The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare many of the inadequacies of our capitalist systems, as Žižek extols in Pandemic! COVID-19 Shakes the World. This essay explores how the capabilities approach, as outlined by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, may be re-examined in the light of this new viral reality by the contributions of Slavoj Žižek and Byung-Chul Han. The capability approach, as it stands, suffers from two missing pieces: that of an acknowledgement of the necessity of negativity as a foil (...) to positivity within the capabilities as articulated by Nussbaum, and the existence of the material root of all capabilities, namely the need to have the capacity to be capable. A “capability for boredom,” and a “zeroth capability” are discussed as solutions, means by which to fill these gaps. Finally, an universal basic income is discussed as a means by which to support the functioning of a “zeroth capability,” the goal being to avoid a descent into bare life during this time of pandemic capitalism. (shrink)

Occasionalism is the doctrine that relegates all real causal efficacy exclusively to God. This paper will aim to elucidate in some detail the metaphysical considerations that, together with certain common medieval theological axioms, constitute the philosophical steps leading to this doctrine. First, I will explain how the doctrine of divine conservation implies that we should attribute to divine power causal immediacy in every natural event and that it rules out mere conservationism as a model of the causal relation between God (...) and nature. This leaves concurrentism and occasionalism as the only compatible options. Then I will explain the argument that since no coherent conception of divine concurrence is possible, occasionalism emerges as the only model of the causal relation between God and nature compatible with the doctrine of divine conservation. (shrink)

"The debate recorded in al-Ghazālī's Incoherence of the Philosophers, and Ibn Rushd's response in Incoherence of the Incoherence, is one of the most philosophically interesting events in the history of classical Islamic thought. Here, the cutting edge of Ghazālī's searching critique meets the depth of Ibn Rushd's philosophical insight in a clash over the innovative synthesis of Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic thought represented chiefly by Ibn Sīnā. This critical commentary closely analyses and evaluates the arguments deployed by all three parties in (...) the debate, wherein are raised questions about the origin of the universe and the reality of time, possibility, causality, and nature. Where opportunities arise, it actively engages in the discussion by suggesting alternative arguments and philosophical directions. It goes beyond the cliché construal of the Incoherence debate as simply a conflict between faith and reason, exposing it as a genuinely philosophical enterprise and a potential source of fresh perspectives on contemporary discussions in metaphysics and analytic theology"--. (shrink)

Papers addressing the role which human motivation plays in a wide range of specialties including clinical psychology, internal medicine, sports psychology, ...

Recent research has shown a memory advantage for minimally counterintuitive concepts, over concepts that are either intuitive or maximally counterintuitive, although the general result is heavily affected by context. Items from one such study were given to subjects who were asked to create novel stories using at least three concepts from a list containing all three types. Results indicated a preference for using MCI items, and further disclosed two styles of usage, an accommodative style and an assimilative style. The results (...) extend recent memory research and suggest extensions to recent theories intended to explain the prevalence of counterintuitive religious concepts. (shrink)

In recent years, many studies have examined conservative Christian responses to shifting societal attitudes about sexuality. In this article we examine official discourse from the LDS Church found in General Conference talks and the official adult magazine of the Church, Ensign, to better understand how leaders of the religion have taught the members to abstain from the use of pornography. Using a grounded-theory approach, we noted a pattern to the lessons that included four elements: avoiding dangerous associations, taking personal responsibility, (...) maintaining inner purity, and seeking spiritual treatment. This study extends previous research by examining how Mormon leaders taught their followers to interpret and protect themselves from pornography. As such, our analysis demonstrates the elaboration of religious teachings that may facilitate the negative reactions to pornography researchers have observed in survey and outcome-based research on members of conservative religions. (shrink)

El presente artículo rastrea el pensamiento antropológico de Miguel de Unamuno, descubriendo su esencia en el aspecto religioso. El desarrollo de este argumento permite explicitar la formación intelectual de Unamuno, destacando la relación de su pensamiento con tres de los filósofos que más le influyeron: Agustín, Pascal y Kierkegaard. El estudio de las relaciones entre ellos permite, a su vez, volver a poner la cuestión sobre Dios como un problema filosófico siempre actual. This article presents anthropological thought of Miguel de (...) Unamuno. The religious aspect expresses the essence of the Spanish writer's thought. In the development of his mind three important authors have influenced Western philosophy: St. Augustine, Pascal and Kierkegaard. This paper studies the relationships between them and with them again proposes the question of God as a philosophical problem. (shrink)

