Disturbed by these acrimonious arguments, the authors - former colleagues and university-press board members - embarked on an ambitious project to reexamine a number of major literary and philosophical works dealing with the liberal arts and education. With their discussions ranging from Plato to Rousseau, from Cicero to Vico, from Erasmus to Matthew Arnold, Sousa and Weinsheimer offer not a history of education philosophy but an examination of the present.

The article is about the poetic-practical philosophy of dialog of Lesia Ukrainka, which is manifested in the dramatic creativity of the prominent poetess, her translation activity and the concept of “person-nature relations”. In the text it is shown that Lesia Ukrainka created a new genre of contemporary drama on the basis of application of “Socratic dialog”, which started an important direction in contemporary literature and coincides with a leading trend of world philosophy associated with the paradigmatic turning point from the (...) philosophy of subjectivity to the philosophy of inter-subjectivity. The kinship of the Socratic philosophy of dialog and “Socratic drama” is also referred to. The author also showed that the meaning of Socratic dialog of Lesia Ukrainka in the resolution of the main problems of world outlook of modernity and the role of argumentation, in particular, the method of elenctics, the realization of such notions as “truth” and “verity”, which is particularly important the modern day situation of “posttruth” and “post-morality”. Against the background of the global environmental crisis, it is important to look at the way how Lesya Ukrainka suggests treating nature as a subject and partner in dialogue. This paradigm continues and deepens the Romantic concept of nature as a partner in a conversation and co-creator of the liber mundi ("the book of the world"). It also opens the opportunity to apply hermeneutical methods of understanding nature as a common world (Mitwelt) of communication, love and creativity. The article also analyzes the topic of dialogue between cultures, as well as perception and understanding of another culture as a subject in a dialogue. We can see this focus in Lesya Ukrainka's approach to translation of poetic texts produced by cultures from distant places and epochs. (shrink)

This book offers the first full-length study of philosophical dialogue during the English Enlightenment. It explains why important philosophers - Shaftesbury, Mandeville, Berkeley and Hume - and innumerable minor translators, imitators and critics wrote in and about dialogue during the eighteenth century; and why, after Hume, philosophical dialogue either falls out of use or undergoes radical transformation. Philosophical Dialogue in the British Enlightenment describes the extended, heavily coded, and often belligerent debate about the nature and proper (...) management of dialogue; and it shows how the writing of philosophical fictions relates to the rise of the novel and the emergence of philosophical aesthetics. Novelists such as Fielding, Sterne, Johnson and Austen are placed in a philosophical context, and philosophers of the empiricist tradition in the context of English literary history. (shrink)

This paper responds to a piece of dialogue from Flora Nwapa’s novel Women are Different, in which Comfort mockingly says, “They took up the job voluntarily. Now you will soon tell us that they are celibate because of us.” There are two different interpretations of the use of “because,” and the claim is obviously false on only one of these.

This book brings together researchers with cognitive-scientific and literary backgrounds to present innovative research in all three variations on the possible interactions between literary studies and cognitive science. The tripartite structure of the volume reflects a more ambitious conception of what cognitive approaches to literature are and could be than is usually encountered, and thus aims both to map out and to advance the field. The first section corresponds to what most people think of as "cognitive poetics" or "cognitive literary (...) studies": the study of literature by literary scholars drawing on cognitive-scientific methods, findings, and/or debates to yield insights into literature. The second section demonstrates that literary scholars needn't only make use of cognitive science to study literature, but can also, in a reciprocally interdisciplinary manner, use a cognitively informed perspective on literature to offer benefits back to the cognitive sciences. Finally, the third section, "literature in cognitive science", showcases some of the ways in which literature can be a stimulating object of study and a fertile testing ground for theories and models, not only to literary scholars but also to cognitive scientists, who here engage with some key questions in cognitive literary studies with the benefit of their in-depth scientific knowledge and training. (shrink)

The notion of dialogue is foundational for both Juri Lotman and Mikhail Bakhtin. It is also central in Charles S. Peirce’s semeiotics and logic. While there are several scholarly comparisons of Bakhtin’s and Lotman’s dialogisms, these have yet to be compared with Peirce’s semeiotic dialogues. This article takes tentative steps toward a comparative study of dialogue in Peirce, Lotman, and Bakhtin. Peirce’s understanding of dialogue is explicated, and compared with both Lotman’s as well as Bakhtin’s conceptions. Lotman (...) saw dialogue as the basic meaning-making mechanism in the semiosphere. The benefits and shortcomings of reconceptualizing the semiosphere on the basis of Peircean and Bakhtinian dialogues are weighed. The aim is to explore methodological alternatives in semiotics, not to challenge Lotman’s initial model. It is claimed that the semiosphere qua model operating with Bakhtinian dialogues is narrower in scope than Lotman’s original conception, while the semiosphere qua model operating with Peircean dialogues appears to be broader in scope. It is concluded that the choice between alternative dialogical foundations must be informed by attentiveness to their differences, and should be motivated by the researcher’s goals and theoretical commitments. (shrink)

