In this detailed study giving more depth and breadth to Moravia’s work than has hitherto been done in English, the authors explore his background and assess his accomplishment as a twentieth-century artist. Students of the modern novel will be interested in the explication given here of the influences of Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus, and Martin Buber on Moravia’s work.

Joan Tronto’s new paradigm of caring democracy bases citizenship on the need to ensure that all people receive and provide care equitably. But how exactly are citizens motivated to take up these caring responsibilities? The writings of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) co-founder William ‘Bill’ Wilson provide one answer: he pathologizes the alcoholic – dooming him to inevitable relapse and death – to compel AA members to accept shared vulnerability and mutual care as the bedrock of sobriety and AA society. Wilson (...) returns repeatedly to the threat of death to convince AA members to carry out their newfound caring and democratic responsibilities. We use Wilson’s thinking, as well as Michel Foucault’s work on biopower, to forward the concept of biocaring democracy, in which the acceptance of shared pathology compels people to care for each other but also limits their democratic responsibilities. More broadly, our analysis suggests how hinging democracy to shared vulnerability may constrain the radical possibilities that Tronto envisions. (shrink)

'Chains of Being' argues that there can be infinite chains of dependence or grounding. Cameron also defends the view that there can be circular relations of ontological dependence or grounding, and uses these claims to explore issues in logic and ontology.

There is a section in Samuel Delany’s magnificent autobiographical meditation, The Motion of Light in Water, that dramatically raises the problem of writing the history of difference, the history, that is, of the designation of “other,” of the attribution of characteristics that distinguish categories of people from some presumed norm.1 Delany recounts his reaction to his first visit to the St. Marks bathhouse in 1963. He remembers standing on the threshold of a “gym-sized room” dimly lit by blue bulbs. The (...) room was full of people, some standing, the rest an undulating mass of naked, male bodies, spread wall to wall. My first response was a kind of heart-thudding astonishment very close to fear. I have written of a space at certain libidinal saturation before. That was not what frightened me. It was rather that the saturation was not only kinesthetic but visible.2Watching the scene establishes for Delany a “fact that flew in the face” of the prevailing representation of homosexuals in the 1950s as “isolated perverts,” as subjects “gone awry.” The “apprehension of massed bodies” gave him a “sense of political power”:what this experience said was that there was a population—not of individual homosexuals … not of hundreds, not of thousands, but rather of millions of gay men, and that history had, actively and already, created for us whole galleries of institutions, good and bad, to accommodate our sex. [M, p. 174] 2. Samuel R. Delany, The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village, 1957-1965 , p. 173; hereafter abbreviated M. Joan W. Scott is professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. She is the author, most recently, of Gender and the Politics of History and is currently at work on a history of feminist claims for political rights in France during the period 1789-1945 as a way of exploring arguments about equality and difference. (shrink)

A psychoanalytic and philosophical exploration of sublimation as a key term in Jacques Lacan's theories of ethics and feminine sexuality.

The connection between whole and part is intimate: not only can we share the same space, but I’m incapable of leaving my parts behind; settle the nonmereological facts and you thereby settle what is a part of what; wholes don’t seem to be an additional ontological commitment over their parts. Composition as identity promises to explain this intimacy. But it threatens to make the connection too intimate, for surely the parts could have made a different whole and the whole have (...) had different parts. In this paper I attempt to offer an account of parthood that is intimate enough but not too intimate: the parts generate the whole, but they are not themselves the whole. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to determine the applicability of Buddhist practices in today’s workplaces. The findings were supported by interviews with Buddhist masters and Buddhist business practitioners, as well as literature review, through phenomenological analysis. As a means of presenting the main reasons why Buddhist practices should be considered in contemporary workplaces, a SWOT analysis is presented. In this analysis, a number of strengths for using Buddhist practices in workplaces are listed such as pro-scientific, greater personal responsibility, and (...) healthy detachment, while potential weaknesses such as non-harming, equanimity, and no competition are also reviewed. Both the strengths and the weaknesses could be listed in reverse if applied to a different extent. Among the opportunities were issues such as re-educating the world of business, enhancing personal ownership and a healthier society, while the threats comprised issues such as creating different imbalances, disinterest, and stationary development. (shrink)

