This book presents an innovative reading of Daoist philosophy that highlights the critical and therapeutic functions of satire and humor. Moeller and D'Ambrosio show how the Zhuangzi expounds the Daoist art of "genuine pretending" the paradoxical skill of enacting social roles without submitting to them or letting them define one's identity.

More and more, we present ourselves and encounter others through profiles. A profile shows us not as we are seen directly but how we are perceived by a broader public. As we observe how others observe us, we calibrate our self-presentation accordingly. Profile-based identity is evident everywhere from pop culture to politics, marketing to morality. But all too often critics simply denounce this alleged superficiality in defense of some supposedly pure ideal of authentic or sincere expression. This book argues that (...) the profile marks an epochal shift in our concept of identity and demonstrates why that matters. You and Your Profile blends social theory, philosophy, and cultural critique to unfold an exploration of the way we have come to experience the world. Instead of polemicizing against the profile, Hans-Georg Moeller and Paul J. D’Ambrosio outline how it works, how we readily apply it in our daily lives, and how it shapes our values—personally, economically, and ethically. They develop a practical vocabulary of life in the digital age. Informed by the Daoist tradition, they suggest strategies for handling the pressure of social media by distancing oneself from one’s public face. A deft and wide-ranging consideration of our era’s identity crisis, this book provides vital clues on how to stay sane in a time of proliferating profiles. (shrink)

An in-depth account of how critique and subversion have been integral parts of the history and development of Chinese philosophy from the classical period to the present.

Imagination: Cross-Cultural Philosophical Analyses is a rare intercultural inquiry into the conceptions and functions of the imagination in contemporary philosophy. Divided into East Asian, comparative, and post-comparative approaches, it brings together a leading team of philosophers to explore the concepts of the illusory and illusions, the development of fantastic narratives and metaphors, and the use of images and allegories across a broad range of traditions. Chapters discuss how imagination has been interpreted by thinkers such as Zhuangzi, Plato, Confucius, Heidegger, and (...) Nietzsche. By drawing on sources including Buddhist aesthetics, Daoism, and analytic philosophy of mind, this cross-cultural collection shows how the imagination can be an indispensable tool for the comparative philosopher, opening up new possibilities for intercultural dialogue and critical engagement. (shrink)

Introduction: Adorno and Barthes on the question of the right (di)stance -- The pathos of distances in "a world of banished people" -- George Orwell's critique of sincerity and the obligation of tactlessness -- The inferno of saviors: notes in the margin of Elias Canetti's lifework -- A socialism of distances, or on the difficulties of wise love: Iris Murdoch's secular community -- "The world in me": the distantiality of everyday life -- In search of a whole self: Benjamin's childhood (...) fragments -- Annie Ernaux's diaries of the outside -- Gunter Grass's century -- Damon Galgut on emptying oneself for sleep -- Conclusion. (shrink)

Prior researches have highlighted challenges and variations arising from the requirements of research ethics committees and ethics governance systems across diverse research fields. This emphasizes the need to investigate how universities convey and implement research ethical practices. Research ethics plays a pivotal role in guiding the integration of ethical principles throughout all stages of research starting from its inception and planning to its completion and the dissemination of results. These practices encompass a range of considerations, reviews, guidelines, and processes aimed (...) at safeguarding the rights, dignity, health, safety, and privacy of research participants. Using the content analysis technique, this paper aims to analyse research ethical practices information on universities’ websites from three developed countries and developing countries respectively using the isomorphism conception. The findings suggest that the coercive, normative, and mimetic isomorphic pressures explain the research ethics governance practices. The ethical practices information was disclosed more on university websites of the developed countries. Suggestions to improve the university’s research ethics governance system for the post-COVID-19 era were provided in the paper. (shrink)

Intimate partners are an important source of support when pursuing health goals. A vast amount of literature documents the role of social support in alleviating recipients’ distress and facilitating health behaviors. Less studied is the phenomenon that providing support may entail a benefit for the provider, particularly in the context of health behavior change. In the present study, we investigated whether providing social support in daily life would be associated with more health behavior, and emotional and relational well-being that same (...) day, using a sample of romantic couples aiming to become more physically active. Ninety-nine inactive and overweight heterosexual romantic couples (=198 individuals) participated in this dyadic daily diary study. Both partners reported on the provision of social support, positive and negative affect, and relationship satisfaction in electronic end-of-day diaries across 14 consecutive days. Moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) was objectively assessed via triaxial accelerometers (Actigraph GT3X+). Using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (APIM), dyadic data analyses indicated that providing support to the partner was associated with higher own MVPA, more own positive affect, less own negative affect, and more own relationship satisfaction (actor effects), over and above the effect of support provision on outcomes in the other partner (partner effects). The present findings suggest that the provision of daily social support in couples is strongly associated with enhanced well-being not only at a personal level but also at a relational level. Providing social support may also serve the function of relationship maintenance. Thus, shifting the focus away from the recipient to examine beneficial effects of social support in providers is highly relevant. Future research should address the question of when, why, and how giving support is beneficial. (shrink)

This introduction presents three articles that remember the life and work of Antonio Millán-Puelles. It contains a summary of the seminar which took place in the University of Navarra in January 2005 as a tribute to Millán-Puelles. It also registers the articles from Millán-Puelles Publisher in Anuario Filosófico, as well as the articles griten by other authors on Millán-Puelles’ work.

