inquiry into the form of the American mind with a complex discussion of the concepts of time and existence in European and American philosophy and continues with an extended interpretation of George Santayana, a study of the Puritan mystic Jonathan Edwards, a presentation on Anglo-American jurisprudence, and a consideration of the historian, economist, and political scientist John R. Commons. Although admitting that this diversity of themes seems only loosely connected," Voegelin demonstrates the actual overall unity of these various subjects: each concerns linguistic expressions of a theoretical nature. Analysis of _On the Form of the American Mind_ indicates that Voegelin integrated the approaches of _Lebensphilosophie_ into what Georg Misch called the "philosophical combination of anthropology and history," which characterized contemporary trends within the discourse of the _Geisteswissenschaften_ and finally resulted in a theoretical paradigm of philosophical anthropology. Jürgen Gebhardt and Barry Cooper provide access to this brilliant study with their two-part introduction. The first part considers _On the Form of the American Mind_ in the context of methodological debates ongoing in Germany at the time Voegelin was writing the book; the second describes Voegelin's American experience and compares his work with similar studies written during the post-World War I period. (shrink)

The Analysis of Wonder is a stimulating and worthy introduction to the difficult and unique thought of Nicolai Hartmann. In this venue, the focus is upon criticisms of Cicovacki’s book. The opportunity to elicit further clarification and argumentation from Cicovacki should be fruitful. Hartmann’s philosophy is truly unique in nature and vast. As such, it is worth noting at the outset that, given the nature of Cicovacki’s book and a lack of deeper familiarity with Hartmann’s philosophy, the concerns raised herein (...) may very well be issues in Hartmann that Cicovacki is replicating. The criticisms addressed herein present five sets of worries related to The Analysis of Wonder. The first three may be relatively minor concerns having to do with what is meant by the rediscovery of the world; Cicovacki’s criticisms of post-modernism and existentialism; and Cicovacki’s use of Arendt as a way of framing Hartmann’s value to contemporary philosophy and beyond. The latter two sets of worries are more substantive. They involve Hartmann’s account of the importance of a loving attitude and Hartmann’s theory of personality. Again, these are presented in the spirit of an invitation to dialogue more about Hartmann, a figure who Cicovacki represents well in The Analysis of Wonder. (shrink)

Les manifestations de jeunes de l’été 2023 dénoncent, de manière violente, l’impasse politique à laquelle a conduit le refus persistant des élus de reconnaître la condition de ces nouvelles générations post-ouvrières, et leur stigmatisation constante. Cet article montre la continuité des révoltes urbaines depuis les années 1980, mais aussi les transformations notables dans la manière dont ces jeunes s’opposent de manière virulente aux institutions.

Between 1933 and 1938, Eric Voegelin published four books that brought him into increasingly open opposition to the Hitler regime in Germany. As a result, he was forced to leave Austria in 1938, narrowly escaping arrest by the Gestapo as he fled to Switzerland and later to the United States. Twenty years later, he was invited to Munich to become Director of the new Institute of Political Science at Ludwig-Maximilian University. In 1964, Voegelin gave a series of memorable lectures (...) on what he considered "the central German experiential problem" of his time: Adolf Hitler's rise to power, the reasons for it, and its consequences for post-Nazi Germany. For Voegelin, these questions demanded a scrutiny of the mentality of individual Germans and of the order of German society during and after the Nazi period. _Hitler and the Germans,_ published here for the first time, offers Voegelin's most extensive and detailed critique of the Hitler era. Voegelin interprets this era in terms of the basic diagnostic tools provided by the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, Judeo-Christian culture, and contemporary German-language writers like Heimito von Doderer, Karl Kraus, Thomas Mann, and Robert Musil. Responding to publications on National Socialist Germany, Voegelin discusses the historian Percy Schramm's "Anatomy of a Dictator," along with studies of the churches and the legal profession. His inquiry uncovers a historiography that was substantially unhistoric: a German Evangelical Church that misinterpreted the Gospel, a German Catholic Church that denied universal humanity, and a legal process enmeshed in criminal homicide. While most of the lectures deal with what Voegelin called his "descent into the depths" of the moral and spiritual abyss of Nazism and its aftermath, they also point toward a restoration of order. His lecture "The Greatness of Max Weber" shows how Weber, while affected by the culture within which Hitler came into power, has already gone beyond it through his anguished recovery of the experience of transcendence. _Hitler and the Germans_ provides a profound alternative approach to the topic of the individual German's entanglement in the Hitler regime and its continuing implications. This comprehensive reading of the Nazi period has yet to be matched. (shrink)

