I examine communitarian social theory with an eye to suggesting that the form it most often takes contains resources insufficient to satisfy the aims of those who propose it. This is shown to be the case through an analysis of the writings of Johann Gottfried Herder , the first philosophically rigorous communitarian in the West. Herder's communitarianism, like that of so many of our contemporaries, combines a description of what he believes to be man's ineradicably communal nature with a normative (...) longing for an experience of community we have supposedly lost. But unlike today's communitarians, who usually propose ways for modern man to reattain primordial happiness in communal particularism, Herder became convinced that he could only satisfy his normative longing for community by supplementing his descriptive communitarianism with a radically universalistic theology that took the form of a providential philosophy of history. I conclude that Herder's attempt to fashion a new, humanistic religion as a means to making it possible for him to "live" his communitarianism has much to teach contemporary communitarians as well as their critics. (shrink)

I argue that Kotzee’s model of meta- debate succeeds in identifying illegitimate or fallacious charges of bias but has the unintended consequence of classifying some legitimate and non-fallacious charges as fallacious. This makes the model, in some important cases, counter-productive. In particular, cases where the call for a meta- debate is prompted by the participant with epistemic privilege and a charge of bias is denied by the participant with social advantage, the impasse will put the epistemically advantaged at far greater (...) risk. Therefore, I propose treating epistemic privilege as a variety of expert opinion specifically in cases where meta- debate participants come to an impasse in deliberation. My proposal exposes the problem of interpreting debate contexts as both adversarial and free from social power differentials. (shrink)

This essay explores the evolving systems ofjustz$5cation and morality that emerge fiom mother and child dialogues. Contrasting a mother's ethic of care with a surrounding cultural climate of violence, I argue that children are capable of providing insigljt to this seeming socialcontradiction.Ifocus on a series cfconversa- tionsI've had with my nowJiveyear oldson with regard to naturally occurringharm (i.e.yfloods,disease...) and human createdharm (i.e. war, violence,physical intimi- dation). I argue that my son's effortsto "makethe symbolic reap are consistent with philosopher Gareth Matthews' (...) (1980) claim that young children are capable of complexphilosophicalthinkingthoughitmaygodormantatabouteightornineyears of age. M y view is thatphilosophicalthinking between mother and child typifies the feminist ideal that respecful investigation can occur between two parties who are uneyual in terms of socialpower. Though my son is smaller, less experienced, and physically weaker, he has come to believe that these qualities will not be relevant in others' assessment of his explanations of the world. (shrink)

MODERN GERMAN PHILOSOPHY PRESENTS A PECULIAR PUZZLE to the historian of ideas. For most of the early modern period, philosophers throughout Europe had allied themselves with the Enlightenment in its self-proclaimed struggle against dogma, superstition, and ignorance. Yet beginning in late eighteenth century Germany, this situation began to change—so much so that by the early decades of the twentieth century, Germany had become the undisputed home of the philosophical Counter-Enlightenment. If today the most celebrated Counter-Enlightenment figures hail from France or (...) Italy, that should not obscure the fact that the ideas of such authors as Derrida and Foucault, Vattimo and Virilio descend directly from the writings of Nietzsche and Heidegger. All of these theorists are united in their opposition to the Enlightenment and what they see as its detrimental social and political effects in the modern world. Moreover, all of them deny the core assumptions of the Enlightenment: the possibility and goodness of rational discourse dispelling darkness and mystery from human life. Hence, their writings tend to take the form of deconstructive commentaries on seminal texts from the Western philosophical and literary traditions or radically critical analyses of the social and intellectual practices common to the post-Enlightenment world. Above all, these works claim to show that what might superficially appear to be examples of disinterested argument and rational impartiality in those texts and practices are, instead, attempts at violating, marginalizing, delegitimizing, and dominating the “other”—with the “other” defined as the nonrational, unusual, different, or abnormal dimensions of human life and experience. The role of the Counter-Enlightenment theorist is to liberate the “other” from its subjugation at the hands of reason by exposing the myriad ways in which all supposedly enlightened discourses and practices are themselves permeated by the “other” and thus always one step away from collapsing under the weight of their own incoherence. In other words, Counter-Enlightenment philosophy seeks to expose reason’s own inevitable and fatal dependence upon unreason. (shrink)

MODERN GERMAN PHILOSOPHY PRESENTS A PECULIAR PUZZLE to the historian of ideas. For most of the early modern period, philosophers throughout Europe had allied themselves with the Enlightenment in its self-proclaimed struggle against dogma, superstition, and ignorance. Yet beginning in late eighteenth century Germany, this situation began to change—so much so that by the early decades of the twentieth century, Germany had become the undisputed home of the philosophical Counter-Enlightenment. If today the most celebrated Counter-Enlightenment figures hail from France or (...) Italy, that should not obscure the fact that the ideas of such authors as Derrida and Foucault, Vattimo and Virilio descend directly from the writings of Nietzsche and Heidegger. All of these theorists are united in their opposition to the Enlightenment and what they see as its detrimental social and political effects in the modern world. Moreover, all of them deny the core assumptions of the Enlightenment: the possibility and goodness of rational discourse dispelling darkness and mystery from human life. Hence, their writings tend to take the form of deconstructive commentaries on seminal texts from the Western philosophical and literary traditions or radically critical analyses of the social and intellectual practices common to the post-Enlightenment world. Above all, these works claim to show that what might superficially appear to be examples of disinterested argument and rational impartiality in those texts and practices are, instead, attempts at violating, marginalizing, delegitimizing, and dominating the “other”—with the “other” defined as the nonrational, unusual, different, or abnormal dimensions of human life and experience. The role of the Counter-Enlightenment theorist is to liberate the “other” from its subjugation at the hands of reason by exposing the myriad ways in which all supposedly enlightened discourses and practices are themselves permeated by the “other” and thus always one step away from collapsing under the weight of their own incoherence. In other words, Counter-Enlightenment philosophy seeks to expose reason’s own inevitable and fatal dependence upon unreason. (shrink)

