What would happen if we reimagined the humanities as the superhumanities? If we acknowledged and celebrated the undercurrent of the fantastic within our humanistic disciplines, entirely new cultural worlds and meanings would become possible. That is Jeffrey J. Kripal's vision for the future-to revive the suppressed dimension of the superhumanities, which consists of rare but real altered states of knowledge that have driven the creative processes of many of our most revered authors, artists, and activists. In Kripal's (...) telling, the history of the humanities is filled with superhumanist thought, possession states, and out-of-body experiences. The basic idea of the superhuman, for Kripal, is at the core of who and what the human species has tried to become over millennia and around the planet. After diagnosing the basic malaise of the humanities-that the truth must be depressing-Kripal shows how it can all be done differently. He argues that we have to decolonize reality itself if we are going to take human diversity seriously. Toward this pluralist end, he engages psychoanalytic, Black critical, feminist, postcolonial, queer, and ecocritical theory. He works through objections to the superhumanities while also recognizing the new realities represented by the contemporary sciences. In doing so, he tries to move beyond naysaying practices of critique toward a future that can embrace those critiques within a more holistic view-a view that recognizes the human being as both a social-political animal as well as an evolved cosmic species that understands and experiences itself as something super. (shrink)

This essay is conceived as a contribution to the academic debate on the ethical status of mystical traditions with regard to Jain asceticism in particular and—through comparison of Jain with Advaita Vedanta asceticism—to ideologies of radical quietism more generally. For both Jain and Advaita Vedantic ascetic traditions, the material world, and particularly the body, are the primary obstacles to spiritual development. We deal with the social, physical, and environmental implications of such a worldview, rather than with the practice or the (...) phenomenology or the doctrine of mysticism, which we grant to be an accurate reflection of a particular kind of cosmic experience. We address ethical issues, not metaphysical ones. In our discussion of Jain asceticism, we demonstrate that the basic problem (and promise) of quietism, in almost any cultural form, is the shocking realization it can occasion that the Real has absolutely nothing to do with the social or with any sort of ethical action. We argue that Jain asceticism cannot function as an adequate resource for contemporary ethics. Our normative concerns lie exclusively with the adequacy of Jain quietism in supporting a stable global community and a sustainable natural environment. One can be mystical without being ethical, and ethical without being a mystic. We conclude that the truths of quietism are both very profound and profoundly nonethical. (shrink)

This essay introduces the second installment of a symposium in Common Knowledge called “Apology for Quietism.” This introductory piece concerns the sociology of quietism and why, given the supposed quietude of quietists, there is such a thing at all. Dealing first with the “activist” Susan Sontag's attraction to the “quietist” Simone Weil, it then concentrates on the “activist” William Empson's attraction to the Buddha and to Buddhist quietism, with special reference to Empson's lost manuscript Asymmetry in Buddha Faces. The author, (...) who is also editor of the journal, argues against the effort of some contributors to substitute new terms for quietism and emphasizes instead what he calls “the need for repose.”. (shrink)

This essay introduces the second installment of a symposium in Common Knowledge called “Apology for Quietism.” This introductory piece concerns the sociology of quietism and why, given the supposed quietude of quietists, there is such a thing at all. Dealing first with the “activist” Susan Sontag's attraction to the “quietist” Simone Weil, it then concentrates on the “activist” William Empson's attraction to the Buddha and to Buddhist quietism, with special reference to Empson's lost manuscript Asymmetry in Buddha Faces (and to (...) Sharon Cameron's work on the topic in her book Impersonality). The author, who is also editor of the journal, argues against the effort of some contributors to substitute new terms for quietism and emphasizes instead what he calls (quoting Sontag) “the need for repose.”. (shrink)

A few months ago, I was busy scrolling through one of my favorite automotive Web sites, reading about a concept carintroduced at an international auto show, when a hyperlink embedded in the text of...

Pierre Bourdieu was one of the most influential social thinkers of the past half-century, known for both his theoretical and methodological contributions and his wide-ranging empirical investigations into colonial power in Algeria, the educational system in France, the forms of state power, and the history of artistic and scientific fields-among many other topics. Despite the depth and breadth of his influence, however, Bourdieu's legacy has yet to be assessed in a comprehensive manner. The Oxford Handbook of Pierre Bourdieu fills this (...) gap by offering a sweeping overview of Bourdieu's impact on the social sciences and humanities. Thomas Medvetz and Jeffrey J. Sallaz have gathered a diverse array of leading scholars who place Bourdieu's work in the wider scope of intellectual history, trace the development of his thought, offer original interpretations and critical engagement, and discuss the likely impact of his ideas on future social research. The Handbook highlights Bourdieu's contributions to established areas of research-including the study of markets, the law, cultural production, and politics-and illustrates how his concepts have generated new fields and objects of study. (shrink)

This article places the concept of "right to know," which is normally associated with law, in a moral framework. It outlines multiple meanings of the concept, emphasizing the institutional nature of "right to know." Then the article imbeds this understanding in moral thinking, including a discussion of the moral elements of rights, and applies that understanding in specific journalistic situations.

