Laurence BonJour has recently proposed a novel and interesting approach to the problem of induction. He grants that it is contingent, and so not a priori, that our patterns of inductive inference are reliable. Nevertheless, he claims, it is necessary and a priori that those patterns are highly likely to be reliable, and that is enough to ground an a priori justification induction. This paper examines an important defect in BonJour's proposal. Once we make sense of the claim that inductive (...) inference is "necessarily highly likely" to be reliable, we find that it is not knowable a priori after all. (shrink)

This is a composite review of three intriguing and provocative books that address the interconnections between East Asian and Western philosophy. Firstly, in _Phenomenology and Intercultural Understanding: Toward a New Cultural Flesh_, Kwok-Ying Lau thinks that phenomenology can help construct a “cultural flesh” between civilizations that encourages East-West philosophical dialogues, and that China needs to adopt Western terminology to facilitate an intercultural engagement. Merleau-Ponty’s “inter-world” can help this bridge. Secondly, in _Fundamentals of Comparative and Intercultural Philosophy_, Lin Ma (...) and Jaap van Brakel argue that Chinese thinkers of the modern world invent “Chinese philosophy” in order to engage with Western thought. In a distinct fashion, they incorporate a Wittgenstein-inspired scenario whereby the necessary precondition for comparative intercultural philosophy is the “attitude-toward-a-soul principle” alongside the “family resemblance principle” which includes the “no need to speak the same language principle” or no need for one tradition to adopt another’s terminology. Thirdly, in _Chinese and Buddhist Philosophy in Early Twentieth-Century German Thought_, Eric S. Nelson proposes that intertextual analysis opens multi-dimensional spaces of interpretation to situate changing views of East-West encounters in Germany ranging from Hegel and Kant to Buber and Heidegger. Daoism, Confucianism, Chan and Zen Buddhism are sites for examination by Western thinkers that open portals to East Asian culture and philosophy. (shrink)

This paper aims to lay out the main tenets of Bernhard Waldenfels’s analyses of the experience of the alien and to confront the philosophical thesis underwriting them with a central insight stemming from Merleau-Ponty’s late philosophy. In the first section, I reconstruct the outlines of the experience of the alien, as described by Waldenfels, and show that, on his account, this experience can function as a powerful impetus enabling us to call into question some of the most deeply held commitments (...) of Western philosophical tradition: the sovereignty of the ego, the supremacy of order, the priority of the whole. In the second section, I show how a patient analysis of this experience compels us to undertake an inquiry concerning the “inter-world,” understood as the place of the encounter and the threshold of separation between the own and the alien. Finally, drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s alternative description of the “inter-world,” I maintain that Waldenfels’s account is insufficiently radical and show that the in-between realm cannot be assimilated to an interstice lodged between two insulated spheres. Rather, the “inter-world” should be conceived of as a shared dimension, subtending the partition between the spheres of ownness and alienness, as the one inclusive world. (shrink)

In this paper my objective is two-fold. First, I will try to provide further arguments in favour of the view defended in my earlier paper¹. In particular, I will try to show (in § 1) that a plausible understanding of the notion of a complete concept, coupled with (what I take to be) a reasonable interpretation of Leibniz's intriguing talk of severa “possible Adams” (§ 2), leads quite naturally to the view that Leibniz was committed to the doctrine of (...) class='Hi'>world-bound individuals. Second, I will try to show (in § 3) that a suggestive way of saving contingency in the framework of Leibniz's theory of complete concepts is bound to fail : and the reasons for this failure will provide further evidence in favour of the view under present discussion. The remaining sections of the paper (§§ 4-6), will be concerned with fixing and making precise some of the loose ends of the previous three sections. Thus §§ 4 and 5 will be devoted to an analysis of Leibniz's use and understanding of the notions of contingency and necessity, and essence and accident, respectively. It will be shown that Leibniz's use and understanding of those notions is perfectly consistent with his commitment to the doctrine of world-bound individuals. In § 6, finally, I will try to indicate exactly how David Lewis' Counterpart Theory can be brought to bear upon Leibniz's theory of complete concepts, and, specifically, how it ought to be interpreted in that context. (shrink)