Many have been tempted to invoke a primitive notion of grounding to describe the way in which some features of reality give rise to others. Jessica Wilson argues that such a notion is unnecessary to describe the structure of the world: that we can make do with specific dependence relations such as the part–whole relation or the determinate–determinable relation, together with a notion of absolute fundamentality. In this paper I argue that such resources are inadequate to describe the particular ways (...) in which some parts of reality give rise to others, and thus that we do in fact need grounding. (shrink)

Does the “free market” foster more freedom for individuals generally and less coercion? Libertarians and other market advocates argue that the unfettered market maximizes freedom and hence has less coercion than any feasible alternative. Welfare liberals, Socialist, and Marxists, in different ways, argue against the claim that the unrestricted market maximizes freedom generally. Both supporters and critics agree that coercion undermines freedom and that that is what is ultimately prima facie wrong with it. Further, they agree that the extent to (...) which an economic system includes coercion provides a serious strike against it. The problem is that there is little consensus on the necessary conditions for coercion. In this paper I will be concerned with the nature of coercive relationships in the market. Market interactions have a particular character and occur within a specific institutional framework. Other accounts of coercion have failed to capture the unique character of coercion in the market because they have failed to take into account certain nontrivial facts about the market which are essential to the analysis of coercive market relations. (shrink)

Nation and Identity provides a concise and comprehensive account of the place of national identity in modern life. Ross Poole argues that the nation became a fundamental organising principle of social, political and moral life during the period of early modernity and that is has provided the organising principle of much liberal, republican and democratic thought. Ross Poole offers us a new and urgently needed analysis of the concept of identity, arguing that we are now in a position (...) to envisage the end of nationalism. We see that the impact of issues like multiculturalism, republicanism, and indigenous rights have made it very difficult to see how the possibility of a postnational cosmopolitanism could not degenerate into a nihilistic moral universe. Nation and Identity will be a fascinating read for all those interested in issues of national identity, both politically and philosophically. (shrink)

A collection of 22 interviews and one personal essay, _Julia Kristeva Interviews_ presents an intimate and accessible portrait of one of France's most important critical thinkers and intellectual personalities.

"Speciesism: 'A failure, in attitude or practice, to accord any nonhuman being equal consideration and respect'"--From the book's cover.

This study examines how our personal values influence our judgment of the morality of some workplace behaviours. Sixty-nine undergraduates were asked to rank order separately Rokeach''s instrumental and terminal values in terms of their importance as guiding principles in their life. Subjects then read four scenarios, each of which described ethically questionable behaviour of the sort that might be encountered in business. They were then asked to rate whether or not the behaviour of the person described in the scenario was (...) ethical, and whether or not they had any intentions to rectify the situation. People with different value hierarchies perceived the targeted behaviours differently. For example, subjects who valued honesty perceived the behaviour as more immoral than subjects who did not value honesty. While the ranking of the instrumental valuehonesty was the best predictor of people''s judgments about the morality of the behaviour, their ranking of the instrumental valueambition was the best predictor of their behavioural intentions. (shrink)

I argue that Agustín Rayo’s symmetric ‘just is’ statements cannot be defined in terms of notions like essence, grounding or metaphysical truth-conditions. I go on to argue that one of these latter notions, which allow us to express an asymmetric relationship between facts, is needed to do some of the work that Rayo intends ‘just is’ statements to do, such as stating reductionist claims.

While the British Empire conventionally is recognized as a source of research subjects and objects in anthropology, and a site where anthropological expertise might inform public administration, the settler-colonial affiliations and experiences of many leading physical anthropologists could also directly shape theories of human variation, both physical and cultural. Antipodean anthropologists like Grafton Elliot Smith were pre-adapted to diffusionist models that explained cultural achievement in terms of the migration, contact and mixing of peoples. Trained in comparative methods, these fractious cosmopolitans (...) also favoured a dynamic human biology, often emphasizing the heterogeneity and environmental plasticity of body form and function, and viewing fixed, static racial typologies and hierarchies sceptically. By following leading representatives of empire anatomy and physical anthropology, such as Elliot Smith and Frederic Wood Jones, around the globe, it is possible to recover the colonial entanglements and biases of interwar British anthropology, moving beyond a simple inventory of imperial sources, and crediting human biology and social anthropology not just as colonial sciences but as the sciences of itinerant colonials. (shrink)