In this paper, I endeavor to penetrate to the heart of Janusz Kuczyński’s writings about his concept of universalism and to offer my own deliberations upon it based upon my previous writings concerning universalism and dialogue and on my considerations of necessary conditions for the possibility of universal dialogue taking place. To this end, I posit ten conditions for the possibility of entering into genuine universal dialogue. For clarification of Kuczyński’s concept of universalism, I analyze his concept (...) into meta-universalism and holistic universalism. I also discuss the important role of complementarity in the selection of the content of both types of universalism. Finally, I discuss how the phenomenological epoché can be employed to choose the basic values that constitute the shared values of universalism. In so doing, I make reference to Chinese philosophy to illustrate the universality of ethical values. (shrink)

Extending literature on health information to entertainment television, we analyze the prostate cancer narrative presented in the police drama, NYPD Blue. We explain how the physician-patient interaction depicted on the show followed (and sometimes did not follow) the medical dialogue model. Findings reveal that the producers of this show advocate a more dialogic model of medical interaction. Portrayals of incompetent, ineffective physicians are contrasted with the superior, effective efforts of other physicians. The audience learns that a non-dialogic approach characterizes (...) “bad doctors,” while the dialogic method typifies “good doctors.” Likewise, medical professionals can use such texts to enhance physician-patient interaction. (shrink)

Cognitive Literary Studies is gradually making its mark on the publishing world with a growing number of theoretical works that blend scientific approaches with the practice of literary theory. To some extent, this slowly emerging current could even be construed as the missing link, if not the ideal interface, between science and the humanities. At the crossroads of these two areas of study, Cognitive Literary Studies offers an extraordinary opportunity to bridge the “gulf of mutual incomprehension” between literary intellectuals and (...) scientists, one that C.P. Snow famously identified in the wake of World War II.1 Perhaps, along the way, this polymorphous field could even share “the excitement of connecting... (shrink)

The dialogue being a form of communication represents a dynamic structure. Speech communication analysis is mostly based on the material of spontaneous dialogue, but it can be analyzed on the material of a fiction dialogue as well. The fiction dialogue appears to be the product of one of the most complicated types of communication. It refers to fiction and literature and its subjects are the author, the readers and the characters. The functional-communicative approach in the analysis (...) of a fiction dialogue reveals new possibilities for the communicative analysis of the communicative behavior of a certain character. The article deals with the description of the dialogue function in the stories by V. M. Shukshin. The specificity of the artistic dialogues is defined by its aesthetic function. The dramatic category becomes the principle of V. M. Shukshin’s poetics. Verbal and visual form created by the writer is a peculiarity of his artistic system. Polyfunctionality of the dialogues in Shukshin’s stories determines his dominant, text forming function. The dialogue in this case possesses a high level of informativeness: it moves the action, develops the plot, exposes the interrelation between the characters thus defining their behaviour. The test of the characters in Shukshin’s works is made by means of dialogues, that’s why the characterological function is very important. It represents an essential feature of the writer’s prose style. The dialogue is a means of modeling the ‘speech mask‘ that reflects the peculiarities of speech behavior of Shukshin’s characters. In Shukshin’s stories, the dialogue performs an evaluating function as it gives the opportunity to deliver some evaluating positions. The evaluating position is the perception and evaluation of the depicted objects by the author and actors. It’s the dialogues that expose the Shukshin’s characters’ peculiarities of the worldview, ethics and values. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Buddhist-Christian Dialogue in an Age of ScienceNancy R. HowellBuddhist-Christian Dialogue in an Age of Science. By Paul O. Ingram. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008. 155 pp.To my knowledge, Paul Ingram’s Buddhist-Christian Dialogue in an Age of Science undertakes a new project: Systematic and methodological analysis of how Buddhist-Christian dialogue can be shaped by focus on the natural sciences, or, alternatively, how science-religion (...) class='Hi'>dialogue can be enhanced through interreligious dialogue. Either description is appropriate and remarkable in light of the accomplishments of a modestly brief book. While I have participated in multireligious dialogue on science, never have I seen a cogent guide for undertaking the conversation until Ingram’s book appeared.The thesis of Ingram’s argument is that bringing the natural sciences into Buddhist-Christian dialogue promises mutual creative transformation of Buddhism, Christianity, and the natural sciences (p. 2). In such a compact sentence is much to be explained, and Ingram unfolds the meaning of the thesis particularly in chapters 2 and 6. Ingram describes both Christian and Buddhist understandings of the relationship of science and religion, as well as approaches to dialogue between the religions. Ingram’s book is focused on conceptual interreligious dialogue, which engages theological and philosophical worldviews and self-perceptions and how the religions can learn from each other (p. 10). (Not surprisingly, the Whiteheadian Ingram names John B. Cobb Jr. as an exemplar for conceptual dialogue.) Ingram proposes that Buddhism and Christianity enter conceptual dialogue with the natural sciences, with the goal of mutual creative transformation (p. 15). Creative transformation is a Whiteheadian concept defined as “a process of growth and novelty,” “the essence of life itself,” and “a process that alters the nature of...elements without suppressing or destroying them” (p. 120). Creative transformation is possible when all participants in the dialogue Ingram proposes have some particularity to contribute, so the challenge in Ingram’s book is to describe how Buddhism and Christianity have particular contributions to make to dialogue about the natural sciences, as well as whether the sciences can be creatively transformed by encounter with world religions (p. 121).The structure of the book, which includes chapters on Buddhist and Christian encounter with cosmology, evolutionary biology, and cognitive sciences, provides specific awareness of the literature about how the religions have individually engaged the natural sciences. Ingram presupposes and names the awe, wonder, and reverence generated by the natural sciences, whose insights shape our worldviews and inform understanding of ourselves. Scientific insights, according to Ingram, generate “an urgent cultural need to reflect thoughtfully and critically on these changes and challenges in a constructive dialogue involving the world’s religious traditions” (p. 130). Ultimately the dialogue must overcome compartmentalized, disciplinary knowledge and engage in integrative, inclusive, multireligious dialogue (p. 130). Ingram envisions that the “purpose of interdisciplinary and interreligious dialogue is mutual creative transformation” (p. 130), which can occur only when the complex details of the sciences and Buddhist and Christian traditions are honored. [End Page 209]Following Ian Barbour, Ingram recommends a critical realist stance, which he adopts as his approach. He understands critical realism to mean that scientific, Christian, and Buddhist conclusions, practices, and worldviews intend to correspond with reality. However, correspondence to reality, “the way things really are,” (p. 37) must be understood provisionally, so that conclusions and worldviews must always be subjected to correction and reformulation. In Ingram’s view, the need for reformulation is the justification for Buddhist–Christian–natural science dialogue because no single view “possesses the final truth about the natural order or ultimate reality” (p. 37). Buddhism, Christianity, and the natural sciences offer distinctive expressions of the search for truth, which (Ingram avers) “requires...some form of mutual critical integration” in the process of dialogue (p. 37).Concentrating more on the constructive methodology of the book (rather than the three chapters with examples of engagement of the natural sciences with Buddhism and Christianity), I want to address one feature of the argument. Chapter 1, “A Common Cosmology,” proposes appropriately that “[while] scientific cosmology cannot simply replace the basic content of religious creation myths, current scientific cosmology can clarify and transform religious creation myths” (p... (shrink)

