One relatively straightforward way in which academics could have more impact on global poverty is by doing more to help people make wise decisions about issues relevant to such poverty. Academics could do this by conducting appropriate kinds of research on those issues and sharing what they have learned with the relevant decision makers in accessible ways. But aren’t academics already doing this? In the case of many of those issues, I think the appropriate answer (...) would be that they could do so much better. As an illustration, I examine the academic input into one decision about an issue concerning global poverty in some detail in this paper. I argue that that input has been seriously deficient, and suggest some ways in which it might be improved. Building on this discussion, I then formulate two questions that can be applied to any such decision, answers to which would indicate the quality of the input academics are currently providing. In cases where that input is deficient, and the decision in question an important one, I suggest that academics consider organising themselves in ways that will improve that input. I finish by briefly discussing how Academics Stand Against Poverty might help them do so. (shrink)

Ethics dumping is a global phenomenon involving the ‘off-shoring’of research. Research that would be prohibited, severely restrictedor regarded as highly patronizing in high-income regions is instead conducted inresource-poor settings. Twenty-eight case studies of ethics dumping were examined through inductive thematic analysis to reveal predisposing factors from the perspective of researchers from high-income regions. Six categories were agreed and further illuminated: Patronizing conduct, unfair distribution of benefits and/or burdens, culturally inappropriate conduct, double standards, lack of due diligence and lack of transparency. (...) The ultimate aim of the paper is to deepen understanding of thesehighly unethical practicesamongst academics who stand against poverty, leading to theirfurther reduction. (shrink)

A position that appears to be growing in popularity in atheist and rationalist circles is known as ‘mythicism’. According to this position we have no adequate reason to believe that the gospels refer to a historical figure called Jesus at all. This position of strong scepticism holds that the gospels are entirely mythological texts and that we are mistaken in reading them as embellished accounts of a man who lived and preached in the Middle East around 2000 years ago. I (...) disagree with this position for a number of reasons. In particular, I contend that the apocalyptic material found on Jesus' lips and the hopes for a very real earthly historical transformation strongly suggest that there is an underlying historical basis to the claims that a man named Jesus made ‘prophetic’ statements about events that were expected to happen within his lifetime, and that this historical figure was considered by his band of followers to be the long awaited Messiah. The fact that hopes for eschatological transformation and claims of the coming of a Messiah are nothing more than religious mythological notions does not preclude there having been a historical figure to which these hopes were attached. (shrink)

This article discusses ways in which academics and concerned individuals committed to the faster eradication of extreme poverty might make a contribution. It argues that this discussion needs to be informed by examining the lessons of academics who have been working in the development field for many decades tell us about success and failures and possible ways forward. Following the introduction, section two attempts to draw out from the work of academics, researchers and policymakers in the (...) “world of development” what we know and have learned about how best to accelerate the process of reducing extreme poverty in the world, and what “doesn't work”. Against this backdrop, the third section discusses different ways that academics from outside the professional development community might effectively contribute to the faster or more effective eradication of global poverty. It considers in particular some current knowledge gaps in the development field which might be bridged by academic from the fields of moral and political philosophy. Finally, section four provides a brief discussion of the types of anti-poverty organizations concerned individuals might support, providing a check-list of questions to help assess their approaches, strengths and weaknesses. It suggests that as the faster eradication of poverty requires a series of interventions on many different fronts, academics need to approach poverty eradication through a multifocal lens and prioritize support to effective and transparent anti-poverty agencies working at the local, national and international levels. (shrink)

First published in French, Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) was composed during his years in Brussels, when he was developing his economic views and, through confrontations with the chief leaders of the working-class movement, establishing his intellectual standing. In this classic work, which laid the foundation of ideas later developed in Capital, Marx polemicized against then premier French socialist, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Proudhon wanted to unite the best features of such contraries as competition and monopoly. He hoped to (...) save the good features of economic institutions while eliminating the bad. Marx, however, declared that no equilibrium was possible between the antagonisms in any given economic system. Social structures were transient historical forms determined by the productive forces: "The handmill gives you society with the feudal lord; the stream mill, society with the industrial capitalist.". (shrink)

First published in French, Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) was composed during his years in Brussels, when he was developing his economic views and, through confrontations with the chief leaders of the working-class movement, establishing his intellectual standing. In this classic work, which laid the foundation of ideas later developed in Capital, Marx polemicized against then premier French socialist, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Proudhon wanted to unite the best features of such contraries as competition and monopoly. He hoped to (...) save the good features of economic institutions while eliminating the bad. Marx, however, declared that no equilibrium was possible between the antagonisms in any given economic system. Social structures were transient historical forms determined by the productive forces: "The handmill gives you society with the feudal lord; the stream mill, society with the industrial capitalist.". (shrink)

Effective altruism is a movement which aims to maximise good. Effective altruists are concerned with extreme poverty and many of them think that individuals have an obligation to donate to effective charities to alleviate extreme poverty. Their reasoning, which I will scrutinise, is as follows: -/- Premise 1. Extreme poverty is very bad. -/- Premise 2. If it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything else morally significant, we ought, (...) morally, to do it. -/- Premise 3. Individuals ought to choose the effective option in preventing very bad things. -/- Premise 4. Donating to effective charities is one of the best ways to alleviate extreme poverty. -/- Conclusion. Individuals ought to donate to effective charities working towards extreme poverty alleviation where doing so does not require them to give up anything of moral significance. -/- I will scrutinise each of these premises in turn. -/- For Premise 1, I focus on hedonistic utilitarianism and criticise its outlook on extreme poverty. I claim that hedonistic utilitarianism might be problematic for effective altruism. -/- Premise 2 is Peter Singer's Weaker Principle of Sacrifice. I introduce several possible interpretations of it, and press several objections to it by stressing overpermissiveness, luck, and rights. I defend strengthening the Weaker Principle of Sacrifice without making it overdemanding. -/- I claim that Premise 3 can be attractive to both consequentialists and non-consequentialists. Nevertheless, by showing that effectiveness sometimes violates fairness, I propose a method which avoids always helping the greater number and always giving everyone equal chances of being helped, which is compatible with effective altruism. -/- Against Premise 4, I assess the systemic change objection, which states that effective altruism unjustifiably distracts individuals from systemic change. By considering risk and the moral standing of the future extremely poor, I claim that the systemic change objection is partially successful, but cannot undermine effective altruism. -/- After analysing all of these, I argue that individuals have an obligation to donate to effective charities to alleviate extreme poverty where doing so does not require them to give up anything of moral significance. (shrink)

Existing estimates of optimal climate policy ignore the possibility that carbon tax revenues could be used in a progressive way; model results therefore typically imply that near-term climate action comes at some cost to the poor. Using the Nested Inequalities Climate Economy (NICE) model, we show that an equal per capita refund of carbon tax revenues implies that achieving a 2 °C target can pay large and immediate dividends for improving well-being, reducing inequality and alleviating poverty. In an optimal (...) policy calculation that weighs the benefits against the costs of mitigation, the recommended policy is characterized by aggressive near-term climate action followed by a slower climb towards full decarbonization; this pattern—which is driven by a carbon revenue Laffer curve—prevents runaway warming while also preserving tax revenues for redistribution. Accounting for these dynamics corrects a long-standing bias against strong immediate climate action in the optimal policy literature. (shrink)

The purpose of this article was to compare Jerome’s and Augustine’s sermons on the fifth book of the Psalms with regard to their views on the rich and the poor. After a brief consideration of the different audiences of Jerome and Augustine, we focused on their attitudes to wealth and poverty, and almsgiving and its relationship to eschatology. In both Jerome’s and Augustine’s commentaries we were confronted with problems regarding the nature of the collections, the composition of the audiences, (...) and a lack of overlap between the two works, but it was possible to discern congruences and differences in their exegesis. In their preaching on poverty and riches, both homilists associated Judas with the devil and wealth. With regard to the identification of Christ and the poor, Jerome offers a somewhat uneasy exegesis in explaining that Christ stands at the right hand of the pauper, although the Lord himself is rich. Augustine mentioned the identification of Christ and the poor a few times in Enarrationes in Psalmos and framed the poverty of Christ within the body of the church, emphasising the common humanity of his congregation. In his sermons, mainly delivered to monks, Jerome advocated total renunciation. Augustine made more allowances for human frailty, advocating partial and gradual dispossession. The Songs of Ascent provided both our authors with the opportunity to consider the place of almsgiving in an eschatological context. Contribution: We investigate the views of two prominent Latin fathers on wealth and poverty in their sermons on Psalms 109–150. The focus on wealth and poverty is evident. Judas is identified with the rich and Christ with the poor, placing Christ and riches against each other in an either/or position. (shrink)