‘Metaphysics’, said Bradley, ‘is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe on instinct, but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.’ This idea that reasoning is both instinctive and feeble is reminiscent of Hume; except that reasons in Hume tend to serve as the solvent rather than the support of instinctive beliefs. Instinct leads us to play backgammon with other individuals whom we assume inhabit a world which exists independently of our own perception and which will (...) continue to exist tomorrow in a similar fashion to today. However, when instinct leads us also to reason about these beliefs they are all subject to sceptical attack. Their defence provides a challenge, a challenge which in thumbnail histories of the subject is met by Kant. He does this by use of a powerful new form of argument which he calls transcendental argument and which, in my opinion, provides not only reasons but also good reasons for the defence of some of our most central instinctive beliefs. The strategy involved in this kind of argument is to reflect on the necessary preconditions for comprehensible experience. In this way, some beliefs which are subject to sceptical attack, such as that there is a causal order between objects which exist independently of our experience of them, can be found to be the essential preconditions for having comprehensible experience at all. The reason for accepting them is, therefore, that they are the necessary preconditions of having any beliefs at all; and this provides a good, rather than a bad, reason for accepting these particular instinctive beliefs. (shrink)

The evolving Ebola epidemic in West Africa is unprecedented in its size and scope, requiring the rapid mobilization of resources. It is too early to determine all of the ethical challenges associated with the outbreak, but these should be monitored closely. Two issues that can be discussed are the decision to implement and evaluate unregistered agents to determine therapeutic or prophylactic safety and efficacy and the justification behind this decision. In this paper, I argue that it is not compassionate use (...) that justifies this decision and suggest three lines of reasoning to support the decision. (shrink)

In the author's Relative lawlessness in intuitionistic analysis [this JOURNAL. vol. 52 (1987). pp. 68-88] and An intuitionistic theory of lawlike, choice and lawless sequences [Logic Colloquium '90. Springer-Verlag. Berlin. 1993. pp. 191-209] a notion of lawless ness relative to a countable information base was developed for classical and intuitionistic analysis. Here we simplify the predictability property characterizing relatively lawless sequences and derive it from the new axiom of closed data (classically equivalent to open data) together with a natural principle (...) of invariance under finite translation. We characterize relative lawlessness in terms of a notion of forcing. Finally, we study relative lawlessness on an arbitrary fan and show that the collection of lawless binary sequences (which is comeager in the sense of Baire) has probability measure zero. The reasoning is predominantly constructive. (shrink)

The specific type of torture to which Abu Ghraib prisoners were submitted was predicated on the assumption that hejab, or the islamic system of modest, makes Muslims especially vulnerable to shame. This paper investigates this supposed link between hejab and the affect of shame through an analysis of the philosophical and psychoanalytic literature on shame and the films of the iranian filmmaker, Abbas Kiarostami. Beginning with a discussion of the massive impact of hejab regulations on Iranian cinema, the author shows (...) how Kiarostami’s critique of these regulations becomes a powerful argument for shame as against the modesty system. (shrink)

A conception of the person as a subjective being plays a crucial, though frequently overlooked, role in the justification of unequal property in liberal theories. Unger's ascription of individualism to general liberal legal theory can be concretely defended with respect to liberal theories of property. Identifying a common fundamental structure calls in question the conventional view that the liberal legal theories rest on an ensemble of different moral foundations. So important is subjective personality to the moral basis for highly unequal (...) property that such property looks to be morally untenable if this concept of the person is invalid. The analysis points to social theory of personality as a major direction for research into an alternative theory of egalitarian property right. (shrink)

This paper is an investigation of metaphysical nihilism: the view that there could have been no contingent or concrete objects. I begin by showing the connections of the nihilistic theses to other philosophical doctrines. I then go on to look at the arguments for and against metaphysical nihilism in the literature and find both to be flawed. In doing so I will look at the nature of abstract objects, the nature of spacetime and mereological simples, the existence of the empty (...) set, the dependence of universals on particulars, and other general questions of ontology. (shrink)