Hans-Georg Gadamer, the major proponent of philosophical hermeneutics, reveals himself here as a highly sensitive reader and critic of the German literary tradition. This is not the work of a specialist as narrowly defined in the typical literary study. Although he is a master of the techniques of criticism, Gadamer always sees the study of literature as a fundamentally human activity where human beings, generation after generation, pose their questions to an encroaching darkness that threatens to rob them of their (...) confidence in the meaning of life and death. Never pedantic or antiquarian, these studies show such literary giants of the German past as Goethe and Hölderlin as our contemporaries. Gadamer demonstrates his ability to achieve the creative interplay of literature and philosophy which, in isolation, easily degenerate into sterile academic games. Typical of this dialogue are essays on Rainer Maria Rilke, including an examination of a problem of punctuation in one of his poems. What would be, in less capable hands, one more solution to a literary problem, turns out to be one of Gadamer's creative approaches to the mystery of man's relation to time and death. (shrink)

Aim: The aim of this paper is to present the development and evaluation of an art psychotherapy brief treatment method for complex depression for patients referred to mental health services.Background: Art Psychotherapy literature describes a range of processes of relational change through the use of arts focused and relationship focused interventions. Complex depression has a prevalence of 3% of the population in the West and it is recorded that in 2016 only 28% of that population were receiving psychological treatment. This (...) study was developed to test the hypothesis of whether an accessible and acceptable approach to the treatment of complex depression could be developed in relation to existing evidence-based practice within mental health services.Method: The United Kingdom Medical Research Council phased guidance for complex intervention development was used to develop the intervention. The process included producing a literature overview, systematic description of clinical practice, including a logic model and a clinical protocol. The art psychotherapy protocol described an arts-based dynamic interpersonal therapy approach, offered 1:1 over 24 sessions. Further to this the intervention was tested for referrer acceptability. The intervention is in the early stages of evaluation, using changes to the patient's depression and anxiety measured pre- and post-treatment with a follow-up measure at 3 months following completion of treatment.Results: Phase I of the study provided a good basis for developing a logic model and protocol. The authors found that there was good clinical consensus about the use of a structured clinical art psychotherapy method and the literature overview was used to support specific examples of good practice. The verification of clinical coherence was represented by a logic model and clinical protocol for delivering the intervention. The acceptability study demonstrated very high levels of acceptability for referrers reporting that ADIT was acceptable for patients with complex/major depression, that they were likely to refer to ADIT in the future that the use of arts was likely to improve accessibility the use of arts was likely to improve outcomes and that offering ADIT was an effective use of mental health resources.Discussion: Phase I of this intervention development study demonstrated theoretical and practice coherence resulting in a clinical protocol and logic model. Whilst Phase II of this study showed promising results, Phase II would need to be sufficiently scaled up to a full trial to further test the intervention and protocol. (shrink)

