While most commentators believe that the print book will survive the advent of the ebook, it is at the same time hard not to think that the fundamental technological changes ushered in by the digital revolution will fail to have profound effects on the forms of the book. Arguing that literary forms have always depended on the “material conditions of their enunciation,” the French author François Bon uses historical examples to suggest the book will undergo major, if yet unforeseen, transformations. (...) He maintains that it is urgent for writers to experiment with the possibilities brought about by the digital revolution, lest the actual developments be decided by the commercial interests of large technology entities. In his own experiments with the form of the book in the digital environment -- in his “novel” Tumulte, which consists of daily blog posts that mix fiction, memoir, criticism, and other genres, and in a series of digital remediations of his early novel, Limite -- Bon imaginatively explores the limits of the concept of the book. Yet while these experiments are suggestive, it is less clear that they represent viable avenues for the book’s development, since their main appeal is arguably for scholars and theoreticians. Focusing on the means of organization and delivery, and the ontological ambiguities arising from the multiple versions of the same text, Bon’s experiments skirt the core power of the book: the sustained arrangement of words that has been the principle means whereby books have conveyed content and sustained intellectual culture. (shrink)

Ethology brought some crucial insights and perspectives to the study of behavior, in particular the idea that behavior can be studied within a comparative-evolutionary framework by means of homologizing components of behavioral patterns and by causal analysis of behavior components and their integration. Early ethology is well-known for its extensive use of qualitative observations of animals under their natural conditions. These observations are combined with experiments that try to analyze behavioral patterns and establish specific claims about animal behavior. Nowadays, there (...) is still disagreement about the significance of observation and experiments and their relation. (shrink)

The unexpected death of a child is one of the most challenging losses as it fractures survivors’ sense of parenthood and other layers of identity. Given that not all the bereaved parents who have need for support respond well to available treatments and that many have little access to further intervention or follow-up over time, online interventions featuring therapeutic writing and peer support have strong potential. In this article we explore how a group of bereaved mothers experienced the process (...) of participating in an online course in therapeutic writing for the integration of grief. Our research questions were: How do parents who have lost a child experience being part of an online course in therapeutic writing? What are the perceived benefits and challenges of writing in processing their grief? We followed an existential phenomenological approach and analyzed fieldwork notes (n= 13), qualitative data from the application and assessment surveys (n= 35;n= 21), excerpts from the journals of some participants (n= 3), and email correspondence with some participants (n= 5). We categorized the results in three meaning units: (1) where does my story begin? The “both and” of their silent chaos; (2) standing on the middle line: a pregnancy that does not end; (3) closures and openings: “careful optimism” and the need for community support. Participants experienced writing as an opportunity for self-exploration regarding their identities and their emotional world, as well as a means to develop and strengthen a bond with their children. They also experienced a sense of belonging, validation, and acceptance in the online group in a way that helped them make sense of their suffering. Online writing courses could be of benefit for bereaved parents who are grieving the unexpected death of a child, but do not replace other interventions such as psychotherapy. In addition to trauma and attachment informed models of grief, identity informed models with a developmental focus might enhance the impact of both low-threshold community interventions and more intensive clinical ones. Further studies and theoretical development in the area are needed, addressing dialogical notions such as the multivoicedness of the self. (shrink)

Literate Experience argues for the existence of certain shared patterns of intellectual association in the English seventeenth century, patterns that follow the outlines of Bacon’s project of epistemological reform. Bacon’s project offered a theory of how knowing as a private act could be transformed into a public one, an act related to the creation and maintenance of public authority. The question thus becomes, how did thinkers in the period reimagine civil society as a polity of knowledge? This study traces (...) out a variety of answers to that question, ranging from the Royal Society’s communal rhetoric to the work of four literary writers who, in a variety of ways, problematize the notion that political society exists as a community of shared knowledge. (shrink)