Big decisions in a person’s life often affect the preferences and standards of a good life which that person’s future self will develop after implementing her decision. This paper argues that in such cases the person might lack any reasons to choose one way rather than the other. Neither preference-based views nor happiness-based views of justified choice offer sufficient help here. The available options are not comparable in the relevant sense and there is no rational choice to make. Thus, ironically, (...) in many of a person’s most important decisions the idea of that person’s good seems to have no application. (shrink)

This paper presents a phenomenology of affect and discusses its relevance for organizational life-worlds. With Merleau-Ponty, affects are interpreted as bodily and embodied inter-relational phenomena, which have specific pathic, ecstatic and emotional qualities. Relationally, they will be situated as “inter-affection” that are part of the inter-corporeality of the “Flesh” of wild be(com)ing. Affect and inter-affectivity are then related to organizational life-worlds, through a critical exploration of different phenomena and effects generated by positive, negative and ambiguous dimensions. (...) Finally, the potentials of affects and affection as part of the nexus of an embodied responsive responsibility and sustainability are discussed and critical perspectives on affective becoming outlined. (shrink)

Humanity must continue to grow and develop together in a complex of reciprocal relationships. Such a view presumes an education which is ultimately philosophical. That is, philosophy, teaching and globalization together complement and mutually enrich humanity. In what follows, I discuss the ground, the goal, and potential developments for this project.

This article is a contribution to a festschrift in honor of Rev. Chris Ferguson's leadership of the World Communion of Reformed Churches. It engages the Accra Confession and suggests that the next step for bringing the Confession to bear on our current realities requires churches to consider what it means to be confessional and catholic. In doing so, it introduces inter-confessionality as a possible way forward, not only to address global challenges today, but how the Accra Confession can (...) help facilitate that mission. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that Peter Fitzpatrick provides a unique contribution to international studies, most especially to contemporary interdisciplinary studies of International Law (IL) and International Relations (IR). Peter provides a significant theoretical contribution to the interdisciplinary study of IL and IR not only as a critical thinker of modern law, but also as a critical thinker of the modern international. On the one hand, his supplementary critical legal thinking contributes to a ‘decolonial deconstructionist’ rethinking of the politics of (...) international law. His close reading of how modern international law (auto)grounds ‘itself’, for instance, offers a strident critique of the racist, imperial, and colonial lines of discrimination involved in the negative (auto)constitution of this (supposedly) universal legal being. On the other hand, he provides a conception of the ‘(inter)national’ which displaces conventional, modern understandings of the legal and political organization of ‘humanity’ and ‘the world’, problematizing their foundational assumptions and spatialized geometrical frames as being based on oppositional dualisms (‘inside/outside’, ‘national/international’, ‘empire/modernity’, ‘theological/secular’, etc.), while offering a deconstructionist engagement with the ‘constitutive outside’ of the modern (inter)national. As a form of postcolonial counter-archive, Peter’s work enacts a decolonial deconstruction of ‘our’ (inter)national ‘selves’, including the (inter)national commonality ‘itself’. Before an incalculable, quasi-ontological heteronomy, a dissymmetrical Law of originary sociability which I (re)articulate here with/as the ‘and’ of the world(s), Peter’s supplementary critical thinking of the (inter)national contributes to imagining the world, humanity, and our social being(s), including law and language, otherwise. (shrink)

The internationalization of professional practices and the export of western technology and higher education are accompanied by a need to establish international standards of ethics across different professions. This pioneering and provocative group of essays constitutes essential reading for those interested in understanding, formulating, and teaching ethical standards for professions in an international and particularly cross-cultural context.

Interfaith dialogue has been a border issue in theology at least in the last five decades of the last century. Different theoretical possibilities of approaches to such a question have been raised, e.g., exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism. Therefore, there are remarkable contributions to this from a Catholic perspective, by Westerner theologians: Europeans, Americans, Brazilians and by Asians alike. Technical literature in Brazil has its focus mainly on this Catholic contribution. As a consequence, not much about the Protestant understanding of the (...) theme has been said. Therefore, this article intends to present some Protestant contributions to the theory of interfaith dialogue. (shrink)

