Suther contrasts Theodor Adorno’s idea of “truth” in the work of art with Martin Heidegger’s The Origin of the Work of Art. Ultimately, the piece argues for a materialist aesthetics through Adorno’s account of modernism, suggesting that the “dissonance” intrinsic to modernist works of art activates the intellect of the beholder, disclosing the contradictions of capital.

This article sheds new light on late-19th-century debates about the organization of knowledge through its emphasis on German orientalism and comparative linguistics. Centering on Friedrich Carl Andreas’ (1846–1930) controversial reconstruction of the Avestan language and its sacred literary corpus, I highlight a shift from the history of texts to an engagement with ‘living’ language in the decades around 1900. Andreas is shown to have inherited aspects of two schools, which collectively defined the landscape of 19th-century philological research – one traditional (...) and the other comparative. The long-standing struggle between these schools demonstrates that ‘the humanities’ were no monolithic foil to the rise of natural sciences during the second half of the 19thcentury. Instead, I argue that alternative conceptual frameworks were cultivated within German philology – concepts that were taken up in broader disciplinary debates, though they were not narrowly the products of them. (shrink)

Schopenhauer is famously abusive toward his philosophical contemporary and rival, Friedrich William Joseph von Schelling. This chapter examines the motivations for Schopenhauer’s immoderate attitude and the substance behind the insults. It looks carefully at both the nature of the insults and substantive critical objections Schopenhauer had to Schelling’s philosophy, both to Schelling’s metaphysical description of the thing-in-itself and Schelling’s epistemic mechanism of intellectual intuition. It concludes that Schopenhauer’s substantive criticism is reasonable and that Schopenhauer does in fact avoid Schelling’s errors: (...) still, the vehemence of the abuse is best perhaps explained by the proximity of their philosophies, not the distance. Indeed, both are developing metaphysics of will with full and conflicted awareness of the Kantian epistemic strictures against metaphysics. In view of this, Schopenhauer is particularly concerned to mark his own project as legitimate by highlighting the manner in which he avoids Schelling’s errors. (shrink)

In the past decade, the meaning of Hegel's idea of a ‘science of logic’ has become a matter of intense philosophical debate. This article examines the two most influential yet opposed contemporary readings of the Science of Logic—often referred to as the ‘metaphysical’ and ‘non-metaphysical’ interpretations. I argue that this debate should be reframed as a contest between logic as ontology (LAO) and logic as metaphysics (LAM). According to Stephen Houlgate's interpretation of logic as ontology, the science of logic is (...) a progressively explicit unfolding of the categories of thought, which is at the same time the process by which being itself determines what it is to be. A second interpretation has been pursued by Sebastian Rödl and Robert Pippin, who read Hegel's logic as metaphysics. On this reading, the science of logic is a progressively coherent unfolding of the categories of thought, which articulate all that it could intelligibly mean to be. This article intervenes in this debate in three key ways. First, I argue that Houlgate's ontological approach undermines his attempt to establish the objective validity of the categories. Second, I show that the LAM emphasis on the crucial idea of apperception enables it to succeed where Houlgate fails by doing justice to the rational necessity with which the Logic unfolds. Third, I argue that, despite this success, the LAM program remains unrealized because of its neglect of Hegel's understanding of cognition as a form of life. While LAM has compellingly unfolded the ‘thought of being’, it has ignored the inverse question of the ‘being of thought’. I attempt to fulfil the LAM program by elaborating Hegel's account of what it means to be a thinker. (shrink)

In ____Bodies That Matter,__ Judith Butler further develops her distinctive theory of gender by examining the workings of power at the most "material" dimensions of sex and sexuality. Deepening the inquiries she began in _Gender_ _Trouble,_ Butler offers an original reformulation of the materiality of bodies, examining how the power of heterosexual hegemony forms the "matter" of bodies, sex, and gender. Butler argues that power operates to constrain "sex" from the start, delimiting what counts as a viable sex. She (...) offers a clarification of the notion of "performativity" introduced in _Gender Trouble_ and explores the meaning of a citational politics. The text includes readings of Plato, Irigaray, Lacan, and Freud on the formation of materiality and bodily boundaries; "Paris is Burning," Nella Larsen's "Passing," and short stories by Willa Cather; along with a reconsideration of "performativity" and politics in feminist, queer, and radical democratic theory. (shrink)

