This book is a volume of essays on the Biopolitics of Security in the 21st Century, by Professor Mick Dillon. It is at first of its kind in that no other study currently available covers the same field of research with the same degree of innovation. There is clearly growing attention to biopolitics in general, and the biopolitics of security in particular, beyond international relations and into the social sciences more generally. This volume will provide a genealogy of the (...) biopolitics of security beginning with Michel Foucault’s original account of the rise of biopolitics at the beginning of the 18th century, and will clarify and further develop Foucault’s original analytic of the biopolitics of security. This work is an original introduction to the emerging field of the biopolitics of security, tracking its development into the 21st century, which will serve as an intellectual provocation to researchers as much as it will a pedagogical guide to graduate and undergraduate teachers. This book will be of great interest to students of critical security studies, IR theory, political theory, philosophy and ancillary social science disciplines, such as criminology and sociology. (shrink)

This is the first anthology to bring together a selection of the most important contemporary philosophical essays on the nature and moral significance of self-respect. Representing a diversity of views, the essays illustrate the complexity of self-respect and explore its connections to such topics as personhood, dignity, rights, character, autonomy, integrity, identity, shame, justice, oppression and empowerment. The book demonstrates that self-respect is a formidable concern which goes to the very heart of both moral theory and moral life. Contributors: Bernard (...) Boxill, Stephen L. Darwall, John Deigh, Robin S. Dillon, Thomas E. Hill, Jr., Aurel Kolnai, Stephen J. Massey, Diana T. Meyers, Michelle M. Moody-Adams, John Rawls, Gabriele Taylor, Elizabeth Telfer, Laurence L. Thomas. (shrink)

How do scientific explanations for beliefs affect people's confidence that those beliefs are true? For example, do people think neuroscience-based explanations for belief in God support or challenge God's existence? In five experiments, we find that people tend to think explanations for beliefs corroborate those beliefs if the explanations invoke normally-functioning mechanisms, but not if they invoke abnormal functioning (where “normality” is a matter of proper functioning). This emerges across a variety of kinds of scientific explanations and beliefs (religious, moral, (...) and scientific). We also find evidence that these effects can interact with people's prior beliefs to produce motivated judgments. (shrink)

In many cultures arrogance is regarded as a serious vice and a cause of numerous social ills. Although its badness is typically thought to lie in its harmful consequences for other persons and things, I draw on Kant to argue that what makes it a vice is first and foremost the failure to respect oneself. But arrogance is not only a problem inside individuals. Drawing on feminist insights I argue that it is a systemic problem constructed in and reinforcing unjust (...) distributions of social power. I identify ways in which arrogance is connected with social arrangements of domination and subordination, then discuss implications of a power-focused analysis Among the implications: (1) contrary to the widely-held view, humility is not the personal virtue opposing arrogance, self-respect is; (2) arrogance is not always a vice, for in circumstances of oppression a certain kind of arrogance is a virtue of self-respecting resistance to domination. (shrink)

This book presents a lively and accessible way to use the ancient figure of Socrates to teach modern psychology that avoids the didactic lecture and sterile textbook. In the online age, is a living teacher even needed? What can college students learn face-to-face from a teacher they cannot learn anywhere else? The answer is what most teachers already seek to do: help students think critically, clearly define concepts, logically reason from premises to conclusions, engage in thoughtful and persuasive communication, and (...) actively engage the franchise of democratic citizenship. But achieving these outcomes requires an intimate, interpersonal learning community. This book presents a plan for using the ancient figure of Socrates and his Method to realize humane learning outcomes in the context of psychology. (shrink)

In show business lore, a “trouper” perseveres without complaint no matter how arduous or dangerous the circumstances. In the camaraderie-driven, show-must-go-on world of entertainment, the appellat...

John Dillon presents an English translation of Alcinous' Handbook of Platonism, accompanied by an introduction and a philosophical commentary which explain the ideas in the work and show their intellectual and historical context. The Handbook purports to be an introduction to the doctrines of Plato, but in fact gives us an excellent survey of Platonist thought in the second century AD.

