Based on our comparison of political orientation and research interests of social psychologists in capitalist Western countries versus post-Communist Eastern European countries, we suggest that Duarte and colleagues' claim of liberal bias in the field seems American-centric. We propose an alternative account of political biases which focuses on the academic tendency to explain attitudes of lower status groups.

In defense of moral testimony Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-21 DOI 10.1007/s11098-012-9887-6 Authors Paulina Sliwa, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116.

To have moral worth an action not only needs to conform to the correct normative theory ; it also needs to be motivated in the right way. I argue that morally worthy actions are motivated by the rightness of the action; they are motivated by an agent's concern for doing what's right and her knowledge that her action is morally right. Call this the Rightness Condition. On the Rightness Condition moral motivation involves both a conative and a cognitive element—in particular, (...) it involves moral knowledge. I argue that the Rightness Condition is both necessary and sufficient for moral worth. I also argue that the Rightness Condition gives us an attractive account of actions performed under imperfect epistemic circumstances: by agents who rely on moral testimony or by those who, like Huckleberry Finn, have false moral convictions. (shrink)

Plausibly, you should believe what your total evidence supports. But cases of misleading higher-order evidence—evidence about what your evidence supports—present a challenge to this thought. In such cases, taking both first-order and higher-order evidence at face value leads to a seemingly irrational incoherence between one’s first-order and higher-order attitudes: you will believe P, but also believe that your evidence doesn’t support P. To avoid sanctioning tension between epistemic levels, some authors have abandoned the thought that both first-order and higher-order evidence (...) have rational bearing. This sacrifice is both costly and unnecessary. We propose a principle, Evidential Calibration, which requires rational agents to accommodate first-order evidence correctly, while allowing rational uncertainty about what to believe. At the same time, it rules out irrational tensions between epistemic levels. We show that while there are serious problems for some views on which we can rationally believe, “P, but my evidence doesn’t support P”, Evidential Calibration avoids these problems. An important upshot of our discussion is a new way to think about the relationship between epistemic levels: why first-order and higher-order attitudes should generally be aligned, and why it is sometimes—though not always—problematic when they diverge. (shrink)

Moral understanding is a valuable epistemic and moral good. I argue that moral understanding is the ability to know right from wrong. I defend the account against challenges from nonreductionists, such as Alison Hills, who argue that moral understanding is distinct from moral knowledge. Moral understanding, she suggests, is constituted by a set of abilities: to give and follow moral explanations and to draw moral conclusions. I argue that Hills’s account rests on too narrow a conception of moral understanding. Among (...) other things, it cannot account for the importance of first-personal experience for achieving moral understanding. (shrink)

"This book explores the relationship between performance and activism in Chile as a form of political expression and citizen participation during the period 2010-2020. Since the student mobilizations of 2006, the social movements that have taken place in Chile are characterized, in many cases, by the appropriation of public space and the political use of the body. This became particularly evident during the social outbreak of October 2019. The social upheaval was accompanied by a cultural explosion, where the arts in (...) all their dimensions played a crucial role as new strategies of collective action. The research proposes two hypotheses about this cultural revolution. Firstly, that this explosion of artistic activism had been fermenting for at least a decade (2010-2020) within the social movements, using performance and art as expressions of collective action. These artistic drivers, catalysts of this cultural revolution, have been mobilized around three fundamental axes of social demands: human rights, education, and feminism. The second hypothesis is that artistic activism in Chile between 2010-2020 emerged to exercise citizenship and strengthen the diversity of cultural identities. Chilean artistic activism today, unlike other historical moments, is a direct expression of citizen participation. It is no longer just artists who contribute to social and protest movements with their work: now, it is the citizens who use artistic expression as a practice of political participation. From an intersectional and feminist perspective, this book is an invitation to study and reflect on the aesthetic and political dimension of performance and its potential to establish justice and symbolic reparation when the State is absent. Furthermore, it incentivises a conversation about the ritual, pedagogical, and visionary dimension of art and its infinite possibilities of expressive and discursive resources. Performance art reimagines possible futures embodying the political demand, always loaded with memory, reclaiming the public space. Performance as the 'art of action' conquers the realm of non-formal education, permeating public space and shaping a Pedagogy of memory and hope." -/- . (shrink)

