This essay explores the contemporary experiences of women who live with pain, given the complex responses they encounter within Western medical systems, including pervasive stigma, bias, clinician disbelief, and poor health outcomes. In response to these realities, as highlighted within recent literature and exemplified in a first-person account provided by the paper’s author, this essay explores the Christian practice of the Stations of the Cross as a faithful response to women living with pain. The Stations provide a distinctive Christian practice (...) that invites women living with pain, as well as their clinicians and loved ones, into faithful care marked by prayer, solidarity, and hospitable listening. Practicing the Stations provides one faithful response that Christian clinicians and those who live with pain might engage in the clinic and beyond. (shrink)

Over one in five adults in the United States and around the world are estimated to live with chronic pain. How are we to attend well to persons living with pain? This is a difficult, pressing question for both healthcare institutions and Christian communities, and it is only made more complex both by the contemporary opioid crisis and by how experiences of pain and addiction are shaped in the American context by race, gender, and class. Attending faithfully to persons in (...) pain demands thoughtful, creative resources on both practical and conceptual levels. In this special issue of Christian Bioethics, eight scholars from different disciplines—Sarah Barton, Farr Curlin, Jaime Konerman-Sease, Brett McCarty, Joel Shuman, Devan Stahl, John Swinton, and Emmy Yang—engage the meaning of attending to persons in pain for Christian bioethics and for faithful Christian practice. (shrink)

As philosophers such as Fendler, Bauman and Young have shown, the concept of community poses significant challenges for diversity by reinforcing similarity, necessarily bracketing that which is viewed as outside, other or strange. In this paper, I interrogate the concept of community as it applies to Québec's intercultural context. I explore how intercultural dialogue, a mechanism to promote intercultural community building has, through a number of public displays of xenophobia, reinforced a discourse of intolerance in Québec's public sphere. Québec's Geography, (...) History, and Citizenship education course is aimed at creating an intercultural ‘micro-society’ in which students practice the demands of intercultural citizenship, such as dialogue. As a curricular requirement, intercultural dialogue places educators with the responsibility of perpetuating an intolerant discourse of difference. (shrink)

Lee suggests a conceptualization of health data sharing not merely as an act of altruism, but as a gift. The difference is important, as the inscription of the latter in a social context inv...

The rapid and dynamic nature of digital transformation challenges companies that wish to develop and deploy novel digital technologies. Like other actors faced with this transformation, companies need to find robust ways to ethically guide their innovations and business decisions. Digital ethics has recently featured in a plethora of both practical corporate guidelines and compilations of high-level principles, but there remains a gap concerning the development of sound ethical guidance in specific business contexts. As a multinational science and technology company (...) faced with a broad range of digital ventures and associated ethical challenges, Merck KGaA has laid the foundations for bridging this gap by developing a Code of Digital Ethics (CoDE) tailored for this context. Following a comprehensive analysis of existing digital ethics guidelines, we used a reconstructive social research approach to identify 20 relevant principles and derive a code designed as a multi-purpose tool. Versatility was prioritised by defining non-prescriptive guidelines that are open to different perspectives and thus well-suited for operationalisation for varied business purposes. We also chose a clear nested structure that highlights the relationships between five core and fifteen subsidiary principles as well as the different levels of reference—data and algorithmic systems—to which they apply. The CoDE will serve Merck KGaA and its new Digital Ethics Advisory Panel to guide ethical reflection, evaluation and decision-making across the full spectrum of digital developments encountered and undertaken by the company whilst also offering an opportunity to increase transparency for external partners, and thus trust. (shrink)

