This article attempts to think of thinking as the essence of critical education. While contemporary education tends to stress the conveying of knowledge and skills needed to succeed in present-day information society, the present article turns to the work of Theodor W. Adorno to develop alternative thinking about education, thinking, and the political significance of education for thinking. Adorno touched upon educational questions throughout his writings, with growing interest in the last ten years of his life. Education, he argues following (...) Kant, must enable students to think for themselves and to break free of the authority of teachers, parents and other adults. Nevertheless, in his discussions of education Adorno says little about the nature of thinking, and the secondary literature on his educational theory addresses this question only cursorily. Important claims on the nature of thinking do appear elsewhere in Adorno's work. From his early writings up to Negative Dialectics, Adorno is preoccupied with thinking, sketching the outlines of critical-dialectical thought. Still, these reflections rarely touch upon educational questions, and the Adorno scholarship has yet to establish this link. Unlike studies which read Adorno's educational thought against the backdrop of the history of education and the German Bildung tradition, or in relation to art and aesthetics, the present article brings together Adorno's ideas on education and thinking in an attempt to contribute both to the Adorno scholarship and to the growing field of education for thinking. (shrink)

As a political thinker nurtured in early 20th-century German, Hannah Arendt is most often identified with the Greek philosophical tradition. This article argues that the crisis in reality that threw her into politics also, though unacknowledgedly, threw her into ‘Jewish modes of thinking’ as an alternative source where she found the Greek tradition lacking. This claim is controversial, given Arendt’s vehement criticisms of any recourse to the absolute, or metaphysical truths in the realm of politics. Nevertheless, and consistent with a (...) number of early 20th-century Jewish thinkers (Rosenzweig, Levinas, Buber, Shestov) who explicitly identified the Hebrew God not as the metaphysical but as the condition of possibility for authentic freedom under conditions of finitude, one finds in Arendt a move towards an understanding of the seat of human freedom that sits far more comfortably in the Jerusalem than in the Athens tradition. Specifically, in her emphasis on natality and genuine futurity, one senses a strong resonance with the notion of pure creation in the Hebrew Bible, as one does, notably, in her insistence that forgiveness and promises (covenants) form the two pillars for human sociality. Throughout the history of Jewish thought, one consistently finds precisely this Arendtian struggle to represent a model of law that holds the tension between binding fidelity to promises, memory and the past, and an openness to futurity, to the infinity of interpretation that gives meaning to those promises. Closely resembling the midrashic tradition, Arendt’s political community of speech is one in which meaning is open ended and plural, allowing for the binding together that sustains a polity, while also opening up to the radically new of each new birth. (shrink)

This paper explores the connection between wonder and meaning, in particular ‘the meaning of life’, a connection that, despite strong intrinsic connections between wonder and the (philosoph...

Reflections on Little Rock is one of Hannah Arendt’s most controversial writings. Read from the perspective of the political philosopher, it appears even more contentious than her famous remarks in Eichmann in Jerusalem. In the last two decades, a number of critical contributions have been published addressing this essay, highlighting how it casts serious doubts on the correctness of Arendt’s dealing with the racial question and, more generally, on the tenability of central elements of her political thought – e.g., her (...) distinction between the political and the social. However, only occasional – and, as I will try to demonstrate, quite imprecise – analyses of the implications of RLR for an understanding of Arendt’s view of judgment have been produced. The aim of the present article is to reread what both Arendt’s position on judgment and its main contemporary reformulation, advanced by Linda Zerilli, imply for the making of political choices in pluralistic societies. Special attention will be... (shrink)

Agonistic recognition in education has three interlinked modes of aesthetic experience and self-presentation where one is related to actions in the public realm; one is related to plurality in the way in which it comes into existence in confrontation with others; and one is related to the subject-self, disclosed by ‘thinking. Arendt’s conception of ‘thinking’ is a way of getting to grips with aesthetic self-presentation in education. By action, i.e., by disclosing oneself and by taking initiatives, students and teachers constitute (...) their being. The way Arendt theorizes action (vita activa) makes it essentially unpredictable and destabilizing, which does not seem to fit into what should be expected from education. In the article I will argue that it should have a place by virtue of the debate, challenge and contest it offers. But education should also be defined from a specific kind of contemplation called ‘thinking’ to become the cultivation of a faculty of judgment in education—thinking (vita contemplativa) as a common virtue in education. Arendt’s demarcation between truth and meaning does from the point of view of agonistic recognition in education call for ‘thinking’ as a qualification of political and moral meaning–the ‘taste’ to be established in the individual, by individual judgements but always judged in relation to members of a community. (shrink)