From time to time our tiny intellectual worlds are simultaneously shaken by big ideas – ideas that, however big they are, have their expiration-date. Such is the case with the idea of the impossibility to find life outside language. In this essay, I picture what I think is the current state of the philosophy of history after the so-called linguistic turn and what I think the direction is where the philosophy of history might be headed by taking into account the (...) important job done by linguistic theories. I regard the abandonment of epistemology and the arrival to the realm of aesthetics as a point of no return, and conclude that a new philosophy of history has to have an aesthetic character. However, due to the omnipotence of language I also detect a narrow constructive potential in linguistic theories and argue that a new philosophy of history has to have the dual task of searching for life outside language while remaining in the realm of aesthetics. As a next step, I identify Frank Ankersmit’s notion of an individual historical experience as a move towards the fulfillment of this dual task. Finally, because Ankersmit’s experience remains mute, in the second half of the essay I attempt to present an outline of the possibility of a fruitful cooperation between the philosophy of history and phenomenology. More precisely, I am trying to synchronize Ankersmit’s notion of an individual historical experience with László Tengelyi’s phenomenological experiments with experience and let Tengelyi speak where Ankersmit “stops talking”. As a result, with the help of Tengelyi, an aperture can be found in language through which experience might worm its way. Due to this fissure, experience might be regarded as an invisible driving force behind linguistic expressions, and thus behind historical writing. (shrink)

The book traces connections between the literary experiments of Emerson, Poe, Melville, and Henry James, and the emergence of classical American pragmatism.

This research investigates Chinese EFL students’ flow experience in academic writing and its effect on students’ writing performance. The research consists of two studies: a preliminary study involving a survey of 162 college students immediately after their completion of a short English essay to examine whether and how intensely they experienced flow during their writing and whether their perceived levels of challenge of the writing task and their writing skills affected their flow experience, (...) and a main study including a survey of 216 different students at the end of a semester-long writing course to ascertain how frequently these students experienced flow during the course, whether their intrinsic writing motivation and attention control ability were significantly correlated with their flow experience, and whether their flow frequency had an effect on their performance in the writing course. Results of statistical tests of the data in the preliminary study revealed that a large majority of the students experienced a certain level of flow in their writing and their perceived levels of writing skills had a significant influence on their flow experience. The statistical test results of the main study indicated that 66.4% of the students experienced flow with various frequency levels, while 33.6% of the students rarely or never experienced flow, students’ level of motivation and attention control were significantly correlated with their level of flow frequency, and students’ flow frequency had a significant influence on their writing course scores. Research and pedagogical implications of the study are also discussed. (shrink)

Through a discussion of the work of Marie Cardinal and Annie Ernaux, this article aims to problematize the anglophone academic world's tendency to associate French feminisms predominantly with avant-garde or highly theoretical texts. The work of Ernaux and Cardinal is presented alongside a discussion of its reception by readers and critics in France, and by academics in English-speaking countries. The first part of the article identifies aspects of Ernaux's and Cardinal's works which cannot be encompassed within a critical framework based (...) on the dichotomy between naïve realism on the one hand and the politically and linguistically radical text on the other. Ernaux's plain language, for instance, is clearly very unlike the linguistic experimentation of ‘feminine writing’; nonetheless the emphasis on social class in her writing constitutes a political intervention which is at least equally valid. The reception study in the second part of the article provides further evidence of the relevance to gender politics in France of Cardinal's The Words to Say It (1975) and texts published by Annie Ernaux in the 1980s and 1990s. The ambivalent response of critics seems to indicate the troubling nature of writing which combines the codes of realism and autobiography (or autobiographical fiction in Cardinal's case) with the depiction of taboo subjects such as menstruation, or a daughter's response to her mother's debilitating illness and death. The article also charts the widespread popularity of these texts in France, particularly with women readers, and gives some examples of the pleasures described in letters to the authors. In conclusion, we argue that the ambivalent space between popular and high culture occupied (albeit differently) by Ernaux and Cardinal may be particularly effective in terms of gender politics, and that even in the late 1990s, the personal may be as political as ever. (shrink)

