In his article Banicki proposes a universal model for all forms of philosophical therapy. He is guided by works of Martha Nussbaum, who in turn makes recourse to Aristotle. As compared to Nussbaum’s approach, Banicki’s model is more medical and less based on ethical argument. He mentions Foucault’s vision to apply the same theoretical analysis for the ailments of the body and the soul and to use the same kind of approach in treating and curing them. In his interpretation of (...) philosophical therapy, there are, however, some controversial issues, to which we would like to call attention: -/- Is restoring health by a philosophical method of treatment – health understood as a person’s ability to reach his/her vital goals – a convincing explication of philosophical therapy in general? In order to answer this question, it may be useful to look at Plato. It is not only Platonism (and especially Neo-platonism since Plotinus) that questions the idea that therapy is necessarily connected with „vital goals“. Buddhist and Gnostic philosophies are questioning „the vital“ in general. The immense effort in the history of philosophy to liberate the mind from the body casts doubt on the project to explain philosophical therapy solely in analogy to medical therapy. -/- According to Banicki a therapeutic philosophy has to identify the diseases it attempts at curing. There are, however, reasons for associating the term therapy with suffering/risk rather than disease. If a therapy aims at reducing the fear of death, as for example many classical philosophical therapies do, then there is no disease to be cured. A model based on chances and risks also has the advantage that the Buddhist and Stoic reinterpretation of desires/emotions as “diseases” can be dropped in contemporary philosophical therapy. -/- Banicki mentions the comparison of therapies as one of the primary goals of modelling. Methods should be verified by a statistical correlation between method and therapeutic success and/or by a theory which justifies the method. Some forms of therapies, however, avoid theory-specific terms and concepts in favor of an unprejudiced interpretation of the patient’s statements. Others share the (Nietzschean) aspiration to explore and change measures of value. If the therapeutic process is seen as a unique phenomenon, then there can be no theory and no statistics with co-occurrences. -/- According to Banicki philosophical therapy has to describe techniques which qualify as genuinely philosophical. Techniques like maieutics and hermeneutics, however, are antique philosophical “inventions”, which were later adopted by psychotherapy. If meditation is accepted as a therapeutic tool – as it was in ancient times – then there is not only a methodical but also an emotional relation to religion. If finally, the Socratic search for a good life is seen as one of the characteristics of philosophical therapy, then delimitation even turns into a criterion for non-philosophical therapies. The search for a good life requires an interdisciplinary approach. -/- For the concretization of the formal structure, we suggest a typology of therapies, which is based on chances and risks. Such a typology has the advantage, that it can model conflicting (and even opposing) forms of therapies. The variety of therapeutic goals and methods is a consequence of the historical development towards conceptual freedom. (shrink)

Adorno’s negative dialectics wants to free the thought from the dictates of the system, taking position against the illusion to grasp the essence of reality by logic. Against that false idea of totality, Adorno devises a philosophy of fragment, a logic of disgregation that presupposes a different concept of totality: a fragmented, scattered and conflicting wholeness. The anti systematic thinking of Adorno is configured, however, as a systematic rejection of any systematic formulation: philosophy can at most claiming a pretension to (...) truth by the practice of interpretation. A dialectic configuration of fragments of totality is at stake here: so, the arrangement of such fragments can both produce an image of reality endowed with meaning and also unfold through heterogeneous combinations that are not definitive, but always renewable from time to time. In Adorno’s reflection are so expressed two different instances which are complementary at the same time: on the one hand it represents the critical and negative element against the system and its hybris, on the other hand it expresses the need of the thought to go beyond and overcome that fragmentation, showing how the need of unity of the system is a need of the thought in itself. (shrink)

