In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 314-334 [Access article in PDF] The Epistemology of Cognitive Literary Studies F. Elizabeth Hart I Literary scholars have begun incorporating the insights of cognitive science into literary studies, bringing to bear on questions of literary experience the results of explorations within a wide range of fields that define today's cognitive science. The investigation of the human mind and its reasoning processes encompasses a rich (...) variety of empirical and speculative disciplines, including cognitive psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, evolutionary psychology, developmental psychology, computer science, philosophy, and anthropology. These disciplines are all related to one another by the questions they ask about the brain and mind and the ground they cover in staking out their research agendas; but each also contributes uniquely in terms of individual scope and focus. Literary critics, eavesdropping on this maturing coalition, are now producing critical works that apply cognitive research to a similarly impressive range of literary concerns, with results so far that seem to span the gap between traditional and more contemporary literary critical approaches.All such criticism is dependent on scientific studies of the brain and mind and so accepts axiomatically some degree of epistemological efficacy in scientific empiricism. But this acceptance has not been naive or uncritical and has, in fact, been at times carefully qualified by critics' sensitivity to debate--to the lack of consensus among cognitive scientists, and to the fact that cognitive science is itself in its infancy stage, with its own practitioners often openly tentative about their results and descriptive capabilities. As it happens, such debate, in recent years, has even proven beneficial for literary scholarship since an important [End Page 314] paradigm shift has taken place that now makes some aspects of cognitive science more compatible than ever with the interests of literary studies. This is because, whereas an earlier phase of cognitive science focused its energies on Artificial Intelligence and on theories of language and psychology that supported AI, grounding its theories implicitly in a metaphor of the mind as a computer, today's cognitive scientists tend to concentrate instead on the more organic metaphor of the "embodiment" of mind, that is, of the mind's substantive indebtedness to its bodily, social, and cultural contexts, and on the figurative phenomena of metaphor, metonymy, image schemata, "fields," "frames," other "integrative mental spaces" (as they are called), and the gradient structures and prototypical bases of semantic categories, all of which contribute to recasting human reason into a set of highly imaginative--not logical but figural--processes. 1 For literary theory and criticism, this shift in cognitive science toward "the body in the mind" 2 --tantamount to a wholesale rejection of philosophical rationalism--has given rise to a new kind of interdisciplinary practice, to the potential for a sincere engagement between diverse sciences and even between literature and science that stretches all the bounds of what literary scholars generally mean when they speak of being interdisciplinary (e.g., exchanges with history, art history, anthropology, film studies, sociology).In the discussion that follows, I would like to explore this new interdisciplinarity in literary studies by examining its epistemological implications. I begin with a description of the kinds of criticism now being produced under the rubric of cognitive literary criticism or--to reflect the field's scope more accurately--cognitive and cognitive-evolutionary criticism. This description is not intended as a comprehensive or evaluative survey, since in-depth review articles of extant works are available elsewhere. 3 Rather, I hope to familiarize my readers with the basic orientations of this theory and criticism so that they can grasp the epistemological relations that will become the essay's focus. To lay a further groundwork for this focus, I will review various uses of the term "cognitive" (or "cognitivism") in the scholarship and offer an analysis of its meanings, first in cognitive science and then in literary theory. Building, then, on what "cognitive" might signify for literary studies, I show how a literary approach based on today's cognitive science is uniquely situated among other approaches because of its underlying theory of human... (shrink)

Community Engagement (CE) has been presented by bio-ethicists and scientists as a straightforward and unequivocal good which can minimize the risks of exploitation and ensure a fair distribution of research benefits in developing countries. By means of ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in Kenya between 2007 and 2009 we explored how CE is understood and enacted in paediatric vaccine trials conducted by the Kenyan Medical Research Institute and the US Centers for Disease Control (KEMRI/CDC). In this paper we focus on the role (...) of paid volunteers who act as an interface between villagers KEMRI/CDC. Village Reporters’ (VRs) position of being both with the community and with KEMRI/CDC is advantageous for the conduct of trials. However it is also problematic in terms of exercising trust, balancing allegiances and representing community views. VRs role is shaped by ambiguities related to their employment status and their dual accountability to researchers and their villages. VRs are understandably careful to stress their commitment to self-less community service since it augments their respectability at community level and opens up opportunities for financial gain and self-development. Simultaneously VRs association with KEMRI/CDC and proximity to trial participants requires them to negotiate implicit and explicit expectations for material and medical assistance in a cultural setting in which much importance is placed on sharing and mutuality. To ensure continuity of productive interactions between VRs, and similar community intermediaries, and researchers, open discussion is needed about the problematic aspects of relational ethics, issues concerning undue influence, power relations and negotiating expectations. (shrink)

The field of bioethics is calling for a new generation of scholars equipped with the normative, empirical, and practical knowledge and expertise to prioritize equity concerns largely underrepresent...