Se sostiene que los juicios reflexivos suponen un sujeto actuante que se determina por sus funciones discursivas. Para demostrar que hay un sujeto discursivo o narrativo en Arendt es preciso referir a las siguientes cuestiones. En primer lugar, hay una relación directa entre el sujeto político y su espacio de aparición o grado de publicidad. En este sentido, el sujeto no es cualquier sujeto. Es más bien el que tiene la posibilidad u oportunidad de aparecer frente a otros. Esta experiencia (...) conduce a pensar la acción humana en determinada dirección. El juicio reflexivo opera sobre un caso particular que hace posible la aparición del sujeto discursivo orientando la acción. En segundo lugar, el propósito de este análisis consiste en averiguar si es posible o legítimo pensar al discurso como recurso estrictamente narrativo y, en este sentido, indagar sobre la posición de Arendt al respecto: ¿se pueden pensar los juicios reflexivos a partir de lo narrado? Esta pregunta conduce a la conclusión del presente trabajo puesto que la posibilidad de pensar lo narrado a partir de los juicios reflexivos supone un sujeto específico con determinadas características previas que habilitan las categorías de lo visible, invisible, apariencia y realidad. The paper argues that reflective judgments presuppose an agent determined by discursive functions. In order to demonstrate that there is a discursive or narrative subject in Arendt, the following issues are dealt with. First of all, that there is a direct relation between the political subject and its space of emergence or degree of publicity. In this sense, the subject is not just any subject, but rather one who has the possibility of appearing before others. This experience makes it possible to think of human action in a certain way. Reflective judgments operate on particular cases that enable the emergence of a discursive subject that orients action. Secondly, the purpose of this analysis is to find out whether it is possible or legitimate to think discourse as a strictly narrative resource, and to inquire into Arendt's position in this respect: is it possible to think about reflective judgments on the basis of that which is narrated? This question leads to our conclusion, since the possibility of thinking about that which is narrated on the basis of reflective judgments presupposes a specific subject with certain prior characteristics that enable the categories of the visible, of the invisible, and of appearance and reality. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to assess the relationship between involvement in three aspects of congregational life and spiritual growth. In addition, an effort is made to see if spiritual growth may, in turn, affect health. A latent variable model was developed to test the following hypotheses: individuals who attend worship services more often, attend Bible study and prayer group meetings more frequently, and individuals who receive more spiritual support from fellow church members will be more likely to report (...) they have experienced spiritual growth; people who experience more spiritual growth will be more likely to derive a deeper sense of meaning in life; and individuals who have developed a deeper sense of meaning in life will enjoy better health. Data from the U.S. Congregational Life Survey suggests that spiritual support has the stronger relationship with spiritual growth than either worship service attendance or involvement in formal church groups. The findings further reveal that greater spiritual growth is associated with a deeper sense of meaning in life and meaning, in turn, is associated with better health. (shrink)

Current theoretical account of judgment has a difficult time saying anything positive about the experience of judging and, when they do offer positive accounts, they seem to overlook much that we know about the capacity already in our daily lives. Following the work of Martin Heidegger and Hubert Dreyfus, this article provides a phenomenological consideration of the structure of judging that considers judgment not as an intellectual act, but as a comportment. The article proceeds in two parts. The first offers (...) a brief consideration of the assumptions of intellectualist accounts and shows why, ultimately, they may be unable to bring judging into focus. The second section offers a phenomenological account of judging. The argument of section two is that deliberate judgment is a continuation of the structure of judgment understood as comportment and, in turn, that intellectualist accounts come onto the scene too late. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Hannah Arendt is widely regarded as a political theorist who sought to rescue politics from ‘society’, and political theory from the social sciences. This conventional view has had the effect of distracting attention from many of Arendt’s most important insights concerning the constitution of ‘society’ and the significance of the social sciences. In this article, I argue that Hannah Arendt’s distinctions between labor, work and action, as these are discussed in The Human Condition and elsewhere, are best understood as a (...) set of claims about the fundamental structures of human societies. Understanding Arendt in this way introduces interesting parallels between Arendt’s work and both classical and contemporary sociology. From this I draw a number of conclusions concerning Arendt’s conception of ‘society’, and extend these insights into two contemporary debates within contemporary theoretical sociology: the need for a differentiated ontology of the social world, and the changing role that novel forms of knowledge play in contemporary society as major sources of social change and order. (shrink)