Researches conducted so far within the project Spinning out of control: rhetoric and violent conflict. Representations of 'self' - 'other' in the Yugoslav successor states focused on exploring the relations towards the Other in a state of conflict. Moreover: most of the author's and coauthors' contributions were oriented towards discourse analysis in the context of violence. Except for the peaceful dismemberment of Montenegro and Serbia, proclamation of independence of other Yugoslav states did not go without violence, to a greater or (...) lesser extent. The Other in these situations was predominantly the ethnic Other, and usually treated as enemy. For that reason, the greater part of our past work was oriented towards analysing media reports of the most stiking war events. Also, some of the contributions intentionally targeted media reportings of tense situations and those bearing the unpredictable outcomes, such as referenda or meetings discussing war and peace matters; or, we focused our inquiries on radical standpoints expressed by certain media or political parties - all that in order to explore the essencial forms of constructing and manifesting the Otherness on a rhetoric level. From a broader perspective, the analysed period, marked by the wars of ex - Yugoslavia in the last decade of 20th century, could be comprehended as the preiod of a state of emergency, where the old order had been brutally and radically destroyed and the new one was installed. In such a process, as it was shown, the relation towards the Other was also usually extreme and ethnically motivated. Now, after the constitution of seven new states where once former Yugoslavia was, new questions emerge. We are interested, as we were before, in the identity constructions, especially in the relations toward the Other, and Otherness in general, now in the period of transition and normalization of mutual relationships that these societies are undergoing. Along with the theories of ethnicity and identity construction, the key perspective remains discursive analysis. Our main question is What is happening with the phenomenon of Otherness in public discourse, in the peaceful times, or in the post conflict state? Do the ways of representing Others from the conflict times disappear, or do they 'freeze', that is to say, remain the same, or get manifested on some other levels and by different rhetorical tools? In short, what is happening with the Others in discourses that do not 'spin out of control'? Are the Others stable, mutable or flexible category and where are the imagological boundaries of Otherness? Who are the Others now? Are there any Others among us in ethnical sense? What is the nature of relation towards the common Yugoslav past, in other words, has the common past also become the Otherness for the people of former Yugoslavia? Are the 'refugees', 'cast-outs', 'displaced persons', 'returnees'... only the new names for the old display of Otherness? (shrink)

Just war thinking applies to the conflict Afghanistan, particularly that underdeveloped part of the just war tradition that deals with war’s end and post-conflict (jus post bellum). This essay considers the some of the fundamental ethical challenges of the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, arguing that by considering a jus post bellum framework of Order, Justice, and Conciliation we can address some of the great ethical issues faced by the US government in Afghanistan today. More (...) specifically, this essay will focus on three ethical challenges:• The moral imperative of establishing and enduring political order.• The conflict between our ideals of justice and those of many Afghans.• Establishing a foundation for conciliation among warring parties. (shrink)

Just war thinking applies to the conflict Afghanistan, particularly that underdeveloped part of the just war tradition that deals with war’s end and post-conflict (jus post bellum). This essay considers the some of the fundamental ethical challenges of the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, arguing that by considering a jus post bellum framework of Order, Justice, and Conciliation we can address some of the great ethical issues faced by the US government in Afghanistan today. More (...) specifically, this essay will focus on three ethical challenges:• The moral imperative of establishing and enduring political order.• The conflict between our ideals of justice and those of many Afghans.• Establishing a foundation for conciliation among warring parties. (shrink)

Just War Thinking reconsiders the intersection between morality and pragmatics in foreign policy and modern warfare. The book argues that a political ethic of responsibility should motivate the contemporary application of military force by states in order to protect international security and human life, considering the challenges posed by today's new wars: targeted killing, humanitarian intervention, terrorism, jus post bellum, and the influences of public opinion and supranational institutions.

A cross between a Do It Yourself and a primer of political anatomy, ErwinWurm’s « politically incorrect » drawings present, one by one, the sculptures of a present dreamed up by a post-post-minimalist Buster Keaton. Wurm sculpts bodies that are both outlandish and Austrian; there is nothing to prevent us from thinking of both Austria and the outlandish when we look at these drawings produced for Multitudes, together with the photographs that accompany them.

