The divide between oneself and others has made altruism seem irrational to some thinkers, as Sidgwick points out. I use characterizations of grief, especially by St. Augustine, to question the divide, and use a composition-as-identity metaphysics of parts and wholes to make literal sense of those characterizations.

Dans le contexte de grande liberté qui caractérise l’Université des années 1970-1980, une douzaine d’enseignantes-chercheuses toulousaines venues de disciplines très différentes ont fondé le grief ettenté l’expérience d’une approche interdisciplinaire de l’histoire des femmes et du genre. Une telle démarche, que l’organisation actuelle de la recherche a rendue utopique, a joué un rôle déterminant dans leur formation intellectuelle, leur affirmation de soi et, pour certaines d’entre elles, dans l’orientation de leurs travaux.

Commentators onEpode11 generally begin by comparing the opening couplet with Archilochus : κα⋯ μ' οὔτ' ἰ⋯μβων οὔτε τερπωλ⋯ων μ⋯λει, and sometimes also Catullus 68. 1–40. In both of these the poet explains that grief at the death of a loved one has expelled all desire to compose verses. According to the comparison, Horace, in 1–2, is stating that the onset of love has, similarly, so absorbed his attention that he cannot write verse. The translation will then run ‘Pettius, I (...) have no pleasure any longer in writing verse, smitten as I am with a heavy love’. (shrink)

Commentators on Epode 11 generally begin by comparing the opening couplet with Archilochus : κα μ' οτ' μβων οτε τερπωλων μλει, and sometimes also Catullus 68. 1–40. In both of these the poet explains that grief at the death of a loved one has expelled all desire to compose verses. According to the comparison, Horace, in 1–2, is stating that the onset of love has, similarly, so absorbed his attention that he cannot write verse. The translation will then run (...) ‘Pettius, I have no pleasure any longer in writing verse, smitten as I am with a heavy love’. (shrink)

Commentators onEpode11 generally begin by comparing the opening couplet with Archilochus : κα⋯ μ' οὔτ' ἰ⋯μβων οὔτε τερπωλ⋯ων μ⋯λει, and sometimes also Catullus 68. 1–40. In both of these the poet explains that grief at the death of a loved one has expelled all desire to compose verses. According to the comparison, Horace, in 1–2, is stating that the onset of love has, similarly, so absorbed his attention that he cannot write verse. The translation will then run ‘Pettius, I (...) have no pleasure any longer in writing verse, smitten as I am with a heavy love’. (shrink)

What do we know of the wife and child the Buddha abandoned when he went off to seek his enlightenment? For the first time, The Buddha's Wife brings this rarely told story to the forefront, offering a nuanced portrait of this compelling and compassionate figure while also examining the practical applications her teachings have on our modern lives. Princess Yasodhara's journey is one full of loss, grief, and suffering. But through it, she discovered her own enlightenment within the deep (...) bonds of community and "ordinary" relationships. While traditional Buddhism emphasizes solitary mediation, Yasodhara's experience speaks of the Path of Right Relation, of achieving awareness not alone but together with others. The Buddha's Wife is comprised of two parts: the first part is a historical narrative of Yasodhara's fascinating story, and then the second part is a reader's companion filled with life lessons, practices, and reflections for the modern reader. Her story gives readers a relational path, one which speaks directly to our everyday lives and offers a doorway to profound spiritual maturation, awakening, and wisdom beyond the solitary, heroic journey. (shrink)

Issues surrounding pregnancy loss are rarely addressed in Christian philosophy. Yet a modest estimate based on the empirical and medical literature places the rate of pregnancy loss between fertilization and term at somewhere between 40–60%. If miscarriage really is as common as the research gives us to believe, then it would seem a pressing topic for a Christian philosophy of the future to address. This paper attempts to begin this work by showing how thinking more closely about pregnancy loss understood (...) as a grievable event can have a profound impact on the way we think about particular theoretical debates in Christian philosophy and provide opportunities for the discipline to put its skills to use in the development of helpful conceptual and hermeneutical resources for those grieving such losses. However, this will require seeking out and taking seriously the testimony of those who have undergone pregnancy loss, as well as getting clearer on how best to conceptualize pregnancy and its loss in the first place. (shrink)

La mort nous afflige, nous angoisse, voire nous terrifie. Qu’est-ce que la mort ? La tristesse et l’angoisse face à la mort sont-elles justifiées ? La mort est-elle un mal ? Vaudrait-il mieux être immortel ? Comment comprendre le deuil ? Cette entrée propose un aperçu des questions principales de la philosophie contemporaine de la mort. Tentons de sonder l’énigme la plus tragique de la vie.