The aim of this contribution is to investigate certain selected parts of the extended evolutionary synthesis which all have a common denominator, namely evolution by meaning attribution. We start by arguing that living organisms can manipulate and interpret their genetic script via epigenetic modifications in a semiotic manner, that is, by meaning attribution. Genes do not build living beings to be transmitted to future generations. Genes have been shaped by evolution as a memory medium that is transmitted from one generation (...) to the next, but the actual reading of such scripts is modified by momentary contexts. Secondly, we show that phenotypic evolution variously re-uses already existing homologies which in evolving systems acquire a new meaning. We also suggest that the ways in which organisms perceive their environment and other living beings is an important but still largely neglected evolutionary force. Variations in perception influence the direction and intensity of sexual selection and some behaviourally mediated regimes of natural selection. Thirdly, we point out that especially if we want to study their evolution, living beings should not be considered in isolation but in their mutual coexistence, in their historically established being together. Recent attempts to view living beings as constructors of niches and holobionts seem compatible with the classical Umwelt theory. This approach seems capable of accounting for both competitiveness and cooperation, thus making the overall image of evolution more comprehensive. And finally, we argue that if we want to expand our understanding of biological evolution, in addition to variation, selection, and inheritance we also need to take into account processes which participate in meaning attribution. (shrink)

What can Hannah Arendt's writings offer to current thinking on the environment? Although there are some obvious connections between her work and current issues in environmental ethics, not very much has been written on the topic. This article argues that Arendt's philosophy is particularly fruitful for environmental thinking because she explicitly links the material and biological conditions of human existence with the political conditions of human freedom. This is articulated in the article as the requirement of both constrained consumption and (...) unconstrained deliberation. The article elaborates these notions before concluding that Arendt's philosophy uniquely combines the existential task of self-understanding with the practical task of confronting our environmental challenges. (shrink)

The theorization of the relays and relationships between the psychic and the social, as well as between the cognitive and the expressive, is still obstructed by the resilience of the egocentric and logocentric subject invented by the discourse of modernity. This article examines the possibilities opened up by the work of Lichtenberg Ettinger for breaking free of phallogocentrism in its various forms as one condition for subverting the normative truths of power/knowledge. It focuses on the sonic dimension of being-in-the-world as (...) one approach that indicates new avenues for research. (shrink)

In this paper I want to analyse the meaning of education for democracy and thinking as this is generally understood by Philosophy for Children. Although we may be inclined to applaud Philosophy for Children’s emphasis on children, critical thinking, autonomy and dialogue, there is reason for scepticism too. Since we are expected as a matter of course to subscribe to the basic assumptions of Philosophy for Children, we seem to become tied, as it were, to the whole package, without reservation. (...) Following ideas of Hannah Arendt, I draw attention to the instrumentalised nature of Philosophy for Children and the loss of originality that this instrumentalisation means. This does not mean that I wish to abandon Philosophy for Children. The point is rather that I want to examine whether or not another kind of philosophy for children is possible. (shrink)

This article turns to early modern and Enlightenment advocates of tolerance in order to discover and lay bare the line of argument that informed their commitment to free speech. This line of argument will subsequently be used to assess the shift from free speech to the contemporary ideal of free self-expression. In order to take this assessment one step further, this article will finally turn to Immanuel Kant’s famous defense of the public use of reason. In the wake of Katerina (...) Deligiorgi’s readings of Kant, it will show that the idea of free speech requires a specific disposition on behalf of speakers and writers that is in danger of being neglected in the contemporary prevailing conception of free speech as freedom of self-expression. (shrink)