English for specific purposes has been conceptualized by its leading scholars, like Hutchinson and Waters or Dudley-Evans and St. John, as a multi-stage process, where the ESP practitioner fulfils a variety of roles, including that of learner needs researcher, course designer, language instructor, learning assessor, and course evaluator. The performance of these roles requires considerable knowledge of a linguistic, socio-cultural and pedagogical nature, necessary to inform the teacher’s cognitive processes, par- ticularly those involved in course decision making. The necessary professional (...) knowledge of the ESP teacher, which is gained through professional school- ing, teacher training, and teaching experience, comprises both relevant theo- retical concepts and performance skills. It di- rectly impacts on all stages of the ESP process, namely the planning, design, teaching, assessment and evaluation of a course, largely determining its quality. The present paper focuses on ESP teacher cognition, especially those cognitions that are involved in course design, informing the teacher’s choices of course parameters and instructional practices. Elaborating on the concepts developed by language cognition scholars, like Shulman, Andrews, and Borg, the author tries to outline the in- ternal structure of ESP teacher cognition and describe the function of each subordinate knowledge base. The paper also presents the preliminary results of a small-scale exploratory study into the professional cognition of 13 teachers of Legal and Business English employed at the University of Warsaw. (shrink)

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.

We argue that using a calendar-tracker to capture invisible labour in the academy comes with conceptual and ethical limitations, which might affect how successfully our tracker can provide academics with conceptual resources to understand their invisible work as work.

What is the relationship between understanding and knowing? This paper offers a defence of reductionism about understanding: the view that instances of understanding reduce to instances of knowing. I argue that knowing is both necessary and sufficient for understanding. I then outline some advantages of reductionism.

We are frequently confronted with moral situations that are unsettling, confusing, disorienting. We try to come to grips with them. When we do so, we engage in a distinctive type of moral inquiry: hermeneutical inquiry. Its aim is to make sense of our situation. What is it to make sense of one's situation? Hermeneutical inquiry is part of our everyday moral experience. Understanding its nature and its place in moral epistemology is important. Yet, I argue, that existing accounts of moral (...) inquiry do not give us the resources to do so. This paper develops a positive account of hermeneutical inquiry. I argue that when we engage in hermeneutical inquiry, we search for an apt perspective on our situation. (shrink)

Can moral ignorance excuse? This chapter argues that philosophical debate of this question has been based on a mistaken assumption: namely that excuses are all-or-nothing affairs; to have an excuse is to be blameless. The chapter argues that we should reject this assumption. Excuses are not binary but gradable: they can be weaker or stronger, mitigating blame to greater or lesser extent. This chapter explores the notions of strength of excuses, blame miti- gation and the relationship between excuses and moral (...) responsibility. These ideas open up some principled middle-ground between the two positions staked out in the literature. Moral ignorance may well excuse but it does not exculpate. (shrink)

Excuses are commonplace. Making and accepting excuses is part of our practice of holding each other morally responsible. But excuses are also curious. They have normative force. Whether someone has an excuse for something they have done matters for how we should respond to their action. An excuse can make it appropriate to forgo blame, to revise judgments of blameworthiness, to feel compassion and pity instead of anger and resentment. The considerations we appeal to when making excuses are a motley (...) bunch: tiredness, stress, a looming work deadline, a wailing infant, poverty, duress, ignorance. What unifies these various considerations as a class? In virtue of what can they all excuse? And what does their normative force consist in? This paper aims to develop a unified account of excuses: what they are and what they do. In a nutshell, I argue that excuses are considerations that show that an agent’s wrongdoing does not manifest a specific motivational failing: namely, the lack of a morally adequate present-directed intention. What do excuses do? I suggest that they function as responsibility-modifiers. They alter how the wrongdoer, the wronged party, bystanders may morally respond to a wrong, without negating that it remains appropriate to respond in some way. (shrink)