In this article, we begin from the assertion that global war does not affirm itself as an imperial ordering power without `opacifying' every regulative idea of peace, which is thereby reduced to the status of a deceptive illusion. `Postmodern' peace, which is absolutely contemporaneous with war, is deduced from war in the guise of the `post-democratic' institution of a permanent state of exception, of a continuation of war by other means, and of a reduction of sovereignty to the imbalance (...) of terror, in accordance with the principle of distinction that opposes friend and enemy. Once war, peace and barbarism interact with no rule other than the common sense of the unworldly squalor, only Combat against War can destroy the sensorial evidence of a false social peace and open on to the construction of a World that is once again possible for the singularities that we are in common. Whence derives the character of social threat that marks out contemporary art when it focuses on the mediatic world-image by putting to work a new transversalist aesthetic paradigm, exposing itself to the tearing asunder of the sensible in the over-exposition of peace to war. This could be art's new address, tracing its difference in a creative machination of affects that can no longer find support in any remembrance of the being of peace. (shrink)

In December 1967, Louis Washkansky, a grocer living in South Africa, became the first person to awaken after a heart transplant. Some accounts say that his first words were, “I am the new Frankenstein.” Others claim that Christiaan Barnard, his transplant surgeon, uttered these. Much as people have long mixed up who Frankenstein is—creature or creator?—in Mary Shelley's novel, so patient and surgeon, repaired and repairer, are confused in retellings of this post‐op Frankensteinian moment. Whether Washkansky identified with Frankenstein's (...) monster or not, he was probably feeling a bit monstrous after taking the donor heart of Denise Darvall into his chest. I know I was, over thirty years later, standing naked before a mirror and gazing at my shorn and bloated torso for the first time since a kidney transplant. My boundaries had been rearranged: a crescentic scar marked the frontier between me and not‐me. (shrink)

The final estimate of South Africa's population as of October 1996 from the first post-apartheid census by Statistics South Africa was lower (40·6 million) than expected (42 million). The expectation of a total population of 42 million was largely based on results of apartheid projections of South Africa's population. The results of the last apartheid census in South Africa in 1991 had been adjusted such that it was consistent with results modelling the population size of South Africa. The discrepancy (...) between the final estimate of the 1996 census and that expected from the modelling described above, and the departure by Statistics South Africa from previous practice of adjusting the census results to be consistent with demographic models, has generated controversies regarding the accuracy of the final results from the 1996 census. This study re-examines levels and differential in fertility in South Africa from recent evidence in order to assess whether or not the fertility inputs in projections of South Africa's population during the apartheid era overestimated fertility. (shrink)

Testing the other. It is nowadays a commonplace of academic discourse on social sciences, especially when it comes to such disciplines as anthropology and semiotics, to oppose the old (and old-fashioned) methods of the “structuralists” to post-modern and post-structural epistemological attitudes. Structuralism, it is said, was based on the idea that it is possible to apprehend the meaning of cultural productions from an exterior and therefore objective standpoint, just by making explicit their immanent principles of organization. Today, on (...) the contrary, a totally distinct approach of cultural productions would stem from the consciousness of a strict interdependence, or even of an identity in nature between subject and object at all levels of the process of knowledge, at least in the area of the humanities. However, such a crude opposition proves insufficient when one observes the effective practices of current research. The example here analysed is the account given by the American anthropologist Paul Rabinow of his first mission abroad: Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco. The analysis, based on the use of a semiotic modelling of interaction, consists in exploring the variety of positions respectively adopted by the anthropologist and his informants according to circumstances and contexts. Four regimes are in principle distinguishable: programmation, based on regularity and predictability of the actors’ behaviour, manipulation, based on some kind of contractualization of their relationships, adjustment, based upon reciprocal sensitivity and various strategies permitting to both partners of the interaction to test one another, and a regime of consent to the unexpected or the unforeseeable. The main result of the analysis resides in the possibility of showing that at each of these styles of pragmatic interaction corresponds a specific regime at the cognitive level as well. This leads tostressing the complexity, if not heterogeneity, of the strategies of knowledge involved at various stages of anthropological research, from the collection ofdata to the cooperative production of new forms of understanding. Taking the risk of generalization, one might also consider the interactional device, which ishere tested through the reading of P. Rabinow’s report as a metatheoretical model describing the various epistemological stances at work and at stake in thepractices of research in social sciences at large. (shrink)