Background Noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) designed to screen for fetal genetic conditions, is increasingly being implemented as a part of routine prenatal care screening in the United States (US). However, these advances in reproductive genetic technology necessitate empirical research on the ethical and social implications of NIPT among populations underrepresented in genetic research, particularly Black women with sickle cell disease (SCD).Methods Forty (N = 40) semi-structured interviews were conducted virtually with Black women in the US (19 participants with SCD; (...) 21 participants without SCD) from June 2021 to January 2022. We employed a qualitative approach to examine the study participants’ perceptions of the potential advancement of NIPT for screening SCD in the fetus. Data were analyzed using NVivo 12 qualitative software.Results The themes revealed the complexities involving the intersectional lived experiences of SCD, prenatal care, lack of synergy among health providers, and NIPT decision-making. The results further revealed that even when Black women have shared commonalities in their lived experiences while navigating SCD and motherhood, their perceptions of NIPT screening technologies are divergent.Conclusion Expanding the ethical discourse on the social implications of NIPT is critical to fully elucidate how Black women perceive NIPT’s utility, particularly as NIPT advances to screen for SCD in the fetus. Neglecting to include Black women with genetic conditions in empirical studies on NIPT may contribute to ongoing health inequities and limit and constrain reproductive choices among Black women with and without SCD. (shrink)

American Pragmatist philosopher William James and subcontinent Islamic philosopher Allama Iqbal both believe that religious experiences are an important class of those experiences with which empiricism is concerned. They both explain and defend religious belief on empirical grounds and argue that the ultimate empirical justification of a religious belief must come by looking at its fruits. This is no accident, for James influenced Iqbal on this very point. -/- However, they diverge in some matters. James defends the right (...) to diverse religious belief and eventually articulates his own account based on religious experience—an account which is intentionally philosophical and not reliant on any religious authority. Iqbal, however, reconsiders and defends Islam understood along largely traditional lines. -/- I compare and contrast James’ and Iqbal’s religious epistemologies in order to understand both of them better and, hopefully, enrich contemporary reflection on faith and reason through a better awareness of the past dialogue on the subject. -/- This is the accepted version of the following article: “William James and Allama Iqbal on Empirical Faith;” The Heythrop Journal 61.5 (2020): 775-787, which has been published in final form at the URL provided. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with the Wiley Self-Archiving Policy [see second URL]. (shrink)

This book addresses the challenges of living together after empire in many post-colonial cities. It is organized in two sections. The first section focuses on efforts by people of multiple faiths to live together within their contexts, including such efforts within a neighborhood in urban Manchester; the array of attempts at creating multi-faith spaces for worship across the globe; and initiatives to commemorate divisive conflict together in Northern Ireland. The second section utilizes particular postcolonial methods to illuminate pressing issues within (...) specific contexts—including women’s leadership in an indigenous denomination in the variegated African landscape, and baptism and discipleship among Dalit communities in India. In the context of growing multiculturalism in the West, this volume offers a postcolonial theological resource, challenging the epistemologies in the Western academy. (shrink)

This book addresses the challenges of living together after empire in many post-colonial cities. It is organized in two sections. The first section focuses on efforts by people of multiple faiths to live together within their contexts, including such efforts within a neighborhood in urban Manchester; the array of attempts at creating multi-faith spaces for worship across the globe; and initiatives to commemorate divisive conflict together in Northern Ireland. The second section utilizes particular postcolonial methods to illuminate pressing issues within (...) specific contexts—including women’s leadership in an indigenous denomination in the variegated African landscape, and baptism and discipleship among Dalit communities in India. In the context of growing multiculturalism in the West, this volume offers a postcolonial theological resource, challenging the epistemologies in the Western academy. (shrink)

THIS IS A PRE-PUBLICATION VERSION OF THE PAPER and does not have the same pagination as the published version. -/- It is sometimes said that religious belief and empiricism are different or even incompatible ways of believing. However, William James and notable twentieth-century philosophers representing Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity have argued that there is a high degree of compatibility between religious faith and empiricism. Their analyses suggest that there are three characteristics of empiricism—that an empiricist bases his beliefs (...) on past experience, that he seeks to test his beliefs in future experience, and that he holds his beliefs with a degree of tentativeness in case future experience should uncover evidence against them. The epistemological insights of these philosophers, along with Augustine, show that Christian theology is consistent with empiricism. Indeed, reliance on faith fails to distinguish Christianity from science, and Christian theology is even to a significant extent both verifiable and falsifiable. (shrink)

Cooper, Austin Review of: Faith, Ireland and empire: The life of Patrick Joseph Clune CSSR 1864-1935, archbishop of Perth, Western Australia, by Christopher Dowd, Strathfield: St Pauls Publications, 2014, pp. xxiv + 416, paperback, $39.95.

Muhammad and the Empires of Faith: The Making of the Prophet of Islam. By Sean William Anthony. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2020. Pp. xiv + 287. $32.95, £26.

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 96 Heft: 1 Seiten: 355-358.