Muslims are a marginal minority in Poland, but research shows that they are often subject to negative perceptions and hostility from the majority. Orientalist stereotypes about Islam and the people associated with it are widespread and often reproduced in the media. Research from North America and the European Court of Human Rights suggests that such prejudices can affect the adjudication of cases involving Muslims. It may be presumed that Poland is no exception to that, and this assumption was the starting (...) point for our empirical study. To date, there have been no studies on the perception of Muslims and Islam in the Polish legal system. This article presents the results of a qualitative thematic analysis of 57 judicial opinions issued by the common courts in Poland and published online, in which Islam or being Muslim was mentioned. The cases were categorised and texts of the judicial opinions closely analysed (with computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software) to identify recurring themes. The findings of this first exploratory study show that stereotypical representations and the “‘Othering” of Muslims do indeed occur in Polish courts, with some judges repeating Orientalist tropes that have become normalised in Polish society. (shrink)

Adriana Alfaro Altamirano’s new book examines Henri Bergson’s and Max Scheler’s views on intuition. Both authors believed that this power allows us to apprehend a person’s ‘inner multiplicity’, and...

My topic in this paper is the nature of faith. Much of the discussion concerning the nature of faith proceeds by focussing on the relationship between faith and belief. In this paper, I explore a different approach. I suggest that we approach the question of what faith involves by focussing on the relationship between faith and action. When we have faith, we generally manifest it in how we act; we perform acts of faith: we share our secrets, rely on other’s (...) judgment, refrain from going through our partner’s emails, let our children prepare for an important exam without our interference. Religious faith, too is manifested in acts of faith: attending worship, singing the liturgy, fasting, embarking on a pilgrimage. I argue that approaching faith by way of acts of faith, reveals that faith is a complex mental state whose elements go beyond doxastic states towards particular propositions. It also involves conative states and – perhaps more surprisingly – know how. This has consequences for the epistemology of faith: the role of testimony and experts, the importance of practices, and what we should make of Pascal’s advice for how to acquire faith. (shrink)

The analogies between religious and secular juridical arguments interest political theorists because they suggest a hidden link between religion and politics. However, merely describing analogies does not show that the link is significant. Why are there such analogies? The question matters because answering is a prerequisite for determining whether there can be a neutral political background to religion. This paper argues that there are such analogies because arguments in theology and arguments in the juridical theory of the state share a (...) common structure. This structure is such that the meaning of some concepts in the theory of the state, like political order and sovereignty, cannot be fully understood without reference to theological concepts. This thesis – political theology – has become associated with Carl Schmitt, but the argument in this paper differs importantly from his. Unlike Schmitt, this paper claims that in the contemporary state political theology can be superseded. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the evolution of communication process as used by terrorist groups and organizations. It deals with this problem by starting with Russian anarchists and ending with the activists involved in modern groups engaged in the global jihad. The author analyses changes within the content of communication, as well as the means of spreading the message of violence. This essay reviews selected means and methods of public communication used by modern terrorist groups, and analyses the usefulness of these (...) tools in the “war for hearts and minds”. The keynote of this essay is the need to reflect on the popularity of the leitmotiv of violence in modern popular culture. (shrink)

Interdisciplinary dialogue acts as a symbiosis for all the areas that participate and imply enormous projections for both art and science. This paper explores the potential of an interdisciplinary dialogue between Biology and Performance using as a case study the Performance Analfabeta created by the artist Paulina Bronfman. The work was shaped in the context of The Third Conference of the Nucleus of Artistic Research (NIA) of In/Inter/Disciplinary Laboratories hosted by the Faculty of Art of The Pontificia University of (...) Chile (LAB IID). The Lab was led by Chilean biologist Alejandra Zuñiga- Feest and the Brazilian artist Adriana Parente La Selva. This work aims to explore the questions: what does it mean, from the point of view of the arts and sciences, to develop an interdisciplinary laboratory? How is this done? This paper problematizes the creative process of collaboration between sciences and performance as well as the potential impact and link with society that this multidisciplinary dialogue can have. (shrink)