Due to a much more closely connected world, there is an accelerated interchange of cultures in the clinical setting. Alongside a pluralism of cultural beliefs for health and illness is a greater effort to value and respect freedoms for thoughts and belief pertaining to differing identities from legal, moral, societal and activist initiatives. When treating culture as part of the clinical consultation, there is a need for conceptual frameworks, communication skills, guidelines and policies to be implemented in a context (...) where there are certain dominant narratives such as scientific medicine and biomedical frameworks of the human body and mind that typically bracket out culture. The encounter of the clinic with culture is an ethical endeavour that requires expertise training and education; thus, the role of inter-culturality and cultural competence is significant for setting precedents in the translation from theory to practice. In this chapter, I discuss challenges for global bioethics in responding to culture in the clinic. (shrink)

The progress of history rests on the battle for supremacy of competing ideas.... The power and wealth of western countries give them a dominant role in shaping the international public discourse. This is a privileged position... [an] imbalance of voice in the international discourse [that] has built up a dangerous sense of resentment by the silent majority of the world’s people. The dominant bioethical paradigm that provides the context for research ethics discourse has evolved within western philosophy’s powerful normative (...) framework and is built on a relationship model that explains and underpins the obligations doctors have to their patients. In this one-to-one relationship, the doctor is... (shrink)

Artistic representation is an instrument of historical memory that, unlike history, serves to transfer the emotional imprint that historical records leave behind for the sake of objectivity. Art memorializes achievements and success, but also tragic moments of death and destruction. Cultural differences between China and the West lead to varied perspectives and patterns of expression in the Fine Arts. This paper offers several examples showing how art has dealt with epidemic and pandemic. No one is immune to such tragedies in (...) our increasingly globalized world. By looking back at the memories recorded in artistic representation, we can learn from the past and cooperate in order to face future crises successfully. However, cooperation is only possible if we are aware of cultural differences. This paper provides a brief example on how Chinese and European art face inter-artistic plague narratives in different ways. (shrink)

What does it mean “playing music together”? Is this action guided by cognitive or pre-inferential skills? The aim of this paper is to unveil the different components that are implied in a collective action such as “playing music together”. The idea which will be supported is that embodiment and temporality are the main important structures that guide the subject. In the first part, we will emphasize the centrality of corporeality in the development of self-awareness and intercorporeal understanding. In particular, drawing (...) on Merleau-Ponty’s work, we will argue that the cognitive layer of our consciousness and the pre-inferential one are simply the product of our being embodied. Another central structure for the development of selfhood and intersubjectivity is temporality: as we will show, our selfhood and our attunement with the world can be also described in terms of rhythm, whereby implicit body memory allows for the sedimentation of habits, and synchrony, when my bodily and temporalized self is able to automatically tune in with others. In the second part, we will show how these components are at stake in an action like “playing music together”: attending music therapy sessions with patients who suffer indeed from an (inter)corporeal detachment allowed us to observe the centrality of those components described in the first part of our work, that is, to show how pre-reflective features (such as implicit body memory, intercorporeality, rhythm and synchrony) are necessary for the development of higher social (and cognitive) abilities.In fact, first person reports collected through a qualitative interview applied to patients allow to support the priority of the pre-reflective, affective and (inter)bodily components over the reflective ones. (shrink)

The essay explicates the phenomenological problematic of intersubjectivity on the level of bodily interaction with the world and with others. On this level, the concept of visibility is transformed in terms of the primacy of bodily “I can” and the kinaesthetic awareness that pervades all perceptual fields. In addition, the investigations into kinaesthetic awareness lead to the understanding that one’s own bodily action is extended as well as varied by the kinaesthetic activities of others and thus form an (...) class='Hi'>inter-corporeal field wherein visibility is located. Such an extended awareness is the bodily counterpart of transcendental domain. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider an important objection to moral motivation of believers. It is the objection that their acts are motivated by self-interest,i.e. their personal salvation. Such motivation is sometimes identified as selfish. Therefore, I demonstrate the distinction between self-interest and selfishness. I would like to remind the reader that the critique of self-interest as moral motivation of believers appears within the very traditions of the major world religions. Then, I argue that some contemporary forms of secular ethics (...) still refer to a certain form of self-interest. (shrink)