One of the most talked-about scholarly works of the past fifty years, Judith Butler’s _Gender Trouble_ is as celebrated as it is controversial. Arguing that traditional feminism is wrong to look to a natural, 'essential' notion of the female, or indeed of sex or gender, Butler starts by questioning the category 'woman' and continues in this vein with examinations of 'the masculine' and 'the feminine'. Best known however, but also most often misinterpreted, is Butler's concept of gender as a (...) reiterated social _performance _rather than the expression of a prior reality. Thrilling and provocative, few other academic works have roused passions to the same extent. (shrink)

Evidence of the far-reaching impact of the Anthropocene on young people presents youth work with opportunities to reflect on some long-standing issues. This pioneering exercise considers the implications for youth work practice and its ethical frameworks should it embrace the tenets of the ‘new materialism’. We ask how youth work practice is currently understood, especially in ‘British-influenced youth work’ and whether there are problems with its conceptual, ethical and practice frameworks. We offer an account of ‘new materialism’ then consider the (...) implications for the ethics of youth work practice if practitioners were to adopt this ontological perspective. Conceptually youth work would have a more relational orientation and rely less on essentialist universalised categories like ‘child’, ‘adolescent’ and ‘adult’. It would jettison developmentalist narratives and the structure-agency impasse by elaborating new accounts of assemblages-contingency. Adopting this approach also entails an ethic of cultivation grounded in care for the world. Such an ethic would entail situational judgements about how to enact care in a world in which unexpected changes periodically emerge. This bears a close relationship to ‘phronetic practice’. (shrink)

One of the most talked-about scholarly works of the past fifty years, Judith Butler’s _Gender Trouble_ is as celebrated as it is controversial. Arguing that traditional feminism is wrong to look to a natural, 'essential' notion of the female, or indeed of sex or gender, Butler starts by questioning the category 'woman' and continues in this vein with examinations of 'the masculine' and 'the feminine'. Best known however, but also most often misinterpreted, is Butler's concept of gender as a (...) reiterated social _performance _rather than the expression of a prior reality. Thrilling and provocative, few other academic works have roused passions to the same extent. (shrink)

Ever since feminist theory introduced the distinction between sex and gender, the question of what it means to be a woman has preoccupied feminist thought. In ____Gender__ ____Trouble ____ Judith Butler questions whether it is possible to "be" a woman at all or, for that matter, any gender.

The prior issue of Krisis (42:1) published Critical Naturalism: A Manifesto, with the aim to instigate a debate of the issues raised in this manifesto – the necessary re-thinking of the role (and the concept) of nature in critical theory in relation to questions of ecology, health, and inequality. Since Krisis considers itself a place for philosophical debates that take contemporary struggles as starting point, it issued an open call and solicited responses to the manifesto. This is one of the (...) sixteen selected responses, which augment, specify, or question the assumptions and arguments of the manifesto. (shrink)

In ____Bodies That Matter,__ Judith Butler further develops her distinctive theory of gender by examining the workings of power at the most "material" dimensions of sex and sexuality. Deepening the inquiries she began in _Gender_ _Trouble,_ Butler offers an original reformulation of the materiality of bodies, examining how the power of heterosexual hegemony forms the "matter" of bodies, sex, and gender. Butler argues that power operates to constrain "sex" from the start, delimiting what counts as a viable sex. She (...) offers a clarification of the notion of "performativity" introduced in _Gender Trouble_ and explores the meaning of a citational politics. The text includes readings of Plato, Irigaray, Lacan, and Freud on the formation of materiality and bodily boundaries; "Paris is Burning," Nella Larsen's "Passing," and short stories by Willa Cather; along with a reconsideration of "performativity" and politics in feminist, queer, and radical democratic theory. (shrink)

In ____Bodies That Matter,__ Judith Butler further develops her distinctive theory of gender by examining the workings of power at the most "material" dimensions of sex and sexuality. Deepening the inquiries she began in _Gender_ _Trouble,_ Butler offers an original reformulation of the materiality of bodies, examining how the power of heterosexual hegemony forms the "matter" of bodies, sex, and gender. Butler argues that power operates to constrain "sex" from the start, delimiting what counts as a viable sex. She (...) offers a clarification of the notion of "performativity" introduced in _Gender Trouble_ and explores the meaning of a citational politics. The text includes readings of Plato, Irigaray, Lacan, and Freud on the formation of materiality and bodily boundaries; "Paris is Burning," Nella Larsen's "Passing," and short stories by Willa Cather; along with a reconsideration of "performativity" and politics in feminist, queer, and radical democratic theory. (shrink)

