En partant d’un passage précisément circonscrit, et souvent cité, des « Réflexions sur Kafka » d’Adorno (« Kafka, c’est l’Enfer, vu depuis la perspective de la rédemption »), nous tentons d’en scruter les différents sens, et les multiples enjeux – à la fois pour ce qui est de l’interprétation adornienne, et de ce qu’elle nous dit, ou nous cache, du texte kafkaïen lui-même. Nous y isolons pour cela une double thématique : celle de la photographie, et celle du négatif. Que (...) recouvre cette perspective kafkaïenne selon laquelle le monde semble être renversé ; et en quoi cela nous permet-il de regarder le pays de Kafka comme une photographie? L’article tente de montrer que le négatif, à partir de cette signification photographique et en tant qu’il la dépasse, permet à Adorno de tenir ensemble les différents champs de son interprétation (le négatif étant tantôt compris dans sa dimension philosophique, religieuse, esthétique, ou encore historique). (shrink)

En mai 2011 s’est tenue, à l’Université de Strasbourg, une journée d’études autour de Franz Kafka, intitulée « Les philosophes lisent Kafka. La question de la loi, du motif au concept ». Ce numéro constitue les « actes » de la journée, dans la mesure où il en reprend les principales interventions ; mais il est plus : les intervenants ont retravaillé leurs textes, souvent à tel point qu’ils en sont devenus nouveaux, et de nombreux articles se sont ajoutés a (...) posteriori, qui viennent enrichir no... (shrink)

Dans son livre Le Temps messianique, Gérard Bensussan parle d’un « messianisme kafkaïen ». Cette expression paraît poser un certain nombre de problèmes : comment associer à l’œuvre de Kafka, sombre et apparemment désespéré, l’idée d’un messianisme faisant signe vers une forme d’espérance? Comment, en outre, comprendre les références à la venue du Messie sous la plume d’un Kafka dont le rapport à la tradition juive est pour le moins complexe? En dépit de cet aspect problématique, nous voudrions montrer en (...) quoi il est possible et fécond de parler d’un messianisme kafkaïen. Présent dans les fragments et récits écrits au cours de la guerre dans les Cahiers in-octavo, ce messianisme est à comprendre au prisme de l’effondrement de la Raison historique, et de la nécessité d’affronter le « négatif » au cœur de l’histoire. (shrink)

Michel Surya revient, dans l’entretien qu’il a accordé aux Cahiers philosophiques de Strasbourg, sur sa lecture de Kafka : sur les différentes étapes qu’elle a traversées au fil des œuvres, sur les différentes hypothèses auxquelles elle a donné naissance. À partir de plusieurs thématiques (pourquoi la honte semble-t-elle revenir sans cesse chez Kafka? En quoi peut-on dire qu’il y a dans ses textes une pensée de l’histoire qui est à l’œuvre, et comment celle-ci s’inscrit-elle dans une histoire de la taupe (...) et du souterrain en littérature? Que donne à penser la métamorphose, comme texte et comme processus, de ce que devient l’homme au xxe siècle?, etc.), Michel Surya continue de lire Kafka – si c’est en philosophe ou non, cela fait problème, et c’est précisément l’un de ceux qu’aborde cet entretien. 291-303. (shrink)

A book review of Léa Veinstein, Les philosophes lisent Kafka: Benjamin, Arendt, Adorno, Anders.

A well-known debate in normative ethics is that between proponents of Act Consequentialism and Rule Consequentialism. Given the structural similarities between Rule Consequentialism and existing forms of Contractualism, one might expect a similar debate to arise among contractualists. However, this is not the case. Some, following T. M. Scanlon, even argue that this question is “misconceived” – that there is something deeply mistaken about considering the possibility of an act-based form of contractualism. In this paper, I challenge this claim.

In this article, we shed light on the emergence, diffusion, and use of socio-technological future visions. The artificial intelligence future vision of the German federal government is examined and juxtaposed with the respective news media coverage of the German media. By means of a content analysis of frames, it is demonstrated how the German government strategically uses its AI future vision to uphold the status quo. The German media largely adapt the government´s frames and do not integrate alternative future narratives (...) into the public debate. These findings are substantiated in the framing of AI futures in policy documents of the German government and articles of four different German newspapers. It is shown how the German past is mirrored in the German AI future envisioned by the government, safeguarding the present power constellation that is marked by a close unity of politics and industry. The German media partly expose the government´s frames and call for future visions that include fundamentally different political designs less influenced by the power structures of the past and present. (shrink)

This book focuses on a question issued from The Architectonic of Pure Reason, one of the most important sections of Kant's first Critique: what is the human being? It suggests that the answer to this question is tied to a particular account of the unity of reason - one that stresses its purposive character.

