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

Merleau-Ponty and Buddhism explores a new mode of philosophizing through a comparative study of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology and philosophies of major Buddhist thinkers including Nagarjuna, Chinul, Dogen, Shinran, and Nishida Kitaro. The book offers an intercultural philosophy in which opposites intermingle in a chiasmic relationship, and which brings new understanding regarding the self and the self's relation with others in a globalized and multicultural world.

Through a comparative analysis of the key ontological notions in Merleau-Ponty and Nagarjuna, I develop a relational social ontology that is grounded in their respective implicit and explicit ethics. Both thinkers take heed of our being-in-the-world; this is evident in their views on intersubjective sociality and language. Recognizing the limitations in these views points us toward a greater understanding of the meaningfulness of our situated existences. In this vein, I propose a number of ideas to guide the work of comparative (...) philosophy. (shrink)

For the first two years of my daughter's life, I was scheduled to teach an Introductory Logic course. While I had taught Critical Thinking courses in the past, having to steep myself in categorical and propositional logic left a lasting impression on my own thinking. More importantly, though, these courses influenced my speech-habits during the early years of my child's development. By no means do I intend to assert that my child somehow gained some cognitive benefit from my communication with (...) her during these early stages of her life. Rather, it seems that she acquired the particular virtue of tolerating her father's habit of voicing strangely worded utterances. As she has passed the three and half year mark, her own communication skills and means of expression are well on their way towards developing into her own distinct styles. This I know because we talk a lot. Often times these dialogues are about day care, her friends, or princesses and lots of pink stuff. But sometimes a gem of an argument develops. (shrink)

Kant's ideas about, questions, and challenges to the Western tradition of philosophy reverberate into the third century of the reception of his texts. The writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the twentieth-century French existential and hermeneutic phenomenologist, are interlaced with engagements with Kant's ideas. Often these incidents are marked by Merleau-Ponty's critique, yet there is a noticeable recurrence of his efforts to contend with Kant's philosophy. In Merleau-Ponty's course notes, Nature (2002), he wrestles with Kant's version of nature in the Critique of (...) Judgment (1790), specifically citing ?the happy accident? between sensibility and the understanding. This opens upon realms of metaphysical thought that remain deeply contentious within Kantian scholarship. An interrogation of this ?happy accident? leads to insights about Merleau-Ponty's conceptualization of an existentialized metaphysics the implications of which shed light on theology and the judgment of God. (shrink)

Our article identifies and describes the metaphoric fallacy to a deductive inference (MFDI) that is an example of incorrect reasoning along the lines of the false analogy fallacy. The MFDI proceeds from informal semantical (metaphorical) claims to a supposedly formally deductive and necessary inference. We charge that such an inference is invalid. We provide three examples of the MFDI to demonstrate the structure of this invalid form of reasoning. Our goal is to contribute to the set of known informal fallacies.

The totalizing and absolutizing tendencies of metaphysics can undermine our essential ethical relationality. Is there a metaphysics that is robust enough and conducive to preserving this intuition? In answer, this paper will draw upon Martin Buber and Justus Buchler. Buber’s seminal work, I and Thou, explores the nature of the ethical encounter. Buchler’s Metaphysics of Natural Complexes develops a general ontology, which can be described as an ordinal metaphysics. Encounters are thoroughly relational for Buber. Buchler’s metaphysics is also thoroughly relational. (...) A phenomenological approach to relationality establishes the medium for this dialogue and provides a common ground for these texts. Not only is there a way to account for Buber’s encounter, but there is also an inherent moral understanding in Buchler’s metaphysics that preserves and is conducive to ethical relationality. Buchler’s metaphysics avoids the totalizing and absolutizing tendencies derided by Buber, while simultaneously promotes a version of the encounter. (shrink)

This essay attempts a phenomenological analysis of Descartes' statement, ‘my perception of God is prior to my perception of myself,’ and Buber's claim that God ‘is also the mystery of the self-evident, nearer to me than my I.’ I radicalize the implications of Descartes' and Buber's claims by drawing on the thought of Husserl and Levinas, and couching the analysis in terms of Merleau-Ponty's experiential notions of haunting and reversibility. This forces us to interrogate the subjective space in which we (...) think God qua recognize the other, and shows us a kind of necessity that underlies the I-Thou relation. My conclusion leaves us in a place of powerless subjective inwardness and awe. (shrink)

This book chronicles his years of exploration, a vivid and personal introduction to a thorny but ultimately enchanting place that manages to endear itself over time, if it doesn’t kill you first.