For contemporary critical philosophers of education, the thought of Paul Tillich, a protestant theologian, does not seem to be a very likely point of reference. Nevertheless, we decided to read some of his works within a philosophical-educational context. Reading those works of Tillich we realized that they required a pedagogical-philosophical acknowledgement. Scarce as the educational analyses of Paul Tillich’s writings are, they concern mostly either religious education or some specific issues connected with teaching. Our proposal was to read him differently: (...) as a critical tool for grasping contemporary educational issues, independent from a religious or didactic approach. In the article, referring to the thoughts of Tillich, we analyze the three most important tensions of the last and present centuries: kairos I and II, referring to the human condition after World Wars I and II, and kairos III, related mainly to the war on terrorism and to the growing climate crisis. The analysis of these special moments in the history of humankind is related to the postulates and pedagogical attitudes articulated by us. We conclude that as a result of the deepening climate crisis and the looming specter of a cataclysm, the transition to a better aion may enable the pedagogy of radical hope. The essence of this pedagogy is to shape the “courage to be” during grassroots, collective and political action - an existential attitude saturated with resistance, concern and hope that such grassroots, cultural-religious practices can contribute to social change and reduce the fear of inevitable death associated with the risk of annihilation of the Earth. (shrink)

Paulina Rivero’s paper is a description of a day lived in the shadow of the authentic danger that modern technique implies. It has taken us into a world that is merely functional, in which the forgetting of being leads to forgetting our own interiority. Rivero claims that a key phenomenon in..

The sphere of disability can be treated nowadays from different perspectives that answer to multidimensional of this embodied reality. In this context, a privileged area of reflection is constituted by ethics and, inside of this, as this text propose, the prism of the reciprocal recognition. To achieve this, this present article is structured in two parts. The first, regarding to the understanding of disability from different models. The second, according to the recognition perspective approach of Honneth, and its link with (...) the disability, presents the three stages of recognition with their corresponding ways of disdain. Finally, a series of reflections are exposed regarding the necessity to accomplish a group of demands that transcend civil and political prerogatives, as well as public ones. (shrink)

This article provides a reflection about the concept of «care», from philosophy, for it to develop in relation with the ethics of the sanitary professions, as in relation with the development of certain practices as with the reflection and theoretical configuration that is in the basis, especially from the field of the bioethics. With regard to the philosophical dimension of the concept in question, this will be seen from the perspective of a notable contemporary author: Alasdair MacIntyre, whose approaches allow (...) a nutritional analysis about the possibilities and certain restrictions in relation with the reflection proposed. (shrink)

Despite the fact that radio documentaries broadcast mainly strong emotions, news values of this genre are also its essential feature. Therefore, it is necessary to describe the potential of such works to deliver knowledge about the transcendent world, which could be significant for the listeners. The aim of this article is to show theses made by scholars as regards radio documentaries. Researchers’ analyses are related to the genre’s potential possibilities of to broaden people’s minds and influence the recipient’s perception.

This paper outlines and defends a processual theory of peoplehood. On our theory, a people is, roughly speaking, composed of two things. First, an unfolding series of events coordinated by the practices of constituting, governing, or changing a polity's authoritative institutions. Second, individual persons whose lives and interests are intensely affected by these events and institutions. We call this theory deep processualism. We outline the theory by showing how it would answer five questions: the questions of constituents, individuation, origination, termination, (...) and membership: What are the chief constituents of peoples? What individuates peoples? Under what conditions do peoples originate? Under what conditions do peoples cease to be? Under what conditions is a person a member of the people? We also consider alternative theories of the nature of peoples, theories due to Juergen Habermas, Bruce Ackerman, Philip Pettit, and James Fishkin. We defend our theory on the ground that it is not embarrassed by the difficulties that we pin on these alternative theories. (shrink)

