This article explores the nature of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate reputation using qualitative research approach. Specifically, the relationship between CSR and corporate reputation is examined from the viewpoint of value theory. This paper brings up for discussion the various value priorities lying in the background of CSR actions. The aim is to form categories of value priorities around CSR and reputation, based on qualitative research approach. The main concepts in this paper – CSR, reputation and value – are (...) also defined. This paper further discusses the theory of value structure and content, which identifies certain principal values among different cultures. The data consist of eight interviews with employees of a newspaper company. The results suggest that value priorities play an influential role in CSR actions, influencing to the essence of certain reputation stories in the corporate context. (shrink)
During the past decade, any questionable and illegal behavior of businesses has received significant attention in the media. Thus, taking a critical discursive approach, we investigate how the media constructs any questionable business as illegitimate. Our data draws upon articles dealing with cartels and cartel agreements in Finnish business media covering a five year period 2002-2007. Based on our findings, we suggest that regardless of the globalized business world, socio-cultural history plays an important role in constructing the illegitimacy of business (...) practices. (shrink)
Animal ethics has presented various 'pro-animal arguments' according to which non-human animals have a more significant moral status than traditionally assumed. Although these arguments (brought forward, for instance, by Peter Singer, Tom Regan, Mary Midgley, Stephen Clark, and Mark Rowlands) have been met with various forms of criticism, a quick overview of animal ethics literature suggests that they are difficult to overcome. Pro-animal arguments seem to have consistency and argumentative support on their side. However, recently a new type of criticism (...) has become more prominent. The claim is that the pro-animal arguments ignore the relevance of established paradigms and meanings. The moral status of animals is .. (shrink)
: Animal ethics has presented convincing arguments for the individual value of animals. Animals are not only valuable instrumentally or indirectly, but in themselves. Less has been written about interest conflicts between humans and other animals, and the use of animals in practice. The motive of this paper is to analyze different approaches to interest conflicts. It concentrates on six models, which are the rights model, the interest model, the mental complexity model, the special relations model, the multi-criteria model, and (...) the contextual model. Of these, the contextual model is the strongest, and carries clear consequences for the practical use of animals. (shrink)
Most moral theorists agree that it is one thing to believe that someone has slighted you and another to resent her for the insult; one thing to believe that someone did you a favor and another to feel gratitude toward her for her kindness. While all of these ways of responding to another's conduct are forms of moral appraisal, the reactive attitudes are said to 'go beyond' beliefs in some way. We think this claim is adequately explained only when we (...) take seriously the fact that reactive attitudes are emotions. In this paper, we appeal to insights of the emotions literature to highlight one key way in which reactive attitudes go beyond beliefs: beliefs about a person and her morally significant conduct merely ascribe to the person the property of having performed a morally significant action, while reactive attitudes are ways of experiencing that person as having performed a morally significant action. We then suggest that appreciating this is a crucial first step toward understanding why reactive emotions play roles in our practices around responsibility that beliefs do not. (shrink)
I defend Hume's account of tragic pleasure against various objections. I examine his account of the emotions in order to clarify his "conversion theory". I also argue that Hume does not give us a theory of tragedy as an aesthetic genre, but rather elucidates the felt experience of a particular work of tragedy. I offer a partial reading of King Lear by way of illustration. Finally, I suggest that the experiences of aesthetic pleasure, and aesthetic sadness, share certain qualities. "Tragic (...) pleasure" is possible, in part, because the pity of tragedy is realised through the pleasure of the aesthetic. (shrink)
The supporter of vague objects has been long challenged by the following ‘Argument from Identity’: 1) if there are vague objects, then there is ontically indeterminate identity; 2) there is no ontically indeterminate identity; therefore, 3) there are no vague objects. Some supporters of vague objects have argued that 1) is false. Noonan (Analysis 68: 174–176, 2008) grants that 1) does not hold in general, but claims that ontically indeterminate identity is indeed implied by the assumption that there are vague (...) objects of a certain special kind (i.e. vague objects*). One can therefore formulate a ‘New Argument from Identity’: 1′) if there are vague objects*, then there is ontically indeterminate identity; 2) there is no ontically indeterminate identity; therefore, 3′) there are no vague objects*. Noonan’s strategy is to argue that premiss 1′) is inescapable, and, as a consequence, that Evans’s alleged defence of 2) is a real challenge for any supporter of vague objects. I object that a supporter of vague objects who grants the validity of Evans’s argument allegedly in favour of 2) should reject premiss 1′). The threat of the New Argument from Identity is thus avoided. (shrink)