The noble aim of sociologists to "tell the truth" has sometimes involved ignoble assumptions about human beings. In this major discussion of truth in the social science, Ross Abbinnett traces the debate on truth from the "objectifying powers" of Kant through more than 200 years of critique and reformulation to the unraveling of truth by Lyotard, Foucault, and Derrida. Truth and Social Science gives students an exciting and accessible guide to the main sociological treatments of truth and can also (...) be read as an account of the collapse of modernity and the rise of new forms of thought, which treat difference and ambivalence as positive values. The book will be of interest to students of sociology, social theory, and philosophy. (shrink)

Supporting the concept of DEI, yet, perturbed by the volatility that marks today’s societal and professional climate, the authors of this article examined three Eastern spiritual traditions in search of common guidelines addressing contemporary issues related to social unrest, imbued by inequity and injustice. The areas of review included Buddhist psychology, with some of its foundational concepts such as the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, the concept of ahimsa (non-harming), and the understanding of the impermanence of everything (...) as inclusive managerial practices; Daoist philosophy, with its observations of oneness and equality, and holistic self-alignment with virtue through practicing tranquility; and Hinduism, which focuses on the absence of distinction between ourselves and others around us, thus forming the foundation for morality and ethical behavior with its emphasis on unity in diversity. This collective investigative journey has led us to gather some powerful common behavioral and ethical guidelines, to steer away managers from hyperindividualism and self-centeredness to a greater and consistent respect for the unity among all beings. (shrink)

‘Metaphysics’, said Bradley, ‘is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe on instinct, but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.’ This idea that reasoning is both instinctive and feeble is reminiscent of Hume; except that reasons in Hume tend to serve as the solvent rather than the support of instinctive beliefs. Instinct leads us to play backgammon with other individuals whom we assume inhabit a world which exists independently of our own perception and which will (...) continue to exist tomorrow in a similar fashion to today. However, when instinct leads us also to reason about these beliefs they are all subject to sceptical attack. Their defence provides a challenge, a challenge which in thumbnail histories of the subject is met by Kant. He does this by use of a powerful new form of argument which he calls transcendental argument and which, in my opinion, provides not only reasons but also good reasons for the defence of some of our most central instinctive beliefs. The strategy involved in this kind of argument is to reflect on the necessary preconditions for comprehensible experience. In this way, some beliefs which are subject to sceptical attack, such as that there is a causal order between objects which exist independently of our experience of them, can be found to be the essential preconditions for having comprehensible experience at all. The reason for accepting them is, therefore, that they are the necessary preconditions of having any beliefs at all; and this provides a good, rather than a bad, reason for accepting these particular instinctive beliefs. (shrink)

A cool, lucid examination of the thought of the American philosopher Charles S. Peirce, offering an important clarification and an innovative way to view human ...

The management of covid-19 and the so-called "new normality" have brought with a timely debate of ideas about the future of sovereignty. Leaving aside hegemonic and neoliberal technophilia, this debate has generated two mutually exclusive approaches based on controversial statements by the philosopher Giorgio Agamben, namely: one that foresees an undemocratic horizon subject to new technologies and another that emphasizes the transversal character and contradictory of these. In this work, by appealing to the theory of techno-economic paradigms, I critically set (...) out the main reasonings of the debate and I reflect on the future of democracy. (shrink)

It has long been known that the red blood cell contains a membrane skeleton that stabilizes the plasma membrane, determines its shape, and regulates the lateral distribution of the membrane glyco‐proteins to which it is attached. The way in which these functions are regulated in other cells has not been understood. It has now been shown that platelets also contain a membrane skeleton. In contrast to the membrane skeleton of the red blood cell, the platelet membrane skeleton has actin‐binding protein, (...) not spectrin, as a major component. The platelet membrane skeleton regulates the same cellular functions as the red blood cell membrane skeleton. Other cells may contain a membrane skeleton that is critical to their viability and normal functioning. (shrink)

Social interactions at fraternities that undergraduate women identified as places where there is a high risk of rape are compared to those at fraternities identified as low risk as well as two local bars. Factors that contribute to rape are common on this campus; however, both men and women behaved differently in different settings. Implications of these findings are considered.