Data and metrics play an unmistakably powerful role in today's society. Over the years, their use has expanded to cover almost every sphere of everyday life. This book provides a critical investigation into what we can call a ""metric culture"" in which practices of self-tracking and quantification have become more popular than ever before.

The mainstream approach to the understanding of pain continues to be governed by the biomedical paradigm and the dualistic Cartesian ontology. This Volume brings together essays of scholars of literature, philosophy and history on the many enigmatic shades of pain-experience, mostly from an anti-Cartesian perspective of cultural ontology by scholars of literature, philosophy and history. A section of the essays is devoted to the socio-political dimensions of pain in the Indian context. The book offers a critical perspective on (...) the reductive conceptions of pain and argue that non-substance ontology or cultural ontology supports a more humane and authentic understanding of pain. The general ontological features of the self in pain and culturally imbued dimensions of pain-experience are, thus, brought together in a rare blend in this Volume. The essays dwell on the importance of understanding what cultural, social and political forces outside our control do to our pain-experience. They show why such understanding is necessary, both to humanely deal with pain, and to rectify erroneous approaches to pain-experience. They also explore the thoroughly ambivalent spaces between pain and pleasure, and the cathartic and productive dimensions of pain. The essays in this Volume investigate pain-experiences through the fresh lenses of history, gender, ethics, politics, death, illness, self-loss, torture, shame, dispossession and denial. (shrink)

This book offers a bold and controversial new thesis regarding the nature of prejudice. The authors' central claim is that prejudice is not simply learned, rather it is predisposed in all human beings and is thus the foundation for ethical valuation. They aim to destroy the illusion that prejudice is merely the result of learned beliefs, socially conditioned attitudes, or pathological states of development. Contrary to traditional accounts, prejudice itself is not a negative attribute of human nature, rather it is (...) the necessary precondition for the self and civilization to emerge. Defined as the preferential self-expression of valuation, prejudice gives rise to greater existential complexities and novelties that elevate selfhood and society to higher states of ethical realization. Rather than offer another contribution that highlights the destructive nature of prejudice, Mills and Polanowski address the ontological, psychological, and dialectical origins of prejudice as it manifests itself in the process of selfhood and culture. They provide an original conceptualization of the phenomenology of prejudice and its dialectical instantiation in the ontology of the individual, worldhood, and the very structures of subjectivity. As a unique synthesis of psychoanalysis, Hegelian idealism, Heideggerian existential ontology, and Whiteheadian process philosophy, prejudice is the indispensable ground for humanity to actualize its highest potentiality-for-Being. The striking result is (1) a revolutionary theory of human nature, (2) a new ethical system, and (3) the elevation of dialectical ethics to the domain of metaphysics. (shrink)

Reality exists independently of human observers, but does the same apply to its structure? Realist ontologies usually assume so: according to them, the world consists of objects, these have properties and enter into relations with each other, more or less as we are accustomed to think of them. Against this view, Rein Raud develops a radical process ontology that does not credit any vantage point, any scale or speed of being, any range of cognitive faculties with the privilege to (...) judge how the world ‘really’ is. In his view, what we think of as objects are recast as fields of constitutive tensions, cross-sections of processes, never in complete balance but always striving for it and always reconfiguring themselves accordingly. The human self is also understood as a fluctuating field, not limited to the mind but distributed all over the body and reaching out into its environment, with different constituents of the process constantly vying for control. The need for such a process philosophy has often been voiced, but rarely has there been an effort to develop it in a systematic and rigourous manner that leads to original accounts of identity, continuity, time, change, causality, agency and other topics. Throughout his new book, Raud engages with an unusually broad range of philosophical schools and debates, from New Materialism and Object-Oriented Ontology to both phenomenological and analytical philosophy of mind, from feminist philosophy of science to neurophilosophy and social ontology. Being in Flux will be of interest to students and scholars in philosophy and the humanities generally and to anyone interested in current debates about realism, materialism and ontology. (shrink)

