I Alderdommen (1970) fremsetter Simone de Beauvoir en filosofisk analyse av alderdom og eldre menneskers situa- sjon, og hevder at behandlingen de får er «skandaløs»; samfunnet «returnerer dem som en vare det ikke lenger er bruk for». Hun tilkjennegir et like stort engasjement mot den urett som eldre utsettes for som hun gjør i Det annet kjønn (1949) når det gjelder undertrykkelsen av kvinner. Likevel påstår Beauvoir at alderdommen først og fremst er et problem for mannen, og det har blitt (...) hevdet at Alderdommen er et verk om aldersdiskriminering hvor mannens aldringsprosess gjøres til norm – ikke et feministisk verk på linje med Det annet kjønn. I denne artikkelen argumen- terer Tove Pettersen for at det nettopp er den feministiske filosofien Beauvoir utvikler i Det annet kjønn som ligger til grunn for hennes undersøkelser av undertrykkelse og diskriminering av eldre. I tillegg demonstrerer Beauvoirs omfattende analyse av alderdommen at hverken alder eller kjønn kan studeres uavhengig av hverandre. Alder og kjønn virker sammen, og må ses i lys av den situasjon disse fenomenene fremtrer i hvor også klasse er av stor betydning. Alderdommen kan derfor leses som et verk hvor Beauvoir viser hvordan ulike former for undertrykkelse virker sammen og bidrar til marginalisering og diskriminering av eldre. Nøkkelord: Simone de Beauvoir, Alderdommen, Det annet kjønn, feministisk filosofi, Den andre, aldersdiskriminering, alderisme******* -/- In The Coming of Age (1970), Simone de Beauvoir presents a philosophical analysis of old age and the elderly’s situa- tion, and claims that the treatment they receive is “scandalous”; society ‘returns them as a commodity that is no longer needed.’ She exhibits the same level of commitment regarding the injustice to which the elderly are exposed as she does in The Second Sex (1949) when it comes to the oppression of women. Nevertheless, Beauvoir claims that old age first and foremost is a problem for men, and it has been argued that The Coming of Age is a work on age discrim- ination where the male aging process is made the norm – not a feminist work on par with The Second Sex. In thisarticle, Tove Pettersen argues that it is precisely the feminist philosophy that Beauvoir develops in The Second Sex that enables her to analyze the oppression and discrimination of the elderly. Additionally, Beauvoir's comprehensive analysis of old age demonstrates that neither age nor gender can be studied independently. Age and gender intersect, and must be be seen in light of the situation in which class is of great importance. Thus, The Coming of Age can be read as a work in which Beauvoir shows how different forms of oppression work together and contribute to the mar- ginalization and discrimination of the elderly. Keywords: Simone de Beauvoir, The Coming of Age, The Second Sex, Feminist Philosophy, The Other, Age Discrimination, Ageism. (shrink)

I argue that philosophy department should be reorganised: they should be built up around strong research groups in restricted fields. Another way to think of this: departments should model themselves on research centres. Members of such research centres / departments would teach outside their area of competency. At the BA level teaching can remain as it is, but those teaching classes will often be teaching outside the area of expertise. That is not a problem. PhD supervision would be within the (...) restricted fields that the department specialises in. In other words: I reject the zoo-model of academic departments where you get ‘one of each’, so that all classes can be taught by someone working on the topic of that class. (shrink)

Despite the fact that Norway is considered to be one of the most gender equal countries in the world, the proportion of women in philosophy is still low. In this article, we reflect on women's presence in Norwegian philosophy, partly based on interviews with Norwegian women philosophers from different universities. -/- We discuss the low proportion of women among students and staff in the field, investigate whether gender perspectives and feminist philosophy are present in the study of philosophy today. We (...) also identify some characteristics of the Norwegian postwar philosophy, such as diversity and openness, power struggles and gender blindness. Our material also shows that measures to improve gender balance in philosophy, has met fierce resistance. We discuss how the features of Norwegian postwar philosophy, together with direct and indirect stereotypes on gender, rationality and natural properties, has contributed to the fact that women still are a minority in Norwegian philosophy. -/- We also argue that the study of feminist philosophy and the integration of gender perspective is necessary in order to achieve gender equality in the discipline, to pave way for a new development in Norwegian philosophy, and to ensure the quality of higher education. (shrink)