This book investigates how Pragmatist philosophy as a philosophical method contributes to the understanding and practice of interdisciplinary dance research. It uses the author's own practice-based research project, Later Rain, to illustrate this. Later Rain is a post-dramatic dance theater work that engages primarily with issues in the philosophy of religion and socio-political philosophy. It focuses on ecstatic states that arise in Appalachian charismatic Pentecostal church services, states characterized by dancing, paroxysms, shouting, and speaking in tongues. Research for this (...) work is interdisciplinary as it draws on studio practice, ethnographic field work, cultural history, Pentecostal history and theology, folk aesthetics, anthropological understandings of ecstatic religious rituals, and dance history regarding acclaimed works that have sought to present aspects of religious ecstasy on stage; Doris Humphrey's The Shakers, Mark Godden’s Angels in the Architecture, Martha Clarke’s Angel Reapers and Ralph Lemon’s Geography trilogy. The project thereby demonstrates a process model of dance philosophy, showing how philosophy and dance artistry intertwine in a specific creative process. (shrink)

In this paper I revisit Adam Smith’s treatment of Copernicanism and Newtonianism in his essay, “The History of Astronomy” (hereafter: “Astronomy”), in light of a surprisingly ignored context: David Hume. This remark will strike most scholars of Adam Smith as unfounded—David Hume’s philosophy is often invoked as a source of Smith’s approach in the “Astronomy” or as its target. Yet, Hume’s occasional remarks on Copernicanism nor his treatment of the history of science in the History of England (1754-62, but revised (...) throughout Hume’s life) have not been carefully analyzed in light of the “Astronomy.” In the first five sections of this paper I offer a detailed analysis of all of Hume’s remarks on the Copernican system in his oeuvre. I show that David Hume believed that Copernicus achieved a “revolution” in philosophy. Moreover, I argue that Hume increasingly treats Galileo as the hero of the Copernican revolution. In doing so, Hume appears surprisingly blind to the importance of post-Galilean natural philosophy, especially the (dynamical) arguments that Huygens and Newton provided for the rotation of the Earth. In the last section of the paper, I argue that Adam Smith does show appreciation of dynamic views. I show that Smith and the mature Hume agree on the importance of Galileo, even describing his method in strikingly similar language, but that they evaluate the evidence differently in light of two conflicting commitments: i) Hume is committed to the “true philosophy”—-a certain kind of scepticism which Smith does not share; ii) Hume never seems to have assimilated the way Newton changed the evidential standards within science. (shrink)

Before becoming an internationally renowned sadhu espousing words of wisdom in an Indian forest, Sampath Chawla pulls down his pants. The wedding guests are horrified. His supervisor at the small-town post office fires him on the spot—it is, after all, his daughter's wedding.In Kiran Desai's novel Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, the oafish Sampath probably shouldn't have been invited to the wedding in the first place. At the post office he has been sulking for some time. "The (...) class='Hi'>post office. The post office. The post office. It made him want to throw up."1 More troubling, he routinely opens other people's mail and reads their private letters throughout the workday. The letters give Sampath insights into the lives of... (shrink)

A review of Giorgio Agamben's The Use of Bodies that considers Agamben's Homo Sacer series as a contribution to Post-Marxist political theory, and attempts to place Agamben's politial theology in the context of 1970s Italian radical politics. The review also poses the question whether Agamben's anarchist/aestheticist theory is a helpful contribution to political praxis in the contemporary period of the global hegemony of multinational military-industrial technocratic capitalism.

A review of Francoise Laruelle's General Theory of Victims, which places Laruelle's theory in the context of post-colonial theories of the subaltern subject after Gayatri Spivak and Edward Said. The review questions whether Laruelle's General Theory of Victims really allows the so-called victims to speak for themselves, or simply represents another attempt by Western (French?) intellectuals to speak to/through the victims, for their own political and theoretical purposes.

