NOT SAUSSURE: A CRITIQUE OF POST?SAUSSUREAN LITERARY THEORY by Raymond Tallis London: Macmillan, 1988. 273 pp., £33 (£10.95 paper).

Close to the beginning of Death in Venice, Thomas Mann sets up a relationship between aesthetic production and social context that bears strongly on the parameters of twentieth-century cultural life. After introducing his central figure, the fictive writer Aschenbach, Mann goes on to offer some exposition which, as always with Mann, is much more than exposition, since it draws attention to one of the central philosophical questions of the text: “It was a spring afternoon in that year of grace 19--, (...) when Europe sat upon the anxious seat beneath a menace that hung over its head for months. Aschenbach had sought the open soon after tea. (shrink)

Are the arguments of the Frankfurt School still relevant? Modern Culture and Critical Theory investigates this question in the context of important issues in contemporary cultural politics: neoconservatism and new social movements, discontents with modernity and debates on postmodernism, the political hegemony of Ronald Reagan, and the cultural hegemony of structuralism and poststructuralism. Russell Berman thoughtfully explores the theories of Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Lyotard, and Foucault and their relevance to both historical and contemporary issues in literature, politics, and the (...) arts. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the phenomenon of synesthesia. In an attempt to differentiate between genuine synesthesia and metaphorical synesthesia, I have searched for shared traits among synesthetic visual artists, as well as among composers and performing musicians. The field of synesthesia has been rife with misunderstandings. Though ever increasing numbers of exhibitions, books, and articles have used the title or subtitle, “Synesthesia in art and/or music”, few of these adequately define synesthesia. The major cause of the problem is that art (...) and music historians and curators, as well as artists and composers themselves, have confused the desire to intermingle various art forms with the phenomenon of genuine synesthesia. I show the existence of recurrent patterns of artistic response to synesthetic experience, the evidence of shared characteristics, by taking the examples of Carol Steen, Marcia Smilack, Joan Mitchell, David Hockney, Messiaen. I also present the results of my investigation on the synesthetic perceptions of the pianist Joyce Yang. Cet essai porte sur le phénomène de la synesthésie. Pour bien différencier synesthésie authentique et synesthésie métaphorique, j’ai recherché des traits communs chez les artistes visuels synesthètes, ainsi que chez les compositeurs et les musiciens interprètes. Le champ de la synesthésie a été envahi par des malentendus. Bien que de plus en plus d’expositions, de livres et d’articles utilisent le titre ou le sous-titre « Synesthésie dans l’art et/ou la musique », peu d’entre eux définissent adéquatement la synesthésie. La principale cause du problème est que les historiens et les conservateurs d’art et de musique, ainsi que les artistes et les compositeurs eux-mêmes, ont confondu le désir d’entremêler diverses formes d’art avec le phénomène de la véritable synesthésie. Je montre l’existence de modèles récurrents de réponse artistique à l’expérience synesthésique, l’évidence de caractéristiques partagées, en prenant les exemples de Carol Steen, Marcia Smilack, Joan Mitchell, David Hockney, Messiaen. Je présente également les résultats de ma recherche sur les perceptions synesthétiques de la pianiste Joyce Yang. (shrink)

ExcerptIn the autumn of 1962, the philosopher Theodor Adorno, whose work is the topic of this special issue, wrote bluntly: “It would be advisable … to think of progress in the crudest, most basic terms: that no one should go hungry anymore, that there should be no more torture, no more Auschwitz. Only then will the idea of progress be free from lies. It is not a progress of consciousness.” The invitation to crudeness may seem surprising, coming from Adorno, still (...) misrepresented as the pessimistic aesthete, consistently hostile to engaged activism, mass culture, and representational art. Such are the standard…. (shrink)

A world of legal conflicts -- The limits of sovereigntist territoriality -- From universalism to cosmopolitanism -- Towards a cosmopolitan pluralist jurisprudence -- Procedural mechanisms, institutional designs, and discursive practices for managing pluralism -- The changing terrain of jurisdiction -- A cosmopolitan pluralist approach to choice of law -- Recognition of judgments and the legal negotiation of difference.