In debates over the legitimacy of markets for live human organs, much hinges on the moral standing of desperate exchanges. Can people in desperate circumstances genuinely choose to sell their organs? Alternatively if they do choose to sell, then surely is it their choice? While sales are banned in most of the Western world due to fears that the poor will be exploited, advocates of these markets find such prohibition unconscionably paternalistic; and from the standpoint of contemporary liberal theory, paternalism (...) is anathema. Is it possible to provide grounds for blocking such desperate exchanges which are not at the same time paternalistic?In ‘Imposing Options on People in Poverty: the Harm of a Live Donor Organ Market', Simon Rippon argues that some options in the market do in fact harm. According to Rippon, if we focus on possible negative consequences of increasing an agent's options, one can develop an argument against human organ markets which is not paternalistic or focused on the idea of exploitation. Whether his account is, as stated, non-paternalistic is an open question, but his analysis of the implications of increased commercial options provides an illuminating and original critique of the human organ markets.Rippon labels his opponents' view the ‘Laissez-choisir Argument’ . According to LC, blocking exchanges …. (shrink)

In the past decade, Ethiopia has demonstrated a strong ideological convention to the East-Asian model of ‘developmental state’, which stands for state-led industrialisation as its underlying industrial policy premise. Nevertheless, the labour rights externalities of this industrial policymaking have been overlooked in the existing academic and practical policy debates. Hence, using qualitative empirical data, the article attempts to address the research gap by analysing why and how Ethiopia’s state-led industrialisation and the corporate behaviours of apparel-exporting firms, as well as their (...) respective global brand buyers, have contributed to the existing poverty wages and repressive practices against the associational rights of local industrial workers at those selected apparel-exporting industrial parks of the country. The maxim of industrialisation with a human face has increasingly become a promising alternative to the neoclassical intellectual view of labour relations following its fundamentals towards achieving a more sustainable industrial development in a given state. In light of this human right imperative, the finding revealed Ethiopia’s stateled industrialisation has firmly embraced strong business-state alliances, thereby curbing the power of local industrial workers. The Ethiopian government employs diverse de facto or de jure labour control mechanisms across those selected apparel-exporting industrial parks of the country. This is manifested through poverty wages and repressive measures todeny the associational rights of workers. Further, the flawed Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) of employing firms and their respective global brands have contributed to the ongoing labour abuses across those selected apparel-exporting firms. Hence, Ethiopia’s industrial policy is expected to navigate a reasonable balance between facilitating industrial catch-up and ensuring labour standards for more viable and sustainable labour relations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 278-279 [Access article in PDF] Frederick C. Beiser. German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism, 1781-1801. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi + 726. Cloth, $59.95. With German Idealism Frederick Beiser adds to his already impressive body of work on classical German Philosophy. The aim of his book is to provide a historical account of the various forms the (...) notion of "idealism" took on in the work of Kant, Fichte, Hölderlin, Novalis, Friederich Schlegel, and Schelling. While the ruling picture of the period presents German idealism as the "metaphysics of subjectivity" blown up into mythic proportions, Beiser argues steadily and convincingly that "the development of German idealism consists not in an increasing subjectivism but in the very opposite: a growing realism and naturalism" (3).Nearly two-thirds of the book is devoted to Kant and Fichte. The treatment of Kant weighs in at just under two hundred pages, and is devoted to tracing his struggles with idealism in the pre-critical writings, the Kritik der reinen Vernunft and the Opus postumum. Unresolved Kantian problems serve as the launching pad for Fichte's "practical idealism." Beiser concentrates on Fichte's battles with skepticism and nihilism, his turn to the "primacy of the practical," and his efforts to provide a moral and inter-subjective foundation [End Page 278] for self-consciousness. The rest of the book deals with the ways in which the Kant-Fichte legacy is taken up and transformed into "absolute idealism" by the early Romantics and Schelling. Among the absolute idealists, it is Schelling—"the most inventive, brilliant, and productive" of them all (467)—who receives the most attention.It is a virtue of German Idealism that the trees of interpretive controversy are never mistaken for the idealist forest. In the body of the text, Beiser sticks closely to the task at hand, introducing the reader to the main lines of argumentation and the major philosophical stakes with exceptional skill and clarity. Scholarly debates are carried out mostly in the endnotes. This approach moves things along at a brisk pace, and makes for a refreshingly readable academic tome. It is perhaps inevitable, however, that a book of this scope will crack a little under the strain of its own weight. Three problems stand out. First, rejecting Hegel's self-aggrandizing account of the period is one thing, but it is surely overstating the case to say that the history of German idealism shows us that Hegel "was not the creative and original thinker that his history suggests or that his disciples imply" (11). Beiser's history, at least, does not justify such a claim. Pointing out that Hegelian-sounding ideas were in the air before Hegel started publishing does not suffice. Plato inherited from Parmenides the concern with "being," but this hardly makes him less of a creative and original thinker. Second, Beiser does not live up to his methodological promise to bracket "contemporary philosophical concerns and concepts" (ix). The book is littered with anachronisms. Schlegel is presented as attacking the "myth of the Given" (445-6), for example, while Schelling gives a "transcendental argument" for the self-knowledge of the absolute (589). Beiser also regularly classifies philosophers from the period as either "foundationalist" or "anti-foundationalist" (6-9, 235-9, 444-6), thus putting to work an undeniably contemporary "-ism" for which German, to this day, does not have a direct equivalent.Third, Beiser's treatment of the early German Romantics is too weak to serve as a bridge from Kant and Fichte to Schelling. While he is certainly right to insist that the early Romantics played a crucial role in the development of German idealism, he repeatedly conflates this claim with the less-than-convincing claim that they were philosophers with systematic ambitions. As a result, he seems ill at ease with their work, and has trouble dealing with the form within which they made their contributions. Take Schlegel for example. "For perfectly plausible reasons," we are told, "Schlegel was very skeptical of much... (shrink)

During the Dark Ages, the progress of Western civilization virtually stopped. The knowledge gained by the scholars of the classical age was lost; for nearly 600 years, life was governed by superstitions and fears fueled by ignorance. In this outspoken and forthright book, Lee McIntyre argues that today we are in a new Dark Age--that we are as ignorant of the causes of human behavior as people centuries ago were of the causes of such natural phenomena as disease, famine, and (...) eclipses. We are no further along in our understanding of what causes war, crime, and poverty--and how to end them--than our ancestors. We need, McIntyre says, another scientific revolution; we need the courage to apply a more rigorous methodology to human behavior, to go where the empirical evidence leads us--even if it threatens our cherished religious or political beliefs about human autonomy, race, class, and gender.Resistance to knowledge has always arisen against scientific advance. Today's academics--economists, psychologists, philosophers, and others in the social sciences--stand in the way of a science of human behavior just as clerics attempted to block the Copernican revolution in the 1600s. A scientific approach to social science would test hypotheses against the evidence rather than find and use evidence only to affirm a particular theory, as is often the practice in today's social sciences. Drawing lessons from Galileo's conflict with the Catholic church and current debates over the teaching of "creation science," McIntyre argues that what we need most to establish a science of human behavior is the scientific attitude--the willingness to hear what the evidence tells us even if it clashes with religious or political pieties--and the resolve to apply our findings to the creation of a better society. (shrink)