The transition from empire to nation-state poses challenges in managing religious and ethnic pluralism. Empires, characterized by hierarchical structures and diversity, contrast with nation-states, which aim for uniformity and unity. As empires modernize administratively, they grapple with different approaches to pluralism. While Habsburgs were more in favor of a federal plurality, the Romanovs pushed for centralization and assimilation. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Ottomans vacillated between these two alternative paths. This vacillation is most evident in their approach to millet system (...) which simultaneously followed the contradictory policies of undermining millet boundaries in order to promote a sense of unity across the multi-faith society and policies of promoting and safeguarding the privileges and group-specific rights of non-Muslim communities. Ottoman nationalism eventually shifted towards a homogenizing model, akin to the Romanov approach, leading to the exclusion of religious minorities. This process of homogenization continued in the nationalist policies of modern Turkey and resulted in the secular Turkish Republic being less tolerant towards non-Muslims than the Islamic Ottoman Empire. (shrink)

International migration is an important issue for many high‐income countries and is accompanied by opportunities as well as challenges. South Asians are the largest minority ethnic group in the United Kingdom, and this diaspora is reflective of the growing diversity of British society. An empirical study was performed to ascertain the faith‐based values, beliefs, views and attitudes of participants in relation to their perception of issues pertaining to end‐of‐life care. Empirical observations from this study, as well as the (...) extant knowledge‐base from the literature, are used to support and contextualise our reflections against a socio‐legal backdrop. We argue for accommodation of faith‐based values of migrants at end‐of‐life within normative structures of receiving countries. We posit the ethically relevant principles of inclusiveness, integration and embedment, for an innovative bioethical framework as a vehicle for accommodating faith‐based values and needs of migrants at end‐of‐life. These tenets work conjunctively, as well as individually, in respect of individual care, enabling processes and procedures, and ultimately for formulating policy and strategy. (shrink)

In his medical and scientific works John Wesley provided an interpretation of the universe that was structured, though not pre-ordained, by God. The empirical method he adopted was measured in terms of efficacy and judged according to rationalistic standards. Its practical success, however, was used by Wesley to underpin his vocation of practical piety, which developed out of a holistic view of nature inspired by the spiritualism of Primitive Christianity. Accordingly, the providential ordering of Man and nature meant that (...) safeguarding physical health became a spiritual act, though Wesley separated the discourse of religion and terminology of medicine. This distinction was essential because it ensured intellectual integrity whilst leaving a protective space for religious faith. He made this move on the one hand but saw no contradiction in bringing the discourses of religion and medicine together to serve his mission. For Wesley, social and personal improvement did not rely exclusively on enlightened thinking or religious faith. Rather it depended on showing how rationalism and faith could display separate strengths within an overall framework of holism. (shrink)

In this paper, I will connect some of the philosophical research on non-doxastic accounts of faith to some psychological research on grit. In doing so I hope to advance the debate on both the nature and value of faith by connecting some philosophical insights with some empirical grounding. In particular, I will use Duckworth’s research to show that seeing faith as grit both captures the philosophical motivations for non-doxastic accounts of faith and comes with empirical backing that such (...) faith is voluntary and can be both valuable and rational. (shrink)

No account of contemporary politics can ignore religion. The liberal democratic tradition in political thought has long treated religion with some suspicion, regarding it as a source of division and instability. Faith in Politics shows how such arguments are unpersuasive and dependent on questionable empirical claims: rather than being a serious threat to democracies' legitimacy, stability and freedom, religion can be democratically constructive. Using historical cases of important religious political movements to add empirical weight, Bryan McGraw suggests that (...) religion will remain a significant political force for the foreseeable future and that pluralist democracies would do well to welcome rather than marginalize it. (shrink)

Faith-based Organisations (FBOs) have been at the forefront of a growing interest of the intersection between religion and development. Their value has been recognised as both pragmatic (such as reaching the poorest at the grassroots level and encouraging civil society and advocacy) and, perhaps more contentiously, also ‘spiritual’ in nature because of advantages arising from faith itself (such as hope, meaning, purpose and transcendental power). For many FBOs, religion is far more than an ‘essential component of identity … it is (...) a source of well-being’. In this manner, FBOs challenge the modernist assumptions of traditional development theory, which view the spiritual and physical domains as separate. In fact, for some FBOs, ‘spiritual faith provides the fuel for action’. This paper reports on an aspect of the empirical findings of a South African study and explores both the way in which Christian FBOs understand their Christian identity and the way in which they articulate this through their use of scripture as a motivating or an envisioning tool. (shrink)

Given Hugh Everett III's understanding of the proper cognitive status of physical theories, his relative-state formulation of pure wave mechanics arguably qualifies as an empirically acceptable physical theory. The argument turns on the precise nature of the relationship that Everett requires between the empirical substructure of an empirically faithful physical theory and experience. On this view, Everett provides a weak resolution to both the determinate record and the probability problems encountered by pure wave mechanics, and does so in a (...) way that avoids unnecessary metaphysical complications. Taking Everett's goal to be showing the empirical faithfulness of the relative-state formulation agrees well with his characterization of his project as one of seeking a model for observation in the correlation structure described by pure wave mechanics and seeking a measure of typicality over this empirical substructure that covaries with our empirically warranted expectations. 1 Pure Wave Mechanics and Relative States2 Everett and Frank3 Everett on the Nature of Physical Theories4 Conditions for Empirical Faithfulness5 The Empirical Faithfulness of Pure Wave Mechanics6 Conclusion. (shrink)