An ICQ Message Board Session as Discourse: A Case Study Even though the scope of literature on online communication expands fast, very little attention seems to be paid to instant messengers-programmes providing for one to one communication in real time. It is quite surprising, since such programmes create conditions closest to face to face communication. The similarities and differences between computer-mediated and face to face interaction should be the most apparent in instant messenger mediated communication. The present paper focuses on (...) this type of internet communication. The data sample is a transcript of an online conversation that took place within one day. It is analysed within the framework of Conversation Analysis with regard to turn-taking and the occurrence of discourse markers. Also, attention is paid to the use of minimal responses. Although, as might be expected, face to face and computer-mediated interaction share many features with respect to the above criteria, there arise a few interesting differences. (shrink)

Mentalization is a process of social cognition that involves making inferences about one’s own behavior and the behavior of other people on the basis of unobservable mental states. Particularly in psychodynamic approaches, mentalization is conceptualized in the context of activation of internal representation of emotional relationship. In this study, we checked whether mentalization constitutes a predictor of relational satisfaction in the context of one’s own and the partner’s specific attachment. The research sample was composed of 32 heterosexual couples living together (...) for at least two years. Three tools were applied: the Mental State Task, Experiences in Close Relationships-Relationship Structures, and the Relationship Assessment Scale. The results indicate a strong negative effect of one’s own attachment anxiety and avoidance, and a strong effect of the partner’s attachment anxiety on the relationship satisfaction for both men and women. In women, the incremental validity of mentalization in predicting satisfaction in the relationship beyond the attachment of their partners has been observed. The results are discussed in the context of the intrapsychic and interpersonal aspects of mentalization and attachment. (shrink)

Marcel Gauchet to mało znany w Polsce historyk i filozof francuski. Żadna z jego książek nie została do tej pory przetłumaczona na język polski. Dostępny w tym języku jest jeden z esejów pochodzący z La démocratie contre elle-même (Demokracja przeciwko sobie samej), opublikowany w kwartalniku „Res Publica Nowa” w grudniu 2002 r. pt. Nowy wiek osobowości. Próba psychologii współczesnej, przełożony i opracowany przez Wiktora Dłuskiego. W tekście tym Gauchet stawia tezę o mającej miejsce we współczesnym świecie rewolucji antropologicznej, polegającej na (...) zmianie roli rodziny ze wspólnoty ustanawiającej i podtrzymującej więzi społeczne na grupę społeczną niemającą wpływu na kształt życia społecznego. Przybliżenie sylwetki Gaucheta wydaje się niezbędne, albowiem jego myśl stanowi ważki i godny uwagi głos w dyskusji nad stanem współczesnej polityki oraz świata. -/- W niniejszym artykule skupię się na dwóch poruszonych przez Gaucheta zagadnieniach. Pierwsze z nich to ideologiczne konsekwencje ostatniego kryzysu gospodarczego, m. in. pokonanie lewicowej frakcji politycznej przez prawicową czy kryzys demokracji objawiający się dominacją interesów jednostkowych nad wspólnotowymi. Drugą kwestię stanowi kryzys liberalizmu polegający na występowaniu dwóch sprzecznych trendów na scenie politycznej, mianowicie,dominacji idei państwa interwencjonistycznego, dążącego do zbudowania dobrze funkcjonującego państwa opiekuńczego oraz rosnącego w siłę domagania się praw jednostki, co odbywa się, zdaniem Gaucheta, kosztem państwa. -/- Źródła będące podstawą niniejszego tekstu to przede wszystkim wywiad Macieja Nowickiego z Marcelem Gauchetem pt. Nie ma już lewicy, prawica zwyciężyła na zawsze opublikowany w miesięczniku „Europa. Magazyn Idei Newsweeka” w 2009 r. oraz wydane w 2007 r. I i II tom L’Avènement de la démocratie (Nadejście demokracji) Gaucheta. (shrink)