During the Dark Ages, the progress of Western civilization virtually stopped. The knowledge gained by the scholars of the classical age was lost; for nearly 600 years, life was governed by superstitions and fears fueled by ignorance. In this outspoken and forthright book, Lee McIntyre argues that today we are in a new Dark Age--that we are as ignorant of the causes of human behavior as people centuries ago were of the causes of such natural phenomena as disease, famine, and (...) eclipses. We are no further along in our understanding of what causes war, crime, and poverty--and how to end them--than our ancestors. We need, McIntyre says, another scientific revolution; we need the courage to apply a more rigorous methodology to human behavior, to go where the empirical evidence leads us--even if it threatens our cherished religious or political beliefs about human autonomy, race, class, and gender.Resistance to knowledge has always arisen against scientific advance. Today's academics--economists, psychologists, philosophers, and others in the social sciences--stand in the way of a science of human behavior just as clerics attempted to block the Copernican revolution in the 1600s. A scientific approach to social science would test hypotheses against the evidence rather than find and use evidence only to affirm a particular theory, as is often the practice in today's social sciences. Drawing lessons from Galileo's conflict with the Catholic church and current debates over the teaching of "creation science," McIntyre argues that what we need most to establish a science of human behavior is the scientific attitude--the willingness to hear what the evidence tells us even if it clashes with religious or political pieties--and the resolve to apply our findings to the creation of a better society. (shrink)

This article critiques the ‘withdrawal approach’ to deparochializing global justice and argues for an approach that views ‘departure’ from mainstream theorization as integral to truly critical engagement. It introduces Aakash Singh Rathore’s approach to deparochialization – purportedly founded on Amartya Sen’s The Idea of Justice – as an example of ‘withdrawal approach’ which advocates repudiation of the West-centric and ‘profession-oriented’ academic debate on global justice, and promotion of context-sensitive theories. I argue that Rathore’s ‘withdrawal approach’ springs from an inaccurate reading (...) of Sen’s The Idea of Justice and hence overlooks the critical spirit of Sen’s engagement with the global heritage of ideas and 'critical departure’ from parochial theories. This article further explores three analytical forms of parochialism that dominant theories of global justice may suffer from: epistemic, conceptual and descriptive. Using the case of India’s superrich and their culpability in global poverty, I demonstrate the parochial construction of ‘duties’ in Thomas Pogge’s theory of global poverty. I argue that deparochializing global justice, involving critical engagement with existing theorization along conceptual and descriptive lines, can illuminate a new way forward in global justice research. (shrink)

Due to the growing emphasis on the importance of the rights and entitlements of non-human animals, horseracing has come in for renewed and, in many instances, justifiable scrutiny. This has led to an ongoing public debate concerning the use of the padded whip in particular – a debate which has been reasonably open and well contested. However, the scientific/academic debate has been disappointingly one-sided and, to date, the views of anyone other than those opposed to the continued use of the (...) padded whip have not been given an airing. This paper seeks to redress the imbalance in the academic debate by revisiting some of the key arguments deployed by authors who express grave concerns over the use of the padded whip in racing, challenging what are taken to be significant weaknesses in many of them. For the sport to be able to make informed policy decisions on this important issue, a number of things are needed. First, a critical review of the studies available is needed. And, secondly, gaps in the literature and research need to be flagged. As things stand, the jury is still out from a scientific and philosophical point of view on the issue of whether the padded whip is painful, despite the claims of some of the more vocal critics of the practice. This paper will further look to identify the challenges ahead and the kind of research urgently needed. (shrink)

B.F. Skinner was the voice of radical behaviourism for some five decades, fighting relentlessly against consciousness as a scientific question. While in public he always argued the case for behaviourism, in fact Skinner was deeply at odds with himself, as he reveals in several books. Surprisingly, as a college student he was deeply interested in becoming a stream-of-consciousness novelist. When that ambition failed, he reacted with a radical rejection of the conscious life. Decades later Skinner's inner struggle still continued, (...) as his autobiography shows. Like a mystery novelist, B.F. Skinner again and again provides the clues to his own secret. Skinner's conflict about consciousness was not just a personal idiosyncracy. Behaviourism and its radical rejection of personal experience was a major theme of the twentieth century, and continues even today. Rejection of consciousness became a core belief for academic psychologists and philosophers in the English-speaking world, justifying their claim to standing among the physical sciences. Skinner's life suggests that radical behaviourism may be associated with psychological conflict and some degree of dissociation. It also raises questions about the cultural climate that celebrated the rejection of consciousness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Learning to BreatheFive Fragments Against RacismB. Venkat Mani (bio)For Dr. JLW, for all Black academics and students1. Air HungerI know you, Derek Chauvin. You may think that we first met on May 25, 2020, in Minneapolis. I was called George Perry Floyd. For you, I was just another Black man, a potential criminal. For me, you were not a police officer, but the knee that stands for (...) racism. You kneeled on my windpipe for 9 minutes and 29 seconds. Those were neither my first nor my last memories.You may choose not to recognize me, as you always have. But I do. I recognize every bone, muscle, tendon, pointy curve of the cap, every contour of your strong, heavy, determined, calculating, conniving knee that presses on my windpipe with a false sense of racist superiority. 9 minutes and 29 seconds. As often as you can.We have a history. You have never missed the opportunity of kneeling on my windpipe. You hauled me into your slave ships from various African ports along the Atlantic, then you kneeled on my windpipe all over your cotton and tobacco plantations in the Americas. We met again on schooners from Indian shores journeying across the Indian and Pacific oceans. With slavery banned in the British empire, you turned me into an indentured laborer. You made me put my thumb imprint on a document you created, in a script I could not read, of a language I could not speak. Then you threw me thousands of miles away in Mauritius, Fiji, and numerous Caribbean islands, pressing on my windpipe on sugarcane plantations. My wife, children, sisters, mothers, aunts, brothers, uncles, nephews, nieces, grandparents, great grandparents, we all have lived through those fatal 9 minutes and 29 seconds: on water and land. Repeatedly. Consistently. Incessantly.You want specific dates? April 8, 1857, Barrackpore, Northern India. My name was Mangal Pandey, you called me a Sepoy. You hanged me for standing up against my subjugation by your British East India Company. Against your rule over my land and my people. With your many titles [End Page 41] and names: Major-General Sir Henry Havelock, Lieutenant-General Sir Colin Campbell, Brigadier-General Charles Windham, you rampaged through the streets of Delhi, Meerut, Lucknow, killing anyone in your way so I could be a jewel in Victoria's crown. January 29, 1863, Bear River, Idaho. I was one among the Shoshone of Bia Ogoi, you were Colonel Patrick Connor. You came to us on a frigid morning and killed us by the hundreds. November 15, 1884, the Congo Conference, Berlin. You were called Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and were acting at the behest of sharecropping interests of King Leopold the Second. Your name for me was a "savage." You set up a society to civilize me while you plundered my bounty. You started drawing lines through land, rivers, mountains, deserts. For you, it was the Scramble for Africa. For me, bloody murder. You knelt on my windpipe, smoking a pipe with tobacco my people had grown. April 13, 1919, Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar. You were called Brigadier General Reginald Edward Harry Dyer. For you, I was just a troublemaking native disrupting the civilized business of the Empire. You surrounded our peaceful gathering in Amritsar and opened fire. Your Nobel Laureate Rudyard Kipling claimed that "you did your duty as you saw fit." By killing us in thousands until the bullets ran out. Rikki Tikki Tavi. May 31, 1921, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Inspired by Jim Crow, your knees came running to us in mobs to massacre us. October 19, 1926, Imperial Conference, London. Your name was Field Marshall the Right Honorable Jan Christian Smuts. For you, I was one among the many "colored" subjects from the Cape Colony. You spoke vehemently against mixing my people with your people. Eloquently, I was told, in favor of apartheid.You know very well, Chauvin, that our acquaintance neither begins in 1857 nor ends in 1926. I could take you on a grand tour of the world and give you all the dates when you appeared in different forms. Your self-induced conviction of racial supremacy over me remained the same... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Language of the CaveA. Serge KapplerThe Language of the Cave, by Andrew Barker and Martin Warner; vi & 198 pp. Edmonton: Academic Printing & Publishing, 1993, $54.95 cloth, $21.95 paper.The scholarly essays in this collection focus on the tension between Plato’s expressed views about style, poetry, and intellectual discourse on the one hand and his own practice on the other. Why does a man fiercely hostile toward (...) [End Page 266] literature and poetry write works that are themselves mimetic? Why does he repeatedly resort to story telling to make a point? Why do some of his works fail to fit his own prescriptions of clarity and unity? Six of the eight essays in this collection propose exonerating answers to these and similarly troubling questions.In stimulating counterpoint to this massive rescue operation, John Gould (“Plato and Performance”) argues that Plato’s attack on the irrationality of Greek literature and poetry has irrational roots in Plato himself. The reality defined by literary art, Gould suggests, is one of contradiction and conflict; its “incorrigible plurality”—the “drunkenness” of things as they are—is something that “Plato, at least in the puritanical mood of the Republic and the Phaedo, would not have wished to feel” (p. 25).Gould bases his contentions largely on a negative assessment of Plato’s arguments in the Republic. For him, the poverty and fierceness of those arguments strongly suggest an existential agenda at work. Implicitly supportive of this position, Penelope Murray (“Inspiration and Mimesis in Plato”) shows that the picture Plato paints of poets in the grip of irrational frenzy, in the Republic and elsewhere, far from being the traditional truth he purports it to be, is his own creation. It is a “far cry,” she convincingly argues, from the images of the poet that we find in pre-Platonic literature” (p. 46).The most original defense of Plato is offered by Mary Margaret McCabe in “Myth, Allegory and Argument in Plato.” She proposes that logical arguments in Plato’s text stand in a dialectical relation to stories and allegories elsewhere in the text. Mere logic presents too lean a picture of reality, while myths and allegories present one that is, from an Ockhamite perspective, too rich. The responsibility for finding the right theoretical balance lies with the reader.Now were it true that Plato’s famous images have no genuine heuristic value in the contexts in which they are offered, then McCabe’s thesis might be in some trouble. Yet that is precisely the claim of Manuela Teçusan (“Speaking about the Unspeakable: Plato’s Use of Imagery”), who reassures readers that because Plato resorts to poetic devices primarily in order to illustrate conclusions that are independently supported, he is not really guilty of an inconsistency needing to be explained away.If Plato’s complaints against literature are typically understood as presupposing extravagant metaphysical theses of his own, one possibility is to show that he is not actually committed to those theses. Christopher Rowe (“Reflections of the Sun: Explanation in the Phaedo”) and Michael Stokes (“Plato and the Sightlovers of the Republic”) weigh in with carefully argued versions of that time-honored project. Rowe can discover no reference in the Phaedo to the unhypothesized Good of the Republic, while Stokes discerns no genuine Platonic commitment to a two-world theory in Republic 5.Finally, Richard Rutherford (“Unifying the Protagoras”) diagnoses that dialogue’s notorious lack of unity as reflecting the disorganized minds and unsocratically competitive impulses of its Sophist participants, and Martin [End Page 267] Warner (“Dialectical Drama: The Case of Plato’s Symposium”) proposes that, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, all of the Symposium displays both substance and unity.Reading these well-researched, engaging essays, one may find oneself wishing that their authors would occasionally wonder aloud whether Plato had any choice but to express himself through the poetic/dramatic medium which he criticizes. Perhaps he could have invented the straightforward philosophical prose style, but perhaps he was too busy building its conceptual and cultural foundations.A. Serge KapplerSkidmore CollegeCopyright © 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