A corporate executive is miserable and seeks the help of a psychotherapist. A college student is unhappy in her current major and goes to her academic advisor. A married couple struggles with discord and seeks the help of a licensed counsellor. In each case, the diagnosis and prescription will likely be the same: you are miserable because you are not doing what you want. Your path to happiness thus lies in figuring out what you enjoy doing, coming up with a (...) strategy to satisfy these desires, and then executing your plan. This is the standard approach to happiness used in much of today's counselling and psychotherapeutic practice. The Socratic, Stoic, and Confucian philosophical traditions tell a different story: you are miserable because you are not doing what you must. Through historical and contemporary case studies, analyses of key novels, reviews of modern psychological research, interviews with struggling people, and close readings of philosophical texts, The Joy of Duty illuminates the intimate connection between human joy and the performance of ethical obligation. (shrink)

How does a school of thought, in the area of philosophy, or indeed of religion, from roots that may be initially open-ended and largely informal, come to take on the features that later mark it out as distinctive, and even exclusive? That is the theme which is explored in this book in respect of the philosophical movement known as Platonism, stemming as it does from the essentially open-ended and informal atmosphere of Plato's Academy. John Dillon focuses on a number (...) of key issues, such as monism versus dualism, the metaphysical underpinnings of ethical theory, the theory of Forms, and the reaction to the Sceptical 'deviation' represented by the so-called 'New Academy'. The book is written in the lively and accessible style of the lecture series in Beijing from which it originates. (shrink)

Research on emotion and emotion regulation is expected to improve our understanding of psychopathology. However, achieving this understanding requires overcoming several obstacles, including the paucity of objective markers of specific emotions or psychiatric diagnoses, and the fact that emotion regulation is a concept that can be difficult to operationalize. We review affective neuroscience research that has addressed these issues by focusing on psychological and neural mechanisms implicated in approach and avoidance behaviors, as revealed by studies of fear, anxiety, and reward (...) processing. Dysfunction in these mechanisms may serve as risk markers for psychopathology, while emotion regulation research demonstrates that some of them are susceptible to volitional control. The conclusion acknowledges limitations of affective neuroscience and highlights goals for future work. (shrink)

Iamblichus is the only Platonist philosopher whose philosophical letters have survived from the ancient world. These nineteen letters, which are translated into English here for the first time, address such topics as providence, fate, concord, marriage, bringing up children, ingratitude, music, and the cardinal virtues, with some letters addressed to students and others to prominent members of Syrian society and the imperial administration. The letters reflect the concerns of popular moral philosophy and illustrate the more public aspects of Iamblichus s (...) philosophy. This volume provides a useful complement to Iamblichus: On the Mysteries, and On the Pythagorean Way of Life, both published by the Society of Biblical Literature, and will be of interest to students of late antiquity, of Neoplatonic philosophy, and of early Christianity. (shrink)

The breadth and depth of the Platonic tradition, from Antiquity through to the early Middle Ages, is evidenced by the studies gathered in this volume, written by an international team of contributors in honour of John Dillon. The first papers, on Plato, include a discussion of the problem of evil and of the theme of love n the Symposium. There follows a section of the Middle-Platonists, dealing with how this tradition adapted and developed themes such as the world-soul as (...) a mirror and the notion of an intellible cosmos. Five papers then focus on aspects of the thought of Plotinus, and a final group covers the later Neoplatonic tradition, from Augustine to John Scotus Eriugena, including a survey by the late Henry Blumenthal on perception and memory. (shrink)

Once upon a time, a prophet named Nathan narrated a story to David, the Israelite king who had recently ordered the death of his mistress's husband. The story concerned a rich man who pitilessly slaughtered a poor man's lamb for a feast. When Nathan asked King David what the rich man's punishment should be, David declared, "As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die." Nathan then replied, "You are the man!"1 Despite the fictitious nature of (...) Nathan's story, its point was not lost on David, who responded with contrition and repentance, having been made dynamically aware of the truth of his own crime. Somehow he arrived at this realization through a fabricated story about a different man in a... (shrink)