The dissertation involves an examination of recent work in Social Epistemology. In particular, I am concerned with the question of how one's social position could affect judgments regarding evidence and confirmation. To answer this question I undertake an investigation of feminist epistemology and philosophy of science. Feminist epistemologists have raised criticisms of the traditional analysis of knowledge by arguing against the primacy of the individual and for a more thorough-going analysis of the community in accounts of knowledge. This shift, in (...) my view, is an important contribution toward a more complete theory of knowledge. Yet feminist epistemology is a controversial contributor to the area of social epistemology generally construed. Thus, in the first chapter I offer a defense of the contributions of feminist epistemology to analytic philosophy, against its various critics. ;In Chapters Two and Three I examine feminists' reliance on Naturalistic models of theory-choice such as Quinean Holism or the later Wittgenstein's Social Constructivism. I argue that the reliance on these models is a tactical mistake for feminists since these models are based on problematic accounts of meaning and truth. Alternatively, I advocate the adoption of a realist meaning theory along the lines proposed by Katz, as well as a rationalized epistemology in the service of explaining deductive and inductive inference. My argument involves showing how realism and rationalism entail the kind of strong program of justification and rational censure which is required if feminists want to successfully condemn existing biased practices. ;Consequently, I propose a reformulation of the distinction between a context of discovery and context of justification. My reformulation differs from the past positivist distinction in that "discovery" rather than being wholly random and subjective, is instead reflective of patterns of social experience. "Justification" is conceived of as more sensitive to the epistemic privilege of varying social standpoints. However, a separation is still maintained between how one comes to arrive at a belief and the methods for justifying that belief. My conclusion is that a partnership between rationalized epistemology and feminist theory can provide rich possibilities for both disciplines. (shrink)

German Idealism can be said to have arisen from two main tensions in Kant’s critical philosophy. The first of these concern its epistemological status. Kant had conceived of the Critique of Pure Reason as, at least in part, a “science of ignorance” that clearly delineated what man could count as knowledge from what he could never possibly know. But what was the basis of Kant’s claim to know what can and what cannot count as knowledge? Strictly speaking, the content of (...) Kant’s own philosophy could not be knowledge in the same sense that the findings of the empirical sciences are knowledge, since the “truths” of the critical philosophy are not determined empirically. Rather, Kant arrives at them through an a priori “transcendental deduction” from the “conditions of the possibility of experience.” The critical philosophy would seem to be open to the charge that it represents an arbitrary attempt on the part of one man to dictate what can and what cannot be regarded as knowledge–that, far from being genuinely critical, it was instead an example of the height of dogmatism. For ambitious young admirers of Kant like Reinhold, Fichte, Hölderlin, Schelling, and Hegel, this was unacceptable. (shrink)

This article traces my own pedagogical journey to find strategies for teaching critical thinking that emphasize intellectual cooperation, empathy, and argument repair, a journey that found me frequently turning to sources outside of philosophy, including work in intergroup dialogue and pedagogical work in rhetoric and composition. Theoretically, the article showcases Maureen Linker’s notion of ‘cooperative reasoning’, sets it against the ‘adversary paradigm’ Janice Moulton critiques, and illustrates how Peter Elbow’s challenges to critical thinking as a ‘doubting game’ resonate with Linker’s (...) work. Practically, it illustrates the structure and the role of peer-to-peer dialogues in my own reasoning classroom, an enactment of a cooperative, belief-based approach to reasoning inspired by Linker and Elbow alike, while also learning from the methodologies of intergroup dialogue. (shrink)

As one of the preeminent philosophers of the twentieth century, W. V. Quine made groundbreaking contributions to the philosophy of science, mathematical logic, and the philosophy of language. This collection of essays examines Quine's views, particularly his holism and naturalism, for their value to feminist theorizing today. Some contributors to this volume see Quine as severely challenging basic tenets of the logico-empiricist tradition in the philosophy of science—the analytic/synthetic distinction, verificationism, foundationalism—and accept various of his positions as potential resources for (...) feminist critique. Other contributors regard Quine as an unrepentant empiricist and, unlike feminists who seek to use or extend his arguments, they interpret his positions as far less radical and more problematic. In particular, critics and advocates of Quine's arguments that the philosophy of science should be "naturalized"—understood and pursued as an enterprise continuous with the sciences proper—disagree deeply about whether such a naturalized philosophy is "philosophy enough." Central issues at stake in these disagreements reflect current questions of special interest to feminists and also bridge the analytic and postmodern traditions. They include questions about whether and how the philosophy of science, as a form of practice, is or can be normative as well as questions concerning the implications of Quine's philosophy of language for the transparency and stability of meaning. In representing feminist philosophy centrally engaged with the analytic tradition, this volume is important not only for what it contributes to the understanding of Quine and naturalized epistemology but also for what it accomplishes in working against restrictive conceptions of the place of feminism within the discipline. Aside from the editors, the contributors are Kathryn Pyne Addelson, Louise M. Antony, Richmond Campbell, Lorraine Code, Jane Duran, Maureen Linker, Phyllis Rooney, and Paul A. Roth. (shrink)