In Mexico, the management of public resources has been questioned by the State, and mainly the results that the public administration at its three levels (federal, state and municipal), by the lack of transparency in the application and verification of public resources. The experience that gives us the operation of different emerging programs that focused on reducing social and economic inequality in the country, we can locate them as the first attempts in the search for a solution that is complex. (...) Moving from the role of the benefactor and welfare state to the promoter of the regions and in the recognition of the focalization of priority attention areas, the path that has been taken is not only the beginning. Recognizing the public nature of public finances as a promoter of social development, we must understand it as the one assumed by the State through social, political and economic co-responsibility to solve poverty and marginalization of its own public policy orientation and vision of solution has been made since the eighties. From the above, we can point out some preliminary conclusions including the study of the indigenous language-speaking population with a high level of social exclusion in the methodology for the definition of multidimensional poverty in Mexico, will allow the allocation of public resources in the fight against poverty to be effective since it will make it possible to identify to the target population that is subject to social exclusion and marginalization. This invites us to a final reflection: What to do to address the just social demands of the indigenous population that is immersed in poverty, marginalization and exclusion? What to do so that they do not leave their communities, and if they have already done so, how to attend to the needs of family groups that are due to the expense of a remittance that may never arrive? (shrink)

This article explores some aspects of what has been termed ‘new contractualism’ in social policy, using the Norwegian policy on poverty and social exclusion as an empirical example. An important purpose is to identify how the move to new contractualism implies new modes of controlling behaviour and to explore the ethical legitimacy of this approach. Firstly, contractualism is seen in relation to some dominating discourses in Norwegian and European social policy over the last 20–30 years, emphasizing the importance of (...) economic considerations concerning the financial sustainability of the welfare state. Secondly, the article explores some implications of contractual modes of thought for balancing rights and duties in the welfare state, concluding that the principle of a welfare contract is a euphemism for a polity that basically imposes more obligations on the recipients of welfare services. Thirdly, it elaborates on the tension field between the possible democratic benefits of contractualism and more paternalistic consequences. Although relational contracts may enhance client-influenced service provision, paternal outcomes are likely, owing to the fact that such contracts are often used as instruments for behaviour-changing efforts (e.g. to create an economically active citizen). (shrink)

This paper argues that the dominant modes of academic address, the conference paper, the journal article, and the monograph, reinforce problematic and exclusionary assumptions concerning what counts as legitimate research, whilst also restricting academic enquiry and impoverishing intellectual life. It makes its case by exploring in some detail the intellectual commitments of one the West’s more wayward 20th century thinkers, Georges Bataille. It suggests that Bataille presents not simply a conceptual armoury (and one among many) for critiquing Western logocentrism from (...) within, but offers an example of what a less domesticated, less stylistically narrowed mode of thinking might look like. (shrink)

For 40 years, Peter Singer has deployed the case of the child drowning in the shallow pond to argue for greater donations in foreign aid. The persistent use of the shallow pond example in theorizing about global poverty ignores morally salient features of the real world, and ignoring such morally salient features can have a variety of harmful implications for anti-poverty work. I argue that the shallow pond example should be abandoned, and defend this claim against possible (...) objections. (shrink)

‘Academic rentiership’ is an economistic way of thinking about the familiar tendency for academic knowledge to consolidate into forms of expertise that exercise authority over the entire society. The feature that ‘rentiership’ high-lights is control over what can be accepted as a plausible knowledge claim, which I call ‘modal power’. This amounts to how the flow of information is channelled in society, with academic training and peer-reviewed research being the main institutional drivers. This paper begins by contextualizing rentiership in the (...) deeper issues surrounding ‘cognitive economy ’that lie at the heart of the Western philosophical tradition. The psychological phenomenon of the ‘Gestaltshift’ is used to illustrate various ways in which the flow of information can be channelled to enable or disable certain possible ways of regarding the world. Against this background, such familiar concepts from academic practice as ‘quality control’ and ‘plagiarism’ acquire a new look. Quality control aims to maintain rentiership, whereas plagiarism aims to undermine it. The second half of the paper is largely concerned with the historical swings back and forth between rentiership and anti-rentiership in academia. Rentiership’s decline is associated with corruption of its quality control processes, which reveals academia’s reliance on equally corrupt power elites in society. In addition, the introduction of new communication media over which academia cannot exert proprietary control also serves to open up the sphere of plausible knowledge claims. The ongoing Internet revolution is likely to permanently alter the terms on which academic rentiership will be possible in the future. (shrink)

