Given that Lucretius offers a systematic and cohesive explanation of the workings of nature, we should not expect inconsistencies in his poem. The explanation presented by Lucretius emphatically rejects any interventionist divine machinery of the cosmos, offering in its place the eminently regular dynamics of atomic configuration and dissolution, which can explain everything that pertains to natural philosophy without necessitating the activity of any divinity. The reader who understands the basics of Lucretius’ philosophy, therefore, should be surprised that theDRNbegins with (...) an anthropomorphic description of the goddess Venus, whom the poet petitions to intervene actively in human affairs. Lucretius gradually refines this initial presentation of the goddess’ essence throughout the poem, suggesting that the Venus who inaugurates the poem must be nuanced once one has learned the basic principles of Epicurean philosophy. At the end ofDRN4, Venus is presented not as a divine being but as nothing more than the sexual drive shared by all creatures in nature (haec Venus est nobis, 4.1058). Historically scholars have been keen to ‘correct’ perceived inconsistencies such as this, either by arguing that such imperfections derive from later interpolators or by appealing to the incomplete nature of the text as we possess it. Of course, no one has suggested that Lucretius would have changed or removed the proem, so the Venus problem remains an issue. One major aim of this article is to show that the process we witness with Lucretius’ Venus is not inconsistent but programmatic, a point grasped by many with regard to Venus herself but not in respect to theDRNas a whole. In other words, this article extends this insight about Lucretius’ Venus, whose providential attributes are only provisionally attached to her at the outset of the poem and, in due course, are completely removed. In fact, I will argue that the technique of gradually redefining initial propositions—a process I will refer to as provisional argumentation—fundamentally informs Lucretius’ famous metaphor of the honeyed cup, and I will suggest that we ought to recognize this technique as a major aspect of Lucretius’ discursive method throughout theDRN. (shrink)

The problem which seems to remain with the Advaitin's non-realist account is that in giving up both the robust realist use of existenthood and the strong idealist use of cognitive verification, he seems to have weakened the connection between what must be the case and what is experienced. In explaining the nature of cognition, the realist says that existenthood (objects ontologically independent of cognition)must be the case; the idealist says that existenthoodmust not be the case. But in saying that existenthood (...) and non-existenthood are both outside the purview of the explanation of cognition, and then further, in saying that there is only a weak connection — of coherent assumption or best justification through confirmation — between objects and cognition, in other words, refusing to say whatmust be the case, is the non-realist not making his ontology acutely contingent on the current features of cognition? Is his ontology not, in this sense, provisional upon current cognition? As any reader even glancingly acquainted with Advaita would see straightaway, that understanding of ontology as aprovisional state (samv $$\underset{\raise0.3em\hbox{$\smash{\scriptscriptstyle\cdot}$}}{r} $$ tti-sattā) is precisely what the Advaitin has striven to establish. We must leave the examination of the purpose of this effort for another occasion. (shrink)

Infamously, Rawls assumed a democratic society to be “a complete and closed social system,” in that “entry into it is only by birth and exit from it is only by death.” Since the beginning of the present millennium, however, debates about the ethical issues related to immigration have been prominent. In this context, these methodological departure points seem long outdated, if not simply biased. This paper will rework Rawls’s theory of migration for application to the case of provisional immigrants (...) by reworking its theoretical underpinnings. I will argue that once his assumptions are adjusted, Rawlsian notions of ‘stability’ in conjunction with his idea of a ‘society understood as a fair system of cooperation’ justify inclusive membership regimes. In other words, Rawlsian domestic justice requires inclusive membership regimes for provisional immigrants. (shrink)

This article attempts to reframe the state of research on the notion of goblet words in the Zhuangzi. Recent studies predominantly view the notion of zhiyan as referring to peculiar stylistic forms exhibited in the Zhuangzi—forms such as dilemmatic questions and paradoxes. In this article, I question the quick identification of these forms as zhiyan. I argue that zhiyan are essentially definite yet provisional simple-form utterances located on the level of everyday interaction and coexistence. On this level, the peculiar (...) stylistic forms do not play their part. However, such stylistic forms do become indispensable in discussing and recommending zhiyan. It is on this meta-level—for the Zhuangzi, the level of writing—that we find these forms employed. Based on structural similarities, we may stretch the label ‘zhiyan’ to include such forms but should keep in mind that any such extension is secondary to the use of language in coexisting with others. (shrink)

This is, indeed, another work on the subject of hate speech regulation in the United States. And yet, it is not just another such work. For my goal here is not to settle the jurisprudential arguments regarding the possibility of any specific hate speech regulation, either extant or yet to be conceived, withstanding a Constitutional test. Nor is it my intention to demonstrate, on the basis of a comparative study of existing legislation, that such regulation either is or is not (...) effective in addressing or redressing the social ills of hatred, discrimination, and inequality. Rather, I will achieve greater analytical clarity about just what the harms of hate speech are. I do so in order to reinvigorate the question about regulation with a new view of what exactly the object needing attention is, by demonstrating that though there are real harms here, the state cannot provide a regulatory remedy . Thus, in my conclusion I will assert that the question of what we might do differently in response to hate speech can only be answered —however provisionally—insofar as we first confront how we need to think differently about it. Specifically, I will argue that we need to replace the emphasis on redressing harms once they have occurred with a new emphasis on addressing, and ultimately eliminating, the conditions which make those harms possible in the first place. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Index to Volume Fifty-SixArticlesBernier, Bernard, National Communion: Watsuji Tetsurō's Conception of Ethics, Power, and the Japanese Imperial State, 1 : 84-105Between Principle and Situation: Contrasting Styles in the Japanese and Korean Traditions of Moral Culture, Chai-sik Chung, 2 : 253-280Buxton, Nicholas, The Crow and the Coconut: Accident, Coincidence, and Causation in the Yogavāiṣṭha, 3 : 392-408Chan, Sin Yee, The Confucian Notion of Jing (Respect), Sin Yee Chan, 2 : (...) 229-252Chong, Kim-chong, Zhuangzi and the Nature of Metaphor, 3 : 370-391Chung, Chai-sik, Between Principle and Situation: Contrasting Styles in the Japanese and Korean Traditions of Moral Culture, 2 : 253-280The Confucian Ideal of Harmony, Chenyang Li, 4 : 583-603The Confucian Notion of Jing.(Respect), Sin Yee Chan, 2 : 229-252The Conventional Status of Reflexive Awareness: What's at Stake in a Tibetan Debate? Jay L. Garfield, 2 : 201-228The Crisis of Knowledge in Islam (I): The Case of al-'āmirī, Paul L. Heck, 1 : 106-135The Crow and the Coconut: Accident, Coincidence, and Causation in the Yogavāiṣṭha, Nicholas Buxton, 3 : 392-408De Reu, Wim, Right Words Seem Wrong: Neglected Paradoxes in Early Chinese Philosophical Texts, 2 : 281-300The Desire You Are Required to Get Rid of: A Functionalist Analysis of Desire in the Bhaga-vadgītā, Christopher Framarin, 4 : 604-617Framarin, Christopher, The Desire You Are Required to Get Rid of: A Functionalist Analysis of Desire in the Bhagavadgītā, 4 : 604-617Garfield, Jay L., The Conventional Status of Reflexive Awareness: What's at Stake in a Tibetan Debate? 2 : 201-228Heck, Paul L., The Crisis of Knowledge in Islam (I): The Case of al-'ā mirī, 1 : 106-135Heidegger's Comportment toward East-West Dialogue, Lin Ma and Jaap van Brakel, 4 : 519-566Ho, Chien-hsing, Saying the Unsayable, 3 : 409-427Kantor, Hans-Rudolf, Ontological Indeterminacy and Its Soteriological Relevance: An Assessment of Mou Zongsan's (1909-1995) Interpretation of Zhiyi's (538-597) Tiantai Buddhism, 1 : 16-68Lai, Karyn, Li in the Analects: Training in Moral Competence and the Question of Flexibility, 1 : 69-83Li, Chenyang, The Confucian Ideal of Harmony, 4 : 583-603Li in the Analects: Training in Moral Competence and the Question of Flexibility, Karyn Lai, 1 : 69-83Ma, Lin, and Jaap van Brakel, Heidegger's Comportment toward East-West Dialogue, 4 : 519-566National Communion: Watsuji Tetsurō's Conception of Ethics, Power, and the Japanese Imperial State, Bernard Bernier, 1 : 84-105Ontological Indeterminacy and Its Soteriological Relevance: An Assessment of Mou Zongsan's (1909-1995) Interpretation of Zhiyi's (538- 597) Tiantai Buddhism, Hans-Rudolf Kantor, 1 : 16-68Right Words Seem Wrong: Neglected Paradoxes in Early Chinese Philosophical Texts, Wim De Reu, 2 : 281-300The Role of Time in the Structure of Chinese Logic, Jinmei Yuan, 1 : 136-152Sakya Pandita and the Status of Concepts, Jonathan Stoltz, 4 : 567-582Saying the Unsayable, Chien-hsing Ho, 3 : 409-427Schiltz, Elizabeth, Two Chariots: The Justification of the Best Life in the Katha Upanishad and Plato's Phaedrus, 3 : 451-468Spackman, John, The Tiantai Roots of Dōgen's Philosophy of Language and Thought, 3 : 428-450Stevenson, Frank W., Zhuangzi's Dao as Background Noise, 2 : 301-331Stoltz, Jonathan, Sakya Pandita and the Status of Concepts, 4 : 567-582The Tiantai Roots of Dōgen's Philosophy of Language and Thought, John Spackman, 3 : 428-450 [End Page 709]Two Chariots: The Justification of the Best Life in the Katha Upanishad and Plato's Phaedrus, Elizabeth Schiltz, 3 : 451-468van Brakel, Jaap, and Lin Ma, Heidegger's Comportment toward East-West Dialogue, 4 : 519-566Yuan, Jinmei, The Role of Time in the Structure of Chinese Logic, 1 : 136-152Zhuangzi and the Nature of Metaphor, Kim-chong Chong, 3 : 370-391Zhuangzi's Dao as Background Noise, Frank W. Stevenson, 2 : 301-331Book NotesFenner, David E. W., Introducing Aesthetics (note by James McRae), 3 : 515-516Introducing Aesthetics, by David E. W. Fenner (note by James McRae), 3 : 515-516McRae, James, a book... (shrink)