Aristotle wrote that "the ultimate purpose in studying ethics is not as it is in other inquiries, the attainment of theoretical knowledge; we are not conducting this inquiry in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good, else there would be no advantage in studying it." Ethics for Life is a multicultural and interdisciplinary introductory ethics textbook that provides students with an ethics curriculum that has been shown to significantly improve students' ability to make real-life moral (...) decisions. (shrink)

Approximately 1 in 30 people develop cancer due to an underlying familial predisposition. Genetic counselling and testing for people with (and at risk of) familial cancer are becoming more widely available, but service providers need to address challenging issues in relation to privacy and property. As in any counselling situation, a genetic counsellor seeks to ensure that the principles of autonomy, confidentiality, beneficence, and equity operate in favour of the client. But in dealing with a familial disorder, the application of (...) these principles to the individual must be balanced with the potential for these principles to apply to other family members. This paper summarises the recent experience of a familial cancer service in seeking to avoid situations in which these principles, operating for both individual clients and their relatives, can come into conflict. (shrink)

Judith Jarvis Thomson; Killing, Letting Die, and The Trolley Problem, The Monist, Volume 59, Issue 2, 1 April 1976, Pages 204–217, https://doi.org/10.5840/monis.

With the same intellectual courage with which she addressed issues of gender, Judith Butler turns her attention to speech and conduct in contemporary political life, looking at several efforts to target speech as conduct that has become subject to political debate and regulation. Reviewing hate speech regulations, anti-pornography arguments, and recent controversies about gay self-declaration in the military, Judith Butler asks whether and how language acts in each of these cultural sites.

Questioning the dominant view that Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty have little of substance in common, Judith Wambacq draws on unpublished primary sources and current scholarship in English and French to bring them into a compelling dialogue to reveal a shared concern with the transcendental conditions of thought.

With the same intellectual courage with which she addressed issues of gender, Judith Butler turns her attention to speech and conduct in contemporary political life, looking at several efforts to target speech as conduct that has become subject to political debate and regulation. Reviewing hate speech regulations, anti-pornography arguments, and recent controversies about gay self-declaration in the military, Judith Butler asks whether and how language acts in each of these cultural sites.

In an increasingly litigious society where ritual demands for accountability and “taking responsibility” are now commonplace, it is not surprising that members of clinical ethics committees (CECs) are becoming more aware of their potential legal liability. Yet the vulnerability of committee members to legal action is difficult to assess with any certainty. This is because the CECs which have been set up in the UK are—if the American experience is followed—likely to vary significantly in terms of their functions, procedures, composition, (...) structures and authority. As a consequence it is difficult to generalise about the legal implications. Nevertheless, despite these difficulties this article will outline the broad legal principles governing the potential liability of committee members. It will also consider the relationship between CECs and the courts. It begins, however, with a brief analysis of the relationship between ethics and law in committee deliberations, and in particular of the role of law and legal expertise on CECs. (shrink)

Goodness -- Goodness properties -- Expressivism -- Betterness relations -- Virtue/kind properties -- Correctness properties (acts) -- Correctness properties (mental states) -- Reasons-for (mental states) -- Reasons-for (acts) -- On some views about "ought" : relativism, dilemmas, means-ends -- On some views about "ought" : belief, outcomes, epistemic ought -- Directives -- Addendum 1: "Red" and "good" -- Addendum 2: Correctness -- Addendum 3: Reasons -- Addendum 4: Reasoning.

But what if in order to save 0nc’s life one has to ki]1 another person? In some cases that is obviously permissible. In a case I will call Villainous Aggrcssor, you are standing in :1 meadow, innocently minding your own business, and 21 truck suddenly heads toward you. You try to sidestep the truck, but it tums as you tum. Now you can sec the driver: he is a mam you know has long hated you. What to do? You cannot (...) outrun thc truck. Fortunately, this is not pure nightmare: you just happen to have em antitank gun with you, and can blow up the truck. Of course, if you do this you will kill thc driver, but that does not matter; it is morally permissible for you to blow up thc truck, driver and 211, in defense of your life. (shrink)

Two visual world experiments investigated the processing of the implicature associated with some using a “gumball paradigm.” On each trial, participants saw an image of a gumball machine with an upper chamber with orange and blue gumballs and an empty lower chamber. Gumballs dropped to the lower chamber, creating a contrast between a partitioned set of gumballs of one color and an unpartitioned set of the other. Participants then evaluated spoken statements, such as “You got some of the blue gumballs.” (...) Experiment 1 investigated the time course of the pragmatic enrichment from some to not all when the only utterance alternatives available to refer to the different sets were some and all. In Experiment 2, the number terms two, three, four, and five were also included in the set of alternatives. Scalar implicatures were delayed relative to the interpretation of literal statements with all only when number terms were available. The results are interpreted as evidence for a constraint-based account of scalar implicature processing. (shrink)