El presente artículo rastrea el pensamiento antropológico de Miguel de Unamuno, descubriendo su esencia en el aspecto religioso. El desarrollo de este argumento permite explicitar la formación intelectual de Unamuno, destacando la relación de su pensamiento con tres de los filósofos que más le influyeron: Agustín, Pascal y Kierkegaard. El estudio de las relaciones entre ellos permite, a su vez, volver a poner la cuestión sobre Dios como un problema filosófico siempre actual. This article presents anthropological thought of Miguel de (...) Unamuno. The religious aspect expresses the essence of the Spanish writer's thought. In the development of his mind three important authors have influenced Western philosophy: St. Augustine, Pascal and Kierkegaard. This paper studies the relationships between them and with them again proposes the question of God as a philosophical problem. (shrink)

El presente artículo es un ejercicio hermenéutico que pone en diálogo la filosofía y la teología a partir de la categoría de espiritualidad. Para tal fin asume el rol del poeta, figura crucial en la filosofía del último Heidegger, y lo identifica con el sacerdote, figura importante en la teología. Procediendo de este modo se concluye luego cómo el poeta y el sacerdote son los profetas de lo sagrado que contribuyen a una humanización de la tierra, superando cualquier intento cosificador (...) por parte de la técnica. (shrink)

El presente trabajo pretende analizar el problema de la agonía y la muerte en el pensamiento de Miguel de Unamuno, como estos dos aspectos innegables en la vida del hombre se constituyen en el fundamento del filosofar y del existir. La lucha encarnizada por no morir generará en el autor una duda muy grande a la que no se la puede negar pero que estará presente en todo el proceso vital del ser humano, para después dar paso a unas alternativas (...) de pervivencia que el mismo autor presenta pero que no logran convencerlo como una solución final. (shrink)

Much experimental evidence shows that minimally counterintuitive concepts, which violate one intuitive ontological expectation of domain-specific natural kinds, are remembered as well as or better than intuitive concepts with no violations of ontological expectations, and much better than maximally counterintuitive concepts with more than one violation of ontological violations. It is also well established that concepts rated as high in imagery, are recalled better than concepts that are low in imagery. We conducted three studies to test whether imagery levels affected (...) recall rates of intuitive, minimally counterintuitive, and maximally counterintuitive concepts. In study 1, we obtained imagery level ratings for 48 three-word items. In study 2, we used the ratings obtained in study 1 in a 2 × 3 recall task in which imagery was manipulated along with counterintutiveness. High imagery items were recalled significantly better than low imagery items for intuitive and maximally counterintuitive items but not for minimally counterintuitive items. Study 3, replicated the findings from study 2 in a 2 × 2 study using a larger number of intuitive and minimally counterintuitive items. In both studies, High imagery items were recalled significantly better than low imagery items for intuitive but not for minimally counterintuitive items. Thus, minimally counterintuitive concepts appear insulated from imagery effects on recall. (shrink)

BackgroundThe ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) guidelines are widely endorsed but compliance is limited. We sought to determine whether journal-requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist improves full compliance with the guidelines.MethodsIn a randomised controlled trial, manuscripts reporting in vivo animal research submitted to PLOS ONE (March–June 2015) were randomly allocated to either requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist or current standard practice. Authors, academic editors, and peer reviewers were blinded to group allocation. Trained reviewers performed outcome adjudication (...) in duplicate by assessing manuscripts against an operationalised version of the ARRIVE guidelines that consists 108 items. Our primary outcome was the between-group differences in the proportion of manuscripts meeting all ARRIVE guideline checklist subitems.ResultsWe randomised 1689 manuscripts (control: n = 844, intervention: n = 845), of which 1269 were sent for peer review and 762 (control: n = 340; intervention: n = 332) accepted for publication. No manuscript in either group achieved full compliance with the ARRIVE checklist. Details of animal husbandry (ARRIVE subitem 9b) was the only subitem to show improvements in reporting, with the proportion of compliant manuscripts rising from 52.1 to 74.1% (X2 = 34.0, df = 1, p = 2.1 × 10−7) in the control and intervention groups, respectively.ConclusionsThese results suggest that altering the editorial process to include requests for a completed ARRIVE checklist is not enough to improve compliance with the ARRIVE guidelines. Other approaches, such as more stringent editorial policies or a targeted approach on key quality items, may promote improvements in reporting. (shrink)