This article examines how weblog authors present their online gender identity, in order to establish how these modes of presentation fit into the research landscape about gender identity and computer-mediated communication. After a preliminary descriptive analysis of a sample of Dutch and Flemish weblogs, the authors conduct a qualitative content analysis of four of these `blogs'. They conclude that these weblog writers present their gender identity through narratives of `everyday life' that remain closely related to the binary gender system. However, (...) their performance of `masculinity' and `femininity' is more diffuse and heterogeneous than some theories in the field of gender and CMC would assume. In addition, the act of diary writing on weblogs can be understood as challenging the masculine connotation of the weblog as an ICT, demonstrating that the use of a technology is pivotal in shaping the ways in which technologies themselves are conceived of as `masculine' or `feminine'. (shrink)

The article argues that attending to Oakeshott’s characterization of poetic experience shows his moral philosophy to possess dimensions that can be otherwise overlooked. The first of these dimensions is the authenticity or success with which a self realizes or creates itself as a moral being. The second area of Oakeshott’s moral philosophy that is brought to light by attending to his account of poetic experience is his account of society as a tapestry of moral images.

The present paper illustrates an autobiographical writing experience carried out in a therapeutic day care center involving nine preadolescents and adolescents with moderate to severe mental distress. According to the literature, autobiographical writing is an useful tool to improve educational work with teenagers, because it can accommodate the need to express themselves that characterizes the adolescence and can prevent or reduce feelings of distress. Autobiographical practice is particularly suitable to work with teenagers because it is focused on (...) the question “Who am I?”, which is typical of adolescence. This question was the central theme of the autobiographical writing workshop. During the workshop, was proposed an introspective journey in search of one’s identity between past (who was I?), present (who am I?) and a possible future (who do I want to become?). This article will describe the themes and various stimuli that were proposed during the meetings and will present and discuss the results achieved. (shrink)

Reading with Muriel Dimen / Writing with Muriel Dimen: Experiments in Theorizing a Field is a collection of reading and writing experiments inspired by the late feminist psychoanalyst Muriel Dimen. Each of the six projects that comprise this volume explore a stylistic and thematic manner of reading and responding-to Dimen's work, challenging the field to write outside the standardized edition, and covering a remarkable breadth of essential analytic topics, such as sex, gender, money, love and hate, and boundary (...) violations. As an homage to Dimen's quest to engage the personal and the political in the author's craft, and in collaboration with Dimen's endeavour to foster revolution across the psychosocial landscape that renders psychoanalysis its field, the authors offer readers a wild analysis of reading and writing. Giving a clear introduction to and exploration of Muriel Dimen's groundbreaking work, this book will prove essential for scholars of psychoanalysis, cultural studies and gender studies, as well as anyone seeking to understand Dimen's influence on psychoanalytic practice today. (shrink)

In Experience and Experimental Writing, Paul Grimstad moves both forward out of contemporary pragmatism into its future and backward through the history of pragmatism to its zero moment at the proto-pragmatism of the philosophical inception of literary America in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and his contemporaries. This is the moment that F.O. Matthiessen, writing backward from 1941 during exactly that period about which it is often said that pragmatism fell from its mantles, summarized as “one (...) extraordinarily concentrated moment of expression.”1 Grimstad, much like Matthiessen, moves American thought forward by first pressing it backward through those literary events just before philosophical pragmatism.. (shrink)

Sonja Arndt, Michael Peters, Marek Tesar Introspection is a key concept in epistemology, since introspective knowledge is often thought to be particularly secure, maybe even immune to skeptical dou...

This comprehensive Gandhi reader provides an essential new reference for scholars and students of his life and thought. It is the only text available that presents Gandhi's own writings, including excerpts from three of his books—An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Satyagraha in South Africa, Hind Swaraj —a major pamphlet, Constructive Programme: Its Meaning and Place, and many journal articles and letters, along with a biographical sketch of his life in historical context and recent essays by highly (...) regarded scholars. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ateleological moment of learning through imitation. In general, we can learn something new through imitating models we are given, which embody the values of our own society, culture and institutions. This means that imitation is understood in terms of the representation or reproduction of original models. In this understanding of imitation, however, the creative aspect of imitation is missed. In relation to this I shall, first, consider learning through imitation in terms (...) of Walter Benjamin’s theory of mimesis discussed in his essay, ‘On the Mimetic Faculty.’ It begins by examining general understanding of the concepts of experience and writing. Second and third, while reconsidering the idea of imitation, I shall bring out the difference between mimesis and copying, based on Plato and Aristotle, and I shall examine the former, especially its involuntary aspect. Fourth, in order to consider the ateleological moment of learning through imitation as mimesis, I discuss the relation between mimesis and the chance event. Fifth, Benjamin’s allegorical ‘anti-autobiography’ entitled ‘A Berlin Childhood around 1900’, which ponders the idea of childhood as otherness is considered in order to explore what is happening in the very moment of writing, driven by the chance event. To conclude, I shall show how the very moment of writing involves an unceasing transformation of the self. (shrink)