Social types, or types of persons, occupy a curious place in the history of sociology. There has never been any agreement on how they should be used, or what their import is. Yet the problems surrounding their use are instructive, symptomatic of key ambivalences at the heart of the sociological enterprise. These include a tension between theories of social order that privilege the division of labour and those that focus on large-scale cultural complexes; a tension between the analysis of society (...) in terms of social groups and an acknowledgement of modern individualism; sociology’s location somewhere between literature and science; and sociology’s awkward response to the claim – made by both Catholic conservatives and Marxists – that modern industrial and post-industrial society cannot be a society of estates. These ambivalences may help to explain why the attempts to use social types for the purpose of cultural diagnosis – from the interesting portrait of arbitrarily selected positions in the division of labour to more ambitious guesswork about modern culture’s dominant ‘characters’ – have been unconvincing. (shrink)

This article seeks to examine Ricœur's reflection on metaphor through an intertextual reading. This reading relates The Rule of Metaphor (1975) with lines of thought developed in a series of lectures held at the Centre de recherches phénoménologiques in Paris, from 1973–1974, on the theme From Language to Image, and an essay which appeared in 1978, “The Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imagination and Feeling”. This work starts with an analysis of Ricœur's interpretation of the Aristotelian theory of metaphor, a theory (...) which the French philosopher principally develops in The Rule of Metaphor. In the other two papers, Ricœur develops his metaphorology through a dialogue with Kant and he reformulates in linguistic terms the doctrine of productive imagination and transcendental schematism, which become the ontological sphere on which metaphorical and narrative activity are founded. Through the long journey of language, Ricœur's hermeneutics builds a bridge between Aristotle and Kant. This article examines this link to understand and explain further, also at the epistemological level, the relationship between metaphor and narrative. (shrink)

Political action is unpredictable because it unfolds among a plurality of independent actors. This unpredictability generates a fundamental puzzle: If an actor cannot know where her initiative will lead, what motivates and guides her in her doings? The aim of this paper is to develop and defend the solution to the puzzle that we can find in the thought of Hannah Arendt, namely the idea that political action is – or should be – motivated and guided by principles, principles like (...) justice, equality, or honour. Such principles must be distinguished from goals because they do not designate a specific state of affairs, but are general ideas that allow for diverse implementations. I show that this distinction is of great practical importance for the actors involved, since their outlook and their attitude towards others will differ depending on whether they see their activity as aimed at a goal or as guided by a principle. (shrink)

A cosmopolitan ethic invites both an appreciation of the rich diversity of values, traditions and ways of life and a commitment to broad, universal principles of human rights that can secure the flourishing of that diversity. Despite the tension between universalism and particularism inherent in this outlook, it has received much recent attention in education. I focus here on one of the dilemmas to be faced in taking cosmopolitanism seriously, namely, the difficulty of judging what is just in the context (...) of an increasingly divergent public—and classroom—discourse about values, rights and equality. I propose in what follows that judgement cannot rely on any script, even one as attractive, perhaps, as cosmopolitanism. To explore what is at stake in making judgements in an educational context, I draw on both Hannah Arendt's and Emmanuel Levinas's notions of judgement and thinking. The paper discusses the educational significance of thought and judgement as conditions for reframing the universalism–particularism problem found in a cosmopolitan ethic. My argument is that there is a world of difference between educating for cosmopolitanism, which entails a faith in principles, and ‘thinking cosmopolitan’, which entails a hope in justice for my neighbours. (shrink)

In Political Liberalism, J. Rawls describes a meta-ethical procedure — political constructivism — whereby political theorists formulate political principles by assembling and reworking ideas from the public political culture. To many of his moral realist and moral constructivist critics, Rawls's procedure is simply a recent version of the “popular moral philosophy” that Kant excoriates in the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. I defend the idea of political constructivism on philosophical and political grounds. I argue that political constructivism is the (...) best available methodology for self-legislating, socially embedded and fallible human beings; then I show that political constructivism may produce principles that could garner the principled assent of Euro-American Muslims such as Taha Jabir Al-Alwani. The article considers how political constructivism might be employed to formulate new political principles for Euro-American societies experiencing and confronting the Islamic revival. [R]. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