Four experiments investigate the folk concept of “understanding,” in particular when and why it is deployed differently from the concept of knowledge. We argue for the positions that people have higher demands with respect to explanatory depth when it comes to attributing understanding, and that this is true, in part, because understanding attributions play a functional role in identifying experts who should be heeded with respect to the general field in question. These claims are supported by our findings that people (...) differentially withhold attributions of understanding when the object of attribution has minimal explanatory information. We also show that this tendency significantly correlates with people’s willingness to defer to others as potential experts. This work bears on a pressing issue in epistemology concerning the place and value of understanding. Our results also provide reason against positing a simple equation of knowledge and understanding. We contend that, because deference plays a crucial role in many aspects of everyday reasoning, the fact that we use understanding attributions to demarcate experts reveals a potential mechanism for achieving our epistemic aims in many domains. (shrink)

On the text and translation of the De mysteriis -- Iamblichus the man -- The De mysteriis : a defence of theurgy, and an answer to Porphyry's letter to Anebo -- Iamblichus's knowledge of Egyptian religion and mythology -- The nature and contents of De mysteriis -- Iamblichus, De mysteriis : text and translation.

This is the first English translation of Proclus' commentary on Plato's Parmenides. Glenn Morrow's death occurred while he was less than halfway through the translation, which was completed by John Dillon. A major work of the great Neoplatonist philosopher, the commentary is an intellectual tour de force that greatly influenced later medieval and Renaissance thought. As the notes and introductory summaries explain, it comprises a full account of Proclus' own metaphysical system, disguised, as is so much Neoplatonic philosophy, in (...) the form of a commentary. (shrink)

Beginning with the view that human consciousness is essentially embodied and that the way we consciously experience the world is structured by our bodily dynamics and surroundings, the book argues that emotions are a fundamental manifestation of our embodiment, and play a crucial role in self-consciousness, moral evaluation, and social cognition.

As a strategy for exploring the relationship between understanding and knowledge, we consider whether epistemic luck – which is typically thought to undermine knowledge – undermines understanding. Questions about the etiology of understanding have also been at the heart of recent theoretical debates within epistemology. Kvanvig (2003) put forward the argument that there could be lucky understanding and produced an example that he deemed persuasive. Grimm (2006) responded with a case that, he argued, demonstrated that there could not be lucky (...) understanding. In this paper, we empirically examine how participants' patterns of understanding attributions line up with the predictions of Kvanvig and Grimm. We argue that the data challenge Kvanvig's position. People do not differentiate between knowing-why and understanding-why on the basis of proper etiology: attributions of knowledge and understanding involve comparable (and minimal) roles for epistemic luck. We thus posit that folk knowledge and understanding are etiologically symmetrical. (shrink)

This study examined how the level of meat consumption was related to two psychological factors, selfishness and animal-oriented empathy, and three motivations related to animal, health, and environmental issues. A sample of Australian adults between 18 and 80 (N = 497) was surveyed online via the Zoho Survey platform. Structural equation modelling was applied to the data, and the resulting models revealed that higher selfishness and lower empathy were associated with higher meat consumption for males but there was no association (...) between psychological factors and meat consumption for females. All three motivations were associated with both higher empathy and selfishness for males. For females, higher empathy was associated with higher health and animal motivations, while higher selfishness was associated with higher environmental motivation. Lastly, none of the three motivations were related to meat consumption for either gender. Thus, the results only partially supported the hypotheses that selfishness and empathy would influence meat consumption and motivations. Nevertheless, this study contributes to research on personality factors in relation to meat consumption and the link between masculinity and meat consumption. (shrink)

Die Schrift Uber das Gluck: Das Leben des Proklos, verfasst von dem neuplatonischen Philosophen Marinos, ist ein bemerkenswerter Text des spaten 5. Jh. n. Chr., der traditionelle biographische, hagiographische und philosophische Themen und Motive mit aktuellen zeitgenossischen Diskursen der Spatantike amalgamiert. Das langjahrige Oberhaupt der Neuplatoniker in Athen, der Philosoph Proklos, wird als Leitfigur und paganer Heiliger in einer zunehmend christianisierten Gesellschaft inszeniert. Marinos illustriert anhand seiner Proklos-Figur die Tugenden und Ideale der neuplatonischen Philosophen und schildert dabei programmatisch die (neu-)platonische (...) Ethik und Gluckskonzeption. In der Einleitung sowie in den sieben Essays dieses Bandes werden literarische, philosophische, religionsphilosophische, astronomische wie althistorische und sozialgeschichtliche Themen dieses Textes - der hier zum ersten Mal ins Deutsche ubersetzt wird - beleuchtet. (shrink)