This comprehensive Gandhi reader provides an essential new reference for scholars and students of his life and thought. It is the only text available that presents Gandhi's own writings, including excerpts from three of his books—An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Satyagraha in South Africa, Hind Swaraj —a major pamphlet, Constructive Programme: Its Meaning and Place, and many journal articles and letters, along with a biographical sketch of his life in historical context and recent essays by highly (...) regarded scholars. (shrink)

Many researchers have acknowledged the role of metacognition in facilitating learning to write in English as a foreign language. Although research on metacognition has explored learners’ metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive strategies in the field of EFL writing, little is known about the nature of learners’ metacognitive experiences in EFL writing. To fill such an important gap, this study was designed to assess EFL learners’ metacognitive experiences before, during, and after writing. Data were collected from a total of (...) 760 undergraduates through three self-report questionnaires and a writing task. Results from quantitative analyses showed four subcategories of EFL learners’ metacognitive experiences in writing: metacognitive feeling, metacognitive judgments/estimates, online task-specific metacognitive knowledge, and online task-specific metacognitive strategies. Based on the empirical evidence, we propose a model of metacognitive experiences in EFL writing. Theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical implications are discussed. (shrink)

What are the actual practices of intellectual co-laboring? In the spring of 2006, we began an experiment in collaborative anthropology. There was a dual impetus to our efforts: a desire to deal head-on with inadequacies in our academic environment; and a strong feeling that the classic norms of qualitative inquiry needed to become contemporary. Collaboration struck us as potentially key to both. We drew a parallel to laboratory experiments. In the textbook version, one begins with a question, formulates a hypothesis, (...) then tests it by adapting or inventing techniques and practicing them. With a certain irony, we nicknamed our experiment the “labinar,” lab plus seminar. From the beginning, we understood the “labinar” as an experiment in venue construction and form. We understood it as an intervention into pedagogic practice, as well as anthropological inquiry. Our reasoning was that the world is different than it was when the standards of qualitative human or social science became codified in the heyday of traditional anthropological fieldwork. (shrink)

Dena Goodman here offers a fresh explanation of how critical theory broke out of the mold of an earlier tradition of discourse—the mirror for princes genre—and shaped its own course in the eighteenth century. Criticism in Action provides a historical analysis of French Enlightenment texts as actions and as the focus of critical activity in which writers and their potential readers participate. Goodman approaches texts as forces that shape the thinking and acting of the individuals engaged in the act of (...) reading and presents new interpretations of major Enlightenment texts by Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Diderot. (shrink)

The article examines reports of natural disasters in the 18th century Austrian newspaper "Wienerisches Diarium" to gain insights into how people captured the extraordinary sensory experiences of such events in written form. By analysing a digitised corpus of over 300 newspaper issues, the study identifies 302 text passages referring to natural disasters, among them 285 news reports, and explores textual traces of (multi)sensuality present within this material. The close reading and semantic annotation of the textual findings reveals that comparisons to (...) familiar sensations are commonly used to convey the sensory experiences of natural disasters, allowing readers to (better) relate to and understand the extreme events. At the same time, touch and vision constitute the most frequently mentioned senses, while smell and taste only play a minor role in early modern disaster depiction. In addition, the study finds that earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are more likely to include multisensory descriptions compared to other types of disasters. These and further findings shed light on when and how (multi)sensory impressions of disasters were conveyed in written form within early modern news. (shrink)