_Disaster Psychiatry: Intervening When Nightmares Come True_ captures the state of disaster psychiatry in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. This emergent psychiatric specialty, which is increasingly separated from trauma and grief psychiatry on one hand and military psychiatry on the other, provides psychotherapeutic assistance to victims during, and in the weeks and months following, major disasters. As such, disaster psychiatrists must operate in the widely varying locales in which natural and man-made disasters occur, and (...) they must establish their role among the chaotic array of organizations involved in direct disaster response. Editors Anand Pandya and Craig Katz have captured the challenge and promise of disaster psychiatry through first-person narratives. We hear from psychiatrists who have encountered disasters at various stages of their career and in widely varying social, political, and personal contexts. Accounts of psychiatric involvement with adults and children during and after 9/11 have understandable pride of place in this collection. But they are balanced by richly informative narratives about other domestic and international disasters. Fraught with the drama attendant to the events they describe, these essays delineate the dizzying array of challenges that confront the disaster psychiatrist. They range from the intense emotional responses that are part of the aftermath of any disaster, to the need to legitimize a psychiatric presence within diverse cultural and medical contexts, to the subtle task of providing therapeutic boundaries at a time when all rules seem to be suspended. Special attention is given to the daunting task of working with children whose parents' are disaster victims. What emerges from these testimonies is compelling documentation of skilled and compassionate psychiatrists at the outer limits of their specialty, pursuing their calling into uncharted realms of therapeutic engagement. (shrink)

In Book 10 of the Aeneid, Virgil presents an epic catalogue of Etruscan allies who return under Aeneas' command to the beleaguered Trojan camp, including the forces from Liguria. The account of the Ligurians initially conforms to the general pattern of the catalogue, as Virgil briefly introduces and describes the two leaders. But the description of Cupauo's swan-feather crest leads to a digression about the paternal origins of the avian symbol. Cupauo's father Cycnus, stricken with grief for his beloved (...) Phaethon, was transformed from a mournful singer into the swan that bears his name : non ego te, Ligurum ductor fortissime bello,transierim, Cinyre, et paucis comitate Cupauo,cuius olorinae surgunt de uertice pennae formaeque insigne paternae.namque ferunt luctu Cycnum Phaethontis amati,populeas inter frondes umbramque sororum 190dum canit et maestum Musa solatur amorem,canentem molli pluma duxisse senectamlinquentem terras et sidera uoce sequentem. Virgil not only places the Ligurians in a central position within the catalogue, but also devotes more verses to them than to any other contingent, including his own Mantuans. At the very heart of this prominent passage lies the embedded tale of Cycnus, the erotic and sorrowful centrepiece of Virgil's Etruscan catalogue. (shrink)

This book engages with the writings of W.G. Sebald, mediated by perspectives drawn from curriculum and architecture, to explore the theme of unsettling complacency and confront difficult knowledge around trauma, discrimination and destruction. Moving beyond overly instrumentalist and reductive approaches, the authors combine disciplines in a scholarly fashion to encourage readers to stretch their understandings of currere. The chapters exemplify important, timely and complicated conversations centred on ethical response and responsibility, in order to imagine a more just and aesthetically experienced (...) world. In the analysis of bildung as human formation, the book illuminates the pertinent lessons to be learned from the works of Sebald and provokes further investigations into the questions of memory, grief, and limits of language. Through its juxtaposition of curriculum and architecture, and using the prose of Sebald as a prism, the book revitalizes questions about education and ethics, probes the unsettling of complacency, and enables conversation around difficult knowledge and ethical responsibility, as well as offering hope and resolve. An important intervention in standard approaches to understanding currere, this book provides essential context for scholars and educators with interests in the history of education, curriculum studies, cultural studies, memory studies, narrative research, Sebaldian studies, and educational philosophy. (shrink)

Reviewed Works:B. I. Zil'ber, L. Pacholski, J. Wierzejewski, A. J. Wilkie, Totally Categorical Theories: Structural Properties and the Non-Finite Axiomatizability.B. I. Zil'ber, Strongly Minimal Countably Categorical Theories.B. I. Zil'ber, Strongly Minimal Countably Categorical Theories. II.B. I. Zil'ber, Strongly Minimal Countably Categorical Theories. III.B. I. Zil'ber, E. Mendelson, Totally Categorical Structures and Combinatorial Geometries.B. I. Zil'ber, The Structure of Models of Uncountably Categorical Theories.

: In this article we shall deal with the construction and defense of subjective identity as a topic at the intersection of psychology and anthropology. In this perspective, defense mechanisms are seen as falling along a spectrum that stretches from the individual to the collective level. The individual mind is the sphere of the intrapsychic defenses and the interpersonal maneuvers to which each of us appeals, in the relationship with other people and with one’s own environment, to defend one’s own (...) self-describability and, indissolubly, the solidity of one’s own self-conscious being. At a social and collective level, on the other hand, the individual self-protective structures are supported by cultural interventions that organize and intersubjectively “domesticate” our subjectivity and our feeling of being-there. Keywords: Autobiographical Reasoning; Defense Mechanisms; Grief; Narrative Identity; Ontological Insecurity Meccanismi di difesa: dall’individuale al collettivo Riassunto: L’articolo si occupa di costruzione e difesa dell’identità soggettiva come tema all’intersezione di psicologia e antropologia. In questa prospettiva, i meccanismi di difesa si dispongono lungo uno spettro che dal livello individuale conduce a quello collettivo. La mente individuale è la sfera delle difese intrapsichiche e delle manovre interpersonali a cui ognuno di noi fa ricorso, nella relazione con gli altri e col proprio ambiente, per difendere la propria autodescrivibilità e, inscindibilmente, la solidità del proprio essere autocosciente. Al livello sociale e collettivo, invece, le strutture autoprotettive dell’individuo sono sorrette da interventi culturali che organizzano e “addomesticano” intersoggettivamente la nostra soggettività e il nostro sentirci esistere. Parole chiave: Ragionamento autobiografico; Meccanismi di difesa; Cordoglio; Identità narrativa; Insicurezza ontologica. (shrink)