Empirical investigation of legal systems is emerging as a leading trend in both the social sciences and the legal academy in the early twenty-first century. Law reviews are now filled with studies reporting empirical data. Because empirical investigation of law commonly seeks to inform contentious social and political debates, however, its research often fuels more debate than it resolves. Partisans on both sides of contentious issues now cite the same body of research to support their reform efforts. However, social science (...) research on law is not a useless undertaking, as it can sharpen debate. But the hope that the new empirical legal studies movement will become a neutral source of information for policy makers is unlikely to be realized. (shrink)

. Although the pages of Journal of Business Ethics have hosted an ongoing dialogue on the ethics of rhetoric and persuasion, the debates have been unable to account for the underlying morality of the human propensity to engage in rhetorical discourse as a part of living in society. In this paper, I offer natural-law ethical theory as a moral paradigm in which to examine rhetoric. In this context, I assert that rhetoric services reason, which in turn services our dispositions or (...) inclinations that are one ideological foundation of natural-law theory. As rhetoric affects the apprehension of these dispositions it subsumes a related morality in which rhetorical endeavors can be seen as “natural”. So endowed, I believe that this conception of rhetoric offers a number of philosophical and practical implications, one of which is a new way to assess the morality of commercial manifestations of rhetoric such as spin and the use of puffery in advertising. (shrink)

Jeffrey J. Maciejewski’s Thomas Aquinas on Persuasion: Action, Ends, and Natural Rhetoric reveals why human nature is dependent on an internally constituted form of persuasive discourse to bring about human action. This book puts forth that use of rhetorical discourse is natural to the human person and makes possible the fullest apprehension of human goods.

To advance the philosophical debate of advertising's role in society, in this article I situate the natural tendencies of individuals that manifest themselves in economic relationships within the broader context of natural-law theory. I propose that a natural tendency to exchange goods underscores the classical liberal economic model. As a result, individuals have a natural inclination toward the use of persuasive rhetoric. In addition, as animale symbolicum, individuals have a natural tendency toward symbol use and creation, which in turn affects (...) the production and consumption of persuasive discourse. In light of these particular natural inclinations, I suggest that natural law can justify the institution of advertising. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that, according to Plato’s Statesman, true statesmen directly control, administer, or govern none of the affairs of the city. Rather, administration and governance belong entirely to the citizens. Instead of governing the city, the task of the statesman is to facilitate the citizens’ successful self-governance or self-rule. And true statesmen do this through legislation, by means of which they inculcate in the citizens true opinions about the just, the good, the fine, and the opposites of (...) these. (shrink)

While Aristotle is often lauded, especially by virtue ethicists, for his focus on and insight into virtue, a central aspect of his conception of virtue—the doctrine of the mean—is often derided as false if not indeed absurd. The reason for this disparity in reaction to Aristotle is that the doctrine of the mean has been severely misinterpreted as stating that there are a variety of parameters in which one must achieve a mean. Such a doctrine is false, but it is (...) not Aristotle’s. In this paper, the author gives a more accurate account of the doctrine of the mean than has heretofore been given. According to this account, the doctrine simply states that virtue disposes one to feel one’s passions with an appropriate intensity. The author closes by considering Hursthouse’s famous criticisms of the doctrine of the mean, and he shows that they fail to be reasons for rejecting the doctrine. (shrink)

Observers, including the Catholic Church, have consistently demonstrated a keen ability to identify instances of rhetoric, such as advertising, that are distasteful or offensive. Although they have not necessarily characterized such endeavors as immoral, I submit that a developing notion of “natural rhetoric” may permit such criticism by contextualizing rhetoric as natural, unnatural or even perverse. Following this approach I assert that natural rhetoric, in service to reason, makes possible the apprehension of the basic good of societas. Consequently, rhetoric of (...) the unnatural variety undermines this teleological purpose; when conceived as a perversion it might not only undermine the mission of natural rhetoric, but it might do so in such a way that it harms one or more individuals. After articulating and testing this exploratory thesis with two exemplars, I offer implications for Thomistic natural law and for those who formulate the Catholic Church’s positions on social communications. (shrink)

Although rhetoric might be thought of as nothing more than an archaic art of manipulation, its ability to bring about action—particularly as the intellect and will engage in acts of persuasion amid the operations of the practical intellect—is a possibility that has gone largely unnoticed among philosophers of human nature. In this paper I explore the possibility that natural rhetoric, much as it serves the practical intellect in precipitating action, serves the speculative intellect as it stimulates acts of cognizing and (...) understanding, thus leading to the acquisition of knowledge. (shrink)