IntroductionThis case study describes the process faculty at a large research university undertook to build a stand-alone online academic integrity course for first-year and transfer students. Because academic integrity is decentralized at the institution, building a more systematic program had to come from the bottom-up (faculty developed) rather than from the top down (institutionally mandated).Case descriptionUsing the learning management system, faculty and e-learning designers collaborated to build the course. Incorporating nuanced scenarios for six different types of misconduct (consistent with (...) the University’s Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities & Conduct), a pre- and post-test, and assessments for each scenario, the course provides experience in recognizing and avoiding academic misconduct.Discussion and evaluationAs a stand-alone course, the faculty who created it maintain control over content and are able to analyze student performance across the institution. In the ten months since its launch, the course has been eagerly adopted by faculty (n = 1853 students have completed the course) and post-test scores indicate students are learning from the course.ConclusionsAfter the successful launch of the student course, the next step, already underway, is the launch of learning modules for faculty and teaching assistants. (shrink)

Reflexivity is a well-established theoretical and methodological concept in the human sciences, and yet it is used in a confusing variety of ways. The meaning of `reflexivity' and the virtues ascribed to the concept are relative to particular theoretical and methodological commitments. This article examines several versions of the concept, and critically focuses on treatments of reflexivity as a mark of distinction or source of methodological advantage. Although reflexivity often is associated with radical epistemologies, social scientists with more conventional leanings (...) often speak of reflexivity as a methodological tool, substantive property of social systems, or source of individual enlightenment. Radical and conventional social scientists alike tend to stress the importance of being reflexive, as opposed to being unreflexive, but they do not share a coherent conception of what `being reflexive' means or entails. As an alternative to reflexive self-privileging, I recommend an ethnomethodological conception of reflexivity as an ordinary, unremarkable and unavoidable feature of action. The ethnomethodological conception does not support a particular theoretical or methodological standpoint by contrasting it to an `unreflexive' counterpart. It has little value as a critical weapon or source of epistemological advantage, which, in the present context, can have advantages of its own for promoting peace and epistemic democracy. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of chapters about contemporary issues within African philosophy. They are issues African philosophy must grapple with to demonstrate its readiness to make a stand against some of the challenges society faces in the coming decade such as xenophobia, Afro-phobia, extreme poverty, democratic failure and migration. The text covers new methodical directions and there is focus on the conversationalist, complementarist and consolationist movements within the field as well as the place of the Indigenous (...) Knowledge System.The collection speaks to African philosophy’s place in intellectual history with coverage of African Ethics and African socio-political philosophy. Contributors come from a variety of different backgrounds, institutions and countries. Through their innovative ideas, they provide fresh insight and intellectual energy. The book appeals to philosophy students and researchers. (shrink)

The way in which a nation’s economy is structured is of great importance for the material welfare of its people as well as the people’s relationship with the state and the operation of the state itself. It is also important for the proper functioning of a nation as a people and its psychological welfare. If the gap between rich and poor increases, the structure of an economy, and therefore the welfare of the state and the nation, is at risk. Two (...) important documents of antiquity, Plato’s Nomoi and the Book of Deuteronomy, which even today influence life, dealt intensively with the fissures between rich and poor within society as a danger to political welfare and harmony. This article will examine these documents to make use of these two books for improving a societal situation. This will be done by a comparative perspective on both of these books. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant is recognized as one of the first philosophers who wrote systematically about global justice and world peace. In the current debate on global justice he is mostly appealed to by critics of extensive duties of global justice. However, I show in this paper that an analysis of Kant’s late work on rights and justice provides ample resources for disagreeing with those who take Kant to call for only modest changes in global politics. Kant’s comments in the Doctrine of (...) Right clarify that he thinks we need a coercively enforced global civil condition. But his work also contains ideas that imply that within such a global legal order there must be no extreme forms of poverty and inequality, and that the current holdings of states are by no means conclusive possessions without confirmation by the global legal order we have a duty to establish. Thus, this paper challenges the prevailing interpretation of Kant as a conservative thinker about global justice that is held, for instance, by the leading contemporary liberal thinkers such as John Rawls, Thomas Nagel, and Ronald Dworkin. (shrink)

In recent years, the psychological causes and consequences of poverty have received renewed attention from scientists and policymakers. In this essay, we summarize new developments in this literature. First, we discuss advances in our understanding of the relationship between income and psychological well-being. There is a robust positive relationship between the two, both within and across countries, and in correlational and causal analyses. Second, we summarize recent work on the impact of “scarcity” and stress on economic preferences and decision-making. (...) Our view of this literature is that the evidence is relatively weak. Third, we summarize evidence on the impact of psychological interventions on economic outcomes. Light-touch psychological interventions, such as videos that aim to raise aspirations, have shown some promise in encouraging investment and improving economic well-being. Similarly, psychotherapy and pharmacological mental health treatments have positive effects on economic outcomes. Relative to the effects of cash transfers, these impacts are small in absolute terms and large in per-dollar terms. We conclude by discussing whether a psychological poverty trap is plausible. (shrink)

We examine the applicability of the concept of Social Licence to Operate (SLO) for international humanitarian and development cooperation organizations. We review the relevant literature on SLO and derive criteria that can be applicable to the work of development agencies. We also examine the case of the international NGO, Mercy Corps, in the region of Samtskhe-Javakheti, Georgia, specifically its Market Alliances against Poverty project. Using focus groups and key informant interviews, we sought to understand what would constitute an (...) SLO for the local community in the context of a development intervention. Themes that emerged included: transparency and accountability; access to information; the potential benefits and dangers of innovations; the inspirational effect of the presence of an external organization; risks associated with loans and grants; and the reliability of intermediaries. Our results can be utilized by development practitioners and humanitarian organizations as well as academics who want t.. (shrink)

Medical academics are increasingly bringing critical race theory (CRT) or its corollaries to their discourse, to their curricula, and to their analyses of health and medical treatment disparities. The author argues that this is an error. The author considers the history of CRT, its claims, and its current presence in the medical literature. He contends that CRT is inimical to usual academic modes of inquiry and has obscured rather than aided the analysis of social and medical treatment disparities. Remedies (...) for racism suggested by CRT advocates will not work and some of them will make things worse. Academic medicine should avoid the embrace of CRT and should maintain an allegiance to rigorous empirical inquiry and to treating patients not as essentialized ethnic group members but as individual human beings in need of care. (shrink)

_A fresh, new translation of Augustine’s inaugural work as a Christian convert_ The first four works written by St. Augustine of Hippo after his conversion to Christianity have influenced prominent thinkers from Boethius to Bernard Lonergan. Usually called the Cassiciacum dialogues, these four works are a “literary triumph,” combining Ciceronian and neo-Platonic philosophy, Roman comedy and Vergilian poetry, and early Christian theology. They are also, arguably, Augustine’s most charming works, exhibiting his whimsical levity and ironic wryness. In this first dialogue, (...) Augustine and his interlocutors have retreated to a quiet country villa north of Milan to explore the history and teachings of Academic Skepticism. Augustine is both sympathetic to and critical of the Skeptics, eventually hypothesizing that they could not possibly have believed everything they taught. The dialogue serves as a fitting launch point for a knowledge of God and the soul, the overall subject of the Cassiciacum tetralogy. Michael Foley’s clear, precise and playful translations are accompanied by his brief, illuminating commentaries. (shrink)