Debate about the responsibilities of affluent people to act to lessen global poverty has dominated ethics and political philosophy for forty years. But the controversy has reached an impasse, with the main approaches either demanding too much of ordinary mortals or else letting them off the hook. In Distant Strangers I show how a preoccupation with standard moral theories and with the concepts of duty and obligation have led philosophers astray. I argue that there are serious limits to what can (...) be demanded of ordinary human beings, but that this does not mean we must abandon the moral imperative to reduce poverty. Drawing on findings from behavioral economics and psychology, I show how we can motivate better-off people to lessen poverty without excessively taxing their moral virtue. And I argue that this approach is not just pragmatically but morally appropriate. (shrink)

Many jobs today are alienating: they damage the working person in psychological, mental, intellectual or psychosomatic ways; the psychosomatic damage may be permanent. This ill is due to a disregard for the basic psychological needs not gratified in a large number of workroles. It can be remedied without revolutionizing either the political or the economic-legal systems of pluralist democratic societies. Rather, we should revolutionize the image of the rank-and-file working person and attempt radical experiments in implementing new and democratic structures (...) in the workplace. The feasibility of all this is demonstrated by many successful and viable reforms. These are system-atically overlooked by backward-looking social scientists (Taylorist traditionalists, neo-Marxists and technological determinists). (shrink)

But if there aren’t, then ‘they’ are not caused by anything and do not cause anything. That certainly appears to be false, however. John’s absence from our party might have been caused by his having fallen ill, and might cause a commotion. Dick’s not eating his soup might have been caused by his having fallen ill, and might cause a commotion.

This interview with the philosopher Bernard Stiegler was conducted in Paris on 28 January 2015, and first appeared in Dutch translation in the journal De uil van Minerva. The conversation begins by discussing the fundamental place occupied by the concept of ‘technics’ in Stiegler’s work, and how the ‘constitutivity’ of technics does and does not relate to Kant and Husserl. Stiegler is then asked about his relationship with Deleuze, and he responds by focusing on the concept of quasi-causality, but also (...) by arguing that there is a certain trajectory in Deleuze’s thought, situating his own philosophy in relation to its various moments. Stiegler is then asked to respond to the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks carried out three weeks prior to the interview. After making a couple of precautionary remarks, Stiegler relates such occurrences to the problem of what he calls ‘spiritual poverty’, to the intensification of ‘negative sublimation’ that can occur when there is a disconnection between the generations, and more generally to the growth of nihilism. All of these phenomena relate to the exploitation of technology by a virulent capitalism that irrationally believes that only the market is rational. After consideration of the complex historical relationship between Islam and modernization, and of both of these to Nietzsche’s ‘death of God’, and after recalling the destructive role played by the West in the rise of fundamentalism and jihadism, Stiegler concludes by reflecting on the fact that, ultimately, ‘intellectuals’ have failed to use technologies in ways that produce alternatives to consumerism. (shrink)

Two decades of research on euthanasia in the Netherlands have resulted into clear insights in the frequency and characteristics of euthanasia and other medical end-of-life decisions in the Netherlands. These empirical studies have contributed to the quality of the public debate, and to the regulating and public control of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. No slippery slope seems to have occurred. Physicians seem to adhere to the criteria for due care in the large majority of cases. Further, it has been shown (...) that the majority of physicians think that the euthanasia Act has improved their legal certainty and contributes to the carefulness of life-terminating acts. In 2005, eighty percent of the euthanasia cases were reported to the review committees. Thus, the transparency envisaged by the Act still does not extend to all cases. Unreported cases almost all involve the use of opioids, and are not considered to be euthanasia by physicians. More education and debate is needed to disentangle in these situations which acts should be regarded as euthanasia and which should not. Medical end-of-life decision-making is a crucial part of end-of-life care. It should therefore be given continuous attention in health care policy and medical training. Systematic periodic research is crucial for enhancing our understanding of end-of-life care in modern medicine, in which the pursuit of a good quality of dying is nowadays widely recognized as an important goal, in addition to the traditional goals such as curing diseases and prolonging life. (shrink)

