Previous studies using the dot-perspective task postulated that people automatically take into account others' perspective even when it prevents them from achieving their own goals. This human ability may be of key importance for the ascription of mental states and social interactions. The cognitive and emotional determinants of automatic perspective taking is still matter of debate. To address this issue, we examined the performance in the Samson et al. APT task in 91 healthy adults who underwent a detailed neuropsychological testing (...) including assessment of their general intelligence, attention and impulsivity, alexithymia, and measures of affective empathy and explicit theory of mind. Univariate and multiple linear regression models were used to explore the association between mean reaction times in the APT task, and the CPT-II parameters, WAIS global score, TAS, and GeSoCS and mini-SEA scores. Only the CPT-II parameters were significantly associated with the mean reaction times. Increased omissions, commissions, and detectability as well as hit reaction time standard error in CPT-II were all related to worse performances both in Self and Other conditions. The mean number of errors was negatively associated with the GeSoCS score. Among the variables studied, only CPT-II parameters had a significant impact on egocentric and altercentric interference. Neither global intelligence nor alexithymia have an effect on dot-perspective task performance. The present findings suggest that people with lower attentional resources and increased impulsivity display worse performances in the APT task and are less responsive to both egocentric and altercentric interference. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The complex web of intellectual exchanges between Britain and Europe remains a peripheral concern for historians interested in the circulation of ideas across national, international and imperial frameworks. This special issue attempts to fill the lacuna by presenting new research on the triangular relationship between Britain, Europe and the idea of liberty during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The articles featured in this issue revisit established narratives, discuss novel case-studies and address the question of Britain's special relationship with liberty (...) in an age marked by impediments to the freedom of movement and the erection of nationalist boundaries across Europe, and the world. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe article recovers Henry Brailsford’s reflections on south-eastern and east-central Europe in a transformative period in international politics. Although the British journalist has been considered as key influence in the development of international relations in Britain, his commentary on the national questions in eastern Europe has remained relatively unexplored. The article argues that in response to the international politics of the Eastern Question and to concurrent imperial questions in Britain, Brailsford articulated an imperial anti-imperialist vision of international order based on (...) the support for local autonomy and self-government across eastern Europe and the colonial world. It then proceeds to chart his gradual distancing from the politics of self-determination during the Great War and argues that Brailsford’s international thought was influenced by a series of pragmatic considerations regarding the future of central and eastern Europe. The intricacies of Brailsford’s international thought offer an informative case-study of the symbiosis of liberal and socialist varieties of internationalism in early twentieth century Britain. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The article revisits the history of the ‘Eastern Question’ and its impact in late Victorian England through the lens of the British scholar Arthur J. Evans. Evans is best known for his archaeological discoveries in the island of Crete in the beginning of the twentieth century. His journalistic and archaeological ventures in the Balkans in the 1870s and 1880s have received scant attention. The article recovers Evans’ activities which straddled humanitarianism, political activism, archaeology, anthropology/ethnography and journalism. Although Evans was (...) not a systematic thinker on international affairs, his writings typified the liberal internationalist ambivalences on the ‘plight’ of eastern christians in southeastern Europe and the Balkans. The article argues that his thought fused two interrelated temporal frames: the deep anthropological and archaeological time of ancient civilizations and the modern framework of nationalist politics. These different horizons guided his understanding of the world of international affairs and underpinned the key role he played in debates on the Bosnian and Albanian questions. (shrink)

Given the resurgence of eschatological thought in contemporary theology and the continued relevance of phenomenology in philosophy, this book brings together leading thinkers such as Lacoste, Romano, Kearney and Hart to explore the ways in which these two seemingly unrelated disciplines illuminate each other. Through a series of phenomenological analyses of key eschatological concepts and detailed readings in some of the key figures of both disciplines, this text reveals that phenomenology and eschatology are fundamentally inter-related, and that neither can be (...) fully understood without the other: without eschatology, phenomenology would not have developed the ethical and temporal aspects that characterize it today; without phenomenology, eschatology would remain relegated to the sidelines of serious theological discourse. Along the way, such diverse themes as time, death, parousia, and the call are re-examined and redefined. (shrink)

La primera parte de este artículo discute el poder persuasivo de las narrativas, especialmente en historia de la filosofía, ligándolas con la oposición entre razón y emoción y también con el conocido tema rortiano de las redescripciones. Además, presenta brevemente las líneas generales de la reconstrucción histórica hecha por Rorty y la tipología de géneros historiográficos que establece. La segunda parte muestra ejemplos del modo en que Rorty usa la persuasión al elaborar dos de tales géneros: las reconstrucciones históricas y (...) las reconstrucciones racionales. The first part of this paper discusses the persuasive power of narratives, especially when applied to history of philosophy, linking it with the opposition between reasons and emotions, and with the well-known rortyan theme of redescriptions. It also presents briefly the outlines of the historical reconstruction made by Rorty and the typology of historiographical genres established by him. The second part shows some examples of the way Rorty uses persuasion to develop two such genres: historical reconstructions and rational reconstructions. (shrink)