In this acclaimed exploration of the search for "authentic" individual identity, Marshall Berman explores the historical experiences and needs out of which this new radicalism arose. Focussing on eighteenth-century Paris, a time and place in which a distinctively modern form of society was just coming into its own, Berman shows how the ideal of authenticity—of a self that could organize the individual's energy and direct it toward his own happiness—articulated eighteenth-century man's deepest responses to this brave new world, (...) and his most ardent hope for a new life in it. Exploring in particular the ideas of Montesquieu and Rousseau, Berman shows how the ideal of authenticity was radically opposed to the bourgeois, capitalistic idea of "self-interest.". (shrink)

What is the best way to respond to monuments in our communities if they represent people who stood for harmful ideas and/or societal structures? I start with the assumption that it would be best for everyone if all of the harmful monuments were removed from our public squares. The more interesting question is: Why would it be best? I will examine critically two different explanations as to why it would be best: one, Plato's, which rests on the harmful non-intellectual influences (...) of images and the other, Socrates’, which rests on the harmful intellectual influences of those images. In the end, I shall argue that Socrates got it right and Plato wrong due to the former's ability to explain human behaviour and the latter's surprising lack of that same ability, despite how widely it is believed. If the argument is correct, it will have deep and widespread implications for how we educate our children and ourselves about every important aspect of the human condition. (shrink)

What all contemporary so-called aristotelian realists have in common has been identified by David Armstrong as the principle of instantiation. This principle has been put forward in different versions, but all of them have the following simple consequence in common: uninstantiated universals do not exist. Such entities are for the lotus-eating Platonist to countenance, but not for any sort of moderate realist. I shall argue that this principle, in any guise, is not the best way to differentiate aristotelianism from Platonism. (...) In its place, I shall suggest that the best way to differentiate the two versions of realism from each other is by means of a far more powerful idea: naturalism. And the surprising conclusion given this means of differentiation will be that contrary to the usual proclamations, Platonism will be the more naturalistic theory, whereas aristotelianism will come to be seen for what it really is, namely, non-naturalistic. (shrink)

Without doctors being able to explain medical decisions to patients, I argue their use of black box AIs would erode the effective and respectful care they provide patients. In addition, I argue that physicians should use AI black boxes only for patients in dire straits, or when physicians use AI as a “co-pilot” (analogous to a spellchecker) but can independently confirm its accuracy. I respond to A.J. London’s objection that physicians already prescribe some drugs without knowing why they work.

In this book, Michael P. Berman uses Merleau-Ponty’s thought to develop a critique, grounded in his phenomenology, of certain issues in the philosophy of religion such as faith, love, vision, soul, magic and miracles, judgment, evil, and hallowing.

The Essential Berkeley and Neo-Berkeley is an introduction to the life and work of one of the most significant thinkers in the history of philosophy and a penetrating philosophical assessment of his lasting legacy. David Berman goes beyond providing an introduction and gives us a broader and deeper appreciation of Berkeley as a philosopher. He argues for Berkeley's work as a philosophical system with coherence and important key themes hitherto unexplored and provides an analysis of why he thinks Berkeley's (...) work has had such lasting significance. With a particular focus on Berkeley's dualist thinking and theories of 'mental types', Berman provides the reader with a key to unlocking the significance of this work. This introductory text will provide an insight into Berkeley's full body of work, the distinctiveness of his thinking and how deeply relevant this key thinker is to contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Set aside fanciful doomsday speculations about AI. Even lower-level AIs, while otherwise friendly and providing us a universal basic income, would be able to do all our jobs. Also, we would over-rely upon AI assistants even in our personal lives. Thus, John Danaher argues that a human crisis of moral passivity would result However, I argue firstly that if AIs are posited to lack the potential to become unfriendly, they may not be intelligent enough to replace us in all our (...) jobs. If instead they are intelligent enough to replace us, the risk they become unfriendly increases, given that they would not need us and humans would just compete for valuable resources. Their hostility will not promote our moral passivity. Secondly, the use of AI assistants in our personal lives will become a problem only if we rely on them for almost all our decision-making and motivation. But such a (maximally) pervasive level of dependence raises the question of whether humans would accept it, and consequently whether the crisis of passivity will arise. (shrink)

This book is a story about promoting systemic change of SEL in the mindset and capabilities of staff, in the structure of the district, and in the vision, mission, and policies that guide the district.