LeShan L. and LeShan, E. Psychotherapy and the patient with a limited life span.--Kubler-Ross, E. On death and dying.--Kutscher, A. H. Anticipatory grief, death, and bereavement: a continuum.--Needleman, J. The moment of grief.--Lifton, R. J. On death and death symbolism: the Hiroshima disaster.--Nelson, B. The games of life and dances of death.--Sleeper, R. The resurrection of the body.--Friedman, M. Death and the dialogue with the absurd.--Wyschogrod, E. Sport, death, and the elemental.--Lamont, R. The double apprenticeship: life and the (...) process of dying--Selected bibliography (p. 225-235). (shrink)

En dépit de témoignages explicites d'auteurs anciens, auxquels des historiens modernes ont fait confiance, la date tardive du Phèdre ne fait plus de doute. Ce résultat est dû aux études stylistiques bien plus qu'aux travaux d'exégèse. Quand il s'agit de définir le sens et le but du dialogue ou de démêler les liens qui le rattachent aux autres dialogues ou à des écrits contemporains, on est loin d'aboutir à un accord. Platon veut-il simplement établir le programme d'une rhétorique philosophique pour (...) faire pièce à l'action envahissante des écoles de rhétorique ? Vise-t-il plus spécialement telle ou telle doctrine rhétorique ? Vu les points de contact avec des écrits d'Isocrate, d'Alcidamas et d'autres, a-t-il peut-être voulu trancher certaines questions brûlantes, intervenir en conciliateur ou en arbitre ? Le fait est que l'examen dialectique se termine à la p. 272b par la récapitulation et la réponse définitive à la question posée p. 258d et reprise p. 259e. Alors que le débat portait sur le logos en tant que discours écrit ou prononcé, Socrate introduit dans la finale la notion du logos de l'âme pour répondre aux objections de Phèdre. Alors qu'il a prouvé (261e-262b) la nécessité de la connaissance de la vérité, peu importe de quel genre de discours il s'agit, il revient en arrière pour discuter à nouveau la théorie de la vraisemblance de Tisias appliquée au seul genre judiciaire. Pourquoi, après chacune des objections (273d-274a, 278bc) répéter la conclusion finale et reprendre coup sur coup le problème de l'œuvre écrite, qu'il avait expédié en passant, p. 257d-258d ? Au terme de cette dernière diversion, Socrate oppose à la philosophie les techniques spéciales qui lui sont subordonnées : législation, poésie, éloquence. Est-ce peut-être dans ce message destiné à Lysias et doublé d'un message analogue à Isocrate que Platon a voulu nous donner la clef de l'œuvre ? Le Phèdre été conçu comme un drame parfait axé sur la mission et la condamnation de Socrate et cette structure lui donne son sens et son unité. Le cœur, c'est la péripétie et cette „reconnaissance” dans laquelle le daimonion ouvre les yeux de Socrate. Ecoutant son daimonion, il embrasse ses dieux à lui, son Eros, et dès lors sera traité d'impie par le jury. Les politiques, les poètes et les orateurs impuissants à appuyer leurs paroles (par la philosophie) (273c) deviendront ses accusateurs, et c'est Socrate qui, ignorant leur éloquence, sera impuissant à se défendre. On lui reprochera de corrompre la jeunesse. C'est que son discours ici se termine par cette prière significative : „Accorde-moi... d'être, plus encore qu'à présent, en crédit auprès des beaux garçons” (257a trad. Robin). Bref, la scène du Phèdre est le prélude, ou, si l'on veut, la contre-partie du drame de 399. Quel est le rôle de Lysias ? Exactement le même que dans la République et le Clitophon. Contrairement à son frère Polémarque (257b) il ne pense que politique et barreau, une politique qui en définitive adopte les principes de violence de Thrasymaque (Rép. I et Phèdre 266c). Dans une soi-disant Défense de Socrate, il a répondu à Polycrate en ramenant toute l'affaire sur le plan purement politique et en reniant le verdict de 399, imputable à l'absence d'une défense efficace. Soucieux du relèvement de la démocratie, il désire reléguer à l'arrière-plan l'affaire de 399, faire oublier les griefs religieux et peut-être tendre la main aux Socratiques, pour, ainsi, passer à l'ordre du jour. Or, se prêter à cette manoeuvre, pour Platon, c'est renier son maître. Que reproche-t-il à Lysias ? De tourner le dos à la Philosophie en médisant d'Eros. Et nous apprenons en finale, pour mettre fin à toute équivoque, qu'Isocrate n'échappe pas à ce même reproche. Mais tout cela se situe à l'arrière-plan. Dans la trame du Phèdre, celui qui est directement accusé d'impiété, celui qui s'accuse lui-même, c'est Socrate. S'il n'y avait vu clair, s'il avait quitté ce lieu sacré après un succès oratoire sur un thème imposé par Lysias, il aurait renié ses daimonia ; il aurait trouvé grâce auprès des hommes, mais serait justiciable des dieux (242d). Dans ce cas le drame, le vrai drame du Phèdre, n'aurait pas eu lieu et Socrate aurait échappé à son arrêt de mort. (shrink)