Responding to a deep and universal need of philosophizing in the context of intensive intercultural interaction among all philosophical traditions in the process of globalization, this timely book offers a unique collection of excellent papers on inter-translatability, art, and ethics; subjects which are most crucial for intercultural conversations today. Instead of opting for a "comparative philosophy" that suggests the superiority of philosophy in comparison with other forms of thought, this book explores "inter-translatability" between East and West, given that (...) any dialogue between heterogeneous cultures and systems of thought has to start with translation, which constitutes the first part of this book. Art and ethics are the two areas that most obviously link philosophies of the past and the present and constitute a fundamental part of Chinese long-living and practical philosophy. The value of art and aesthetic appreciation, no less than ethics, is at the core of Chinese culture and, indeed, promises a great deal for the future world. Thus, they are dealt with here in the second and third parts. This book is also relevant to inter-culturalism in philosophy itself, as the contributors, firstly, come from several different continents and, secondly, though most of them are philosophers, all contributors are well-versed in other disciplines, such as anthropology, literature, religion, aesthetics, history of art, sinology, cognitive sciences, and social sciences. (shrink)

Philosophy of religion, approached from a comparative perspective, can be a valuable tool for advancing inter-religious dialogue. Unfortunately, “comparative religion” today is usually characterised by two extreme positions: 1) Comparing religions in order to come to the conclusion that one's own religion is superior 2) Arguing for a type of “religious pluralism” that relativises all religious truth claims. -/- The former approach reduces religion to a confrontational form of apologetics, theatrical “debates” and polemics, while the latter reduces religion to (...) a mere acceptance of pragmatically useful perspectivist narratives devoid of absolute reality or truth. -/- Inter-religious dialogue should follow a middle path between these two extremes by engaging with underlying philosophical themes that are common to all religious traditions instead of emphasising the comparison of theological and soteriological arguments that may depend on justifications that are exclusive to a particular religious practice. The philosophical theme explored here is that of dissatisfaction and existential suffering in an imperfect world, a theme found in all “world religions”. Indeed, the diagnosis of this existential predicament and the hope that religious practice may allow one to overcome it appears to be universal, while its causes and the prescribed remedies differ considerably among religious traditions. Nevertheless, inter-religious dialogue beginning from a conviction that all religious practitioners strive for truth and salvation in response to a common existential experience may lead to a more compassionate and productive dialogue between religious communities. This type of inter-religious dialogue avoids accusations of falling into religious syncretism or relativism while encouraging diverse religious communities to address contemporary issues from areas of philosophical common ground. This allows for a more fruitful type of inter-religious dialogue and comparative study of religion that can be pursued while maintaining one's own distinct religious identities and particular religious truths. (shrink)

How did one man living on an island come to acquire information about the rest of the vast archipelago? This article traces the inter-island information networks of Georg Everhard Rumphius (1627–1702), an employee of the Dutch East India Company, who was able to explore the natural world of the wider archipelago without ever leaving the Moluccan island of Ambon. This article demonstrates the complexities of Rumphius's inter-island networks, as he collected information about plants and objects from islands (...) near and far. Using his administrative, commercial and household networks, Rumphius was able to interact with local actors from across the social spectrum, whose own active collection, mediation and circulation of objects and information overlapped with imperial activities in the archipelago. This article examines Rumphius as both a collector and a mediator, who negotiated between multiple economies of exchange and translated information from different islands for his distant European readership. Such practices of localized translation demonstrate how knowledge produced on one island was the product of criss-crossing inter-island networks, as the information concerned underwent its own complicated processes of transmission and transformation within the archipelago before reaching its intended audience in Europe. (shrink)

This paper presents the metaphysics of the Vietnamese Buddhist Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh. He interprets the Buddhist principle of interdependent arising in terms of interbeing, the idea that everything depends for its existence on everything else. On his view, everything “inter-is” with everything else, or “to be is to inter-be.” His interpretation is particularly interesting in light of the contemporary debate on fundamentality in western metaphysics. By embracing the idea of interbeing, he opposes the view that there (...) are fundamental entities which do not depend for their existence on anything else. I give an outline of Thich Nhat Hanh’s views, answer an objection, and explain his reasons for adopting his standpoint. My aim is not to offer a full defense of his views, but only to show that the often neglected position of metaphysical coherentism, which Thich Nhat Hanh adopts, deserves further consideration. (shrink)