BackgroundThe advent of learning healthcare systems (LHSs) raises an important implementation challenge concerning how to request and manage consent to support secondary use of data in learning cycles, particularly research activities. Current consent models in Quebec were not established with the context of LHSs in mind and do not support the agility and transparency required to obtain consent from all involved, especially the citizens. Therefore, a new approach to consent is needed. Previous work identified the meta-consent model as a promising (...) alternative to fulfill the requirements of LHSs, particularly large-scale deployments. We elicited the public’s attitude toward the meta-consent model to evaluate if the model could be understood by the citizens and would be deemed acceptable to prepare for its possible implementation in Quebec.MethodsEight focus groups, with a total of 63 members of the general public from various backgrounds were conducted in Quebec, Canada, in 2019. Explicit attention was given to literacy levels, language spoken at home and rural vs urban settings. We assessed attitudes, concerns and facilitators regarding key components of the meta-consent model: predefined categories to personalized consent requests, a dynamic web-based infrastructure to record meta-consent, and default settings. To analyse the discussions, a thematic content analysis was performed using a qualitative software.ResultsOur findings showed that participants were supportive of this new approach of consent as it promotes transparency and offers autonomy for the management of their health data. Key facilitators were identified to be considered in the implementation of a meta-consent model in the Quebec LHSs: information and transparency, awareness campaigns, development of educational tools, collaboration of front-line healthcare professionals, default settings deemed acceptable by the society as well as close partnerships with recognized and trusted institutions.ConclusionsThis qualitative study reveals the openness of a sample of the Quebec population regarding the meta-consent model for secondary use of health data for research. This first exploratory study conducted with the public is an important step in guiding decision-makers in the next phases of implementing the various strategies to support access and use of health data in Quebec. (shrink)

Résistance(s) réunit un ensemble de contributions scientifiques originales émanant de chercheurs en sciences humaines et sociales et consacré à la ou aux résistance(s). La résistance décrit les capacités de refus, d'évitement et d'adaptation développées par les acteurs lorsqu'ils sont confrontés à une imposition externe ou à une injonction institutionnelle. Elle se présente comme une interprétation des refus, des éventuelles ruses voire des conflits ouverts qui s'expriment dans une telle situation ; cette interprétation diffère cependant de sa simple manifestation dans la (...) mesure où elle recadre la rationalité et le bien-fondé de l'action ou de la réaction. Il n'est plus question d'y voir l'immaturité d'une population ou le sous-développement d'une nation incapable d'offrir une réponse adéquate à une tension du monde ou à une décision dont elles seraient l'objet. Au contraire, cette réponse est analysée comme pertinente dans le cadre précis de cette population ou de cette nation: ramener l'interaction à son cadre, intégrer dans sa perception les logiques endogènes qui ont présidé à son élaboration, affirmer la simple présence de telles logiques, c'est-à-dire d'une telle cohérence, revient à accepter l'idée même de cette résistance qui, intrinsèquement, exprime ainsi l'existence et la reconnaissance d'une réelle diversité."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

First published in France in 1936 as a journal article, The Transcendence of the Egowas one of Jean-Paul Sartre's earliest philosophical publications. When it appeared, Sartre was still largely unknown, working as a school teacher in provincial France and struggling to find a publisher for his most famous fictional work, Nausea. The Transcendence of the Egois the outcome of Sartre's intense engagement with the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology. Here, as in many subsequent writings, Sartre embraces (...) Husserl's vision of phenomenology as the proper method for philosophy. But he argues that Husserl's conception of the self as an inner entity, 'behind' conscious experience is mistaken and phenomenologically unfounded. The Transcendence of the Egooffers a brilliant diagnosis of where Husserl went wrong, and a radical alternative account of the self as a product of consciousness, situated in the world. This essay introduces many of the themes central to Sartre's major work, Being and Nothingness: the nature of consciousness, the problem of self-knowledge, other minds, anguish. It demonstrates their presence and importance in Sartre's thinking from the very outset of his career. This fresh translation makes this classic work available again to students of Sartre, phenomenology, existentialism, and twentieth century philosophy. It includes a thorough and illuminating introduction by Sarah Richmond, placing Sartre's essay in its philosophical and historical context.t of consciousness, situated in the world. This essay introduces many of the themes central to Sartre's major work, Being and Nothingness: the nature of consciousness, the problem of self-knowledge, other minds, anguish. It demonstrates their presence and importance in Sartre's thinking from the very outset of his career. This fresh translation makes this classic work available again to students of Sartre, phenomenology, existentialism, and twentieth century philosophy. It includes a thorough and illuminating introduction by Sarah Richmond, placing Sartre's essay in its philosophical and historical context. (shrink)

