Sometimes we remember past objects or events in a vivid, experiential way. The present paper addresses some fundamental questions about the metaphysics of such experiential or ‘recollective’ memories. More specifically, it develops the ‘Relational Account’ of recollective memory, which consists of the following three claims. A subject who recollectively remembers a past object or event stands in an experiential relation to the relevant past object or event. The R‐remembered object or event itself is a part of the R‐memory; that is, (...) the subject's present R‐memory is partly constituted by the relevant past object or event. When a subject R‐remembers a past object, the past object is a constitutive part of the conscious experience itself; that is, the object is immediately available to the subject in conscious experience. In developing the Relational Account, the present paper hopes to make a substantial contribution to any attempt to account for the nature of recollective memory. Furthermore, in order to explain how a subject could understand the beliefs that she forms about the past on the basis of an R‐memory, and how a subject could, on the basis of an R‐memory, gain any knowledge about the past, we arguably also need to rely on the Relational Account of recollective memory. Thus, the Relational Account will also play an important role in an attempt to account for various other ways in which a subject might be related to the past in general, and to her own past in particular. Standing in such relations to the past is, in turn, a central feature of our human existence. Ultimately, therefore, the Relational Account of recollective memory should also play a crucial role in furthering our understanding of ourselves, and of our own existence in time. (shrink)

Olkowski proposes a model of phenomenology, both scientific and philosophical, that helps make sense of reality and composes an ethics for dealing with unpredictability in our world.

First published in 1918, this volume was partly based on lectures delivered by Dorothea Jane Stephen at and near Bangalore and was intended to illustrate the considerable influence exercised by the early literature of India on later Indian philosophy and culture. Examining themes of divinity and religion together with morality and human nature, the essays in this book combine to offer a fitting introduction to the importance and far-reaching effects of early Indian thought.

Imagine you are walking through a park. Suddenly, a mugger points a gun at you, threatening to shoot you if you do not hand over your valuables. Is this an instance of domination? Many authors working within the neo-republican framework - including Philip Pettit himself - are inclined to say 'yes'. After all, the mugger case seems to be a paradigmatic example of what it means to be at someone's mercy. However, I argue that this conclusion is based on a (...) misleading, interactional account of domination that misconceives its structural character. Domination, I maintain, is a structurally constituted form of power. Whether the mugger in the park dominates you or not can only be established by analysing the wider power structures in which your interaction is embedded. (shrink)

Phantasia is viewed as a unified concept in Aristotle. When the metaphoric meaning of ‘phantisizing’ is excluded, the causal account for all imagination is the same: all phantasiai are motions in the soul caused by sense-perceptions. These are sensory images or imprints that can exist independently from their original source. Their history may be different, and their character and value may vary. Aristotle’s insistence on their sensory nature indicates that he saw them as a unitary phenomenon in the soul, as (...) sensory appearances. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Partnerships between companies and NGOs have received considerable attention in CSR in the past years. However, the role of NGO legitimacy in such partnerships has thus far been neglected. We argue that NGOs assume a status as special stakeholders of corporations which act on behalf of the common good. This role requires a particular focus on their moral legitimacy. We introduce a conceptual framework for analysing the moral legitimacy of NGOs along three dimensions, building on the theory of deliberative democracy. (...) Against this background we outline three procedural characteristics which are essential for judging the legitimacy of NGOs as potential or actual partners of corporations. (shrink)

_The Universal_ proposes a radically new philosophical system that moves from ontology to ethics. Drawing on the work of De Beauvoir, Sartre, and Le Doeuff, among others, and addressing a range of topics from the Asian sex trade to late capitalism, quantum gravity, and Merleau-Ponty's views on cinema, Dorothea Olkowski stretches the mathematical, political, epistemological, and aesthetic limits of continental philosophy and introduces a new perspective on political structures. Straddling a course between formalism and conventionalism, Olkowski develops the concept (...) of an ontological unconscious that arises from our "sensible" relation to the world-the information we absorb and emit that affects our encounters with the environment and others. In this "realm of the senses," or the field of vulnerability defined by our experience with pleasure and pain, Olkowski is able to rethink the space-time relations put forth by Irigaray's notion of the "interval," Bergson's "recollection," Merleau-Ponty's idea of the "flesh," and Deleuze's "plane of immanence." This aesthetic sense is shared by all humankind and nonhuman entities in the organic and inorganic world. The sensible universal can be applied to categories of pure and practical reason; experiential binaries of male-female and subject-object; and issues of autonomy, moral laws, and the regulation of perception. (shrink)