We investigate the morphosyntax of qualitative binominal constructions (QBCs) in a Southern Italo-Romance language from the Apulian town of San Marco in Lamis. QBCs are complex noun phrases like ‘a jewelN1 of a villageN2’, appearing here prepositionally (with the preposition də, ‘of’, allowing definites, indefinites, and demonstratives) and non-prepositionally (only allowing definites with definite articles and not proper names). We propose that in the latter, a categorial match in the determiner layer, which we call ‘match D’, relates N1 and N2. (...) N1 is embedded as a noun, allowing for: 1) the recursive DP strategy of non-prepositional genitives, and 2) the extension of this mechanism to QBCs. This leads to the impossibility of syntactic extraction, which we connect to the concept of phase. With non-denominal N1s, N1’s article is treated as a head-agreeing adjectival linker, forming a constituent with the modifier but agreeing with the head. A phrase is interpreted as a QBC if N1 and N2 share the same number features and if the features of N1 do not allow for it to be interpreted as the possessum of N2 . We also discuss external agreement with the construction, presenting data supporting the relevance of the [+HUMAN] feature for agreement relations. (forthcoming, Italian Journal of Linguistics). (shrink)

The aim of this dissertation is an analysis of agreement in relation to genitival constructions. It proposes that the Apulian non-prepositional enitives of San Marco in Lamis can be described as regulated by a definiteness agreement mechanism manifesting itself in the necessity of articled heads (excluding vocatives) and genitival nouns, coupled with an adjacency requirement which limits the realization of post-nominal modifiers of the head in a post-genitival position, where they might only refer to the genitive noun. This work thus (...) proposes that such agreement for definiteness is the same holding in Romanian non-al genitives which result in the linker construction when agreement is disrupted. In chapter 1 we thus introduce Kartvelian genitives by Suffixaufnahme which notoriously represent a genitive-head noun morphological agreement phenomenon. Plank (1995) also shows that in a series of genitives, Suffixaufnahme shows up only on the last one, demonstrating that when it comes to agreement in genitives, local dynamics of sorts are often at stake (as it happens with the Costruct State). In 2 we move to linkers; linkers have been connected to agreement in Suffixaufnahme genitives at least since Plank (1995) and later works such as Larson and Yamakido (2006), Manzini et al (2016), and Manzini (2018), according to which linkers can be assimilated to agreement. In fact, in synthetic systems such as Romanian and Aromanian, Albanian and Arbëresh, and Kurdish varieties, linkers agree for φ with either the head or the genitive noun. Giurgea and Dobrovie-Sorin (2013: 126) further show that in Romanian non-linker constructions possessives agree for case with the head noun. In linker constructions, agreement for case is not present: it’s the linker itself which agrees with the head noun, this time for φ. Chapter 3 deals with genitival modification in Hebrew and a number of Arabic varieties. It proposes that the pseudoprepositions found in Arabic varieties are nouns in the Construct State. This was previously proposed for Palestinian Arabic in Mohammad (1999), which also shows that such elements agree for φ with the modified noun. 3.2 takes into account the Semitic preposition l-, dealing with the question of whether this lement can be characterized as possessive and locative as it happens for Romance a. 4 analyzes Apulian non-prepositional genitives and proposes as anticipated that the necessity of articled nouns in the construction is to be linked to an agreement relation taking place via D. Lastly, 5 subsumes the conclusions of this work. (shrink)

Verse treatise on Yoga according to the Nāṭha sect in Hinduism.

W artykule staram się dowieść, że fotografia artystyczna, za sprawą technologii wytwarzania „mieniących się, syntetycznych wizerunków” (K. Linker, On Artificiality), może stać się medium sztuki ze społecznością, tworzonej wraz z osobami systemowo pozbawianymi widoczności w sferze publicznej. Posługując się metodą analizy ikonograficznej, opisuję wybrane fotografie portretowe Krzysztofa Marchlaka prezentujące wizerunki osób należących do społeczności LGBTQ w Polsce. W konkluzji nawiązuję do wykonanej przez artystę wielkoformatowej fotograficznej panoramy Paradiso, którą interpretuję jako zaangażowany społecznie, „mieniący się, syntetyczny wizerunek” sztucznego raju dla wygnanych (...) z królestwa binarnych opozycji płciowych. Artificial Paradises for the Expelled. Krzysztof Marchlak’s Art Photography as a Medium for Performing Queer Identities In the article, I try to demonstrate that artistic photography which involves the use of technology of creating “shimmering, synthetic appearances” (K. Linker, “On Artificiality”) can become a medium for community art projects developed with people who are systemically excluded from view in the public sphere. Applying the method of iconographic analysis, I describe selected portrait photographs by Krzysztof Marchlak that feature images of people who belong to the Polish LGBTQ community. I draw in conclusion upon the artist’s large-format photographic panorama Paradiso, which I interpret as a socially engaged, “shimmering, synthetic appearance” of an artificial paradise for people expelled from the kingdom of binary gender oppositions. (shrink)