Walter Ong points out that no one can write naturally, because writing is a completely artificial technique we need to acquire through education. The technology of literacy as writing letters begets a dividing line between “literates” and “illiterates,” since literacy cannot be acquired otherwise. When we review the early history of literacy, we notice that letter-writing was a specialized technology, and that in its center resided a small number of elites who could write. Thereafter, in the Modern (...) Era, the center of discussion on literacy turned to the issue of the illiterate masses, mainly on how to bring them to literacy through school education. As the interest in popularizing literacy increased, though, another kind of increased interest arose: the interest in literacy education for blind people. On purpose or not, blind people had been excluded or alienated from literature and/or letter-based culture. However, the stronger the power exerted to exclude blind people, the more blind people aspired to write/read letters. Such aspiration and attempts to write/read letters in their own way may establish a distinct touch-centered world of letters and literacy and, importantly, may relativize its sight-centered world counterpart. If so, how will such a practice revise sight-centered literacy and open new horizons? I would like to consider this topic by reviewing its historical background and examining a case of writing practice by Kuzuhara Kôtô, a blind musician, in 19th century Japan. (shrink)

Some years ago I mentioned to Wayne Proudfoot what a pleasure it was to teach Religious Experience, if only to show a group of students how to develop an argument over the course of an entire book. Proudfoot shook his head and remarked that one reviewer praised the book as a helpful collection of essays. In the remarks that follow, I want to argue three points: 1) that Religious Experience is a remarkably tight argument, from beginning to end; (...) 2) that the argument vindicates a methodological pluralism that was previously undervalued in the philosophical study of religion; and 3) that Religious Experience established a paradigm for the philosophical study of religion that remains the norm.Other than scholars of... (shrink)

This work offers a comprehensive picture of the dynamic natures of language and consciousness that will interest linguists, psychologists, literary scholars,...

What significance does the body have in the process of teaching and learning? In what way can the thoughts of a contemporary junior-level teacher in this regard be connected to the theory of the lived body formulated by the French phenomenologist philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), and vice versa? The aim of this paper is to illuminate, enable understanding and discuss the meaning of the body in the learning process, with specific focus on the learning of writing as embodied (...) class='Hi'>experience. In the process, the boundaries of learning are also explored. While understanding the significance both of learning as embodied experience and of the boundaries of learning is essential within the educational field, in this paper the discussion is limited to exploring how learning as embodied experience and the boundaries of learning can be viewed by taking Merleau-Ponty's notions as theoretical starting points. In an attempt to answer the aim and connect the paper's theoretical point of departure with a voice from a teacher, an interview with a junior-level teacher was conducted. The paper thus offers a theoretical contribution to the field of educational research, but one in which the theory is exemplified by, and connected to, a teacher's voice. Accordingly, the paper concludes by summarising the common understandings of learning held theoretically by Merleau-Ponty and made real in the activities of the contemporary junior-level teacher. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:To Paul Lachance, ioculator Domini1. IntroductionWith the expression “inner experience” we refer to a complex linguistic and philosophical problem which is present even in the most recent theology. If, in general, this concept expresses the experience of something which is perceived by an individual in the absence of external stimulus or observable sensations, in Christian and mystical tradition it indicates more precisely the action and the transformation (...) which God arouses in the inner conscience. I propose investigating the specific way the Provençal Franciscan Pierre de Jean Olieu used this concept and presented it, both philosophically and theologically, in a small collection of writings which critical tradition has defined in various ways, but which I continue defining, with a term which maintains a Franciscan suggestion, as opuscula.1 These short devotional texts were written by Olieu and his followers in both Provençal and in Latin, and explicitly addressed the Beguins of the so-called “poverty houses,” as well as the laity which congregated around the Franciscan Order.2 Unlike the prayers and treatises concerning prayer by Olieu, these texts are not completely set but are conceived and written as models of continuous meditation on the part of the reader.3 In view of the critique I am editing, I here furnish a list of these texts, with the aim of updating the incomplete lists complied by Efrem Bettoni4 and Antonio Ciceri:5Cavalier armat Exercens se sacris orationibus et meditationibus Informatio Petri Ioannis De 14 gradibus amoris gratiosi 12De [12/10] gradibus humilitatis 13Grases de vera penitentia 14Modus quomodo quilibet potest referre gratias Deo de Beneficiis ab eo receptis Brevis monitio ad amorem Dei obtinendum 17Remedia contra temptationes spirituales De 7 sentimentis Christi Jhesu 20 Tractatus de 7 tentationibus 21Tractatulus de fugiendis, desiderandis, meditandis 22This approach is particularly interesting, because it is my conviction that, in these texts the author focuses on the paths and transformations of conscience, on the inter-communication of them and on the potential of repeating and recreating, autonomously, an uninterrupted process of spiritual transformation and strengthening. In this sense, as we will see, the concept of “inner experience” is central to the opuscula and, anticipating the results of my analysis, I can say that being in a significant position of the spiritual and meditative path delineated by the text, it constitutes its structural core. Such a placement finds meaning and justification within the philosophical, theological and apocalyptical reflections of the author.23 For Olieu, inwardness and outer activity, although remaining distinct, are balanceable and organizable in a reassemblage founded on devotio. We can say that the devotion of the reader, confirmed and strengthened by the inner experience of his personal reflection on mercy, is the element which allows this reassembling. We will see in what sense we can speak about an element of fracture and an entirely new forma mentis, which opens the way to modern secular spirituality.2. Inner Experience and the Structure of the opusculaI begin with the text entitled Informatio ad virtutum opera. This could be considered the manifesto text of the opuscula, because in this work Pierre de Jean Olieu clarifies the principle subject of the meditations offered to the reader, and proposes a stylistic, structural model which is respected, more or less precisely, in all the other texts of the corpus. This structure is very simple: the author lists twenty-eight subjects which the reader is invited to reflect upon during his personal endeavor towards virtuous perfection. The text is divided in two parts: the first presents fourteen orderly reflections centered on pedagogical-moral subjects like the meditation on God and the Passion of Christ, on the example of the Saints, the awareness of one’s sins, and on the coming of the Day of Judgement; in the second, the author.. (shrink)