La médecine contemporaine bénéficie d’une prodigieuse efficacité technique. Pourtant, paradoxalement, les griefs à son encontre lui dessinent fréquemment le profil d’une accusée : l’objectivité, la rationalité de la science médicale ne font pas bon ménage avec la parole du malade. Dans la consultation médicale, plus exactement dans le contrat qui unit l’usager à un prestataire de soins, n’y a-t-il que des droits pour le premier et des obligations pour le second ? Droit d’avoir les enfants que l’on veut et devoir (...) de proposer le dernier équipement technique ? Un « testament de vie » est-il contraignant pour les soignants ? La médecine doit-elle accéder à toutes les demandes et s’occuper du bonheur ? L’article discute l’enjeu de ces interrogations. Celui-ci est peut-être lié à une question de sens, c’est-à-dire d’interaction entre la signification de la pratique médicale, la direction que celle-ci veut, peut ou doit prendre, et sa perception dans les représentations mentales. (shrink)

Tout au long de sa carrière philosophique, Heidegger s’est livré à une constante explication avec Hegel, qu’il considérait comme son plus vif antagoniste. Dans le cadre de cet article, nous entendons nous rapporter aux origines de leur différend et prendre la mesure des griefs du jeune Heidegger à l’endroit de la dialectique hégélienne. Nous tenterons en un second lieu de démontrer que son opposition frontale camoufle en fait une secrète appropriation, puisque Heidegger aurait préalablement fait sienne l’idée d’un usage productif (...) de la négation en philosophie. (shrink)

Bultmann a-t-il été en partie victime d’une certaine « logique du protestantisme » ? R. Marlé a posé la question. Un théologien protestant peut être d’accord pour le fond avec la critique catholique, mais en la reprenant dans un esprit différent qui fera valoir la particula veri propre à Bultmann. On passera en revue à cet effet les quatre principaux griefs qui lui sont adressés.a) Réduction, au profit de la foi, de l’objectivité de l’historique et de celle du monde. — (...) L’objectivité à revendiquer est celle des données de la croyance, qui sont incarnées, et celle du monde comme lieu de salut. b) Survalorisation de la subjectivité de l’acte de foi au détriment de son contenu. — La particularité de l’engagement de foi dans le présent doit être maintenue, intégrée à une mémoire et à un corps de symbolismes et de références. c) Rejet de la révélation de Dieu à l’extérieur de la raison et de l’expérience historique. — Contre un refus radical à l’excès des médiations de la croyance, on maintiendra que Dieu est « pensable », sans que cela revienne à le « comprendre ». d) Insuffisance de la conception de la théologie comme simple intellectus fidei. — L’exercice théologique doit se déployer sous un horizon universel, mais aussi à un niveau socio-culturel attentif à toutes les inscriptions du religieux dans l’histoire et les mentalités.En définitive, on peut tenir le « fidéisme » du Bultmann pour l’illustration d’un « destin protestant », sans qu’il ait renié pour autant la théologie dialectique, mais pas davantage la théologie libérale, en tant que la première est une riposte articulée à la modernité et non un retour en arrière.Was Bultmann, to some extent, a victim of a certain “Protestant logic”? R. Marlé asked that question. A Protestant theologian can fundamentally agree with the Catholic position but take it in a different spirit, which would highlight the particula veri proper to Bultmann. The four principal complaints addressed to Bultmann in this matter will be reviewed.a) Reduction, in favor of the faith, of the objectivity of the historical and that of the world. — The objectivity demanded is for the tenets of belief, which are incarnate, and for a world as the place of salvation. b) Overvaluing of the subjectivity of the act of faith to the detriment of its content. — The particularity of the engagement of faith in the present must be upheld, integrated into a memory and a body of symbolisms and references. c) Rejection of the revelation of God outside reason and historical experience. — Against a radical refusal of the excess of mediations of belief, one can hold that God is “thinkable”, without being “understood”. d) Lack of the conception of theology as simple intellectus fidei. —The theological task should spread itself under a universal horizon, but also to a socio-cultural level that is attentive to all the inscriptions of the religious in history and mentalities.Finally, one can hold the “fideism” of Bultmann as an illustration of a “Protestant destiny”, without necessarily denying dialectical theology. Nor, indeed, liberal theology, in so far as the former is an articulated reply to modernity and not a return to the past. (shrink)

