The erstwhile sedentary Parisian theologian, Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, traveled extensively throughout Europe after his election as Minister General of the Minorite Order in 1257. In the fall of 1259 he arrived on Mount La Verna in Tuscany. As he ruminated on the stigmatized flesh of Francis of Assisi, Bonaventure composed the classical mystical text, Itinerarium mentis in Deum. Utilizing Michel de Certeau's work on prayer, travel narratives and spatial practices, this essay explores how Bonaventure rereads the story of the (...) Poverello in the Itinerarium mentis in Deum as a mystic narrative of peripatetic prayer. (shrink)

Criticism is a staple of the scientific enterprise and of the social epistemology of science. Philosophical discussions of criticism have traditionally focused on its roles in relation to objectivity, confirmation, and theory choice. However, attention to criticism and to criticizability should also inform our thinking about scientific pursuits: the allocation of resources with the aim of developing scientific tools and ideas. In this paper, we offer an account of scientific pursuitworthiness which takes criticizability as its starting point. We call this (...) the apokritic model of pursuit. Its core ideas are that pursuits are practices governed by norms for asking and answering questions, and that criticism arises from the breach of these norms. We illustrate and advertise our approach using examples from institutional grant review, neuroscience, and sociology. We show that the apokritic model can unify several indices of criticizability, that it can account for the importance of criticizing pursuits in scientific practice, and that it can offer ameliorative advice to erstwhile pursuers. (shrink)

This paper brings together two erstwhile distinct strands of philosophical inquiry: the extended mind hypothesis and the situationist challenge to virtue theory. According to proponents of the extended mind hypothesis, the vehicles of at least some mental states (beliefs, desires, emotions) are not located solely within the confines of the nervous system (central or peripheral) or even the skin of the agent whose states they are. When external props, tools, and other systems are suitably integrated into the functional apparatus (...) of the agent, they are partial bearers of her cognitions, motivations, memories, and so on. According to proponents of the situationist challenge to virtue theory, dispositions located solely within the confines of the nervous system (central or peripheral) or even the skin of the agent to whom they are attributed typically do not meet the normative standards associated with either virtue or vice (moral, epistemic, or otherwise) because they are too susceptible to moderating external variables, such as mood modulators, ambient sensibilia, and social expectation signaling. We here draw on both of these literatures to formulate two novel views – the embedded and extended character hypotheses – according to which the vehicles of not just mental states but longer-lasting, wider-ranging, and normatively-evaluable agentic dispositions are sometimes located partially beyond the confines of the agent’s skin. (shrink)

This paper takes up the question of how videographic public announcements (VPAs)---i.e. videos that a wide swath of the public sees and knows that everyone else can see too--- have functioned to mobilize people politically, and how the presence of deepfakes in our information environment stands to change the dynamics of this mobilization. Existing work by Regina Rini, Don Fallis and others has focused on the ways that deepfakes might interrupt our acquisition of first-order knowledge through videos. But I point (...) out that even where every audience member takes a video to be veridical, where first-order knowledge acquisition is secure, an audience aware of deepfakes in their environment will not acquire higher order knowledge in the way that has erstwhile been characteristic for audiences of VPAs. Engaging with ideas from the literatures on public announcement logic, common knowledge, and convention, I enumerate a variety of ways in which we should expect this absence of higher order knowledge to throw up barriers to political mobilization. I go on to apply my analysis of VPAs to the mechanisms by which an uptick in publicly available videos of police brutality over the last decade, mediated by camera phones and social media, was responsible for the largest mass protests in US history in summer 2020. This makes vivid the stakes of the transformation in our mobilizing environment that I've claimed deepfakes effect: where we lose the common-knowledge-generating effects of VPAs, there are fresh obstacles to this sort of mass mobilization. (shrink)

South Africa's transition to democracy coincided and interlinked with massive global shifts, including the fall of communism and the rise of western capitalist triumphalism. Late capitalism operates through paradoxical global-local dynamics, both universalising identities and expanding local particularities. The erstwhile hegemonic identity of apartheid, 'the Afrikaner', was a product of Afrikaner nationalism. Like other identities, it was spatially organised, with Afrikaner nationalism projecting its imagined community onto a national territory. The study traces the neo-nationalist spatial permutations of 'the Afrikaner', (...) following Massey's understanding of space as political, produced through interrelations ranging from the global to micro intimacies, potentially a sphere for heterogeneous co-existence, and continuously created. Research is presented that shows a neo-nationalist revival of ethnic privileges in a defensive version of Hall's 'return to the local'. Although Afrikaner nationalism's territorial claims to a nation state were defeated, neo-nationalist remnants reclaim a purchase on white Afrikaans identities, albeit in shrunken territories. This phenomenon is, here, called Afrikaner enclave nationalism. Drawing on a global revamping of race as a category of social subjugation, a strategy is deployed that is here called 'inward migration'. These dynamics produce a privatised micro-apartheid in sites ranging from homes, to commercial and religious enterprises, to suburbs. Virtual white spaces in the form of Afrikaans media products serve as extensions of these whitened locales. The lynchpin holding it all together is the heteronormative, middle-class family, with consumption the primary mode of the generation of its white comfort zones. (shrink)

Perhaps the most pressing issue concerning teacher education and training since the end of the Second World War has been that of the role of theory—or principled reflection—in professional expertise. Here, although the main post‐war architects of a new educational professionalism clearly envisaged a key role for theory—considering such disciplines as psychology, sociology and philosophy as indispensable for reflective practice—there are nevertheless well‐rehearsed difficulties about crediting such disciplines with quite the (applied) role in educational practice of (say) physiology or anatomy (...) in medical practice. This paper argues that while recent developments in professional teacher education and training may have moved on from erstwhile instrumentalist and/or applied science (competence and other) perspectives, there may yet be a case for further progress towards a rather more sophisticated philosophical psychology of teacher knowledge and expertise. (shrink)

Goldman’s epistemology has been influential in two ways. First, it has influenced some philosophers to think that, contrary to erstwhile orthodoxy, relations of evidential support, or confirmation, are not discoverable a priori. Second, it has offered some philosophers a powerful argument in favor of methodological reliance on intuitions about thought experiments in doing philosophy. This paper argues that these two legacies of Goldman’s epistemology conflict with each other.