Much of the importance of innovation stems from its capacity to spread via social learning, affecting multiple individuals, thus generating evolutionary and ecological consequences. We advocate a broader taxonomic focus in the field of behavioral innovation, as well as the use of comparative field research, and discuss the unique conservation implications of animal innovations and traditions.

The Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopadie der Theologie und der Kirchen (DBETh) (German Biographical Encyclopaedia of Theology and the Church) offers biographical articles on 8,000 people from the areas of church, theology and the non-Christian religions, in the German-speaking regions. This biographical encyclopaedia of the church and the history of religion reaches from the early Middle Ages to the present, covering a period of more than a thousand years. Christians of different confessions and communities, Jews, prominent theologians and religious leaders and representatives (...) of religious studies are presented with their life histories and life's work. The DBETh is a unique type of lexical work of unparalleled extensiveness. The geographical area covered by the DBETh is defined by the German language. Besides Germany, it covers Austria, German-speaking Switzerland, the Alsace and Transylvania, the Baltic and South Tyrol. The biographical articles are free of value judgements and censorship, and do not cover people still living. Men and women, who made a significant impact during their lives and had far reaching influence following their deaths, are dealt with more extensively in articles written and signed by experts. Almost all the articles have details of further reading. Indexes of persons and places make it easier to use and to find connections. The sphere of people covered is broad: theologians, holders of church offices, philosophers with a religious-theological emphasis as well as artists concentrating primarily on ecclesiastical themes and activities - writers, musicians, painters, sculptors, and architects. Also included are secular leaders who were specifically influential in church politics. Vicars recognized as writers or as naturalists are not forgotten any more than members of orders, acknowledged as astronomers or mathematicians.". (shrink)

As the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and state violence against Black Americans dominated our national landscape in the spring of 2020, many in medicine, nursing, and public health made renewed calls...

Welche gesellschaftlichen und ökonomischen Bedingungen bestimmen unser individuelles Subjektsein und damit unsere Identität, Sexualität und Geschlechtlichkeit? Wie werden unsere Wahrnehmungs- und Affektmuster, unsere Körpererfahrungen, unser Denken und unsere Reflexionsmöglichkeit geformt? Corina Färber entwickelt eine integrierte Subjektivierungsanalytik im Anschluss an Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault und Judith Butler. Dies erlaubt ihr, die Subjektwerdung als ambivalenten und konkreten Prozess analysierbar zu machen und im Hinblick auf die Möglichkeiten der politischen Handlungsfähigkeit und politischen Subjektivierung zu befragen.

Crítica reformista e innovación sustantiva. Alcance y límites de los modelos normativos de deliberación para el análisis del presupuesto participativo de Porto Alegre.

El artículo rastrea en dos de los textos importantes de la obra de Niccolò Machiavelli : El Príncipe y los Discursos sobre la Primera Década de Tito Livio, elementos conceptuales inherentes a la noción psicoanalítica psicología de las masas. En el pensamiento del florentino es dable hallar cierta teoría psicológica, la cual es concebida como expresión de deseos y afectos humanos, a la cual el autor arriba a partir de una aguda observación empírica y del conocimiento del pasado. Machiavelli analiza (...) la ciudad como un campo de deseos en pugna, el deseo del pueblo de no ser oprimido y el de los nobles de ambición ilimitada. En el análisis que despliega el autor sobre estos deseos en conflicto, pero sobre todo en la relación entre el príncipe, los nobles y el pueblo, así como en la caracterización que realiza de éste, es posible hallar elementos en ciernes de la psicología de las masas desarrollos luego por el psicoanálisis freudiano. (shrink)

Patients who have an oncological disease and are in palliative care belong to a group that is often characterized as highly vulnerable, and their participation in clinical trials poses a number of ethical problems. This study is cross-sectional and analytic. In all, 82% of those who took part consider it ethical to conduct research with patients in palliative care, either to help other patients in the future, in the hope of gaining some improvement or due to confidence in the physician-researcher. (...) The wide acceptance to participate in these research studies shows the potential benefits appear to exceed the merely therapeutic ones. Altruism, hoping to improve or the perception of continuing to "fight" the disease are aspects to bear in mind when evaluating respect for the autonomy of the persons involved. (shrink)