The article revisits the idea that writing may be gendered and asks whether we can define what a “woman writing” practice might be. We do this through a comparative study of the work of Julia Kristeva and Judith Butler. Both have expressed reservations about, even objected to, the essentializing of gender and therefore of writing as a woman. They have, however, provided us with useful tools to define what a non-essentialist understanding of “woman” might entail. The article (...) proposes to do three things: first, to look at the way each author presents “woman” and what I term “woman writing” in their work; second, to find, beyond epistemic differences, the common grounds shared by the two authors; and third, to clarify the places where the two disagree. In a concluding part, we will highlight how that disagreement is reconciled in revisiting Kristeva’s and Butler’s use of loss in their apprehension of “woman,” allowing us to formulate a non-essentialist definition of “woman writing.”. (shrink)

Expressive writing is life-based writing that focuses on authentic expression of lived experience, with resultant insight, growth and skill-building. For decades, it has been the province of journals, memoirs, poets, and language arts classrooms. Social science research now provides indisputable evidence that expressive writing is also healing.

This volume raises provocative questions about the status of words and literature in contemporary culture. It argues that words and images are equal and that the vast number of text messages, e-mails, tweets, comments, blogs, and daily social network posts confirms textuality's central role in new media. This is especially true of writing, as old and new forms mix online and off, reconfiguring so prolifically that no single theory can explain it, let alone project its future. This volume explores (...) multiple questions in depth: are microblogs a new literary genre? What happens when Japanese haiku crosses cultures? Is writing still an act of individuality or has it become a modern technological innovation? (shrink)

Abstract:This article explores how philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson embraces the concept of experience as a means to live life as an experiment in order to welcome opportunities for the creation of new knowledge. The author uses Emerson's writings to argue that progress of thought and society can be made when one questions archaic fact, sees action and knowledge as inseparable, and views fearless experiencing as an invaluable event that can transform learning and lives.