Editor's note: This article contains material similar to a book review by the same author previously published in The Pluralist, vol. 18, no. 2, pp 114–21. The present article represents a further critical use of this material that we deem worthy of publication.in this vital and splendidly crafted work, Bethany Henning recovers a philosophy of aesthetic wisdom far richer than the narrow epistemological lens dominant today. From its start, American philosophy looked beyond Europe's atomistic empiricism toward a continuity between our (...) thought and nature's aesthetic splendor. Jonathan Edwards found beauty in the structure of being reflected in relations among ideas. For Emerson, each of us is a "transparent eyeball"... Read More. (shrink)

After biologist Deborah Gordon made a series of experimental discoveries in the 1980s, she argued that a change in terminology regarding the division of labor among castes of specialists was needed. Gordon’s investigations of the interactive effects of ants in colonies led her to believe that the established approach Edward O. Wilson had pioneered was biased in a way that made some alternative candidate adaptive explanations invisible. Gordon argued that this was because the term “division of labor” implied a (...) division among specialists that was unwarranted, and proposed “task allocation” as a better description that did not bias research against the alternative causes she had discovered. Gordon’s empirical findings and theoretical proposals also vindicate the initial critics of Wilson’s human sociobiology who have been dismissed as political radicals, but her proposals have been widely misunderstood by many contemporary behavioral ecologists. The terminological and methodological confusions rampant in contemporary discourse can be clarified by applying a framework developed by Elisabeth Lloyd involving an analysis of the constraints imposed by different research questions. Applying this framework will show how the methodological problems involving description raised by the initial critics of Wilson’s human sociobiology extended to his analysis of ants, indicating that they were not challenging Wilson’s naturalistic approach to the study of human evolution, but rather his methods. It will also show how confusion over how Gordon’s proposed research questions have been conflated with the possible answers she has argued ought to be investigated. This in turn will clarify contemporary disputes over her proposal to abandon the term “division of labor.”. (shrink)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s historical analysis of Buddhist philosophy not only fails as a sound interpretation of that tradition, it also well-exemplifies the Western practice of Orientalism as elucidated by Edward Said. I attempt to demonstrate this in three major parts: the nature of Orientalism as a concept and practice, the Orientalist analytical process that Hegel employs in judging Buddhism as well as religions in general, and how Hegel’s understanding does not work against a more charitably interpreted Buddhist defense. (...) Moreover, I argue that the Orientalist erroneousness of Hegel’s reading deeply complicates his hierarchical philosophy of world history. (shrink)

Readers have struggled to interpret an image from the end of Juvenal's fifth satire, a poem which focusses upon the poor hospitality shown to a dinner guest, Trebius, at the hands of his host, Virro. After repeatedly juxtaposing the luxurious food served to Virro with the scant fare served to Trebius, Juvenal describes the final course of thecena. He again contrasts the host's hyper-abundance with his guest's mere scraps (5.149–55):Virro sibi et reliquis Virronibus illa iubebitpoma dari, quorum solo pascaris odore,qualia (...) perpetuus Phaeacum autumnus habebat,credere quae possis subrepta sororibus Afris:tu scabie frueris mali, quod in aggere roditqui tegitur parma et galea, metuensque flagellidiscit ab hirsuta iaculum torquere capella.Virro will demand that he and the rest of his entourage receive these apples—though you'll dine on their smell alone—like those the endless autumn of the Phaeacians used to yield, which you could believe stolen away from the African sisters: you will enjoy the scab of an apple, which, on the Embankment, is gnawed by someone who is protected by a buckler and helm and who, fearing a whipping, learns to hurl a javelin from atop a shaggy goat.While the core contrast between the quality of each type of fare is clear, the concludingqui-clause is less intelligible. Who could this entity be? On line 153, the scholiast comments:quale simia manducat. Whilequalecould refer to the object being eaten (scabie mali quod) rather than to thequi-antecedent, it is clear in any case that the ancient reader felt that 5.153–5 evoked the image of an ape. Recent commentaries on Juvenal's fifth satire reflect a scholarly consensus: J.D. Duff, Edward Courtney, Susanna Braund and Biagio Santorelli all follow the scholiast's suggestion and believe that the passage describes a trained ape, as do recent readers of the poem. (shrink)

Wegner's The Illusion of Conscious Will (2002) ignores an important aspect of the history of the concept: the determinism of Jonathan Edwards (1754) and the later response to this determinism by William James and others. We argue that Edwards's formulation, and James's resolution of the resulting dilemma, are superior to Wegner's.