I offer a reading of Murdoch's conception of concrete universality as it appears in 'The Idea of Perfection', the first essay in the Sovereignty of Good. I show that it has British Idealist overtones that are inflected by Wittgenstein, a thought I try to illuminate by drawing an analogy with Wittgenstein's discussion of the metre stick in Paris in Philosophical Investigations §50. In the last part of the paper, I appeal to the work of Murdoch's erstwhile tutor Donald MacKinnon (...) to respond to an objection to my strategy, which I draw from Murdoch's later work, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. (shrink)

This is a rudimentary paper written to claim my connection that the American and the erstwhile Indian modes of psychoanalysis are more authentic modes vis-à-vis the French mode. Some of the claims I make in this paper have been already published in Prabuddha Bharata and some are forthcoming. For instance, I have written on Ritalin which is pertinent to this discussion yet I have avoided mentioning this since my contention regarding Ritalin is pending publication in Prabuddha Bharata. Addition : (...) 2020, my comments on the efficacy of Ritalin have been published last year in Prabuddha Bharata. (shrink)

This work argues that the usurpation of the Haitian Revolution by the Affranchis, petit-bourgeois black (creole) landowners and mulatto elites, from the Africans on the island seeking total freedom from the mercantilism and liberalism of the capitalist world-system under European hegemony, rendered it (The Haitian Revolution) an insignificant black bourgeois revolution focused on racial vindicationism and equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution with whites within the denouement of the aforementioned systemicity. The latter move placed the Revolution on par with (...) the American one, which was a counterrevolution to the abolition of slavery and the slave trade under mercantilism and liberalism. The work concludes, had the Revolution remained under either the directorship of the African leadership seeking to implement their (communal) lakou system throughout the island, or the Kojèveian synthesis of Dessalines, it would become a significant revolution offering a counter systemicity to the Protestant/Catholic Ethic and the spirit of capitalism under European and American hegemony. (shrink)

Aimed at a wide audience, this book in the general area of practical ethics consists of seven independent and humorous philosophical analyses of common moral situations, occurrences, and confrontations. The introduction discusses the idea of moralising; Cohen explains what it is, why moral philosophers tend to avoid it, and why it seems a particularly worthwhile enterprise for the book. Throughout its discussions, the book is accessible to readers at any stage of philosophic interest. The author distinguishes between moral encounters and (...) more mundane concerns, an aspect that separates this book from other practical ethics works. Contents: Introduction; Too Busy: A Note on Wasting Time; The Derogatory Erstwhile Fact, or Calling a Spade a Spade; Justification/Explanation and Treatment, or Putting the Shoe on the Other Foot; Vicarious Pride; 'Women's' Gymnastics; Vocations and Vocations; The Last Word. (shrink)

"Scholar of the humanities" is not a title of honor; it is only a choice of profession. Hence, those "erstwhile scholars" who have already gone into politics or business are not discussed in the present article. Instead of touching on such hot topics as professors selling meat pies, buying and selling automobiles, entering people's political consultative conferences, or taking government posts, this article considers the destiny and possible options of scholars who are willing to engage in humanity studies and (...) are still doing so, for the latter are more perplexed and more at loss and deserve more understanding and sympathy. (shrink)

The United States' failed effort to impose an East Asian-style, export-led industrial development regime on the Dominican Republic in the aftermath of the 1965 “Dominican crisis” poses two related empirical puzzles. First, why did the Dominicans reject the widely praised and ultimately rather successful East Asian model? And, second, how did the Dominicans overrule their erstwhile North American overlords? I answer the first question by underscoring the incompatibility of export-led industrialization and the island nation’s prevailing system of patrimonial rule. (...) I answer the second question by illuminating the patrimonial regime's “asymmetrical” desire for independence. And I thereby suggest that the social and political underpinnings of successful export-led industrialization are decidedly more restrictive than the mainstream social science literature would have us believe. (shrink)

Drawn from the Prussian Academy edition of Kant's collected works, these letters make it possible to trace the development of Kant's thought from his earliest worries about the topics discussed in the _Critique of Pure Reason_ to his attempts in later life to meet the objections of his critics and erstwhile disciples. "Perhaps the major value of these writings is their demonstration of Kant's own attitude towards his philosophical works."—Paul Arthur Schilpp, _Saturday Review_.

This major study of Heidegger is the first to examine in detail the concept of existential truth that he developed in the 1920s. Daniel O. Dahlstrom critically examines the genesis, nature and validity of Heidegger's radical attempt to rethink truth as the disclosure of time, a disclosure allegedly more basic than truths formulated in scientific judgements. The book has several distinctive and innovative features. First, it is the only study that attempts to understand the logical dimension of Heidegger's thought in (...) its historical context. Second, no other book-length treatment explores the breadth and depth of Heidegger's confrontation with Husserl, his erstwhile mentor. Third, the book demonstrates that Heidegger's deconstruction of Western thinking occurs on three interconnected fronts: truth, being and time. Dealing with a crucial aspect of the philosophy of one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century, this book will be important to all scholars and students of Heidegger, whether in philosophy, theology or literary studies. (shrink)

In July 2021, a series of gruesome videos exposed a case of brutal torture perpetrated by a guru or leader of the trans feminine hijra community in eastern India. This guru was allegedly of a Bangladeshi Muslim background, and various community members used the case as an alibi to target hijras of such national and religious origin, sometimes even demanding their expulsion from India. This phenomenon paralleled increasing affiliations between certain sections of trans/hijra communities and the Hindu Right. This article (...) situates this case within the broader rise of queer and trans Hindutva or Hindu nationalism and locates it as indicative of Hindutva’s expansion to its erstwhile ‘elsewheres’: areas outside its traditional strongholds such as eastern India and communities such as hijras who are known for their mixed religious practices and have been historically stigmatised by Hindu society. However, the article also analyses the case to show how hijras and related communities evidence contingently wavering political alliances and complex dynamics of intra-community power and resistance that remain irreducible to typical equations of Hindu right-wing politics. Queer/trans Hindutva might become disrupted by its potential constituents themselves, showing how Hindutva’s ‘elsewheres’ trouble its assimilationist capacities. (shrink)

The Quietist affair at the end of the seventeenth century has much to teach us about theories of the will in the period. Although Bossuet and Fénelon are the names most famously associated with the debate over the Quietist conception of pure love, Malebranche and his erstwhile disciple Lamy were the ones who debated the deep philosophical issues involved. This paper sets the historical context of the debate, discusses the positions as well as the arguments for and against them, (...) and opens up investigation of important material that is all but ignored in the English literature and only incompletely addressed in the French. (shrink)

The method of Ramsey sentences has been proposed for handling theoretical constructs within a scientific system. Essentially it consists of constructing a certain "monolithic" sentence for an entire theory. In this present paper several improvements are suggested which help to overcome some of the awkward features of the method. In particular we have here many Ramsey sentences rather than just one, each erstwhile primitive theoretical term giving rise to a Ramsey sentence. Such a sentence in effect defines what we (...) call a Ramsey constant. Using Ramsey constants, we attempt to improve the method in important logical and semantical respects. It is suggested also that such constants are of interest for the philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