SummaryThe paper undertakes to disentangle the problem facing Kant's Third Antinomy from the problems confronting the transcendental reality of time and the distinction between things–in–themselves and appearances. Three different resolutions of the Third Antinomy are distinguished. It is shown that neither the appeal to the transcendental ideality of time nor to the distinction between things‐in‐themselves and appearances in the first Kritik resolution succeeds in resolving the antinomy as Kant states it. The appeal in the Groundwork to the distinction between heteronomy (...) and autonomy shifts the problem. And the reliance in the second Kritik on our ability to know a priori that there are necessary connections in our experience fails in yet another way to forestall the antinomy. The common core of all of these difficulties lies in what is called here the Duplication Problem: The tendency of the distinctions introduced to resolve the problem to duplicate the very antinomy they are supposed to resolve. Finally, it is shown how isolating these issues helps to strengthen Kant's argument for transcendental ideality and to clarify the conditions under which the antinomy can he resolved. (shrink)

In the First Antinomy of The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant drew two conclusions from the argument he gives. First, Kant took his argument to show that the referent of the concept of ‘world’ does not exist as a thing in itself. For at B532 he says.

The article discusses two bioart projects that bring the symbolically core human substances of blood, sweat and tears into technologically mediated relationships with plants and fungi to explore human kinship with other species: Tarah Rhoda’s BS&T (short for ‘blood, sweat and tears’) and OurGlass, and Saša Spačal’s MycoMythologies: Patterning. The article analyses the art projects through the lens of the molecular gaze and different perspectives on kinning, bringing anthropological conceptualizations of kinship together with Haraway’s pathways to connect with other species. (...) How can bioart use technologies to explore interspecies kinship through a molecular gaze? And may such artworks contribute to the toning down of human exceptionality in the face of a precarious future? We find that artworks providing a molecular gaze on interspecies biological processes may risk a decontextualized approach to complex relational processes but may also create new visions of filiation even with biological organisms imagined to be genetically distant from humans, thus spurring awareness of the fragile interrelationships among species. (shrink)

The relation between two systems of attitude ascription that capture all the empirically significant aspects of an agents thought and speech may be analogous to that between two systems of magnitude ascription that are equivalent relative to a transformation of scale. If so, just as an objects weighing eight pounds doesnt relate that object to the number eight (for a different but equally good scale would use a different number), similarly an agents believing that P need not relate her to (...) P (for a different but equally adequate interpretive scheme could use a different proposition). In either case the only reality picked out by any system of ascription is what is common to all equivalent rivals. By emphasizing some contrasts between decision theory and belief-desire psychology, it is argued that if attitude ascription is appropriately analogous to measurement then not only is being related to a proposition an artifact of the system of representation chosen, so are belief and desire. (shrink)

Over the last two decades J.N. Williams has developed an account of the absurdity of such utterances as Its raining but I dont believe it that is both intuitively plausible and applicable to a wide variety of forms that this so-called Moorean absurdity can take. His approach is also noteworthy for making only minimal appeal to principles of epistemic or doxastic logic in its account of such absurdity. We first show that Williams places undue emphasis upon assertion and belief: It (...) is similarly absurd for a person to accept a proposition P as a supposition for the sake of argument while denying that her state of mind is one of supposing P, yet Williams has no account of this. Williams approach is then modified to account for such a case. That modification employs a principle of doxastic logic that is at least plausible as the one on which Williams relies, while being unlike his principle in applying to cases other than belief. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:EPILOGUE Robert J. Daly, SJ. Boston College April 2002 Iwill arrange my comments under four headings: (1) what we had hoped to accomplish; (2) what we actually did accomplish; (3) what we may have learned from this; (4) what this might now enable us to do in thefuture. This epilogueisbeingwritten in April, 2002,twenty-twomonths after the conference. To draw what good we can from this delay, writing at this distance (...) allows me to summarize and draw conclusions with, perhaps, a bit more balance. On the other hand, my listening again to the audio record in the course ofpreparing this publication has enabled me to relive something of the original experience. (1)As I indicated in the introduction, we had unrealistically hoped that, by the time ofthe conference, the five presenters, and perhaps also the twoprincipals inthe "Girard-Lonergan Conversation," wouldhavealready exchanged with each other not just first drafts, but even second drafts of their papers, and that the conference itself would then be invited to join a conversation that was already well under way. As it turned out, I couldn't muster the organizational skills and resources needed to achieve this. But reflecting after the fact, I can see that so carefully detailed a preparation might have been counterproductive. Carrying out our original plan might have been at the cost ofimposing more ofa Western analytic pattern on our discussion ofother traditions, and of!thus smothering from the outset some of the insight that did occur. We had also hoped that the opening "Girard-Lonergan Conversation" would provide an analytic resource for the rest of the meeting. But that did not happen to any great extent. (2)The proximate preparation for this conference began with a draft version ofmy paper being sent to the other major presenters. I opened with 194Robert J. Daly, SJ. a series of brief sketches of salient points in the often unhappy but also occasionally felicitous history ofChristianity on this theme ofviolence and institution. Then, after emphasizing the importance of distinguishing between the normative and the descriptive, I tried to make some sense, both rational and theological, of all this data, especially by reflecting on the influences and consequences ofthe belief in hell, on the one hand, and the hope of universal salvation, on the other. The next major religious theme was Judaism. Reuven Kimelman provided a detailed—and, for some, overwhelming—glimpse of the way the talmudic traditions deal with the theme of war and its restrictions. This highly text-oriented and interpretation-of-texts driven presentation seemed to many, at first, to be irrelevant to mimetic theory and to the need to be confronting actual violence. But, in the course of Sandor Goodhart's response, and in the course ofthe at times spirited discussion that followed, we began to understand that how one interprets texts and traditions, and how these are played off against each other, is indeed fundamental to the way Jews typically try to deal with the practical challenges of violence. Qamar-ul Huda's presentation on IsIamfocused stronglyonthe way the spiritual teachings of Islam—i.e., islam as a religion rather than Islam as a political or national institution—foster peace. The initial reaction was somewhat similarto the reaction to Kimelman's paper: disappointment that Huda was not talking more directly about contemporary Muslim extremist violence. But here, too, the discussion enabled us to catch a glimpse both of the inner spiritual resources of Islam, and of the limitations ofthe range of concerns that Westerners typically bring to the table. Francis Clooney, in his presentation ofHinduism, strongly emphasized the great variety in Hinduism, stressing that one cannot speak ofHinduism as such. Much of this variety comes from the several millennia of Hindu history, and from the complex relationships to Buddhism and Jainism which, themselves, are important parts of Hindu history, and also from the fact that only recently have Hindus, after centuries of Moslem or Colonial domination, once again returned to positions of political and military power. Finally, Christopher Ives's presentation on Buddhism, in a way similar to my presentation on Christianity, but more extensively or more consequently, pointed out the various ways in which Buddhism has been politically and... (shrink)