This paper is an account of the conference titled Kanade, di goldene medine? Perspectives on Canadian-Jewish Literature and Culture / Perspectives sur la littérature et la culture juives canadiennes, which took place in Łódź in April, 2014 as a result of collaboration between the University of Łódź and Concordia University. As a venue for discussing Canadian Jewish identity and its links with Poland, the conference supported a dialogue between Canadians, Polish Canadianists, and European scholars from further afield. Established and (...) young scholars attended from Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, the Czech Republic, and Canada, in addition to many Polish participants. The presence of scholars such as Goldie Morgentaler or Sherry Simon as well as curator Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett contributed to an examination of both past and present Canadian and Polish Jewish life and led to an examination of Polish and Canadian literature and history from a highly personal perspective. Conference-goers took advantage of the opportunity to get to know Łódź, via walking tours and a visit to the Łódź Jewish community’s Lauder-funded centre on Narutowicza. The paper aims, as well, to investigate how the history of Jewish Łódź is conveyed in the novels of Joseph Roth and Chava Rosenfarb. (shrink)

Richly illustrated study drawing on art, literature and science to explore Victorian attitudes towards sight.

Hughes’ second major work can be read as an amplification of his first work, The Texture of the Divine, in which attention was paid to “secondary” themes in Jewish philosophy pertaining to aesthetics, poetics, and rhetoric; these themes have often been marginalized in histories of Jewish philosophy. In both works, Hughes focuses upon the importance of cultural history in understanding philosophical texts, exploring motifs and tropes often left out of more mainstream histories of Jewish philosophy. In The Art of (...) class='Hi'>Dialogue, he argues that, inasmuch as a text’s content cannot be separated from its form, we must become more sensitive to why particular thinkers chose the form of dialogue over others: what did this genre allow the thinker to accomplish, and how are the literary features of the dialogue instrumental in the construction of philosophical arguments? Hughes notes that Jewish thinkers were more apt to employ the dialogue during periods in which it was popular in non-Jewish writings. Although the dialogue form itself has had a venerable history in Jewish thought, Hughes argues that there is no evidence that Jewish philosophers looked to this body of rabbinic literature when composing their own dialogues.To make his case that Jewish writers were influenced by their non-Jewish peers, Hughes examines a number of works, drawn from various periods in Jewish. (shrink)

Aaron W. Hughes presents the first major study of dialogue as a Jewish philosophical practice. Examining connections between Jewish philosophy, the literary form in which it is expressed, and the culture in which it is produced, Hughes shows how Jews understood and struggled with their social, religious, and intellectual environments. In this innovative and insightful book, Hughes addresses various themes associated with the literary form of dialogue as well as its philosophical reception: Why did various thinkers choose (...) class='Hi'>dialogue? What did it allow them to accomplish? How do the literary features of dialogue construct philosophical argument? As a history of philosophical form, context, and practice, this book will interest scholars and students working at the intersections of religious studies, philosophy, and literature. (shrink)

The author applies the fields of gender studies, psychoanalysis, and literature to Talmudic texts. In opposition to the perception of Judaism as a legal system, he argues that the Talmud demands inner spiritual effort, to which the trait of humility and the refinement of the ego are central. This leads to the question of the attitude to the Other, in general, and especially to women. The author shows that the Talmud places the woman (who represents humility and good-heartedness in the (...) Talmudic narratives) above the character of the male depicted in these narratives as a scholar with an inflated sense of self-importance. (shrink)

This book demonstrates the presence of literature within speech act theory and the utility of speech act theory in reading literary works. Though the founding text of speech act theory, J. L. Austin's _How to Do Things with Words_, repeatedly expels literature from the domain of felicitous speech acts, literature is an indispensable presence within Austin's book. It contains many literary references but also uses as essential tools literary devices of its own: imaginary stories that serve as examples and imaginary (...) dialogues that forestall potential objections. _How to Do Things with Words_ is not the triumphant establishment of a fully elaborated theory of speech acts, but the story of a failure to do that, the story of what Austin calls a "bogging down." After an introductory chapter that explores Austin's book in detail, the two following chapters show how Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man in different ways challenge Austin's speech act theory generally and his expulsion of literature specifically. Derrida shows that literature cannot be expelled from speech acts—rather that what he calls "iterability" means that any speech act may be literature. De Man asserts that speech act theory involves a radical dissociation between the cognitive and positing dimensions of language, what Austin calls language's "constative" and "performative" aspects. Both Derrida and de Man elaborate new speech act theories that form the basis of new notions of responsible and effective politico-ethical decision and action. The fourth chapter explores the role of strong emotion in effective speech acts through a discussion of passages in Derrida, Wittgenstein, and Austin. The final chapter demonstrates, through close readings of three passages in Proust, the way speech act theory can be employed in an illuminating way in the accurate reading of literary works. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to demonstrate that globalization, as it proceeds today, will only lead to a clash of civilizations and to the destruction of the fragile cultural identities. This leads to folds of the cultural minorities and the seeking of their recognition that can be expressed through violence. For globalization to succeed in integrating its noble objective of all cultures, it must proceed by inclusion instead of being exclusive. Intercultural dialogue has a central role in such (...) a globalization to achieve peace between cultures. In this dialogue, the community paradigm of African cultures can be used as a model for approaching any culture. (shrink)