O diálogo inter-religioso apresenta-se como um dos grandes desafios para o terceiro milênio. Num tempo marcado pelo recrudescimento da violência e da intolerância, o diálogo significa uma possibilidade alternativa. Não há outro caminho possível para a paz no mundo senão mediante o entendimento mútuo e a abertura para a alteridade. O presente artigo busca traduzir o significado do diálogo no contexto da globalização e suas condições de exercício. Palavras-chave: Diálogo; Religião; Globalização; Pluralismo; Alteridade; Comunicação. ABSTRACT Inter-religions dialogue is (...) one of the great challenges of the third millennium. In a time when violence and intolerance have taken momentum, dialogue means an alternativepossibility. There is no other way towards peace in the world but mutual understanding and the openness to alterity. This paper aims at translating the meaning of dialogue within the context of globalization and its conditions of exercise. Key words: Dialogue; Religion; Globalization; Pluralism; Alterity; Communication. (shrink)

Ethics is being asked to respond to the globalization of the economy, and among the various responses one can see the emergence of inter-religious approaches including lay groups. This article examines certain of these concrete attempts to integrate ethics, spirituality and economics, and problematizes some of the theoretical underpinnings of these activities, specifically the question of beliefs.In January, 1998, two inter-religious and interdisciplinary organizations — Avicenne and the World Conference on Religion and Peace — participated for the (...) first time in the European Commission's conference on the future of Europe's economic and social order. It was recognized at this meeting that inter-religious dialogue constituted a paradigmatic example for the construction of a European society that must integrate different cultures. But paradigmatic does not mean it actually exists, for the inter-religious dynamic is still hesitating between globalization and integrationism. Nevertheless, religious plurality is apparent in the economy. The IMF recently hosted representatives of different religions, surpassing the framework of Christianity. In France, the University of Paris IX has planned a series of lectures on “Morality, Spirituality and Business Life”. Before looking at the theoretical questions connected with the emergence of a planetary, inter-religious ethics, let us come back to the question of the Christian religions and the social and economic order. I will restrict myself to mentioning some problematic points in order to defend the necessity of an inter-religious, interdisciplinary approach.Among the positions adopted by the churches at the January, 1998 conference, three points bear some examination: the dignity of labour and the community as specifically Christian values, and Europe constructed on the base of Christian values. (shrink)

Trauma and traumatization have arguably always been part of the human experience yet have in the last few decades come to occupy a prominent place in various popular and academic contexts. This chapter offers an interdisciplinary and comparative investigation of trauma and traumatization in different historical contexts. More specifically, my aim is to discuss whether the rich bodies of research in trauma and traumatization in Holocaust survivors and their descendants yield relevant insights for post-slavery contexts. It has been shown that (...) children of Holocaust survivors suffer from stress and other symptoms related to their parents’ traumatization which influence the interactions with their environments. Such results made me wonder whether the traumatic impact of chattel slavery—which has been abolished some 160 years ago—might have a similar impact, yet now across several generations. Issues of the transmission and current persistence of trauma are inherently linked to questions of social justice, recognition and reparations. This chapter is meant, however, as an exploration of interdisciplinary connections that should be studied in concert to account for the traumatic impact of historical and present day experiences. It starts by discussing the concepts of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder. Continuing by exploring the phenomenon of the inter- and transgenerational transmission of trauma, it relies in part on the important body of research conducted on families of Holocaust survivors. I then turn to the much less researched ‘post-traumatic slave syndrome’ (DeGruy) and discuss two factors that might contribute to the transgenerational transmission of trauma in the families of former enslaved: epigenetics and the continuation of traumatization even after the abolition of slavery as articulated in Historical Trauma theory. Drawing upon these insights, I conclude that it is plausible that a continuing transgenerational transmission of trauma might occur in some families of slavery survivors, the knowledge of which might help to break the chains of such traumatization across generations. (shrink)