Jizang sets forth a hermeneutical theory of “one name, infinite meanings” that proposes four types of interpretation of word meaning to the effect that a nominal word X means X, non-X, the negation of X, and all things whatsoever. In this article, I offer an analysis of the theory, with a view to elucidating Jizang's thought on meaning and reference and considering its contemporary significance. The theory, I argue, may best be viewed as an expedient means for telling (...) us how to use words provisionally without any definite understanding of their referents. (shrink)

For Sengzhao (374−414 CE), a leading Sanlun philosopher of Chinese Buddhism, things in the world are ontologically indeterminate in that they are devoid of any determinate form or nature. In his view, we should understand and use words provisionally, so that they are not taken to connote the determinacy of their referents. To echo the notion of ontic indeterminacy and indicate the provisionality of language, his main work, the Zhaolun, abounds in paradoxical expressions. In this essay, I offer a philosophical (...) analysis and rational reconstruction of Sengzhao’s linguistic thought, with a view to exploring the rationale for and purpose of his use of paradoxical language. (shrink)

What is right in the corporation is not what is right in a man's home or in his church," a former vice-president of a large firm observes. "What is right in the corporation is what the guy above you wants from you." Such sentiments pervade American society, from corporate boardrooms to the basement of the White House. In Moral Mazes, Robert Jackall offers an eye-opening account of how corporate managers think the world works, and of how big organizations shape moral (...) consciousnss. Based on extensive interviews with managers at every level of two industrial firms and of a large public relations agency, Moral Mazes takes the reader inside the intricate world of the corporation. It is a world where hard work does not necessarily lead to success, but where sharp talk, self-promotion, powerful patrons, and sheer luck might; where intense competition is masked by cheerfully bland public faces; where intentions are cloaked and frankness is simply one of many guises; and where words are always provisional and accountability often depends on the ability to outrun mistakes. In this topsy-turvy world, managers must bring often unforgiving technology and always difficult people together to make money, an uncompromising task demanding continual compromises with conventional verities. Moral issues are translated into practical concerns and into issues of public relations. Sooner or later, managrs ask themselves: How does one act in such a world and maintain a sense of personal integrity? Moral Mazes is a brilliant, sometimes disturbing, often wildly funny study of corporate thinking, decision-making, and morality. It is an analytical work of great importance, one filled with compelling real life stories of the men and women charged with running the business of America. It is a book for anyone interested in how big organizations actually function, or who is concerned with the current moral malaise in our public life. (shrink)

This chapter considers a provisional hypothesis that Logos is indeed absolutely perfect – in a word, God – and then discusses the implications of this assumption for the scope of contingency. It then argues that if God exists, it is likely that contingent reality is vastly greater than what current scientific theory or even speculation fancies. The conditions for freedom in the divine and human cases differ in a way that reflects the difference in ontological status between an (...) absolutely independent Creator and a dependent, causally conditioned creature. The chapter also discusses some applications of the many‐universe‐creation hypothesis. Finally, it addresses the relationship of Logos to logical and mathematical necessities. (shrink)

This paper is about what we may provisionally call “indicative” conditionals. It aims to describe one use of the word ‘if’, by giving the truth conditions of sentences using ‘if’ in the way in question. Here are some sentences that, on their natural interpretations, illustrate the target use.

This paper is about what we may provisionally call “indicative” conditionals. It aims to describe one use of the word ‘if’, by giving the truth conditions of sentences using ‘if’ in the way in question. Here are some sentences that, on their natural interpretations, illustrate the target use.