In recent publications, Harré and Llored Challenges of cultural psychology, Routledge, London, pp 189–206, 2018a; Philosophy, 93:167–186, 2018b; The analysis of practices, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2019) take the role of philosophy of science as a digging out of the ‘hinges’, that are the tacit elements of a discipline. In this perspective, the philosophy of chemistry consists, at least partly, in making explicit the hinges on which chemistry turns and in examining their origins and logical status. In this (...) paper, we propose to query Harré and Llored’s research approach in the case study of the element chlorine. Whereas most early nineteenth-century textbooks define the element as the endpoint of chemical decomposition, the controversy surrounding the element chlorine reveals implicit criteria that surpass operational indivisibility. From 1810 onwards, Davy argued that chlorine was a simple substance; yet, even though it had been known to be indecomposable using the strongest instruments available, the widespread acceptance of chlorine took until 1816–1818. The main factor that contributed to the resolution of the debate was the discovery of iodine, an analogous element which provided new theoretical coherence between explanations of different phenomena :247–258, 1959). Thus, the idea that elements should qualitatively resemble each other is an implicit belief which appears to have been shared by many prominent chemists of the time, despite the fact that it was not stated as part of the definition of the chemical element. Could we assert that this idea was a ‘hinge’ around which the notion of chemical element revolved? Our talk will answer this question. (shrink)

La teneur d'un ouvrage philosophique dépend à la fois des thèses qui y sont déployées par son auteur et des références dont celui-ci se nourrit. Dans l'oeuvre de Gaston Bachelard, le système référentiel est tout particulièrement abondant : comme si le philosophe redoutait secrètement la vaticination, préférant étayer ses affirmations par des matériaux qu'il puise dans l'univers, pour ainsi dire illimité, de ses lectures. De fait, il n'a jamais caché avoir été un lecteur boulimique, insatiable. Ce faisant, il oublie de (...) dire que toute sa vie est aussi bien un acte d'écriture, dont la table d'existence, c'est-à-dire la table de travail, est le support fondamental. Écriture et lectures s'avèrent pour lui intimement liées. C'est bien pourquoi l'Index que nous proposons ici présente un intérêt majeur. Il dévoile de façon ordonnée l'abondance impressionnante d'une culture qui se met sans arrêt au service d'une pensée. En même temps il agit à la manière d'un spectrographe, qui révèle des zones privilégiées de références et de préoccupations. Dans le cas de Gaston Bachelard, le champ des affinités philosophiques est particulièrement révélateur : il s'y noue un réseau globalement cohérent de références récurrentes, qui apparaît en même temps sur un fond de désaffections implicites : c'est dire qu'il y a de grands absents dans le répertoire bachelardien. De fait, et globalement, il cite beaucoup plus largement les savants et les poètes que les grands philosophes de la tradition classique. D'une utilisation particulièrement aisée, cet Index permettra aux chercheurs, aux étudiants et à tous les lecteurs passionnés de repérer les sources explicites de Gaston Bachelard disséminées à l'intérieur de son oeuvre. (shrink)

In 2013, Bennett proposed a mereological theory in which the parthood relation is defined on the basis of two primitive relations: a is a part of b iff a fills a slot owned by b. However, this theory has issues counting how many parts an entity has. We explore the various counting problems and propose a new theory to solve them. Keeping the core idea of Bennett’s slots, this theory introduces mereological relations between slots. This theory enables us to solve (...) all known counting problems and to go beyond the limits of Bennett’s theory by theorising expected features of mereological theories: supplementation principles and mereological sum and fusion. The theory is illustrated on ontological issues on the nature of structural universals and informational entities. (shrink)

This collection of essays brings together an international roster of contributors to provide historical insight into women’s agency and activism in education throughout from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Topics discussed range from the strategies adopted by individual women to achieve a personal education and the influence of educated women upon their social environment, to the organized efforts of groups of women to pursue broader feminist goals in an educational context. The collection is designed to recover the variety of (...) the voices of women inhabiting different geographical and social contexts while highlighting commonality and continuity with reference to creativity, achievement, and the management and transgression of structures of gender inequality. (shrink)