This essay interrogates Hannah Arendt’s different notions of friendship, their weaknesses and strengths, with a view to establishing the basis for a more adequate discussion. After examining her conception of friendship first among the ancients, and then in “dark times”, the essay asks how are we to understand friendship among the moderns when times are not particularly dark. This requires a critical reading of her conception of private intimacy and social association in order to construct a more plural understanding of (...) friendship, and of the criteria by which it can be judged, as it is differentially instituted within, and traverses, the private, civil and political realms. (shrink)

This article aims to contribute to the academic debate on the general crisis faced by law schools and the legal professions by discussing why juristic practice is a matter of experience rather than knowledge. Through a critical contextualisation of Vilhelm Lundstedt’s thought under processes of globalisation and transnationalism, it is argued that the demise of the jurist’s function is related to law’s scientification as brought about by the metaphysical construction of reality. The suggested roadmap will in turn reveal that the (...) current voiding of juristic practice and its teaching is part of the crisis regarding what makes us human. (shrink)

This article presents Hannah Arendt's novel conception of evil, arguing that what animates and undergirds this conception is an understanding of human agency, of what it means to be a person at all. The banality of evil that Arendt theorizes is exactly the failure to become a person in the first place—it is, in short, the evil of being a nobody. For Arendt, this evil becomes extreme when a mass of such nobodies becomes organized by totalitarianism. This article focuses on (...) the connection between Arendt's understanding of personhood and her conception of evil, showing how Arendt falls into a Kantian tradition of prioritizing apperception— thinking—as central for human agency. In this way, the article shows that thinking—being a person—is central to Arendt's work, thereby prioritizing and making sense of her claim in _The Human Condition_ that one is never “more active” than when thinking. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to study ethical problematics in the philosophical works of Alasdair MacIntyre and Hannah Arendt. On the one hand we have the analysis of virtues ethics and of its place in modern society, and on the other hand, we have the analysis of action and judgment as scopes of person’s self-representation, which are valuable by themselves. MacIntyre developed his hypothesis about an individual biography pointing out that modern emotivism ethics does not leave a room for (...) conscious ethical worldview, reduces the scope of ethical choice to the very statement of individual preference. By that, a sequence of ethical decisions and preferences in a person’s life acquires irrational and wayward nature, due to which conscious transition from one narrative to another becomes impossible. In its turn, the possibility of individual biography as a holistic story that everyone can tell about themselves provides such an informative nature of ethical views, which have features of a narrative that can be rationally told and rationally perceived by others. Hannah Arendt analyzed the issue of modern ethical crisis from the other side – she studied the ethical dimension of judging ability and the role of action in social interaction. An action becomes the strictly human scope of human activity, in which personality can “open up”. Judging ability appears in this context as a foundation, thanks to which a person becomes able to act: ethical worldview exists in terms of evaluation of something that exists in relation to something due. An action in this context is an active embodiment of a certain worldview position that “unfolds” itself precisely in the area of ethics while being involved in interpersonal interaction. Arendt claimed that an action, due to its nature, is unpredictable and that every human being, who dares to take it, risks getting, in the end, a result that is far from their intentions. Exactly because of it, an action exists in the actor’s biography and the fabrics of interpersonal connections simultaneously – it is the latter, which gives the space for interpretation of an actor’s actions significance. Thus, the individual biography becomes the thing that makes sense only through the prism of interpersonal interaction and mutual interpretations of individual stories. (shrink)

Medical students’ mask-making can provide valuable insights into personal and professional identity formation and wellness. A subset of first- and second-year medical students attending a medical school wellness retreat participated in a mask-making workshop. Faculty-student teams examined student masks and explanatory narratives using visual and textual analysis techniques. A quantitative survey assessed student perceptions of the experience. We identified an overarching theme: “Reconciliation/reclamation of authentic identity.” The combination of nonverbal mask-making and narrative offers rich insights into medical students’ experience and (...) thinking. This activity promoted reflection and self-care, while providing insight regarding personal and professional development. (shrink)

