The Anthropocene has become an umbrella term for the disastrous transgression of ecological safety boundaries by human societies. The impact of this new reality is yet to be fully registered by political theorists. In an attempt to recalibrate the categories of political thought, this article brings Hannah Arendt’s framework of The Human Condition into the gravitational pull of the Anthropocene and current knowledge about the Earth System. It elaborates the historical emergence of our capacity to “act in the mode of (...) laboring” during fossil-fueled capitalist modernity, a form of agency relating to our collectively organized laboring processes reminiscent of the capacity of modern sciences to “act into nature” discussed by Arendt. I argue that once read from an energy/ecology-centric perspective, The Human Condition can help us make sense of the Anthropocene predicament, and rethink the modes of collectively organizing the activities of labor, work, and action. (shrink)

Arendt’s concept of experience can contribute in important ways to the contemporary debates in political and feminist theory. However, while the notion is ubiquitous in Arendt’s thinking we lack an understanding of experience as a concept, as opposed to the impact of Arendt’s personal experiences on her thought. Drawing from her notes for “Political Experiences in the Twentieth Century,” the article seeks to enrich our understanding of the Janus-faced character of political experience. It emphasizes the importance of vicariousness, and argues (...) that experience should be understood as a process of suffering, enduring, and re-experiencing events beyond our conscious control. The article further posits that experience appear only when events, through metaphors, are allowed to leave their mark on our way of using language. It is argued that this concept poses an important challenge to the different ways experience is approached in contemporary political and feminist theory. (shrink)

For Hannah Arendt, some of the most distinctive features of the modern age derived from the adoption of a process-imaginary in science, history, and administration. This article examines Arendt’s work, identifying what it calls the ‘process-frame’ in her criticism of imperialism, economy, and the biologization of politics. It discusses an interpretation in which ‘natality’ presents a completely alternative mode of temporality, a resistance to the process-frame. This interpretation, it is argued, needs to be specified by taking into account that political (...) action both interrupts and starts processes of its own. To confine and overcome the negative effects of process-framing, it is important to emphasize action as a world-building activity – something capable of establishing a relatively stable area of the common world by initiating processes of its own. Second, it is also important to cultivate ways of thinking and perceiving particular acts as meaningfully independent of all-embracing processes. (shrink)

The article addresses the role of the essay in Hannah Arendt’s theorizing. By paying attention to Arendt’s style, we are better able to draw the full conclusions from the well-known fact that she was not a system-builder but took her bearings from concrete experiences. First, the concept of experience—too often taken at face value—is explicated. It is argued that Arendt’s understanding of the concept cannot be reduced to her personal experiences, but must be read against the background of the common (...) world. A crucial dimension in the incorporation of experiences into the Arendtian political theory is the essayistic style of her writings. The essay, as an experimental and tentative platform, provides an indispensable angle to Arendt’s work—even though often overshadowed by “classical” or “narrative” readings. This will be demonstrated in relation to the puzzlement surrounding the controversial concept of “the social.”. (shrink)

In this introductory essay to a special issue “Arendt in the Present” we ponder the strange contemporaneity of Arendt’s work, her striking ability to speak to current concerns and experiences, despite her own insistence of remaining engaged with the events of her time. We argue that the “third wave” of Arendt scholarship, building on new theoretical insights and careful archival research has opened many new perspectives to her thought. Arendt scholarship has overcome the tendency to assign her a label, while (...) also avoiding the canonization of “Saint Arendt”. There is no party line, no “Arendtism”, to tow. What makes Arendt’s thought so versatile is indeed the fact that it does not call for application but a thoughtful attending to the “sense of the real” and serious facing of our newest political experiences. (shrink)

Constructions of Intersubjectivity shows that the meaning of grammatical constructions often has more to do with the human cognitive capacity for taking other peoples' points of view than with describing the world. Treating pragmatics, semantics, and syntax in parallel and integrating insights from linguistics, psychology, and animal communication, Arie Verhagen develops a new understanding of linguistic communication. In doing so he shows the continuity between language and animal communication and reveals the nature of human linguistic specialization. Professor Verhagen uses Dutch (...) and English data from a wide variety of sources and considers the contributions of grammar to the coherence of discourse. He argues that important problems in semantics and syntax may be resolved if language is understood as an instrument for exerting influence and coordinating different perspectives. The grammatical phenomena he discusses include negative expressions, the let alone construction, complementation constructions, and discourse connectives.This powerfully argued and original explanation of the nature and operation of communication will interest a wide range of scholars and advanced students in linguistics, cognitive science, and human evolution. (shrink)

One of the challenges educational systems are facing today worldwide is enabling children's voices from silenced, marginalized, and excluded groups. This book analyzes the challenge of various identities and their uniqueness within childhood and offers theoretical and pedagogical-educational solutions within Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC).