The notion of affordance remains elusive, notwithstanding its importance for the representation of agency, cognition, and behaviors. This paper lays down a foundation for an ontology of affordances by elaborating the idea of “core affordance” which would serve as a common ground for explaining existing diverse conceptions of affordances and their interrelationships. For this purpose, it analyzes M. T. Turvey’s dispositional theory of affordances in light of a formal ontology of dispositions. Consequently, two kinds of so-called “core affordances” are proposed: (...) specific and general ones. Inspired directly by Turvey’s original account, a specific core affordance is intimately connected to a specific agent, as it is reciprocal with a counterpart effectivity of this agent within the agent-environment system. On the opposite, a general core affordance does not depend on individual agents; rather, its realization involves an action by an instance of a determinate class of agents. The utility of such core affordances is illustrated by examining how they can be leveraged to formalize other major accounts of affordances. Additionally, it is briefly outlined how core affordances can be employed to analyze three notions that are closely allied with affordances: the environment, image schemas, and intentions. (shrink)

Recent attempts to develop and apply digital ethics principles to address the challenges of the digital transformation leave organisations with an operationalisation gap. To successfully implement such guidance, they must find ways to translate high-level ethics frameworks into practical methods and tools that match their specific workflows and needs. Here, we describe the development of a standardised risk assessment tool, the Principle-at-Risk Analysis (PaRA), as a means to close this operationalisation gap for a key level of the ethics infrastructure at (...) many organisations – the work of an interdisciplinary ethics panel. The PaRA tool serves to guide and harmonise the work of the Digital Ethics Advisory Panel at the multinational science and technology company Merck KGaA in alignment with the principles outlined in the company’s Code of Digital Ethics. We examine how such a tool can be used as part of a multifaceted approach to operationalise high-level principles at an organisational level and provide general requirements for its implementation. We showcase its application in an example case dealing with the comprehensibility of consent forms in a data-sharing context at Syntropy, a collaborative technology platform for clinical research. (shrink)

Bullying often results in negative coping in victims, including an increased consumption of alcohol. Recently, however, an increase in alcohol use has also been reported among perpetrators of bullying. The factors triggering this pattern are still unclear. We investigated the role of empathy in the interaction between bullying and alcohol use in an adolescent sample (IMAGEN) at age 13.97 (±0.53) years (baseline (BL), N = 2165, 50.9% female) and age 16.51 (±0.61) years (follow-up 1 (FU1), N = 1185, 54.9% female). (...) General empathic distress served as a significant moderator of alcohol use in perpetrators (F9, 493 = 17.978, p < 0.01), which was specific for males and FU1. Male perpetrators, who are generally less sensitive to distress, might thus be more vulnerable to alcohol abuse. (shrink)

Cancers rely on multiple, heterogeneous processes at different scales, pertaining to many biomedical fields. Therefore, understanding cancer is necessarily an interdisciplinary task that requires placing specialised experimental and clinical research into a broader conceptual, theoretical, and methodological framework. Without such a framework, oncology will collect piecemeal results, with scant dialogue between the different scientific communities studying cancer. We argue that one important way forward in service of a more successful dialogue is through greater integration of applied sciences (experimental and clinical) (...) with conceptual and theoretical approaches, informed by philosophical methods. By way of illustration, we explore six central themes: (i) the role of mutations in cancer; (ii) the clonal evolution of cancer cells; (iii) the relationship between cancer and multicellularity; (iv) the tumour microenvironment; (v) the immune system; and (vi) stem cells. In each case, we examine open questions in the scientific literature through a philosophical methodology and show the benefit of such a synergy for the scientific and medical understanding of cancer. (shrink)

