: The aim of this essay is to reclaim Kristeva's concept of the semiotic chora by re-inscribing it as an intervention in the context of two important postmodern debates. The first debate relates to the philosophical problem of "the beginning before the Beginning." The second concerns the necessity and possibility of mediation between incommensurable entities: the "demonic" and the social, desire and the Law, material production and representation. I contend: (1) that the introduction of the chora in RPL is part (...) of Kristeva's effort to restore the legacy of a materialist economy of the beginning, as this is glimpsed in Plato's Timaeus from which Kristeva borrows her controversial term; and (2) that the chora constitutes an attempt on Kristeva's part to explore a third space of ambiguous relationality in the context of which our transcendence to the "demonic" lies less "beyond us" than "in-between.". (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to reclaim Kristeva's concept of the semiotic chora by reinscribing it as an intervention in the context of two important postmodern debates. The first debate relates to the philosophical problem of "the beginning before the Beginning." The second concerns the necessity and possibility of mediation between incommensurable entities: the "demonic" and the social, desire and the Law, material production and representation. I contend: (1) that the introduction of the chora in RPL is part of (...) Kristeva's effort to restore the legacy of a materialist economy of the beginning, as this is glimpsed in Plato's Timaeus from which Kristeva borrows her controversial term; and (2) that the chora constitutes an attempt on Kristeva's part to explore a third space of ambiguous relationality in the context of which our transcendence to the "demonic" lies less "beyond us" than "in-between.". (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to reclaim Kristeva's concept of the semiotic chora by reinscribing it as an intervention in the context of two important postmodern debates. The first debate relates to the philosophical problem of "the beginning before the Beginning." The second concerns the necessity and possibility of mediation between incommensurable entities: the "demonic" and the social, desire and the Law, material production and representation. I contend: that the introduction of the chora in RPL is part of Kristeva's (...) effort to restore the legacy of a materialist economy of the beginning, as this is glimpsed in Plato's Timaeus from which Kristeva borrows her controversial term; and that the chora constitutes an attempt on Kristeva's part to explore a third space of ambiguous relationality in the context of which our transcendence to the "demonic" lies less "beyond us" than "in-between.". (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to reclaim Kristeva's concept of the semiotic chora by re-inscribing it as an intervention in the context of two important postmodern debates. The first debate relates to the philosophical problem of “the beginning before the Beginning.” The second concerns the necessity and possibility of mediation between incommensurable entities: the “demonic” and the social, desire and the Law, material production and representation. I contend: that the introduction of the chora in RPL is part of Kristeva's (...) effort to restore the legacy of a materialist economy of the beginning, as this is glimpsed in Plato's Timaeus from which Kristeva borrows her controversial term; and that the chora constitutes an attempt on Kristeva's part to explore a third space of ambiguous relationality in the context of which our transcendence to the “demonic” lies less “beyond us” than “in-between.”. (shrink)

Drawing on Julia Kristeva's amorous dialogue with Therese in Therese, mon amour , her third volume on the powers and limits of psychoanalysis ( La haine et le pardon ), and Cet incroyable besoin de croire , my aim in this essay is to unpack Kristeva's theory of sublimation which, I suggest, Therese helps her elaborate, enrich and complicate. In particular, I focus on Kristeva's foregrounding of the mediating role of language in the sublimatory process and her rethinking of the (...) experience and stakes of sublimation in light of what has been discussed as the central problematic of the baroque: namely, the blurring of the distinction between appearance and reality and the uninhibited celebration of illusion. As I demonstrate, this problematic and Therese's unique response to it are most important for Kristeva since they enable her to raise questions which carry her beyond her previous treatments of sublimation. These questions relate to the amorous source of the imaginary; the dynamic established between idealization and sublimation; the dangers of an unbridled imaginary; the uncomfortable residue of matter and the body; the dialectic between finitude and infinity, unity and multiplicity. (shrink)

Employing the concept of “layering,” this book seeks to rethink our relation to textual tradition against the background of the emergence of digital culture, the increasing spectacularization of psychic as well as social life, the renegotiation of historical thinking and the precarious position of the theoretical humanities within academia.