England and Wales have recently experienced wide-ranging rape law reform and a galloping rape reporting rate but no comparable increase in rape convictions, leading many erstwhile law reformers to turn attention to attitudes. In essence, their argument is that reform has proved relatively ineffective because a range of agents hold ‘rape myths’. Despite the broad consensus that this approach has attracted, I argue that the regressiveness of current public attitudes towards rape has been overstated. The claim that rape myths (...) are widespread may be challenged on three grounds: first, some of the attitudes are not myths; secondly, not all the myths are about rape; thirdly, there is little evidence that the rape myths are widespread. To a troubling extent, we are in the process of creating myths about myths. This process functions to close down, not open up, the possibilities of a productive public conversation about important and at times vexed questions. (shrink)

Drawn from the Prussian Academy edition of Kant's collected works, these letters make it possible to trace the development of Kant's thought from his earliest worries about the topics discussed in the Critique of Pure Reason to his attempts in later life to meet the objections of his critics and erstwhile disciples. "Perhaps the major value of these writings is their demonstration of Kant's own attitude towards his philosophical works."—Paul Arthur Schilpp, Saturday Review.

Given the apocalyptic nature of nuclear weapons, how can states establish an international order that ensures survival while allowing the weapons to be used in controlled ways to discourage great wars, and while allowing nuclear technology to diffuse for civil purposes? How can the possession of nuclear weapons by a few states be reconciled with their renunciation by the majority of states? Which political strategies can best deliver an international nuclear order that is effective, legitimate and durable? These have been (...) central questions in the nuclear age. This article suggests that the effort to construct such an order displayed the characteristics of an enlightenment project, with its emphasis on balance and rationality, the quest for justice and trust among states, the feasibility of instrumental regulation, and the attachment to hope and progress. With the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty at its heart, it necessarily gave precedence to diplomacy and containment over preventive war. The reasons why this conception of nuclear order was discarded by its erstwhile champion, the United States, in favor of one bearing traits of counter-enlightenment, are explored. Its alternative strategy can now be declared a failure. Avoidance of a greater disorder depends on recognition that the problem of nuclear order is more than the problem of proliferation, or of non-compliance, and on recovery whatever the difficulties of the cooperative yet pragmatic sensibility that lay behind the prior approach to order. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The term “deep state” has enjoyed political prominence in recent years, especially in movements around former President Donald Trump. However, the term emerged in the activist milieu after the founding of Students for a Democratic Society, which sought to engender political realignment in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination. Those on the far right who use the term to level accusations of conspiracy at supposed subversives in the administrative state are unwittingly drawing on a long-running but little-analyzed intellectual tradition. (...) In that tradition, conspiracy theories purport to unmask the real intentions of political actors in order to facilitate cooperation and recruitment across ideological and partisan divides. From the postwar period to the present, conspiracy theories, and the “deep state” vocabulary in particular, circulated freely across the left-right political divide. Authors and activists were attracted to these tropes and texts not merely because they appeared to reveal concrete truths about long-hidden elements of American political life, but also because their very ambiguity enabled them to be flexibly co-opted. Conspiracy theories allowed activists to mobilize around shared gaps in public knowledge about traumatic events like the assassination, activating public dissatisfaction with official explanations of those events. Their ambiguity, coupled with the seeming pervasiveness of conspiracy theorist tropes across political divides, appeared to activists seeking realignment of both the left and the right as a promising tactical opportunity to assert that they and their erstwhile enemies were actually engaged in a shared project. Activists thus came to see conspiracy theory not as the province of an exclusively left or right politics, but as an autonomous and contestable cultural space. This, in turn, led to cross-partisan encounters. (shrink)

Amidst the broad divergence in opinion of philosophers and scientists at understanding reality that has lent character to the historical epochs of the Philosophical enterprise, the crucial realization has always been, of the necessity of Epistemology in our entire program of making inquiry into ‘What Is’. This realization seems born out of the erstwhile problem of knowing. Epistemology, which investigates the nature, sources, limitations and validating of knowledge, offers a striking challenge here. Since we have no direct access to (...) our world around us, outside of the subjective experience offered us by our senses, we are handicapped at making comparisons of our beliefs with a concrete world, out there, or with elements of the world. Our statements about the world seem to stand alone, buffeted against the intimidating tide of possible contradicting circumstances. Our putative claims to knowledge, therefore, face the exigency of justification. Ayer, expressing the urgency of resolving this persisting lacuna, provides an alternative criterion of knowing, as ‘having the right to be sure’. Thus, it is this deep-seated concern that has evolved, over time, to become the primary thrust of the project of Epistemology, raising the controversy over which, of Epistemology or Metaphysics, is to be accorded the prime status of first philosophy. However, Aquinas is wise to build his epistemological premise on a firm metaphysical support, clarifying the needed development from being to knowledge. For, being has to first exist to constitute the object of perception, belief, and knowledge. Accordingly, our exposition of Aquinas’ epistemology will first take a cursory look at the theoretical and historical background to Aquinas’ Philosophy, before offering a general characterization of his theory of knowledge. Then, the paper will discuss his concept of sense perception as a basis for all knowing, followed closely by an analysis of cognition and Scientia. (shrink)

While many philosophers of religion are familiar with the reconciliation of grace and freedom known as Molinism, fewer by far are familiar with that position initially developed by Molina’s erstwhile rival, Domingo Banez (i.e., Banezianism). My aim is to clarify a serious problem for the Banezian: how the Banezian can avoid the apparent conflict between a strong notion of freedom and apparently compatibilist conclusions. The most prominent attempt to defend Banezianism against compatibilism was (in)famously endorsed by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange. Even (...) if it were true that freedom does not require alternative possibilities, Banezians have a grounding problem. (shrink)

Perhaps the most pressing issue concerning teacher education and training since the end of the Second World War has been that of the role of theory—or principled reflection—in professional expertise. Here, although the main post-war architects of a new educational professionalism clearly envisaged a key role for theory—considering such disciplines as psychology, sociology and philosophy as indispensable for reflective practice—there are nevertheless well-rehearsed difficulties about crediting such disciplines with quite the (applied) role in educational practice of (say) physiology or anatomy (...) in medical practice. This paper argues that while recent developments in professional teacher education and training may have moved on from erstwhile instrumentalist and/or applied science (competence and other) perspectives, there may yet be a case for further progress towards a rather more sophisticated philosophical psychology of teacher knowledge and expertise. (shrink)