Named one of the Ten Best Books of 2016 by the New York Times, a spirited account of a major intellectual movement of the twentieth century and the revolutionary thinkers who came to shape it, by the best-selling author of How to Live Sarah Bakewell. Paris, 1933: three contemporaries meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are the young Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and longtime friend Raymond Aron, a fellow philosopher who (...) raves to them about a new conceptual framework from Berlin called Phenomenology. "You see," he says, "if you are a phenomenologist you can talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it!" It was this simple phrase that would ignite a movement, inspiring Sartre to integrate Phenomenology into his own French, humanistic sensibility, thereby creating an entirely new philosophical approach inspired by themes of radical freedom, authentic being, and political activism. This movement would sweep through the jazz clubs and cafés of the Left Bank before making its way across the world as Existentialism. Featuring not only philosophers, but also playwrights, anthropologists, convicts, and revolutionaries, At the Existentialist Café follows the existentialists' story, from the first rebellious spark through the Second World War, to its role in postwar liberation movements such as anti-colonialism, feminism, and gay rights. Interweaving biography and philosophy, it is the epic account of passionate encounters--fights, love affairs, mentorships, rebellions, and long partnerships--and a vital investigation into what the existentialists have to offer us today, at a moment when we are once again confronting the major questions of freedom, global responsibility, and human authenticity in a fractious and technology-driven world. (shrink)

1 Evidence-based policy requires researchers to provide the answers to ecological questions that are of interest to policy makers. To find out what those questions are in the UK, representatives from 28 organizations involved in policy, together with scientists from 10 academic institutions, were asked to generate a list of questions from their organizations. 2 During a 2-day workshop the initial list of 1003 questions generated from consulting at least 654 policy makers and academics was used as a basis for (...) generating a short list of 100 questions of significant policy relevance. Short-listing was decided on the basis of the preferences of the representatives from the policy-led organizations. 3 The areas covered included most major issues of environmental concern in the UK, including agriculture, marine fisheries, climate change, ecosystem function and land management. 4 The most striking outcome was the preference for general questions rather than narrow ones. The reason is that policy is driven by broad issues rather than specific ones. In contrast, scientists are frequently best equipped to answer specific questions. This means that it may be necessary to extract the underpinning specific question before researchers can proceed. 5 Synthesis and applications. Greater communication between policy makers and scientists is required in order to ensure that applied ecologists are dealing with issues in a way that can feed into policy. It is particularly important that applied ecologists emphasize the generic value of their work wherever possible. (shrink)

"[This book is] account of one of the twentieth centurys major intellectual movements and the revolutionary thinkers who came to shape it"--Amazon.com.

Extensive research has demonstrated that rs1360780, a common single nucleotide polymorphism within the FKBP5 gene, interacts with early-life stress in predicting psychopathology. Previous results suggest that carriers of the TT genotype of rs1360780 who were exposed to child abuse show differences in structure and functional activation of emotion-processing brain areas belonging to the salience network. Extending these findings on intermediate phenotypes of psychopathology, we examined if the interaction between rs1360780 and child abuse predicts resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) between the amygdala (...) and other areas of the salience network. We analyzed data of young European adults from the general population (N = 774; mean age = 18.76 years) who took part in the IMAGEN study. In the absence of main effects of genotype and abuse, a significant interaction effect was observed for rsFC between the right centromedial amygdala and right posterior insula (p <.025, FWE-corrected), which was driven by stronger rsFC in TT allele carriers with a history of abuse. Our results suggest that the TT genotype of rs1360780 may render individuals with a history of abuse more vulnerable to functional changes in communication between brain areas processing emotions and bodily sensations, which could underlie or increase the risk for psychopathology. (shrink)

In Selfless Cinema?, Sarah Cooper maps out the power relations of making, and viewing, documentaries in ethical terms. The ethics of filmmaking are often examined in largely legalistic terms, dominated by issues of consent, responsibility, and participantse(tm) or film-makerse(tm) rights, but Cooper approaches four representative French film-makers e" Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, Raymond Depardon, and Agns Varda e" in a far less juridical way, drawing on the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. She argues that, in spite of Levinase(tm)s (...) iconoclastic, anti-ocular thinking, his concept of visage is richly applicable to film, and especially to documentary. (shrink)