Using a nationally representative survey of farm operators in Ireland, this study examines the effect of non-pecuniary benefits from farm work on labor allocation choices. Results suggest that non-pecuniary benefits affect both the decision to enter the off-farm labor market and also once that decision is made, the amount of time spent working off-farm. We find our derived variable representing non-monetary benefits associated with farm work to have a substantial impact similar to the effect of other more widely reported personal (...) and farm structural variables such as the age of the farm operator, farm size, and farming system. The existence of these non-pecuniary benefits serves to increase the implied wage to farmers for their farm work. This in turn can lead to allocations of labor that would seem suboptimal from a purely financial point of view. Rural development policies aimed at creating off-farm opportunities could fail unless returns to off-farm work are high enough to compensate the farmer for losing the benefits associated with the farming lifestyle. From a methodological perspective, our analysis indicates that failure to model off-farm labor allocation choices as a two-part process may lead to some incorrect conclusions regarding the effect of certain explanatory variables. Outside of explaining farmers’ off-farm labor supply it would be useful to incorporate farmer perceptions regarding the non-pecuniary benefits from farming in economic models of farm behavior across a range of activities as this could lead to much more accurate predictions of farmers’ responses to policy changes. (shrink)

There is a tendency to take mounted dinosaur skeletons at face value, as the raw data on which the science of paleontology is founded. But the truth is that mounted dinosaur skeletons are substantially intention-dependent—they are artifacts. More importantly, I argue, they are also substantially imagination-dependent: their production is substantially causally reliant on preparators’ creative imaginations, and their proper reception is predicated on audiences’ recreative imaginations. My main goal here is to show that dinosaur skeletal mounts are plausible candidates for (...) art-status. But, what is more, I think they are artworks—specifically, sculptures. (shrink)

In the 1950s, Noam Chomsky offered a new vision for linguistic research and syntacticians. This chapter explores some ways in which Chomsky's linguistic work has influenced research on one domain of linguistic performance, sentence processing, over the last half century. It shows that Chomsky's claim in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax is largely borne out: "the study of performance will proceed only as far as the study of the underlying competence permits". The chapter briefly addresses a question about the (...) scope of modern sentence processing research and its relationship to specific grammatical formalisms. It reviews the literature on incremental ambiguity resolution, moves to the processing of long‐distance filler‐gap dependency processing, and provides information on the processing of anaphoric relations. In order to illustrate how the phenomenon has contributed to psycholinguistic theorizing, the chapter outlines a well‐known model and then considers how other models diverge. (shrink)

Philosophical suspicions about the place of shame in the psychology of the mature moral agent are in tension with the commonplace assumption that to call a person shameless purports to mark a fault, arguably a moral fault. I shift philosophical suspicions away from shame and toward its absence in the shameless by focusing attention on phenomena of shamelessness. In redirecting our attention, I clarify the nature of the failing to which ascriptions of shamelessness might refer and defend the thought that, (...) as an evasion of moral self-censure, shamelessness can be morally pernicious. Far from foregoing shame, I conclude, we should be mindful of its moral importance and unapologetic in its defense. (shrink)

Translator's preface -- Introduction: The question of phenomenology -- Hyletic phenomenology and material phenomenology -- The phenomenological method -- Pathos-with reflections on Husserl's Fifth cartesian meditation -- For a phenomenology of community.

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 98 Heft: 1 Seiten: 400-405.

Ce livre de Michel Freitag interpelle "tous ceux qui s'interrogent sur la place qu'ils tiennent ou le rôle qu'ils jouent dans l'aventure de l'Université contemporaine." (Georges Leroux, Spirale) Une des constantes des écrits contenus dans ce livre "réside dans la comparaison systématique que Michel Freitag établit entre les caractéristiques de la modernité et celles de la postmodernité et les conséquences de celle-ci sur le traitement des enjeux et des problèmes actuels." (Louis Guay, Anthropologie et société) "Dans une société réduite au (...) bavardage, à l'insignifiance, à la poursuite de petits bonheurs mesquins, le tout sous contrôle bureaucratique de plus en plus envahissant, une telle réflexion est devenue essentielle. Voici un livre de bonne foi qui n'attend que ses lecteurs, qu'on souhaite nombreux." (Robert Major, Voix et images). (shrink)