Hugh Everett III proposed his relative-state formulation of pure wave mechanics as a solution to the quantum measurement problem. He sought to address the theory’s determinate record and probability problems by showing that, while counterintuitive, pure wave mechanics was nevertheless empirically faithful and hence empirical acceptable. We will consider what Everett meant by empirical faithfulness. The suggestion will be that empirical faithfulness is well understood as a weak variety of empirical adequacy. The thought is (...) that the very idea of empirical adequacy might be renegotiated in the context of a new physical theory given the theory’s other virtues. Everett’s argument for pure wave mechanics provides a concrete example of such a renegotiation. (shrink)

This paper provides a relational analysis of James Fowler's Faith Development Theory and Heinz Streib's Religious Styles Perspective in light of a recent study of apostasy from religious fundamentalisms. Empirical support is provided for both theories. RSP is endorsed as a more encompassing theory of religious development which accounts for more contingencies than FDT. However, FDT is subsumed rather than superseded by RSP as a powerful lens through which to observe cognitive dimensions of religious development. The paper introduces an (...) integrative paradigm, phenomenological empiricism, to conceptualise a complementary relationship between FDT and RSP as key theories in the future study of religious development. (shrink)

Faith-based Organisations have been at the forefront of a growing interest of the intersection between religion and development. Their value has been recognised as both pragmatic and, perhaps more contentiously, also 'spiritual' in nature because of advantages arising from faith itself. For many FBOs, religion is far more than an 'essential component of identity … it is a source of well-being'. In this manner, FBOs challenge the modernist assumptions of traditional development theory, which view the spiritual and physical domains as (...) separate. In fact, for some FBOs, 'spiritual faith provides the fuel for action'. This paper reports on an aspect of the empirical findings of a South African study and explores both the way in which Christian FBOs understand their Christian identity and the way in which they articulate this through their use of scripture as a motivating or an envisioning tool. (shrink)

Van Fraassen has recently argued that empiricism can be construed as a stance, involving commitments, attitudes, values, and goals, in addition to beliefs and opinions. But this characterisation emerges from his recognition that to be an empiricist can not be to believe, or decide to commit to belief in, a foundational proposition, without removing any basis for a non-dogmatic empiricist critique of other philosophical approaches, such as materialism. However, noticeable by its absence in Van Fraassen's discussions is any mention of (...) Bartley's ‘pancritical rationalism’, for Bartley offers a cohesive argument that genuine dogmatism lies precisely in the act of commitment to an idea. The consequence of denying this, he thinks, is an opening of the floodgates to irrationalism: if to rely on reasoned argument in decision-making is fundamentally an act of faith, then there is a tu quoque – “I simply have a different faith” – that may be employed by those who wish to shield their views from criticism. This raises the following question: why should it be any less dogmatic to adopt particular commitments, attitudes, values, and goals, rather than a particular belief or opinion, come what may? And if Bartley is right that there is only one non-dogmatic attitude – the critical attitude – then why might this not be adopted by an empiricist, a materialist, a metaphysician, or anyone else? (shrink)

It is a cliché to say science and religion are antagonistic. The outlook is often promoted by religious people uneducated in the workings of science, and equally by scientifically-oriented individuals with little experience of religion. This essay challenges presumptions about the irreconcilability of science and religion, focusing on action organizing metaphysical principles infusing both. The aim, however, is not to evaluate proofs for God’s existence, nor defend young earth creationism, nor the notion that there is one true religion, nor still (...) the thesis that morality demands divine guidance – all positions that critics commonly raise to demonstrate the stupidity of religion, even though such views are hardly universal among theists. The aim is instead to expand what one can rationally accept, leaving it to individuals to decide what to believe. Central to my arguments is the concept of pragmatic faith. The notion holds that willingness to act measures strength of conviction and that actions generate empirical results that may either verify or disconfirm what was initially held without adequate evidence. Such a stance is a necessary ingredient in both scientific and spiritual activities, suggesting a rebuttal to New Atheists, who narrowly identify religion with superstitious irrationality -/- . (shrink)

The Umayyad Mosque of Damascus is an in-depth analysis of one of the main sacred buildings of the Islamic world. It focuses on the Umayyad phase of the building.

Santayana claims that animal life inevitably requires the “posit” of an external and independent environment, but the claim is shown to be both a mistake and a move from empirical science to metaphysics. Such a move originates in a quest for permanence and a plea for humility.

A popular objection to theistic commitment involves the idea that faith is irrational. Specifically, some seem to put forth something like the following argument: (P1) Everyone (or almost everyone) who has faith is epistemically irrational, (P2) All theistic believers have faith, thus (C) All (or most) theistic believers are epistemically irrational. In this paper, I argue that this line of reasoning fails. I do so by considering a number of candidates for what faith might be. I argue that, for each (...) candidate, either (P1) is false or (P2) is false. Then, I make two positive suggestions for how faith can be epistemically rational but nonetheless have a unique relationship to evidence: one, that Jamesian self-justifying attitudes describe a distinctive kind of faith in oneself and others, and two, that faith is not solely based on empirical evidence. (shrink)