This book is the first sustained modern investigation of Plato’s theology. A central thesis of the book is that Plato _had _a theology—not just a mythology for the ideal city, not just the theory of forms or the theory of cosmic souls, but also, irreducible to any of these, an account of God as _Nous _, the source of rational order both to souls and the world of bodies. The understanding of God as Reason, and of the world as governed (...) directly or indirectly by Reason, is worked out in the dialogues of Plato’s last period, the _Statesman, Philebus, Timaeus, _and _Laws. _These dialogues offer a strategy for explaining the physical world that goes beyond anything in the middle dialogues, and gives the best starting point for understanding the cosmologies and theologies of Aristotle, the Stoics, and later ancient thinkers. Menn focuses on the _Timaeus _as Plato’s most sustained effort to provide what _Anaxagoras had failed to deliver: an explanation of the world through Reason, showing that things are as they are because it is best, or because it best serves the order of the world as a whole. Anaxagoras was disappointed because he explained things through their material constituents, without explaining why the constituents are ordered as they are; but the theory of forms has the same defect, since it_ _cannot explain why different parts of the universe participate in different forms according to a particular order. The _Timaeus _and other late dialogues attempt to supply the missing explanation of the ordering of the physical world. These dialogues do not retreat from the middle dialogue theory of forms, nor do they escape into an esoteric theory of numbers; but they add to the middle dialogues an analysis of the principles necessary to account for the existence and partial intelligibility of the sensible world—not only forms and a material substance but also _Nous _and souls. Although the demiurge of the _Timaeus _ _is represented as a cause both to souls and bodies, most scholars have been reluctant to identify the demiurge as a being separate from and superior to souls, because they think that both the meaning of the Greek word _nous _and Plato’s own statements require that _Nous _is_ _either a kind of soul or something inseparable from souls. Reexamining the linguistic evidence and the Platonic texts, Menn argues that _nous _can mean something separate from souls, namely the virtue of rationality or intelligence that souls participate in. Menn argues that Anaxagoras’ _Nous _should be construed as such a virtue; then he examines what status this virtue has in the context of the Platonic theory of forms, and how it_ _is a cause both to souls and to bodies. Soul plays a crucial role in mediating the causality of _Nous _and introducing rational order into the world of bodies, but neither soul in general nor the world-soul in particular can be identified with _Nous. _ Menn stresses the pre-Socratic context for the cosmology and theology of Plato’s late dialogues; he argues for the importance of Diogenes of Appolonia in particular, and he reconstructs a possible new fragment of Diogenes from the _Timaeus _and from the Hippocratic treatise _On Breaths. _In the _Timaeus _and other late dialogues Plato attempts to do better than his predecessors by standards implicit in Socrates’ critique of Anaxagoras in the _Phaedo, _but what Plato offers remains consciously provisional. Aristotle argues that the _Timaeus _remains liable to some of the same criticisms that Socrates had leveled against Anaxagoras, and Aristotle’s own cosmology and theology take up Plato’s challenge to carry out Anaxagoras’ promise of an explanation of the world through _Nous, _and attempt to improve on the _Timaeus _as_ _Plato had improved on Anaxagoras. In this way the _Timaeus _serves as an essential starting point, not only_ _for those later ancient philosophers who took it as an authoritative statement on the world and on God but also for those who took it as a challenge to do better. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Elements of Eleatic Ontology' MONTGOMERY FURTH THE TASKOF AN INTERPRETERof Parmenides is to find the simplest, historically most plausible, and philosophically most comprehensible set of assumptions that imply (in a suitably loose sense) the doctrine of 'being' set out in Parmenides' poem. In what follows I offer an interpretation that certainly is simple and that I think should be found comprehensible. Historically, only more cautious claims are possible, for (...) several portions of the general view from which I 'deduce the poem' are not clearly stated in the poem itself; my explanation of this is that they are operating as tac/t assumptions, and indeed that the poem is best thought of as an attempt to force these very assumptions to the surface for formulation and criticism -that the poem is a challenge. To be sure, there are dangers in pretending, as for dramatic purposes I shall, that ideas are definite and explicit which for Parmenides himself must have been tacit or vague--that Parmenides knew what he was doing as clearly as I represent him; I try to avoid them, but the risk must be taken. I even believe that not to take it, in the name of preserving his thought pure from anachronous contamination, actually prevents us from seeing the extent to which he, pioneer, was ahead of his timc the argument works both ways. So let me hedge my historical claim in this way: the view I shall discuss could have been an active-indeed a controlling---element of Eleaticism; to suppose that Parmenides held it not only explains the poem, but also helps explain the subsequent reactions to Eleaticism of Anaxagoras, Democritus, and Plato (though there is not space to elaborate this here). In addition, it brings his thought astonishingly close to some contemporary philosophical preoccupations. In the first of the following sections, I lay down some sketchy but necessary groundwork concerning the early Greek concept of 'being.' Then in Section 2 an interpretation is given of what I take to be the central Parmenidean doctrine, that 'it cannot be said that anything is not.' This section is the lengthiest and most involved, but it also contains all the moves that appear to be important. Of the remaining sections, Section 3 exp]Mn.qthe principle: 'of what is, all that can be said is: it is,' Section 4 deals briefly with the remaining cosmology of "The Way of Truth," and Section 5 considers the question whether Parmenides himself believed the fantastic conclusions of his argument. There is a short postscript on a point of methodology. 1. A Word on 6v If we are to examine Parmenides' reasoning profitably, an indispensable pre1This paper wasprepared while the author was beneficiary of a Grant-in-Aid of Research from the American Council of Learned Societies, hereby gratefully acknowledged. [111] 112 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY liminary is to estabhsh at least a provisional reading for the Greek words translated "is" or "it is" (tar,v), "what is" or "being" (Sv,rb 5v), "to be" (alva0. For while it is evident enough that in his poem Parmenides purports to be delivering an insight of the utmost significance concerning rb tbv (as he calls it), still the construction which he puts upon the term and its cognates, and the understanding which he expects of his listener, are not so clear and have been topics of dispute. Especially notable, and often noted, is the fact that Parmenides' discussion of 'being' shows no sign of the conceptual distinction considered elementary nowadays, between the "is" linking subject and predicate and the "is" of existence; and in fact it needs no documentation here that this distinction was not reflected in either ordinary or philosophical Greek idiom until, at least, a much later date than his, the word tare expressing both concepts. Also highly visible in the poem is the abundance of occurrences of tare used absolutely, unaccompanied by any predicate expression. As a result of this last, the poem can create in the contemporary reader the impression that r5 tSv is being used to mean what is in the existential sense only, to mean what there is; indeed some students of the poem conclude not only that Parmenides... (shrink)

Sophocles' Antigone contains the first recorded instance of the word αὑτ ό νομος, the source for our word “autonomous”. I argue that reflection upon the human aspiration toward autonomy is central to that work. I begin by focusing on the difficulty readers of the play have determining whether Antigone's actions in the play should be considered autonomous and then suggest that recognizing this difficulty is crucial to a proper understanding of the play. The very aspects of Antigone's character (...) that seem to militate against understanding her actions within the play as autonomous—her rejection of life, her intimacy with death and the way she seems defined by her incestuous heritage— serve to illustrate the inherently problematic character of a moral ideal that we can provisionally call Antigone's autonomy. I show how the movement of the play can be understood in terms of Antigone's progress from what Kant would characterize as a heteronomous representation of her irremissible duty to bury her dead brother, to a self-conception defined by a recognition and embrace of her autonomy understood as, in Kant's words, “a respect for something entirely different from life”. Antigone's autonomy is exemplified by her choice to be dead, the choice to bear the burden of responsibility to her own. This choice, I argue, must be understood as the choice of herself as defined by her obligation to her own. Sophocles' Antigone suggests that the moral ideal Antigone represents is unliveable, but that this ideal is nonetheless essential to human moral aspiration. (shrink)

This paper provides an interpretation of the existential conception of selfhood that follows from Merleau-Ponty’s account of perception. On this view, people relate to themselves not by “looking within” in acts of introspection but, first, by “looking without” at the field of solicitations in which they are immersed and, eventually, in Merleau-Ponty’s words, by “making explicit” the “melodic unity” or “immanent sense” of their behavior. To make sense of this, I draw out a distinction latent in Merleau-Ponty’s view between a (...) pre-reflective sense of self and a reflective self-interpretation. The former is a suite of abilities and dispositions in light of which a person is aware of and drawn to act in a situation. This sense of self undergoes transitions over time, is constitutively susceptible to moments of disorientation, and tends toward but never achieves full coherence. Reflective self-interpretation is an activity whereby someone—provisionally and defeasibly—clarifies, articulates, and gets a better “grip” on how they are prereflectively drawn to act. I ground this interpretation in a detailed reading of Merleau-Ponty’s treatment of romantic love and I corroborate it by examining his account of the emergence of class-consciousness in the self-interpretation of a worker. (shrink)

In chapter one I will try to reconstruct a plot, or a hidden agenda, in the discussion in ethics between the beginning of the twentieth century and 1958, the year of a decisive turning point in ethics, both Anglo-Saxon and Continental, and strangely enough also the year of the beginning of the end of the Cold War, of post-Tridentine Catholicism, and perhaps something else. My hypothesis will be that there are two similar starting points for the Anglo-Saxon and the Continental (...) twentieth-century discussion, the philosophies of Henry Sidgwick and Friedrich Nietzsche, both expressions of some kind of ethical scepticism, and that a third, somewhat analogous starting-point could be found in Émile Durkheim, the proponent of the dream of the morale laïque. I will discuss how far the diagnosis formulated by Karl-Otto Apel of a kind of ‘parallel convergence' between existentialism and analytic philosophy, based on the shared division of facts and values that eventually justified two kinds of 'decisionism' is useful in making sense of the agenda of the discussion. In the second chapter I will discuss the reasons for two parallel U-turns around 1958 which brought back traditional schools of normative ethics, 'deontologism' and utilitarianism, as well as the reasons for criticism to both schools from the heterogeneous alignment of virtue ethics. In the third chapter I will discuss the remarkable phenomenon of the emergence, starting with the Sixties or the early Seventies, of ‘applied’ ethics. I examine the reasons, both theoretical and political, for the revival, the point to which applied ethics may look as a grand return of a casuistic and natural law way of thinking, or in Alan Donagan’s words a case of “reverse subversion” of the modern secular world by traditional Scholastic ways of thinking, and the difficult coexistence between general normative ethics and procedures for settling issues in a ‘reasonable’ way while dissent on issues of principle is as alive as ever. Then I try to draw a provisional moral. My suggestions are that (i) casuistry is more alive than ever; (ii) natural law thinking is more alive than ever; (iii) moral dilemmas never arise; (iv) moral dissent is treatable, with the right strategy; (v) practical philosophy does not need the same degree of exactness as the theoretical sciences but this is no obstacle to its working in practice. (shrink)