This volume addresses the impact of human movement on the aesthetic practices that make up the fabric of culture. The essays explore the ways in which cultural activities—ranging from the habitual gestures of the body to the production of specific artworks—register the impact of migration, from the forced transportation of slaves to the New World and of Jews to the death camps to the economic migration of peoples between the West and its erstwhile colonies; from the internal and external (...) exile of Palestinians to the free movement of cosmopolitan intellectuals. Rather than focusing exclusively on art produced by those identified as migrant subjects, this collection opens up the question of how aesthetics itself migrates, transforming not only its own practices and traditions, but also the very nature of our being in the world, as subjects producing, as well as produced by, the cultures in which we live. The transformative potential of cultures on the move is both affirmed and critiqued throughout the collection, as part of an exploration of the ways in which globalisation implicates us ever more tightly in the unequal relations of production that characterise late modernity. This collection brings academic scholars from a variety of disciplines into conversation with practising visual and verbal artists; indeed, many of the essays break down the distinction between artist and academic, suggesting a dynamic interchange between critical reflection and creativity. (shrink)

Political Beckett? In September 1941, one of the twentieth century’s most apparently non-political artists secretly took up arms against fascism. Samuel Beckett, who with exquisite timing for a notorious pessimist was born on Good Friday 1906, had been living in Paris since 1937, self-exiled from his native country in the manner of many an eminent Irish writer. The Irish, unlike their erstwhile colonial proprietors, have always been a cosmopolitan nation, from the nomadic monks of the Middle Ages to the (...) corporate executives of the Celtic Tiger. If the oppressiveness of colonial rule turned some of them into nationalists, it turned others into citizens of the world. Joyce, Synge, Beckett and Thomas MacGreevy, men already caught between two or three cultures and languages, were to flourish in the rootless, polyglot, ambience of high-modernist Europe, rather as half a century later their compatriots were to embrace the European Union. It helped, in signing up to a linguistically self-conscious modernism, to stem from a nation in which language, as a political minefield, could never be taken for granted. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders a well-known Diophantine problem-“the coconut puzzle”-with two philosophically humorous motives. The first motive is methodological; the second, ontological. First, different methodological approaches to solving this problem, namely those of the stereotypical engineer, physicist, and mathematician, are informed by different conceptualizations of the mathematical puzzle itself. This is illustrated by comparing stereotypical solutions by an engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician. Second, ontological implications of Dirac’s unorthodox solution precipitate heuristic questions concerning correspondence between mathematically admissible answers and physically (...) possible states. An anecdotal history of this problem is also cited, in order to prepare the ground for a concluding satirical solution by an erstwhile Carlylean economist. (shrink)

This article consists of an original translation of Ernst Bloch’s 1923 review of Lukács History and Class Consciousness, preceded by a translator’s introduction contextualising Bloch’s review and interpreting what it tells us about the intellectual and personal relationship between Bloch and Lukács. I argue that Bloch’s review highlights some of the key differences and points of intersection between their thinking. Written when their personal relationship had already soured for both political and intellectual reasons, Bloch’s review makes clear his ongoing commitment (...) to a form of utopianism Lukács had long abandoned. Unlike Lukács, who in History and Class Consciousness argued that the dialectical method could only be applied to the social realm, Bloch followed Engels in developing a dialectics of nature. However, even if Bloch was less willing to become involved in party politics than his erstwhile friend, as the review reveals, both men ultimately emphasised the present moment as the privileged locus of urgent political action. (shrink)

Summary Heidegger’s jeremiads against metaphysics are amongst the most influential and iconoclastic in the annals of continental philosophy; and none is more trenchant than the Destruktion of Descartes’ ontology of self with which Sein und Zeit begins. Yet for all the intellectual energy he expends on attempting to uncover the social texture of Dasein’s being-in-the-world, many remain convinced that Heidegger simply transposes the Cartesian ego into a phenomenological key. One of the first thinkers to arouse these suspicions was an (...) class='Hi'>erstwhile colleague of Heidegger, the Jewish-born phenomenologist and Carmelite spiritual writer, Edith Stein, in an unjustly neglected work, Martin Heideggers Existentialphilosophie. What sets Stein’s critique apart from more influential treatments is that in the course of diagnosing weaknesses in Heidegger’s account from within his own methodological constraints, she reaches some strikingly theological conclusions. The task of the present study is to offer an assessment of her dissection of the status and function of sociality in the Daseinsanalytik. After setting out Stein’s early phenomenology of empathy, I examine Stein’s argument that Heidegger’s tacit and mistaken appeal to theological categories ironically collapses his account of sociality back into the very subjectivism his Destruktion had been directed against. I conclude that Stein deftly reverses Heidegger’s strategy of atheological expropriation strategies by taking up a central theme in his own thought to articulate the theological unity of all finite existents. For Stein, unity at the level of fundamental ontology is most plausibly analysed by reference to the creaturely participation in the plenitude of Trinitarian being. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Camus’s Meursault and Sartrian IrresponsibilityDavid ShermanIn the wake of poststructuralism, with its glorification of the libidinal play of unaccountable, fragmented subjectivities, the concept of personal responsibility has been rehabilitated. From the French fascination with various forms of neo-Kantianism to the American interest in homey (albeit demagogic) books on the virtues, personal responsibility is regaining currency. But what, exactly, does it mean to be personally responsible? When Albert Camus suggested (...) in “Neither Victims Nor Executioners” that non-violence was the “responsible” position for intellectuals to take on the Algerian crisis, he was reproached for legalistically evading responsibility by his erstwhile friend Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre, who offered up the concept of “absolute responsibility,” and viewed any attempt to obscure the nature of this ontological burden for oneself as “bad faith,” regarded Camus’s position as just such an attempt: “If you’re not victims when the government which you voted for, when the army in which your younger brothers are serving... have undertaken race murder, you are, without a shadow of a doubt, executioners.” 1 For Sartre, who tentatively advocated revolutionary violence, taking responsibility meant acknowledging that “bloodying one’s hands” is unavoidable.The concept of personal responsibility is well considered within the context of French existentialism, which made it one of its hallmarks. In this essay, however, I shall approach personal responsibility from the vantage point of its opposite, personal irresponsibility. Towards this end, I shall consider Meursault, the protagonist in Camus’s The Stranger, whom I take to be one of the most irresponsible characters in literature. The depths of Meursault’s irresponsibility can best be appreciated, fittingly enough, within Sartre’s psychoanalytic framework. [End Page 60]IIn Being and Nothingness, Sartre offers up the ontologically rooted phenomenon of bad faith, which, for present purposes, can be explicated as follows: consciousness, which is intentional (nothing more than that which it is conscious of), reflectively reconstitutes the Self, which does not exist in consciousness but as an object in the external world. There is no intrinsic Self, and the Self that does exist is perpetually being transcended. Despite this state of unremitting transcendence, however, at any point in time there are the undeniable facts of our particular existences, which (however we choose to interpret them) define the range of our possible projects. These brute facts, which are inexorable, constitute our facticity. Thus, Sartre tells us, there is a “double property of the human being, who is at once a facticity and a transcendence” (B&N, p. 98). 2 It is in a person’s approach to the relationship between these two properties, which is marked by an irresolvable tension, that bad faith arises: “Bad faith does not wish either to coordinate them or to surmount them in a synthesis. Bad faith seeks to affirm their identity while preserving their differences. It must affirm facticity as being transcendence and transcendence as being facticity, in such a way that at the instant when a person apprehends the one, he can find himself abruptly faced with the other” (B&N, p. 98).Sartre provides numerous illustrations of individuals who flee from either their facticity or transcendence. For example, there is the homosexual and his interlocutor, the “champion of sincerity.” The former, despite repeated homosexual encounters, refuses to draw the conclusion that he is a homosexual; instead, he sees both his past behavior and his present inclinations as part of a “restless search.” Conversely, the latter demands that the homosexual sincerely avow what he is, “a homosexual.” Both are in bad faith. The homosexual denies responsibility for all that he has done by perpetually pushing his conception of Self into the future, and thus perpetually beyond the reach of his ability to make judgments about himself—he makes a mockery of his past and present choices. The champion of sincerity, on the other hand, pushes the homosexual’s conception of Self into the past in order to make it a thing—he denies the homosexual’s (and perhaps his own) freedom to make future choices, which is what enables us to transcend what we presently are. The former flees facticity; the latter, transcendence.All persons in bad faith fall... (shrink)