Because the techno-economic paradigm of contemporary conceptualizations of innovation is often taken for granted in the literature, this chapter opens up this self-evident notion. First, the chapter consults the work of Joseph Schumpeter, who can be seen as the founding father of the current conceptualization of innovation as technological and commercial. Second, we open up the concept by reflecting on two aspects of Schumpeter’s conceptualization of innovation, namely its destructive and its constructive aspect, based on findings in the history of (...) innovation. Finally, we synthesize our findings and propose an ontic-ontological conceptualization of innovation as ontogenetic process and outcome with six dimensions—newness, political dimension, economic dimension, temporal dimension, human dimension and risk—that moves beyond its technological and commercial orientation. (shrink)

While the terrorism studies literature speaks of a shape of terrorism unique to modernity, the exact nature of modern terrorism, let alone the nature of modernity or its starting point, remain much in dispute. In this article we suggest that the confusion and conflict within the literature arises from a tendency to focus on certain outward or inessential features associated with modernity. In order to truly answer the question of what makes modern terrorism modern, the question needs to be set (...) on a new footing, one which inquires into the necessary and not instrumental relationship between modernity and terrorism—i.e., that inquires into the possibility of an inner dynamic which can take us from the nature of modernity itself to terrorism. In this article we suggest that the intellectual resources for an understanding of modern terrorism in the fullest sense can be found within the preeminent nineteenth-century philosopher of the birth of the modern, G.W.F. Hegel. More specifically, through a reconstruction of Hegel’s account of the French Revolution we can uncover the possibility of understanding modern terrorism as an ontological rather than a temporal category. In other words, we can uncover resources that help us grasp what modern terrorism is, rather than in what age—with its instrumental possibilities given by, say, technology or ideology—it is found. What makes modern terrorism truly modern, we will argue, is a particular shape of self-consciousness that, Hegel shows us, stands as the deep structure of early modernity, and which contains within it an inner dynamic towards a uniquely modern shape of terrorism. While all terrorism that occurs within modernity is not modern, a truly modern terrorism can be identified. (shrink)

This dissertation defends and develops the thesis that some instances, or tokens, of dispositional properties are pure. A pure disposition has no causal basis in any further properties beyond the disposition. A causal basis typically consists of some set of properties underlying a disposition that enables the disposition to manifest when stimulated in the appropriate circumstances. For example, a vase is fragile because it is disposed to break when a hammer or other suitable object strikes it, where the causal basis (...) for fragility is the underlying micro-structure of the vase. Moreover, micro-structural properties of the vase seem to anchor the continuous existence of the vase’s fragility when the vase is not actually breaking. In contrast to the neo-Humean metaphysical assumption that any disposition requires a causal basis in further properties, as in the example of fragility, the Pure Dispositions Thesis denies this. This dissertation achieves four goals. First, it defends the Pure Dispositions Thesis from notable objections: the Powers Regress Argument, the Insufficient Causal Basis Argument, the Argument from the Identity Thesis, and the Argument from Spatial Occupation. Second, it evaluates several theories of the continuous existence of pure dispositions, and argues that some pure dispositions are self-grounded via a minimally sufficient occurrence of their own power. Third, it presents two arguments that some pure dispositions are extrinsically grounded, the Argument from the Higgs Field and the Argument from Priority Monism, and deflects numerous objections to those arguments. Finally, it develops and defends an account of systems of pure dispositions, arguing that a pure dispositional system may generate higher-level categorical and dispositional properties by way of an emergence mechanism involving the union of two pure dispositions. (shrink)

Feminist Metaphysics is the first collection of articles addressing metaphysical issues from a feminist perspective.

This chapter attempts to “re-boot” the discussion of Harry Frankfurt’s approach to autonomy, in the service of a new diagnosis of the strengths and weaknesses of his satisfaction-based ontology of the will. Criticisms of Frankfurt’s work have tended to focus on a lack of normative foundations, often missing Frankfurt’s aim of shifting discussions of autonomy towards a focus on avoiding passivity in how one cares about what one cares about, while still acknowledging the central role of volitional necessity and, (...) especially, self-satisfaction in autonomous agency. Although this approach provides Frankfurt with interesting ways of deflecting criticisms that are ethical in character, the lack of attention to the hermeneutic and linguistic dimensions of our inner life, leaves his approach with insufficient grounds for identifying the passivity of those who are unable or unwilling to engage in genuine self-interpretation. (shrink)