This essay examines Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Logic and its interpretation of Kant's “science of transcendental analysis” as a theory of the cognitive faculties and their “inherent forms” or “several functional powers”. I explain why Coleridge characterises transcendental analysis as an “investigation into the constitution and constituent forms” of the faculties, and consider the reasons behind his schematic division of such inquiry into “transcendental [ … ] Æsthetic, Logic, and Noetic”. I argue that Coleridge's claims about the forms, operations, and contents (...) that derive from different cognitive powers, and the philosophical method that enables us to prove such derivation, are based on Kant's theory of “transcendental reflection”. I also explain how Coleridge's facultative conception of transcendental analysis relates to recent scholarship on Kant's accounts of (i) our cognitive capacities and (ii) the purposes of transcendental reflection. My essay does not aim to defend Coleridge's interpretation of Kant, but rather to provide a clearer picture of how this interpretation informs Coleridge's analysis of cognitive activity and mental content in Logic, including his “transcendental noetic”, which seeks to explain the possibility of the kind intellectual intuition that Kant explicitly denies. (shrink)

Foucault on Politics, Society and War interrogates Foucault's controversial genealogy of modern biopolitics. By insisting on 'life' as the key referent of power in the modern age, Foucault argues that politics grounds society in war, specifically race war, in ways that come to threaten the very human existence it is pledged to promote. These essays situate Foucault's arguments, clarify the correlation of sovereign- and bio-power and examine the relation of bios, nomos and race in relation to modern war.

This paper provides an overview of the history of the notion of essence in 20th century analytic philosophy, focusing on views held by influential analytic philosophers who discussed, or relied on essence or cognate notions in their works. It in particular covers Russell and Moore’s different approaches to essence before and after breaking with British idealism, the (pre- and post-)logical positivists’ critique of metaphysics and rejection of essence (Wittgenstein, Carnap, Schlick, Stebbing), the tendency to loosen the notion of logical necessity (...) to accommodate certain metaphysical truths in Wittgenstein and others, Quine’s logical rehabilitation of metaphysics and criticism of de re modality, the modal view of essence promoted by the development of quantified modal logic (C. I. Lewis, Barcan Marcus, Kripke) and direct reference theory (Barcan Marcus, Kripke, Putnam), and the emergence of the notion of metaphysical necessity (Kneale, Kripke), and finally Fine’s re-establishment of a Neo-Aristotelian, hyperintensional notion of essence in contemporary metaphysics. (shrink)

Philosophers disagree about what the folk concept of pain is. This paper criticises existing theories of the folk concept of pain, i.e. the mental view, the bodily view, and the recently proposed polyeidic view. It puts forward an alternative proposal – the polysemy view – according to which pain terms like “sore,” “ache” and “hurt” are polysemous, where one sense refers to a mental state and another a bodily state, and the type of polysemy at issue reflects two distinct but (...) related concepts of pain. Implications with respect to issues in philosophy of pain are also drawn. (shrink)

« Qu’est-ce que la philosophie et quel est son rôle aujourd’hui? Entre juillet et octobre 1966, quelques mois après la parution des Mots et les Choses, Michel Foucault, dans un manuscrit très soigneusement rédigé mais qu’il ne publiera pas, apporte sa réponse à cette question tant débattue.À la différence de ceux qui, à l’époque, s’attachent à dévoiler l’essence de la philosophie ou à en prononcer la mort, Foucault l’appréhende, dans sa matérialité, comme un discours dont il convient de dégager l’économie (...) eu égard aux autres discours (scientifique, fictif, ordinaire, religieux) qui circulent dans un contexte donné.Le Discours philosophique propose ainsi une nouvelle manière de faire l’histoire de la philosophie, qui la décentre du commentaire des grands philosophes. Nietzsche y occupe toutefois une place particulière car il inaugure une conjoncture où la philosophie devient une entreprise de diagnostic du présent. Il revient en effet désormais à la philosophie de dire, à partir de l’« archive intégrale » d’une culture, ce qui en fait l’actualité.Si L’Archéologie du savoir, consacré aux enjeux méthodologiques d’un tel projet, s’y annonce, nulle part autant que dans Le Discours philosophique Michel Foucault n’aura explicité les ambitions de son programme intellectuel.»--. (shrink)