The_ Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy_ is the most ambitious international philosophy project in many years. Edited by Edward Craig and assisted by thirty specialist subject editors, the REP consists of ten volumes of the world's most eminent philosophers writing for the needs of students and teachers of philosophy internationally. The REP is a project on an unparalleled scale: Over 2000 entries ranging from 500 to 15,000 words in length - thematic, biographical and national 10 volumes consisting of over 5 (...) million words of text plus considerable bibliographic material A Chief Editor and thirty specialist Subject Editors from across the world Over 1200 authors from all over the world. The importance of the REP is not to be found just in the sheer size of the project but also in its breadth of subject matter. It covers: The core of most Anglo-American philosophy - the metaphysical, epistemological and logical questions The usual menu of ethics, political philosophy and the history of philosophy The philosophy of other cultures - from Chinese, Arabic and Jewish philosophy to the philosophy of Africa and Latin America The most impressive range of authors have been gathered together on this unique project: William Alston, Roderick Chisolm, Fred Dretske, Joel Feinberg, Sandra Harding, Larry Laudan, Martha Nussbaum, Richard Popkin, Richard Rorty, Alan Ryan, Gyatri Chakravorty Spivak, Stephen Stich, Patrick Suppes and Bernard Williams, to name just a few. Also available online: www.rep.routledge.com. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2001) 312-314 [Access article in PDF] Shook, John R. Dewey's Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Reality.The Vanderbilt Library of American Philosophy. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2000. Pp. ix + 316. Cloth, $46.00; Paper, $22.95. The current renaissance of American pragmatism, and John Dewey's philosophy in particular, began two decades ago with Richard Rorty's refashioning of Dewey as a postmodernist who renounces the (...) "professional philosophy" of metaphysics and epistemology for the fluidity of conversation in the life and growth of a community. This depiction, though praised for rekindling Dewey's star, has been widely challenged by subsequent commentators. Ralph Sleeper's 1986 The Necessity of Pragmatism persuasively argues that Dewey reconfigures, rather than renounces, the logical and metaphysical grounds of knowledge. Despite an archaic Hegelian vocabulary that misleadingly suggests idealism and antirealism, Sleeper finds Dewey advancing a genuine metaphysics of existence, not merely a conversation about experience: a naturalistic realism of independent existences that enter into and are transformed by human interactions with them.This perspective is shared by most Dewey scholars, including Sandra Rosenthal, Raymond Boisvert, and J. E. Tiles. At least until now. In a profound and provocative exploration of his early philosophy, John R. Shook, presents a compelling case that Dewey's reconstruction of metaphysics and epistemology is deeper than even Sleeper imagined. Dewey did not merely abandon idealism under the influence of William James, as most assume; he transformed it in a original way that, while wholly naturalistic, [End Page 312] is a fusion of idealism and realism that overcomes both the former's "mind-stuff" and the latter's "in-itself reality."Dewey began his philosophical odyssey with the searing desire to eradicate the dualisms of mind versus world, phenomenal versus noumenal, perceptual versus conceptual. Post-Hegelian idealists agreed that this division is ultimately reconciled in the "absolute," though they disagreed about whether the absolute is psychological or cosmological, social or supernatural, knowable or unknowable. From the very beginning, Shook argues, Dewey accepted the psychological path as sketched by James Ward, and also Edward Caird's claim that the absolute must be knowable in some sense. Intriguingly, the missing link between perception and conceptual awareness is Wilhelm Wundt's notion of volition: percepts are neither mechanically attached to concepts nor are they overlaid by Kantian "faculties of mind." Instead, a disruption of perceptual or noncognitive experience generates a desire for reconciliation that calls forth ideas that diagnose the problem and suggest ways to resolve it. Achieved solutions, in turn, forge a background of habitual dispositions that shape interpretations within the noncognitive realm.While still an idealist, then, Shook finds the essential elements of the "method of inquiry" that later anchored Dewey's instrumentalism and pragmatism. Prior to 1890, however, he still construed this as individual "mental activity," and the problem of its relation to God's Absolute Mind remained. Upon relinquishing the supernatural for the social, however, this final obstacle was eliminated. The dispositional background extends beyond the individual to the customs, traditions, and values of a culture—indeed, even the barest notions of "self" and "reality" are inconceivable without reference to such a background. This is Dewey's broad conception of "experience"—a humanistic naturalism with no trace of mind-stuff or subjectivism. In this sense Dewey is a realist, though his affirmation of things-themselves (including things we have not or may never actually discover) avoids the things-in-themselves that is the bane of metaphysical realism. To claim that things exist without an experiential background of how we may find them to exist is at best empty verbiage, and at worst hypnosis by the dervishes of dualism.Scrupulous in research, penetrating in detail, Shook's presentation is so faithful to Dewey that it will undoubtedly draw many of the same criticisms once hurled at the master. Though careful readers will be able to identify "experience" in its broadly social and functional sense, others will be confused by applications as diverse as "mental activity," "soul," "reality," "the history of the... (shrink)