In this paper, close attention is paid to the argumentative patterns resulting from combining pragmatic argumentation in which a recommendation is made with arguments in which the majority is invoked. I focus on such argumentative patterns as employed by European parliamentary committees of inquiry conducting inquiries into the activity of the Equitable Life Assurance Society. By incorporating legal and political insights about the activity of these parliamentary committees of inquiry into a pragma-dialectical argumentative approach, an analysis will be given of (...) the selected argumentative pattern. This analysis will reveal which standpoints are supported by which arguments and how these arguments relate to each other to increase the acceptability of the recommendation made. In addition, the analysis will explain the arguer’s argumentative choices in the pattern employed. (shrink)

In this paper, the author examines the use of pragmatic argumentation in European practices of political accountability in which the politicians explain and justify a future course of action which they plan to undertake in order to solve an existing problem. The author explains some vital institutional characteristics of the practices under discussion and demonstrates how these institutional characteristics constrain the use of pragmatic argumentation. In addition, the author shows which criteria arguers commonly invoke in practices of political accountability to (...) make their pragmatic arguments acceptable to critics. (shrink)

The European Union is making increased efforts to find simpler and more effective ways to function adequately in the eyes of its citizens by using ‘soft law’ instruments such as recommendations. Although they have no legally binding force, recommendations have practical and legal effects occurring partly due to their normative content in which a course of action is prescribed and further supported by arguments intended to persuade the addressees of a political position. Although recommendations function as persuasive instruments due to (...) their argumentation, the characteristics of argumentation and how it is employed to convince the addressee to comply with certain measures have not been investigated at all. The main goal of the paper is to explain how arguments are used by the European Commission when recommending Member States to follow a new course of action. First, we will unravel the justificatory reasons employed by the Commission in order to make Member States comply with new measures and we will show how these reasons are combined into an argumentative pattern : 1–23, 2016; J Argum Context 6: 3–26, 2017). This pattern basically prescribes a course of action to Member States, which is further supported by arguments in which the necessity and advantages of following the proposed course of action are justified. Second, we will explain how and why the way in which the arguments are combined in this complex pattern could be potentially persuasive for the Member States despite the legally non-binding character of recommendations. We will show that the European Commission tries to persuade the Member States to take new measures by evading the burden of proof imposed by the legislative framework. At a more specific level of analysis, we will delve into the implicit premises in the argumentation, which enable us to identify cases of evasion of the burden of proof due to the Commission’s use of implicit starting points which might not be accepted by the Member States. (shrink)

In this paper, the author examines the burden of proof in the argu- mentative confrontations taking part in practices of political accountability. She does so by explaining how politicians maneuver strategically with the burden of proof in an attempt at winning the discussion in which they are involved. After making clear the role of the burden of proof in defining the difference of opinion in argumentative confrontations, the author outlines the constraints imposed by practices of political accountability on the burden (...) of proof. Finally, she analyzes in detail a concrete case in which a politician maneuvers in such a way that his burden of proof is significantly diminished. (shrink)

This paper explores in detail an argument for epistemic expressivism, what we call the Argument from Motivation. While the Argument from Motivation has sometimes been anticipated, it has never been set out in detail. The argument has three premises, roughly, that certain judgments expressed in attributions of knowledge are intrinsically motivating in a distinct way (P1); that motivation for action requires desire-like states or conative attitudes (HTM); and that the semantic content of knowledge attributions cannot be specified without reference to (...) the intrinsically motivating judgments that such attributions express (P2). We argue that these premises entail a version of ecumenical expressivism. Since the argument from motivation has not been explicitly stated before, there is no current discussion of the argument. In this paper we therefore consider and reject various objections that one might propose to the argument, including some that stem from the idea that knowledge is factive, or that knowledge involves evidence that rules out relevant alternatives. Other objections to (P1) specifically might be derived from cases of apparent lack of epistemic motivation considered in in Kvanvig (The value of knowledge and the pursuit of understanding, 2003) and Brown (Nous 42(2):167–189, 2008), as well as from general forms of externalism about epistemic motivation. We consider these and find them wanting. Finally, the paper offers some critical remarks about the prospect of denying (P2). (shrink)

This article is a brief response to Ramsey E. Ramsey’s essay ‘Letters on the hermeneutic education of dwelling’ published in Empedocles (6: 1, pp. 77–90). While it sees Ramsey’s defense of the lecture as a necessary articulation of the specificity of the work professors do in the humanities classroom, it points to the necessity of an enhanced self-awareness given the pervasive sense of crisis in the humanities, and in light of more recent developments on American and British campuses.