La médecine contemporaine bénéficie d’une prodigieuse efficacité technique. Pourtant, paradoxalement, les griefs à son encontre lui dessinent fréquemment le profil d’une accusée : l’objectivité, la rationalité de la science médicale ne font pas bon ménage avec la parole du malade. Dans la consultation médicale, plus exactement dans le contrat qui unit l’usager à un prestataire de soins, n’y a-t-il que des droits pour le premier et des obligations pour le second ? Droit d’avoir les enfants que l’on veut et devoir (...) de proposer le dernier équipement technique ? Un « testament de vie » est-il contraignant pour les soignants ? La médecine doit-elle accéder à toutes les demandes et s’occuper du bonheur ? L’article discute l’enjeu de ces interrogations. Celui-ci est peut-être lié à une question de sens, c’est-à-dire d’interaction entre la signification de la pratique médicale, la direction que celle-ci veut, peut ou doit prendre, et sa perception dans les représentations mentales. (shrink)

Afin de montrer qu'il faut situer le début du processus de réception de l'œuvre nietzschéenne avant les années 1980, cet article dépouille les études critiques et les recensions de cette œuvre, parues dans les pays germanophones entre 1872 et 1889. Une étude statistique révèle que Nietzsche était connu pour ses écrits sur Wagner et sa première Inactuelle. Le dépouillement de l'importante réception de l'essai sur D. F. Strauss montre que les critiques de l'époque s'intéressaient à cet essai en fonction de (...) son actualité: les divers griefs qui lui sond faits voient notamment la première Inactuelle comme un écrit schopenhauerien en continuité avec la querelle entourant La naissance de la tragédie. En grande patrie critique, la première réception des écrits nietzschéens montre que le statut philosophique qui fut accordé à lœvre et à son auteur est le résultat d'un long processus d'appropriation par le combat.Dieser Artikel wertet kritische Studien und Rezensionen von Nietzsches Werk aus,d ie zwischen 1872 und 1889 im deutschen Sprahraum erschienen sind. Es soll veranschaulicht werden, dass der Beginn des Rezeptionsprozesses seiner Werke bereits vor den 1890er Jahren leigt. Eine statistische Auswertung des Materials zeigt, dass Nietzsche für sein Schriften über Wagner und seine ersten Unzeitgemässen Betrachtungen bekannt war und sein Essais über D. F. Struß aufgrund seiner Aktualität für Kritiker interessant war. Die erste Unzeitgemässe Betrachtung wurde als eine schopenhauerische Forzetzung des Streits um Die geburt der Tragödie betrachtet. In den ersten kritischen Rezeptionen von Nietzsches Werken wird deutlich, dass der Status, der Autor und Werk in der Philosophie zugeteilt wurde, das Ergebnis eines langen Prozesses von Aneignung durch Kampf ist. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:preface At a time when access to safe abortions is being curtailed in the United States under the pretext of a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, this Feminist Studies issue focuses on abortion and women’s embodiment. The essays by Melissa Oliver-Powell, Rachel Alpha Johnston Hurst, and Jennifer L. Holland each contribute new approaches to the stillvexed topic of abortion, positioning movements for abortion access in relation to historical and (...) ecological change. Two collaboratively written essays, by South American authors María Fernanda Olarte-Sierra and Tania Pérez-Bustos, and by North American and European authors Laura Bisaillon with six colleagues, both center the body within feminist labor, exploring how the embodied experience of work can also be a site of knowledge-making. Other authors push us to move beyond humanistic understandings of affect and the body in feminist work, as Nathan Snaza shows in a review essay of four recent books engaging “Biopolitics without Bodies.” Poems by Rosetta Marantz Cohen, Darlene Taylor, and Abby Minor also feature experiences of bodily violence and bodily pleasure, while Ellyn Weiss discusses the distinctive representations of bodies in the visual art of Swedish-American artist Anna U. Davis. To close the issue, two News and Views pieces by Pang Laikwan and Sealing Cheng on the recent protest movement in Hong Kong provide two complementary perspectives on living through tumultuous political times. Our next issue will include content directly focused on the COVID-19 pandemic. In the first essay, Melissa Oliver-Powell’s “Beyond the Spectacle of Suffering: Agnès Varda’s L’Une chante, l’autre pas and Rewriting the Subject of Abortion in France” addresses the complexities of anti-​ abortion 8 rhetoric in France. Placing Varda’s 1977 film in the historical context of French nationalistic anxiety about low birthrates in the twentieth century, Oliver-Powell argues that the film deconstructs polarized narratives about abortion. While dominant cultural representations of abortion typically depicted it as the result of female irresponsibility or traumatic victimization, Varda’s film rejects the binary concepts of villain and victim and questions the presumption that women always suffer when exercising their reproductive choice. Oliver-Powell situates Varda alongside the 343 eminent French female cultural leaders who composed a famous 1971 Manifesto publicly declaring themselves criminals for having had illegal abortions and presents simultaneous histories of French feminism and French cinema. Varda’s film constructs a feminist representation of abortion that avoids foregrounding women ’s suffering and instead emphasizes empowerment and solidarity. Its narrative features two women friends, both treated unjustly by France’s abortion laws, who participate in the movement for reform over a fourteen -year span. Varda represents the interplay of motherhood with women ’s lives as a continuum, not a disruptive episode, and she blends documentary -style devices with imaginative musical interludes: she shows actual women seeking abortions in Holland and includes songs about abortion, pregnancy, and motherhood. Oliver-Powell claims that Varda dramatizes unprecedented representations “of female friendship without pathology, of abortion without guilt, death or persecution, of motherhood without objectification....” A second essay, Rachel Hurst’s “Abortion as a Feminist Pedagogy of Grief in Marianne Apostolides’s Deep Salt Water,” proposes that the championing of women’s reproductive rights could better account for the context of difficult emotions and an imperfect world. Hurst uses reproductive justice approaches to critique simplistic rights-based arguments for abortion, premised on liberal concepts of choice and autonomy, which fail to understand the material conditions of poor women and especially women of color. Such analyses emphasize the necessity of rights discourses that include the right to bear and parent one’s own children free from violence and economic hardship, and they advocate the transformative possibilities of acknowledging rather than suppressing women’s ambivalence about their own abortions as well as others’ choices. Hurst describes a collaboration between two contemporary Canadian feminists, writer Marianne Apostolides and visual artist  9 Catherine Mellinger, in their mixed-media text, Deep Salt Water, which is organized according to the weeks of a pregnancy and the aftermath of its termination. Rather than falling back into familiar polarizations for and against “choice,” they use the story of Apostolides’s abortion seventeen years earlier... (shrink)