ABSTRACT While multiple crisis phenomena have sparked experimentation with alternative forms of production and consumption on the micro level, it is not clear if and how these alternative practices may become hegemonic and thus displace capitalism as the hegemonic order on the macro level, rather than merely fostering pockets of a solidarity economy within capitalism. This question is hard to research, because it relates to post-capitalist futures rather than actual events or phenomena in the past or present. In this article, (...) I propose a methodological framework for studying the transformative potential of counter-hegemonic initiatives. Building on debates on causality and prediction within Critical Realism, I introduce the concept of ‘ex-ante’ retroduction. Using this mode of reasoning helps to identify possible generative mechanisms for the viability and achievability of alternative futures which can then be empirically investigated. (shrink)

Capitalism is often modernised and stabilised by its very critics. Gramsci called this paradox a 'passive revolution'. What are the pitfalls through which critique becomes absorbed? This question is taken up using a Cultural Political Economy approach for analysing the resistant potential of 'degrowth discourses' against the neoliberal hegemony. Degrowth advocates an economy without growth in order to achieve the transformation that is necessary in ecological and social terms. It thus does not follow the neoliberal idea of green capitalism that (...) already has absorbed much environmental critique. This paper argues that degrowth needs to be further differentiated in order to draw any conclusions about its counter-hegemonic potential. Three dimensions are identified for differentiating sub-hegemonic from counter-hegemonic degrowth positions: the mode of growth critique, the interpellation of the individual and the subsequent actions motivated. (shrink)

PhaenEx, Vol 1, No 1 (2006) Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Intertwining and Objectification Dorothea OlkowskiIn chapter four of The Visible and the Invisible, titled ``The Intertwining -- The Chiasm,'' Merleau-Ponty considers the relation between the body as sensible, which is to say ``objective,'' and the body as sentient, that is, as ``phenomenal'' body. He makes this inquiry in the context of interrogating the access of such a sensible-sentient or objective-phenomenal body to Being. ``Objectivity'' and the objective body, as Merleau-Ponty defines it (...) in the Phenomenology of Perception, are to be determined in relation to experience. Objectivity requires knowing how it is possible for determinate shapes to be available for experience at all. But the possibility of determinate shapes is also called into question by Merleau-Ponty insofar as the body is experienced as a point of view on things; thus every body would experience a different point of view, even though things are given as abstract elements of one total world. Since the two elements form a system, an intertwining, in which each moment (that of a body with a particular point of view and that of things in the totality of their world) is immediately expressive of each other, objectivity would seem to be hard to achieve. The relationship between body and things, point of view and world, if the relata continually express one another, would appear to be anything but determinate and the question of how objectivity is possible remains unanswered. This essay will explore this question in the light of Merleau-Ponty's (mis-) reading of Henri Bergson and from the point of view of Sartre's original expression of the relation of intertwining. (shrink)

Women are commonly stereotyped as more risk averse than men in financial decision making. In this paper we examine whether this stereotype reflects gender differences in actual risk-taking behavior by means of a laboratory experiment with monetary incentives. Gender differences in risk taking may be due to differences in valuations of outcomes or in probability weights. The results of our experiment indicate that value functions do not differ significantly between men and women. Men and women differ in their probability weighting (...) schemes, however. In general, women tend to be less sensitive to probability changes. They also tend to underestimate large probabilities of gains more strongly than do men. This effect is particularly pronounced when the decisions are framed in investment terms. As a result, women appear to be more risk averse than men in specific circumstances. (shrink)

Dorothea Olkowski's exploration of the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze clarifies the gifted French thinker's writings for specialists and nonspecialists alike. Deleuze, she says, accomplished the "ruin of representation," the complete overthrow of hierarchic, organic thought in philosophy, politics, aesthetics, and ethics, as well as in society at large. In Deleuze's philosophy of difference, she discovers the source of a new ontology of change, which in turn opens up the creation of new modes of life and thought, not only in (...) philosophy and feminism but wherever creation is at stake. The work of contemporary artist Mary Kelly has been central to Olkowski's thinking. In Kelly she finds an artist at work whose creative acts are in themselves the ruin of representation as a whole, and the text is illustrated with Kelly's art. This original and provocative account of Deleuze contributes significantly to a critical feminist politics and philosophy, as well as to an understanding of feminist art. (shrink)