continent. 1.3 (2011): 201-207. “Poetry is experience, linked to a vital approach, to a movement which is accomplished in the serious, purposeful course of life. In order to write a single line, one must have exhausted life.” —Maurice Blanchot (1982, 89) Nikos Karouzos had a communist teacher for a father and an orthodox priest for a grandfather. From his four years up to his high school graduation he was incessantly educated, reading the entire private library of his granddad, comprising mainly (...) the Orthodox Church Fathers and the ancient classics. Later on in his life he sold the library for money, only to buy a little more time before he went broke again: “I carry sorrow like a cage/ I got no birds/ as I come back from her hair/ I see the profit emptied/ cool from terror.” (1993, Ι, 101) Nowadays—and ridiculously recently—we are more than apt to speak of a certain insouciance pertaining to the Greek form of expenditure: expenditure without any type of investment, sometimes not (even) symbolic. In the vaults of the European unconscious, this imprudent stance still conjures a “capital punishment” in the form of de-capitation, reflecting back the fear of excess and the terror of its consequences.1 Thus the Greek way of living is very close to what a stranger could have termed as “the Greek way of dying.” Yet, what is not often understood is that the Greek esprit , the same one that invented the maxim μηδ?ν ?γαν (“nothing in excess”), does not experience death solely as an imminent fear of bankruptcy. For it miraculously combines its unconditional acceptance with the promise of a resurrection that is always there in the scents of Spring, from Dionysus to the orthodox Christ: “Everyone resurrects himself through dying [….] Resurrection is the switching of mortalities.” (2002, 94) Hence, if an entire library was imprudently traded for a plate with seven olives, a sliced tomato and some fresh goat cheese, let us not be fooled: this is not the meal of the pauper, but that of “an aristocrat from God” (1993, II, 491) feeding his eloquent loudmouth, ridiculously cut open in an otherwise rock-solid caput . *** To speak of the Greek experience is to speak about a half-dead language that still utters in life what is seemingly excluded from it and thus forbidden to be talked about: death. Death as anything that is out of this world, as something that will never return . Still, along with an experience of death that recently waned as a worn-out academic fashion, the Greek experience is dead too. Nearly 2300 years of written words separating Homer from the fall of Byzantium equal 500 books on a library traded for money: “I am with the killed. Hence my deepest solitude. I do not feel this tremendous macho society, beyond from the fact that it is a ruthlessly consuming one. It is me who pays all the time .” (2002, 57) Let us do the math and see how much this dealing with the Greek experience is costing the poet and how much dealing with the Greek experience might cost us today. *** “I do not guarantee a single word.” (Karouzos, 1993, II, 454) Through its various dialects and forms, the Greek language speaks through an incessant historical dissemination. Anyone who is aware of this terrifying polymorphy and still calls himself a poet, must stand against a white sheet of paper, pen-in-hand, with a very particular duty: to be as fully inconsistent as possible. In the formally ironic uniqueness of the poem, the poet functions as “a band-aid for lesser and greater antinomies.” (1993, I, 251) Of course these antinomies are not exhausted in language—they are historical, political and, alas, existential. Yet, beyond appearances , it is language that ruthlessly encodes them through history, submitting the poet to the temptation of placing them one next to the other on a single white sheet. The closer their neighboring, the greater the scattering of the writer in the ironic uniqueness of the paper. In a work where poetic license is described as a “freedom-impasse” (2002, 51), this task is undertaken in full conscience of its personal consequences: “what I am interested in is to escape my individuality (envisioning the non-ego) […] Nevertheless, my dissociations never achieve duration.” (2002, 74-75) Hence, though poetry is the “deserted direction of will,” (1998, 62) the stance of the poet is not that of a Nietzschean “great man.”2 Whereas drunkenness provides a thread between the poem and the excess it both presupposes and infuses (“Poetry always enlarges. ‘Drunkenness’ is nothing more than that,” (2002, 85)), whereas language flashes in loudmouth spurts of déraison (“When I am alone I do something else. I utter words. For example, while having my ouzo and listening to music I am most likely capable of randomly shouting ‘Electricity!’” (2002, 138)), the poet never gives in to the double affirmation that would eventually risk the “element of pleasure in discourse.” (2002, 80)” It is exactly because the gap of the antinomies is so vast that poetry is not meant to be written with a hammer. Neither does writing consist in a reevaluation of those elements. In short, poetry is not an affirmation of difference, but the surprising beauty of chiming antinomies. We might never transcend them, but it is up to us to put them together. Yet again, this voisinage is not to be identified with the necessity of chance as an eternal return.4 On the contrary it is a return from that very return : Let us treat Yes as a No to No and No as a Yes […] And let us not forget that this pissed affirmation crumbled down Nietzsche’s intellect in the dark paths of this world. (2002, 88) This return from the “vicious circle” should in no way be taken as a form of artistic prudence. Rather it can be seen as a dribble of demonic inconsistency as Dionysus transforms himself into a Christ that is in turn de-theologized: “Who can forbid that? Every man is capable of his own theology, nothing can stop him.” (2002, 73-74) This is a turn towards an existential vision of the world, historically coinciding with a particular political defeat of the Left, to which the poet devoted all his life: after the defeat of the popular front I raised the question “why do we exist?” while others were asking “why we failed.” (2002, 57)5 But most of all it is a return to poetry that exceeds the existential question itself, going beyond the issue of faith. Poetry comes in as a question of return after a defeat that is confessed in full profanity. Though it accepts the necessity of the defeat, it does not affirm it. Though it negates it, the negation is not in the name of a promise to be delivered in the kingdom of heavens. Following a historical and existential defeat, poetry is born post mortem . It signals a return to Christ as “groundless religiousness in the surprise of the real as such” (2002, 72) which is at once a return to the refuge of childhood. It is not a question of endurance towards an eternal return. Rather it is a question on the possibility of an existential return. Returning in a world as someone who cannot enjoy any returns exactly because he is averse to guarantees. A return without returns. *** PHOTOCOPY OF HAPPINESS When I was young I used to pin down cicadas and step on ant nests. I used to stand there silent for hours. With threads I decapitated bees. Now I am a dead man breathing. (Karouzos, 1993, II, 336.) The return to the “paradise of childhood” (2002, 68) constitutes the devouring refuge of its own memory when defeat becomes the synonym of adulthood. The political struggles of a young communist in a country torn up by a civil war right after World War II fraught with incarcerations and exiles. Historically they resulted in the defeat of the communist movement in Greece and opened up a long turbulent road that would peak in the dictatorship of 1967. Existentially they led to a series of disillusionments: mental breakdown, divorce, abandonment of studies in law school. To the question “why do we exist” the answer was poetry. Still this exposé should not be read as a sweeping chronography of a man. For it actually happens to coincide with the historical fate of a nation that after its modern constitution never stopped dreaming of the glories of its past youth, in a present