Employing the concept of “layering,” this book seeks to rethink our relation to textual tradition against the background of the emergence of digital culture, the increasing spectacularization of psychic as well as social life, the renegotiation of historical thinking and the precarious position of the theoretical humanities within academia.

Explores and illuminates Kristeva's profound impact on our understanding of literary modernism.

Razón, poesía, historia.--La cuestión del estoicismo español.--El querer.

Dibujar el pensamiento de Seneca es dibujar su figura viva, trazar el esquema de su persona. Seneca es un mediador que para alzarse sobre nosotros necesita de nuestra necesidad, pues solo apoyado en nuestra indigencia tiene sentido. Maria Zambrano lleva a cabo un lucido estudio de la figura y significacion del pensador cordobes y presenta una seleccion de sus escritos.

Hilary Putnam is one of the world’s leading philosophers. His highly original and often provocative ideas have set the agenda for a variety of debates in philosophy of science, philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. His now famous philosophical thought experiments, such as the ‘Twin earth’ and ‘the brains in the vat’ have become part of the established canon in philosophy and cognitive science. _Reading Putnam_ is an outstanding overview and assessment of Hilary Putnam’s work by a team of (...) international contributors, and includes replies by Putnam himself. Divided into clear sections, it contains chapters on key aspects of Putnam’s large body of writing, including: Scientific realism and the changes that Putnam’s thought has undergone on this topic analyticity and ontology, including the important interconnections between the views of Putnam and Quine Putnam’s arguments concerning externalist views of meaning and reference, questions of conceptual relativity, and his preoccupation with ethics through a denial of the fact–value dichotomy Putnam’s developing views on perception. Offering an excellent survey of Putnam’s work, _Reading Putnam_ is essential for those studying philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science, as well as for anyone interested in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Positive reappraisal strategies have been found to reduce negative affect following the recall of negative personal events. This study examined the restorative effect of two mood-repair instructions (self-compassion vs benefit-focused reappraisal) and a control condition with no instructions following a negative Mood Induction Procedure by using the guided recall of a negative autobiographical event. A total of 112 university students participated in the online study (81% women, Mage: 21.0 years). Immediately following the negative memory recall, participants were randomised to each (...) condition [(self-compassion: n = 36, benefit-focused: n = 39) or a control condition (n = 37)]. Repeated measures ANOVAs 3 (Repair condition) × 3 (Time of mood assessment: pre-recall, post-recall, post-regulation) showed that, as expected, negative mood (sadness, shame, and guilt) worsened significantly after the guided recall in all groups (p <.001). After the mood-repair intervention, participants in the self-compassion and benefit-focused conditions showed a significant reduction in negative mood (p <.019), while such improvement was not observed in the control group. Self-compassion and benefit-focused reappraisal functioned similarly as mood repair strategies after experiencing negative affect induced by the recall of negative personal memories. Implications in the context of autobiographical memory biases are discussed. (shrink)

Drawing on recent findings, this study examines whether valence concordant electromyography (EMG) responses can be explained as an unconditional effect of mere stimulus processing or as somatosensory simulation driven by task-dependent processing strategies. While facial EMG over the Corrugator supercilii and the Zygomaticus major was measured, each participant performed two tasks with pictures of album covers. One task was an affective evaluation task and the other was to attribute the album covers to one of five decades. The Embodied Emotion Account (...) predicts that valence concordant EMG is more likely to occur if the task necessitates a somatosensory simulation of the evaluative meaning of stimuli. Results support this prediction with regard to Corrugator supercilii in that valence concordant EMG activity was only present in the affective evaluation task but not in the non-evaluative task. Results for the Zygomaticus major were ambiguous. Our findings are in line with the view that EMG activity is an embodied part of the evaluation process and not a mere physical outcome. (shrink)

_Jane and Louise Wilson_ With Essays by Jeremy Millar and Claire Doherty London: Ellipsis, 2000 ISBN 1-84166-027-2 84 pp., inc. 120 b/w photograph.