"In The Givenness of Desire, Randall S. Rosenberg examines the human desire for God through the lens of Lonergan's "concrete subjectivity." Rosenberg engages and integrates two major scholarly developments: the tension between Neo-Thomists and scholars of Henri de Lubac over our natural desire to see God and the theological appropriation of the mimetic theory of René Girard, with an emphasis on the saints as models of desire. With Lonergan as an integrating thread, the author engages a variety of thinkers, including (...) Hans Urs von Balthasar, Jean-Luc Marion, René Girard, James Alison, Lawrence Feingold, John Milbank, among others. The theme of concrete subjectivity helps to resist the tendency of equating too easily the natural desire for being with the natural desire for God without at the same time acknowledging the widespread distortion of desire found in the consumer culture that infects contemporary life. The Givenness of Desire investigates our paradoxical desire for God that is rooted in both the natural and supernatural."--. (shrink)

The difficulty of the task that the authors of this book have posed themselves is due in the first instance to the fact that this period has been very little studied in the history of philosophy. In applying the term "early Russian philosophy" to the set of ideas, images, and conceptions of a philosophical order contained in the cultural texts of the tenth through the seventeenth centuries, M.N. Gromov and N.S. Kozlov see it not simply as a specific stage in (...) the development of Russian philosophy but as a "very particular phenomenon that is qualitatively unique and requires special study" . Thus the authors declare their own position in the far from finished debate about the specificity of Russian philosophy and the distinctive features of its historical development. They rely not only on the vast treasury of early Russian texts that have come down to us but also on the scholarship of historians of literature, language, painting, architecture, folklore, and other areas of culture. Of course, the book also gives careful consideration to the few studies that have been devoted to the historical-philosophical analysis of early Russian culture, from the works of the Archimandrite Gavriil to the most recent works by Soviet and foreign authors published in decades just past. (shrink)

American outlier writer William S. Burroughs was a creative force – an homme de lettres in his own right, yes, but as a cultural theorist as well, particularly his anticipation of what we now regularly call ‘a society of control’ or ‘a surveillance culture’, and, moreover, as a textual embodiment as well. That is, Burroughs was as much a media theorist and performance artist as he was a traditional literary figure, what we generally call a writer, or novelist, although he (...) lauded those latter categories. Through such multimodality he offered critiques of a ‘control society’ and of ‘thought control’ by a media that strips us of volition. In his lectures on Michel Foucault delivered at the Université de Paris VIII in the 1980s, Gilles Deleuze detailed Burroughs's influence on both philosophers with his critique of our ‘control societies’, a term they adopted from him. These critiques of what Burroughs calls ‘thought control’ were and currently remain inseparable from his emergence as a performance artist, such embodiment of his art readily available amid our own image-obsessed electronic revolution. That is, the products of this period are currently being recirculated through commercial media outlets and through multiple open access formats to suggest – to confirm – that the artist whom many another ‘outsider’ has called ‘the Priest’ and who saw himself as a ‘cosmonaut of inner space’ and ‘a technician of consciousness’, this dystopic modernist author, visionary science fiction writer, and aesthetic weapons maker was one of the major media artists, social critics, cultural theorists and literary figures not only of his but of our ‘postpersonal’ time. Michel Foucault closes The Order of Things by imagining a time when ‘man will be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea’. The closing image was crafted some fifteen years before Foucault met Burroughs in New York in 1975, but in the 1960s Burroughs, too, was already imagining and theorising the disappearing author and a post-human, media-dominated world. Such lines of thought suggest parallel trajectories that Deleuze will see as bridging philosopher and artist if not philosophy and art. (shrink)