This collection is the first extended investigation of the relation between time and memory in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s thought as a whole as well as the first to explore in depth the significance of his concept of institution. It brings the French phenomenologist’s views on the self and ontology into contemporary focus. Time, Memory, Institution argues that the self is not a self-contained or self-determining identity, as such, but is gathered out of a radical openness to what is not self, (...) and that it gathers itself in a time that is not merely a given dimension, but folds back upon, gathers, and institutes itself. Access to previously unavailable texts, in particular Merleau-Ponty’s lectures on institution and expression, has presented scholars with new resources for thinking about time, memory, and history. These essays represent the best of this new direction in scholarship; they deepen our understanding of self and world in relation to time and memory; and they give occasion to reexamine Merleau-Ponty’s contribution and relevance to contemporary Continental philosophy. This volume is essential reading for scholars of phenomenology and French philosophy, as well as for the many readers across the arts, humanities, and social sciences who continue to draw insight and inspiration from Merleau-Ponty. Contributors: Elizabeth Behnke, Edward Casey, Véronique Fóti, Donald Landes, Kirsten Jacobson, Galen Johnson, Michael Kelly, Scott Marratto, Glen Mazis, Caterina Rea, John Russon, Robert Vallier, and Bernhard Waldenfels. (shrink)

My goal is to explicate the ontological framework of the human self that is required for radical discipleship. I do this through two notions: Christian love and Christian humility. To that end I explore the other- and the self-regarding aspects of humility and love, posing a problem for love and humility rooted in our typical notions of self-interest and phronesis. I then propose a way of rethinking humility and love in the context of a sketch of solidarity and an alternative (...) ontology of the self. (shrink)

It is argued that the many-worlds interpretation is by far the best interpretation of quantum mechanics. The key points of this view are viewing the wave functions of worlds in three dimensions and understanding probability through self-locating uncertainty.

The object of this study is to find a coherent theoretical approach to three problems which appear to interrelate in complex ways: (1) What is the ontological status of consciousness? (2) How can there be 'un conscious,' 'prereflective' or 'self-alienated' consciousness? And (3) Is there a 'self' or 'ego' formed by means of the interrelation of more elementary states of consciousness? The motivation for combining such a diversity of difficult questions is that we often learn more by looking at interrelations (...) of problems than we could by viewing them only in isola tion. The three questions posed here have emerged as especially prob lematic in the context of twentieth century philosophy. 1. The question of the ontological status of consciousness The question 'What is consciousness?' is one of the most perplexing in philosophy-so perplexing that many have been motivated to proceed as though consciousness did not exist. If William James was speaking rhetorically when he said "Consciousness does not exist," 1 many behaviorists of the recent past were not. 2 James meant only to imply that consciousness is not an independently existing soul-substance, along side physical substances. He did not mean that we do not really 'have' consciousness, and he did not provide final resolution for the problem of the causal interrelations between consciousness and the physical realm (e. g. , our bodies). Many recent philosophers and psychologists, however, try to proceed as though these problems did not exist. (shrink)

루이 라벨은 『자아(la conscience de soi)』에서 ‘인간의 의식’과 ‘자아’에 대해 다양하게 규정한 이후에, 『나르시스의 오류(L’erreur de Narcisse)』에서는 고대 희랍의 신화에 나오는 ‘나르시스’가 범한 오류를 실존주의자의 관점에서 분석하고 있다. 이 책에서 말하고 있는 나르시스의 오류는 다양한 관점에서 분석 가능하겠지만, 본 논문에서는 크게 4가지로 개념화 하여 분석하고 있다. 1) 정신으로서의 인간적 자아를 왜곡하는 오류, 2) 도덕을 부정하는 오류, 3) 존재론적 성실성을 외면하는 오류 그리고 4) 인간실존의 양면성에 대한 부정과 영적(정신적) 세계를 부정하는 오류가 그것이다. 이 같은 분석은 인간이란 본래 정신적인 존재로서 타자와의 관계성 (...) 중에 있으며 이 관계성을 통해 진정한 자아를 형성하는 존재임을 말해주고 있지만, 나르시스는 이 같은 인간 존재의 근본적인 조건과 본질에 대해 무지하였거나, 혹은 정신적인 게으름으로 인해 이를 부정하였다. 이 첫 오류가 그 이후 자신의 삶을 불가능하게 한 나머지 오류들도 순차적으로 발생하게 한 것이다. 따라서 나르시스의 오류는 현대사회가 보다 기계, 기술 문명과 물질만능주의에 접근해 있다는 차원에서 자아에 관한 현대인들의 오류를 은유적으로 보여주고 있다고 할 수 있다. (shrink)