In recent years, Richard Kearney has emerged as a leading figure in the field of continental philosophy, widely recognized for his work in the areas of philosophical and religious hermeneutics, theory and practice of the imagination, and political thought. This much-anticipated--and long overdue--study is the first to reflect the full range and impact of Kearney's extensive contributions to contemporary philosophy. The book opens with Kearney's own "prelude" in which he traces his intellectual itinerary as it traverses the three imaginaries explored (...) in the volume: the dialogical, the political, and the narrative. The interviews that follow the first section allow readers to listen in on conversations between Kearney and some of the most interesting and respected thinkers of our time--Noam Chomsky, Charles Taylor, Jacques Derrida, Paul Ricouer, and Martha Nussbaum--as they reveal new and unexpected aspects of their thought on stories and mourning, ethics and narrative, terror and religion, intellectuals and ideology. The next section, on the political imaginary, looks at Kearney's distinctive contribution to the political situation in Ireland and in Europe more generally; and in the last, on narrative, writers including David Wood, Terry Eagleton, and Mark Dooley focus on Kearney's novels as instances of narrative theory put into literary practice. Concluding with Kearney's postscript, an essay on "Traversals and Epiphanies in Joyce and Proust," the volume comes full circle, encompassing the full extent of Richard Kearney's engagement and offerings as a philosopher. (shrink)

Who or what comes after God? In the wake of God, as the last fifty years of philosophy has shown, God comes back again, otherwise: Heidegger's last God, Levinas's God of Infinity, Derrida's and Caputo's tout autre, Marion's God without Being, Kearney's God who may be.

Martin Heidegger’s sustained reflection on Greek thought has been increasingly recognized as a decisive feature of his own philosophical development. At the same time, this important philosophical meeting has generated considerable controversy and disagreement concerning the radical originality of Heidegger’s view of the Greeks and their place in his groundbreaking thinking. In Heidegger and the Greeks, an international group of distinguished philosophers sheds light on the issues raised by Heidegger’s encounter and engagement with the Greeks. The careful and nuanced essays (...) brought together here shed light on how core philosophical concepts such as phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, and ethics are understood today. For readers at all levels, this volume is an invitation to continue the important dialogue with Greek thinking that was started and stimulated by Heidegger. Contributors are Claudia Baracchi, Walter A. Brogan, Günter Figal, Gregory Fried, Francisco J. Gonzalez, Drew A. Hyland, John Panteleimon Manoussakis, William J. Richardson, John Sallis, Dennis J. Schmidt, and Peter Warnek. (shrink)

The Ethics of Time" explores a rather uncharted field in philosophy, namely the ethical implications of time. It does so by utilizing the resources of phenomenology and hermeneutics. On the one hand, its rigorous analyses of such phenomena as waiting, memory, and the body are carried out phenomenologically, while on the other hand, it engages in a hermeneutical reading of such classical texts as, Augustine's Confessions and Sophocles's Oedipus Rex, among others. Nevertheless, this book makes a claim to originality, as (...) it does not provide a commentary on any single text or thinker. Even though a strictly philosophical endeavour, this book engages literature, theology and the arts more generally. It takes seriously phenomenology's claim of a consciousness both constituting time and being constituted by time. This claim has some important implications for the "ethical" self or, rather, for the ways in which such a self informed by time, might come to understand anew the problems of imperfection and ethical goodness. (shrink)

While philosophy believes it is impossible to have an experience of God without the senses, theology claims that such an experience is possible, though potentially idolatrous. In this engagingly creative book, John Panteleimon Manoussakis ends the impasse by proposing an aesthetic allowing for a sensuous experience of God that is not subordinated to imposed categories or concepts. Manoussakis draws upon the theological traditions of the Eastern Church, including patristic and liturgical resources, to build a theological aesthetic founded on the (...) inverted gaze of icons, the augmented language of hymns, and the reciprocity of touch. Manoussakis explores how a relational interpretation of being develops a fuller and more meaningful view of the phenomenology of religious experience beyond metaphysics and onto-theology. (shrink)

Unconscious Incarnations considers the status of the body in psychoanalytic theory and practice, bringing Freud and Lacan into conversation with continental philosophy to explore the heterogeneity of embodied life. By doing so, the body is no longer merely an object of scientific inquiry but also a lived body, a source of excessive intuition and affectivity, and a raw animality distinct from mere materiality. The contributors to this volume consist of philosophers, psychoanalytic scholars, and practitioners whose interdisciplinary explorations reformulate traditional psychoanalytic (...) concepts such as trauma, healing, desire, subjectivity, and the unconscious. Collectively, they build toward the conclusion that phenomenologies of embodiment move psychoanalytic theory and practice away from representationalist models and toward an incarnational approach to psychic life. Under such a carnal horizon, trauma manifests as wounds and scars, therapy as touch, subjectivity as bodily boundedness, and the unconscious 'real' as an excessive remainder of flesh. Unconscious incarnations signal events where the unsignifiable appears among signifiers, the invisible within the visible, and absence within presence. In sum: where the flesh becomes word and the word retains its flesh. Unconscious Incarnations seeks to evoke this incarnational approach in order to break through tacit taboos toward the body in psychology and psychoanalysis. This interdisciplinary work will appeal greatly to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists as well as philosophy scholars and clinical psychologists. (shrink)