If Haecker's book on History and the Attitude of the Christian be considered as an index, there seems to be a strong humanistic current in present day Catholicism. Haecker develops in his book the Christian belief that history manifests the will of God, and that all wars, upheavals and revolutions really occur for the salvation of the soul of the individual. He opposes the modern trend to deify nation and race, and presents the elevation of man from his fall, and (...) his return to God, as the eternal goal of all that ever happens. Because Haecker insists upon the intrinsic value of each single man, because he refuses to accept the ruling totalitarian ideology of the day, even the non-Catholic can go a long way with him in his humanism.Horkheimer, however, demonstrates that the connection between this kind of humanism and Catholicism is a very loose one. The deep understanding of human misery that is evident in Haecker's pages fits other convictions and persuasions just as well as it does a Catholic philosophy. Haecker's contention that to reject a sense and a meaning transcending the temporal world is to drive man to despair, does not invalidate the rejection of a supernatural significance. Despair is no argument against truth. Grief over the present is well justified ; nevertheless an attitude is possible which permits of a positive cooperation in the historical tasks of the day.Le livre de Haecker sur la philosophie chrétienne de l'histoire donne à Horkheimer l'occasion de présenter quelques remarques de principe au sujet du courant humaniste dans le catholicisme contemporain. Haecker développe Vidée chrétienne que l'histoire est soumise à la volonté de Dieu, et que dans toutes les guerres, les crises et les révolutions, c'est en vérité le salut de l'âme individuelle qui est en jeu. Il s'oppose à la divinisation moderne du peuple et de la race, et montre dans le relèvement de l'homme après la chute et dans son retour à Dieu le but éternel du devenir. Dans cette affirmation de la valeur de chaque personne, dans la négation des idéologies totalitaires régnantes, s’exprime un humanisme que le philosophe non-catholique peut reconnaître et approuver.Cependant, Horkheimer indique que le lien de cet humanisme et du catholicisme est — logiquement — très lâche. La compréhension de la misère humaine, qui apparaît dans le livre de Haecker, ne peut nullement confirmer la vision catholique du monde, elle s'adapte aussi bien à d'autres convictions. Certes, on comprend l'affirmation de Haecker que le refus de la transcendance doit mener l'homme au désespoir ; mais la négation d'une signification supranaturelle n'est pas ainsi réfutée : le désespoir n'est pas un argument contre la vérité. La tristesse légitime que nous inspire le présent, appelle, bien loin de l'exclure, la décision de travailler aux tâches que l'histoire nous assigne. (shrink)

Dans une lettre du 10 novembre 1938, Adorno a formulé envers l’investigation benjaminienne des mythologies modernes des griefs radicaux et terribles : la description y prendrait l’allure d’« un pouvoir d’illumination presque superstitieux » et ne parviendrait pas, malgré ses efforts louables pour « payer tribut au marxisme », à mettre en œuvre une approche véritablement dialectique de la phénoménologie de la modernité. Bref, Benjamin aurait succombé au charme des phénomènes mythiques qu’il dé...