This article treats representations of the wolf in the Greek archaic and early classical literary and visual sources. Using a close reading of the Iliadic Doloneia as a point of departure, it argues that wolves in myth, fable, and other modes of discourse, as well as in the early artistic tradition, regularly serve as a means of signaling the loss of distinctions that occurs when friend turns into foe and an erstwhile philos or “second self” betrays one of his (...) kind. Prominent in the discussion are two further issues: the generic confusion or oscillation that characterizes so many textual and artistic versions of the tale, as well as the loss of distinction between two roles that normative representations more regularly contrast, those of warrior and hunter, martial victim and animal prey. Within the Doloneia, warfare proves indistinguishable from the hunt. (shrink)

How does a self-respecting Christian from Galilee who now finds himself based near the seat of empire relate to power in light of his faith? How are his admonishments, especially those which relate to the public arena, to be appropriated by those living on the periphery of the empire? I reflect on these questions from the vantage point of a South Africa in which on the one hand erstwhile prophets are being haunted by the vagaries of power and on (...) the other the Church is apparently as powerless as never before. (shrink)

In seeking to understand the development of philosophy in later antiquity it is important to take account of Clement of Alexandria, perhaps the first Christian writer to be greatly influenced by the systems of Greece. Accordingly in this article certain aspects of Clement's doctrine will be selected for examination where his obligations to the philosophers have apparently hitherto received insufficient attention. In a valuable paper Mr. R. P. Casey has dealt with many important points, but there is room for further (...) exploration, both by the philological method and by a careful comparison of corresponding ideas in Clement and Plotinus. I am here concerned to stress resemblances rather than to prove, for instance, that any direct connection exists between Neoplatonism and Alexandrian theology. It is nevertheless not irrevelant to mention that Ammonius Saccas, the professor whose lectures both Origen the Christian and Plotinus were to attend, and who, besides being a Platonist, if not the founder of Neoplatonism, was also an apostate Christian, had probably begun to attract attention in Alexandria at the time when Clement was head of the Christian School there, in which perhaps Ammonius himself had been originally educated. There seems nothing to prevent the assumption that Ammonius and Clement were known at least by name to each other, and perhaps the philosopher under whom Plotinus was to study for eleven years had even sat by the side of Clement at the feet of Pantaenus, the erstwhile Stoic and founder of the Catechetical School. However that may be, both Neoplatonism and Alexandrian theology show a markedly similar tendency, and in the Enneads and the Stromateis there are many equivalent features. (shrink)

In seeking to understand the development of philosophy in later antiquity it is important to take account of Clement of Alexandria, perhaps the first Christian writer to be greatly influenced by the systems of Greece. Accordingly in this article certain aspects of Clement's doctrine will be selected for examination where his obligations to the philosophers have apparently hitherto received insufficient attention. In a valuable paper Mr. R. P. Casey has dealt with many important points, but there is room for further (...) exploration, both by the philological method and by a careful comparison of corresponding ideas in Clement and Plotinus. I am here concerned to stress resemblances rather than to prove, for instance, that any direct connection exists between Neoplatonism and Alexandrian theology. It is nevertheless not irrevelant to mention that Ammonius Saccas, the professor whose lectures both Origen the Christian and Plotinus were to attend, and who, besides being a Platonist, if not the founder of Neoplatonism, was also an apostate Christian, had probably begun to attract attention in Alexandria at the time when Clement was head of the Christian School there, in which perhaps Ammonius himself had been originally educated. There seems nothing to prevent the assumption that Ammonius and Clement were known at least by name to each other, and perhaps the philosopher under whom Plotinus was to study for eleven years had even sat by the side of Clement at the feet of Pantaenus, the erstwhile Stoic and founder of the Catechetical School. However that may be, both Neoplatonism and Alexandrian theology show a markedly similar tendency, and in the Enneads and the Stromateis there are many equivalent features. (shrink)

As an independent researcher, registered social worker and erstwhile long-term, long-distance carer, the care of older people and protection of elders from abuse had been constant professional and personal foci for me for many years. Commissioned to review a case involving the serious abuse of an elder where official safeguarding procedures had not been used, I puzzled why this had been managed ?informally? by social services and partner agencies (i.e. outside adult safeguarding procedures), with vague unspecified ?monitoring? (AEA 2006). (...) Why was there this apparent gap between policy intention and implementation? That question led to research on which this essay is based. (shrink)