A surprising feature of the White Rose anti-Nazi resistance pamphlets is their appeal to a foundational classical Chinese text, the Laozi (otherwise known as the Daodejing), to buttress their critique of fascism and authoritarianism. I argue that from the perspective of a 1942 educated readership, the act of quoting the Laozi functioned as a subtle and pointed nod to anti-fascist intellectuals in pre-war Germany, many of whom had interpreted the Laozi as an anti-authoritarian and pacifist text. To a sympathetic reader, (...) the Laozi therefore constituted an apt reference point for critiquing National Socialism. I then introduce a complication for this wartime reading of the Laozi from the perspective of its ambiguous reception in ancient Chinese political thought. I more specifically discuss an ancient line of interpretation of the Laozi that points in the direction of authoritarianism — in stark tension with the White Rose message of passive resistance and popular revolt. (shrink)

Esta coletânea é uma homenagem aos 70 anos do professor Emmanuel Carneiro Leão. Reúne artigos de seus alunos, amigos e admiradores que foram atraídos pela abrangência e rigor de seu pensamento. A diversidade de temáticas, abordagens e premissas destes ensaios refletem bem a generosidade do espírito de Emmanuel Carneiro.

In international human rights law ‘jurisdiction’ is the centre of the debate on extraterritorial obligations. The purpose of the present paper is to a) analyse how facts and principles contribute t...

In this innovative study, Lea David critically investigates the relationship between human rights and memory, suggesting that, instead of understanding human rights in a normative fashion, human rights should be treated as an ideology. Conceptualizing human rights as an ideology gives us useful theoretical and methodological tools to recognize the real impact human rights has on the ground. David traces the rise of the global phenomenon that is the human rights memorialization agenda, termed 'Moral Remembrance', and explores what happens once (...) this agenda becomes implemented. Based on evidence from the Western Balkans and Israel/Palestine, she argues that the human rights memorialization agenda does not lead to a better appreciation of human rights but, contrary to what would be expected, it merely serves to strengthen national sentiments, divisions and animosities along ethnic lines, and leads to the new forms of societal inequalities that are closely connected to different forms of corruptions. (shrink)

This dissertation abstract and the reflection commentary present the work done by Dr. Lea Stadtler. Comprising four articles, the dissertation explores the challenge of designing successful public–private partnerships for development and contributes to the discourse on partnerships and business engagement in society. Article I adopts the company perspective and develops a conceptual framework for interest alignment in PPPs for development. Based on a theoretical analysis, Article II examines the role that different structures play in handling common design challenges. Articles III (...) and IV are empirical: The former analyzes how partners cope with tensions occurring on the PPP’s boundaries, while Article IV explores the roles of broker organizations, which increasingly facilitate the partnering process of PPPs for development. This extended dissertation abstract introduces the dissertation’s research focus and summarizes each article’s research question, methods, and main findings. The reflection commentary in the appendix discusses the author’s views of her dissertation journey as a junior scholar and the research process. (shrink)

The “happy fish” passage concluding the “Autumn Floods” chapter of the Classical Chinese text known as the Zhuangzi has traditionally been seen to advance a form of relativism which precludes objectivity. My aim in this paper is to question this view with close reference to the passage itself. I further argue that the central concern of the two philosophical personae in the passage – Zhuangzi and Huizi – is not with the epistemic standards of human judgements (the established view since (...) Hansen, “The Relatively Happy Fish”), but with the more basic problem of species-specific perspectives. On my reading, Zhuangzi’s emphatic positionality in the passage – on the dam, accompanied by his friend Huizi – plausibly suggests a circumspect reflection on the limitedness of human knowledge. It is significant that Zhuangzi’s knowledge of fish happiness is avowedly from a certain place, and not absolute. But there is still a sense in which this view is objective: namely, insofar as it adequately accounts for an inherently human perspective on the world. I call this modest form of relativism ‘Species Relativism’, which, crucially, leaves room for objectivity, even though a fully objective (i.e. absolute) view of the world is not accessible to humans. (shrink)