The perplexing relationship between two of the twentieth century’s most important philosophers, Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger, has been the subject of much speculation within academic circles. For Arendt, Heidegger was at once, her mentor, her lover, and her friend. In this paper, we juxtapose Arendt’s theory of the banality of evil against her relationship with Heidegger in an effort to consider the question: How does corporeality inform theorizing? In answering this question, we repudiate the conventional reading of the banality (...) of evil, which attributes the theory to Arendt’s analysis of Adolf Eichmann during the latter’s criminal trial for the actions that he perpetrated in the operation of the Holocaust. Instead, we argue that the theory is, more compellingly, reflective of Arendt’s deeply personal attempts at making sense of Heidegger’s decision to affiliate himself with the German Nazi Party in the years preceding, and during, the Second World War. Through this revisionist account of the banality of evil, we animate the idea that theorizing is the discursive corollary, and belongs within the phenomenological parameters, of corporeality. Finally, we contend that any constructive understanding of how corporeality informs theorizing will only be realized, when there is a collapsing of the seemingly impervious philosophical boundaries that demarcate between ontology and epistemology. (shrink)

Education as a deliberate activity and purposive process necessarily involves mediation, in the sense that the educator mediates between the child and the world. This can take different forms: the educator may function as a guide who initiates children into particular practices and domains and their modes of thinking and perceiving; or act as a filter, selecting what of the world the child encounters and how; or meet the child as representative of the adult world. I look at these types (...) of mediation at the hand of the work of John Dewey, Martin Buber, Hannah Arendt, and Richard Peters. The purpose of this paper is to explore the bearing that the mediating role of the educator—as interpreted by these authors—has on the role wonder may play in the educational process. I suggest that initiation highlights the familiarizing function of wonder, and is most readily associated with inquisitive wonder; representation draws attention to the defamiliarizing role of wonder, as well as to its world-affirming role; and selection foregrounds the distinction between momentary and dispositional wonder. (shrink)

It is argued here that business firms can and do provide an incubator that enables the Aristotelian category of friendships of advantage to develop into friendships of virtue. This contradicts other literature that views acquaintances of utility as the business norm, and expresses pessimism concerning more advanced virtuous development of friendship within the business firm. It is argued here, however, that this virtuous development is integral to the Kantian social aim of pursuing a moral community, an aim which declares the (...) appropriate moral motivation for business, and that certainly should incorporate a role for developing virtuous relations as a component of that pursuit. An atmosphere that encourages the development of relations of virtue is feasible, exists in real business, and is optimal for pursuit of moral business communities. (shrink)

In much theory there is a tendency to place thought above action, or the opposite, action over thought. The consequence of the first option is that philosophy or scientific evidence gains the upper hand in educational thinking. The consequence of the second view is that pragmatism and relativism become the dominant features. This article discusses how different branches of the Aristotelian tradition can mediate between these two views. I argue, contrary to some other Aristotelian approaches, that thinking and action are (...) both separated and yet prerequisites for each other and point to some educational consequences of this way of thinking. To build this argument I draw on selected aspects of the philosophy of Hanna Arendt, Leo Strauss and John Dewey. (shrink)

In a series of famous experiments, Benjamin Libet claimed to have shown that there is no scientific basis for our commonsensical understanding of freedom of the will. The actions we are about to undertake register in our brains before they register in our conscious minds. And yet, all that Libet may have shown is that long-invoked notions such as “the will” and “freedom” are poor explanations of how actions are initiated. Actions take place as we respond to the call of (...) the mood of the situation in which we find ourselves. Action is a way of attuning ourselves. Simple actions happen as long established habits kick in, and complex actions happen as the mood of a situation comes to correspond to the mood of a story we have been telling ourselves. When it feels right, we just act. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe aim of this paper is to bring a phenomenological perspective to bear on a specific problem: how to understand the diminished sense of reality that is often reported by persons who have suffered severe and prolonged interpersonal trauma. For this purpose I turn to resources from two traditions. First, I present a phenomenological account of the intersubjective constitution of objective experience, which is then complemented by a developmental account of how the very small child comes to inhabit a world (...) of shared mind-independent things. On this basis, I aim to show how the sense of reality, as the clear and dependable sense of the difference in experience between inner life and external reality, is an interpersonal developmental achievement that goes hand in hand with the development of the sense of self. I will in particular draw on Husserlian phenomenology and Winnicott’s psychoanalytic perspective on developmental psychology. (shrink)