Some evolutionary psychologists claim that humans are good at creating superstimuli, and that many pleasure technologies are detrimental to our reproductive fitness. Most of the evolutionary psychological literature makes use of some version of Lorenz and Tinbergen’s largely embryonic conceptual framework to make sense of supernormal stimulation and bias exploitation in humans. However, the early ethological concept “superstimulus” was intimately connected to other erstwhile core ethological notions, such as the innate releasing mechanism, sign stimuli and the fixed action pattern, (...) notions that nowadays have, for the most part, been discarded by ethologists. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we will reconnect the discussion of superstimuli in humans with more recent theoretical ethological literature on stimulus selection and supernormal stimulation. This will allow for a reconceptualisation of evolutionary psychology’s formulation of (supernormal) stimulus selection in terms of domain-specificity and modularity. Second, we will argue that bias exploitation in a cultural species differs substantially from bias exploitation in non-cultural animals. We will explore several of those differences, and explicate why they put important constraints on the use of the superstimulus concept in the evolutionary social sciences. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:78 Discussion c:\users\kenneth\documents\type3401\rj 3401 193 red.docx 2014-05-14 8:54 PM MORE WIT IN PM Michael E. Berumen 37155 Dickerson Run Windsor, co 80550, usa [email protected] eldom does one find a piece by Bertrand Russell without a morsel of humour or wryness. Sometimes the Russellian wit is obvious. Other times it is more subtle, maybe even requiring a second look just to be sure. Headlong into some of his most technical (...) and difficult works, a delightful bon mot might suddenly punctuate the philosophical solemnity. One doesn’t ordinarily think of Principia Mathematica as a sourcebook for Russellian waggishness, but it is there, to be sure—albeit one will negotiate many pages of symbols and scant prose before finding a specimen. Perhaps the best-known witticism amongst cognoscenti is, after having proved 1 + 1 = 2 (PM ∗110.643, 2: 83), the authors observe, “The above proposition is occasionally useful.” The most complete directory for these jewels that I know is by Kenneth Blackwell.1 I thought it unlikely another would be found, so imagine my surprise when, after having dusted off my seldom-used Volume 3 to look something up, I came across a droll nugget that (to the best of my knowledge) has not been highlighted before. Something tells me Russell was biting down on his pipe stem and had a twinkle in his eye when he (I assume Russell, but they, anyway) wrote in the summary of Section A of Part vi, “Quantity”: Great difficulties are caused, in this section, by the existence-theorems and the question of types. These difficulties disappear if the axiom of infinity is assumed, but it seems improper to make the theory of (say) 2/3 depend upon the assumption that the number of objects in the universe is not finite. (PM 3: 234; italics mine) “Improper” indeed, the erstwhile Victorian says! By way of explanation, he goes on to say, We have, accordingly, taken pains not to make this assumption, except where, as in the theory of real numbers, it is really essential, and not merely convenient. Even that has a bit of Russellian sarcasm. So, accept the challenge and find another. In the meantime, take comfort in the knowledge that the sometimes controversial Axiom of Infinity is an unnecessary assumption in mixing one part soda and two parts Red Hackle. 1 “The Wit and Humour of Principia Mathematica”, Russell 31 (2011): 151–60. S... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sikh Philosophy as a Philosophy-of-PracticeMonika Kirloskar-Steinbach (bio)Some recent publications on Indian philosophy argue that the colonial narrative about the philosophical traditions from the subcontinent was erroneous. It wrongly suggested that the erstwhile Brahmanic thought embodied by the darśanas was an exhaustive representation of philosophical activity on the subcontinent and that this activity came to a grinding halt with the onset of European modernity. In an attempt at rectifying (...) this story, one path proposed by philosopher Vrinda Dalmiya (Dalmiya 2016, p. 125) is to cognize and fix the "epistemophilic excesses" in the field, that is, the obsessive compulsion in conventional academic philosophy to engage in theory for theory's sake. In the study of Indian philosophy, this malady manifests as the practice of channeling philosophical analysis solely through a darśanic framing. This monofocal lens, however, is unable to reflect either the diversity of practices on the ground or values like intellectual freedom that drive some such practices.Arvind-Pal Mandair's Sikh Philosophy: Exploring Gurmat Concepts in a Decolonizing World (Bloomsbury, 2022), discussed here in this forum, speaks to these concerns and offers a possible way forward. Sikh Philosophy advocates a liminal perspective from which to engage with the set of philosophical practices that emanated on the subcontinent around the figure of Guru Nanak (1469–1539) and the teachings of the Sikh gurus (gurmat). In the first part of my response, I will bring into this conversation Mandair's philosophical orientation to ask whether and how he would contribute to that debate. In the second part, I will project the haumai—one concept doing much of the work in Sikh Philosophy—as one viable path that may be able to contribute to the correction of the epistemophilia currently afflicting a judicious study of world-philosophical traditions.In my limited understanding, Mandair's rendition of the haumai may serve as one component that could be implemented fruitfully in broadening the perspective on Indian philosophy. Mandair observes that a postcolonial sensibility demands a philosophical orientation that does not continue its proprietary attitude toward philosophical positions. I share his view. Instead of parading these positions as possessions that embellish one's academic finesse, they should be considered as ways of navigating life adequately. In doing so, however, the making of such navigational routes may profit from a deliberate reflection on them from different standpoints. [End Page 348]Halting Exclusivist Historiographical Trends in PhilosophyTwo recent handbooks on Indian philosophy reflect the growing awareness that changes in the field's self-understanding are imperative, should imperialist and colonial historiographies that affect this understanding be upturned. Jonardon Ganeri's editorial introduction to the Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy—"Why Indian Philosophy? Why Now?"—argues that students of Indian philosophy should overcome the routinized fixation on the classical darśanas. In developing their accounts, they should factor in the "regionality, vernaculars, subaltern communities, [and] eccentrics" through which "scholarly networks, nodes of philosophical activity, transnational encounters, and contexts of philosophical invention" arose on the subcontinent (Ganeri 2017, p. 2). This broader approach would, in his view, not only be viable in halting the elitist and exclusivist historiography that was the default mode in the recent colonial past. In addition, it would be better equipped to grasp the richness of practices on the ground.Accordingly, his Handbook departs from the handbook genre on one core point: instead of delivering a supposedly comprehensive study of positions that would be indispensable to the reader to understand the intricacies of the field marked out as Indian philosophy, this Handbook chooses to narrate one multi-perspectival story about practices on the subcontinent that were philosophically motivated and are worthy of study today. It suggests through this move that there are other such possible stories that can be narrated. Relatedly, Purushottama Bilimoria and Amy Rayner's History of Indian Philosophy strives as well to make a case to go beyond the darśanic mold. It includes a variety of philosophical positions located on its peripheries. For example, Sikh philosophy, which notably is not included in the Ganeri volume, is incorporated here as a tradition that engaged darśanic practices. Balbinder Singh Bhogal, the author of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Noble Impermanence of WaystationsMiriam Rowntree (bio)In the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (ABIA), adjacent to Gate 14, a screen announces that boarding to Equestria is on time. The description below this announcement includes transport “through a portal to a parallel dimension” and a “harmonious sparkly” atmosphere. An attractive destination. Esquestria’s capital, Canterlot, offers castles, dragons, and, of course, ponies. As the heart of the My Little Pony universe, Canterlot boasts (...) a fantastical utopia. Gate ∞, as it is called (because its erstwhile home, Gate 13, is an unlucky number), imaginatively whisks weary travelers away to other fantastical destinations. Using a commonplace ticket machine or kiosk, travelers answer a series of whimsical questions and receive a ticket to a utopian destination that the machine has personally matched to the traveler for their mythical utopia. Doesn’t everyone want to go to lands of unicorns, ponies, or other such magic?The installation titled “Interimaginary Departures” draws upon 120 destinations drawn from various media, literature, and games, including Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Wizard of Oz.1 Even the carpet is inspired by the rabbits of Watership Down. Artist Janet Zweig describes her art [End Page 570] installation as designed to “create generative situations in public settings” and Gate ∞ does invite possibility as it is situated in a portal askew to the portals of the real in the terminal. Gate ∞ boldly crosses a border wall at 7 degrees (fig. 1, p. 572), heightening the boundaries between the real and the unreal. The chairs, a trashcan, and a book are caught between worlds, a wall slicing through them. Although Zweig cites China Mieville’s The City and the City (2009) as inspiration for her art installation, for me, the juxtaposition of the “interimaginary” and the real calls to mind Olga Tokarczuk’s book Flights (2007).2 While Zweig’s kiosk personally recommends Equestria (fig. 2, p. 573), ABIA is itself merely a waystation on my own trip between Texas and Rome.Tom McAllister’s review of Flights in the Washington Post describes the book as “beautifully fragmented,” not unlike Zweig’s “Interimaginary Departures” which relies on structural fragmentation of a space to exemplify the interposition of the imaginary and the real.3 This book captivated me from the first strange narrative when I tried to read it several years ago. However, I found it difficult to finish the first time as the stories in each section (there are no chapters) moved rapidly from one place, person, idea, and time to the next. McAllister says that “the disconnectedness is part of the point; they are fragments of people’s lives, a patchwork of personal experience, secondhand observation and imagination. Each story appears, draws our attention and then fades as the narrator finds her way to a new hotel, a new airport.” Perhaps the disconnectedness is the point, but I have found that Tokarczuk also infuses the sections with a sense that “there exists in the world’s coordinate system a perfect point where time and space reach an agreement” (4). Like Zweig’s “Interimaginary Departures,” that agreement is found in movement and the waystations toward that right time and place.Destination: RomeI settle into my seat next to my two daughters. Our flight will land in Rome at 8:00 am tomorrow. I have prepared them for what this means for our bodies. Jet lag is no joke. We shuffle our things around, air pods in the seat pocket in front of us, our bags tucked into the overhead bins. I take out my book and open it to the first page as my girls turn on the tv screens nestled in the seat in front of them. “Here I am” it says in bold letters at the top of the first page of Tokarczuk’s book. The narrator announces their presence (here) with the imperative of existence (I am). I take out my pen as is my habit, but it falls to the side as I read the first [End Page 571] Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1.A view from the Interimaginary Departures exhibit at Gate 13, or Gate Infinity, in Austin-Bergstrom International... (shrink)