Background: Seeking consent for genetic and genomic research can be challenging, particularly in populations with low literacy levels, and in emergency situations. All of these factors were relevant to the MalariaGEN study of genetic factors influencing immune responses to malaria in northern rural Ghana. This study sought to identify issues arising in practice during the enrolment of paediatric cases with severe malaria and matched healthy controls into the MalariaGEN study. Methods: The study used a rapid assessment incorporating multiple qualitative methods (...) including in depth interviews, focus group discussions and observations of consent processes. Differences between verbal information provided during community engagement processes, and consent processes during the enrolment of cases and controls were identified, as well as the factors influencing the tailoring of such information. Results: MalariaGEN participants and field staff seeking consent were generally satisfied with their understanding of the project and were familiar with aspects of the study relating to malaria. Some genetic aspects of the study were also well understood. Participants and staff seeking consent were less aware of the methodologies employed during genomic research and their implications, such as the breadth of data generated and the potential for future secondary research.Moreover, trust in and previous experience with the Navrongo Health Research Centre which was conducting the research influenced beliefs about the benefits of participating in the MalariaGEN study and subsequent decision-making about research participation. Conclusions: It is important to recognise that some aspects of complex genomic research may be of less interest to and less well understood by research participants and that such gaps in understanding may not be entirely addressed by best practice in the design and conduct of consent processes. In such circumstances consideration needs to be given to additional protections for participants that may need to be implemented in such research, and how best to provide such protections.Capacity building for research ethics committees with limited familiarity with genetic and genomic research, and appropriate engagement with communities to elicit opinions of the ethical issues arising and acceptability of downstream uses of genome wide association data are likely to be important. (shrink)

When you don’t know what to do, you’d better find out. Sometimes the best way to find out is to ask for advice. And when you don’t know what the right thing to do is, it’s sometimes good to rely on moral advice. This straightforward thought spells serious trouble for a popular and widespread approach to moral worth: on this approach, agents deserve moral praise for a right action only if they are acting on right-making reasons. The first part of (...) this paper argues that cases of moral advice present right-making reasons accounts with a dilemma: depending on how we make the right-making relation precise, we either have to deny that agents who seek out and follow moral advice are morally praiseworthy or we have to credit morally wrong actions by unsavory characters with moral worth. This casts doubt on the claim that acting on right-making reasons can be both necessary or sufficient for moral worth. The second half of the paper explores an alternative proposal: what’s required for moral worth is moral knowledge. This idea has been unpopular in recent literature. My aim is to show that it deserves serious consideration. (shrink)

The article is an attempt to determine the role of the media in shaping the image of the Polish- German borderlands. As examples, press releases published (from August 1994 to November 1996) in Gazeta Pogranicza [Borderland Gazette] were used. The newspaper is the result of cooperation between local editorial supplements to Gazeta Wyborcza and the Brandenburg regional daily newspaper Märkische Oderzeitung. An important element of this research is the assumption that the foundation of any international communication is the need to (...) know and understand. (shrink)

The article seeks to explain why spontaneity, a concept that political theorists have given scant attention to, matters. It argues that it matters because it delivers a capacity for producing democratic change that is urgent to reflect on amidst a prevailing mood of grief over a democracy lost. To stimulate this reflection, the article engages with Rosa Luxemburg’s work, showing how her understanding of spontaneity as an initiative that delivers something for democracy lays the groundwork for a theoretical orientation that (...) allows us to notice the effects of spontaneity on democracy without overplaying its short-lived nature. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Genomic research and biobanking present several ethical, social and cultural challenges, particularly when conducted in settings with limited scientific research capacity. One of these challenges is determining the model of consent that should support the sharing of human biological samples and data in the context of international collaborative research. In this paper, we report on the views of key research stakeholders in Ghana on what should count as good ethical practice when seeking consent for genomic research and biobanking in (...) Africa. This study was part of a multi-country qualitative case study conducted in three African countries: Ghana, Uganda and Zambia under the auspices of the Human Heredity and Health in Africa initiative (H3Africa). Our study suggests that while participants are willing to give consent for their samples and associated data to be used for future research purposes, they expect to receive feedback about the progress of the research and about the kinds of research being undertaken on their samples and data. These expectations need to be anticipated and discussed during the consent process which should be seen as part of an ongoing communication process throughout the research process. (shrink)

Citizenship and human rights in tension : changes, issues and approaches -- Privileging human rights -- The illusive promise of human rights -- Politics and legalism -- Back to citizenship, an agonistic conception.