ExcerptThis issue of Telos explores the contours of politics after metaphysics as the horizon for an appropriate response to today's unabating politico-economic crisis. Profound challenges to core institutions of modernity—free-market economy, political liberalism, and parliamentary democracy—have emerged: the expansion of the state into civil society, the subordination of rights to security, and the growth of executive authority. Critical Theory developed, historically, in response to what Max Horkheimer labeled the “authoritarian state,” which has now overflowed the limits of the national polity (...) and permeated the fabric of transnational financial and political institutions. That is where we ought to seek the common…. (shrink)

Does stakeholder theory constitute an established academic field? Our answer is both “yes” and “no.” In the more than quarter-century since Freeman’s seminal contribution in 1984, this domain has acquired some of the administrative, social, and disciplinary trappings of an established field. Stakeholder research has coalesced around a unique intellectual position: that corporations must be understood within the context of their stakeholder relationships and that this understanding must grow out of the interplay between normative and social scientific insights. Yet, much (...) of this domain remains an unexplored territory. In this article, the authors assess the progress to date toward field status and outline future directions for stakeholder research. (shrink)

Will stakeholder theory continue to transform how we think about business and society? On the occasion of this journal’s 60th anniversary, this review article examines the journal’s role in shaping stakeholder theory to date and suggests that it still has transformative potential. We conducted a bibliometric analysis of co-citations in the literature from 1984 to 2020. Reporting these results, we examine the field’s evolving structure. Contextualized theoretically as an accomplishment of institutional work—the creation of a meaningful and innovative field ideology—this (...) structure is remarkable for how it integrates ethical and behavioral arguments, invites engagement from adjacent domains, and arrives at important insights for business and society. We advance a research agenda consistent with this larger institutional project. (shrink)

Since 1999 Thoemmes Press (now Thoemmes Continuum) has been engaged in a large-scale programme of biographical dictionaries of philosophy and related subjects. This volume on Irish philosophers follows the standard format of arranging entires alphabetically by thinker. It includes two forms of entry: (1) entries reproduced from previous editions of Thoemmes encyclopedias of British philosophy and (2) wholly new entries on early (renaissance-period) and_ modern (20th century) philosophers, together with some new entries on the intervening centuries. >.

This panel considered the uses of and prospects for the stakeholder theory/approach. After 20 years of popularity, the stakeholder concept has still notemerged as a true theory. However, it offers some unique perspectives on business organizations and there is plenty of room to develop stakeholder theory and research. These session notes are offered to further the scholarly discussion.

Our article identifies and describes the metaphoric fallacy to a deductive inference (MFDI) that is an example of incorrect reasoning along the lines of the false analogy fallacy. The MFDI proceeds from informal semantical (metaphorical) claims to a supposedly formally deductive and necessary inference. We charge that such an inference is invalid. We provide three examples of the MFDI to demonstrate the structure of this invalid form of reasoning. Our goal is to contribute to the set of known informal fallacies.

This panel considered the uses of and prospects for the stakeholder theory/approach. After 20 years of popularity, the stakeholder concept has still notemerged as a true theory. However, it offers some unique perspectives on business organizations and there is plenty of room to develop stakeholder theory and research. These session notes are offered to further the scholarly discussion.

Do we face a new rule of lawlessness? On the high seas, in matters of international law and human rights, and even in domestic prosecutorial practices, any grounds to place one's trust in the lawfulness of order seem increasingly elusive. The New World Order appears to be no order at all; the century of secular universalisms leaves us in the state of a general and all-encompassing nihilism. Still, rather than signaling a dead end rife with global despair, the collapse of (...) everything that went under the name of the New World Order could be a harbinger of ample opportunities for…. (shrink)

Although risky decision-making has been posited to contribute to the maladaptive behavior of individuals with psychopathic tendencies, the performance of psychopathic groups on a common task of risky decision-making, the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT; Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, & Anderson, 1994), has been equivocal. Different aspects of psychopathy (personality traits, antisocial deviance) and/or moderating variables may help to explain these inconsistent findings. In a sample of college students (N = 129, age 18–27), we examined the relationship between primary and secondary psychopathic (...) features and IGT performance. A measure of impulsivity was included to investigate its potential as a moderator. In a joint model including main effects and interactions between primary psychopathy, secondary psychopathy and impulsivity, only secondary psychopathy was significantly related to risky IGT performance, and this effect was not moderated by the other variables. This finding supports the growing literature suggesting that secondary psychopathy is a better predictor of decision-making problems than the primary psychopathic personality traits of lack of empathy and remorselessness. (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)

In June 2012, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced his plans for a ban on the sale of sugary beverages in containers larger than 16 ounces. Shortly thereafter, the Center for Consumer Freedom took out a full-page ad in the New York Times featuring Bloomberg photo-shopped into a matronly dress with the tag line “New Yorkers need a Mayor, not a Nanny.” On television, the CATO Institute's Michael Cannon declared, “This is the most ridiculous sort of nanny (...) state-ism; [i]t’s none of the mayor's business how much soda people are drinking.” And in newspapers around the country, editorial pages featured headlines such as “Gulp! Yet Another Intrusion of the Nanny State.” Just like that, the public debate about this measure became focused on government overreach, while the public health problem of obesity faded into the background. (shrink)