In the present epoch of tensions between civilizations, challenges being brought by globalization processes and the necessity of the coexistence of various cultures and traditions, the subject of inter-religious dialogue seems to be particularly significant. Can religions remain isolated islands? Are their claims of being the only source of theological truth justified? Or should it rather be understood as an effect of interaction between different points of view and common effort of looking for the answers to the questions about (...) God and his relations to the world? What is the role of dialogue? Is it only a politically correct element or maybe something more essential - the basis of reasonable existence and development of religion? Should the direction traced by 20th century's partisans of ecumenical movements be widened in order to embrace also non Christian religions? What is the orthodoxy and where are its boundaries? The process philosophy creates a convenient and favorable atmosphere for this kind of considerations. The articles of this selection represent different points of view of the discussed topic. The book is addressed to all who deal with the inter-religious dialogue: both clergy and laymen as well as scholars and students interested in the subject. (shrink)

This book examines the longstanding debate between philosophical optimism and pessimism in the history of philosophy, focusing on Aristotle, Maimonides, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Camus. Philosophical optimists maintain that the world is optimally arranged and is accordingly valuable, and that the existence of human beings is preferable over their nonexistence. Philosophical pessimists, by contrast, hold that the world is in a woeful condition and ultimately valueless, and that human nonexistence would have been preferable over our existence. Schopenhauer criticizes (...) the optimism he locates in the Hebrew Bible and in Spinoza for being unable to square the presumed perfection of the world and its parts, including human life, with the suffering and misfortunes observable in them, and for leading to egoism and thereby to cruelty. Nietzsche, in turn, criticizes Schopenhauer's overtly pessimistic view, inter alia, for furtively positing a perfect state for one to aspire to, thus being latently optimistic. Similarly, Camus charges Nietzsche, who announces his rejection of both optimism and pessimism, with deifying the world and oneself, thereby reverting to optimism. Interestingly, Aristotle countenances an optimistic theory, later adopted and developed by Maimonides, that is arguably capable of facing Schopenhauer's challenge. Aristotelian optimism accounts for the perfection of the world in terms of a hierarchy of value between its parts, with human beings ranked relatively low, and recommends an attitude congruent with that ranking. (shrink)

This volume considers the confluence of world history and historical materialism, with the following guiding question in mind: given developments in the field of historical materialism concerned with the intersection of race, gender, labour, and class, why is it that within the field of World History, historical materialism has been marginalized, precisely as World History orients toward transnational socio-cultural phenomenon, micro-studies, or global histories of networks? Answering this question requires thinking, in an inter-related manner, about both (...) the development of World History as a discipline, and the place of economic determinism in historical materialism. This book takes the position that historical materialism (as applied to the field of World History) needs to be more open to the methodological diversity of the materialist tradition and to refuse narrowly deterministic frameworks that have led to marginalization of materialist cultural analysis in studies of global capitalism. At the same time, World History needs to be more self-critical of the methodological diversity it has welcomed through a largely inclusionary framework that allows the material to be considered separately from cultural, social, and intellectual dimensions of global processes. (shrink)

The following extracts come from a memoir of philosophical life between the wars and after, written in the 1970s by the Anglo-Scottish philosopher Louis Arnaud Reid (1895–1986).2 Today Reid is best known for his writings on aesthetics, and as the holder of the foundation chair in the philosophy of education at the University of London. Reid will also be familiar to those who have read A.J. Ayer's account of Ayer's appointment to the chair of philosophy at London, for Reid was (...) the candidate strongly preferred by the philosophers on the selection committee.3 Reid regretted the rise of logical positivism in the later 1930s because it introduced a break with the earlier world of humane philosophical discourse.In these extracts, edited by his grandson, Reid begins by giving a sense of the breadth of topics covered in philosophical conferences in the 1920s, before sketching some of the characters involved. He mentions of course a number of figures still familiar to us, from Moore to Russell to Wittgenstein, but tries more generally to give an impression of a philosophical world which is now largely lost. These are themes he continues elsewhere in the book, where he discusses the people he knew at Edinburgh, Aberystwyth, Liverpool, Newcastle and London. (shrink)