In Aristotle's biological treatise, On the Parts of Animals, one finds a rare and unexpected burst of rhetorical eloquence. While justifying the study of “less valued animals,” he erupts into praise for the study of all natural phenomena and condemns the small-mindedness of those who trivialize its worth. Without equal in Aristotle's remaining works for its rhetorical quality, it reveals the otherwise coolheaded researcher as a passionate seeker of truth and an unabashed lover of natural beauty. For Aristotle, rhetoric not (...) only discloses the truth of appearances by refuting counterarguments and defending one's claims within agonistic forums; rhetoric also defends and advances whole fields of study on the promise on wonder. By examining Aristotle's example in practice, this article seeks to elucidate a notion of the rhetoric for inquiry that calls lovers of wisdom to the empirical study of nature. (shrink)

According to explanatory individualism, every action must be explained in terms of an agent's desire. According to explanatory nonindividualism, we sometimes act on our desires, but it is also possible for us to act on others' desires without acting on desires of our own. While explanatory nonindividualism has guided the thinking of many social scientists, it is considered to be incoherent by most philosophers of mind who insist that actions must be explained ultimately in terms of some desire of the (...) agent. In the first part of the paper, I show that some powerful arguments designed to demonstrate the incoherence of explanatory nonindividualism fail. In the second part of the paper, I offer a nonindividualist explanation of the apparent obviousness of belief-desire psychology. I argue that there are two levels of the intelligibility of our actions. On the more fundamental (explanatory) level, the question "Why did the agent do something?" admits a variety of folk-psychological categories. But there is another (formation-of-self) level, at which the same question admits only of answers that ultimately appeal only to the agent's own desires. Explanatory individualism results from the confusion of the two levels. (shrink)

This paper presents what I will call Arendt’s genealogy of thinking. My purpose in doing so is to strengthen Arendt’s critique of thoughtlessness which I believe is both a powerful, but underappreciated analytic tool and a consistent, but under-examined thread that occurs throughout Arendt’s oeuvre. To do so I revisit her phenomenology of thinking and the distinction between thinking and cognition she introduces in her last, unfinished work, The Life of the Mind. When read alongside the genealogy of action in (...) The Human Condition to create a parallel genealogy of thinking, we can begin to see that the implications of this distinction between thinking and cognition are radical, challenging, and deeply important. (shrink)

In this essay, I examine the concept of thinking in Hannah Arendt's writings. Arendt's interest in the experience of thinking allowed her to develop a concept of thinking that is distinct from other forms of mental activity such as cognition and problem solving. For her, thinking is an unending, unpredictable and destructive activity without fixed outcomes. Her understanding of thinking is distinguished from other approaches to thinking that equate it with, for example, problem solving or knowledge. Examples of a ‘problem-solving’, (...) skills-based approach to thinking that place a premium on behavioural change are drawn from the context of the prison. I offer an alternative example of thinking with others from my philosophy classes in the prison. I draw upon Arendt's insights to develop a concept of ‘thinking-in-concert’. Whilst Arendt believes that thinking must be a solitary activity, I argue that the concept of ‘thinking-in-concert’ helps to capture experiences of thinking with others in a manner that is more hesitant and provisional than some descriptions of communities of enquiry or democratic education. The embodied presence of others matters when ‘thinking-in-concert’. I describe this approach as educational as well as conversational. This helps to communicate the way in which we turn towards others and may be pulled up short by them as we strive to think together or experience moments of conversion or insight whilst enjoying the ordinary activity of talking with others. This concept may help us to understand the difference between the experience of thinking, teaching and learning when we are physically present to one another and the experience of virtual learning or teaching. (shrink)

In this article I compare and contrast Hannah Arendt’s and Stanley Cavell’s understandings of critique, focusing in each case upon the role played in it by skepticism. Both writers are decisively influenced by the later Heidegger’s thought that thinking as such is, first, the necessary turn to a practice adequate to our situation and, second, something that we shun. They also share the desire to take up this Heideggerian thought in Kantian terms: what is at stake is critical thinking. It (...) is here, however, that they part ways, with Arendt insisting that critique is as incompatible with skepticism as it is with dogmatism, and Cavell insisting that skepticism is the central moment within critique. Arendt’s attempt to ban skepticism from critique forces her into the contradictory position of at once denying and affirming the role of dogma in critical thinking. Cavell, in contrast, is able to shed light consistently upon the question of how citizens might best respond to the new – a task, ironically, that is a... (shrink)