It is widely believed that the ancient Greeks thought that Thales was the first philosopher, and that they therefore maintained that philosophy had a Greek origin. This paper challenges these assumptions, arguing that most ancient Greek thinkers who expressed views about the history and development of philosophy rejected both positions. I argue that not even Aristotle presented Thales as the first philosopher, and that doing so would have undermined his philosophical commitments and interests. Beyond Aristotle, the view that Thales was (...) the first philosopher is attested almost nowhere in antiquity. In the classical, Hellenistic, and post-Hellenistic periods, we witness a marked tendency to locate the beginning of philosophy in a time going back further than Thales. Remarkably, ancient Greek thinkers most often traced the origins of philosophy to earlier non-Greek peoples. Contrary to the received view, then, I argue that (1) vanishingly few Greek writers pronounced Thales the first philosopher; and (2) most Greek thinkers did not even advocate a Greek origin of philosophy. Finally, I show that the view that philosophy originated with Thales (along with its misleading attribution to the Greeks in general) has roots in problematic, and in some cases manifestly racist, eighteenth-century historiography of philosophy. (shrink)

A number of philosophers claim that reflection on the subjective or phenomenal character of conscious experience reveals the universal involvement of a certain feature—‘for-me-ness’, or ‘mine-ness’, or ‘a sense of mine-ness’—whose presence is often overlooked or denied. The first half of this chapter canvasses several possible interpretations of these phrases, identifies some ways in which their use tends to be problematically equivocal, and ends with a clear and minimal statement of what the feature is supposed to be. The second half (...) questions some of the grounds on which the universality of this feature has been upheld in recent analytic work, addressing both a cluster of explanatory motivations (appealing to immunity to error though misidentification, epistemic asymmetry, and ease of judgment or reportability) and a more direct descriptive or conceptual case for this view. (shrink)

This paper brings into focus the idea that just as no third-personal way of thinking could capture the self-consciousness of first-person thought, no first- or third- personal way of thinking could capture the especially intimate way we have of relating to each other canonically expressed with our uses of ‘you’. It proposes, motivates and defends the view that second-person speech is canonically expressive of a distinctive way we have of thinking of each other, under a concept that refers de jure (...) to its addressee and whose availability depends on standing in a relation of interpersonal self-consciousness with another. (shrink)

In this essay David Lea approaches the decline in the study and teaching of the humanities within the university context from a financial perspective. As humanities departments are either closed down or have their curriculum attenuated, it is obvious that the revenue previously available to support such programs has not been forthcoming. This change is often explained as the result of cost cutting necessary during periods of financial crisis, but this justification is belied by the fact that while the humanities (...) have suffered during recent “financial crises,” other areas within the university have grown. Resources that could have supported the humanities have instead been applied elsewhere: first, to increasing the administration and ancillary support staff; and second, in support of subjects oriented toward technology and the market. Ultimately, Lea links the decline of the humanities to the growing financialization of the economy, the ideology of managerialism, and a contemporary tradition that accords with the “procedures of the realms of the market and of liberal individualist politics.”. (shrink)

Scholarship on Plato's Timaeus has paid relatively little attention to Tim. 77a–81, a seemingly disjointed passage on topics including plants, respiration, blood circulation, and musical sounds. Despite this comparative neglect, commentators both ancient and modern have levelled a number of serious charges against Timaeus' remarks in the passage, questioning the coherence and explanatory power of what they take to be a theory of respiration. In this paper, I argue that the project of 77a–81e is not to sketch theories of respiration, (...) circulation, and digestion, but to explain how the human body is maintained in light of and despite constant environmental depletion. Further, I argue that in order to understand this account of “the replenishing system,” we need to understand Timaeus' striking analogy of the fish trap or nassa. Commentators have generally focused directly on the workings of the bodily construction that Timaeus likens to a fish trap, but without considering how we should understand the analogy qua analogy. I develop a functional reading of the analogy that yields a coherent account of the replenishing system on which previous criticisms of Timaeus' remarks on respiration do not arise. Aside from lending greater unity to the passage, both internally and within its immediate context in the dialogue, this account of the replenishing system contributes to our understanding of Timaeus' reason-and-necessity explanatory framework as applied to the human body and has noteworthy implications for specific explanatory principles, in particular like-to-like motion and circular thrust. (shrink)

Whilst Rahimzadeh et al. (2023) apply a critical lens to the pedagogical use of LLM bioethics assistants, we outline here further reason for skepticism. Two features of LLM chatbots are of signific...

High levels of threat and uncertainty characterize the onset of societal crises. Here, people are exposed to conflicting information in the media, including disinformation. Because individuals often base their news selection on pre-existing attitudes, the present study aims to examine selective exposure effects in the face of a crisis, and identify right-wing ideological, trust-, and science-related beliefs that might influence the selection and sharing of disinformation. A representative survey of German internet users (N = 1101) at the time of the (...) COVID-19 pandemic outbreak showed a confirmation bias in crisis-related news selection and sharing. It revealed right-wing authoritarianism and political mistrust as significant predictors of disinformation selection. The influence of social dominance orientation, mistrust in politics, and perceived certainty of knowledge were significant for sharing disinformation. The present results extend previous knowledge about people’s (dis)information behavior in times of crisis, and shed light on groups particularly vulnerable to disinformation. (shrink)

This article examines Kant’s and Marx’s analysis of religion in its relation to human emancipation. It highlights some important affinities in their accounts of human nature and their critique of religious authority including: the emphasis on freedom as distinguishing human beings from other species, the relation between moral and political progress, the critique of revealed religion, the role of political community and the importance of ethical community to achieve moral emancipation.