The public sphere, be it the Greek agora or the New York Times op-ed page, is the realm of appearances - not citizenship. Its central event is spectacle - not dialogue. Public dialogue, the mantra of many intellectuals and political commentators, is but a contradiction in terms. Marked by an asymmetry between the few who act and the many who watch, the public sphere can undermine liberal democracy, law, and morality. Inauthenticity, superficiality, and objectification are the very essence of the (...) public sphere. But the public sphere also liberates us from the bondages of private life and fosters an existentially vital aesthetic experience. Reign of Appearances uses a variety of cases to reveal the logic of the public sphere, including homosexuality in Victorian England, the 2008 crash, antisemitism in Europe, confidence in American presidents, communications in social media, special prosecutor investigations, the visibility of African-Americans, violence during the French Revolution, the Islamic veil, and contemporary sexual politics. This unconventional account of the public sphere is critical reading for anyone who wants to understand the effects of visibility in urban life, politics, and the media. (shrink)

Longer-term developments shape the present and endogenous futures of institutions and practices of science and technology in society and their governance. Understanding the patterns allows diagnosis and soft intervention, often linked to scenario exercises. The book collects six articles offering key examples of this perspective, addressing ongoing issues in the governance of science and technology, including nanotechnology and responsible research and innovation. And adds two more articles that address background philosophical issues.

This study offers a fresh reappraisal of the philosopher, political thinker, and historian of ideas Sir Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997) from childhood to the height of his intellectual career. It provides the first historically contextualized study of Berlin's formative years and identifies different stages in his intellectual development, allowing a reappraisal of his theory of liberalism. Applying a 'double perspective' that examines Berlin both as an East European Jewish émigré; as well as a British Liberal intellectual, author Arie Dubnov stresses the (...) very ambivalent relation between Berlin's liberal philosophy and his pro-Zionist sentiments. (shrink)

This work focuses on the conception of God of the medieval Jewish philosopher and legal scholar, Hasdai Crescas. It demonstrates that Crescas’ God is infinitely creative and good and explores the parallel that Crescas implicitly draws between God as creator and legislator.

Cognitive Science, Volume 45, Issue 11, November 2021.

Within the space of a few years, the idea of Responsible Research and Innovation, and its acronym RRI, catapulted from an obscure phrase to the topic of conferences and attempts to specify and realize it. How did this come about, and against which backdrop? What are the dynamics at present, and what do these imply for the future of RRI as a discourse, and as a patchwork of practices? It is a social innovation which creates opening in existing divisions of (...) moral labour, a notion that is explained with the help of the history of responsibility language. It is filled in for the present situation and ongoing developments. Some elements may stabilize and this creates a path into the future. There will be reductions of the originally open-ended innovation, some productive, others less so. This is a reason to regularly inquire into the value of the reductions and the directions the path is taking. (shrink)

Many believe that the ethical problems of donation after cardiocirculatory death (DCD) have been "worked out" and that it is unclear why DCD should be resisted. In this paper we will argue that DCD donors may not yet be dead, and therefore that organ donation during DCD may violate the dead donor rule. We first present a description of the process of DCD and the standard ethical rationale for the practice. We then present our concerns with DCD, including the following: (...) irreversibility of absent circulation has not occurred and the many attempts to claim it has have all failed; conflicts of interest at all steps in the DCD process, including the decision to withdraw life support before DCD, are simply unavoidable; potentially harmful premortem interventions to preserve organ utility are not justifiable, even with the help of the principle of double effect; claims that DCD conforms with the intent of the law and current accepted medical standards are misleading and inaccurate; and consensus statements by respected medical groups do not change these arguments due to their low quality including being plagued by conflict of interest. Moreover, some arguments in favor of DCD, while likely true, are "straw-man arguments," such as the great benefit of organ donation. The truth is that honesty and trustworthiness require that we face these problems instead of avoiding them. We believe that DCD is not ethically allowable because it abandons the dead donor rule, has unavoidable conflicts of interests, and implements premortem interventions which can hasten death. These important points have not been, but need to be fully disclosed to the public and incorporated into fully informed consent. These are tall orders, and require open public debate. Until this debate occurs, we call for a moratorium on the practice of DCD. (shrink)