Literature-Philosophy apprehends the encounter of literature and philosophy as an open dialogue, where the commonality of a specific distance with regard to ἐπιστήμη serves to open up discourse beyond knowledge and epistemology. This article serves the purpose to argue for reading in translation as a core element of the methodological toolkit and part of a study-focus on Literature-Philosophy in a curriculum of Global Philosophy. It will therefore start by sketching a contextualization of Tschuang-Tse. Reden und Gleichnisse, Martin Buber’s poetic (...) renderings of 莊子, to introduce into how and why his philosophy of dialogue in her educational form stays trapped within an aesthetically motivated hierarchy of explanation. Le maître ignorant by Jacques Rancière will provide a restructuring of the educational encounter as a kind of emancipatory literary poetics of subjectivation inquiry and experience that is political, rather than power-related. (shrink)

Literature-Philosophy apprehends the encounter of literature and philosophy as an open dialogue, where the commonality of a specific distance with regard to ἐπιστήμη serves to open up discourse beyond knowledge and epistemology. This article serves the purpose to argue for reading in translation as a core element of the methodological toolkit and part of a study-focus on Literature-Philosophy in a curriculum of Global Philosophy. It will therefore start by sketching a contextualization of Tschuang-Tse. Reden und Gleichnisse, Martin Buber’s poetic (...) renderings of 莊子, to introduce into how and why his philosophy of dialogue in her educational form stays trapped within an aesthetically motivated hierarchy of explanation. Le maître ignorant by Jacques Rancière will provide a restructuring of the educational encounter as a kind of emancipatory literary poetics of subjectivation inquiry and experience that is political, rather than power-related. (shrink)

In recent times, African states have experienced multiple challenges. The most disturbing one is the inability to evolve a sustainable culture of dialogue that is suitable for the mitigation of ethnic conflicts in contemporary Africa. It is this failure that has generated many other problems in other spheres. These problems, in concert, have made the socio-political space largely that of frustration, despair and disappointment. This accounts for the social design of unhealthy alliances and the basis for the affirmation of (...) parochial primordial frivolities at the detriment of a trans-national identity. But why have the affirmation of these primordial alliances and its attendant conflicts remain daunting, intricate and resilient, in spite of the several attempts by scholars to mitigate it? This paper argues that extant discourse of the above concern fails because it ignores the value of the conditions for the practical realisation of agreement in situations of conflict. The attempt here is to explore indigenous mediation strategies especially from the traditional Igbo speaking people in South-Eastern Nigeria in arriving at trans-national identity in Africa, which will be inclusive other than the divisive structure that has exclusive character in extant discourse. This paper, therefore, will employ the analytic-descriptive method to interrogate the above in a manner many scholars are wont to ignore. Hence, it is expected that this paper will initiate a perspective that will challenge extant interpretation of the conditions of dialogue and consequently human solidarity in African States. (shrink)

This paper examines the roles of dialogue in the process of communication with stakeholders. The conceptual frameworks of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and stakeholder relationships frequently present the initiation of a dialogue with stakeholders as a way for an organization to respond to criticisms of its social and environmental policies and actions. The paper discusses dialogue in the stakeholder and CSR literature. This is followed by the analysis of in-depth semi-structured interviews in the empirical section. Theoretical discussion (...) and empirical examples demonstrate that the role of stakeholder dialogue in implementing CSR strategy is crucial in many ways. The case examples taken from the interviews with the heads of two large companies and two non-governmental organizations illustrate the practical difficulties that may be encountered in applying the principle and practice of dialogue to the implementation of CSR programs in the real world. (shrink)

Hans-Georg Gadamer, the major proponent of philosophical hermeneutics, reveals himself here as a highly sensitive reader and critic of the German literary tradition. This is not the work of a specialist as narrowly defined in the typical literary study. Although he is a master of the techniques of criticism, Gadamer always sees the study of literature as a fundamentally human activity where human beings, generation after generation, pose their questions to an encroaching darkness that threatens to rob them of their (...) confidence in the meaning of life and death. Never pedantic or antiquarian, these studies show such literary giants of the German past as Goethe and Hölderlin as our contemporaries. Gadamer demonstrates his ability to achieve the creative interplay of literature and philosophy which, in isolation, easily degenerate into sterile academic games. Typical of this dialogue are essays on Rainer Maria Rilke, including an examination of a problem of punctuation in one of his poems. What would be, in less capable hands, one more solution to a literary problem, turns out to be one of Gadamer’s creative approaches to the mystery of man’s relation to time and death. (shrink)

In this book, Joseph Cimakasky examines Plato’s use of the term exaíphnēs, revealing a pattern that links Plato’s theory of Ideas with philosophical education.