Global legal pluralism has become one of the leading analytical frameworks for understanding and conceptualizing law in the twenty-first century.

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 4, Page 520-530, July 2022.

Andrew Simester’s new book, Fundamentals of Criminal Law: Responsibility, Culpability, and Wrongdoing, is a masterful analysis of the doctrines of the general part of the criminal law and the multiple, overlapping functions that those doctrines serve. Along the way, Simester makes explicit what criminal law theorists routinely presuppose—that the ordinary words “blameworthiness” and “culpability” pick out the same moral concept. This essay argues that this assumed equivalence is mistaken: two concepts are in play, not one. Roughly, to be blameworthy is (...) to be justly liable to blaming practices in virtue of being at fault, and to be culpable is to act in a fashion that manifests or issues from insufficient concern for morally weighty interests. Culpability is not identical to blameworthiness, but rather a ground of blameworthiness: to be culpable is one way to be at fault, thus one way to be blameworthy. More importantly, culpability is not the exclusive ground of blameworthiness; an agent can be at fault, hence blameworthy, without being culpable. This essay defends these conceptual claims and draws forth some implications for two theses that Simester advances: that it is morally permissible to punish persons for criminal negligence and that it is unjust to punish persons who don’t deserve it. (shrink)

Robert Adams defends a platonic account of goodness, understood as excellence, claiming that there exists a platonic good that all other good things must resemble, identifying the Good with God. Mark Murphy agrees, but argues that this platonic account is in need of Aristotelian supplementation, as resemblance must take into account a thing’s kind-membership. While this article will accept something like Murphy’s account of goodness, it will further develop its details and support. Without relying on theistic premises, I show that (...) the metaphysical status of an individual’s goodness consists in resemblance with the platonic good. As for the distinct question of what that goodness holds in virtue of, I conclude it holds in virtue of exactly: the thing’s own properties, those properties being such as to satisfy its kind-based standards, and those K-standards resembling the platonic good. I then develop an account of how K-standards resemble the platonic good: The K-standards resemble it firstly with respect to requiring activities, as the platonic good will be posited to be active, and must resemble it secondly also at the level of what teleology those activities are directed towards. I also motivate the need for a third respect of resemblance, to be developed in future work. The article ends with a discussion of the nature of the platonic good. (shrink)

This paper critically examines David Berman's theological lying interpretation of Hume and identifies two types of theological lying: the denial of atheism strategy and the pious Christian strategy. It is argued that neither reading successfully establishes an atheist interpretation of Hume. Moreover, circumstantial evidence shows that Hume's position was different from that of the atheists of his time. Attributions theological lying to Hume, therefore, are unwarranted and should be rejected, even if we grant that this literary technique was used (...) in the early-modern era. Analysing other non-theistic readings of Hume is beyond the scope of this paper. However, given that Berman presents one of most elaborated atheist reinterpretations of Hume's affirmative theistic passages, the failure of Berman's analysis shows that rejecting these passages should not be the default interpretive approach, and it is reasonable to attribute to Hume a weak, indeterminate theism. (shrink)

Aristotelian theory, as found in Michael Thompson and Philippa Foot, claims that to be good is to be good as a member of that kind. Moreover, Foot argues in effect that goodness admits of only the kind-based sort, obtaining solely in virtue of something’s satisfying kind-based standards. However, I contend that something can satisfy kind-relative standards but nonetheless be bad—I propose a hypothetical Ebola-like microbe that meets its kind-standards of being destructive for its own sake, but it would plausibly be (...) bad for doing so. In defending my counterexample, I respond to the Aristotelian contention that evaluations should only be made from “within” the standpoint of a particular lifeform conception, rather than an “external” one from which that kind itself can be judged to be bad. (shrink)