The laws of classical logic are taken to be logical truths, which in turn are taken to hold objectively. However, we might question our faith in these truths: why are they true? One general approach, proposed by Putnam [8] and more recently Dickson [3] or Maddy [5], is to adopt empiricism about logic. On this view, logical truths are true because they are true of the world alone – this gives logical truths an air of objectivity. Putnam and Dickson both (...) take logical truths to be true in virtue of the world’s structure, given by our best empirical theory, quantum mechanics. This assumes a determinate logical structure of the world given by quantum mechanics. Here, I argue that this assumption is false, and that the world’s logical structure, and hence the related ‘true’ logic, is underdetermined. This leads to what I call empirical conventionalism. (shrink)

Inspired by Peter van Inwagen’s “simulacra model” of the resurrection, I investigate whether it could be reasonable to adopt an analogous approach to the problem of evil. Empirically Skeptical Theism, as I call it, is the hypothesis that God shields our lives from irredeemable evils surreptitiously (just as van Inwagen proposes that God shields our bodies from destruction surreptitiously). I argue that EST compares favorably with traditional skeptical theism and with eschatological theodicies, and that EST does not have the negative (...) moral consequences we might suppose. (shrink)

In the Republic, Socrates argues that morality (justice) is valuable both for itself and for what comes from it. In contemporary moral theory, this view is not widely accepted. However, contemporary empirical research in psychology reveals that what we experience is also what we come to expect. It follows from this that if we act in an immoral fashion, we will expect the same from others. The more often we act immorally, the more suspicion will be ingrained within us. (...) Suspicion quickly pervades our minds, corrodes our relationships, and increases our levels of stress, thereby dramatically decreasing our quality of life. Moral action, on the other hand, has the ability to strengthen our faith in others and create strong human relationships. Therefore,morality should be classified as having the highest type of value, just as Socrates contends.Moral behavior allows for healthy relations between persons (intrinsic value) and the wellbeing of the individual (extrinsic value). (shrink)

Wood (1970) convincingly argues that Kant’s notion of moral faith is a response to a “dialectical perplexity” or antinomy. Specifically, moral faith is a response to the threat of moral despair. In line with this suggestion, I make the case that moral faith is the resolution of a crisis about how to go on with one’s life in the face of the threat of moral despair. If this is right, then we have a potential solution to two related anxieties: (1) (...) why the matter of our moral faith or despair deserves to be a topic of practical philosophy instead of empirical psychology, and (2) how despair could be a real threat even though Kant holds that rational beings could never truly lack faith. But, to fully see how these concerns can be answered, we must go beyond Wood’s initial analysis. I first argue that Kant’s philosophy suggests two kinds of moral faith: external and internal. I then argue that internal moral faith is analogous to self-contentment (Selbstzufriedenheit) in the second Critique’s practical antinomy. Together, these arguments suggest that moral faith is a response to a real threat of moral despair, and that faith and despair dialectically require one another within practical reason. (shrink)