Having thought out the Enlightenment project of individualism, privacy, and autonomy to its end, Anglo-American ethical theory now finds itself unable to respond to the collapse of community in which the practices justified by this project have resulted. In the place of reasonable deliberation about the goals to be chosen and the means to them, we now, it seems, have only what MacIntyre has aptly called “interminable debate” among “rival” positions, debate in which each party merely contends with the others (...) for its own advantage. And this circumstance MacIntyre himself seems unable to escape despite his best efforts. In further elaborating Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutical reception of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, and Hegel, and in referring simultaneously to Edmund Burke’s parallel political rhetoric, among other tradition-oriented arguments in the English language, this book seeks a recollection of shared ethical principles, a recollection which alone, it is argued, might prevent the devolution of discussion into war with words and make possible some measure of consensus, however provisional and shadowed by dissent it will be. (shrink)

y title links together kings, war, and the economy, and the linkage is deliberate. I do not of course wish to suggest that Hellenistic kings did nothing but fight wars, that they were responsible for all the wars in the period, that royal wars were nothing but a form of economic activity, or that the economy of the kings was dependent purely on the fruits of military success, though there would be an element of truth in all these propositions. But (...) I wish to react against the frequent tendency to separate topics that are related, the tendency to treat notions relating to what kings were or should be as something distinct from what they actually did, and the tendency to treat political and military history on the one hand as something separate from economic and social history on the other. A number of provisos should be made at the outset. The title promises more than the paper can deliver; in particular, more will be said about kings and war than about kings and the economy. The subject is handled at a probably excessive level of generalization and abstraction. I talk about Hellenistic kings in general, but in practice it would obviously be necessary to draw distinctions between different dynasties, different times and places, and individual rulers, and some of those distinctions I shall indicate. Conclusions are provisional and subject to modification and considerable expansion in detail. Finally, two points of terminology. I use the word ‘Hellenistic’ for no better reason than out of the force of acquired habit, but of course the word and the concept are modern inventions that were unknown to the ancient world. (shrink)

In recent decades, the analysis of phraseology has made use of the exploration of large corpora as a source of quantitative information about language. This paper intends to present the main lines of work in progress based on this empirical approach to linguistic analysis. In particular, we focus our attention on some problems relating to the morpho-syntactic annotation of corpora. The CORIS/CODIS corpus of contemporary written Italian, developed at CILTA – University of Bologna (Rossini Favretti 2000; Rossini Favretti, Tamburini, De (...) Santis in press), is a synchronic 100-million-word corpus and is being lemmatised and annotated with part-of-speech (POS) tags, in order to increase the quantity of information and improve data retrieval procedures (Tamburini 2000). The aim of POS tagging is to assign each lexical unit to the appropriate word class. Usually the set of tags is pre-established by the linguist, who uses his/her competence to identify the different word classes. The very first experiments we made revealed how the traditional part-of-speech distinctions in Italian (generally based on morphological and semantic criteria) are often inadequate to represent the syntactic features of words in context. It is worth noting that the uncertainties in categorisation contained in Italian grammars and dictionaries reflect a growing difficulty as they move from fundamental linguistic classes, such as nouns and verbs, to more complex classes, such as adverbs, pronouns, prepositions and conjunctions. This latter class, that groups together elements traditionally used to express connections between sentences, appears inadequate when describing cohesive relations in Italian. This phenomenon actually seems to involve other elements traditionally assigned to different classes, such as adverbs, pronouns and interjections. Recent studies proposed the class of ‘connectives’, grouping all words that, apart from their traditional word class, have the function of connecting phrases and contributing to textual cohesion. From this point of view, conjunctions can be considered as part of phrasal connectives, that can in turn be included in the wider category of textual connectives. The aim of this study is to identify elements that can be included in the class of phrasal connectives, using quantitative methods. According to Shannon and Weaver’s (1949) observation that words are linked by dependent probabilities, corroborated by Halliday’s (1991) argument that the grammatical “system” (in Firth’s sense of the term) is essentially probabilistic, quantitative data are introduced in order to provide evidence of relative frequencies. Section 2 presents a description of word-class categorisation from the point of view of grammars and dictionaries arguing that the traditional category of conjunctions is inadequate for capturing the notion of phrasal connective. Section 3 examines the notion of ‘connective’ and suggests a truth-function interpretation of connective behaviour. Section 4 describes the quantitative methods proposed for analysing the distributional properties of lexical units, and section 5 comments on the results obtained by applying such methods drawing some provisional conclusions. (shrink)

My title links together kings, war, and the economy, and the linkage is deliberate. I do not of course wish to suggest that Hellenistic kings did nothing but fight wars, that they were responsible for all the wars in the period, that royal wars were nothing but a form of economic activity, or that the economy of the kings was dependent purely on the fruits of military success, though there would be an element of truth in all these propositions. But (...) I wish to react against the frequent tendency to separate topics that are related, the tendency to treat notions relating to what kings were or should be as something distinct from what they actually did, and the tendency to treat political and military history on the one hand as something separate from economic and social history on the other.A number of provisos should be made at the outset. The title promises more than the paper can deliver; in particular, more will be said about kings and war than about kings and the economy. The subject is handled at a probably excessive level of generalization and abstraction. I talk about Hellenistic kings in general, but in practice it would obviously be necessary to draw distinctions between different dynasties, different times and places, and individual rulers, and some of those distinctions I shall indicate. Conclusions are provisional and subject to modification and considerable expansion in detail. Finally, two points of terminology. I use the word ‘Hellenistic’ for no better reason than out of the force of acquired habit, but of course the word and the concept are modern inventions that were unknown to the ancient world. (shrink)

The environmental crisis—because of its complexity, urgency, unpredictability, and scale—requires a defence of the educational role of philosophy and an account of how to implement philosophical pedagogy in the exploration of environmental issues. This is the aim of this paper. As we face an uncertain future, all educators must consider what knowledge and “know-how” young people need, and what kind of people they need to become, if they are to survive and thrive in this changing world. Philosophical educators cannot assume (...) the ongoing utility of their practice, nor can they expect that their practice should remain the same. In the context of the current crisis, the philosophical exploration of emerging environmental issues raises challenges for those who work in the spirit of Community of Enquiry and these challenges require both discipline and flexibility from practitioners and participants. This paper outlines some of the adaptations that I have used to try and respond flexibly to this predicament. But I also defend an issue on which I believe philosophical educators should hold the line—namely the importance of being non-directive on matters that are philosophically contentious. I defend the view that despite the existential nature of this emergency and its profound urgency, it is not the role of philosophical educators to convince or coerce philosophical learners to adopt particular views on the philosophical questions that this crisis raises. This is because all philosophical enquiry involves creating an environment of freedom and responsibility with respect to what participants believe to be right and true and what they do as a result. Participants in enquiry must be epistemically free to explore and evaluate philosophical questions as they see fit, but they must also be epistemically responsible for the evidence and arguments on which their provisional judgements rest. Equally, participants in enquiry must be ethically free to respond to philosophical problems in ways that express and cultivate their authentic character and commitments, but they remain ethically responsible for their true motivations, their professed values and for the real-life consequences of their words and actions, and their silences and inaction. This paper explores some ways to optimise freedom and responsibility in all forms of philosophical enquiry, drawing specifically on examples of my work with young people on philosophically contentious environmental issues. These examples also highlight some of the adaptations that I have developed to address the challenges that environmental enquiry brings. (shrink)