Theologians are split into two groups: those who embrace prosperity theology and those who oppose it; both sides on scriptural grounds. Those criticising it embrace cessationism in its diversity, while its supporters are mainly found among Pentecostals and Charismatics, who are continuationists. Continuationists believe and teach that all gifts of the Spirit are still available to the church today, therefore should be practised by the church just as they were operative during the apostolic era. Therefore, it is clear that prosperity (...) preachers are continuationists. They believe and practice healing and miracle gifts today. A review of the literature, biblical texts, historical teachings, and Pentecostal and Neo-Pentecostal (also referred to as charismatic and neo-charismatic) form the basis of this article. It addresses the positive features of prosperity teachers’ beliefs and methods as well as how they exploit the dreams, fears, and aspirations of people living in poverty. The theology of sharing, as articulated by Nicholas B.H. Bhengu, is proposed as a solution to creating parity between the rich and the poor.Contribution: This article seeks to balance opposing theological approaches with the prosperity gospel. It does this by introducing a theology of sharing as taught by Nicholas Bhengu based on the philosophy of Ubuntu, a way of life among African people. The challenge for theologians on both sides of the argument is finding a way to accommodate the other side’s contributions. (shrink)

In the paper A. I. Malcev's problem on the characterization of axioms for classes with strong homomorphisms is being solved.

‘Creative Involution’ posits something of a philosophical genealogy, a line of flight that has neither need for nor interest in the periodisation of Modernism, a line of which Beckett (even reluctantly) is part. Murphy, among others, is deterritorialised as much as Beckett's landscapes are, and so he/they become a ‘complexification’ of being that manifests itself in Beckett not as represented, representative or a representation, since so much of Beckett deals with that which cannot be uttered, known or represented, but whose (...) image the works (and its figures) have become, a thinking through of negativity, becoming, and multiplicity through non-Newtonian motion, of being as becoming, where every movement brings something new into the world, but in something of a reverse Darwinism that moves from complex to simple organism, from Murphy to Worm, or Watt to Pim, or among the nameless figures in the short prose, a ‘becoming-animal’, in something not so much of a creative devolution but rather a ‘neoevolution’, or to adopt another term from Deleuze and Guattari, an ‘involution’, which ‘is in no way confused with regression’ (1987: 238), becomings creating nothing less than new worlds. Writing casually to his post-war confidant Georges Duthuit on 26 July 1951, Beckett noted in the midst of gardening chores, ‘Never seen so many butterflies in such worm-state, this little central cylinder, the only flesh, is the worm’ (2011: 271). The observation comes after the writing but before the premiere performance of Waiting for Godot in which Gogo tells Didi, ‘You and your landscapes! Tell me about the worms!’ (1954: 67). Such ‘becoming-animal always involves a pack, a band, a population, a peopling, in short a multiplicity’ (1987: 239), Deleuze and Guattari tell us. For Beckett it defines creativity as well, only possible through such un-tethered selves or beings, amid the generation of varieties and differences, accessible through moments of deterritorialisation, characterised by, ‘A fearsome involution calling us toward unheard-of becomings’ (240). (shrink)

The Hanf number for a set S of sentences in \ is the least infinite cardinal \ such that for all \, if \ has models in all infinite cardinalities less than \, then it has models of all infinite cardinalities. Friedman asked what is the Hanf number for Scott sentences of computable structures. We show that the value is \. The same argument proves that \ is the Hanf number for Scott sentences of hyperarithmetical structures.

Understanding Deleuze, Understanding Modernism explores the multi-faceted and formative impact of Gilles Deleuze on the development and our understanding of modernist thought in its philosophical, literary, and more broadly cultural manifestations. Gilles Deleuze himself rethought philosophical history with a series of books and essays on individual philosophers such as Kant, Spinoza, Leibniz, Nietzsche, and Bergson and authors such as Proust, Kafka, Beckett and Woolf, on the one hand, and Bacon, Messiaen, and Pollock, among others, in other arts. This volume acknowledges (...) Deleuze's profound impact on a century of art and thought and the origin of that impact in his own understanding of modernism. Understanding Deleuze, Understanding Modernism begins by "conceptualizing" Deleuze by offering close readings of some of his most important works. The contributors offer new readings that illuminate the context of Deleuze's work, either by reading one of Deleuze's texts against or in the context of his entire body of work or by challenging Deleuze's readings of other philosophers. A central section on Deleuze and his aesthetics maps the relationships between Deleuze's thought and modernist literature. The volume's final section features an extended glossary of Deleuze's key terms, with each definition having its own expert contributor. (shrink)