In this article the main focus is to analyse and present the Works of Love by Søren Kierkegaard, and through the critique of Adorno, illustrate the perspective of love that is present in Kierkegaards text, and in doing so I will try to reestablish and widen the concept of charity. I will argue that the lack of a societal surrounding Adorno is highligning, is precisely what makes Kierkegaards concept of love that robust, and it is necessary in the argumentation for (...) establishing a concept of charity that contains equality between human beings. Is the essence of love expressed through our ability to value and treat other human beings in mcuh the same way, to look beyond their individual characteristics and love the person unconditionally? Or is it rather the case that because of the individual characteristics of a human -being, we are capable of loving it? To offer charity, do you then have the ability and will to act according to it, or is charity to be understood primarily in a historical context and at a certain place? These questions will be adressed in this article. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that there is an important distinction between past philosophers who are still sufficiently close to contemporary philosophy to have an actual significance on on-going philosophical research and such ones which are still relevant to modern problems in that we can recognize their questions and projects as ancestors of our own questions and projects. The class of the latter philosophical classics is fairly large, that of the former fairly restricted. I also argue that philosophers belonging to (...) the era before post-renaissance philosophy to a significantly lesser extent are even relevant to contemporary philosophical problems than those belonging to the post- Cartesian tradition. The last part of the paper is addressing the question whether philosophy can be said to make progress. I answer, with some hesitation, in the affirmative, while stressing that classical philosophers nevertheless can claim to as much greatness as more recent ones. I also make a point of accepting that solutions to philosophical problems is compatible with the existence of a manifold of solutions to one problem. It is also important to be aware that while some philosophical problems may be too deep to permit a solution, there are many middle-sized problems in philosophy that get a solution. (shrink)

I århundreder har filosofien haft indflydelse på alverdens civilisationer, og ikke mindst har den europæiske kultur draget megen nytte af filosofien. David Favrholdts bog giver en kort og præcis introduktion til en række filosofiske problemstillinger og forklarer den mindre velbevandrede læser, hvorfor filosofi er vigtig, og hvad den har af betydning for den verden, vi lever i. Bogen henvender sig til alle, der har lyst til at snuse til filosofien, og den lægger op til videre selvstudium, hvis man (...) finder nogle af emnerne særligt interessante. (shrink)

It is a useful exercise to reflect, sometimes, on the way philosophy is carried out, and on how we think philosophy should be carried out in the future. We need to accept that academia is undergoing some important changes, which means that academic philosophy is also changing. The aim of this article is to discuss what gives philosophy its legitimacy in Norway. I will argue that the justification for having philosophy in Norway, in one way or the other, must be (...) that it has societal value. In this respect, I believe that teaching and public outreach are philosophy's most important areas of focus. Even though I mainly concentrate on academic philosophy in Norway, much of what I say is relevant for understanding the legitimacy of academic philosophy in other countries. (shrink)

The philosophical situation at Copenhagen University in the 1960’s was dominated by two positivists. Th elogical positivist Jørgen Jørgensen – who had written the history of the “movement” – and the legal positivistAlf Ross. There were also two “outsiders”: Peter Zinkernagel, who did more analytical philosophy of language in the British style, and K. Grue Sørensen who was working in the traditions of neo-Kantianism. In 1955 Grue-Sørensen was hired as the first professor in education – after a long controversy about (...) the scientific status ofeducation as a discipline – but with a focus on the history of education. He had received a doctoral degree in philosophy in 1950 with a dissertation on refl exivity as a philosophical concept and a thesis about the reflexivity of consciousness. He was also an objectivist in ethics, and had been critical of the prevalent moral relativism and subjectivism found in recent philosophy. Jørgensen and Ross had done important work on moral argumentation with more technical work on the logic of imperatives and norms. Moral objectivism was not only wrong but in a way also “immoral” because it undermined their belief in democracy. Especially Jørgensen also thought that the idea of reflexivity was wrong when applied to consciousness. Neither statements nor consciousness could be reflexive – that is refer to themselves/itself. The reflexivity of consciousness is – according to Jørgensen – simply not an empirical psychological fact. Grue-Sørensen tried to establish the foundation of a theory of education based both on conceptions of consciousness and of the relation between scientific knowledge – facts – and moral values – in a neo-Kantian fashion. For him the interplay between ethics and knowledge was a central part of a theory of education – a belief due to which he never became a professor of philosophy – having tried many times. These debates in philosophy and in education were superseded in the 1970’s by the rise in influence of the German inspiration from Critical Theory and the demise of logical positivism. (shrink)