Analysant les caractéristiques majeures des notions contemporaines d'égalité à la lumière d'une bibliographie que l'auteur publiera bientôt, cette étude montre les contradictions qui existent dans la documentation actuelle entre les études traitant implicitement ou explicitement d'égalité, ainsi que l'importance de sept caractéristiques marquantes des théories de l'égalité du XXe siècle. L'auteur soutient que les griefs courants concernant l'absence de clarté de la notion contemporaine d'égalité découlent d'une manière significative d'une réduction systématique de l'ensemble des possibilités ouvertes par la documentation actuelle (...) dans son ensemble, plutôt que de l'absence de définition de l'égalité.Analyzing the major features of the contemporary notions of equality on the basis of the author's forthcoming bibliography on the subject, this paper shows the contradictions between the implicit and the explicit literature on the subject, the main catagories by virtue of which one must assess the contemporary approaches on equality, and the importance of seven outstanding features of XXth Century equality theories. It is argued that current grievances concerning the lack of clarity of the contemporary notion of equality results in a significant manner from the systematic reduction of all the possibilities opened by the present literature on equality as a whole, rather than from a lack of definition of equality. (shrink)

Various claims have been made concerning the role of narrative in grief. In this paper, we emphasize the need for a discerning approach, which acknowledges that narratives of different kinds relate to grief in different ways. We focus specifically on the positive contributions that narrative can make to sustaining, restoring and revising a sense of who one is. We argue that, although it is right to suggest that narratives provide structure and coherence, they also play a complementary role (...) in disrupting established structure and opening up new possibilities. We add that both of these roles point to the importance of interpersonal, social and cultural factors in shaping the trajectory of grief. We conclude by briefly considering the implications for distinguishing between typical and pathological forms of grief. (shrink)

An engaging and illuminating exploration of grief—and why, despite its intense pain, it can also help us grow Experiencing grief at the death of a person we love or who matters to us—as universal as it is painful—is central to the human condition. Surprisingly, however, philosophers have rarely examined grief in any depth. In Grief, Michael Cholbi presents a groundbreaking philosophical exploration of this complex emotional event, offering valuable new insights about what grief is, whom (...) we grieve, and how grief can ultimately lead us to a richer self-understanding and a fuller realization of our humanity. Drawing on psychology, social science, and literature as well as philosophy, Cholbi explains that we grieve for the loss of those in whom our identities are invested, including people we don't know personally but cherish anyway, such as public figures. Their deaths not only deprive us of worthwhile experiences; they also disrupt our commitments and values. Yet grief is something we should embrace rather than avoid, an important part of a good and meaningful life. The key to understanding this paradox, Cholbi says, is that grief offers us a unique and powerful opportunity to grow in self-knowledge by fashioning a new identity. Although grief can be tumultuous and disorienting, it also reflects our distinctly human capacity to rationally adapt as the relationships we depend on evolve. An original account of how grieving works and why it is so important, Grief shows how the pain of this experience gives us a chance to deepen our relationships with others and ourselves. (shrink)

Grief is our emotional response to the deaths of intimates, and so like many other emotional conditions, it can be appraised in terms of its rationality. A philosophical account of grief's rationality should satisfy a contingency constraint, wherein grief is neither intrinsically rational nor intrinsically irrational. Here I provide an account of grief and its rationality that satisfies this constraint, while also being faithful to the phenomenology of grief experience. I begin by arguing against the (...) best known account of grief's rationality, Gustafson's strategic or forward-looking account, according to which the practical rationality of grief depends on the internal coherence of the component attitudes that explain the behaviors caused by grief, and more exactly, on how these attitudes enable the individual to realize states of affairs that she desires. While I do not deny that episodes of grief can be appraised in terms of their strategic rationality, I deny that strategic rationality is the essential or fundamental basis on which grief's rationality should be appraised. In contrast, the heart of grief's rationality is backward-looking. That is, what primarily makes an episode of grief rational qua grief is the fittingness of the attitudes individuals take toward the experience of a lost relationship, attitudes which in turn generate the desires and behaviors that constitute bereavement. Grief thus derives its essential rationality from the objects it responds to, not from the attitudes causally downstream from that response, and is necessarily irrational when the behaviors that constitute an individual's grieving are inappropriate to the object of that grief. So while the strategic rationality of an episode of grief contributes to whether it is on the whole rational, no episode of grief can be rational unless the actions that constitute grieving accurately gauge the change in a person's normative situation wrought by the loss of her relationship with the deceased. (shrink)

The widely accepted “continuing bonds” model of grief tells us that rather than bereavement necessitating the cessation of one’s relationship with the deceased, very often the relationship continues instead in an adapted form. However, this framework appears to conflict with philosophical approaches that treat reciprocity or mutuality of some form as central to loving relationships. Seemingly the dead cannot be active participants, rendering it puzzling how we should understand claims about continued relationships with them. In this article, we resolve (...) this tension by highlighting two fundamental aspects of paradigmatic loving relationships that can, and often do, continue in an adapted form following bereavement: love and mutual shaping of interests, choices, and self-concepts. Attention to these continuing features of relationships helps to capture and clarify the phenomenological and behavioral features of continuing bonds. However, love and mutual shaping must also change in important ways following bereavement. Love becomes unreciprocated, and although the dead continue to shape our interests, choices, and self-concepts, we predominantly shape their legacies and memories in return. These changes place important constraints upon the nature of our interpersonal connections with the dead. (shrink)