This paper explores cross-cultural semiotics in adaptation in order to rethink the relationships between China and the West. The multi-dimensional model of cross-cultural research presented defends a temporal semiotic orientation, rather than a purely spatial approach for intercultural interpretation. The paper insists that in the age of globalization, cultural identity is unavoidably a very sharp question, and that multiple layers of meanings are involved in cultural identity. Thus, it explores differences and parallelisms between Western and Chinese semiotics, conservative and as (...) well as unconventional approaches – misappropriation, transplantation, transfer and transformation – which appear in adaptations such as Journey to the West and Wolf Totem. Adaptations are contemplated as intercultural avenues for learning about the West and exporting Chinese culture to the world, showing the complexity of cross-cultural exchanges which are never merely one-directional and which include temporal mappings. (shrink)

In the last sixty years the West-European religious landscape has changed radically. People, and also religious and humanist communities, in a post-sec¬ular world are challenged to develop a new existential, ethical and spiritual language that fits to their global and pluralistic surroundings. This new world-viewing language could rise out of the reflection on contrast experiences, positive and negative disruptive experiences that question the everyday inter pretations of life. The connection of these articulated reflections on contrast experiences with (...) former world-viewing sources and practices with regard to precarious life could provide new meaning and orientation for individuals and communities. Four different sorts of dialogues can be distinguished, which together I call world-viewing dialogues: contrast experiences and the dialogue with oneself, contrast experiences discussed in small groups, contrast experiences and values in our nowadays society and contrast experiences in dialogue with philosophical and religious traditions from different cultures and ages. (shrink)

An effective and enriching discourse on comparative historiography invests itself in understanding the distinctness and identity that have created various civilizations. Very often, infected by bias, ideology, and cultural one-upmanship, we encounter a presumptuousness that is redolent of impatience with the cultural other and of an ingrained refusal to acknowledge what one’s own history and culture fail to provide. This “failure” need not be the inspiration to subsume the other within one’s own understanding of the world and history and, (...) thereby, neuter the possibilities of knowledge-sharing and cultural interface. It is a realization of the “lack” that provokes and generates encounters among civilizations. It should goad us to move away from what we have universalized and, hence, normalized into an axis of dialogue and mutuality. What Indians would claim as itihasa need not be rudely frowned upon because it does not chime perfectly with what the West or the Chinese know as history. Accepting the truth that our ways of understanding the past, the sense of the past, and historical sense-generation vary with different cultures and civilizations will enable us to consider itihasa from a perspective different from the Hegelian modes of doing history and hence preclude its subsumption under the totalitarian rubric of world history. How have Indians “done” their history differently? What distinctiveness have they been able to weave into their discourses and understanding of the past? Does the fact of their proceeding differently from how the West or the Chinese conceptualize history delegitimize and render inferior the subcontinental consciousness of “encounters with past” and its ways of being “moved by the past”? This article expatiates on the distinctiveness of itihasa and argues in favor of relocating its epistemological and ideological persuasions within a comparative historiographical discourse. (shrink)

In this essay I propose to offer some observations in due course on how Christian thought and practice in general might profit from a central theme in the theology of Rāmānuja, a Tamil Vaisnava Brahmin whose traditional date straddles the eleventh and twelfth centuries of the Christian era. The central theme I have in mind is expressed in Rāmānuja's view that the ‘world’ is the ‘body’ of Brahman or God. We shall go on to explain what this means, but (...) let me state first that my overall aim is to further inter-religious understanding, especially between Christian and Hindu points of view. In professing a concern for inter-religious dialogue I know that I reflect a longstanding interest of Professor H. D. Lewis. I shall seek to show that the Christian religion can profit both from the content and the method of Rāmānuja's body-of-God theology. To this end this essay is divided into two sections. Section I is the longer: it contains an analysis of what Rāmānuja did mean by his body-of-God theme – doubtless unfamiliar ground for most of the readers of this essay – and serves as a propaedeutic for what follows in section 2. In section 2 I shall attempt to ‘extrapolate’ Rāmānuja's thinking into a Christian context, with dialogue in mind. Section 2 cannot be appreciated for the promise I hope it holds out without the detail of the first section. (shrink)