Scholars have long been intrigued by the Buddha's defining action (karma) as intention. This book explores systematically how intention, agency, and moral psychology were interpreted in all branches of early Theravada thought, paying special attention to the thought of the 5th-century commentator Buddhaghosa.

The purpose of this article is to argue for a position holding that epigenetic responsibility primarily should be a political and not an individual responsibility. Epigenetic is a rapidly growing research field studying regulations of gene expression that do not change the DNA sequence. Knowledge about these mechanisms is still uncertain in many respects, but main presumptions are that they are triggered by environmental factors and life style and, to a certain extent, heritable to subsequent generations, thereby reminding of aspects (...) of Lamarckism. Epigenetic research advances give rise to intriguing challenges for responsibility relations between the society and the individual. Responsibility is commonly understood in a backwards-looking manner, identifying causally responsible actors to blame for a bad outcome. If only a backwards-looking responsibility model is applied, epigenetics might give rise to arduous responsibility ascriptions to individuals for their health and the health of their future descendants. This would put heavy responsibility burdens on actors constrained by unequal social and economic structures. In contrast, a forward-looking responsibility notion takes account of structural conditions and pay attention to who is best placed to do something about conditions contributing to bad outcomes. A forward-looking responsibility notion would partly free disadvantaged individuals from responsibility, and identify actors with power and capacity to do something about structural factors constraining genuine choice. (shrink)

Mental causation is notoriously threatened by the causal exclusion argument. A prominent strategy to save mental causation from causal exclusion consists in subscribing to an interventionist account of causation. This move has, however, recently been challenged by several authors. In this paper, we do two things: We (i) develop what we consider to be the strongest version of the interventionist causal exclusion argument currently on the market and (ii) propose a new way how it can in principle be overcome. In (...) particular, we propose to replace strict supervenience in the assumption that the mental supervenes on the physical by probabilistic supervenience and show how this move has the potential to license the inference to mental causation. Finally, we argue that probabilistic supervenience captures some of the most important intuitions that strict supervenience captures and discuss possible objections to weakening strict supervenience in the way we suggest. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the responsibility of AI experts for guiding the development of AI in a desirable direction. More specifically, the aim is to answer the following research question: To what extent are AI experts responsible in a forward-looking way for effects of AI technology that go beyond the immediate concerns of the programmer or designer? AI experts, in this paper conceptualised as experts regarding the technological aspects of AI, have knowledge and control of AI (...) technology that non-experts do not have. Drawing on responsibility theory, theories of the policy process, and critical algorithm studies, we discuss to what extent this capacity, and the positions that these experts have to influence the AI development, make AI experts responsible in a forward-looking sense for consequences of the use of AI technology. We conclude that, as a professional collective, AI experts, to some extent, are responsible in a forward-looking sense for consequences of use of AI technology that they could foresee, but with the risk of increased influence of AI experts at the expense of other actors. It is crucial that a diversity of actors is included in democratic processes on the future development of AI, but for this to be meaningful, AI experts need to take responsibility for how the AI technology they develop affects public deliberation. (shrink)

We argue that philosophers are competent to facilitate public discussion concerning restrictions on human migration across political borders. We also argue that presenting public audiences with a prima facie case for open borders offers a unique opportunity to elucidate important aspects of philosophical reasoning. Finally, we share resources and a lesson plan for those keen to examine the case for open borders with students, or to facilitate public discussion on these issues.

The purpose of this article is to argue for a position holding that epigenetic responsibility primarily should be a political and not an individual responsibility. Epigenetic is a rapidly growing research field studying regulations of gene expression that do not change the DNA sequence. Knowledge about these mechanisms is still uncertain in many respects, but main presumptions are that they are triggered by environmental factors and life style and, to a certain extent, heritable to subsequent generations, thereby reminding of aspects (...) of Lamarckism. Epigenetic research advances give rise to intriguing challenges for responsibility relations between the society and the individual. Responsibility is commonly understood in a backwards-looking manner, identifying causally responsible actors to blame for a bad outcome. If only a backwards-looking responsibility model is applied, epigenetics might give rise to arduous responsibility ascriptions to individuals for their health and the health of their future descendants. This would put heavy responsibility burdens on actors constrained by unequal social and economic structures. In contrast, a forward-looking responsibility notion takes account of structural conditions and pay attention to who is best placed to do something about conditions contributing to bad outcomes. A forward-looking responsibility notion would partly free disadvantaged individuals from responsibility, and identify actors with power and capacity to do something about structural factors constraining genuine choice. (shrink)