John Searle has recently developed a theory of reasons for acting that intends to rescue the freedom of the will, endangered by causal determinism, whether physical or psychological. To achieve this purpose, Searle postulates a series of "gaps" that are supposed toendowthe self with free will. Reviewing key steps in Searle's argument, this article shows that such an undertaking cannot be successfully completed because of its solipsist premises. The author argues that reasons for acting do not have a subjective, I- (...) class='Hi'>ontology but a first-person plural, Weontology that better accounts for agency and responsibility. Key Words: free will • agency • reasons for acting • ontology. (shrink)

In this paper the author examines the ontology of Byzantine music in its self, its aesthetical ground, the philosophical and cultural principles of creation, its episteme, the epistemological field that produced its forms from the 12th till the 14th century, and why that musical ontology hasn’t change through the centuries. The paper discusses in partucular Ernst Bloch’s view that the only evolutionary expression of the Absolute spirit as far as music is concerned, is Western classical music. The author (...) claims that the Western and the Byzantine music stand for two totally distinct and diverse ontologies of the musical being, something that Bloch seems to overlook; this, according to the author, is mostly due to the different systems of representation that have been used, and especially the representational ideas of the time-space relation. The author supports the view that while Western music is spatially-modeled, Byzantine music is time-modeled. (shrink)

John Searle has recently developed a theory of reasons for acting that intends to rescue the freedom of the will, endangered by causal determinism, whether physical or psychological. To achieve this purpose, Searle postulates a series of “gaps” that are supposed toendowthe self with free will. Reviewing key steps in Searle's argument, this article shows that such an undertaking cannot be successfully completed because of its solipsist premises. The author argues that reasons for acting do not have a subjective, I- (...) class='Hi'>ontology but a first-person plural, Weontology that better accounts for agency and responsibility. (shrink)

This book is a systematic analysis of John R. Searle’s philosophy of mind. Searle’s view of mind, as a set of subjective _and_ biologically embodied processes, can account for our being part of nature _qua_ mindful beings. This model finds support in neuroscience and offers reliable solutions to the problems of consciousness, mental causation, and the self.

This book provides important philosophical insights concerning the kind of creatures we are such that we can experience something we understand as well-being, with these insights then being applied to various areas of social policy and welfare practice. The author defends what he calls The Ontology of Well-Being Thesis (TOWT), addressing ontological questions about the human condition, and how these questions are fundamental to issues concerning what we might know about human well-being and how we should promote it. Yet, (...) surprisingly, these ontological questions are often side-lined in academic, political, and policy and practice based debates about well-being. Addressing these questions, head-on, six features of the human condition are identified via TOWT: human embodiment, finiteness, sociability, cognition, evaluation, and agency. The main argument of the thesis is that these features reveal the conflicting character of human experiences, which can, in turn, have a profound bearing on our experience of well-being. Notably, it is our conflicting experiences of time, emotion, and self-consciousness, which can potentially help us experience well-being in complex and multi-dimensional ways. The author then applies these insights to various social policies and welfare practices, concerning, for example, pensions, disability, bereavement counselling, social prescribing within health settings, the promotion of mental health, and co-production practices. This book is of importance to philosophers, social policy analysts, and welfare practitioners and is also relevant to the fields of psychology, sociology, politics, and the health sciences. (shrink)

We present an ontology of pain and of other pain-related phenomena, building on the definition of pain provided by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP). Our strategy is to identify an evolutionarily basic canonical pain phenomenon, involving unpleasant sensory and emotional experience based causally in localized tissue damage that is concordant with that experience. We then show how different variant cases of this canonical pain phenomenon can be distinguished, including pain that is elevated relative to peripheral (...) trauma, pain that is caused neuropathically (thus with no necessary peripheral stimulus), and pain reports arising through deception either of self or of others. We describe how our approach can answer some of the objections raised against the IASP definition, and sketch how it can be used to support more sophisticated discrimination of different types of pain resulting in improved data analysis that can help in advancing pain research. (shrink)