In contemporary film theory, body and mind have been central to explorations of film form, representation, and spectatorship. While the soul may seem to have no place here, the history of film theory and its legacy to the present suggest otherwise. From the origins of film theory - from Hugo Münsterberg through French Impressionism to writings of the Weimar Republic - to the mid-twentieth century work of Henri Agel and Amédée Ayfre and Henri Agel, as well as Edgar Morin, the (...) soul emerges as a multi-faceted, if contested, concept. By revisiting such key moments in the history of film theory, and tracing the survival of this concept through to a range of cutting-edge debates today, from the work of Vivian Sobchack to Jean-Luc Nancy, Gilles Deleuze to Torben Grodal, The Soul of Film Theory tells the heretofore tacit tale of the relation between cinema and the soul, from classical to contemporary times, in dialogue with philosophy, religion, and science. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The political works of Adam Blackwood offer a powerful defence of absolute monarchy, and one which explicitly sets political power within a religious framework. Critiquing the resistance theories of his contemporaries, Blackwood was sceptical about the political value of natural law and of any appeal to popular sovereignty, at least in contemporary Europe. Blackwood was deeply troubled by the way Christianity was being used to justify resistance, often in Protestant texts that aligned Christianity and natural law, and he insisted (...) that true Christianity taught obedience. Though he has often been likened to his contemporary Jean Bodin, a closer examination of Blackwood’s writing reveals significant differences, especially on the linked issues of natural law, the value of historical argument, and religion. For Blackwood, sovereign power in general had to be underpinned by religion, the one constant in a world of diverse and mutable social practices, and its particular, local manifestation had to be understood historically, as the product of conquest and force. Aware of the potential tensions between Catholic Christianity and monarchical authority, Blackwood also developed a distinctive piety in an attempt to bolster the alliance he advocated between religious and political authority. (shrink)

Prior to the productive encounters that can be staged between Emmanuel Levinas’sthought and cinema at the level of reception, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne introducehis philosophy to their filmmaking at its moment of inception.1Luc Dardenne’s diary Audos de nos images documents their filmmaking from 1991 to 2005, and isinterspersed with brief but erudite references to Levinas’s work. While Levinasianthinking is one among many cited influences in this text, which also features quotationsfrom the writings of novelists, poets, and other philosophers, along (...) with detailedreferences to other filmmakers, his work is a signal point of inspiration and ethicalaspiration for their filmmaking. The Dardenne brothers seek permanently to unsettlereceived ideas of what cinema is. In this, their approach is bound up explicitly, but notexclusively, with the ethical underpinnings of Levinas’s thought. Levinas’s reformulationof ethics as first philosophy creates a fissure at the root of the philosophy of being. TheDardennes’ films, in turn, perform a Levinasian-inspired challenge to the being ofcinema. At its most extreme moments, to kill or not to kill is the key question that theircinema raises. This tacit rewriting of the interrogative opening to Hamlet’s infamous soliloquy, shifts attention away from a self-centered concern with being or non-being,and towards the survival of the other. The passage from being to non-being, whichwould involve the death of the subject, is displaced here by a preoccupation with killing,or failing to kill, someone else. This particular move from dying to killing lies at the heartof the Dardennes’ mortal ethics. (shrink)

Morale et mysogynie. L'auteur démontre que la subjectivité masculine s'active à l'intérieur du discours prétendument universel des philosophes (Kant et Rousseau), spécialement lorsqu'ils traitent de la problématique des sexes qui traverse toute culture.

Translation (French to English) of Jean-Luc Nancy's "L'Annoncée.".

Translation (French to English) of Jean-Luc Marion's "La donation en son herméneutique," originally published (in French) as chapter II of Reprise du donné (Paris: PUF, 2016).