that was (and is) sweepingly disappointing. But isn’t this return to youth finally a way of compensating for a loss of youth that necessarily results in a losing adulthood? Will Greeks, the eternal children of Plato and Nietzsche, ever learn? How to return without dying, how to remember without wasting time? WE ARE IN THE OPEN MEANING Living the coldest mauve night right across Parthenon I went to take a piss on some foliage and I was enjoying the foliage as it was steaming. (Karouzos, 1993, II, 340) Beyond the historical tragedies of modern Greece and away from any personal disappointments, the relation that this land holds with language and history is mediated through the Greek light—whose omnipresence is the very condition of its transcendence. All historical contradictions from Dionysus to Christ took place under this light; all those disseminated dialects were spoken beneath its warmth. To paraphrase Lévinas,6 light is both the condition of the world and of our withdrawal from it—a withdrawal towards the invisibility of God, of the dead, of meta-physics, resulting from the temptation that all is still here, behind this light the visibility of which they once evaded: “birds, the allurement of God.” (1993, I, 17) Under that luminous sky, if Greeks can do anything at all, it is to envision a return that will never come. All they can do is write poetry—which is doing nothing; other than lending an ear to a disseminated language whispering a unity that cannot be promised, as an adulthood in defeat is ready to recognize. Trying “to trap the invisible in visibility” (1993, II, 483) they forget that they have grown up and one day they die—with the promise of return. Hence an additional meaning must be given to this return to childhood. It does not signal salvation but rather its promise. To the ears of an aged continent it means that the return to/of poetry is a losing game, a return without returns. “Europe, Europe… you are nothing more than the continuation of Barabbas.” (1993, I, 295) *** “Life is not there to verify theories.”7 The records show that Karouzos was finally given a second-class pension from the Greek government, at the time when he was being recognized by the literary press as one of Greece’s major contemporary poets. Being neither a bourgeois nor a nobelist, he proclaimed himself to be an anarcho-communist, unconditionally faithful to the utopia of a classless society. He also drank, heavily. “Capitalism made an animal out of man/ Marxism made an animal out of truth/ Shut up.” (1993, II, 369) Perhaps one of the most scandalous divides of our times has been the one between the living and the dead, the latent prohibition that the living should not be concerned with the dead based on the mere impossibility of the dead to be concerned with the living in the first place. What adds to this scandal is that this divide abuses anything that cannot return to us by subsuming it under the same futility. Hence death is no longer “loss” in the usual sense. It no more refers to the things we lost but to our “loss” (of time, money and well-being) as we insist to dwell on them. Death is a waste —of time. It is this waste that we find in the insouciance of Greek expenditure; the waste in dealing with a language that most of its historical part is no longer spoken (a dead language); the waste in translating a poet who is ex definitio untranslatable; the waste of his vision, his money, his life. The waste of dealing with anything that cannot return and that cannot bring in any returns . But it is also the waste of life that poetry itself presupposes, the waste of dealing with invisibility, with anything that is out of this world and thus invokes the fear of death that is in turn—and surprisingly— nowhere to be found. Instead of death, what is there, beyond the light, is the being without us (to recall the Lévinasian il y a ), the mumble of our own nothingness which constitutes the price to be paid for writing poetry under an evergreek light. To understand this to-and-fro, is to realize that poetry is something out of this world that nevertheless takes place in this world, by virtue of this world. But to ridiculously equate this to-and-fro with death as non-existence, is to exile poetry along with its own possibility from this same old world: I do not believe that poetry will ever disappear from this world. […] But I am also sure that it does not have many chances of playing, as you say, a redemptive role in our vertiginous technological future. Without being endangered as a creative need, it will be placed on the side of history. (2002, 32) It is mainly there that we would like to locate the meaning of Nikos Karouzos’s poetry today. If we are willing to include the Greek original it is because we consider that it will be both a waste of time for us to do so (since most of you cannot read Greek) and because it might induce you to the even larger waste of learning it. We would additionally be glad if this small introduction served as an equally wasteful, academically useless piece of reading, gesturing towards a taboo of investing in anything Greek—that is in anything dead among the living, in anything that will never come back and maybe was never here in the first place. This is the only way to reserve for ourselves the possibility of poetry and preserve the light of its promise. “To return: that is the miracle.” (1993, I, 17) Athens, Greece July 10, 2011 NOTES 1 “ Capitale (a Late Latin word based on caput “head”) emerged in the twelfth to thirteenth centuries in the sense of funds, stock of merchandise, sum of money or money carrying interest.[…] The word and the reality it stood for appear in the sermons of St. Bernardino of Siena (1380-1444) ‘… quamdam seminalem rationem lucrosi quam communiter capitale vocamus ’, ‘that prolific cause of wealth that we commonly call capital’” (Braudel, 1992, 232-233). 2 “A great man – a man whom nature has constructed and invented in the grand style – what is he? First : there is a long logic in all of his activity, hard to survey because of its length, and consequently misleading; he has the ability to extend his will across great stretches of his life and to despise and reject everything petty about him, including even the fairest, ‘divinest’ things in the world.” (Nietzsche, 1968, 505, §962) 3 Cf. Deleuze, 1986, 186-9. 4 “Return is the being of becoming, the unity of multiplicity, the necessity of chance: the being of difference as such or the eternal return.” (Deleuze, 189)5 In this 1982 interview Karouzos refers to the defeat of the communist movement in Greece after the civil war of 1946-1949 between the Governmental Army and the Democratic Army of Greece, the military division of the Greek communist party. Karouzos’s father was a member of the communist National Liberation front (EAM) members of which formed the mainl resistance movement (ELAS) in Greece during WWII. The poet was a member of the United Panhellenic Organization of Youth (EPON), which was a youth division of EAM. After the end of the war, ELAS was called to disarmament in view of the formation of a National Army. The members of EAM resigned from the government of national unity and a series of protests led to a 3 year civil war between ELAS and the Government Army. After the defeat of ELAS the Communist party was outlawed and many communists were exiled in deserted Greek islands. Karouzos, who took action in the Greek resistance and was active during the Greek civil war, was exiled in Icaria on 1947 and in Makronisos on 1953 where he was called two years earlier to do his military service. 6 “Existence in the world qua light, which makes desire possible, is then, in the midst of being, the possibility of detaching oneself from being. To enter into being is to link up with objects; it is in effect a bond that is already tainted with nullity. It is already to escape anonymity. In this world where everything seems to affirm our solidarity with the totality of existence, where we are caught up in the gears of a universal mechanism, our first feeling, our ineradicable illusion, is a feeling or illusion of freedom. To be in the world is this hesitation, this interval in existing, which we have seen in the analyses of fatigue and the present.” (Lévinas, 1988,43-4) 7from a TV interview. THE POETRY OF NIKOS KAROUZOS From Redwriter [ Ερυθρογρ?