The pursuit of health is one of the most basic and prevalent concerns of humanity. In order to better attain and preserve health, a fundamental and unified description of the concept is required. Using Paul Tillich's ontological framework, I introduce a complete characterization of health and disease is that is useful to the philosophy of medicine and for health-care workers. Health cannot be understood merely as proper functioning of the physical body or of the separated levels of body, mind, and (...) soul. Rather, the multidimensional unity that is the essence of human life requires a new understanding of health as balanced self-integration within the multiple human dimensions. The ontological description of health and disease has concrete implications for how health-care workers should approach healing. It calls for a multidimensional approach to healing in which particular healing is needed and helpful if it considers the other realms of the human. It reveals the importance of accepting limited health as well as the value of faith understood as an ultimate concern because of its ability to wholly integrate the person. (shrink)

Post-millennial scholarship in Buddhist studies reflects increasing interest from Anglophone philosophers working within the analytic tradition.1 Within this emerging body of work the aim has been not merely to bring the conceptual toolkit of analytic philosophers to bear on topics traditionally of interest to Buddhist philosophers but also to enlist the theories that analytic philosophers have developed on core topics within epistemology and metaphysics as frameworks within which to interpret the work of major Buddhist philosophers. Two recent notable examples of (...) this interpretative enterprise are seen in the work of Siderits and Hayashi. These Anglophone commentators utilize theories... (shrink)

This paper argues that Hume can account for character traits as lasting mental qualities without violating his reductionist account of the mind as a changing bundle of ideas and impressions. It argues that a trait is a disposition to act according to certain passions or motivations, explained entirely with reference to the ideas and impressions constituting one's current self. This account is consistent with Hume's view of the mind, and relies solely on his accounts of the association of impressions and (...) ideas, and of the relationship between belief and passion, to establish relations that can properly be called lasting mental qualities. (shrink)

The coupling of 'self and other' as well as the issues regarding intersubjectivity have been central topics in modern Japanese philosophy. The dominant views are critical of the Cartesian formulation , but the Japanese philosophers drew their conclusions also based on their own insights into Japanese culture and language. In this paper I would like to explore this theme in two of the leading modern Japanese philosophers - Kitaro Nishida and Tetsuro Watsuji . I do not make a causal claim (...) that Japanese culture or language was responsible for these thinkers' philosophy, although without a doubt they were strong influences. The point rather is to show an interesting convergence of concerns regarding the fundamental nature of the relation between the self and others across different cultures and intellectual traditions, and to clarify further the ontological structure of the self-other relation. After the examination, the thesis I would like to defend here is the following: Intersubjectivity is indeed a condition, rather than an accident, of the structure of lived experiences as such but this relation also requires at the same time the recognition that the Other must remain a true negation-in-relation to the self. Let me first turn to Watsuji, although chronologically he was 20 years junior and was a student of Nishida, since Watsuji's phenomenology deals more directly with the topic of intersubjectivity. I will then turn to Nishida's broader ontological considerations. (shrink)

THERE would appear to be no philosophical consensus about the nature of human action, even though discussion of that ancient topic has intensified in the last two decades. I shall nevertheless ask the reader to suppose that the question has at last been settled in its main lines, and settled in a way I shall describe in a moment. The supposition I have in mind is no light matter. The universe it envisions is radically different from what it would be (...) if some other supposition were in its place. A detailed justification of it would require a thoroughgoing reassessment of many of the notions about causality that have prevailed in this century. Though I have offered something of that kind in earlier writings, the most I can hope to do here is to state the supposition in as brief, vivid, and concrete a way as I can manage. After that I shall ask what view of the rational agent it leads us to. No matter how action itself is interpreted, common sense attributes action to an agent. If the actions are those that take place in an atmosphere of rational discourse, it is natural to think of the agent as a rational one. Do we have any right to make this attribution in any way more exacting than that of common sense? Precisely what ontological status does the rational agent have? What, in particular, are we to make of its self-identity, seeing that some actions seem to modify the self-identity in which in a prima facie sense they originate? (shrink)