A.D. Smith opens his excellent paper, “Space and Sight,” by remarking, One of the most notable features of both philosophy and psychology throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is the almost universal denial that we are immediately aware through sight of objects arrayed in three-dimensional space. This was not merely a denial of Direct Realism, but a denial that truly visual objects are even phenomenally presented in depth (481). Times have changed. As Smith writes, “It is hard to think of (...) a more radical reversal in thinking than the one that separates such an outlook from that which prevails today; for this erstwhile orthodoxy is hardly given even serious consideration in our own times, at least among philosophers” (482). Even so, how could this doctrine come and go? How can there be fashion in phenomenology?1 Let me answer the question indirectly, by considering Locke’s reasons for advancing the doctrine. He writes, “When we set before our Eyes a round Globe, of any uniform colour, v.g. Gold, Alabaster, or Jet, ‘tis certain, that the Idea thereby imprinted in our Mind, is of a flat Circle variously shadow’d, with several degrees of Light and Brightness coming to our Eyes” (2.9.8).2 Adults have acquired ideas of three-dimensional objects (presumably by.. (shrink)

The Arab Spring uprisings that led to the downfall of erstwhile authoritarian regimes in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya heralded the end of a state system introduced into the Middle East and North Africa by imperialist powers after the First World War. Characterized by an authoritarian model of modernization and secularization from above, these regimes are challenged by the rise of political Islam and its ideology of a transnational ‘ummah’. Islamist parties that have come to power in Egypt and Tunisia, (...) however, have proven remarkably unsuccessful in stabilizing governments and writing new constitutions. Are democracy and a religious revival compatible? What will replace the spent legitimacy of these regimes across the region? The legitimation crises of the Arab world have transnational dimensions as well as being influenced by the politics and attitudes of diasporic populations in Europe who need to contend with a different model of church–state relations referred to as ‘the Protestant model of religion’. Contemporary Turkey, which was often pointed to as a successful model of the synthesis of Islam with a pluralist representative democracy, is itself in the throes of another legitimation crisis in the aftermath of the Gezi Park protests which took place in the summer of 2013. What does all this bode for the region? (shrink)

Sachverhalt and Gegenstand are dead. Wittgenstein announces their passing in Philosophische Untersuchungen and he of all people should know when the brainchildren of his youth were no more. But it is surprising that he does not accord them more generous obsequies than a fragmented, offhand obituary. Their existence was a logical necessity in his erstwhile scheme of things, not a dispensable phenomenon of the contingent world: Even if the world is infinitely complex, so that every fact consists of infinitely (...) many Sachverhalte and every Sachverhalt is composed of infinitely many Gegenstände , even then there would have to be Gegenstände and Sachverhalte. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Recent developments allow for the creation of human stem cells without the creation of human embryos, a process called alternate nuclear transfer (‘ANT’). Pursuing this method of stem cell research makes sense for pro‐lifers if arguments for the sanctity of the human embryo do not apply to ANT. However, the technology that makes ANT possible undermines the erstwhile technical barrier between human embryos and somatic cell DNA. These advances bring home the force of hypothetical arguments about the potential (...) of the DNA in somatic cells, showing that there is not a morally relevant difference between the potential of an embryo and the potential of the DNA in a somatic cell. Therefore, the supposed distinction between entities that are potential human life and entities that are human life does not give any support to arguments for the sanctity of the human embryo because those arguments extend value to too many entities. (shrink)