Tropologies is the first book-length study to elaborate the medieval and early modern theory of the tropological, or moral, sense of scripture. Ryan McDermott argues that tropology is not only a way to interpret the Bible but also a theory of literary and ethical invention. The "tropological imperative" demands that words be turned into works--books as well as deeds. Beginning with Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory the Great, then treating monuments of exegesis such as the Glossa ordinaria and Nicholas of (...) Lyra, as well as theorists including Thomas Aquinas, Erasmus, Martin Luther, and others, Tropologies reveals the unwritten history of a major hermeneutical theory and inventive practice. Late medieval and early Reformation writers adapted tropological theory to invent new biblical poetry and drama that would invite readers to participate in salvation history by inventing their own new works. Tropologies reinterprets a wide range of medieval and early modern texts and performances--including the Patience-Poet, Piers Plowman, Chaucer, the York and Coventry cycle plays, and the literary circles of the reformist King Edward VI--to argue that "tropological invention" provided a robust alternative to rhetorical theories of literary production. In this groundbreaking revision of literary history, the Bible and biblical hermeneutics, commonly understood as sources of tumultuous discord, turn out to provide principles of continuity and mutuality across the Reformation's temporal and confessional rifts. Each chapter pursues an argument about poetic and dramatic form, linking questions of style and aesthetics to exegetical theory and theology. Because Tropologies attends to the flux of exegetical theory and practice across a watershed period of intellectual history, it is able to register subtle shifts in literary production, fine-tuning our sense of how literature and religion mutually and dynamically informed and reformed each other. "This is an original book. It draws confidently on a wide range of medieval critical and scholarly work, as well as on a cogent body of contemporary theory and theology. It not only moves easily and eloquently between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries but also delves back into the 'tropological' Christian thought of the previous thousand years." --Nicolette Zeeman, University of Cambridge. (shrink)

_The Hidden God_ revisits the origins of American pragmatism and finds a nascent "posthumanist" critique shaping early modern thought. By reaching as far back as the Calvinist arguments of the American Puritans and their struggle to know a "hidden God," this book brings American pragmatism closer to contemporary critical theory. Ryan White reads the writings of key American philosophers, including Jonathan Edwards, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James, and Charles Sanders Peirce, against modern theoretical works by Niklas Luhmann, Richard Rorty, (...) Jacques Derrida, Sharon Cameron, Cary Wolfe, and Gregory Bateson. This juxtaposition isolates the distinctly posthumanist form of pragmatism that began to arise in these early texts, challenging the accepted genealogy of pragmatic discourse and common definitions of posthumanist critique. Its rigorously theoretical perspective has wide implications for humanities research, enriching investigations into literature, history, politics, and art. (shrink)

The beatific vision is a subject of considerable importance both in the Christian Scriptures and in the history of Christian dogmatics. In it, humans experience and see the perfect immaterial God, which represents the final end for the saints. However, this doctrine has received less attention in the contemporary theological literature, arguably, due in part to the growing trend toward materialism and the sole emphasis on bodily resurrection in Reformed eschatology. As a piece of retrieval by drawing from the Scriptures, (...) Medieval Christianity, and Reformed Christianity, we motivate a case for the Reformed emphasis on the immaterial and intellectual aspects of human personal eschatology and offer some constructive thoughts on how to link it to the contemporary emphasis of the body. We draw a link between the soul and the body in the vision with the help of Christology as reflected in the theology of John Calvin, and, to a greater extent, the theology of both John Owen and Jonathan Edwards. (shrink)