This paper explores the intersection of time and relational economic sociology. Building on Viviana Zelizer’s relational framework, I argue that analyzing the temporal dimensions of exchange provides insight into how social ties gain meaning through economic practices. The paper shows time’s dual role as both an organizing structure bounding action, and a dynamic element that actors leverage to shape transactional contexts. As structure, time offers culturally-available templates like schedules and rhythms that facilitate coordination and signify predictable social meanings befitting particular (...) relational categories. Yet time also constitutes relational work itself; strategic timing, duration, pacing, and sequencing of interactions signal context, manage expectations, and sustain bonds amidst entanglements. Synchronization through temporal agency prevents mismatches between transactions and social contexts that could strain ties. This agency in time ranges from passive adherence to dominant structures to active assertions of power resistance, enabling both domination and defiance across economic contexts. Analyzing shared temporal infrastructure within circuits of commerce further illuminates how actors distinguish those spheres of exchange at various scale from the impersonal market. Ultimately, incorporating temporality strengthens relational economic sociology by identifying a key mechanism through which practices of exchange become relationally meaningful. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Editors’ IntroductionElizabeth S. Radcliffe and Mark G. SpencerThis issue opens with the winning essay in the Third Annual Hume Studies Essay Prize competition: “Hume beyond Theism and Atheism” by Dr. Ariel Peckel. Dr. Peckel’s essay was chosen as the winner from among papers submitted by emerging scholars from August 2022 through July 2023. Please see the full prize announcement with information about this talented Hume scholar elsewhere in this (...) issue. Our Call for Papers for the Fourth Essay Prize competition is printed in the back of this issue and on-line at the Hume Studies website. The contest is open to authors ten or fewer years from the Ph.D. and closes on August 1, 2024. If you are eligible, please consult our “Call” for further details!In other Hume Studies news, we have once again acquired a new printer. Christensen Printing (Lincoln, Nebraska), whose work for us was excellent, suddenly closed its business when its owner retired this past year and had no one to succeed him. We received the news just when our November issue was ready to go to press. With the assistance of our friends at the Philosophy Documentation Center, we obtained estimates from three printers and have now engaged Bailey Printing in Charlottesville, Virginia. Our November issue was published on-line by November 1 (at the Philosophy Documentation Center website, the Project Muse website, and the Hume Society website), but the print issue took longer to get to subscribers.For a second time, we want to bring to the attention of our readers that Hume Studies will be marking its 50th year of publication in 2025. As we have previously noted, we are planning an anniversary issue for 50:1 (April 2025). We hope to include among the special features of that issue paragraphs or statements from our readers in answer to this query: “Of all of the articles that have been published in [End Page 7] Hume Studies over the past 50 years, which one is most noteworthy to you? Why so?” Please see the “Call for Entries” in the back of this issue or on the Hume Studies website (https://www.humesociety.org/ojs/index.php/hs), which includes details on where to send your response. The due date is October 15, 2024, but we encourage you to send your entries as soon as possible! [End Page 8]Copyright © 2024 Hume Studies... (shrink)

Social isolation and loneliness are growing concerns around the globe that put people at increased risk of disease and early death. One much‐touted approach to addressing them is deploying artificially intelligent agents to serve as companions for socially isolated and lonely people. Focusing on digital humans, we consider evidence and ethical arguments for and against this approach. We set forth and defend public health policies that respond to concerns about replacing humans, establishing inferior relationships, algorithmic bias, distributive justice, and data (...) privacy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Response to My ReadersMichael S. Hogue (bio)I. IntroductionI often begin writing for personal reasons: to slow my thinking, clarify and organize my thoughts, trace ideas, and sort concepts. Generally, a concern for something I consider wrong about the world motivates me to write. Provoked by such a concern, I write to understand why and how what is wrong came to be that way and why and how I (...) think it can or should be different. I write in reply to H. Richard Niebuhr's moral hermeneutic question, "What's going on?" And yet, while writing typically begins (for me) as a personal search for understanding, this search eventually leads me to (re) discover my formative communities of inquiry and interpretation. None of my questions or ideas, none of my orienting values, none of my interpretive impulses are mine alone. They do not, and cannot, exist independently of others' questions, ideas, values, and interpretations. To use Peirce's metaphor, they are slender fibers braided into a larger cable rather than independent links in a chain. The issues and questions that motivate my research; the topics I care about enough to develop into articles and books; the conceptual, critical, and normative vocabularies I bring to my research and writing; the intellectual traditions that shape the patterns of my thinking—none of these are strictly personal or individual. They have taken root and grown in me as I've learned with and from others. Writing reminds me that, as a person, I am a creature of relational processes because it shows me that my mind is not (exclusively) my own—what and how I think have been formed, animated, and limited by my experience with others in a larger world of experience that is broader and deeper than any individual mind.I open this brief essay with this comment to acknowledge my gratitude and indebtedness not only to the authors of the articles in this special issue (Walter Gulick, Robert Smid, John Teehan, and AJ Turner) but also to the larger community of scholars that comprise the readership of the American Journal of Theology and Philosophy (AJTP) and the Institute for American Religious and Philosophical Thought (IARPT). I attended my first IARPT (HIARPT, at the time) conference about seventeen years ago, soon after completing my Ph.D. I didn't know anyone personally then, but I knew several folks as authors of articles and books I had read in recent years. I discovered IARPT through the bibliography of Victor Anderson's book, Pragmatic Theology: Negotiating [End Page 80] the Intersections of an American Philosophy of Religion and Public Theology. I resonated with Anderson's articulation of a socially engaged public theology that drew from American pragmatist, historicist, and naturalist philosophies of religion. His mind had been where mine was going, into the dissenting tradition of American immanence, or the left wing of American radical theology, as I refer to it.While reading Anderson's book, I learned that many of the authors in his bibliography met every summer as a (relatively?) organized group of like-minded scholars. I joined them the next chance I had. And as things go with this group, I was immediately recruited to serve as the book review editor for the AJTP! Since that first meeting, I've attended as many IARPT meetings as my schedule allows, organized one of the summer conferences, served as AJTP book review editor for several years, and then served for several more years as the AJTP editor (following Michael Raposa's illustrious term!). Most recently, I was honored when Andrew Irvine and Austin Roberts made American Immanence a focus of the 2021 IARPT conference, "Political Thought and the Powers of Democracy: American Thought in the Anthropocene." Gulick's, Smid's, Teehan's, and Turner's articles began as papers for that conference.All this is to say what I have heard many others say through the years: the IARPT/AJTP community of interpretation has become a primary intellectual (and even spiritual) home for me. I am (and we are) fortunate to belong to a group of academic philosophers and theologians who collectively embody a rare (let us hope not... (shrink)