On the basis of the Weber, Jaspers, and Arendt style ‘ideal types’ of the manager as Eichmann, Richard III, and Faust it is explained how under strong organizational pressures to obey orders and further organizational ends, different types of managers cooperate with organization behavior that harms people. On the basis of Arendt's and Tillich's action philosophies, the manager as Institution Citizen with the courage to be both as oneself and as a part is presented as alternative, contrast, and resistance model (...) to the other ‘ideal types’, particularly to the Eichmann ‘ideal type’. (shrink)

This article shows that Held's central philosophical concern is with the manner in which the withdrawal of world is apparent in kairological moments disclosed in fundamental moods. The phenomenology of world is for him a way of overcoming voluntarist nominalism. World is of its nature a limit to will and is experienced in the passivity of being acted upon. It is shown how Held emphasizes the common origins of philosophy and politics in the fundamental moods of wonder and awe. In (...) the final section it is argued - with reference to his more recent encounter with theological and scriptural themes - that Held's understanding of kairos and doxa is one-sided. By failing to account for the biblical transformation of both terms, especially St Paul's conception of the kairos as a suspension of world and by equating the Judaeo-Christian God with its voluntaristic conception, Held fails to give sufficient weight to the singularity of the kairos in the kenotic humbling of will implicit in the Christian notions of creation and incarnation. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that we need to re-address the issue of freedom as it relates to democracy and critical practice. My argument is drawn out of Derrida's deconstructive reading of Jean-Luc Nancy's The Experience of Freedom which proposes freedom in ontological terms as an experience of indeterminate openness that must be thought prior to any freedom of the self. I show how Derrida's reading of Nancy's text is itself a re-enactment of the freedom that Derrida finds wanting in (...) Nancy's text, but which, by that very fact, affirms the power of critique in its capacity to think freely. The urgency of the thought of freedom is not something that can be avoided, but is itself the fact of critique in its thinking of democracy as a possibility, as something that might come about, as distinct from an already accomplished idea. To think in this way is, I argue, a matter of virtue, that is, of being free, as the virtue of critique and its capacity to act decisively, thereby bringing something forth by risking what it already is, in the absolute possibility of it not being. (shrink)

Over the last 20 years, a paternalistic view in health care has been losing ground. The question about less asymmetrical positions in the healthcare professional–patient relationship is, for example, being addressed by the increased emphasis on person‐centred care, promoted in disciplines such as medicine and nursing. Partnership is considered as a key component in person‐centred care. Although the previous studies have addressed the attributes inherent in partnership, there is still potential for further discussion on how the various interpretations of partnership (...) influence their use in healthcare literature. A vague understanding might also affect education and evaluation. As we see it, the philosophical underpinnings of the idea of partnership have not been sufficiently explored and discussed. The study reveals that partnership originates in the term “partener” defined as a relationship between individuals or groups characterized by cooperation and responsibility. Etymologically speaking, partnership is hence bound by a contract, which in this study is discussed in the frame of Rawls’ contract theory, which in turn intersects with Benhabib and her distinction between “the abstract” and “the concrete Other.” Further, the expression “equal partnership,” which often appears in the context of person‐centredness, is explored in relation to the philosophies of Rawls and Benhabib. The opportunity for partnership, as well as the risk of partnership becoming a tempting magnet with a vague and imprecise meaning, is discussed. Without exploration, reflection and discussion of the philosophical underpinnings, partnership carries a substantial risk of becoming an indistinct idea used in health care. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

In this article, I develop an account of judgment that I term embodied reflective judgment, which implies that thinking and feeling are connected, entangled, and crucial for critical judgment. How we think about something can prompt an emotional response, and that response can prompt further reflection necessary for critical judgment. I clarify the relationship between thinking and feeling in judgment by foregrounding guilt feelings as a specific issue that individuals and political collectivities must deal with to make embodied reflective judgment (...) possible. I ground the concept of embodied reflective judgment in an engagement with Theodor W. Adorno and Hannah Arendt. (shrink)