This special focus issue brings to the Journal of Religious Ethics fresh considerations of moral anthropology as practiced by four emergent voices within the field. Each of these essays, in varying ways, seeks not only to advance an understanding of ethics in a particular time, place, and context, but to draw our attention to shared aspects of the human condition: its discontinuities and fractures, its practices of perception and attention, its interplays of emotion, intuition, and reason, and its thoroughly intersubjective (...) nature. To learn something of Thai Buddhist life-worlds, contemporary Russian modes of being, or the experience of immorality in today's China, each essay argues in turn, is to gain new insight into ourselves. (shrink)

In this conceptual article, we argue that defining corporate social responsibility and corporate social irresponsibility as opposite constructs produces a lack of clarity between responsible and irresponsible acts. Furthermore, we contend that the treatment of the CSR and CSI concepts as opposites de-emphasizes the value of CSI as a stand-alone construct. Thus, we reorient the CSI discussion to include multiple aspects that current conceptualizations have not adequately accommodated. We provide an in-depth exploration of how researchers define CSI and both identify (...) and analyze three important gray zones between CSR and CSI: the role of harm and benefit, the role of the actor and intentionality, and the role of rectification. We offer these gray zones as factors contributing to the present lack of conceptual clarity of the term CSI, as a concept in its own right, leading to difficulties that researchers and managers experience in categorizing CSI acts as distinct from CSR. (shrink)

Certain emotional processes “bypass the will” and even awareness, whereas others arise due to the deliberative evaluation of objects, states, and events. It is important to differentiate between the automatic versus reflective origins of emotional processes, and sensory versus conceptual bases of diverse negative and positive emotions. A taxonomy of emotions based on different origins is presented. This taxonomy distinguishes between negative and positive automatic versus reflective emotions. The automatic emotions are connected with the (a) homeostatic and (b) hedonistic regulatory (...) mechanisms. The reflective emotions—uniquely human—are described in reference to deliberative processes and appraisals based on two types of conceptual and verbalized evaluative standards: (a) ideal self-standards and (b) general, axiological standards of good and evil. (shrink)

In this article, the author examines how Diogenes of Sinope and Plato employed the analogy of the dog in order to illustrate two very different conceptions of the philosopher. Although in both cases the analogy of the dog is used to exemplify and explain certain moral or psychological characteristics of the philosopher, the author argues that the differences between Diogenes’ and Plato’s usages of the analogy are both more essential and more philosophically significant. Thus, against those scholars who claim that (...) there is a tight link between the Cynic’s and Plato’s analogy, the author demonstrates that these two versions of the paradigm should be understood independently from one another. The article is accordingly devoted to contrasting Diogenes’ and Plato’s respective usages of the analogy of the dog in order to bring out the profound rift separating their rival conceptions of the philosopher: whereas Plato’s guardian assumes the responsibility of protecting the just society and its institutions, Diogenes’ philosopher, by contrast, defends a marginal way of living that shuns institutions altogether. (shrink)

This paper considers the process of becoming an international public intellectual, taking the case of Maria Montessori (1870–1952), the Italian physician who became an authority on education and, u...

This article examines Sanskrit and Pali conceptions of contempt, and explores how they work in a number of ancient Indian genres, with a sustained focus on the Rāmāyaṇa. The article argues that while Indian texts often analyze emotion words and concepts systematically and with intricate granularity, contempt was not seen as an interior state to be theorized or managed therapeutically or morally. Rather, words for contempt are used to describe behaviors, etiquette, and social relationships, and are principally concerned with stipulating (...) social status. (shrink)