Yi-Ping Ong's The Art of Being: Poetics of the Novel and Existentialist Philosophy is a highly innovative book. It teases out from essays by Søren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir an existentialist poetics of the novel, which then inspires thoughtful readings of freedom and self-consciousness, situated worldhood, and unfinished works of art in nineteenth-century novels. At every step, Ong carefully articulates the insights that set her study apart from established ways of understanding the novel as form, the legacy (...) of existentialism, and the generative potential of literary form for philosophy. This book will likely delight and intrigue in equal measure. The argument is bold, the scholarship... (shrink)

There is a deep tension between logical and probabilistic norms of belief. This article illustrates the normative force that is associated with these frameworks by showing how rather unrestricted belief bases can be improved by undergoing logical and probabilistic reflection. It is argued that probabilistic reasoning accounts for the reliability of the conclusions one can draw from the beliefs. Most importantly, reliability commands us to care for the increasing uncertainty of conjunctions of beliefs. Deductive logic captures the agent's commitment towards (...) all conclusions of her beliefs. In other words, it seems that commitment forces the agent to believe conclusions, which reliability tells her to view with scepticism. This conflict is resolved by arguing that commitment merely forces the agent to find the logical conclusions of her beliefs acceptable, not necessarily to believe them. This demands consistency but no deductive closure. Furthermore, it is shown that by restoring consistency, a straightforward connection between high subjective probability and full belief is undermined. Finally, the article delineates how this approach deals with the lottery paradox and the preface paradox. (shrink)

This paper analyses the relationship between religion and the field of medicine and health care in light of other recent studies. Generally, religion and spirituality have a positive impact on disease. For patients diagnosed with malignancies and chronic diseases, religion is an important dimension of healing. From ancient times, God has been considered an inspiration for the physician's knowledge and healing resources. Some authors have proposed a brief history of spiritual and religious states that the doctor can apply to his (...) patient. Religiosity and spirituality allow patients to receive better social support and to benefit greatly from resources provided by religious organizations (cultural activities, jobs, and health care counseling). The two terms "religion" and "spirituality" have different meanings but are always in connection. Many studies emphasize that people with greater religiosity and spirituality have a lower prevalence of depression and suicide, better quality of life, and greater survival. Additionally the article discusses the complementary health care benefits of religious fasting. Caloric and protein restrictions promoted by religious fasting were associated with improvement in control or prophylaxis of many diseases and with longevity. (shrink)

For anyone working in aesthetics interested in understanding the richness of the Chinese aesthetic tradition this handbook is the place to start. Comprised of general introductory overviews, critical reflections and contextual analysis, it covers everything from the origins of aesthetics in China to the role of aesthetics in philosophy today. Beginning in early China (1st millennium BCE), it traces the Chinese aesthetic tradition, exploring the import of the term aesthetics into Chinese thought via Japan around the end of the 19th (...) century. It looks back to early practices of art and craftsmanship, showing how the history of Chinese thought provides a multitude of artifacts and texts that give rise to a wide range of aesthetic creations and notions. Introducing various perspectives on traditional arts in China, including painting, ceramics, calligraphy, poetry, music and theatre, it explores those aesthetic traditions not included in "canonic" art forms, such as martial arts, rock gardening, and ritual performance. Written by Chinese, European, and American theoreticians and practitioners, this authoritative research resource enhances contemporary aesthetics by revealing the possibilities of a Chinese philosophy of art. (shrink)

Normally, it's warm in the summer. A simple statement - yet what do we mean by "normally?" This is the question addressed by the author. She distinguishes between statistical and non-statistical interpretations of normalcy, and, in the light.

The present study aimed to examine the longitudinal promotive and protective role of process quality in regular early childhood education and care (ECEC) centers in the context of early cumulative family risks on children’s social–emotional development from early to middle childhood. The sample consisted of 293 (T1;Mage = 2.81), 239 (T2;Mage = 3.76), and 189 (T3;Mage = 9.69) children from 25 childcare centers in Switzerland. Fourteen familial risk factors were subsumed to a family risk score at T1. Parents and teachers (...) reported on children’s conduct problems (CP), emotional problems (EP), and prosocial behavior (PB) at T2 and T3. Childcare process quality was assessed at T2 using external observations of teaching and interaction, provisions for learning, and key professional tasks. Results showed that early family risks were positively associated with CP and EP and negatively associated with PB in the long term. High-quality teaching and interaction as well as caregivers’ professional behavior in terms of systematic observation, documentation, and planning of children’s individual learning processes and needs protected children from the undesirable long-term effects of early family risks on conduct problems, emotional problems, and prosocial behavior from early to middle childhood. The results indicate that a high process quality in ECEC might serve as an essential contextual protective factor in the development of resilience in children at risk. (shrink)

The study of signed languages has inspired scientific' speculation regarding foundations of human language. Relationships between the acquisition of sign language in apes and man are discounted on logical grounds. Evidence from the differential hreakdown of sign language and manual pantomime places limits on the degree of overlap between language and nonlanguage motor systems. Evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging reveals neural areas of convergence and divergence underlying signed and spoken languages.