Open-ended survey responses from 205 Christian exemplars drawn from 37 distinct congregations within 19 Christian denominations in the Northwest and New England regions of the United States were analyzed by chi-square and multiple regression analyses to determine relationships between religious experience and gender. Results indicated that men were more likely than women to describe positions of leadership/responsibility/service as influential to their faith, and to indicate their own personal sin as a faith challenge. Women were more likely than men to describe (...) negative/tragic events as a faith influence, the intellectual dimension of their faith as a challenge, and serving other people as a faith satisfaction. These results appear to lend strong empirical support to previous assertions in both the social science and feminist theological literature regarding relationships between gender and religious experience. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Anthony Close THE EMPIRICAL AUTHOR: SALMAN RUSHDIE'S THE SATANIC VERSES HOBBES, comparing the author ofan action to the owner ofgoods, asserts, "And as the right of possession, is called dominion; so the right of doing any action, is called authority" (Leviathan, Book I, chap. 16). My purpose in this essay is to apply this Hobbesian maxim to the relation Author/Text, expanding somewhat Hobbes's notion of authority. I presuppose (...) that in our day-to-day dealings with our fellow men, we envisage each others' acts as exhibiting purpose and commitment, which make them ours in more than the platitudinous sense that we performed them. By virtue of that, they confer on us a privileged, though clearly not unchallengeable, authority in saying what they are and what they are for. Such, in effect, is the position reached by Austin in How to Do Things with Words, and it broadly corresponds to that of various philosophical writings on human action—by Anscombe, Davidson, and Melden.1 To be sure, we may legitimately consider human behavior from other viewpoints (e.g., structuralist, anthropological, psychoanalytical, Marxist) trained on its unconscious presuppositions. Yet, insofar as such theorizing fails to acknowledge the priority of the Hobbesian perspective, it will seem perverse for a reason that has been well put by Charles Taylor. Precisely because history is made up of purposeful activity, Taylor argues, we need to explain historical patterns in a way that is "intelligible in relation to conscious action" even though they may not "issue from conscious action."2 By this criterion much of our modern literary theory is defective. A vivid measure of the deficiency is provided by the furor over Salman Rushdie's TL· Satanic Verses, culminatingin thefatwa pronounced against Philosophy and Literature, © 1990, 14: 248-267 Anthony Close249 him by the Ayatollah Khomeini in February 1989. I take it that for anyone vocationally committed to the practice or study ofliterature and to the cause of freedom of expression, the defense of Rushdie cannot be a matter of indifference. Nor can one be indifferent to the chasm of misunderstanding that separates Rushdie and his apologists from the novel's Muslim opponents. I believe that these two causes—defending Rushdie and bridging the chasm—can be reconciled by offering better explanations ofhis novel in place ofcrude denunciations or, from some non-Muslim quarters, smug and knowing dismissals. Yet, as we shall see, the task of explanation could be considered hamstrung by our modern poetics. I was reminded ofHobbes's textby Rushdie's lucid and cogent defense of his novel in TL· Independent (London, February 4, 1990). Against the accusations that he had deliberately reviled the Islamic faith, he argued as follows. Though TL· Satanic Verses, like many novels that Rushdie esteems, is a work of radical dissent, questioning, and reimagining, it is motivated by a spirit of serious inquiry rather than debunking derision. More particularly, it reflects a determination that underlies all Rushdie's work: "to create a literary language and literary forms in which the experience offormerly-colonised, still-disadvantaged peoples might find full expression." He continues: "It is written from the very experience of uprooting, disjuncture and metamorphosis... that is the migrant condition, and from which, I believe, can be derived a metaphor for all humanity.... [It] celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs. It rejoices in mongrelisation and fears the absolutism of the Pure." Note the insistence on how these themes flow direcdy from Rushdie's own experience. Two days after the publication of this article, Harold Pinter gave on Rushdie's behalf a lecture on the relationship of literature to religion and society at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. In this lecture, Rushdie articulated a Bakhtinian view of the novelist's function: to dramatize ironically and noncommittally the clash of voices, languages, and ideologies in a world without gods and without traditionsanctioned truth. Rushdie referred specifically, I think, to a species of postmodernist novel which we may dub "palimpsest history";3 the species includes Rushdie's works, García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, Carlos Fuentes's Terra Nostra... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Visual EmpireSusan Buck-Morss (bio)1 The Sovereign IconThe Question of SovereigntyJust when the nation-state appeared to be waning in significance, national sovereignty is back in the spotlight. The issue takes on special urgency in the United States, where sovereign right has been proclaimed persistently by the president in an attempt to justify policies of military aggression and violations of international and domestic law, executing these policies with disregard for traditional (...) judicial and constitutional procedures.1 Giorgio Agamben’s recently translated book State of Exception has touched off a small case of collective hysteria among American academics by claiming that by their intrinsic nature, democracies undermine themselves, that dictatorship is an ontological necessity of modern politics, and that the sovereign’s power to declare a state of emergency and with it a state exception to the law places potentially the whole world under the sign of the concentration camp.Agamben’s revelation, however, is not the scandal. It is a logical truism that something cannot be a member of its own set, that constituting power (pouvoir constituens) cannot be synonymous with constituted power (pouvoir constituent).Plato in the Timaeus described a self-eating, circular being as the first living thing in the universe–an immortal, perfectly constructed animal [image 1]. Agamben seems shocked to find that such an animal does not exist. If democracies could be self-constituting and self-reproducing, if they could realize the perfect closure of the Oroborus (snake consuming its tail), there would be no decay and no history—but also no hope, no escape from the magic circle of power that is capable of mystifying any political regime, no matter how democratically conceived. The historical event that ruptures the circle’s mythic repetition is also the possibility of a better future.Unlike both Walter Benjamin and Carl Schmitt, upon whom he relies, Agamben uses history ahistorically, in order to abstract from it a timeless ontology of power. In contrast, Benjamin is attentive to historical concreteness, as is Schmitt—this attention is their common bond. But when Benjamin criticizes the parliamentary democracy of the early Weimar Republic, it is not, as it is for Schmitt, out of yearning for a strong executive to cut through parliamentary legalism and compromise.2 Rather, it reminds twentieth-century [End Page 171] parliaments of their own violent origins. A present-day executive leader who, in using the emergency powers of his office, fails to be reminded of the historical origins of representative governments no longer feels It necessary to submit to democratic rule. Benjamin believed that the watered-down versions of democracy in his own time had become little more than bourgeois governing cliques, and for that reason, he might have appreciated Thomas Jefferson’s suggestion that every generation needs a new revolution. The sovereign who declares a state of exception would then be the citizens themselves.The question we need to ask is why Thomas Jefferson’s call for permanent revolution is not predictive of the history of democracies in modern times—why it is so difficult to cut off the head of the king so that it stays off, why popular sovereignty consistently resurrects an aura of quasi-mystical power around the sovereign figure—which since Hobbes’s Leviathan has been recognized as a human artifact, a merely mortal god [see image 2]. In a democracy where only the citizens have the legitimate right to declare a state of exception to the law, the real scandal occurs when an executive branch usurps that power and is allowed to get away with it.More than the sum of merely empirical individuals of which Hobbes’s Leviathan is composed, sovereignty is a transcendent category. The sovereign is an icon in the theological sense. He (or she) embodies an enigma—precisely the power of the collective to constitute itself. The sovereign figure as personification of the collective demonstrates the power of the visible image to close the circle between constituting and constituted power, explaining why even when the illegalities of an individual sovereign are exposed, the faith of the believer is still not shaken. As long as the circle appears closed, sovereign power remains intact; likewise, and... (shrink)