Could Christians and Muslims be referring to the same God? For an account of the reference of divine names, I follow Bogardus and Urban (2017) in advocating in favour of using Gareth Evans’s causal theory of reference, on which a name refers to the dominant source of information in the name’s “dossier”. However, I argue further that information about experiences, in which God is simply the object of acquaintance, can dominate the dossier. Thus, this demonstrative use of names offers a (...) promising alternative avenue by which users of the divine names can refer to the same referent despite having different conceptions of God. I also respond to Burling’s (2019) worship-worthiness view. (shrink)

Faith has many aspects. One of them is whether absolute logical proof for God’s existence is a prerequisite for the proper establishment and individual acceptance of a religious system. The treatment of this question, examined here in the Jewish context of Rabbi Prof. Eliezer Berkovits, has been strongly influenced in the modern era by the radical foundationalism and radical skepticism of Descartes, who rooted in the Western mind the notion that religion and religious issues are “all or nothing” questions. Cartesianism, (...) which surprisingly became the basis of modern secularism, was criticized by the classical American pragmatists. Peirce, James and Dewey all rejected the attempt to achieve infallible absolute knowledge, as well as the presumptuousness of establishing such a knowledge by means of casting Cartesian hyperbolic doubt. They advocated an alternative approach which was more holistic and humane. This paper lays out Descartes’s approach and the pragmatists’ critique. Despite the place that pragmatic considerations hold in Jewish tradition, some thinkers reject the relevance of these ideas. Yet Berkovits’s thought suggest a different path. He rejected Descartes’ radical skepticism and his radical foundationalism, in favor of a moderate foundationalism, which allows for a belief in God alongside constructive doubts. Similar to Peirce’s conception of the fixation of belief, Berkovits views local doubts (distinct from the hyperbolic doubt) as necessary for thought. Berkovits’s understanding of the biblical human-divine encounter, following Rosenzweig, Buber, and Heschel, is conceptualized here as “encounter theology”. Berkovits criticizes the propositionalist attempts to prove God’s existence logically, as well as the presumptuousness of basing religious belief on the teleological world-order. However, Berkovits’s conception of the ‘caring God’ is not provable, and thus defined as a pragmatic ‘postulate’. The article concludes by considering Berkovits’s “encounter theology”. In contrast to the approach described by Haym Soloveitchik, of halakhic stringency and lack of subjective experience of God’s face, Berkovits’s approach is dialogic through and through. (shrink)

This article presents Franz Rosenzweig’s concept of redemption as a vehicle for raising some important questions for confronting the contemporary movement of Transhumanism. The upshot of our discussion is located in the existential questions asked, following a philosophical comparison of Rosenzweig’s religious and philosophical commitment to human life in its most robust form, with Transhumanism’s scientistic vision. To do so, the article first discusses some techno-scientistic assumptions of Transhumanism, showing that it presumes what was once a core principle of German (...) Idealism, the identity of reason and being, against which Rosenzweig rebelled. Then, the article turns to examine Rosenzweig’s humanistic redemptive vision and its emphasis on the corporeal, the temporal, and the worldly. The conclusion makes explicit the ways in which Rosenzweig’s redemptive vision provides a contrasting model to the one set forth by Transhumanism. (shrink)

This paper considers the responsibilities of the FDA with regard to disseminating information about the benefits and harms of e-cigarettes. Tobacco harm reduction advocates claim that the FDA has been overcautious and has violated ethical obligations by failing to clearly communicate to the public that e-cigarettes are far less harmful than cigarettes. We argue, by contrast, that the FDA’s obligations in this arena are more complex than they may appear at first blush. Though the FDA is accountable for informing the (...) public about the health risks and benefits of products it regulates, it also has other roles that inform when and how it should disseminate information. In addition to being a knowledge purveyor, it is also a knowledge producer, an advisor to the public, and a practical agent shaping the material conditions in which people make health-related choices. In our view, those other roles call for caution in the way the FDA interprets and communicates the available evidence. (shrink)