The paper presents a phenomenology of the hand in four declinations: the touching, the grasping, the working and the throwing hands. This selective sequence expresses not only the disposition but also a hypothesis. To be disclosed is a distance already in the intimate doings and a proximity still in the far-reaching operations of the hands. The claim is that this intimate alienness and distant proximity makes the human hands technical and associates the human being originally with technology. It is assumed (...) that pedagogical philosophy will have an interest in this anthropo-technical condition fundamental to the Bildung of man. (shrink)

This article1 I 2014 hadde nærmere én av tre høyere utdanning. Blant folk mellom 25 og 39 år har mer enn halvparten av kvinnene høyere utdanning, noe som gjør denne aldersgruppen til den høyest utdannede i Norge.2 presents reflections on women's presence in Norwegian philosophy, partly as a result of input from key persons in the Norwegian philosophy environment. We discuss the low proportion of women among students and staff in the field, then we investigate whether gender perspectives are present (...) in the study of philosophy and why women's low participation in the study of philosophy is regarded as a vital challenge. We argue that awareness of the impact history of categorization of gender is important and it is necessary to examine current direct and indirect stereotypes of gender, rationality and natural properties and their role in Norwegian philosophy today. We identify characteristics of the Norwegian post-war philosophy, such as diversity and openness, power struggles and gender blindness, and argue that women throughout the postwar period and until today been a minority in philosophy. Our material shows that measures to improve gender balance in philosophy, and attempts to integrate gender perspectives, has met fierce resistance. The article also shows how the study of feminist philosophy and its influence and position in Norway, is well suited to give us a richer and more complex picture of the Norwegian philosophy. It may tell us something about how open-minded or closed the philosophical communities are, but it can also throw light on how philosophy itself plays the role as critical and self-reflective. (shrink)

Filosofi og pædagogik er gamle fæller, og der er et overlap mellem filosofiens historie og pædagogikkens historiske litteratur. Store tænkere som Platon, Aristoteles, Augustin, Descartes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Herbart og Dewey hører hjemme begge steder. I den pædagogiske filosofi kan almene teoretiske og praktisk filosofiske spørgsmål udforskes systematisk og historisk. Gennem diskussioner af sådanne spørgsmål kan man forholde sig mere nysgerrigt, bevidst, begrundet og kritisk til pædagogisk praksis såvel som til pædagogisk teori, empiri og undervisningsteknologi. (...) -/- Fællesskabet er ikke uproblematisk. Pædagogik er ikke filosofi, og pædagogisk filosofi ikke kun pædagogik. Både didaktik og almen pædagogik kan komme i konflikt med pædagogisk filosofi. Hvordan kan almene pædagogiske spørgsmål overhovedet belyses filosofisk, og hvad betyder de for filosofien selv? En pædagogisk filosofisk tilgang forandrer kanon i både pædagogik og filosofi. Udvalget af nøgletekster ændres. Emner, der er værd at diskutere, forskydes. Nye forskningsspørgsmål og prioriteringer viser sig. Et pædagogisk perspektiv på filosofiens udvikling vil fremhæve dens bidrag til at forstå ’den pædagogiske problem- og fænomenverden’, ligesom et filosofisk perspektiv på pædagogikken vil flytte – eller rettere udvide – fokus med hensyn til dens idéhistorie såvel som dens aktuelle teoretiske praksis. Som i al anden filosofi kan man i den pædagogiske filosofi diskutere teoretiske og praktiske, såvel som poetiske og æstetiske spørgsmål; men det er typisk med en særlig vinkel, nemlig den pædagogiske. Man kan således diskutere erkendelse, viden og sandhed, ligeså vel som man kan undersøge ret, retfærdighed og skønhed. Ofte vil det være med en særlig tvist. Den pædagogiske filosofi kan vise sig som særegen både ved sin særlige position og ved at relatere sig til det pædagogiske som genstandsfelt. Hvad denne position og dette genstandsfelt egentlig er, er der dog ingen enighed om. Det kan ikke engang siges at være udelukkende pædagogisk defineret, og derfor må den pædagogiske filosofi forholde sig åbent til begge dele. Studier i pædagogisk filosofi indbyder til denne drøftelse. (shrink)