The article revisits the large n problem as it relates to the Jeffreys-Lindley paradox to compare the frequentist, Bayesian, and likelihoodist approaches to inference and evidence. It is argued that what is fallacious is to interpret a rejection of as providing the same evidence for a particular alternative, irrespective of n; this is an example of the fallacy of rejection. Moreover, the Bayesian and likelihoodist approaches are shown to be susceptible to the fallacy of acceptance. The key difference is that (...) in frequentist testing the severity evaluation circumvents both fallacies but no such principled remedy exists for the other approaches. (shrink)

This paper first develops a theoretically motivated view of narrative as a special form of inferential, cooperative human communication, of the role that the past tense plays in the intersubjective coordination of narrators and readers, viz. that of ‘curtailing’ the immediate argumentative applicability of the represented situation, and of its relation to viewpoint management. In three case studies, it is subsequently shown how this helps to elucidate certain effects of present and past tense alternations in stories. While these effects are (...) multi-faceted and highly text-specific, there is a common denominator of the use of the past tense in the dimension of narrator-reader communication in the narratives. The analysis supports an independently motivated conception of intersubjectivity that assigns a special status to ‘coordination with other minds’, apart from senders and addressees. (shrink)

This paper aims to give a substantive account of how Feynman used diagrams in the first lectures in which he explained his new approach to quantum electrodynamics. By critically examining unpublished lecture notes, Feynman’s use and interpretation of both "Feynman diagrams" and other visual representations will be illuminated. This paper discusses how the morphology of Feynman’s early diagrams were determined by both highly contextual issues, which molded his images to local needs and particular physical characterizations, and an overarching common diagrammatic (...) style, which facilitated Feynman’s movement between different diagrams despite their divergent forms and significance. (shrink)

In Part I of this series, we presented the microscopic approach to Souslin-tree constructions, and argued that all known ⋄-based constructions of Souslin trees with various additional properties may be rendered as applications of our approach. In this paper, we show that constructions following the same approach may be carried out even in the absence of ⋄. In particular, we obtain a new weak sufficient condition for the existence of Souslin trees at the level of a strongly inaccessible cardinal. We (...) also present a new construction of a Souslin tree with an ascent path, thereby increasing the consistency strength of such a tree's nonexistence from a Mahlo cardinal to a weakly compact cardinal. Section 2 of this paper is targeted at newcomers with minimal background. It offers a comprehensive exposition of the subject of constructing Souslin trees and the challenges involved. (shrink)

This article explores Gerardus van der Leeuw’s view of phenomenology of religion. The phenomenological method he defended is basically a hermeneutical approach in which an observer relates personally and even existentially to the “phenomena” (s)he studies in order to determine their essence (Wesensschau). In his anthropology (that reflects on the basic structure of human beings) a similar way of relating to the world is discussed: the “primitive mentality” that is characterized by the “need to participate” (besoin de participation). Both phenomenology (...) and mentalité primitive imply a critique of modern scholarship. This fundamental criticism of the prevailing (historical) approach in the humanities including religious studies explains the growing distance between van der Leeuw and the majority of scholars of religion in the decades after his death in 1950. (shrink)

This article explores Gerardus van der Leeuw’s view of phenomenology of religion. The phenomenological method he defended is basically a hermeneutical approach in which an observer relates personally and even existentially to the “phenomena” (s)he studies in order to determine their essence (Wesensschau). In his anthropology (that reflects on the basic structure of human beings) a similar way of relating to the world is discussed: the “primitive mentality” that is characterized by the “need to participate” (besoin de participation). Both phenomenology (...) and mentalité primitive imply a critique of modern scholarship. This fundamental criticism of the prevailing (historical) approach in the humanities including religious studies explains the growing distance between van der Leeuw and the majority of scholars of religion in the decades after his death in 1950. (shrink)

The map is not the territory - from ontology to epistemology in knowledge construction -- Dialectics: a mechanism of knowledge construction -- Reflectivity reconsidered -- Reflectivity and the researchers' perspective -- Reflectivity and the participants' perspective -- Ethical differences and similarities as sources of reflection and knowledge construction -- Research relations and power differentials: from resistance to collaboration and in-between -- Frames of reference and the control of knowledge -- Reciprocity: the nature and attributes of research relations and power -- (...) Epilogue: from dialectics to dialog across liminal spaces. (shrink)