RESUMENEn este artículo la risa se explica a través de la conocida teoría de la risa como una respuesta ante la incongruencia. Con base en lo anterior, la autora compara dos tipos de respuesta ante la incongruencia: aquella que pretende resolver la incongruencia, a saber, la filosofía, y aquella que la festeja sin remediarla: la risa. Y es que la tragedia y la comedia, el llanto y la risa, tienen en el fondo un mismo origen, tanto como obras de arte, (...) en la antigua Grecia, como en la vida humana.PALABRAS CLAVERISA, FILOSOFÍA, TRAGEDIA, COMEDIA, INCONGRUENCIA, RESOLVERABSTRACTIn this paper, laughter is explained through the well-known incongruence theory, i.e. as a way to deal with incongruence. The author compares two different ways of acting upon incongruence: one of them is to try to resolve it by setting a rational order and the other one is to take it as it is, accept it, and laugh. Tragedy and comedy, just like crying and laughing, have both the same origin, as works of art in ancient Greece, and also in human life.KEY WORDSLAUGHTER, PHILOSOPHY, TRAGEDY, COMEDY, INCONGRUENCE, RESOLVE. (shrink)

The perplexing relationship between two of the twentieth century’s most important philosophers, Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger, has been the subject of much speculation within academic circles. For Arendt, Heidegger was at once, her mentor, her lover, and her friend. In this paper, we juxtapose Arendt’s theory of the banality of evil against her relationship with Heidegger in an effort to consider the question: How does corporeality inform theorizing? In answering this question, we repudiate the conventional reading of the banality (...) of evil, which attributes the theory to Arendt’s analysis of Adolf Eichmann during the latter’s criminal trial for the actions that he perpetrated in the operation of the Holocaust. Instead, we argue that the theory is, more compellingly, reflective of Arendt’s deeply personal attempts at making sense of Heidegger’s decision to affiliate himself with the German Nazi Party in the years preceding, and during, the Second World War. Through this revisionist account of the banality of evil, we animate the idea that theorizing is the discursive corollary, and belongs within the phenomenological parameters, of corporeality. Finally, we contend that any constructive understanding of how corporeality informs theorizing will only be realized, when there is a collapsing of the seemingly impervious philosophical boundaries that demarcate between ontology and epistemology. (shrink)

Nous sommes en train de franchir un seuil dont, par ailleurs, nous ignorons l’issue. Une technologie de conversation inspirée du mouvement chilien Mandrágora des années 1930 et des qualités magiques de la plante du même nom mobilise les pratiques artistiques pour l’entrevoir. La Mandrágora Constituyente a été conçue autour d’au moins deux idées : la dissidence ne nie pas la conversation, mais la favorise ; la réalité se constitue dans sa description, de sorte que les faits ne sont pas indépendants (...) de la manière dont ils sont lus. (shrink)

Genomic research and biobanking present several ethical, social and cultural challenges, particularly when conducted in settings with limited scientific research capacity. One of these challenges is determining the model of consent that should support the sharing of human biological samples and data in the context of international collaborative research. In this paper, we report on the views of key research stakeholders in Ghana on what should count as good ethical practice when seeking consent for genomic research and biobanking in Africa. (...) This study was part of a multi-country qualitative case study conducted in three African countries: Ghana, Uganda and Zambia under the auspices of the Human Heredity and Health in Africa initiative. Our study suggests that while participants are willing to give consent for their samples and associated data to be used for future research purposes, they expect to receive feedback about the progress of the research and about the kinds of research being undertaken on their samples and data. These expectations need to be anticipated and discussed during the consent process which should be seen as part of an ongoing communication process throughout the research process. (shrink)