Jecker, et al., argue against rejecting a location for an international bioethics conference based on a “litmus test” for several reasons, ranging from the practical to the theoretical. However, th...

Without seeking to diminish its authority as the Word of God, this article acknowledges the Fourth Gospel as a brilliant piece of literary artistry by the implied author. The aim of this article is to substantiate this assertion by conducting a study on focalisation and illustrating how it invites the implied reader’s participation in the narrative. This contribution acknowledges the existence of insightful contributions on the topic, particularly in relation to the Fourth Gospel. However, it asserts that the study of (...) the performative nature of focalisation in this particular Gospel has not received the attention it deserves. The main contribution of this article is its analysis of a selected narrative of the Fourth Gospel using focalisation as an analytical tool, with the objective of demonstrating that the Fourth Gospel is performative in nature, crafted and formulated to consistently engage the implied reader in considering its purpose, as stated in 20:30–31.Contribution: The article showcases that focalisation, when used as an analytical tool, can unlock, and enable the interpreter of the Fourth Gospel to recognise its performative nature to the implied reader of the text. This is critical, given that the text is crafted to encourage the reader to participate in it by making decisions regarding their faith in Jesus Christ. (shrink)

The influence of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy on the ideas of Gilles Deleuze was quite substantial. However, analyses of the correlation between the ideas of the two philosophers have not yet received proper research attention, especially in Russian-language literature. To reveal the essence and history of the development of Deleuze’s attitude to Kant, the former’s work, Kant’s Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties (1963), in which the French philosopher aims to find the potential limits of interpretation of Kant’s philosophy. Deleuze (...) appeals to Kant’s study of faculties, in which he finds contradictions and “gaps” that find their solution in the Critique of Judgment. Deleuze refers to the free coherence of the faculties as to “something third”, which gives options for reactualising Kant’s philosophy without striving to overcome it. I also provide a brief history of the issues related to Kant­ian philosophy, appearing in the works of Deleuze — from a course of lectures on the problem of grounds, given by the young Deleuze at the Lyceum Louis the Great in Paris, to his last article published in his lifetime, “Immanence: A Life”, in which Deleuze brings up the question of the transcendental field. Despite the fact that Kant and Deleuze are more often contrasted than considered as possible allies, and despite the cases of criticisms of Kant by Deleuze, I defend the thesis that their philosophical projects are firmly linked. Considering Kant’s presence in Deleuze’s study, I conclude that Kant’s philosophy has shaped some key aspects of the French philosopher’s thinking — in particular, the concept of “transcendental empiricism” — and also has influenced Deleuze’s ideas about difference, becoming, ground and immanence. (shrink)

Industry-funded religious liberty legal groups have sought to undermine healthcare policy and law while simultaneously attacking the rights of sexual and gender minorities. Whereas past scholarship has tracked religiously-affiliated healthcare providers’ growing political power and attendant transformations to legal doctrine, our account emphasizes the political donors and visionaries who have leveraged religious providers and the U.S. healthcare system’s delegated structure to transform social policy and bureaucratic agencies more generally.

The archive produces a linear time that reaches towards ‘what could be’ by asserting ‘what has been’, providing us reassurance of our existence through the assertion of a reliably past past. But the Anthropocene is an era of uncontained material ramifications, where the past juts into the future and temporality warps as change accelerates unexpectedly. As an ecological and geologic epoch, documentation of the Anthropocene inherently has a relationship to natural history museums and archives. These institutions, however, troublingly rest on (...) what Elaine Graham calls ‘ontological hygiene’ – the separateness of the human subject from ‘nature’. The Anthropocene however, challenges the western post-Enlightenment binary of man vs. nature, as it (supposedly) naturalizes humans into an earth systems force. As such, documentation of this epoch might resist ontological sanitation. This article outlines an artistic research practice to create artefacts of the Anthropocene – one that invites material idiosyncrasies, objects-in-becoming, ephemerality, and decay. I suggest that artistic ‘anarchices’ prioritize process over objects, and resist linear and static representation in lieu of material, embodied and sensory artefacts. These include relational encounters with waste materials, reworked forms of ‘geology’, edible artefacts and multimedia works at landfills and feral sites. The anarchives are interpolated by a rejection of hegemonic logic, positivism and ‘objective’ truths about environmental phenomena; Situated, ambiguous and material knowledges are inwrought into the so-called Anthropocene (and any alternatives to this term). By focusing on waste as an analytical category, I explore some of the ontological breakdowns present in the Anthropocene and question how to unorder systems and disturb materiality. (shrink)