Women are commonly stereotyped as more risk averse than men in financial decision making. In this paper we examine whether this stereotype reflects gender differences in actual risk-taking behavior by means of a laboratory experiment with monetary incentives. Gender differences in risk taking may be due to differences in valuations of outcomes or in probability weights. The results of our experiment indicate that value functions do not differ significantly between men and women. Men and women differ in their probability weighting (...) schemes, however. In general, women tend to be less sensitive to probability changes. They also tend to underestimate large probabilities of gains more strongly than do men. This effect is particularly pronounced when the decisions are framed in investment terms. As a result, women appear to be more risk averse than men in specific circumstances. (shrink)

Luce Irigaray is often cited as the principle feminist who adheres to phenomenology as a method of descriptive philosophy. A different approach to Irigaray might well open the way to not only an avoidance of phenomenology's sexist tendencies, but the recognition that the breach between Irigaray's ideas and those of phenomenology is complete. I argue that this occurs and that Irigaray's work directly implicates a Bergsonian critique of the limits of phenomenology.

Dorothea Olkowski's exploration of the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze clarifies the gifted French thinker's writings for specialists and nonspecialists alike. Deleuze, she says, accomplished the "ruin of representation," the complete overthrow of hierarchic, organic thought in philosophy, politics, aesthetics, and ethics, as well as in society at large. In Deleuze's philosophy of difference, she discovers the source of a new ontology of change, which in turn opens up the creation of new modes of life and thought, not only in (...) philosophy and feminism but wherever creation is at stake. The work of contemporary artist Mary Kelly has been central to Olkowski's thinking. In Kelly she finds an artist at work whose creative acts are in themselves the ruin of representation as a whole, and the text is illustrated with Kelly's art. This original and provocative account of Deleuze contributes significantly to a critical feminist politics and philosophy, as well as to an understanding of feminist art. (shrink)

Robert Grosseteste.--Thomas of York.--Roger Bacon.--John Pecham.--Richard of Middleton.--Duns Scotus.--Conclusion.--Bibliography (p. [409]-412).

_The Infrastructure of Accountability _brings together leading and emerging scholars who set forth an ambitious conceptual framework for understanding the full impact of large-scale, performance-based accountability systems on education. Over the past 20 years, schools and school systems have been utterly reshaped by the demands of test-based accountability. Interest in large-scale performance data has reached an unprecedented high point. Yet most education researchers focus primarily on questions of data quality and the effectiveness of data use. In this bold and thought-provoking (...) volume, the contributors look beneath the surface of all this activity to uncover the hidden infrastructure that supports the production, flow, and use of data in education, and explore the impact of these large-scale information systems on American schooling. These systems, the editors note, “sit at the juncture of technical networks, work practices, knowledge production, and moral order. (shrink)

Abstract: The article aims to sharpen the neo-republican contribution to international political thought by challenging Pettit’s view that only representative states may raise a valid claim to non-domination in their external relations. The argument proceeds in two steps: First I show that, conceptually speaking, the domination of states, whether representative or not, implies dominating the collective people at least in its fundamental, constitutive power. Secondly, the domination of states – and thus of their peoples – cannot be justified normatively in (...) the name of promoting individual non-domination because such a compensatory rationale misconceives the notion of domination in terms of a discrete exercise of power instead of as an ongoing power relation. This speaks in favour of a more inclusive law of peoples than Pettit (just as his liberal counterpart Rawls) envisages: In order to accommodate the claim of collective peoples to non-domination it has to recognize every state as a member of the international order. (shrink)

The present paper offers a philosophical discussion of phenomena which in the empirical literature have recently been subsumed under the concept of ‘mental time travel’. More precisely, the paper considers differences and similarities between two cases of ‘mental time travel’, recollective memories (‘R-memories’) of past events on the one hand, and sensory imaginations (‘S-imaginations’) of future events on the other. It develops and defends the claim that, because a subject who R-remembers a past event is experientially aware of a past (...) particular event, while a subject who S-imagines a future event could not possibly be experientially aware of a future particular event, R-memories of past events and S-imaginations of future events are ultimately mental occurrences of two different kinds. (shrink)

Criminal law operates under the assumption that persons have the capacity for free, voluntary choice. However, since the concept of free will and self-determination may be understood in a variety of ways, it must be made the subject of philosophical scrutiny if it is to provide a solid foundation for law. This paper will present two major philosophical concepts of self-determination and evaluate their utility for criminal law. The conclusion delineates the possibilities and limitations of these concepts when applied in (...) particular to the field of criminal law. (shrink)

: Luce Irigaray is often cited as the principle feminist who adheres to phenomenology as a method of descriptive philosophy. A different approach to Irigaray might well open the way to not only an avoidance of phenomenology's sexist tendencies, but the recognition that the breach between Irigaray's ideas and those of phenomenology is complete. I argue that this occurs and that Irigaray's work directly implicates a Bergsonian critique of the limits of phenomenology.