Every human being may be said to be a philosopher, endowed with the capacity to reflect on her own life as part of some general worldview or even 'ontology'. With that said, it is not obvious what kind of philosophical training a state-organized, state-funded educational system should support. This paper seeks an answer to this problem in a Kantian understanding of enlightenment: in transcendental philosophy, what corresponds to a formal notion of ontology is reason, and the autonomy of reason is (...) realized in free and equal citizens governing themselves according to their own best judgment. A precondition of such government is a certain general level of rationality and reflection among the populace, a level to be fostered by public philosophy education. This may warrant closer, 'dialogic' ties between teaching and research as the best way for students to develop their capacity for philosophical thinking. It may also favour the taking of a critical stance on the more scientistic approach dominating much of today's mainstream philosophy. (shrink)

Anmeldelse af Ole Thyssens 'Det filosofiske blik' og 'Blikskift'.

У статті висвітлено розвиток ідеї патріархату в Українській Греко-Католицькій Церкві у діаспорі, із окремим фокусом на середовищі третьої хвилі української еміграції у 1945-1962 роках. Після завершення Другої світової війни близько 250 000 українських біженців опинились на території Західної Європи, звідки вони протягом 1947-1955 років розселились в країни Північної та Південної Америки, Західної Європи та Австралії. Досвід їхнього перебування в таборах переміщених осіб був позначений зростанням ролі Церкви, яка продовжила відігравати важливу роль в їхньому житті і після їх нього переселення до (...) згаданих країн. DP-табори стали місцем зближення між українськими греко-католиками і православними, одним з наслідків чого стали звернення українського греко-католицького єпископату з пропозицією створення спільного патріархату з українськими православними, який був би в єдності з Римом. З іншого боку розширення географії присутності УГКЦ та заснування нових митрополій в Канаді і США висунуло на перший план питання єдності всіх структурних одиниць цієї Церкви на глобальному рівні, яку, як дехто вважав, міг забезпечити саме патріархат. Наостанок патріархат почав розглядатись українською повоєнною еміграцією, як засіб збереження єдності діаспори перед лицем асиміляції та дезінтеграції. А в майбутньому як інституція, що могла ефективно допомагати відродженню Церкви на батьківщині після здобуття нею незалежності. Останній аспект патріархальної ідеї справив значний вплив на постання Українського патріархального руху, а його близькість з цілями, які ставила перед собою третя хвиля української еміграції, забезпечила рухові високий рівень масовості і пасіонарності. (shrink)

La teoría moderna de la literatura surgió del encuentro, no siempre pacífico, entre la filosofía, la estética y la literatura bajo la influencia dominante de los programas idealistas y románticos. En el período que va desde la publicación del tratado de Schiller Sobre poesía ingenua y sentimental (1795) hasta la aparición de El nacimiento de la tragedia (1872) de Nietzsche, los conceptos poetológicos tradicionales fueron reelaborados en términos especulativos, sustancialistas y trascendentales. A través de una lectura comparada de textos filosóficos (...) y literarios, este libros propone una interpretación de conjunto en la que la teoría moderna de la literatura se caracteriza por una conciencia crítica cuyo ideal de transparencia reflexiva no cesa de conducir a diversas “formas de lo informe”. (shrink)