Writing involves risks—the risk that one will be misunderstood, the risk of being persecuted, the risks of being made a champion for causes in which one does not believe, this risk of inadvertently supporting a reader’s prejudices, to name a few. In trying to give expression to what is true, the writer must “clear a passage within the agitated world of passions,” an undertaking that always to some extent fails: writers are never the master of their own speech. In (...) _Writing: The Political Test, _France’s leading political philosopher, Claude Lefort, illuminates the process by which writers negotiate difficult path to free themselves from the ideological and contextual traps that would doom their attempts to articulate a new vision. Lefort examines writers whose works provide special insights into this problem of risk, both literary artists and political philosophers. Among them are Salman Rushdie, Sade, Tocqueville,m Machiavelli, Leo Strauss, Orwell, Kant, Robespierre, Guizot, and Pierre Clastres. In Tocqueville, for example, Lefort finds that the author’s improvisatory and open-ended expression represents the character of the democratic experience. Orwell’s work on totalitarianism shows up the totalitarian subject’s complicity in this political regime. And Rushdie is remarkable for his solid attack on relativism. With the character and fate of the political forms of modernity, democracy, and totalitarianism a central theme, Lefort concludes with some reflections on the collapse of the Soviet Union. This intriguing and accessible exploration of literature’s political aspects and political philosophy’s literary ones will be welcomed by those who have been stymied by current efforts to bridge these two fields. Taken together, the essays in this volume also stand as an intellectual autobiography of Lefort, making it an excellent introduction to his work for less experience students of political theory or philosophy. (shrink)

What significance does the body have in the process of teaching and learning? In what way can the thoughts of a contemporary junior-level teacher in this regard be connected to the theory of the lived body formulated by the French phenomenologist philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and vice versa? The aim of this paper is to illuminate, enable understanding and discuss the meaning of the body in the learning process, with specific focus on the learning of writing as embodied experience. (...) In the process, the boundaries of learning are also explored. While understanding the significance both of learning as embodied experience and of the boundaries of learning is essential within the educational field, in this paper the discussion is limited to exploring how learning as embodied experience and the boundaries of learning can be viewed by taking Merleau-Ponty’s notions as theoretical starting points. In an attempt to answer the aim and connect the paper’s theoretical point of departure with a voice from a teacher, an interview with a junior-level teacher was conducted. The paper thus offers a theoretical contribution to the field of educational research, but one in which the theory is exemplified by, and connected to, a teacher’s voice. Accordingly, the paper concludes by summarising the common understandings of learning held theoretically by Merleau-Ponty and made real in the activities of the contemporary junior-level teacher. (shrink)

Jonathan Edwards and Ralph Waldo Emerson remain central voices in North American spiritual traditions. This article is an attempt to contextualize a major vein of the north American theological and spiritual tradition concerning the intersection of aesthetics and the human experience of God. As will be argued below, both Edwards and Emerson were deeply involved in these conversations and to a large extent offer novel approaches to the tensions between the individual and community as it relates to the (...) class='Hi'>experience of God. To that end, this essay begins with an analysis of Edwards's view of religious experience and its normative relation to human experience as a whole. I will argue that... (shrink)

This book deals with contemporary epistemological questions, connecting Educational Philosophy with the field of Science- and Technology Studies. It can be understood as a draft of a general theory of world-disclosure, which is in its core a distinction between two forms of world-disclosure: experiment and exploration. These two forms have never been clearly distinguished before. The focus lies on the experimental form of world-disclosure, which is described in detail and in contrast to the explorational form along the line of twenty-one (...) characteristics, which are mainly derived from empirical studies of experimental work in the field of natural sciences. It can also be understood as an attempt to integrate elements of the Anglo-Saxon Philosophy of Science with elements of the German tradition of Educational Philosophy. This is also reflected in the style of writing. In accordance to the content-level of the book, the argument for experimental forms of world-disclosure is written in an essayistic, readable style, which can be understood as an experimental form of writing. This book is a translation of the doctoral thesis 'Experiment und Exploration. Bildung als experimentelle Form der Welterschließung' (summa cum laude). The thesis was published in German in 2010 by Transcript (Bielefeld) in the series called 'Theorie Bilden', edited by Prof. Dr. Hannelore Faulstich-Wieland, Prof. Dr. Hans-Christoph Koller, Prof. Dr. Karl-Josef Pazzini and Prof. Dr. Michael Wimmer. (shrink)