This paper argues against the view that the Freudian unconscious can be understood as an extension of ordinary belief-desire psychology. The paper argues that Freud’s picture of the mind challenges the paradigm of folk psychology, as it is understood by much contemporary philosophy of psychology and cognitive science. The dynamic unconscious postulated by psychoanalysis operates according to rules and principles which are distinct in kind from those rules that organise rational and conscious thought. Psychoanalysis offers us a radical reconception of (...) our ordinary way of thinking about our own minds. (shrink)
A common Western assumption is that animals cannot be persons. Even in animal ethics, the concept of personhood is often avoided. At the same time, many in cognitive ethology argue that animals do have minds, and that animal ethics presents convincing arguments supporting the individual value of animals. Although “animal personhood” may seem to be an absurd notion, more attention needs to placed on the reasons why animals can or cannot be included in the category of persons. Of three different (...) approaches to personhood—the perfectionist approach, the humanistic approach, and the interactive approach—the third approach is the strongest. Personhood defined via interaction opens new doors for animal ethics. (shrink)
Altruism has often been thought to be the reason we treat animals with a certain moral respect. Animals are not moral agents who could reciprocally honour our well being, and because of this duties toward them are considered to be based on other-directed motivations. Altruism is a vague notion, and in the context of animals can be divided into at least three different alternatives. The first one equates altruism with benevolence or "kindness"; the second one argues altruism is based on (...) recognising inherent value in others; and the third one emphasises identification. Out of these three the first one seems the poorest, for it ultimately falls into egoism: we treat animals with respect out of a need to cultivate our "humanity". The second option is well justified and has been defended thoroughly in the field of animal ethics. Still, it has been criticised recently for being too theory-dependent and even abstract. The third alternative seems tempting in its willingness to give room to practice instead of emphasising abstract moral notions. However, this willingness also comes with a price, for it seems unclear what the mere concentration on contexts and practice can tell us about duties and norms. The main problem is fitting together identification as a practical grounds for moral sentiment with the need for "codified" and even abstract moral principles. One way to do this, the paper suggests, is to use a three-level approach that seeks to take both sides into account. (shrink)
Vagueness manifests itself (among other things) in our inability to find boundaries to the extension of vague predicates. A semantic theory of vagueness plans to justify this inability in terms of the vague semantic rules governing language and thought. According to a supporter of semantic theory, the inability to find such a boundary is not dependent on epistemic limits and an omniscient being like God would be equally unable. Williamson (Vagueness, 1994 ) argued that cooperative omniscient beings adequately instructed would (...) find a precise boundary in a sorites series and that, for this reason, the semantic theory misses its target, while Hawthorne (Philosophical Studies 122:1–25, 2005 ) stood with the semantic theorists and argued that the linguistic behaviour of a cooperative omniscient being like God would clearly demonstrate that he does not find a precise boundary in the sorites series. I argue that Hawthorne’s definition of God’s cooperative behaviour cannot be accepted and that, contrary to what has been assumed by both Williamson and Hawthorne, an omniscient being like God cannot be a cooperative evaluator of a semantic theory of vagueness. (shrink)
In this paper, I hope to show how a recent theory in the philosophy of mind concerning how we ‘read’ the minds of others – namely, Heal’s version of simulation theory – is consistent with the view that the kind of understanding we bring to bear on the irrational is different in kind from the way we understand one another in the course of everyday life. I shall attempt to show that Heal’s version of simulation theory (co-cognition) is to be (...) favoured over its rival ‘theory theories’ in the light of its accommodation of deeply irrational mental states. I claim that simulation theory preserves an asymmetry of psychological explanation which is not similarly preserved by a theory theory account, and I argue that this preservation of asymmetry is an advantage of Heal’s account. (shrink)
Kumārila’s commitment to the explanation of cognitive experiences not confined to valid cognition alone, allows a detailed discussion of border-line cases (such as doubt and error) and the admittance of absent entities as separate instances of cognitive objects. Are such absent entities only the negative side of positive entities? Are they, hence, fully relative (since a cow could be said to be the absent side of a horse and vice versa)? Through the analysis of a debated passage of the Ślokavārttika (...) , the present article proposes a reconstruction of Kumārila’s view of the relation between erroneous cognitions and cognitions of absence ( abhāva ), and considers the philosophical problem of the ontological status of absence. (shrink)