The title of the paper productively suggests a double-meaning of truth vis-à-vis dialogue. The claim is both that the concept of truth is essential for a comprehensive conception of dialogue, and that dialogue points toward a concept of truth beyond dogmatic infallibity or doxastic relativism. At stake is to show how truth entails an essentially dialogical moment, and dialogue, if conceived philosophically, must entail the concept of truth.In theological as well as philosophical dogmatism, a final truth (...) is assumed. Interesting are positions such as Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI’s or Karl-Otto Apel’s “transcendental pragmatics” since they attempt to engage in dialogue yet assume an “infallible” or “ultimately grounded” foundation for their own assumptions. Radically opposed to this infallibilism is the postmodern relativistic view according to which the “groundless grounds” of human understanding make all claims to truth meaningless. Since understanding and dialogue are situated in contingent cultural contexts, as Richard Rorty argues, no ascent to truth is ever possible. The result of our analysis suggests that both positions lead to an insulation of experience from true dialogicalchallenge. Dogmatic positions miss the dialogical core of truth, as they believe that insulated truth-content remains “true” regardless of engaged and challenged reassertions. Doxastic conceptions miss the truth-relation of dialogue, as they fail to capture the seriousness and intentionality of intersubjective and intercultural dialogue.From these critical points emerges a productive concept of dialogue that entails truth as an open-ended and dynamic, and thereby indispensable, concept. Moreover, our analysis lays out that the basic dialogical notions involve truth, openness, and reciprocity in an interconnected way. Dialogue is unavoidable for truth, as much as truth is intrinsic to dialogue. But the new synthesis of truth and dialogue allows for a pluralistic understanding of truth that still, we hope, remains truthful to its content. As such, it alone can ground a non-relativistic notion of multiculturalism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Toward a Theoretical Framework for the Study of Humor in Literature and the Other ArtsJerry Farber (bio)With a clearer understanding of the way humor works, we might be better able to give it the attention it deserves when we study and teach the arts. But where do we turn to find a theoretical framework for the study of humor—one that will help to clarify the role that humor plays (...) in the arts and that will help us as well to understand differences in the way individual perceivers respond to humor in art?A superiority theory of humor emerged in classical times and more or less held the stage through the seventeenth century; now, however, though an occasional attempt to revive it is still made,1 superiority theory is usually regarded as far too narrow in scope to be useful as a general account of humor. What are commonly referred to as "release" (or, occasionally, "relief") theories— and associated with Spencer and Freud—were for a time very influential, but are somewhat narrow too in their own way, and furthermore, as Noël Carroll puts it, "have the liability of presupposing hydraulic views of the mind that are highly dubious."2 Incongruity theory, which has been around in one form or another since at least the eighteenth century, dominates contemporary humor theory but is still widely regarded as not quite there yet. And so humor remains somewhat mysterious and elusive. Or not even that. It may be that most people, even teachers in the arts, bypass theory entirely and simply accept humor as a given: an unanalyzable fact of human life. I've sometimes wondered if it may be that we don't want to understand humor, either because we're afraid that this understanding will spoil the game or, just possibly, because we sense that, as a consequence of it, we may discover things about ourselves that we would prefer not to know.Is a well-founded, broadly inclusive theoretical framework for the study and teaching of humor in the arts achievable? I want to propose that it is if [End Page 67] we take incongruity theory a few steps further, integrating an analysis of the humorous situation (that is, what we perceive: the caricature, the witty dialogue, the bit of stage business) with an analysis of what goes on in the perceiver (the humor experience itself).A General Theory of HumorIncongruity theory, though clearly the front-runner these days, continues to be problematic, making too much sense for us to discard it, but not quite enough sense to get us where we need to go. Thus, Carroll concludes his recent overview of this theoretical tradition: "Though promising, the Incongruity Theory of Humor remains a project in need of further research."3 Reading this we may find ourselves wondering, just as we might about some writer or performer who's been on the scene for a good long time, how much longer this centuries-old theoretical approach gets to remain "promising."What have been the major problems associated with incongruity theory? For one thing, it doesn't tell us much about the affective dimension of humor.4 Neither does it satisfactorily explain differences in the way individual perceivers respond. The major weakness of incongruity theory, however, has been a failure to account adequately for all of those instances of incongruity that are not funny: for example, brainteasers, logic problems, and puzzles. One way of dealing with this problem has been to keep adding on exclusionary clauses until the category has been pared down satisfactorily. In other words, humor is based on incongruity, provided that we exclude situations that inspire fear, or are disgusting, or are perceived instrumentally, or are regarded primarily as a puzzle, and so on. But, of course, this is patchwork. What we need is a humor theory where stipulations such as these don't have to be added on, because they follow logically from the theory itself.It's been proposed repeatedly that the incongruous elements in humor are likely to be connected in some way, though some of the terms that have been advanced to identify this connection are unnecessarily limiting if... (shrink)

It is no surprise if a good quality communication unit succeeds in seizing the attention of the intended audience (or readership) and is able to let people see precisely what the author wanted them to see, while avoiding that the average addressee become aware of what the author wants to convey in an almost subliminal way. In this respect Plato is no exception. Nevertheless the study of these resources, far from having been somewhat systematic, still is largely neglected, and only (...) a minority of commentators find it important to pay head to the communicational strategies which are at work in Plato's dialogues. It will be argued that the shades of meaning and the contextualization of thought (a) systematically grant to Plato ample room for affecting the way a reader comes to perceive his points of doctrine and (b) often let him convey a biased perception of his arguments.The paper includes an outline of the already longstanding debate on these matters, a case study (Memo 80–82), and a sketchy typology of how the literary working-out is able to affect the reader's perception of the line of thought, esp. within the aporetic dialogues. (shrink)

Rosalie Osmond examines both literal and metaphorical aspects of the relationship between body and soul in seventeenth-century literature and their significance within a primarily dualistic philosophy.