Definition of the problem: The report supplies the national part of a European survey in which doctors that are involved in the treatment of patients in `Persistent Vegetative State' (PVS) are being interviewed. The questions concern decision-situations the doctors are frequently confronted with in the treatment of PVS-patients. The questionnaire is designed as a decisiontree in order to bring about the exact delineations that govern the decisions. Therefore the result of the survey only portrays which delineations are in fact being (...) accepted (and does not allow any conclusion concerning which norms should guide the decisions). Whether these factual delineations correspond to ethical-normative criteria that derive from guiding principles – such as human dignity – is being discussed in the part reflecting on the survey. It is crucial to an adequate interpretation of the survey results to keep in mind that the doctors were not being asked about what they actually did in the situations described; the survey was designed to bring about what the doctors' basic attitudes towards the problems are.Arguments: The reason this methodological approach to the problem was chosen is that an ethical evaluation can only take place when the action-guiding convictions of the agents concerned are known. The goal of the survey was to make a provisional orientation concerning the basic attitudes possible. Compared to other countries taking part in, the survey result in Germany confirms the hypotheses that doctors from different European countries – concerning the decisions of withdrawing treatment or withholding treatment – are guided by different basic attitudes.Conclusion: As it has become apparent that important national differences concerning the action-guided attitudes of the doctors exist, it would not be advisable to recommend that European guidelines for all countries should be set up for such cases. The decisions taken depend on the guiding ethical assumptions; they can only be decisions for the very case they were derived at. (shrink)

The contemporary West is biased in favor of rebellion. This is attributable in the first place to the dominance of liberal political philosophy, according to which it is the power of the state that always poses the greatest threat to human well-being. But it is also because of consequent anti-imperialism, according to which any nationalist rebellion against imperial power is assumed to be its own justification. Autonomy, whether of the individual or of the nation, is reckoned to be the value (...) that trumps all others. I surmise that it is because in liberal consciousness the word “rebel” connotes a morally heroic stance—because it means the opposite of “tyrant”—that Western media in recent years have preferred to refer to Iraqi opponents of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and Taliban opponents of the ISAF in Afghanistan not as “rebels,” but as “insurgents.”. (shrink)

The article investigates the use of the term “Law” in Richard Rorty and suggests an alternative use of the word. Although Rorty’s anti-foundationalism and antirepresentationalism are well known specially in relation to the metaphysical grounds of the human sciences, I argue that he would employ the term “law” in important rhetorical contexts. The text proposes to identify some aspects of the Rortyan Approach to “law” and, at the same time, focuses on the environment and the professional activity of the (...) jurists in this context. At the end, I suggest a different use of the term, in the sense of a literary and conversational art (an artistic ability). This use of the term shall be understood as a provisional suggestion for narrative purposes and seems to partly escape a rigorous Rortyan view. If the practice of law was for the romans not only a “science”, but also an “art” (ars), so it can be for those that act in the juridical practice today a practice of prudence qua art. (shrink)

Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning explores the links between Humanities and the Social Sciences, with theories including, decision and action theory as well as cognitive sciences, economy, sociology, law, logic, and philosophy of sciences. It’s two main ambitions are to develop a theoretical framework that will encourage and enable interaction between disciplines as well as to federate the Humanities and Social Sciences around their main contributions to public life: using informed debate, lucid decision-making and action based on reflection. The series welcomes (...) research from the analytic and continental traditions, putting emphasis on four main focus areas: • Argumentation models and studies • Communication, language and techniques of argumentation • Reception of arguments, persuasion and the impact of power • Diachronic transformations of argumentative practices The Series is developed in partnership with the Maison Européenne des Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société (MESHS) at Nord - Pas de Calais and the UMR-STL: 8163 (CNRS). Proposals should include : • A short synopsis of the work or the introduction chapter • The proposed Table of Contents • The CV of the lead author(s) • If available: one sample chapter We aim to make a first decision within 1 month of submission. In case of a positive first decision the work will be provisionally contracted: the final decision about publication will depend upon the result of the anonymous peer review of the complete manuscript. We aim to have the complete work peer-reviewed within 3 months of submission. The series discourages the submission of manuscripts that contain reprints of previous published material and/or manuscripts that are below 150 pages / 85,000 words. (shrink)

From the 1991 referendum on independence and the adoption of the Constitution up to date, Macedonian statehood has been going through several political transformations, of which, as key, we single out those of 2001, 2017 and 2018-19. All those turning points relate to the resolution of identity conflicts and disputes, both within the country and with neighbouring states. The purpose of this paper is to prove the hypothesis according to which the replacement of constitutionality as the foundation of the Macedonian (...) state with contractual relations, which are later constitutionalized, leads to statehood erosion. In other words, instead of the Constitution representing a relatively permanent social contract of the citizens in the political community, the three contracts turned it into its opposite. Constitutional changes brought about through coercion and blackmail, that is, from a position of power, through international state building, have gradually created an increasingly weak and unsuccessful state, that is, a provisional state. Such an entity cannot hope to be incorporated into the European Union. More precisely, identity concessions accompanied by the dysfunctional state institutions result in effects contrary to the basic democratic imperatives and the principles contained in the Copenhagen criteria. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 21.1 (2001) 157-161 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism. By Jacques Dupuis, S.J. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books. 1997. xiv + 433 pp. There may not be another individual more qualified than Jacques Dupuis to write this book. He has not only spent a lifetime teaching and serving in a part of the (...) world where the encounter between Christianity and other faiths has been particularly pressing (India), but he has also previously reflected intensively and published widely on this topic. Even more impressive, however, is the fact that the scholarship that emerges in this volume reflects Dupuis as a faithful Catholic Christian, both in the sense of paying sincere heed to the wide range of the Roman Church's official teachings on this and related topics (he taught for years at the Gregorian University in Rome and edited, with Josef Neuner, the massive The Christian Faith in the Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic Church 1 ) and in the sense of thinking along with others in the universal community of faithful Christians. Here we have a master theologian practicing his craft, working within a community of theological inquirers, bringing out, displaying, and putting to work old things and new in the effort to understand one of the most crucial issues of our time.The result is a comprehensive and lucid discussion of Christian theology of religions that is indispensable as an introduction to students without any knowledge of the landscape even while it also serves as a handy status questionis to those already [End Page 157] familiar with the terrain. The first half of the book (part 1) is an overview of the history of Christian approaches to other faiths, beginning with the biblical material, continuing through the Logos spermatikos theology of the early Fathers, the developments surrounding the Extra ecclesiam nulla salus ("no salvation outside the Church") axiom over the centuries, and the pre- and post-Vatican II attempts to develop a theology of religions in the Catholic Church. This part concludes by summarizing the paradigm shifts from ecclesiocentrism to (in order) christocentrism, theocentrism, and regnocentrism/soteriocentrism. Throughout the discussion--especially of the pre-twentieth-century history that focused much more so on the fate of the unevangelized--Dupuis manages to provide important connections to developments in Christian thinking about the role of the religions in the divine scheme of things.The second half of the volume (part 2) presents seven of the most difficult theological questions in Christian theologia religionum today. First, concerning the covenant: is there only one, or are there many? Is salvation history particular, or universal? Dupuis' provisional response is that there is one cosmic covenant that is never revoked. This covenant is revealed according to what he calls a "trinitarian rhythm" whereby God covenants through his Word, in his Spirit, and this covenant includes the witnesses of God left in other religions as well. Second, concerning revelation: does revelation come to us from "without," or emerge from "within" ourselves? What about the sacred texts of other traditions? How are Christians to understand the fullness of the revelation in Jesus Christ vis-à-vis other faiths? Dupuis' answer is that divine revelation is indeed scattered among the various religions, even if fully captured only in Christ, and that these revelations are thereby differentiated but complementary. 2 Third, concerning the divine mystery: is the "Real" beyond the categories of "personal" and "impersonal"? Is God one, or many (triune)? Dupuis responds that the religions have complementary and converging insights into the divine reality. Fourth, concerning Jesus Christ: is he one among many savior figures? What does the uniqueness of Christ mean? Is there a distinction or an absolute identity between Jesus and Christ? Is the Christ particular, or universal? Dupuis posits a "searching christology" whereby God reveals Godself in and through the images and symbols of the religions and through which humankind therefore responds to the divine graciousness. Jesus' uniqueness is thereby both "constitutive" (of universal significance) and "relational" (inserted in the overall plan of... (shrink)

Over the past 10 years two concepts of central significance in the social sciences have come up for rediscussion: ‘space’ and ‘gender’. Today the two concepts are seen as relational, as a production process based on relation and demarcation. Gender and space alike are a provisional result of an – invariably temporal – process of attribution and arrangement that both forms and reproduces structures. This article takes a microsociological look at the construction of the local, seeking to trace the (...) genderization of spaces. For this purpose, it discusses the organization of perceptions, in particular of glances and corresponding body technologies. Referring to the example of beach life, the article shows that the genderization of perception leads, in the sense of an embodiment of social order, to a practice of localization that reproduces the structural principles of society. In other words, gender may be seen as inscribed, via body practices, in the production of spaces. (shrink)