This article theorises the relationship between 1970s US Third World queer and feminist movements and Latin American anti-imperialist revolutions of the late twentieth century. I focus upon the historically occluded relationships between Third World feminists and queers in Chile and the United States throughout the transition to neoliberalism. My archive includes June Jordan’s little-known writings on Chile, the writings of Audre Lorde, and, primarily, a 1973 Third World feminist poetry reading staged in San Francisco shortly after the Pinochet coup. By (...) assembling this unconventional archive, I intervene into the domestication of US anti-racist queer, black and feminist of colour politics. I argue for the profoundly internationalist foundation of these formations. I work to re-animate a moment when the affective economies of anti-colonial ‘global revolution’ opened up space for the imagination of joint struggle – allowing a visceral sense of struggle’s urgency and vitality in ways that have since been partially eclipsed. (shrink)

This paper makes the case for amnesty of irregular migrants by reflecting on the conditions under which a wrong that is done in the past can be considered superseded. It explores the relation between historical injustice and irregular migration and suggests that we should hold states to the same stringent standards of compliance with just norms that they apply to the assessment of the moral conduct of individual migrants. It concludes that those standards ought to orient migrants and citizens’ moral (...) assessment of how their states handle questions of irregular migration and to inform political initiatives compatible with these moral assessments. (shrink)

There is a need to explore educational strategies that translate ethics knowledge into ethical behavior. Commonly used pedagogical approaches steeped in traditional normative ethical theory are less powerful than sensemaking in preparing clinicians to respond to ethical problems in practice. This integrative review of 15 articles explores the use of sensemaking as an instructional method for clinical ethics. Whittemore and Knafl’s :546–553, 2005) integrative review method guided a systematic appraisal of data from both qualitative and quantitative research traditions, synthesizing disparate (...) studies in analyzing literature about the use of sensemaking as a pedagogical approach in teaching ethics. Findings supported the use of Weick’s sensemaking theory to develop instructional methods that encourage ethical decision making in students as well as promote ethical response by health care providers. The review reveals important theoretical and training implications for introducing sensemaking as a means to promote ethical action in clinical practice. (shrink)

Global Justice and Avant-Garde Political Agency offers a fresh, nuanced example of political theory in an activist mode. Setting the debate on global justice in the context of recent methodological disputes on the relationship between ideal and nonideal theorizing, Ypi's dialectical account shows how principles and agency really can interact.

The move to remote learning during COVID-19 has impacted billions of students. While research shows that school closure, and the pandemic more generally, has led to student distress, the possibility that these disruptions can also prompt growth in is a worthwhile question to investigate. The current study examined stress-related growth (SRG) in a sample of students returning to campus after a period of COVID-19 remote learning (n= 404, age = 13–18). The degree to which well-being skills were taught at school (...) (i.e., positive education) before the COVID-19 outbreak and student levels of SRG upon returning to campus was testedviastructural equation modeling. Positive reappraisal, emotional processing, and strengths use in students were examined as mediators. The model provided a good fit [χ2= 5.37,df= 3,p= 0.146, RMSEA = 0.044 (90% CI = 0.00–0.10), SRMR = 0.012, CFI = 99, TLI = 0.99] with 56% of the variance in SRG explained. Positive education explained 15% of the variance in cognitive reappraisal, 7% in emotional processing, and 16% in student strengths use during remote learning. The results are discussed using a positive education paradigm with implications for teaching well-being skills at school to foster growth through adversity and assist in times of crisis. (shrink)

Walter Benjamin situe au milieu des années 1920 un tournant dans sa pensée, qu’il désigne comme sa « conversion à la théorie politique » : délaissant progressivement le paradigme métaphysique qui informe les textes de jeunesse, il s’emploie à penser l’émancipation politique. Cet article se propose d’étudier les effets de cette « conversion » dans la théorie esthétique de Benjamin – qui, de théorie de la critique, devient théorie de la perception –, pour comprendre que la « seconde » esthétique (...) ne rompt pas tant avec les catégories de la « première » qu’elle en propose la réélaboration dans un nouveau paradigme. Cette lecture synthétique et diachronique des écrits majeurs de Benjamin sur l’art s’attache à restituer la dynamique et la cohérence de la réflexion benjaminienne, qui conçoit dès l’abord la réception esthétique comme une pratique émancipatoire. (shrink)