To date, 1.7 million US military service personnel have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Of those, one in five are suffering from diagnosable combat-stress related psychological injuries including Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). All indications are that the mental health toll of the current conflicts on US troops and the medical systems that care for them will only increase. Against this backdrop, research suggesting that the common class of drugs known as beta-blockers might prevent the onset of PTSD is drawing (...) much interest. I urge caution against accepting too quickly the use of beta-blockers for dealing with the psychological injuries that combat experiences can wreak. Beta-blockers are thought to work by disrupting the formation of emotionally disturbing memories that typically occur in the wake of traumatic events and that in some people manifest as PTSD. Focusing on a single dimension of soldiers' experience in combat, namely, their perpetration of other-directed violence, I argue that some of the emotional memories blunted by beta-blockers play important roles in the recovery of moral aspects of soldiers' selves damaged by experiences of combat violence — specifically, in the achievement of a state of grace— and, therefore, that the use of beta-blockers may come with distinct moral costs. (shrink)
It is now a commonplace that emotions are not mere sensations but, rather, conceptually contentful states. In trying to expand on this insight, however, most theoretical approaches to emotions neglectcentral intuitions about what emotions are like. We therefore need a methodological shift in our thinking about emotions away from the standard accounts’ attempts to reduce them to other mental states andtoward an exploration of the distinctive work emotions do. I show that emotions’ distinctive function is to engage us with both (...) objective and personal values. Attention to emotions’ work reveals that it is precisely their “unruliness” that allows them to play meaningful roles in our lives. (shrink)
This paper examines parents experiences of medical decision-making and coping with having a critically ill baby in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) from a cross-cultural perspective (France vs. U.S.A.). Though parents experiences in the NICU were very similar despite cultural and institutional differences, each system addresses their needs in a different way. Interviews with parents show that French parents expressed overall higher satisfaction with the care of their babies and were better able to cope with the loss of their (...) child than American parents. Central to the French parents perception of autonomy and their sense of satisfaction were the strong doctor–patient relationship, the emphasis on medical certainty in prognosis versus uncertainty in the American context, and the sentimental work" provided by the team. The American setting, characterized by respect for parental autonomy, did not necessarily translate into full parental involvement in decision-making, and it limited the rapport between doctors and parents to the extent of parental isolation. This empirical comparative approach fosters a much-needed critique of philosophical principles by underscoring, from the parents perspective, the lack of emotional work" involved in the practice of autonomy in the American unit compared to the paternalistic European context. Beyond theoretical and ethical arguments, we must reconsider the practice of autonomy in particularly stressful situations by providing more specific means to cope, translating the impersonal language of rights" and decision-making into trusting, caring relationships, and sharing the responsibility for making tragic choices. (shrink)
It has recently been discovered that propranolol—a beta-blocker traditionally used to treat cardiac arrhythmias and hypertension—might disrupt the formation of the emotionally disturbing memories that typically occur in the wake of traumatic events and consequently prevent the onset of trauma-induced psychological injuries such as Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. One context in which the use of propranolol is generating interest in both the popular and scientific press is sexual violence. Nevertheless, feminists have so far not weighed in on propranolol. I suggest that (...) the time is ripe for a careful feminist analysis of the moral and political implications of propranolol use in the context of sexual violence. In this paper, I map the feminist issues potentially raised by providing propranolol to victims of sexual assault, focusing in particular on the compatibility of propranolol use and availability with an understanding of the social and systematic dimensions of rape's harms. I do not deliver a final verdict on propranolol; in fact, I show that we do not yet have enough information about propranolol's effects to do so. Rather, I provide a feminist framework for evaluating the possibilities and perils opened up by therapeutic memory manipulation in the context of sexual violence against women. (shrink)
The paper defends Wollheim’s account of aesthetic expressive perception by showing that it may fruitfully be extended to artistic genres other than painting. The paper hopes to show the richness of Wollheim’s theory of expressive projection as an account of aesthetic perception. In investigating the application of Wollheim’s account of artistic expression to literature, I shall illustrate how understanding expression as the result of the projective activity of the writer is a useful way of understanding some of the expressive properties (...) of two poems by Wordsworth. I shall also attempt to show how Wordsworth’s poems require and facilitate the activity of projection by the reader, so as to allow for the appreciation of the work’s expressive properties. In exploring the application of Wollheim’s account of expression-as-projection to poetry, this paper will also attempt to defend Wollheim’s account against some objections raised by Malcolm Budd. (shrink)