"Anyone interested in Simone Weil will want, and need, to read this superb collection." —Diogenes Allen, Princeton Theological Seminary “These essays—some written by leading specialists in Simone Weil's thought, others by prominent theologians and philosophers of religion—are especially valuable not only for elucidating Weil's reading of Plato but also for showing what one or another form of Christian Platonism can mean for us today.” —James A. Wiseman, O.S.B., Catholic University of America "This remarkable and penetrating collection of essays on Simone (...) Weil's religious philosophy illumines the living intersection between serious metaphysics and ethics. The authors carefully examine this relation that much post-modern reflection has until now only skimmed, but that Weil herself managed to embrace with breathtaking intellectual discipline and self-giving. The book is a bracing testimony to the deep moral consequences of classical ontology and its challenging Christian reorientation." —The Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner, Ascension Episcopal Church, Pueblo, Colorado In this book a group of renowned international scholars seek to discern the ways in which Simone Weil was indebted to Plato, and how her provocative readings of his work offer challenges to contemporary philosophy, theology, and spirituality. This is the first book in twenty years to systematically investigate Weil’s Christian Platonism. (shrink)

Posthumanist critics such as Braidotti—informed by the antihumanisms of Foucault, Irigaray, and Deleuze—seek to respond to advanced capitalism by promoting what they take to be a radical transformation of what it means to be “human,” a way of conceiving being human that is thoroughly and consistently post-anthropocentric. Braidotti calls out advanced capitalism’s global economy as being inconsistently post-anthropocentric. In response, I first lay out ways through which posthumanists can find corroboration in Asian religious thought, such as in Zhuangzi (...) and classical Chan (Zen) Buddhism. I simply put forth, basically side by side, posthumanist positions on subjectivity and flourishing and parallels in Zhuangzi and Chan. This may strike some as sophomoric, which is in part what I hope to illustrate: just how easy it is to find corroboration in these Asian religious resources. This leads to my second issue. Given such conveniently available resources, what might this tell us about limitations in posthumanist Humanities and posthumanist critical theory as developed so far? I seek to bring out both a possible covert form of Orientalism in posthumanism and a myopic methodology in excluding Religious Studies in general as paradigmatic of posthumanist Humanities. (shrink)

St. Augustine’s tremendous influence on Western thought continues to provide scholars from all fields with fresh insights and new connections to the philosophical and theological questions posed by modernity. The twenty essays collected here attempt not only to discuss perennial problems as found in Augustine—human willing, the nature of time, sin and free will, the soul’s relationship to the body—but also bring Augustine’s mind to bear on many post-Patristic concerns such as the alliance between theology and philosophy, linguistic analysis, (...) the insights of various ethical systems, as well as the fundamental tenets of modern liberal thought. (shrink)

Regardless of one’s particular philosophical interests and convictions, it is evident that the notion of autonomy is an important one. However, agreement about the nature of autonomy and about what it requires has proven elusive in contemporary discussions. In Kant and the Fate of Autonomy Karl Ameriks addresses this impasse by going back to the historical roots of this notion in Kant and arguing that many contemporary conceptions of autonomy are based on misunderstandings of Kant’s position, misunderstandings that first arose (...) in his immediate successors, Reinhold, Fichte, and Hegel. However, Ameriks does not aim merely to set the historical record straight; he wants to suggest that Kant’s actual position on autonomy is much more attractive philosophically than either what he refers to as “pure Kantian” conceptions or positions that are similar in basic respects to those of Rorty, Taylor, Larmore, and other post-Kantians. That Ameriks is able to combine remarkable sensitivity toward an extremely broad range of obscure texts with striking clarity and philosophical sophistication in evaluating the positions and arguments laid bare by his exegetical analyses makes his book an extraordinarily rich contribution to our contemporary philosophical landscape. (shrink)

Lofts’s purpose is to interpret Cassirer in the light of francophone post-structuralist thought, particularly that of Jacques Lacan. Portraying a cautious neo-Kantian as a proto-post-structuralist may seem almost perverse, but the notion has potential. Unfortunately, the book reads as if it were still in rough draft. Its sections are disconnected, its arguments and insights are truncated or aphoristic, its style is careless, and it is poorly edited. Orthographical and typographical errors abound, even to the point of printing Lofts’s (...) own name wrong once. The long note about Hegel repeats previous text. Lofts’s analysis does not flow with the stream of the history of philosophy, but rather leaps from stone to stone in that stream, lingering too long on some stones and avoiding others. Dilthey, Gadamer, and Habermas, for example, are conspicuously absent from the discussion. Originally presented as Lofts’s dissertation, this book seems not yet to have proceeded far enough beyond that phase to warrant wider distribution. (shrink)