φος ], in Collected Works, Vol . II, Athens: Ikaros. 1993, 463-4. [Athens: Apopeira, 1990, 9-10.] JESUS ANTI-OEDIPUS* Why were we once saving till the fifth day the Paschal lamb? The scriptures say: with this victim’s meat we ought to cleanse all of our senses. To give life to the whitest wave miraculous odors in the extension of the chest. Ideals to death. For us to witness the illustrious dawns of Absinthe and for the soul to be a deeply carved ornament on the fore we named will. Then many deer running amidst the evergreen growth with watery hymns, then, the unintended angels descending with heights spiraling in their momentum offer themselves to the luminous Adventure. Whence the need for speech and our sufferings covered with flags like the glorified dead. An incorporeal finger pointing at the flamboyant and fragrant holocausts within the tired horizons and the exhausted breadths with joys of the mistletoe on fire and shivering all of the green-leaved love. Something would have chirped again had we not driven it away— maybe the ewe’s grass. Something would have called us to the eternal resurrection— maybe the grace of spring. But now our heart is fiercely blinded, withdrawn to the appearances of Hades. Silence and ice incessantly cover the Infant Spirit in thatched times. While the cherry trees are dreaming faintly glowing in absolute darkness there’s nothing the Babylonians can contemplate in labs with automatic colored lights. How to rejoice now in the fifth day of the lamb? We have forked the stars. We’ve gradually become supposedly sublime with plucked chimeras in our hands. Avenged relentlessly by science. *Though the poem appears in a 1990 collection, it was actually written in 1968. Hence the reader must be aware in not associating Karouzos’ Anti-Oedipus with the famous 1972 work of Deleuze and Guattari, given that the former precedes the latter. ΙΗΣΟΥΣ ΑΝΤΙ-ΟΙΔΙΠΟΥΣ Γιατ? κρατο?σαμε κ?ποτε ?ς την π?μπτη μ?ρα το πασχαλιν? πρ?βατο; Τα κε?μενα λ?νε: μ’ αυτο? του θ?ματος το κρ?ας ?πρεπε να καθαρ?σουμε ?λες τις αισθ?σεις. Για να δ?σουμε κ?μα στη ζω? λευκ?τατο θαυμ?σιες ευωδι?ς στην ?κταση του στ?θους. Ιδανικ? στο χ?ρο. Για να βλ?πουμε τα λαμπρ? χαρ?ματα του ?ψινθου και να ’ναι η ψυχ? στ?λισμα βαθυχ?ρακτο της πλ?ρης που την ε?παμε θ?ληση. Τ?τε πολλ?ς δορκ?δες τρ?χοντας αν?μεσα στην καταπρ?σινη φ?ση με τους υδ?τινους ?μνους, τ?τε, κατεβα?νοντας οι αθ?λητοι ?γγελοι με κυλινδο?μενο το ?ψος στην ορμ? τους χαρ?ζονται της αστραφτερ?ς Περιπ?τειας. ?θεν η μιλι? γι’ αυτ? χρει?ζεται και τα δειν? σκεπ?ζονται ωσ?ν τους τιμημ?νους νεκρο?ς με σημα?ες. Ασ?ματο δ?χτυλο δε?χνει τα φλογ?δη και μοσχοβ?λα ολοκαυτ?ματα στους κουρασμ?νους ορ?ζοντες στα εξουθενωμ?να πλ?τη καθ?ς αν?βουν οι χαρ?ς του νερα?δ?ξυλου και τρ?μει ολ?κληρη η πρασιν?φυλλη αγ?πη. Κ?τι θα κελαηδο?σε π?λι αν δεν το δι?χναμε— μπορε? της προβατ?νας το χορτ?ρι. Κ?τι θα μας καλο?σε στην απ?ραντη αν?σταση— μπορε? του ?αρος η χ?ρη. Μα η καρδι? μας ?γρια τυφλ?θηκε π?ρασε στα φαιν?μενα του ?δη. Σιγ? και π?γος αδι?κοπα σκεπ?ζει στους αχυρ?νιους καιρο?ς το Ν?πιο Πνε?μα. Την ?ρα που ονειρε?ονται οι βυσσινι?ς και λ?μπουν αμυδρ? μεσ’ στο απλ?τατο σκοτ?δι τ?ποτα δε στοχ?ζονται οι βαβυλ?νιοι στα εργαστ?ρια με τ’ αυτ?ματα χρωματιστ? φ?τα. Π?ς να χαρο?με πια την π?μπτη μ?ρα του προβ?του; Φουρκ?σαμε τ’ αστ?ρια. Γ?ναμε σιγ?-σιγ? δ?θεν υπ?ροχοι με μαδημ?νες χ?μαιρες στα χ?ρια. Μας ν?μεται σκληρ? η επιστ?μη. From: Redwriter [Ερυθρογρ?φος], in Collected Works, Vol. II, Athens: Ikaros. 1993, 472. [Athens: Apopeira, 1990, 18.] DIALECTΙCS OF SPRING Christ the straight angle; Christ the Pythagorean theorem. Christ the infinitesimal calculus from above the blessed Sets Christ. Christ the tessellation of massive particles Christ the zero mass. Hence we spray numbers and fields of lust. We are carabineers of diseased logic plus something— Observed means observer and Hekate The darkness luminous and light in the dark Astarte banqueters demons from today. ΔΙΑΛΕΚΤΙΚΗ ΤΟΥ ΕΑΡΟΣ Χριστ?ς η ορθ? γων?α· Χριστ?ς το πυθαγ?ριο θε?ρημα. Χριστ?ς ο απειροστικ?ς λογισμ?ς ?νωθεν ?λβια Χριστ?ς τα Σ?νολα. Χριστ?ς η ψηφιδογραφ?α στα μαζικ? σωμ?τια Χριστ?ς η μ?ζα μηδ?ν. ?ρα ψεκ?ζουμε αριθμο?ς και πεδ?α λαγνε?ας. Ε?μαστε τυφεκιοφ?ροι νοσο?σης λογικ?ς και κ?τι-- παρατηρο?μενο σημα?νει παρατηρητ?ς και Εκ?τη σκ?τος το π?μφωτο και φως εν τ? σκοτ?? η Αστ?ρτη συνδαιτημ?νες δα?μονες απ’ ?ρτι. From: Redwriter [Ερυθρογρ?φος], Athens: Apopeira, 1990, 18. [1993, II, 472]. CREDO (as we are used to say in Latin) Α I believe in one Poet expelled from heavens / fugitive from the god and vagabond, Empedocles / and here on earth / exile on the earth etc. of Baudelaire /. Β I believe in one Computer inside thunder and through matter. Γ Suffering undefiled / substantive / the Poet uplifts himself slow-burning suicidal implying lengthy sleeps. Δ Cutting down on prospective mistakes. Ε Of all things visible and invisible officiating the onion-peelings. Ζ The Poet has nothing / see the departed /. Η I believe in one Poet that says: madness I enjoy; he ridicules existence; let me light up from my mana. Θ Syntax he doesn’t care about when musicality commands him. Along with still more licenses, and Ts are played according to the concept sound anywhere. E.g. the winters here, he winters there; it will not come—I will not rest, etc. etc. Ι The Poet exercises thought until it’s stripped down. Κ And if he’s Greek he must always study the fineness of Attica, in light, mountains, fields and sea. For this fineness teaches language. Λ And if he’s deeply destined the Poet expresses the unexplainable of the explained; he happens to be a rightful heir to the scientist and his predecessor. Μ On the froth he does not last; the Poet blusters at the bottom of the pot. Ν Flamebred and never redeemed. Ξ The Poet must sometimes say: what a consumption of presence — be a bit lonely for a change! Ο The Poet is twilit. Π He is susceptible of deaths and resurrections. Ρ He looks from the corner of his eye and exists in a glance. Σ He follows behind the mother. Τ Eveningless when it comes to age. Υ I believe in one Poet who says: let the purities coincide. Until the Corinth of the Universe or even further. Φ In a higher despair. Χ In a brighter quintessence. Ψ In one sensation that lifts off. Ω Forgiving everyone. CREDO (ως ε?θισται να λ?με λατινιστ?) Α Πιστε?ω εις ?να Ποιητ?ν εκτ?ς ουρανο? / φυγ?ς θε?θεν και αλ?της, Εμπεδοκλ?ς / και επ? της γης / εξ?ριστος π?νω στη γη κ.λπ. του Βωδελα?ρου /. Β Πιστε?ω εις ?να Υπολογιστ?ν εντ?ς κεραυνο? και δια της ?λης. Γ Υποφ?ροντας ?χραντα / ουσιαστικ?ν / ο Ποιητ?ς ανατε?νεται βραδυφλεγ?ς αυτ?χειρας εξυπακο?οντας πολ?ωρους ?πνους. Δ Τα υποψ?φια λ?θη λιγοστε?οντας. Ε Ορατ?ν τε π?ντων και αορ?των ιερουργ?ντας την αποκρομμ?ωση. Ζ Ο Ποιτ?ς ?χει τ?ποτα / βλ?πε τους αναχωρ?σαντες /. Η Πιστε?ω εις ?να Ποιητ?ν που λ?ει: η τρ?λα μ’ αρ?σει· γελοιοποιε? την ?παρξη· ας αν?ψω απ’ τη μ?να μου. Θ Συνταχτικ? δεν το γνοι?ζεται στην προσταγ? της μουσικ?τητας. Μαζ? και μ’ ?λλες ακ?μη λευτερι?ς, και τα νυ πα?ζονται κατ? την ?ννοια ?χος οπουδ?ποτε. Π.χ. τον χειμ?να εδ?, το χειμ?να εκε?· δε θ? ’ρθει – δεν θα καταλαγι?σουμε, κ. λπ. κ.λπ. Ι Ο Ποιητ?ς γυμν?ζει τη σκ?ψη σε απογ?μνωση. Κ Κι αν ε?ναι ?λληνας οφε?λει να σπουδ?ζει π?ντοτε της Αττικ?ς τη λεπτ?τητα, σε φως, βουν?, χωρ?φια και θ?λασσα. Διδ?σκει γλ?σσα η λεπτ?τητα το?τη. Λ Κι αν ε?ναι βαθι? πεπρωμ?νος ο Ποιητ?ς εκφρ?ζει το ανεξ?γητο του εξηγητο?· τυγχ?νει ν?μιμος δι?δοχος του επιστ?μονα και προκ?τοχ?ς του. Μ Στον αφρ? δεν ?χει δι?ρκεια· στο πατοκ?ζανο μα?νεται ο Ποιητ?ς. Ν Φλογοδ?αιτος και ποτ? ξελυτρωμ?νος. Ξ Ο Ποιητ?ς κ?ποτε πρ?πει να λ?ει: μεγ?λη καταν?λωση παρουσ?ας – γενε?τε και λ?γο μοναξι?ρηδες! Ο Ο Ποιητ?ς ε?ναι αμφ?φλοξ. Π Επιδ?χεται θαν?τους και αναστ?σεις. Ρ Ακροθωρ?ζει και υπ?ρχει σε ξαφνοκο?ταγμα. Σ Ε?ναι ουραγ?ς της μητ?ρας. Τ Αν?σπερος απ? ηλικ?α. Υ Πιστε?ω εις ?να Ποιητ?ν που λ?ει: να συμπ?σουν οι αγν?τητες. Μ?χρι την Κ?ρινθο του Σ?μπαντος ? μακρ?τερα. Φ Σε αν?τερη απελπισ?α. Χ Σε φαειν?τερη πεμπτουσ?α. Ψ Σε μια α?σθηση που πτηνο?ται. Ω Συγχωρ?ντας τους π?ντες. From Large Sized Logic [ Λογικ? μεγ?λου σχ?ματος ], Athens: Erato, 1989, n.p. [1993, II, 521-3]. (shrink)