In this interdisciplinary examination of the discourse of environmentalism, the authors explore the linguistic, philosophical, psychological and cultural-historical aspects of environmental discourse; rather than environmental phenomena themselves. This volume is not advocacy on environmentalism, rather, it is an analysis of the means of persuasion and the techniques of advocacy used by both sides of the environmental debate between `conservationists' and `conservatives'. The book includes an analysis of the concepts of time and space in their linguistic manifestations. Another theme is the (...) interdependencies of the natural world with political and economic institutions. (shrink)

Brockmeier reflects on the positive consequences (e.g., socio‐cultural socialization of children) of examining conversational remembering as a process or practice that is context‐dependent and functionally oriented, relying on the interplay of narrative, cognitive and cultural resources co‐evolving over multiple time‐scales rather than just a substance or product located in people’s brains.

This essay offers a reading of William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience that suggests considering religious experience as a cultural form and practice of 'transcendent' meaning construction. Following James, but also drawing on discussions in cultural psychology, anthropology, and philosophy, such meaning constructions are viewed as historically and culturally specific ways of transcending ordinary experience in an effort after 'deeper' meaning. While James's project is seen in the tradition of Geisteswissenschaft, outlining a hermeneutic human science, it is argued that (...) his investigations have not taken into account the complex relationship between experience and language. In line with an empiricist conception of experiences, James ignores the constructive function of language -- and thus culture -- in the constitution of both experiences and thought. The discussion of the problematic consequences of this neglect of language and cultural language games focuses on 'ineffable experiences', which are the chief characteristic of mystical states and thus, for James, at the centre of the religious experience. (shrink)

“One of the most dangerous of ideas for a philosopher is, oddly enough, that we think with our heads, or in our heads.” Wittgenstein… aber wir sprechen das Allgemeine aus;” Hegel“Hegel is the last philosopher of the book and the first thinker of writing.” Derrida“Linguistic turn”, “pragmatic paradigm”, “Destruktion”, “deconstruction”, “condition postmoderne”, “pensiero debole” are not only philosophical labels. They are not only indices of intellectual positions which have inscribed themselves, as consequences as well as preconditions, in the end of (...) traditional metaphysics. “Nothing is true, everything is permitted”, Nietzsche'sGenealogy of Moralsannounces, describing the empty space which the metaphysical concepts have left; and in doing so opening up a seemingly boundless dimension for new developments of thoughts. The dilemma of these developments of modernity is that the vacuum they left, caused by their ruthless critique, cannot be refilled. So the outlook of modernity remains necessarily heterogeneous and unstable, meandering towards the colourful and fashionable-macabre extremes of postmodemity which gain from the tragic certainty of rien ne va plus the happy imperative of anything goes. But these are also ciphers of a particular philosophical-historical constellation, a work situation, in which the potencies of reason, being verhimmelt for a long time, now are going to be situated into their real contexts. Only, as Habermas puts it, “under the premises of an unexcited postmetaphysical thinking”, the once heroic concept of theory, which was meant to explain the world of human beings and their history as well as Nature out of onto-theleological principles of rationality, falls to pieces. (shrink)