This article was inspired by Georges Didi-Huberman’s keynote lecture “Que ce qui apparaît seulement s’aperçoit” delivered in 2015 at Charles University in Prague during the “Dis/appearing” conference organized by the Internationales Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie. Didi-Huberman’s lecture consisted of various reflections concerning the meaning of the image as instances of flaring up and fading away. During his talk, Didi-Huberman used evocative images – recollections – which he had collected over the years; impressions while walking in the streets, melancholic musings (...) about love, and thoughts gathered from literature en route. From this, the article identifies seven cases through which Didi-Huberman has conceptualized images; the nymph, the butterfly, the passer-by, the surface, the dance, the silence, and sophrosyne. These cases attest to the influence of Aby Warburg on the writing of Didi-Huberman and, taken together, identify what these cases of the image have in common; namely, that images occupy an interspace: the fleeting instant of appearance/disappearance. Didi-Huberman explains images – “Dante’s Beatrice and Baudelaire’s fleeting beauty” as “the paradigmatic ‘passer-by.’” Through these cases, this article poetically draws the reader’s attention to what Didi-Huberman calls “non-knowledge”; those fleeting, mobile, paradoxical aspects of images that resist clear categorization and can be thought of as fireflies against the night sky. The article asks: is it possible to characterize this genre? To denominate the collection of thoughts that welcome the image as a witness to the history of thought? The study of images can be understood, following Giorgio Agamben’s interpretation of Aby Warburg’s oeuvre, as “the nameless science.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.1 (2002) 84-106 [Access article in PDF] Irony in the Platonic Dialogues Charles L. Griswold, Jr. I INTERPRETERS OF PLATO have arrived at a general consensus to the effect that there exists a problem of interpretation when we read Plato, and that the solution to the problem must in some way incorporate what has tendentiously been called the "literary" and the "philosophical" sides of Plato's writing. (...) The problem is created by the fact that Plato wrote in dialogue form, indeed a specific type of dialogue form. The solution must somehow combine into a coherent theory of the "meaning" of the dialogues, the ways in which these texts work (such as the use of imagery, metaphor, myth, allusion, irony, as well as argument). At the same time, there exists enormous disagreement about how one ought to move from these general observations to interpretation of a particular text. 1The problem of interpretation lies not merely in the fact that Plato wrote dialogues. That alone would not necessarily present any hermeneutical issues of unusual difficulty. Plato's distinctive use of the dialogue form creates the difficulties. The genre that we might call "the Platonic dialogue" is distinguished by several relevant characteristics.First, there is no character called "Plato" who speaks in any of the dialogues; indeed, "Plato" is mentioned twice in the entire corpus, once as being absent (Pho. 59b10), and once as being present (Apol. 38b6). Authorial anonymity is thus an important feature of the dialogues. 2 At least ab initio, we are not justified in identifying Plato with any one of his characters. Indeed, there are positive reasons why he cannot be identified even with Socrates, as I will discuss below. 3 Plato is absent from his own texts; no simple act of reading them will allow us to ascertain what his views are. 4 It does not follow that Plato's views are [End Page 84] entirely absent from the dialogues—say, in the form of some mysterious "esoteric teaching"—and that they cannot be elicited by a complex act of reading. Just how Plato's views are to be extracted has been, again, the subject of a very long debate. 5 I myself think that Plato's views can be so elicited. 6 But the fact of his anonymity as author means that "Plato's meaning" is not ascertainable in the way that, say, "Kant's meaning" may be ascertainable in the Critique of Pure Reason.A second feature of Plato's dialogues contributes to the interpretive puzzle. The dialogues are clearly fictional in character. They are not—they could not be—transcriptions of conversations which took place. Some dialogues could not have taken place even when the interlocutors were historical figures (for example, at the Phaedrus' ostensible dramatic date the real Phaedrus was not in Athens). Not only are many of the characters entirely fictional, there is clear evidence that even "Socrates" is very much a fictionalized version of the historical character. I am referring not just to the famous statement in the (possibly inauthentic) Second Letter, 7 but to the fact that the Socrates of Plato's dialogues is presented as being a super-human character. This is evident from Alcibiades' description of him in the Symposium as well as from a number of subtle fictions. For example, Plato has Socrates narrate the entirety of the Republic from memory, without a single moment of hesitation or (so far as the reader can tell) any lapse of memory. This fantastic feat is complemented by Socrates' equally fantastic stamina in conversation. The lengthy Protagoras, for example, is narrated in its entirety by Socrates immediately after the dialogue itself has occurred. Socrates never shows any fatigue of any sort. It is not just hyperbole to say that Plato's Socrates is heroic; he is carefully compared, in passages I cannot examine here, to both Achilles and Odysseus. Socrates' absolute calm and self-control before death also evidence his superhuman character. The relation between the historical Socrates and the Platonic Socrates is the source of much fruitful controversy. It suffices for... (shrink)