We are all immersed in a sea of social norms, but they are sometimes tricky to observe with any clarity. They are often invisible to us and emerge only when they are not observed. Social norms are important to understand because they are both limiting of our freedom, such as gendered and racialized norms, and at the same time the very conditions of our agency. Social Goodness presents an original, externalist answer to the question of the source or origin of (...) social role normativity. Rather than grounding social normativity in the attitudes of persons, the book argues for an externalism that roots social role normativity in the social world itself: in its positions, institutions, and larger architecture. The core insight of externalism is that the function or structural feature of an enterprise or activity can bring with it normative demands quite independently of the attitudes of those who engage with it. According to the artisanal model, just as a carpenter, ceramicist, or chef is responsive to and evaluable under a set of artisanal norms or techniques, so too is a mother and or an academic or a President. The source of normativity is this technique or expertise, independent of the preferences, endorsements, or recognitive attitudes of individuals. The artisanal model for social role normativity has resources to explain both the "stickiness" or persistence of social norms and our ability to criticize existing norms and to engage in normative self-creation--to create new normative selves. The artisanal model also has resources to capture and express the social situatedness, locality, and materiality of social roles. The relational ontology of social roles, implicit in the artisanal model, provides a useful frame to consider both hierarchical and oppressive social relations. (shrink)

This book is both an introduction to and a research work on Meinongianism. “Meinongianism” is taken here, in accordance with the common philosophical jargon, as a general label for a set of theories of existence – probably the most basic notion of ontology. As an introduction, the book provides the first comprehensive survey and guide to Meinongianism and non-standard theories of existence in all their main forms. As a research work, the book exposes and develops the most up-to-date Meinongian (...) theory (called modal Meinongianism), applies it to specific fields, and discusses its open problems. Part I of the book provides a historical introduction to, and critical discussion of, the dominant philosophical view of existence: the “Kantian-Fregean-Quinean” perspective. Part II is the full-fledged introduction to the Meinongian theories of existence as a real property of individuals: after starting with the so-called naïve Meinongian conception and its problems, it provides a self-contained presentation of the main neo-Meinongian proposals, and a detailed discussion of their strengths and weaknesses. Part III develops a specific neo-Meinongian theory of existence employing a model-theoretic semantic framework. It discusses its application to the ontology and semantics of fictional objects, and its open problems. The methodology of the book follows the most recent trends in analytic ontology. In particular, the meta-ontological point of view is largely privileged. (shrink)

This article explores the relevance of ontological assumptions for justifications of agency and ethics. It critiques Kantian ethics for being based upon an ontological imaginary that starts from the substantialism of Newtonian physics. Substantialism shapes Western political philosophy’s view about who we are as subjects and how the world works. In this ontological imaginary, validation of ethics is based upon universality and abstractions. Furthermore, Kantian ethics underscores an anthropocentric and theocratic vision of how to govern societies. I argue Kantian criteria (...) are not only insufficient to make good choices but are also conducive to wrong ones, since they elicit self-appeasement in international intervention, and contribute to the conceptual repertoire of coloniality. I propose that an ontology of entanglements opens possibilities for overcoming the shortcomings of an ethos based upon abstractions and possibly for correcting some of its moral failures. In a quantum ontological imaginary, the validation of ethical choices relies instead upon the exploration of the apparatuses we deploy, as well as upon careful situational evaluation. Specific practices, rather than an abstract humanity, are the referents for devising such ethos. This position, I argue, resonates with the critical project of decoloniality and its acknowledgment of the political salience of ontological imaginaries. (shrink)

Lebensphilosophie, central to nineteenth-century philosophical thought, is concerned with the meaning, value and purpose of life. In this much-needed study, historical lebensphilosophie is returned to the core of philosophical investigations and revealed in the contemporary ascendency of 'life' in philosophical thinking. Scholars from aesthetics, bioethics and ontology examine how the notion of life has made its way into contemporary philosophical discussions. They identify three main themes: the shift toward biological and technological views of life, altering Dilthey and Nietzsche's emphasis (...) on historical life over biological life; the relationship between biopolitics and political liberalism and the re-emergence of the idea of life - so important for the traditional life-philosophers - in recent discussions about care of the self, existential gratitude skepticism and the emotions. Anticipating new directions of philosophical thinking, this study restores a vital school of thought to crucial discussions about the dangers of contemporary politics and the threat of new technologies. (shrink)