John Panteleimon Manoussakis - Heidegger's Topology: Being, Place, World - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.4 674-675 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by John Panteleimon Manoussakis Boston College Jeff Malpas. Heidegger's Topology: Being, Place, World. Cambridge-London: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. 2006. Pp. x + 413. Cloth, $38.00. The exclusive focus on the who-question has often made philosophy forget the correlate where-question. All the answers given to the first (...) question describe a man who is essentially nowhere. Place is never taken into account as part of one's identity and this implies nothing less than the exclusion of the body, for belongingness.. (shrink)

The original hermeneutics was theological, that is, theology was the origin of hermeneutics. This chapter examines the relationship between theology and hermeneutics so as to demonstrate how the origin of hermeneutics and thereby its character, regardless of its object, could not have been anything but theological. This can only be done if the remarks that fulfill this double imperative by being as much an exposition on theology as on hermeneutics. Christological hermeneutics are permeated with the paradox of affirming both continuity (...) and discontinuity, both communion and difference. The Trinitarian affirmation of history assumes a particular significance as soon as one can turn to the hermeneutical site par excellence, namely, the Eucharist. The Greek term martyrion signifies witness, testimony, and also martyrdom. The testimonial character of testimony implies and necessitates an Other and even a Third, inscribing, the act of hermeneutics within a witnessing community that is founded upon such testimonies. (shrink)

Near is andDifficult to grasp, the God.Religion, too, perhaps religion even more, seems to be “near” enough; for it is such proximity, it would seem, that allows us to make all kinds of statements about it—whether in defense of it or against it. Yet were we to be asked, “What is religion?” and what makes an experience “religious,” or rather, what makes us append this characterization to any particular experience, we would find that, in Hölderlin’s words, religion is “difficult to (...) grasp”. To paraphrase one famous passage: “We know perfectly well what we mean when we speak of [religion] and understand just as well when we hear someone else refer to it. What, then, is [religion]? If no one asks me, I... (shrink)

This essay is an attempt towards a phenomenology of God. The leading question in our analysis will be whether God could be given to consciousness as a phenomenon. First, we go back to Husserl and to his formulation of the possibility of phenomenality. Then, the discussion proceeds to the innovative reappropriation of Husserlian phenomenology by Jean-Luc Marion and his notion of the saturated phenomenon. Finally, I propose that God can “appear” only through an “inverted intentionality,” such as it is exemplified (...) in certain divine manifestations recorded in Scripture, in the techniques of depicting the divine in icons, and finally, in the human person. (shrink)

The present essay is apologetic in as much as it aims to justify as well as to explain the philosophical appropriation of Dionysian metaphysics by contemporaryFrench phenomenology, especially by the work of Jean-Luc Marion. It should be noted that Dionysius serves as the inspiration, direct or indirect, of many authors in the contemporary French school, among whom the most notable are Jacques Derrida, Jean-Louis Chretien, and Jean-Yves Lacoste. The present essaywill focus particularly on the convergence between Dionysius’s theology and Marion’s (...) phenomenology. (shrink)

This essay gives a close reading of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex in light of Schelling's discussion of theodicy as teleology. The article raises the question of the connection between ethics and time, and it argues that ethical categories are really temporal ones, so much so that it would make little sense to posit a choice between good and evil as if there were two simultaneous options. Instead, the story of Oedipus shows us how Thebes is always to precede if one is (...) to reach Colonus, that evil precedes and enables the good. (shrink)

[Book Review] Eric Severson reviews John Panteleimon Manoussakis, ed. After God: Richard Kearney and the Religious Turn in Continental Philosophy . New York: Fordham University Press, 2005.

Book Review. Eric Severson reviews Peter Gratton and John Panteleimon Manoussakis, eds. Traversing the Imaginary: Richard Kearney and the Postmodern Challenge . Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2007.

The surviving pictorial hagiographical cycles of St Panteleimon were executed in the period between the 10th and 15th centuries. The most elaborate one is on a vita icon, consisting of sixteen scenes, at the monastery of St Catherine, Mt. Sinai and is at the centre of this research. The painter used the Passion of St Panteleimon by Symeon Metaphrastes as a main textual source for its creation. In addition, we may presume that the iconography of the images was (...) influenced by other existing pictorial cycles of the life of the saint. Also, the selection of the images, included in the saint's cycle, reflects the devotional needs and wishes of the unknown donor. (shrink)