In the debate about the nature of social cognition we see a shift towards theories that explain social understanding through interaction. This paper discusses autopoietic enactivism and the we-mode approach in the light of such developments. We argue that a problem seems to arise for these theories: an interactionist account of social cognition makes the capacity of shared intentionality a presupposition of social understanding, while the capacity of engaging in scenes of shared intentionality in turn presupposes exactly the kind of (...) social understanding that it is intended to explain. The social capacity in question that is presupposed by these accounts is then analyzed in the second section via a discussion and further development of Searle’s ‘sense of us’ and ‘sense of the other’ as a precondition for social cognition and joint action. After a critical discussion of Schmid’s recent proposal to analyze this in terms of plural pre-reflective selfawareness, we develop an alternative account. Starting from the idea that infants distinguish in perception between physical objects and other agents we distinguish between affordances and social affordances and cash out the notion of a social affordance in terms of “interaction-oriented representations”, parallel to the analysis of object affordances in terms of “action-oriented representations”. By characterizing their respective features we demonstrate how this approach can solve the problem formulated in the first part. (shrink)

Two decades of research on euthanasia in the Netherlands have resulted into clear insights in the frequency and characteristics of euthanasia and other medical end-of-life decisions in the Netherlands. These empirical studies have contributed to the quality of the public debate, and to the regulating and public control of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. No slippery slope seems to have occurred. Physicians seem to adhere to the criteria for due care in the large majority of cases. Further, it has been shown (...) that the majority of physicians think that the euthanasia Act has improved their legal certainty and contributes to the carefulness of life-terminating acts. In 2005, eighty percent of the euthanasia cases were reported to the review committees. Thus, the transparency envisaged by the Act still does not extend to all cases. Unreported cases almost all involve the use of opioids, and are not considered to be euthanasia by physicians. More education and debate is needed to disentangle in these situations which acts should be regarded as euthanasia and which should not. Medical end-of-life decision-making is a crucial part of end-of-life care. It should therefore be given continuous attention in health care policy and medical training. Systematic periodic research is crucial for enhancing our understanding of end-of-life care in modern medicine, in which the pursuit of a good quality of dying is nowadays widely recognized as an important goal, in addition to the traditional goals such as curing diseases and prolonging life. (shrink)

Introduction : low theory -- Animating revolt and revolting animation -- Dude, where's my phallus? forgetting, losing, looping -- The queer art of failure -- Shadow feminisms : queer negativity and radical passivity -- "The killer in me is the killer in you" : homosexuality and fascism -- Animating failure: ending, fleeing, surviving.

Dispossession describes the condition of those who have lost land, citizenship, property, and a broader belonging to the world. This thought-provoking book seeks to elaborate our understanding of dispossession outside of the conventional logic of possession, a hallmark of capitalism, liberalism, and humanism. Can dispossession simultaneously characterize political responses and opposition to the disenfranchisement associated with unjust dispossession of land, economic and political power, and basic conditions for living? In the context of neoliberal expropriation of labor and livelihood, dispossession opens (...) up a performative condition of being both affected by injustice and prompted to act. From the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa to the anti-neoliberal gatherings at Puerta del Sol, Syntagma and Zucchotti Park, an alternative political and affective economy of bodies in public is being formed. Bodies on the street are precarious - exposed to police force, they are also standing for, and opposing, their dispossession. These bodies insist upon their collective standing, organize themselves without and against hierarchy, and refuse to become disposable: they demand regard. This book interrogates the agonistic and open-ended corporeality and conviviality of the crowd as it assembles in cities to protest political and economic dispossession through a performative dispossession of the sovereign subject and its propriety. (shrink)

Projective contents, which include presuppositional inferences and Potts's conventional implicatures, are contents that may project when a construction is embedded, as standardly identified by the FAMILY-OF-SENTENCES diagnostic. This article establishes distinctions among projective contents on the basis of a series of diagnostics, including a variant of the family-of-sentences diagnostic, that can be applied with linguistically untrained consultants in the field and the laboratory. These diagnostics are intended to serve as part of a toolkit for exploring projective contents across languages, thus (...) allowing generalizations to be examined and validated crosslinguistically. We apply the diagnostics in two languages, focusing on Paraguayan Guaraní, and comparing the results to those for English. Our study of Paraguayan Guaraní is the first systematic exploration of projective content in a language other than English. Based on the application of our diagnostics to a wide range of constructions, four subclasses of projective contents emerge. The resulting taxonomy of projective content has strong implications for contemporary theories of projection, which were developed for the projective properties of particular subclasses and fail to generalize to the full set of projective contents. (shrink)