The central premise of this book is that biblical Hebrew narrative, in terms of its structure, tends to operate under similar mechanical constraints to those of a stage-play; wherein space is central, characters are fluid, and objects within the narrative tend to take on a deep internal significance. The smaller episodic narrative units within the Hebrew aesthetic tend to grant primacy to space, both ideologically and at the mechanical level of the text itself. However space, as a determinate structural category, (...) has been all but overlooked in the field of biblical studies to date; reflecting perhaps our own inability, as modern readers, to see beyond the dominant cinematic aesthetic of our times. The book is divided into two major sections, each beginning with a more theoretical approach to the function of narrative space, and ending with a practical application of the previous discussion; using Genesis 28:10-22 (the Bethel narrative) and the book of Ruth respectively, as test cases.Where does the notion of free will come from? How and when did it develop, and what did that development involve? In Michael Frede's radically new account of the history of this idea, the notion of a free will emerged from powerful assumptions about the relation between divine providence, correctness of individual choice, and self-enslavement due to incorrect choice. Anchoring his discussion in Stoicism, Frede begins with Aristotle--who, he argues, had no notion of a free will--and ends with Augustine. Frede shows that Augustine, far from originating the idea (as is often claimed), derived most of his thinking about it from the Stoicism developed by Epictetus. (shrink)

How do things come to stand for something other than themselves? An understanding of the ontology of relations allows for a compelling account of the action of signs. The Primacy of Semiosis is concerned with the ontology of relations and semiosis, the action of signs. Drawing upon the work of Gilles Deleuze, John Deely, and John Poinsot, Paul Bains focuses on the claim that relations are 'external' to their terms, and seeks to give an ontological account of this (...) purported externality of relations. Bains develops the proposition, first made in 1632 by John Poinsot (John of St. Thomas), that, ontologically, signs are relations whose whole being is in esse ad ('being-toward'). Furthermore, relations are found to be univocal in their being as relations. This univocity of being is antecedent to the division between 'ens rationis' and 'ens reale'. The ontology of relations Bains presents is thus neither mind-dependent nor mind-independent insofar as the rationale of the relation is concerned. The book includes chapters on Deleuze and Deely on relations, Jacob von Uexkull and Heidegger on Umwelten (self-worlds), Maturana and Varela on Autopoiesis. It provides a form of vicarious causality, by way of the scholastic doctrine of the 'species', that complements the emerging school of 'object oriented ontology'. The Primacy of Semiosis provides a semiotic that subverts the opposition between realism and idealism; one in which what have been called 'nature' and 'culture' interpenetrate in an expanding collective of human and non-human. Bains' work promises to be a touchstone for semiotic discussion for years to come. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that Hegel’s system includes no ontology of nature, either in any traditional sense, or in any specifically Hegelian sense, of “ontology.” What Hegel provides instead is a philosophy of nature in which specifically natural activities generate specifically natural differences and identities out of themselves. I make my case first by considering the meaning of “ontology” Hegel inherited from Wolff and Kant. I show that Hegel rejected this sense of ontology for his (...) own philosophy, in part because of his recognition of the success of the Kantian critical project in making traditional ontology impossible. I then argue that although Hegel sometimes characterizes his own Objective Logic in ontological terms, he also restricts that characterization in a way that makes it inapplicable to his treatment of apparently natural categories in the Logic itself, and to his Philosophy of Nature. Against this anti-ontological background I examine a small portion of Hegel’s concrete treatment of natural phenomena and kinds: his discussion of the nervous system in higher-order animals. Through its self-formation and the contribution of its nervous-system activity to its overall life, the animal does not implement differences, identities, or logical structures borrowed from elsewhere, but itself produces the differences and identities through which it is constituted. The self-determination Hegel articulates in his study of the nervous system gives us a good example of his typically “on-the-ground” approach, which is strikingly different from the “top-down” approach more common in the ontological tradition. (shrink)