"Nous vomissons sur tous ces gens qui, subitement, disent être nos amis," ["We vomit on all those people who suddenly declare themselves our friends"],1 Willem, one of the surviving cartoonists from Charlie Hebdo told the press shortly after the 2015 attack on the magazine's offices that left twelve dead, including six of its star cartoonists. Willem was speaking at the peak of demonstrations that were taking place across France in support of the paper, which became known as Republican marches. Thrust (...) suddenly into international prominence, CH editors made a show of their irreverence towards their new supporters, mocking the way their cause was being taken up by their erstwhile political... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Vatican Manuscript of Spinoza’s EthicaSteven NadlerLeen Spruit and Pina Totaro. The Vatican Manuscript of Spinoza’s Ethica. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 205. Brill’s Texts and Sources in Intellectual History, 11. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2011. Pp. vi + 318. Cloth, $136.00.By any measure, it is a remarkable find. There was a small codex in the Vatican Library, marked Vat. Lat. 12838. It originally belonged to the Congregation of the (...) Holy Office, which in 1917 inherited the role of keeper of the Index of Prohibited Books. The codex had been transferred to the Library with other materials in 1922. The manuscript, originally acquired in 1677, bore no author’s name. According to the card catalogue it is a Tractatus theologiae, a five-part “Theological Treatise.” Its contents are described as follows: Pars prima de Deo: Definitiones. / 1. Per causam. / Des. Tam difficilia quam rara sunt.Sound familiar?We possess no autograph manuscripts of Spinoza’s philosophical writings (there are a couple of autographs of his letters). And the only philosophical manuscripts we do have are the two Dutch manuscripts of the Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being, both discovered in the nineteenth century but one of which almost certainly was composed in Spinoza’s lifetime from a Latin original. Thus, to discover a seventeenth-century Latin manuscript copy of the Ethics, even if it is not an autograph, is exciting news indeed. Since it was in the Vatican’s possession by September 1677, we know that it was written out while Spinoza (who had died only a few months earlier) was still alive; it may also be that, while the manuscript is not by Spinoza’s hand, he did look it over.What makes this last possibility even more likely is the fact that, as Leen Spruit and Pina Totaro—the discoverers of the manuscript—argue in their introduction to this volume, the manuscript may originally have belonged to a member of Spinoza’s circle of friends in Amsterdam, Walter Ehrefried von Tschirnhaus. Tschirnhaus was in Paris by 1676, and had in his possession a copy of the Ethics (which a suspicious Spinoza famously told him not to show to Leibniz, who was also in Paris at the time and wanted to have a look at the work). Tschirnhaus was in Rome within a year, where, Spruit and Totaro suggest, he may have made the acquaintance of Niels Stensen, erstwhile Lutheran scientist and friend of Spinoza, now a fervent Catholic convert and anti-Spinozist soon to be appointed Vicar Apostolic of Nordic Missions. Tschirnhaus, or possibly some other “Lutheran foreigner” (in Stensen’s words) to whom he, eager to spread the good word of Spinozism, had given the manuscript, passed it on to Stensen, who in turn handed it over to the Roman Inquisition, along with a denunciation of its author. Stensen’s intention was to have Spinoza condemned by the Church and his works placed on the Index. Spruit and Totaro also claim—on the basis of the handwriting—that the copyist of this manuscript is Pieter van Gent, a member of Spinoza’s circle who played a role in the posthumous publication of his works.While Spruit and Totaro wisely admit that this story behind the manuscript “cannot be established with certainty,” they also say that it is “rather likely.” Their plausible hypothetical reconstruction of the history of the manuscript and of its relationship to the publication history of the Ethics, as well as their account of other important contextual elements, is based on careful and informed scholarship, and makes for fascinating reading.As for the manuscript itself, it is not a revolutionary discovery (as, say, the discovery of the Short Treatise manuscripts were). It will not affect the reading of the Ethics in any major way. There are a variety of discrepancies between the Vatican manuscript and the text of the Ethics in the Opera Posthuma (OP) of 1678: differences in spelling, “rather insignificant” omissions and additions of words and phrases, probable scribal errors, changes in word order, and some noticeable differences in expression. To take just one nonetheless interesting example, the final clause of the... (shrink)

In recent years, the long-standing philosophical and religious duel between ‘Hegel’ and ‘Kierkegaard’ has quiedy transmuted into something that, if still far from an amicable resolution, is something much less black and white. We are, of course, collectively grateful to Jon Stewart for demonstrating not only something of the extent to which ‘Kierkegaard's relation to Hegel’ needs to be re-envisaged as ‘Kierkegaard'srelationsto Hegel,’ but also that, often, even mosdy, the passages where Kierkegaard is seemingly attacking Hegel are actually directed against (...) one or other, often Danish, representative of Hegelianism — above all, against J. L. Heiberg and H. L. Martensen. As a biographical narrative, this is largely beyond dispute — though, as many of Stewart's critics have noted, this does not necessarily lead, as he himself suggests, to the elimination of crucial philosophical differences between the two erstwhile protagonists.In this paper, I accept Stewart's point that Kierkegaard's reception of Hegel is inseparable from his multiple receptions of Hegelianism. I shall, however, offer a particular focus on a part of the story that, I believe, still remains under-represented in the secondary literature, namely, Kierkegaard's early response to a number of those theologians often referred to as ‘Right’ Hegelians. This focus calls for a revision of Stewart's emphasis on the relation to Heiberg and Martensen as the decisive factor in Kierkegaard's anti-Hegelianism. (shrink)

This volume is an introduction to the relationship between psychoanalysis and literature. Jean-Michel Rabaté takes Sigmund Freud as his point of departure, studying in detail Freud's integration of literature in the training of psychoanalysts and how literature provided crucial terms for his myriad theories, such as the Oedipus complex. Rabaté subsequently surveys other theoreticians such as Wilfred Bion, Marie Bonaparte, Carl Jung, Jacques Lacan, and Slavoj Žižek. This Introduction is organized thematically, examining in detail important terms like deferred action, fantasy, (...) hysteria, paranoia, sublimation, the uncanny, trauma, and perversion. Using examples from Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare to Sophie Calle and Yann Martel, Rabaté demonstrates that the psychoanalytic approach to literature, despite its erstwhile controversy, has recently reemerged as a dynamic method of interpretation. (shrink)