In this essay, we explore the philosophical and theoretical resonances of the artwork Qatipana from the perspective of some key insights of Gilbert Simondon’s information processing system approach. Qatipana (Quechua word that means flow, sequence, transmission) is a hybrid ecosystem of information flow which, even though not the kind of dispositive systems theory was designed to read, offers some valuable empirical insights to test some key aspects of Simondon’s information processing systems. In particular, we are interested in observing how (...) Simondon’s becoming and individuation play out in an algorithmic cycle performed by the cognitive system of an Artificial Intelligence agent: how does mono-technology and computerization of cultural techniques influence the nature of knowing the affection of being with others (people, things, animals)? We contrast Simondon’s contributions with the work of Norbert Wiener and Stafford Beer on information in cybernetics and the cosmotechnics and Technodiversity of Chinese philosopher Yuk Hui. Furthermore, we offer a provisional assessment of the reach, limits, and possibilities this kind of symbiotic crossing of technologies and arts: it is a field filled with challenges and unresolved complexities that should encourage us to recognize the urgency that is implied in the disruptive (and creative) we can see unfolding in social and political life. The already pervasive (and growing) presence of computational systems has become both a tremendous risk and a vertiginous deployment of liberating opportunities. Latin America and elsewhere are desperately calling for an insightful and imaginative engagement. (shrink)

From the beginning, Augustine's "Confessions" presents itself as a dialogue with God. Taking a cue from Ludwig Feuerbach’s "The Essence of Christianity [Das Wesen des Christentums]," this dialogue can easily be dismissed as a projection of the self. This would imply that the divine otherness is nothing more than a mirror of one’s own fears and preferences. “Does this critique,” I asked myself in this piece, “really do justice to a position like that of Augustine?” For a long time, I (...) did not know how to approach what I had — provisionally — called Augustine’s dialogue with God. It appeared to me that Augustine, in an accidental and indirect way, had re-invented the Platonic dialogue and had turned it into a new Christian genre. “It is true,” I told myself, “that the genre of the Confessions shows family resemblances with the hagiography and the autobiography. But most certainly it cannot be reduced to these genres.” The Greek words ‘hagios’ (holy) and ‘autos’ (self) are in flagrant contradiction with the intention of the Confessions. Augustine tries to stay clear of any claim of holiness and only highlights his own ‘self’ to immediately question it. “Is the Platonic dialogue,” I asked myself, “not a far more appropriate predecessor for Augustine’s dialogue with God?” Both types of dialogues can be seen as true dia logoi in which at least two different voices emerge. However, contrary to what one would expect, it is not the dialogue form itself that frames these two voices. Instead the two voices emerge within the discourse of a single speaker, incorporating true otherness within the discourse of the self. Building on these reflections, I explore how Augustine's dialogue with God succeeds in eluding Feuerbach's charge of self-projection. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Remembering ApartheidMark Sanders (bio)What was apartheid? How is it being remembered? Two questions. The first of them, almost at once, encourages a third: what is apartheid? An answer to the first question will be an answer to the third. Knowing what apartheid was, it is implied, we will know what apartheid is. We will know what it is in essence. But if the answer supplied to the first question (...) is the same as that to the second, the question has been begged. This answer and begged question affect not only what we understand apartheid to have been. The essence of what apartheid is has been derived from an activity of remembering that is historically contingent. Is there a way out of this circle? A path to a place where essence will in no way be trammeled by any historical excrescence—where apartheid, stamped with -heid, the Afrikaans suffix for -ness, stands forth intact, unique—where, in a final victory, apartheid's phantasy of separateness will have perfected itself in truth? Supposing that responsibility involves the unstable articulation of essence and contingency, and consequent decision in the "night of non-knowledge," would it be responsible to seek such a way out? Is it possible, on the other hand, not to embark upon, or want to embark upon, such a search?The title "Remembering Apartheid" is to be understood as shorthand for this aporia of certain knowing. It refers in the first place to ways of remembering bound up, in South Africa, with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. These have involved not only the collection of facts anchored in recollection, a classically forensic project, but also the admission of acts of grieving and the invitation for others to participate in these acts—a participation to which I will refer, employing the word in the general sense of a mourning-with, as condolence. The word remembrance (echoing the German Gedächtnis, with its folding in of Denken) might more closely approach the inextricable interlinking, before the Commission, of epistemic and mournful practice. Yet, in traversing the aporia provisionally without eliminating it, the title of my essay lays claim to knowledge. It announces: this is apartheid, for this is what apartheid was. It thereby also seeks to acknowledge that, just as forensic evidence assembled by the Commission may be bound up with the grieving of witnesses, no claim about the nature of apartheid can be untouched by the affective demands of those who bear the burden of remembering. The legacy of apartheid of which they speak is of undiscovered bodies, of bodies denied a proper burial. They seek the help of the Commission in rectifying this state of affairs. What we hear when we listen to those witnesses is this: apartheid was a proscription on mourning, specifically of the other. Can we then not say: apartheid is, at least for those who remember the worst deeds committed under it, and who attach to them a particular affect, a proscription on mourning the other? Viewed from a purely forensic point of view, it is far from clear that we possess evidence to impeach this testimony. [End Page 60]Apartheid was/is, in the most general terms, an interdict against the development of a social formation. Although Afrikaner-nationalist politicians and intellectuals sometimes frightened the volk with images of being swamped by the vast black African mass or of being ploughed under as a people [see Louw 1: 505], the nature of that social formation was never outlined in precise terms. Versions of racial degeneration and bastardy were proffered by apartheid theorists, but what the ideology of race purity and the power that hid behind it really entailed was a foreclosure of the other, and thus of any historical possibility of another social formation—of what Breyten Breytenbach, alluding in Dog Heart [69] to the novelist Jan Rabie, calls "other-making" (andersmaak).In Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), Sigmund Freud offers an account of the social formation that, although standing on the shoulders of conservative nineteenth-century writers such as Gustave le Bon, does not depend upon racial, cultural, linguistic, or other characteristics that, singularly or together, formed the core... (shrink)

The idea of incarnation is one of the Christian theological concepts that has exerted the strongest influence on philosophical thought in Europe and which was repeatedly referred to in the twentieth century. The paper presents three reinterpretations of this biblical category. Carl Gustav Jung interprets incarnation in the spirit of Gnosticism, as a process of the psychological individuation of God and man; Hans‑Georg Gadamer employs the idea of the inner Word, Verbum interius, to analyse the dogmas of incarnation and (...) the Trinity: seeking in them a solution to the mystery of language; while Michel Henry reaches for the Bible and theology to face anew the issue of human corporeality. These attempts to rethink the theological aspects of the Incarnation of the Son of God reveal the role of this notion in the development of modern psychology, the hermeneutic philosophy of language as well as in anthropology. At the same time, a philosophical reinterpretation of incarnation provides an impulse to rephrase the questions about the relationship between philosophy and theology, as well as faith and reason, good and evil, the relationship between God and man, the mind and the body, as well as speech and thinking. On the other hand, provisional answers to these questions may rekindle theological thought and contribute to the revival of reflection on issues such as the Holy Trinity, the Immaculate and Virgin Conception, or a privation theory of evil. The article provides a starting point for just such a multi‑faceted analysis. (shrink)