In the industrialized countries university research and state-financed research are increasingly evaluated from the point of view of their contribution to technology transfer, industrial innovation, and the competitiveness of national industries. Political debates on the viability of orienting basic research toward practical applications are paralleled by discussions, among social scientists, about the risks and opportunities of political direction over science. These debates are the frame of reference for this study, which analyzes the differences between basic and applied research, their correlates (...) and consequences, in high-temperature superconductor research in the Federal Republic of Germany. It will be shown that basic and applied research are fundamentally different in their social organization, their research goals, and their research strategies. These differences are in contrast to the call of science policy for more intense interaction and assimilation. Nevertheless, there are conditions under which basic or applied re searchers will partially follow "foreign" orientations and strategies. These conditions may, in part, be shaped by policy decisions. (shrink)

Die vorliegende kritische Edition stellt die erste vollständige, alle vier Kollegs umfassende sowie alle verfügbaren Autographen Schleiermachers inkludierende Ausgabe der Vorlesungen zur Psychologie dar. Neben den Manuskripten Schleiermachers aus den Sommersemestern 1818, 1821, 1830 und dem Wintersemester 1833/34 wird zu jedem Kolleg eine Hörernachschrift geboten, womit zugleich erstmalig eine Dokumentation der Vorlesung von 1821 erfolgt. Alle Texte sind philologisch gesichert und chronologisch angeordnet. Durch die Vollständigkeit der Quellen und die textkritischen Apparate geht die Edition weit über die erste Ausgabe der (...) Seelenlehre in den Sämmtlichen Werken hinaus und stellt Grundlagen zur Verfügung, die die Psychologie Schleiermachers wieder ins Bewusstsein der Forschung rücken und neu einordnen können. (shrink)

Philosophie de la structure, philosophie de l’événement La critique deleuzienne de la phénoménologieDans son essai sur la peinture de Francis Bacon, Gilles Deleuze affirme résolument que le corps vécu de la phénoménologie est trop faible pour être à la mesure de la puissance presque incroyable du “corps sans organes”. “L’hypothèse phénoménologique est insuffisante” parce qu’elle n’invoque “que le corps vécu”, écrit-il, alors que le corps sans organes, lui, se porte à la limite même du corps vécu. Cette thèse semble nous (...) inviter à choisir entre deux conceptions du corps, celle de la phénoménologie et celle de Deleuze : un corps vécu et un corps presque incroyable. Mais sur quelle base pouvons-nous choisir? L’une de deux thèses est-elle clairement vraie et l’autre fausse? Nous verrons que Merleau-Ponty use d’un modèle fondé sur la mécanique des ondes systémiques, et que le modèle classique ou newtonien de Deleuze construit l’image d’une réalité physique absolue et pose ensuite que les structures perceptives sont simplement des manifestations ou des projections de cette fondation ontologique fondamentale. Mais le concept phénoménologique de “forme” indique que, même si les lois de la réalité physique ne conceptualisent que le monde perçu, la référence à ce monde perçu reste néanmoins essentielle à la connaissance du monde physique.Filosofi a della struttura, fi losofi a dell’evento La critica di Deleuze alla fenomenologiaNella sua analisi della pittura di Francis Bacon, Gilles Deleuze afferma risolutamente che il corpo vissuto della fenomenologia è insignificante, rispetto al potere quasi invivibile del corpo senz’organi. L’ipotesi fenomenologica è insufficiente perché si limita al corpo vissuto, mentre il corpo senz’organi sorge al confine estremo del corpo vissuto. Questa rivendicazione ci invita apparentemente a scegliere tra le due concezioni del corpo: quello di Deleuze e quello della fenomenologia, un corpo vissuto ed uno pressocché invivibile. Ma su che base possiamo compiere questa scelta? Un corpo è evidentemente vero, e l’altro falso? Vedremo che Merleau-Ponty utilizza un modello derivato dalla fisica quantistica, e che il modello classico, o newtoniano, di Deleuze costruisce invece l’immagine di una realtà fisica assoluta e proporremo poi che le strutture percettive siano semplici manifestazioni o proiezioni di questo fondamento ontologico essenziale. Il concetto fenomenologico di forma indica, al contrario, che per quanto le leggi della realtà fisica concettulizzino il mondo percepito, il riferimento almondo percepito è essenziale e preliminare alla conoscenza del mondo fisico. (shrink)