Despite traditional viewpoints that see rhetoric as nothing more than a techné or bios, rhetoric may be viewed as being capable of instantiating basic human goods. This paper proposes that rhetoric motivates our capacities for action and brings the processes involved in action – including the bearing of practical reason on them – into accord with virtue, enabling us to exercise practical wisdom in and through prudential judgments so that when these judgments have a direct bearing on others we may (...) say that they are just. (shrink)

Thelen et al. not only offer an important new theoretical account of the Stage 4 object permanence error but provide the foundation of a new theory of cognitive development that is grounded in action. The success of dynamic field theory as a more general account of cognitive functioning, however, will depend on the degree to which it can model more generative capacities that are not limited to simple choice situations. Imitation and problem solving are suggested as two capacities that might (...) be productively modeled within their approach. (shrink)

This article presents empirical evidence to address how some visitors build relationships with a wildland place over time. Insights are drawn from qualitative interviews of recreation visitors to the backcountry at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. The article describes relationship to place as the active construction and accumulation of place meanings. The analysis is organized around three themes that describe how people develop relationships to place: time and experience accrued in place, social and physical interactions in and with the (...) setting, and an active reflective process of regulating sense of identity to affirm commitment to place. (shrink)

In this commentary on Osiurak and Reynaud's target article, we argue that action is largely missing in their account of the ascendance of human technological culture. We propose that an action-based developmental account can help to bridge the cognitive-sociocultural divide in explanations of the discovery, production, and cultural transmission of human tool use.

The comprehension of anaphoric relations may be guided not only by discourse, but also syntactic information. In the literature on online processing, however, the focus has been on audible pronouns and descriptions whose reference is resolved mainly on the former. This paper examines one relation that both lacks overt exponence, and relies almost exclusively on syntax for its resolution: adjunct control, or the dependency between the null subject of a non-finite adjunct and its antecedent in sentences such as Mickey talked (...) to Minnie before ___ eating. Using visual world eyetracking, we compare the time course of interpreting this null subject and overt pronouns (Mickey talked to Minnie before he ate). We show that when control structures are highly frequent, listeners are just as quick to resolve reference in either case. When control structures are less frequent, reference resolution based on structural information still occurs upon hearing the non-finite verb, but more slowly, especially when unaided by structural and referential predictions. This may be due to increased difficulty in recognizing that a referential dependency is necessary. These results indicate that in at least some contexts, referential expressions whose resolution depends on very different sources of information can be resolved approximately equally rapidly, and that the speed of interpretation is largely independent of whether or not the dependency is cued by an overt referring expression. (shrink)

This paper extracts and articulates the account of normativity in Plato’s Philebus. Central to this account is the concept of measure, which plays both an ontological and a normative role. With regard to the former, measure is what makes particular things to be the specific kind of thing they are; with regard to the latter, measure supplies the appropriate standard for determining whether or not those things are good or bad instances of their kind. As a result of measure playing (...) these two roles, normative evaluation is grounded in the ontological structure of the thing being evaluated. (shrink)

Nucleosome positioning is proposed to have an essential role in facilitating the regulated transcription of eukaryotic genes. Some transcription factors can bind to DNA when it is appropriately wrapped around the histone core, others cannot bind due to the severe deformation of DNA structure. The staged assembly of nucleosomes and positioning of histone‐DNA contacts away from promoter elements can facilitate the access of transcription factors to DNA. Positioned nucleosomes can also facilitate transcription through providing the appropriate scaffolding to bring regulatory (...) factors bound at dispersed sites into juxtaposition. (shrink)

Nucleosome positioning is proposed to have an essential role in facilitating the regulated transcription of eukaryotic genes. Some transcription factors can bind to DNA when it is appropriately wrapped around the histone core, others cannot bind due to the severe deformation of DNA structure. The staged assembly of nucleosomes and positioning of histone‐DNA contacts away from promoter elements can facilitate the access of transcription factors to DNA. Positioned nucleosomes can also facilitate transcription through providing the appropriate scaffolding to bring regulatory (...) factors bound at dispersed sites into juxtaposition. (shrink)

This paper concerns the two arts of measurement discussed at Statesman 283-287b. In particular, it argues against the standard interpretation of the first art of measurement, according to which the various branches of mathematics are instances of the first art. Having argued against this standard view, this paper then supplies a more accurate interpretation in its place. Furthermore, it discusses the consequences of this interpretive disagreement for how we understand the relationship between the Statesman's art of measurement and Aristotle's doctrine (...) of the mean. (shrink)