Reconciliation, Transitional and Indigenous Justice presents fifteen reflections upon justice twenty years after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa introduced a new paradigm for political reconciliation in settler and post-colonial societies. The volume considers processes of political reconciliation, appraising the results of South Africa’s Commission, of the recently concluded Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and of the on-going process of the Waitangi Tribunal of Aotearoa New Zealand. Contributors discuss the separate politics of Indigenous resurgence, linguistic justice, (...) environmental justice and law. Further contributors present a theoretical symposium focused on The Conceptual Foundations of Transitional Justice, authored by Colleen Murphy, who provides a response to their comments. Indigenous and non-indigenous voices from four regions of the world are represented in this critical assessment of the prospects for political reconciliation, for transitional justice and for alternative, nascent conceptions of just politics. Radically challenging assumptions concerning sovereignty and just process in the current context of settler-colonial states, Reconciliation, Transitional and Indigenous Justice will be of great interest to scholars of Ethics, Indigenous Studies, Transitional Justice and International Relations more broadly. The chapters were originally published as a special issue in the Journal of Global Ethics, with one addition from The Round Table.”. (shrink)

Just over 20 years ago, molecular biologists Leonie Ringrose and Renato Paro published an article with a provocative title, “Remembering Silence”, in BioEssays. The article focused on how epigenetic elements could return to their silent state, operationally defined as their epigenetic status before their modulation by experimental or environmental factors. Though Ringrose and Paro's article was on fruit flies and factors affecting embryological growth, the article asked a question of considerable importance to rapidly expanding research in neuroepigenetics on the correlation (...) between trauma and neuropsychiatric risk: If you experience a traumatic event and, as a result, acquire an epigenetic trait that is considered pathological, can you free yourself of that trait? Ultimately, we are interested in how a return to silence is envisioned in neuroepigenetics research, how interventions purported to bring about that silence might function, and what this might mean for people who live in the aftermath of trauma. (shrink)

A popular argument against direct duties for individuals to address climate change holds that only states and other powerful collective agents must act. It excuses individual actions as harmless since they are neither necessary nor sufficient to cause harm, arise through normal activity, and have no clear victims. Philosophers have challenged one or more of these assumptions; however, I show that this definition of harm also excuses states and other collective agents. I cite two examples of this in public discourse (...) and suggest we reconsider the notion of harmful action in our discussions about climate change. (shrink)

Lofts’s purpose is to interpret Cassirer in the light of francophone post-structuralist thought, particularly that of Jacques Lacan. Portraying a cautious neo-Kantian as a proto-post-structuralist may seem almost perverse, but the notion has potential. Unfortunately, the book reads as if it were still in rough draft. Its sections are disconnected, its arguments and insights are truncated or aphoristic, its style is careless, and it is poorly edited. Orthographical and typographical errors abound, even to the point of printing Lofts’s (...) own name wrong once. The long note about Hegel repeats previous text. Lofts’s analysis does not flow with the stream of the history of philosophy, but rather leaps from stone to stone in that stream, lingering too long on some stones and avoiding others. Dilthey, Gadamer, and Habermas, for example, are conspicuously absent from the discussion. Originally presented as Lofts’s dissertation, this book seems not yet to have proceeded far enough beyond that phase to warrant wider distribution. (shrink)

Research on the use of propranolol as a pharmacological memory dampening treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder is continuing and justifies a second look at the legal and ethical issues raised in the past. We summarize the general ethical and legal issues raised in the literature so far, and we select two for in-depth reconsideration. We address the concern that a traumatized witness may be less effective in a prosecution emerging from the traumatic event after memory dampening treatment. We analyze (...) this issue in relation to sexual assault, where the suggestion that corroborating evidence may remedy any memory defects is less likely to be helpful. We also consider the clinical ethical question about a physician's obligation to discuss potential legal consequences of memory dampening treatment. We conclude that this latter question reflects a general problem related to novel medical treatments where the broader socio-legal consequences may be poorly understood, and suggest that issues of this sort could usefully be addressed through the promulgation of practice guidelines. (shrink)

Governments have been slow to address climate change. If non-governmental agents share a responsibility in light of the slow pace of government action then it is a collective responsibility. I examine three models of collective responsibility, especially Iris Young's social connection model, and assess their value for identifying a collective, among all emitters, that can share responsibility. These models can help us better understand both the growth of the movement to divest from fossil fuels and the nature of responsibility for (...) collective action problems. Universities and colleges share a responsibility because they occupy similar positions of, among other things, power and privilege. (shrink)