Troubadour of truth, by R. E. Brennan.--Reflections on necessity and contingency, by Jacques Maritain.--Intellectual cognition, by Rudolf Allers.--The problem of truth, J. K. Ryan.--The ontolgical roots of Thomism, by Hilary Carpeuter.--The role of habitus in the Thomistic metaphysics of potency and act, by V. J. Bourke.--The nature of the angels, by J. O. Riedl.--The dilemma of being and unity, by A. C. Pegis.--Prudence, the incommunicable wisdom, by C. J. O'Neil.--A question about law, by M. J. Adler.--The economic philosophy of (...) Aquinas, by J. A. Ryan.--Beyond the crisis of liberalism, by Y. R. Simon.--The fate of representative government, by Walter Farrell.--The Thomistic concept of education, by R. J. Slavin.--The perennial theme of beauty, by Immanuel Chapman.--Epilogue, by H. T. Schwartz.--Bibliography (p.[363]-419). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dewey and the Aesthetic Unconsciousness: The Vital Depths of Experience by Bethany HenningFrank X. RyanDewey and the Aesthetic Unconsciousness: The Vital Depths of Experience Bethany Henning. Lexington Books, 2022.In this important and splendidly crafted book, Bethany Henning recovers a philosophy of aesthetic wisdom distinct from the narrow epistemological lens dominant today. Unlike the psychological atomism of European Empiricism, from its outset, American philosophy embraced nature's aesthetic splendor and (...) the continuity between our thought and our world. Jonathan Edwards held that relations among ideas reflect beauty in the structure of being. For Ralph Waldo Emerson, each of us is a "transparent eyeball" where the cultivation of nature's spontaneous beauty fortifies our moral and spiritual agency. At the apex of this tradition is John Dewey, for whom Henning touts "aesthetic experience as the highest mode of human experience" (55).Although the aesthetic is generally associated with the cognitive evaluation of art, of special significance for Dewey is its non-reflective or unconscious dimension. Henning's appropriation of "unconscious"—the cradle of Freud's infantile id—is intentionally provocative. American culture, reflected in academic thought, has largely resisted appeals to subterranean urges and drives. In so doing, however, we perpetuate a myth of rational and moral exceptionalism that masks our history of colonialism, oppression, and crass commercialism. In accepting the unconscious, European thought has taken strides to acknowledge and address such ills. Despite America's disdain for psychoanalysis, Henning wonders whether it "could have accepted a dynamic unconscious, were it presented with an alternative mythology" (10).Dewey's alternative, says Henning, arises from his underappreciated notion of qualitative immediacy. In Henning's interpretation of this, meaning is embodied as a "sense of fulfillment" among accumulated habits—a "coming to terms with the world around us" through an "aesthetic (directly felt) connection between ourselves and the world." As such, to appreciate meaning, we must affirm the tacit, unconscious depth of experience; that is, we must "welcome aesthetic experience back into our philosophical lives" (5).Embodied meaning signifies that "the sensuous, lived body" is "the primary reality" (69). In this reality, qualitative immediacy is a non-reflective, aesthetic unity punctuated by "impulsions" arising from an organism's needs. Such needs are satisfied in organism-environment interactions where, says Dewey, "the epidermis is only in the most superficial way an indication of where an organism ends and its environment begins" (LW 10:61). As "a site of adaptive adjustments," Henning continues, "the body is responsive to the [End Page 114] brink of coalescence at the point of contact with the world, in which things that are 'outside of it' belong to it" (71). As such, the body-mind relation is a problem of aesthetics, not epistemology. For Dewey, as for Merleau-Ponty, the body "is the organic and dynamic condition of my thought" (75). The body is not a thing, however, but a process "always organically involved in exchanges" (86).Following the feminist thought of Susan Bordo, Henning agrees that the ascendance of the body amounts to a kind of philosophical recovery. Seventeenth-century science eviscerated the organic "female" universe of the Middle Ages. But this loss of an integrated world evoked existential fright, which Descartes tried to calm by subjugating feminine vagaries of the body to a masculine cognitive certitude bent upon controlling the whole of nature. In America today, this neurosis perpetuates our cultural alienation from our bodies, our environments, and one another (81–84). With the re-emergence of the body, however, it is possible to acknowledge and address this trauma."Feeling," in Dewey's sense, is unconsciously affective: a constant rhythm of disequilibrium and equilibrium, of need and resolution noticed only when a problem rises to the point of requiring our conscious attention. This affective "charge," this rhythm of sensed need and the desire to overcome it, is Dewey's appropriation of Plato's Erōs. Thomas Alexander casts Dewey's Erōs broadly as humanity's aesthetic investment in our world—our collective effort "to transform a biophysical environment into a world filled with meaning" (Alexander 11). But Henning turns to the more familiar sense of Erōs attuned not to the world at... (shrink)