According to a recent newspaper article, 40 million people in the European Union live in anxiety every single day . Apparently only 6% of the population can summon the courage to talk about their anxiety with their doctor. It would seem that doctors have too little time to recognize the signs of what the article calls the “new illness”. Nor are they encouraged to do so by the renowned scientific journals, where the focus is solely on a purely medical treatment (...) for anxiety, or by the pharmaceutical industry, where anxiety is equated with “long-term easy money”. The title of the article immediately struck me, especially since it seemed to be in flat contradiction to its subtitle: “Anxiety as the other side of affluence. Being afraid without knowing why”. Let me first of all try to explain why this contradiction did not really surprise me.It is well known that `anxiety' is traditionally opposed to `fear', where the difference is said to be that fear has a clear object but anxiety does not. One is afraid of something determinate, whereas with anxiety one appears to be afraid without knowing precisely why or what one fears. Yet this distinction is not so straightforward: merely mentioning it is not the same as maintaining it, as can be seen in this frequently cited passage from Freud: “anxiety [Angst] has an unmistakable relation to expectation: it is anxiety about something. It has a quality of indefiniteness and lack of object. In precise speech we use the word `fear' [Furcht] rather than `anxiety' [Angst] if it has found an object”.Freud appears to waver between two possibilities: either anxiety is essentially characterized by indeterminacy and a lack of object, in which case it is literally anxiety for nothing, or anxiety is temporarily undetermined, in which case it is anxiety for something that cannot immediately be named but that could be named and determined with the proper technique or therapy. In this second case — the one Freud clearly prefers — anxiety would be a fear whose object is provisionally undetermined. And indeed, hardly a paragraph further Freud no longer concerns himself with the distinction he just drew and with seeming carelessness sets aside the rules of correct usage which he brought to his readers' attention: “a real danger is a danger that is known, and realistic anxiety is anxiety about a known danger of this sort. Neurotic anxiety is anxiety about an unknown danger. Neurotic danger is thus a danger that has still to be discovered.Analysis has shown that it is a pulsional danger [Triebgefahr]. By bringing this danger which is not known into consciousness, the analyst makes neurotic anxiety no different from realistic anxiety, so that it can be dealt with in the same way”. Neurotic anxiety, then, is only anxiety as long as the danger causing the anxiety is unknown. And Freud's treatment for revealing that danger essentially boils down to turning the neurotic anxiety into a realistic anxiety, or more precisely: to show that the danger, although different in each case, is knowable in principle and so does not betray anxiety but fear! Realistic anxiety already has an object and is therefore fear. Neurotic anxiety has a hidden object which can and must be disclosed: “where there is anxiety there must be something that one is afraid of”.Evidently, “anxiety is not so simple a matter”, as Freud himself wrote and, one could add, experienced in the text from which I have just quoted at length. (shrink)

As a critic, Virginia Woolf has been called a number of disparaging names: "impressionist," "belletrist," "raconteur," "amateur." Here is one academic talking on the subject: "She will survive, not as a critic, but as a literary essayist recording the adventures of a soul among congenial masterpieces. . . . The writers who are most downright, and masculine, and central in their approach to life - Fielding or Balzac - she for the most part left untouched....Her own approach was at once (...) more subterranean and aerial, and invincibly, almost defiantly, feminine." In other words, Virginia Woolf is not a critic; how could she be? She is a woman. From its beginning, criticism has been a man's world. This is to say not only that males have earned their living as critics but, more importantly, that the conventionally accepted ideals of critical method are linked with qualities stereotypically allotted to males: analysis, judgment, objectivity. Virginia Woolf has had a poor reputation as a critic not merely because her sex is female but because her method is "feminine." She writes in a way that is said to be creative, appreciative, and subjective. We will accept this descriptive for the moment but will later enlarge on it, and even our provisional acceptance we mean to turn to a compliment. Barbara Currier Bell has written articles on critical theory and modern poetry and has served as a consultant on women's education at both Vassar and Hampshire Colleges. She is assistant professor of English at Wesleyan University. Carol Ohmann is the author of Ford Madox Ford: From Apprentice to Craftsman and several articles on English and American fiction. She coedited Female Studies IV: Teaching about Women with Elaine Showalter and is chairman of the Department of English at Wesleyan University. She has contributed, with Richard Ohmann, "Reviewers, Critics, and The Catcher in the Rye , and "CRITICAL RESPONSE: Universals and the Historically Particular" .See also: "The Masculine Mode" by Peter Schwenger in Vol. 5, No. 4; "The Robber in the Bedroom: or, The Thief of Love: A Woolfian Grieving in Six Novels and Two Memoirs" by Mark Spilka in Vol. 5, No. 4. (shrink)

The explanation of a child's discriminate responses to his environment turns on ascribing to the child a perceptual discrimination which counts certain things as more similar to one another than to some other thing. As Quine forcefully puts it:If an individual is to learn at all, differences in degree of similarity must be implicit in his learning pattern. Otherwise any response, if reinforced, would be conditioned equally and indiscriminately to any and every future episode, all these being equally similar.Now for (...) those determined to cleave to behaviourist canons, the problem is to use ‘perceptual similarity’ in explaining the subject's discriminating responses in a way which does not imply the existence of mental states and entities. What this really means is that the behaviourist must reconstruct the notion of ‘perceptual similarity', purifying it of its mentalistic dimension. So long as physicalism is a reasonable position, and while we are awaiting and abetting the neurophysiological millennium, the behaviourist's project is of significant moment. Now in Word and Object Quine does not seriously attempt to provide behavioural criteria for a subject's perceiving similarities, and he provisionally permits himself the mentalistic idiom he avows finally to eschew. (shrink)

Making meaning out of life requires effort, sustained thought and action. It can be difficult to reassert our responsibility for solving real life problems from within social science research or current trends, such as extremely deconstructivist text, and postmodernism in its cheerfully nihilistic guise. Hermeneutical philosophy, of the Ricoeurian reconstructive mode, rehabilitates text as a powerful device for influencing others and offers us courage to proceed with the human project by developing a way of writing, thinking and behaving that is (...) provisional, affirmative and conciliatory, yet constantly questioning. Ricoeur invites the person, both reflective subject and empiricist object of research, to combine these elements and use written text and action as text for an active mode of living. Within philosophy he attempts to achieve a rapprochement between hermeneutical and rational thought. Understanding oneself, through better understanding of the other, derives benefit from crossing disciplinary boundaries between, in this study, philosophy and the social sciences (education and psychology), in order to attempt to move from the particular, individual issues to the general, holistic view and return to one’s own situation to act for oneself and others. Ricoeur offers us the opportunity to repossess language, to be ethical and practical, and to challenge the hegemony of Explaining, going beyond method and methodology into epistemology and beyond fact into Understanding: an ontology of hope that makes sense of plurality, without the damage of relativism. This text attempts a narrative ethics, illustrating how Ricoeur’s work transformed my thinking from that of a method-bound psychologist to that of, perhaps, a philosopher in the making. Key Words: critical realism • hermeneutics • holism • Hollis • individualism • Norris • rational analytic • Ricoeur • self • text. (shrink)

It is frequently noted that a “crisis in language” accompanied the profound changes in human consciousness everywhere evident near the turn of the century. As the nature of reality itself became problematic—or at least suspect, distrusted for its imposition of limits upon individual imagination—so, necessarily, did the relationship of language to reality. Thus in the later nineteenth century, the adequacy of an essentially standardized form of “classical” writing was increasingly questioned as an effective vehicle for artistic expression: even though often (...) in “elevated” form, such writing bore too close a connection to ordinary discourse. Indeed, it was precisely the mutually shared, conventional aspects of language that came to be most deeply distrusted for their failure to mirror the more subjective, obscure, and improbable manifestations of a transcendent reality or, rather, realities—the plural reflecting an insistence upon the optional and provisional nature of human experience. Language in its normal manifestations—with its conventionalized vocabulary and standardized rules for syntactical combination—proved inadequate for an artistic sensibility demanding, in Friedrich Nietzsche’s words, “a world of abnormally drawn perspectives.”This dissatisfaction with “normal” language received its classic statement through Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Lord Chandos. Writing in 1902, Hofmannsthal conveys through the figure of the aristocratic Chandos the loss of an encompassing framework within which the various objects of external reality are connected with one another and integrated with the internal reality of human feelings. Chandos’ world has become one of disparate, disconnected fragments, resistant to the abstractions of ordinary language. It is a world characterized by “a sort of feverish thought, but thought in a material that is more immediate, more fluid, and more intense than that of language.” Chandos longs for a new language in which not a single word is known to me, a language in which mute objects speak to me and in which perhaps one day, in the grave, I will give account of myself before an unknown judge.”2 The content and forms of art thus shifted away from exterior reality, which no longer provided a stable, “given” material, toward language itself—to “pure” language in a sense closely related to the symbolists’ “pure” poetry. “No artist tolerates reality,” Nietzsche proclaimed.3 And Gustave Flaubert’s farsighted advice to himself was that he should write “a book about nothing, a book dependent on nothing external, which would be held together by the internal strength of its style.”4 2. Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Ein Brief,” Gesammelte Werke, ed. Bernd Schoeller with Rudolf Hirsch, 10 vols. , 7:471-72; my translation. All further translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.3. Friedrich Nitzsche, Complete Works, ed. Oscar Levy, 18 vols. , vol. 15, The Will to Power, trans. Anthony M. Ludovici, p. 74.4. Gustave Flaubert, Flaubert to Louise Colet, 16 Jan. 1852, The Letters of Gustave Flaubert 1830-1857, ed. and trans. Francis Steegmuller , p. 154. Other passages in this letter are equally remarkable for their “modernist” tone. Flaubert argues that from the standpoint of l’Art pur, “one might almost establish the axiom that there is no such thing as subject—style in itself being an absolute manner of seeing things” . Further:The finest works are those that contain the least matter; the closer expression comes to thought, the closer language comes to coinciding and merging with it, the finer the result. I believe the future of Art lies in this direction. I see it, as it has developed from its beginnings, growing progressively more ethereal …. Form, in becoming more skillful, becomes attenuated, it leaves behind all liturgy, rule, measure; the epic is discarded in favor of the novel, verse in favor of prose; there is no longer any orthodoxy, and form is as free as the will of its creator. This progressive shedding of the burden of tradition can be observed everywhere: governments have gone through similar evolution, from oriental despotisms to the socialisms of the future. [P. 154] Robert P. Morgan, professor of music at the University of Chicago, is currently writing a history of twentieth-century music and working on a study of form in nineteenth-century music. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are “On the Analysis of Recent Music” and “Musical Time/Musical Space”. (shrink)