Canadian nursing practice has been profoundly influenced by the legalization of medical assistance in dying in 2016, requiring that nurses navigate new and sometimes highly challenging experiences. Findings from our longitudinal studies of nurses' experiences suggest that these include deep emotional responses to medical assistance in dying, an urgency in orchestrating the perfect death, and a high degree of relational impact, both professionally and personally. Here we propose a theoretical explanation for these experiences based upon a relational ontology. Drawing (...) upon the work of Wildman, we understand a relational ontology to be one in which relationships are more fundamentally central than the conceptual entities that provide the context to practice. It is in a relationship that conceptual entities, and their affiliated values, are created and recreated. Seen as causal, relationships have ontological status, with important implications for how we consider the concepts of death, suffering, and time in this context. From a conceptual perspective, suffering is primarily self‐defined based upon personal histories, time reflects the potential remaining until death, and death is primarily biological and amoral, although social discourses of a good and bad death surround the death trajectory. However, within a relational ontology of medical assistance in dying, these understandings shift. Death becomes primarily social rather than biological, suffering is shared, and time until death is now clearly delimited. Accordingly, nurses assume a profound responsibility for influencing outcomes that are authentically person‐centered. These understandings provide important insights into nurses' experiences, enabling us to recognize the causal effects, both intended and unintended, of nurses' relational practices amidst the complexities of assisted death. Drawing on such a perspective, we find implications for how we provide spaces for nurses to reflect on, and have conversations about, their experiences with some of the greatest mysteries of life—death, suffering, and time. (shrink)

This article analyses the British TV drama Warriors, investigating military masculinities and their cinematic attachments to specific nationhoods. The author’s main argument is that Warriors engages in a negotiation of ontological differences through production of military masculinities, situated within specific time–space coordinates. The story of the war is told using the classical war movie genre, underpinned by a tripartite gendered discourse that links feminization, victimhood and peace, on the one side, with two kinds of military masculinities, on the other side: (...) first, the heroic-moral-military masculinity of the protector and defender and second, the vicious-ethnic-military masculinity of the ‘local’ men. As the drama’s characters stand for the specific symbolic geographies and histories, we see different ontological worlds appearing. Among them Bosnia – represented through viciousness of local masculinities and victimhood of local femininities – becomes a specific, isolated place, the ‘symbolic continent’ of the Balkans, whose singular, violent geography is separated from Europe and the West, through Orientalist and Balkanist discourses. Furthermore, it is a place with a past but no future, wherein moral geographies of peacekeeping military masculinities translate into ontologies of Self and Other. (shrink)

In Ontological Aspects of Early Jewish Anthropology, Tyson L. Putthoff combines contemporary theory and sound exegesis to understand early Jewish beliefs about how the human self reacts ontologically in God s presence.".

Ockham’s ontology of arithmetic, specifically his position on the ontological status of natural numbers, has not yet attracted the attention of scholars. Yet it occupies a central role in his nominalism; specifically, Ockham’s position on numbers constitutes a third part of his ontological reductionism, alongside his doctrines of universals and the categories, which have long been recognized to constitute the first two parts. That is, the first part of this program claims that the very idea of a universal thing (...) is self-contradictory, while the second part asserts that it is more rational to accept only two distinct types of singular things, namely substance and quality. These two elements are incomplete, however, for they do not fully encompass Ockham’s position on what realists take to be abstract objects. For this, one needs the third part of Ockham’s program of ontological reductionism, dealing with numbers, among the most paradigmatic abstract objects for realists. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the ontological character of amicitia in Aquinas. The originality of Aquinas’s theory is found in the ontological foundation expressed by Neoplatonic concepts (unio, unitas, communicatio). By integrating such Neoplatonic concepts with his analysis on the transcendentals (aliquid, unum), I made a new ontological foundation to the theory of amicitia.In order that a man is a one (unum), he must establish himself as something different (aliud quid) in the midst of the relationship with (...) others and then has to return to himself. So long as he stays self-contained without moving outward, he cannot constitute himself as an independent being which is different from other beings (aliquid). The ontological oneness (unitas) as an independent rational substance makes it possible for a man to form the mutual relationship of unity (unio) without losing himself in the midst of the deep relationship with someone else. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the ontological character of amicitia in Aquinas. The originality of Aquinas’s theory is found in the ontological foundation expressed by Neoplatonic concepts (unio, unitas, communicatio). By integrating such Neoplatonic concepts with his analysis on the transcendentals (aliquid, unum), I made a new ontological foundation to the theory of amicitia.In order that a man is a one (unum), he must establish himself as something different (aliud quid) in the midst of the relationship with (...) others and then has to return to himself. So long as he stays self-contained without moving outward, he cannot constitute himself as an independent being which is different from other beings (aliquid). The ontological oneness (unitas) as an independent rational substance makes it possible for a man to form the mutual relationship of unity (unio) without losing himself in the midst of the deep relationship with someone else. (shrink)