Brain death has been accepted worldwide medically and legally as the biological state of death of the organism. Nevertheless, the literature has described persistent problems with this acceptance ever since brain death was described. Many of these problems are not widely known or properly understood by much of the medical community. Here we aim to clarify these issues, based on the two intractable problems in the brain death debates. First, the metaphysical problem: there is no reason that withstands critical scrutiny (...) to believe that BD is the state of biological death of the human organism. Second, the epistemic problem: there is no way currently to diagnose the state of BD, the irreversible loss of all brain functions, using clinical tests and ancillary tests, given potential confounders to testing. We discuss these problems and their main objections and conclude that these problems are intractable in that there has been no acceptable solution offered other than bare assertions of an ‘operational definition’ of death. We present possible ways to move forward that accept both the metaphysical problem - that BD is not biological death of the human organism - and the epistemic problem - that as currently diagnosed, BD is a devastating neurological state where recovery of sentience is very unlikely, but not a confirmed state of irreversible loss of all [critical] brain functions. We argue that the best solution is to abandon the dead donor rule, thus allowing vital organ donation from patients currently diagnosed as BD, assuming appropriate changes are made to the consent process and to laws about killing. (shrink)

This discussion note offers a preliminary analysis of what recent developments in human germline gene editing tell us about the effectiveness of speculative and anticipatory modes of techno-ethics. It argues that the benefits of speculative discussions are difficult to detect thus far, and that pushing the focal point of ethical discourse well ahead of the current state of technology may prematurely undermine existing norms long before a broad consensus would justify moving beyond them.

The Vatican recently published directives regarding “beginning of life” issues that explain the Catholic Church's position regarding new technologies in this area. We think that it is important to develop a response that presents the traditional Orthodox Jewish position on these same issues in order to present an alternative, parallel system. There are many points of commonality between the Vatican document and traditional Jewish thought as well as several important issues where there is a divergence of opinion. The latter include (...) the status of the zygote as produced during in vitro fertilization, the acceptable of procreation in a method other than through the conjugal act, and the permissibility of deriving benefit from the products of an illicit act. These points of agreement and disagreement are discussed in detail in this article. (shrink)

This article explores the various uses or – according to some authors, such as the sociologist James Beckford – misuses of the term ‘postsecular’. The variations in its use are indeed so broad that the question is justified whether the terminology as such has much analytical value. The prominence of the ‘postsecular’ in present-day debates in my view primarily indicates the inability among scholars, intellectuals and religious interest groups to come to grips with what – for some at least – (...) is an unexpected presence and resurgence of religion in the public domains of presumably secular societies. The work of the cultural anthropologist Talal Asad shows that the secular does not preclude the religious. All kinds of religious arguments, organizations, and agents are very much present in modern ‘secular’ societies. From this perspective, the emergence of the ‘postsecular’ refers to very real phenomena, most importantly the intertwinement of the secular and the religious. For instance, religious actors do not accept the barriers of secular society and claim a role for religion in public and secular arenas. This insight could be one of the most important driving forces behind the popularity of the term ‘postsecular’ in recent years. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 6, June 2020, Page 42-44.

This article calls into question the charge that frequentist testing is susceptible to the base-rate fallacy. It is argued that the apparent similarity between examples like the Harvard Medical School test and frequentist testing is highly misleading. A closer scrutiny reveals that such examples have none of the basic features of a proper frequentist test, such as legitimate data, hypotheses, test statistics, and sampling distributions. Indeed, the relevant error probabilities are replaced with the false positive/negative rates that constitute deductive calculations (...) based on known probabilities among events. As a result, the ampliative dimension of frequentist induction—learning from data about the underlying data-generating mechanism—is missing. *Received August 2009; revised January 2010. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Economics, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

In his essay ‘Critique of Violence’, Walter Benjamin subjects violence to a critique in order to establish the criterion for violence itself as a principle. His starting point is the distinction between law-positing and law-preserving violence. However, these are for him inseparable and subjected to the law of historical change: the history of the law is nothing but the dialectical rising and falling of legal orders. Benjamin’s analysis of legal violence and his criticism of parliamentary democracies, this article advances, should (...) be related to the critical analysis of the possibilities for alternative politics in contemporary democratic rule of law states, as those advanced by Bernard Noël, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Nancy and Jacques Rancière. For Benjamin, it is only law-destroying divine violence, whose principle is justice, not power, that is able to break this circle and open up a new era. Divine violence is, however, not only a provocative but also an extremely problematic, even dangerous, concept, as Jacques Derrida, among others, has claimed. This article considers, therefore, whether the concept of divine violence has any real political relevance in the contemporary era. (shrink)

Halley et al. (2023) highlight important equity challenges emerging out of existing health policy’s reliance on self- and family advocacy. As advocacy capacity varies dramatically across groups, pu...

The contributions in this volume treat aspects and manifestations of this cultural symbiosis, and they throw new light on authors and texts both more and less ...