This 1995 book takes as its starting point Plato's incorporation of specific genres of poetry and rhetoric into his dialogues. The author argues that Plato's 'dialogues' with traditional genres are part and parcel of his effort to define 'philosophy'. Before Plato, 'philosophy' designated 'intellectual cultivation' in the broadest sense. When Plato appropriated the term for his own intellectual project, he created a new and specialised discipline. In order to define and legitimise 'philosophy', Plato had to match it against genres of (...) discourse that had authority and currency in democratic Athens. By incorporating the text or discourse of another genre, Plato 'defines' his new brand of wisdom in opposition to traditional modes of thinking and speaking. By targeting individual genres of discourse Plato marks the boundaries of 'philosophy' as a discursive and as a social practice. (shrink)

This is a major study of conceptions of selfhood and personality in Homer and Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. The focus is on the norms of personality in Greek psychology and ethics. Gill argues that the key to understanding Greek thought of this type is to counteract the subjective and individualistic aspects of our own thinking about the person. He defines an "objective-participant" conception of personality, symbolized by the idea of the person as an interlocutor in a series of psychological and (...) ethical dialogues. (shrink)

Dialogue is a recurring and significant component of Indian religious and philosophical literature. Whether it be as a narrative account of a conversation between characters within a text, as an implied response or provocation towards an interlocutor outside the text, or as a hermeneutical lens through which commentators and modern audiences can engage with an ancient text, dialogue features prominently in many of the most foundational sources from classical India. Despite its ubiquity, there are very few studies that (...) explore this important facet of Indian texts. This book redresses this imbalance by undertaking a close textual analysis of a range of religious and philosophical literature to highlight the many uses and functions of dialogue in the sources themselves and in subsequent interpretations. Using the themes of encounter, transformation and interpretation - all of which emerged from face-to-face discussions between the contributors of this volume - each chapter explores dialogue in its own context, thereby demonstrating the variety and pervasiveness of dialogue in different genres of the textual tradition. This is a rich and detailed study that offers a fresh and timely perspective on many of the most well-known and influential sources from classical India. As such, it will be of great use to scholars of religious studies, Asian studies, comparative literature and literary theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 13.1 (2005) 111-114 [Access article in PDF] Response to Elvira Panaiotidi, "The Nature of Paradigms and Paradigm Shifts in Music Education" Janice Waldron Michigan State University Elvira Panaiotidi makes a strong case that MEAE and praxialism represent, respectively, the poesis and praxis strands of the Aristotelian conception of art and that, consequently, one cannot conclude that the two accounts are ontologically incompatible. At this (...) point I wish only to respond to an implication which I believe may be present and discuss its relevance. That is that the search for ontological explanations has historically preceded (or at least should precede) the development of music education theory. A brief look at the historical record indicates that the development of music education theory seems to have been dominated by the search for axiological more than ontological explanations. Panaiotidi lists both aspects as integral parts of the theoretical kernel, however, the need to justify music education in terms of value has, at least in the United States, apparently preceded any search for meaning.Michael Mark recounts a report of the Boston School Committee in 1837, at which certain arguments of Aristotle were invoked in order to persuade the commitee of the value of music instruction.1 The entire transcript of that meeting amounts to a polemic about the value of music, resulting from its supposed effects on the spirit, character, or health, yet the record is devoid of any discussion of what might actually constitute music.2 Marie McCarthy describes how the search for aesthetic foundations over a century later was fostered by a need to "explain [music education's] importance in the curriculum."3 Of the scholars of this period, Abraham Schwadron in particular was quite explicit in articulating how his theory of aesthetics was motivated by what he considered an appalling inability for music educators to validate their field's existence.4This is not to imply that the authors of our current philosophies were not searching for or failed to provide strong ontological arguments for music education or to insist that they have always framed the question: What is valuable about music? as the question: What is music? in order to address these ideological [End Page 111] and political pressures. I am merely suggesting that the search for ontological explanations has generally followed the search for value. The historical pattern is one of reaction to various pressures, followed by the eventual development of an aesthetic philosophical framework which was intended, directly or indirectly, to respond to those pressures. The magnitude of such pressures to justify the place of music in the curriculum would seem to differentiate music education paradigms from those of the social sciences and humanities, of which, the author asserts, they are hybrids. Combined with the marked differences in social and political pressures which are found in various times and places in America, it would also account for the emotional tone of the debate, to which the author also alludes. Presumably, such emotion results not only from various scholars' attachments to their ontological beliefs, but from the practical consequences which occur when a theory is ultimately rejected or implemented at the classroom level, based on its perceived ability to define what is valuable in music education.Although this differentiation is subtle and does not detract from the strength of Panaiotidi's central argument, it has implications for the eventual implementation of any unitary theory. Specifically, if we accept that, ontologically speaking, praxialism and aestheticism are two sides of the same coin, it is likely that the argument will simply transform into an axiological question concerning which side is more valuable, a fact to which the author also alludes. Considering past evidence, the overriding concern for value justification may make implementing any unitary theory difficult, regardless of the benefits that could potentially be gained through such a "balanced music education." Consider, for example, that a unitary theory would be less susceptible to ideological use because of its breadth. In other fields such as literature or science, this would be a... (shrink)