Much of what makes Hayek so controversial can be found in The Road to Serfdom, the theoretical basis of which is provided by The Counter-Revolution of Science. The first book, a polemic against the “planning mentality,” did not defend complete laissez faire, but argued that planning disrupts the coordination between prices and supply and demand; that effective planning is thus impossible in a modern industrial society; that it is coercive; and, of course, that it leads to totalitarianism. In The Counter-Revolution (...) of Science, Hayek argued that the “planning mentality” is the result of the hubristic attempt to reconstruct society along scientific lines. But the likes of Edward Bellamy envisioned a planned but free society, while John Dewey contrasted planning, where people collectively choose their goals, against a planned economy that is coercively imposed. Hayek's welcome strictures against a scientistic society and an overly ambitious social science aside, his binary approach to intellectual history distorted through oversimplification. (shrink)

European Vision and the South Pacific, first published in 1960, is the most acclaimed of all Bernard Smith’s many texts on art history and cultural theory. In conjunction with its 1992 companion-piece, Imagining the Pacific, and supported by collations of art and cartography from Cook’s and other voyages, this work also established his reputation as a major presence in Pacific-centred research. Likewise, the ongoing influence of European Vision and the South Pacific has seen Smith claimed as a foundational figure in (...) post-colonial scholarship, as one who ‘anticipated’ aspects of Edward Said’s late-1970s analysis of orientalism. But while there are important parallels and overlaps in the thinking of this pair, their differences and divergences are at least as significant. Above all, Smith’s Pacific-centred writings need to be understood as the unique intellectual achievements they undeniably are. (shrink)

Lewis Gordon's Fear of Black Consciousness is a resolute response to the ongoing pessimism present in contemporary culture and academia regarding Black life. As a towering figure in Black existential philosophy, Gordon seamlessly weaves together discussions of contemporary and historical Western philosophers such as Gabriel Marcel and Friedrich Nietzsche with his analyses of film, music, culture, and more. Across the text's twelve chapters, Gordon reveals the pervasiveness of anti-black ideologies while challenging his readers to affirm various forms of resistance to (...) violence, invisibility, and erasure. The book is written for an audience beyond academia, and is invested in telling a practical philosophical story about generating an empowering sense of Black consciousness. Sprinkled with personal stories, witty anecdotes, and powerful arguments, the book encourages readers to rethink historical descriptions of anti-black violence as well as the vocabulary used to talk about race and racism today. An example of this is Gordon's discussion of various slave trades across the planet. He writes, ‘Only the Arab designation is correct, since it refers to Arabs trading in the enslavement of peoples. The others should properly be called the European slave trade and the East Indian slave trade or Asian slave trade. Oceans do not trade people’ (pp. 52). Another insightful aspect of the text is the author's study of films like Jordan Peele's Get Out, Boots Riley's Sorry to Bother You, and Ryan Coogler's Black Panther. Through these films, he provides a detailed look at how cinematic representation engages complex dialogues of anti-Blackness and Black power, as well as anti-capitalism. Overall, Gordon's book is a wonderful resource for anyone curious about cultivating a resistant and critical lens on contemporary culture. The aim of this review is to highlight a few of the book's major contributions for academics, casual readers, and those interested in ongoing discussions within Africana philosophy. (shrink)

This volume concerns the status and ambitions of metaphysics as a discipline.

The Nature of God explores a perennial problem in the philosophy of religion.