There is a growing body of literature on the research ethics review process, a process that can have important effects on the nature of research in contemporary times. Yet, many people know little about what the actual process entails once an application has been submitted for review. This lack of knowledge can affect researchers and committee members' responses to the review process. Based on ethnographic research on the ethics review process in 5 countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States, (...) and the United Kingdom) this article takes the reader through common aspects of the research ethics review process, including some of the kinds of narratives that influence decision making. Greater understanding of the nature of the review process and the narratives that often form the core of the process can help contextualize responses that researchers get from committees so they can better address them. It may also help committee members reflect on how these narratives influence their decision making and the responses they make to researchers. (shrink)
New genetic technologies promise to generate valuable insights into the aetiology of several psychiatric conditions, as well as a wider range of human and animal behaviours. Advances in the neurosciences and the application of new brain imaging techniques offer a way of integrating DNA analysis with studies that are looking at other biological markers of behaviour. While candidate 'genes for' certain conditions, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorders, are said to be 'un-discovered' at a faster rate than they are discovered, many (...) studies are being conducted on personality traits such as aggressiveness and anti-social traits. The clinical applicability and implications of these studies are often discussed within the scientific community. However, little attention has so far been paid to their possible policy implications in relation to criminality management and to Criminal Law itself. Similarly, the related ethical issues arising in the field of crime control, and the tensions between enhancing security for society and protecting civil liberties, are currently under-explored. This paper investigates these ethical issues by focusing on the views of those professionals – including judges, lawyers, probation officers and social workers – who work with individuals 'deemed at risk' of violent and aggressive behaviours. It also discusses and problematizes mainstream rhetoric and arguments around the notion of 'risky individuals'. (shrink)
This article reports the findings of a one-year project examining British press coverage of the genetically modified (GM) food debate during the first half of 2003, and both expert and non-expert reactions to that coverage. Two pro-GM newspapers and two anti-GM newspapers were selected for analysis, and all articles mentioning GM during the period in question were stored in a machine readable database. This was then analyzed using corpus linguistic and discourse analytic techniques to reveal recurrent wording, themes and content. (...) This text analysis was complemented by 12 interviews with experts involved in the communication of GM issues, and 12 focus-group sessions in which members of the public reacted to selected newspaper texts and other GM material. Both in the press and in public reaction, the issue of GM was found to be intimately associated with other political events of the time, notably the invasion of Iraq. Except among experts, there was little awareness of the official national debate and issues were approached in more general terms. Pro-GM characterization of the issues as primarily scientific, both by newspapers and experts, was rejected by the anti-GM press and campaigners, and by the focus-group participants. They assessed the issues in a more global frame, rejecting scientists and companies as unreliable. In addition, they linked both US and British GM policy to the invasion of Iraq, and, by analogy, rejected pro-GM arguments as untrustworthy. (shrink)
The increased scrutiny of investors regarding the non-financial aspects of corporate performance has placed portfolio managers in the position of having to weigh the benefits of ' holding the market' against the cost of having positions in companies that are subsequently found to have questionable business practices. The availability of stock indexes based on sustainability screening makes increasingly viable for institutional investors the transition to a portfolio based on a Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) benchmark at relatively low cost. The increasing (...) share of socially responsible investments may play a role in providing incentives towards a continuous upgrading of sustainability standards to the extent that their performance is not systematically inferior to that of the other funds. This article examines whether these incentives have been so far detectable with particular reference to the Dow Jones Sustainability Stoxx Index (DJSSI) that focuses on the European corporations with the highest CSR scores among those included in the Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index. The aim of the article is twofold. First, we analyse the performance of the DJSSI over the period 2001-2006 compared to that of the Surrogate Complementary Index (SCI), a new benchmark that includes only the components of the DJ Stoxx 600 that do not belong to the ethical index to evaluate more correctly the size of possible divergent performances. Second, we perform an event study on the same data set to analyse whether the stock market evaluation reacts to the inclusion (deletion) in the DJSSI. In both cases, the results suggest that the evaluation of the CSR performance of a firm is a significant criterion for asset allocation activities. (shrink)
Institutions create their own internal cultures, including the culture of ethics that pervades scientific research, academic policy, and administrative philosophy. This paper addresses some of the issues involved in institutional enhancement of its culture of research ethics, focused on individual empowerment and strategies that individuals can use to initiate institutional change.