Grief seems difficult to locate within familiar emotion taxonomies, as it not a basic emotion nor a hybrid thereof. Here I propose that grief is better conceptualized as an emotionally rich attentional phenomenon rather than an emotion or sequence of emotions. In grieving, that another person has died, the loss incurred by the grieving, etc., occupy the forefront of the grieving subject’s consciousness while other candidate facts for their attention recede into the background. The former set of facts (...) thus sist near the top of their mental “priority structures” throughout a grief event. The hypothesis that grief is attentional helps to explain several common phenomenological features of grief experience, underpins a credible ‘metaphysics’ of grief, accounts for the extent to which grief is susceptible to choice and agency, and addresses a recent puzzle regarding our reasons to grieve and our apparent proclivity toward ‘resilience’ in the face of grief. (shrink)

Grief research in philosophy agrees that one who grieves grieves over the irreversible loss of someone whom the griever loved deeply, and that someone thus factored centrally into the griever’s sense of purpose and meaning in the world. The analytic literature in general tends to focus its treatments on the paradigm case of grief as the death of a loved one. I want to restrict my account to the paradigm case because the paradigm case most persuades the mind (...) that grief is a past-directed emotion. The phenomenological move I propose will enable us to respect the paradigm case of grief and a broader but still legitimate set of grief-generating states of affairs, liberate grief from the view that grief is past directed or about the past, and thus account for grief in a way that separates it from its closest emotion-neighbor, sorrow, without having to rely on the affective quality of those two emotions.If the passing of the beloved causes the grief but is not what the grief is about, then we can get at the nature of grief by saying its temporal orientation is in the past, but its temporal meaning is the present and future—the new significance of a world with the pervasive absence that is the world without the beloved. The no-longer of grief is a no-longer oriented by a past that is referred a present and future. Looking at the griever’s relation to time can tell us much about the pain and the object of grief, then. As the griever puts the past before himself with a certainty about this world “henceforth,” a look at the griever’s lived sense of the fi nality of the irreversibly lost liberates grief from the tendency in the literature to be reduced to a past-directed emotion, accounts for grief ’s intensity, its affective force or poignancy, and thus enables us to separate grief from sorrow according to its intentionalobject in light of the temporal meaning of these emotions. (shrink)

:In this essay, I consider a particular version of the thesis that the blameworthy deserve to suffer, namely, that they deserve to feel guilty to the proper degree. Two further theses have been thought to explicate and support the thesis, one that appeals to the non-instrumental goodness of the blameworthy receiving what they deserve, and the other that appeals to the idea that being blameworthy provides reason to promote the blameworthy receiving what they deserve. I call the first "Good-Guilt" and (...) the second "Reason-Guilt.” I begin by exploring what I take to be the strongest argument for Good-Guilt which gains force from a comparison of guilt and grief, and the strongest argument against. I conclude that Good-Guilt might be true, but that even if it is, the strongest argument in favor of it fails to support it in a way that provides reason for the thesis that the blameworthy deserve to feel guilty. I then consider the hypothesis that Reason-Guilt might be true and might be the more fundamental principle, supporting both Good-Guilt and Desert-Guilt. I argue that it does not succeed, however, and instead propose a different principle, according to which being blameworthy does not by itself provide reason for promoting that the blameworthy get what they deserve, but that being blameworthy systematically does so in conjunction with particular kinds of background circumstances. Finally, I conclude that Desert-Guilt might yet be true, but that it does not clearly gain support from either Good-Guilt or Reason-Guilt. (shrink)

Imagine that someone recovers relatively quickly, say, within two or three months, from grief over the death of her spouse, whom she loved and who loved her; and suppose that, after some brief interval, she remarries. Does the fact that she feels better and moves on relatively quickly somehow diminish the quality of her earlier relationship? Does it constitute a failure to do well by the person who died? Our aim is to respond to two arguments that give affirmative (...) answers to these questions. The first argument, which is developed by Dan Moller in “Love and Death”, states that recovering relatively quickly from grief over the deaths of people who are close to us is deeply regrettable, in one respect, because it means that these people were relatively unimportant to us. The second, which derives from some classic literary discussions of grief, states that such a recovery is regrettable because it amounts to abandoning the person who died. Responding to these arguments promises to dissolve certain anxieties about whether we do well by the people we love when they die. Beyond this, it promises to help us better understand what it means to cultivate good relationships with these people during their lives. (shrink)

Grief is not a kind of feeling, or a kind of judgement, or a kind of perception, or any kind of mental state or event the identity of which can be adequately captured at a moment in time. Instead, grief is a kind of process; more specifically, it is a complex pattern of activity and passivity, inner and outer, which unfolds over time, and the unfolding pattern over time is explanatorily prior to what is the case at any (...) particular time. The pattern of a particular grieving is best understood and explained through a narrative account, and not merely through a causal account, for narrative accounts in such cases have powerful explanatory, revelatory, and expressive powers which causal accounts lack. Although I will not argue for it here, I believe that this view of grief can be generalised to other kinds of emotion. If this is so, then many philosophical accounts of emotion are at fault in identifying emotion with a kind of mental state or event. (shrink)

I explore some of the ways that assumptions about the nature of substance shape metaphysical debates about the structure of Reality. Assumptions about the priority of substance play a role in an argument for monism, are embedded in certain pluralist metaphysical treatments of laws of nature, and are central to discussions of substantivalism and relationalism. I will then argue that we should reject such assumptions and collapse the categorical distinction between substance and property.