This article addresses Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas's notion of ‘Junkspace’ Š infinitely reconfigurable, physical space that is always-already in transition, perpetually in a state of becoming Š and its implications for theology. Junkspace is the logical result of a culture in which ‘shopping’ is the last public activity. All public institutions Š churches, museums, the internet, hospitals, universities and airports Š increasingly are drawn into this framework. While this schema represents the suburban desire for control and predictability, it consequently flattens (...) intellectual terrain. In other words, we have come to the point of shopping for politics, knowledge, ideology and theology. Rather than critique this hypothesis, the article explores its possibilities for new understandings of the secular, our desire for ‘the new’, and our need to intentionally forget or disavow. I argue that Junkspace may serve as a promising new metaphorical lens for theological reflection, which is now rendered provisional, incomplete, and migratory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Religious Pluralism and Christian TruthJoseph S. O’Leary has been named recipient of the 1998 Frederick J. Streng Book Award for his 1996 volume, Religious Pluralism and Christian Truth. Dr. O’Leary was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1949. He studied literature, theology, and philosophy in Maynooth, Rome, and Paris. After teaching briefly in the United States (University of Notre Dame and Duquesne University), he moved to Japan in 1983. He (...) has worked in association with the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture and currently teaches English literature at Sophia University (with special emphasis on Joyce and the modernist period) and a course on Japanese values at International Christian University.He has been working on a trilogy in fundamental theology that has taken on an increasingly interreligious character. The first volume is Questioning Back: The Overcoming of Metaphysics in Christian Tradition (Minneapolis: Winston/Seabury, 1985), reviewed in Buddhist-Christian Studies in 1987; a French version is in preparation. The second volume appeared first as La verite chretienne a l’age du pluralisme religieux (Paris: Cerf, 1994) and then as Religious Pluralism and Christian Truth (Edinburgh University Press, 1996). Joseph O’Leary is also coeditor of Heidegger et la question de Dieu (Paris: Grasset, 1980) and Buddhist Spirituality (vols. 8 and 9 of World Spirituality, New York: Crossroad, 1993 and 1999).Terry Muck: Why did you write this book?Joseph O’Leary: My earlier book, Questioning Back: The Overcoming of Metaphysics in Christian Tradition, advocated deconstruction of the Greek and Hebrew elements in Christian theology—the need for a radical retrieval of the tradition in the spirit of Heidegger’s “step back” from metaphysical systems to the original phenomena. In Religious Pluralism and Christian Truth, I broadened the horizon to see all religion as historical, cultural constructs growing and changing through mutual interaction. Living in Japan brought me a liberating sense of historical and cultural relativity and with it the sense that the Christian tradition should be thought of as an essentially incomplete project, always reaching out to other traditions in search of a fuller vision.But that discovery did not mean giving up on the Christian tradition.No. Rather than sitting back and enjoying the pluralism, I found myself more and more concerned with the question of truth. Followers of Jacques Derrida assured me that “truth” has been exposed as a historical myth. Struggling with Derrida I found rather a recontextualization of the value of truth. Moreover, the “situated truth” (always relative to a given context in culture and praxis) of historically formulated dogmatic propositions turned out to be quite defensible despite Derrida’s demolition [End Page 239] of notions of truth as totality (Hegel) or truth as presence (Heidegger). Christianity has nothing to fear from opening itself up to its historical relativity. Buddhism has long accepted the provisionality of all religious expressions. I focused especially on the notion of skillful means and on the theory of the two truths (conventional and ultimate) in Madhyamaka Buddhism.What does this “opening up” do to traditional Christian doctrines?The notion of God is not only compatible with such a relativized view of the status of religious language, but demands it. The biblical discourse about God consists in a constant deconstruction of old images of God by new ones. As for the role of Jesus Christ, Incarnation is an ongoing event in that the historical significance of Jesus is still unfolding. The uniqueness of Jesus resides not in some ontological amalgamation of divinity and humanity but in the specifics of his historical role. God’s Word is spoken in other ways elsewhere, indeed is spoken in all things, and its specifically “fleshly” (human and historical) and “eschatological” manifestation in the unfolding of the Jesus story should not be divorced from these wider contexts.How have these ideas been received?The most flattering response has come from the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies in granting me the Frederick J. Streng Book Award. Streng’s book, Emptiness, which I read in Pittsburgh in 1982, opened my eyes to the world of Madhyamaka thought.Any criticisms?Predictably, the book has come under fire from two opposing camps. The Revue Thomiste reviewer claimed that I could... (shrink)

The present paper is to be read as a provisional essay on the essence of Time through the examination of the relationship between the notions of Time and Motion. Key-Words: Time - Puzzle - Motion - Change.

Maurits Cornelis Escher’s 1938 lithograph, Cycle, illustrates what mathematical physicist Roger Penrose calls ‘impossible objects’. The illusion of three-dimensionality, the innovative use of tessellation, and the incorporation of traditionally figurative elements induce the viewer to perceive the lithographic print as depicting a visually plausible reality built on the deconstructive metamorphosis of man into cube. It is Escher’s ability to paradoxically combine the radical oppositions of man and cube, landscape and geometric abstraction into an apparently harmonious composition where shapes repeat with (...) subtle variation and almost imperceptibly transition into radically different shapes that I want to use as a visual paradigm for conceptualizing the shifts in human consciousness in the digital age. Roger Penrose, path-breaking theorist of consciousness as a physical but non-computational process, was inspired by and inspired Escher. Penrose’s provisional concepts of consciousness, time and space can be visually compared to Escher’s earlier man-cube renderings, where each of these individual design elements allows the transition to another shape. In other words, Penrose’s theories, like Escher’s design concepts, illustrate a moment of transition in consciousness theory. As in Escher’s Cycle, the individual elements are being continually redefined, reshaped and revealed. Each may be a unique distortion of the previous, but this does not mean that it is disconnected or independent of the final outcome. These distortions are transitional elements that lead us visually to the other side of the composition. Radical transformations and developing connectedness in the boundaries between art, technology and science function like the individual elements in Escher’s Cycle. As we try to define the shifts in human consciousness occurring in the digital age, visually speaking, we are focusing on only one element right in the middle of an Escher metamorphosis, unable to see exactly how this element will be part of the completed design. This thought can be both frightening and liberating: frightening because we humans are used to relying on boundaries and predictable outcomes to feel a sense of control, liberating because anything and everything is possible and the changes will occur naturally as part of the transition. If Escher teaches us anything, it is that each piece in the meta-morphosis is needed to complete the big picture. (shrink)