In the 1870s, microscopy societies began to proliferate in the United States. Most of these societies attracted microscopists from surrounding cities, but the American Postal Microscopical Club, modelled on the British Postal Microscopical Society, used the postal system to connect microscopists scattered across the country. Club members exchanged microscope slides and notes following a chain-letter system. The main objective of the club was to teach its members how to make permanent slides. Preparation and mounting methods required technical skill, which was, (...) as even club members had to admit, difficult to learn without personal instruction. Yet members developed ways to share craft knowledge through the post. Drawing on the private notes of a member and published reports on the slides circulated, this paper challenges the widespread assumption that the generation of craft knowledge depended on the co-location of artisans. It argues that microscopists’ knowledge of preparation methods was intertwined with their skill in building and navigating information infrastructures, and that by tracing these infrastructures we gain a better understanding of how craft knowledge travelled in the late nineteenth century. (shrink)

This article explores the justification of states' territorial rights. It starts by introducing three questions that all current theories of territorial rights attempt to answer: how to justify the right to settle, the right to exclude, and the right to settle and exclude with reference to a particular territory. It proposes a ‘permissive’ theory of territorial rights, arguing that the citizens of each state are entitled to the particular territory they collectively occupy, if and only if they are also politically (...) committed to the establishment of a global political authority realizing just reciprocal relations. The article is developed by introducing some key features of the permissive theory and by explaining how such an account addresses the questions of settlement, exclusion and particularity in ways that significantly improve on existing rival accounts (most prominently: acquisition theories, legitimacy-based theories and nationalist theories). (shrink)

In clinical practice, evidence suggests that teaching ethics using normative ethical theory has little influence on the ethical actions of providers in practice. Thus, new training methods are needed that improve clinician response to ethical problems. A sensemaking approach to ethics training has demonstrated promise as an evidence-based pedagogical method to improve ethical reasoning and response. Project ECHO is theoretically linked to improved sensemaking. This study examines the effectiveness of ECHO and training in use of sensemaking approaches to ethical response (...) by clinicians. A quasi-experimental design study using univariate linear regression was used to examine the effect of the three types of ethics training on ethical response self-efficacy scores, while controlling for participant characteristics of years in practice, discipline and sex. We found evidence that training in sensemaking through participation in ECHO promotes improved ethical response self-efficacy of clinicians. However, results also suggest that a traditional ECHO format that does not explicitly introduce sensemaking strategies into the training does not result in the same learning outcomes as measured through an ethical response self-efficacy survey. This study found important preliminary results to support use of sensemaking approaches in clinical ethics training. (shrink)

In the light of a vast political information ‘buffet’, so-called news-avoiders stay away from the news for indefinite periods of time. Recent research suggests that news avoidance can be intentional or unintentional. However, research has mostly focused on one form of news avoidance or has not differentiated at all. Based on survey data, this study (a) identifies and compares motivations for intentional and unintentional avoidance and (b) investigates drivers of different news avoidance motives. Findings suggest that, overall, avoidance is rooted (...) in the preference for other pastimes, with intentional avoiders also being tired of news and seeing it as too negative, biased, and unreliable. Further, different motives are driven by specific characteristics: Political knowledge and internal efficacy relate to ‘cognitive’ motives, empathy, and being negativity-prone to ‘emotional’ motives, while external efficacy relates to ‘political’ motives. (shrink)

heories of embodied cognition (e.g., Perceptual Symbol Systems Theory; Barsalou, 1999, 2009) suggest that modality specific simulations underlie the representation of concepts. Supporting evidence comes from modality switch costs: participants are slower to verify a property in one modality (e.g., auditory, BLENDER-loud) after verifying a property in a different modality (e.g., gustatory, CRANBERRIES-tart) compared to the same modality (e.g., LEAVES-rustling, Pecher et al., 2003). Similarly, modality switching costs lead to a modulation of the N400 effect in event-related potentials (ERPs; Collins (...) et al., 2011; Hald et al., 2011). This effect of modality switching has also been shown to interact with the veracity of the sentence (Hald et al., 2011). The current ERP study further explores the role of modality match/mismatch on the processing of veracity as well as negation (sentences containing “not”). Our results indicate a modulation in the ERP based on modality and veracity, plus an interaction. The evidence supports the idea that modality specific simula- tions occur during language processing, and furthermore suggest that these simulations alter the processing of negation. (shrink)