En este estudio se analiza el cambio de clase de palabras en el mapudungun a través del procedimiento de derivación, desde la perspectiva tipológica de la formación de palabra (Aikhenvald, 2007). Las palabras, en la lengua mapuche, usan ciertos procesos morfológicos y sintácticos que posibilitan el cambio de clase de palabra, ya sea por la intervención de algún sufijo derivacional, por la propiedad polisémica de los mismos, o por el cambio de posición de la palabra respecto a una palabra principal. (...) Los procesos más productivos de formación de palabras suelen ser la composición y la derivación, no obstante, por razones de extensión, este artículo solo se concentra en la derivación y en el análisis de los sufijos -tu, -küle/-le, -meke, y -nge. This study analyzes word classes changes process in Mapudungun through derivation, from the typological perspective of word class formation (Aikhenvald, 2007). Words, in the Mapuche language, use certain morphological and syntactic processes that make possible word class changes, in either of three ways: the intervention of a derivational suffix, by the polysemic property of derivational suffixes, or by changing the position of the word with respect to a principal word. While the most productive processes of word formation often are composition and derivation, due to length reasons this article will focus on the derivation process and analysis of only the suffixes -tu, -küle/-le,-meke, and -nge. (shrink)
In this study, we assessed the influence of trait anger on decisions in risky situations evaluating how it might interact with some contextual factors. One hundred and fifty-eight participants completed the Trait Anger scale of STAXI-2 (T-Ang) and an inventory consisting of a battery of hypothetical everyday decision-making scenarios, representative of three specific domains: financial, social and health. Participants were also asked to evaluate familiarity and salience for each scenario. This study provides evidence for a relationship between individual differences in (...) the tendency to feel anger and risky decisions in different domains and for mediation effects of familiarity and salience perception. The evaluation of the mechanisms with which dispositional anger is linked to risky decision-making could further contribute to an understanding of the role of personality traits in decision-making processes. (shrink)
Wittgenstein’s remarks on “seeing-as” have influenced several scholars working on depiction. They have especially inspired those who think that in order to understand depiction we should understand the specific kind of visual experience depictions arouse in the viewer (e.g. Gombrich [1960], Wollheim [1968; 1987]). In this paper I would like to go a different way. My hypothesis is that certain of Wittgenstein’s claims both in the Tractatus and in his later writings resonate well within the context of an objective resemblance (...) account of depiction (Hyman, 2006). (shrink)
What Mamardašvili meant by “process of knowledge” is not an all-embracing vision of reality accomplished “once-and-for-all”; it is not a step by step procedure of deduction; rather it is an anti-dialectical reconstruction of a constellation of signs put together over and over again by the subject by an act of non-premeditated genius. It is a kind of aesthetic act that makes the sense appear, like a vertical cut in the sequential line of space and time.
Focussing on some claims addressed by Richard Wollheim and Clement Greenberg I investigate how the concepts of depicted figure, background of a pictorial scene and ground of a picture are relevant for an understanding of the relation between figurative and abstract pictures, especially when it comes to consider whether abstract pictures can be said to represent pictorially.
Debates about new technologies, such as crop and food genetic modification (GM), raise pressing questions about the ways ‘experts’ and ‘ nonexperts’ communicate. These debates are dynamic, characterized by many voices contesting numerous storylines. The discoursal features, including language choices and communication strategies, of the GM debate are in some ways taken for granted and in others actively manipulated by participants. Although there are many voices, some have more influence than others. This study makes use of 50 hours of in-depth (...) interviews with GM scientists, nonexperts, and other stakeholders in the GM debate to examine this phenomenon. We uncover rhetorical devices used by scientists to characterize and ultimately undermine participation by non-experts in areas including rationality, knowledge, understanding and objectivity. Scientists engage with ‘the public’ from their own linguistic and social domain, without reflexive confirmation of their own status as part of the public and the citizenry. This raises a number of interesting ironies and contradictions, which are explored in the article. As such, it provides valuable insights into an increasingly important type of discourse. (shrink)
External descriptions, which approach animals via external mechanisms rather than internal mental states, have gained a prominent position. However, according to strong objectivism, attention needs to be placed on the presumptions that lay behind given beliefs. When applied to the topic of animal minds, it reveals that perhaps inter-nal rather than external descriptions would offer a fruitful option. This claim is sup-ported by the Wittgensteinian criticism of skepticism, which seeks to avoid “deflection” and brings forward an “affective stance”. Still, in (...) order to avoid relativ-ism and conservatism, internal descriptions and the affective stance need to place em-phasis on the epistemological ramifications behind beliefs concerning animal minds, and centralise the animal as the reference point of inquiry. (shrink)