Damn Great Empires! offers a new perspective on the works of William James by placing his encounter with American imperialism at the center of his philosophical vision. This book reconstructs James's overlooked political thought by treating his anti-imperialist Nachlass -- his speeches, essays, notes, and correspondence on the United States' annexation of the Philippines -- as the key to unlocking the political significance of his celebrated writings on psychology, religion, and philosophy. It shows how James located a craving for authority (...) at the heart of empire as a way of life, a craving he diagnosed and unsettled through his insistence on a modern world without ultimate foundations. Livingston explores the persistence of political questions in James's major works, from his writings on the self in The Principles of Psychology to the method of Pragmatism, the study of faith and conversion in The Varieties of Religious Experience, and the metaphysical inquiries in A Pluralistic Universe. Against the conventional view of James as a thinker who remained silent on questions of politics, this book places him in dialogue with a transatlantic critique of modernity, as well as with champions and critics of American imperialism, from Theodore Roosevelt to W. E. B. Du Bois, in order to excavate James's anarchistic political vision. Bringing the history of political thought into conversation with contemporary debates in political theory, Damn Great Empires! offers a fresh and original reexamination of the political consequences of pragmatism as a public philosophy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Critical realist thought has theorised convincingly that epistemic relativism is constellationally embedded in ontological realism which in turn necessitates judgemental rationality. In social science, judgemental rationality involves acting upon plausible decisions about competing points of view. However, the tools for doing this are, as yet, under-articulated. This paper addresses this absence by articulating triangulation and depth-reflexivity as two tools for doing judgemental rationality in empirical research. It draws on the experiences of a diverse team working on an international (...) comparative research project on conversion to Islam in prisons. It demonstrates how epistemic and relational gaps between researchers and research subjects can be bridged by mobilising the ‘laminated’ properties and personal attributes of a diverse research team that factors in attributes that are absent as well as those present. The biographical experiences of the team are analyzed in a variety of intersecting dimensions: faith, ethnicity/ethno-culture, gender, class and professionality. (shrink)

This study examines whether and how a CEO’s personal traits (gender, altruism, age, and founder) influence organizational performance. Building upon upper echelons theory, this study develops a conceptual framework that gives explicit recognition to how the institutional environment surrounding the CEOs shapes their characteristics, which, in turn, are reflected in the different organizational strategies and performance. This study moves beyond the existing focus on for-profit corporations and conducts the empirical analysis on a novel, hand-collected, longitudinal dataset of 1342 firm-year (...) observations of 128 faith-based charity organizations operating in a major developing, Muslim-majority country in the period 1996–2019. This study reveals that those faith-based charity organizations led by CEOs with specific personal traits (woman, altruistic, young, and founder) exhibit better organizational performance. Importantly, CEOs’ personal traits, however, do not have a uniform, systematic effect; their effect is generally strengthened when the CEO is also the founder of the faith-based charity organization, given the greater latitude of managerial discretion that a CEO has in managing the organization. Our findings have important implications for individual charity organizations; their board of directors; and their stakeholders, in particular the communities they serve, as well as the whole society where they operate. (shrink)

While central to the Christian religion, the act of faith has been notoriously difficult to define. This essay is an attempt to illuminate, with the aid of insights from cognitive science and process philosophy, what it means for a Christian to have faith, specifically in God. In doing so, the apriori and aposteriori aspects of faith are explored, along with its connections to science and empirical evidence, revelation, knowledge, doubt, morality, and additional Christian beliefs.

In this article, an anthropologist examines the question, asked today in diverse forms by an increasing variety of actors: what is the aim or telos of the social sciences? From within the disciplinary communities of the social sciences themselves, the answers given are inseparable from questions of theory and method. This essay engages some recent experimental, postcritical responses as formulated by scholars in the fields of anthropology and STS. Following decades of reflexive debates and changing institutional and disciplinary environments, both (...) anthropology and STS currently experience heightened levels of uncertainty about theories and methods, means and ends. In this context, the emergence and vigor of a number hybrid positions, eschewing traditional separations between facts and values, the conceptual and the empirical, and the descriptive and the performative, are noteworthy. This essay examines three distinctive and novel responses to the question of what comes after critique, found in the writings of the anthropologist Hirokazu Miyazaki, who has defined what he terms a method of hope; in the experimental anthropology of Richard Rottenburg, which offers parables of modern development aid; and in the scholarship of Helen Verran, a philosopher and STS ethnographer who constructs the figure of the good faith analyst. Coming to terms with the challenges, possibilities, tensions, and paradoxes of these and other postcritical responses is the key purpose of the present discussion. (shrink)