Analysts of political culture within the "civil religion" tradition have generally assumed that discourse in civil society is structured by a single set of enduring codes based on liberal traditions that actors draw upon to resolve crises. Based on two case studies of national crises and debate in Brazil during its transition to democracy, I challenge this assumption by demonstrating that not only do actors draw upon two distinct but interrelated codes, they actively seek to impose one or another as (...) dominant. In Brazil this is manifest in actors who defend elements from the code of liberty and its valuation of the freestanding citizen, and those who defend the corporate code and its valuation of the collectivity over the individual. In an earlier debate on crime the corporate code was dominant, but in a later debate surrounding presidential improprieties, the liberal code became dominant. This analysis makes two contributions to the literature: it highlights the importance of nonindividualist cultural codes, such as the corporate code, in animating discourse in the public sphere in democratizing societies, raising attention to the importance of the symbolic contestation between actors seeking to establish one or another code during political transitions. Second, it offers a subtle commentary on the literature on democratization: changes in collective representations in the public sphere may not proceed apace of institutional changes and may be contingent on the kinds of crisis events and actors willing to contest previously dominant codes. (shrink)

In this essay we explore Rancière’s ‘politics of equals’ as an alternative conception of the political. Central to this conception is a division between instances of political contestation that address fundamental questions of equality and those that are part of the management of the division of resources and positions in society. This distinction provides a new way of thinking about theoretical and empirical questions over logics of political action.

Despite recent interest in political ethnography, most of the reflection has been on the ethnographic aspect of the enterprise with much less emphasis on the question implicit in the first word of the couplet: What is actually political about political ethnography and how much should ethnographers pre-define it? The question is complicated because a central component of the definition of what is political is actually the struggle to define its jurisdiction and how it gets distinguished from what it is not. (...) In this article we aim to show how ethnography can actually lead us out of this conundrum in which the political is paradoxically both predefined and, at the same time, the open question that leads the process of inquiry. We do so by advancing a formal and relational approach that provides us with procedural tools to define the nature and specificity of the political bond not ex ante, but rather during the process of research itself. In the first part of the article we historicize the development of political ethnography as a distinct avenue for inquiry and show what have been the challenges to its normalization. This is followed by the article’s main section, which focuses on the four ways in which what is political has been conceptualized in contemporary socio-ethnographical literature. In the conclusion of the article, we advance a lowest common denominator definition proposal, with examples from other scholars as well as from our own research to illustrate how this approach would work. (shrink)

Participatory Budgeting has by now been widely discussed, often celebrated, and is now instituted in at least 1,500 cities worldwide. Some of its central features—its structure of open meetings, its yearly cycle, and its combination of deliberation and representation—are by now well known. In this article, however, we critically reflect on its global travel and argue for more careful consideration of some of its less well-known features, namely the coupling of the budgeting meetings with the exercise of power. We disaggregate (...) PB into its communicative and empowerment dimensions and argue that its empowerment dimensions have usually not been part of its global expansion—and this is cause for concern from the point of view of emancipation. We thus discuss the specific institutional reforms associated with empowerment in the original version as well as its analytic dimensions. We also address some of the specific dangers of a communication-only version of PB as well as some suggestions for reintroducing empowerment. (shrink)

Knowledge sharing is a typical activity of using different ways to share ideas, skills, expertise, and opinions among friends, family members, peers, communities, and employees. Knowledge can be shared with a firm's internal and external stakeholders, and it can improve process efficiency as well as product quality. Not many studies have examined the influence of knowledge sharing among different stakeholders of a firm and its impact on a firm's innovative performance. Also, studies that understand the role of modern technology usage (...) in firm innovation performance are scant. Using stakeholder theory, other views, and existing literature, we have developed a theoretical model that was validated using the PLS-SEM technique to analyze 341 respondents from different firms in India. The study demonstrates that knowledge sharing has a significant impact among stakeholders on improving firm innovation performance. The study also finds that stakeholder usage of modern technology has a significant moderating impact on the relationship between process innovation, product innovation, and innovation performance of firms. (shrink)

1. Premesse Questo articolo richiede alcune premesse. Innanzitutto sono opportuni due chiarimenti, o precisazioni, che riguardano il titolo, Il nominalismo di Quine: un argomento circolare. Il primo chiarimento riguarda l’attribuzione a Willard Van Orman Quine di una posizione nominalistica, attribuzione contestabile sotto diversi rispetti. È vero che Quine è comunemente considerato uno dei maggiori esponenti del nominalismo contemporaneo. Tuttavia il termine “nominalismo” può essere inteso i...