In his writings Wittgenstein has touched some key aspects of aesthetic experience, of the experience of art, and of the dynamics of culture. Moreover, several lines of research in these fields have emerged and are still emerging from the roots of Wittgenstein's thought. This volume collects a number of essays on these topics by renowned international scholars (such as H.-J. Glock, J. Hyman, S. Majetschak, J. Schulte, A. Voltolini, and W. Vossenkuhl) and younger researchers. Our aim is to document the (...) presence of aesthetics across the development of Wittgenstein's thought and to present Wittgenstein's point of view, and new views inspired by Wittgenstein, on music, literature and poetry, the visual arts, and architecture. (shrink)
This article deals with various responses to the phenomenon of Orientalism. Since the publication of Edward Said s book Orientalism , there has been an ongoing discussion about the influence of Orientalism on contemporary social sciences in the East. In the West, Orientalism was an original theory, but in the East its acceptance was tantamount to an assimilation of foreign point of view on social reality. I argue that it is a symptom of provincialism among scientists from the East. Even (...) though most of them tried to overcome Orientalism, they used the same categories and methodology. In this sense they repeated its mistakes and misunderstandings. This article analyzes different attempts of overcoming Orientalism and shows why they are provincial. (shrink)
Much of the current genetic research into aggressive and violent behaviour focuses on young people and might appear to offer the hope of targeted prediction and intervention. In the UK data is collected on children from various agencies and collated to produce ‘at risk of offending’ identities used to justify intervention. Information from behavioural genetic tests could conceivably be included. Regulatory frameworks for collecting, storing and using information from DNA samples differ between the health service and the police particularly in (...) the need for consent and the treatment of children. This paper draws on discussions with professionals involved with ‘problem’ young people to consider their views on the utility of genetic research for tackling violent/aggressive behaviour and the impact an identification of genetic susceptibility might have on their clients. (shrink)
Dissertatio proposita circa “argumentum ontologicum” pro existentia Dei, quem K. Goedel construxit, versatur. In prima parte structuram logicam dicti argumenti exponimus, singulos gradus argumenti explicamus, “collapsumque modalitatum”, quo argumentum invalidari invenitur, examinamus. Sequenti parte recentiores quasdam confectiones argumenti pertractamus; et scil. praecipue formam eius, quae super conceptum mathematicum multitudinis seu “complexus elementorum terminatorum” fundatur, et formam “algebraicam”, quarum affinitates quasdam notabiles prae oculos ponimus. Ultima parte disceptationes, quae circa huiusce argumenti validitatem ac momentum respectu modernae theisticae philosophiae agebantur, describimus. Loco (...) conclusionis observamus, Goedelii argumentum exemplum esse notabile “fidei quaerentis intellectum”.The article deals with Gödel’s ontological proof of God’s existence. It consists of three parts. In the first part we present the logical structure of the argument, analyse its individual steps and discuss the implied collapse of modalities, which is fatal for the proof. In the second part we focus on some more recent versions of the argument, especially the set-theoretical version and the algebraic version, and we show several interesting connexions between the algebraic and the set-theoretical version. In the final part of the paper we briefly recount the discussions concerning the validity of the argument and its importance for modern theistic philosophy. We conclude by observing that Gödel’s argument is an interesting modern instance of “faith seeking understanding”. (shrink)
The Kleinian psychoanalyst Hanna Segal argues for the reparative nature of art, and especially of the genre of classical tragedy. According to Kleinian theory, healthy psychological development requires that early infantile aggressive and destructive emotions are worked through; such “working through” is necessary for the development of conscience, for feelings of empathy, as well as for cognitive development. It is also a necessary condition for creative activity. Segal examines the roots of the impulse to create by looking specifically at the (...) genre of classical tragedy; she argues that the pleasure we derive from tragedy is non-contingently related to the distressing elements of the drama. Thus not only are the formal and aesthetic elements important for the containment of powerfully distressing emotions, but the distressing emotions themselves are a necessary ingredient of the aesthetic pleasure This paper will examine Segal’s discussion of tragedy in the light of her commitments to Kleinian theory, and it will attempt to explore more fully the contributions of difficult or painful emotions towards aesthetic pleasure. (shrink)