Black women do not want to become white women because they know that this is impossible. Yet, some black women straighten and curl their naturally kinky hair, or wear hair extensions, weaves and wigs that resemble Caucasian hair. Still, they recognize that hair is only one attribute of their Being and that even if they choose to wear non-African hairstyles, they can concurrently embrace other aspects of their black identity. So, is this a matter of cultural assimilation or integration, or (...) is there a deeper ontological problematic underlying these cross-racial hair styling choices? I interrogate three arguments that black women usually advance for their hairstyling choices – the survival strategy argument, the protective styling argument, and the options-choice argument. I use Mabogo Percy More’s interpretation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s concepts of “the Look,” “facticity,” and “bad faith” to analyze Black women’s hair consciousness through the lens of his “Politics of Being” concept. (shrink)

Maya Deren was a Russian-born American filmmaker, theorist, poet, and photographer working at the forefront of the American avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Influenced by Jean Cocteau and Marcel Duchamp, she is best known for her seminal film Meshes of the Afternoon, a dream-like experiment with time and symbol, looped narrative and provocative imagery, setting the stage for the twentieth-century's groundbreaking aesthetic movements and films. Maya Deren assesses both the filmmaker's completed work and her numerous unfinished projects, arguing (...) Deren's overarching aesthetic is founded on principles of incompletion, contingency, and openness. Combining the contrasting approaches of documentary, experimental, and creative film, Deren created a wholly original experience for film audiences that disrupted the subjectivity of cinema, its standards of continuity, and its dubious facility with promoting categories of realism. This critical retrospective reflects on the development of Deren's career and the productive tensions she initiated that continue to energize film. (shrink)

This essay is a defense of Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Imaginary as a text which changes the direction of philosophical thinking regarding the image. Historically depreciated as a mere “copy” or “appearance” of a “reality” grasped through perception, the image is reconceived in Sartre’s text, which culminates in a revaluation of imagination as the condition of possibility for a human consciousness that always already transcends its situation towards something entirely other – what he calls “the imaginary.” Despite the metaphysical bias (...) that clearly operates on Sartre’s thinking throughout The Imaginary and leads him to privilege perception over imagination, his work ultimately succeeds in nihilating the traditional thing-image binary. In effect, he imagines something other than his situatedness within the philosophical reality of his time, ushering in a thought of the imaginary through a creative encounter with nothingness. This thought could only occur spontaneously, for the advent of the imaginary is not produced in an act of will. Accordingly, this essay attempts to trace the movements of Sartre’s project in its transformative process. (shrink)

FEATURED IN EVENTAL AESTHETICS RETROSPECTIVE 1. LOOKING BACK AT 10 ISSUES OF EVENTAL AESTHETICS. This essay is a defense of Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Imaginary as a text which changes the direction of philosophical thinking regarding the image. Historically depreciated as a mere “copy” or “appearance” of a “reality” grasped through perception, the image is reconceived in Sartre’s text, which culminates in a revaluation of imagination as the condition of possibility for a human consciousness that always already transcends its situation (...) towards something entirely other – what he calls “the imaginary.” Despite the metaphysical bias that clearly operates on Sartre’s thinking throughout The Imaginary and leads him to privilege perception over imagination, his work ultimately succeeds in nihilating the traditional thing-image binary. In effect, he imagines something other than his situatedness within the philosophical reality of his time, ushering in a thought of the imaginary through a creative encounter with nothingness. This thought could only occur spontaneously, for the advent of the imaginary is not produced in an act of will. Accordingly, this essay attempts to trace the movements of Sartre’s project in its transformative process. (shrink)

This chapter asks what stance is morally appropriate as we consider when, whether, and how to assist persons experiencing physical, emotional, or intellectual disability. Appealing to a variety of intelligent and observant thinkers for inspiration (Ralph Barton Perry, Helen Keller, and Immanuel Kant), it argues that one important aspect of such a stance is an attitude of reciprocal beneficence. This has three central aspects: a perspective of fellowship acknowledging the disabled and the currently able as members of the community (...) of vulnerable human agents; a developed sympathy attuned to gaps in knowledge and failures of imagination and analogy; and a readiness to show gratitude or appreciation for what the currently disabled may teach about the vulnerable moral agency we share. The argument takes initial inspiration from Perry but owes most to its roots in Kantian moral and political theory. It also owes much to wise and insightful enrichments due to Keller. (shrink)