In September 2020, relationships and sex education (RSE) became compulsory in all English secondary schools, and relationships education became compulsory in all English primary schools, marking a significant step forward in the fight to establish children's rights. Although the new RSE regime will help to ensure that many English schools provide pupils with a far more comprehensive RSE curriculum than ever before, the statutory guidance underpinning it includes a number of caveats that mean, although the subject is compulsory, not all (...) children will receive the same content. Arguably, along with the right to withdraw (which is often exercised on religious grounds), the most insidious of these ‘carve-outs’ allows faith schools to teach RSE according to their ‘distinctive religious character’. This exemption has been used to defend the use of religious RSE resources that critics maintain are misogynistic, homophobic and often draw heavily on pseudoscience, as well as to justify leaving certain topics (such as same-sex relationships or trans rights) out of classroom discussion altogether. Drawing on empirically informed normative case studies and recent reforms to the curriculum in Wales, I argue that faith-based carve-outs to RSE policy imperil children's access to a distinct package of educational goods. Using a recent framework for educational decision-making based on these goods developed by Brighouse et al. I go on to conclude that such policies are politically and morally unjustifiable (at least if one agrees that the relevant package of goods is desirable). I further maintain that, even when considered from the perspective of human rights law—which is often given as a pragmatic reason to allow more permissive policies with respect to teaching topics that may impinge upon parents’ deeply held convictions—there are no necessary grounds for governments to legislate for the subject to be circumscribed by the religious beliefs of parents or the faith ethos of the schools children attend. (shrink)

Is there any such thing as the Cusan view of the relationship between faith and reason? That is, does Nicholas present us with clear concepts of fides and ratio and with a unique and consistent doctrine regarding their interconnection? If he does not, then the task before us is surely an impossible one: viz., the task of finding, describing, and setting in perspective a doctrine that never at all existed. For even with spectacles made of beryl stone or through the (...) looking glass of Lewis Carroll, we could not descry the totally nonexistent. Four lines of argument purport to show that the task before us is fundamentally impossible. 1. First of all, it may be argued that Nicholas of Cusa can have a coherent doctrine of faith and reason only if he has a generally coherent theory of knowledge and that since his theory of knowledge is generally incoherent, so too must be the aforesaid doctrine, which is an intrinsic part of the theory of knowledge. Let us grant—for the sake of the argument—the disputable logic of this reasoning, and let us focus on the question of whether Nicholas does or does not have a viable general theory of knowledge. Many philosophers judge the theory to be unviable. For example, the philosopher Hans Blumenberg writes: “I will not make what I believe would have to be a futile attempt at a unitary interpretation of the Cusan theory of knowledge. Here in particular the inner consistency of his philosophical accomplishment is doubtful. The reason for this can be specified: it lies, again, in the inability to deal with or successfully to evade the consequences of nominalism.” 2 Other philosophers are quick to agree that Cusa’s epistemology consists of a host of glaring contradictions: Cusa’s theory of representative perception is said to be incompatible with his doctrine of homo mensura—i.e., with his doctrine that man is the measure of the reality that is perceived and conceived by him. Cusa’s notion that empirical concepts are abstracted from perceptual and imaginative images is asserted to be contradicted by his further claim that all concepts are derived a pri- ori from the mind itself. (shrink)

This essay argues that important critical and political perspective can be gained on Deleuze's famous essay, ‘Bartleby; or, The Formula’ by viewing it as an attempt to move beyond the Sartrean framework of ‘bad faith’. The argument comprises four sections. In section one, I contextualise Deleuze's essay in terms of contrasting readings of Bartleby, from a prior account by Georges Perec, to contemporary accounts indebted to Deleuze, from Hardt and Negri's Empire to Gisèle Berkman's recent L'Effet Bartleby. The argument of (...) this section is that a problematically reductive image of Bartleby has emerged in the wake of Deleuze's essay, but that this can be challenged in favour of a more nuanced and politically significant reading by contextualising the essay as an attempt to overcome bad faith. In section two, I develop this by drawing out the nature and relevance of the threat posed by bad faith through a focus on Sartrean, Deleuzian and Badioucan critiques of Bartleby, before arguing, in section three, that attention to the concept of a ‘logic of presuppositions’ developed in Deleuze's essay shows how bad faith can be overcome. These sections all build towards the fourth and longest section, which draws out the wider political significance of what it means to overcome bad faith. To do so, I pay attention to how logics of presupposition function in Bartleby's story, and consider Deleuze's essay in relation to his work on ‘control societies’ and ‘collective assemblages of enunciation’. (shrink)

Purpose The idea that user comments on journalistic articles would help to increase the quality of the media has long been greeted with enthusiasm. By now, however, these high hopes have mostly evaporated. Practical experience has shown that user participation does not automatically lead to better journalism but may also result in hate speech and systematic trolling – thus having a dysfunctional impact on journalistic actors. Although empirical journalism research has made it possible to describe various kinds of disruptive (...) follow-up communication on journalistic platforms, it has not yet succeeded in explaining what exactly drives certain users to indulge in flaming and trolling. This paper intends to fill this gap. Design/methodology/approach It does so on the basis of problem-centered interviews with media users who regularly publish negative comments on news websites. Findings The evaluation allows for a nuanced view on current phenomena of dysfunctional follow-up communication on journalistic news sites. It shows that the typical “troll” does not exist. Instead, it seems to be more appropriate to differentiate disruptive commenters according to their varying backgrounds and motives. Quite often, the interviewed users display a distinct political devotion to a certain cause that rather makes them appear as “warriors of faith.” However, they are united in their dissatisfaction with the quality of the media, which they attack critically and often with a harsh tone. Originality/value The study reflects these differences by developing a typology of dysfunctional online commenters. By helping to understand their aims and intentions, it contributes to the development of sustainable strategies for stimulating constructive user participation in a post-truth age. (shrink)