According to Hannah Arendt, action is the only activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things or matter. From this point of view, action is the basis of political life. But, although human actions are direct human interactions, each person must have a body and senses, a sensation of reality and a feeling of realness—and do we not share these characteristics with animals? Therefore, do we have the right to claim that human interaction and consciousness of (...) an acting self are uniquely, humanly political? For example, what if we were to maintain that language is a second-order conventionalization of the expressive body immersed in an atmosphere, assimilating and being assimilated. If this were to be the case, how then can we explain the passage from elemental life, the life we share with all living things, to the acting in and among human pluralities that Hannah Arendt identifies with the political? Kant tried to do this by separating reason from sensation and separating respect from nature’s purely physical, causal forces. This essay examines Arendt’s claim that it is uniquely the activity that passes between humans that makes it possible for humans to consider themselves political. (shrink)

The Author replies to a review recently published by Franco Gori in the journal Augustinianum. The point of disagreement advanced by the Author is the basic hypothesis which she finds in Gori’s essay, according to which textual variants in De vocatione omnium gentium go back to the author himself, i.e., to Prosper of Aquitaine.

Zwischen Johann Gottlieb Fichte, dem Philosophen der „abstrakten Denkkünsteleien“ (Husserl), und Jean-Paul Sartre, dem Existentialisten, der sich von der Phänomenologie faszinieren ließ, weil man damit selbst über ein Glas Bier philosophieren könne, scheinen Welten zu liegen. Umso überraschender ist das Resultat der vorliegenden Studie, die aufzeigt, daß sich wesentliche Argumentationsweisen und Resultate von Sartres Selbstbewußtseinstheorie vor dem Hintergrund der Fichteschen Transzendentalphilosophie interpretieren und einsichtig machen lassen. Während Sartre bisher zumeist mit Husserl, Heidegger oder Hegel in Verbindung gebracht wurde, stellt diese (...) Arbeit die erste Monographie dar, die die Theorie Sartres in _Das Sein und das Nichts_ aus der Perspektive des frühen Fichte in den Blick nimmt. Dessen _Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre_ von 1794/95 dient der Autorin als Interpretationsfolie, vor der die grundlegenden Elemente von Sartres Ansatz untersucht werden: Die Konstitution des Für-sich in ihrem apriorischen Bedingungsgefüge, die Endlichkeit des Selbstbewußtseins und dessen Intentionalität, die ursprüngliche Mangelhaftigkeit des Für-sich angesichts des höchsten Werts, das präreflexive Cogito sowie schließlich die Aspekte, die mit dem „Primat des Praktischen“ in Verbindung stehen. Auch wenn der ‚Priester der Freiheit’ des 20. Jahrhunderts den ‚Priester der Wahrheit’ des 18. Jahrhunderts abzulösen scheint, zeigt die Autorin auf, daß Sartre in vielen Punkten als eine Art ‘französischer Fichte’ verstanden werden kann. (shrink)

Who is responsible for fighting domination? Answering this question, I argue, requires taking the structural dimension of domination seriously to avoid unwillingly reproducing domination in the nam...

Les princesses participaient pleinement à la mobilité qui caractérisait le mode de vie et l'habitus de la haute noblesse à l'époque moderne. La plupart du temps délaissés par les études sur le voyage ou considérés comme de simples “ affaires de famille ” dépourvues de toute importance sociale ou politique, les voyages de princesses revêtaient, au contraire, un caractère hautement politique. Dans la haute noblesse, les femmes qui visitaient des cours différentes, jouaient un rôle clé pour les relations extérieures d'une (...) maison au même titre que les voyageurs hommes. La fonction politique du voyage allait souvent de pair avec de nombreux transferts culturels, destinés à augmenter le prestige et le rang d'une cour. Les voyages de princesses laissaient ainsi des marques durables sur la vie de cour et, au-delà, sur la société de leur pays d'origine. (shrink)