Historians of science have often presented the inter-war period as a time when British scientific communities radically questioned existing scholarship on ‘race’. The ascendancy of genetics, and the perceived need to challenge Nazi ‘racial’ theory have been highlighted as pivotal issues in shaping this British revision of ‘racial’ ideas. This article offers a detailed analysis of British scientific thinking in the inter-war period. It questions whether historians have exaggerated or oversimplified the prevalence of anti-‘racial’ reform. It uses a (...) wide range of scientific writings to consider issues of continuity and change in ‘racial’ thinking in mainstream British scientific communities. The article probes the relationship between science and politics, focusing on the extent to which ideological factors affected both the scientific agenda and conclusions as regards ‘racial’ issues. Far from dismissing the idea that events in the inter-war period triggered changes in the way in which British scientists dealt with ‘race’, the article argues that the seeds of the post-Second World War international scientific rejection of ‘race’ were sown in inter-war Britain amid considerable ambivalence and discord.We must remember that the investigator, whether a biologist, an economist, or a sociologist, is himself a part of history, and that if he ever forgets he is a part of history he will deceive his audience and deceive himself.J. B. S. Haldane, Heredity and Politics, 1938. (shrink)

Interactions in service ecosystems, as opposed to the service dyad, have recently gained much attention from research. However, it is still unclear how they influence a customer’s experiential value and trigger desired prosocial behavior. The purpose of this study is to identify which elements of the multi-actor service ecosystem contribute to a customer’s experiential value and to investigate its relation to a customer’s interaction attitude and inter-customer helping behavior. The authors adopted a scale development procedure from the existing literature. (...) Service, brand, retail and tourism management research as well as expert feedback is used to generate a pool of 33 items. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were conducted. The scale was validated based on more than 468 responses to a CASI at one of the world’s largest trade shows. Scale-development procedure was followed by structural equation modeling. CFA supports that experiential value in multi-actor ecosystems comprises five dimensions. The functional value of personnel, the perception of other customers’ appearance, the perception of other customers’ behavior, multisensory stimuli, and a customer’s enjoyment. Experiential value positively and directly relates to a customer’s interaction attitude and inter-customer helping behavior. Furthermore, the effect of experiential value on inter-customer helping behavior is partially mediated by interaction attitude. Managers interested in getting more out of interactions with customers will develop an understanding for the interplay between the physical environment and individuals within a multi-actor ecosystem. Social scientists and managers can use the scale to assess experiential value, encourage a customer’s interaction attitude and utilize the customers’ influence on their peers. This paper synthesizes insights from existing research on experiential value, from various fields, in one scale. This holistic approach is the first to simultaneously account for a customer’s interactions with the multisensory physical environment, personal interactions with employees and interactions between customers in a multi-actor service ecosystem. (shrink)

In this paper, we turn to the philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy. In his work La Création du Monde ou la Mondialisation of 2002 the French philosopher analyses the process of globalisation. Rather than denoting a new homogeneity, the term refers to a world horizon characterized in its interpalpable multiplicity of cultural, socio-economical, ideological and politico-moral content. According to Nancy, globalisation refers to ag-glome-ration: the decay of what once was a globe and now nothing more than a glome. On the (...) one hand, Nancy indicates that the world has changed by an unknown increase of techno-science, the worsening of inequalities between growing populations and by the changing and disappearing of given certainties, views and identities of the world and of man. On a large scale, this deformation is due to the relation between the capitalist evolution and the capitalising of worldviews. On the other hand, due to the inter-palpability of the multiplicity, this means that on our planet there is only space for one world. The world gradually becomes the only world. In this paper we will investigate what Nancy means with the becoming-world of the world and how this relates to our being in the world. For Nancy globalisation reveals two possible destinies of our relation with the world. In La Création du Monde ou la Mondialisation he discerns globalisation from mondialisation to analyze these two possibilities. We will investigate this distinction of Nancy and its consequences for everyday life. (shrink)

There is an underlying idea of symmetry involved in most notions of rationality. From a dialogical philosophical standpoint, however, the symmetry implied by social contract theories and so-called Golden Rule thinking is anchored to a Cartesian subject–object world and is therefore not equipped to address recognition – at least not if recognition is to be understood as something happening between subjects. For this purpose, the dialogical symmetry implied by Habermas' communicative action does a much better job. Still, it is (...) insufficient to embrace those kinds of recognition that are dependent on asymmetry and concrete difference. This article explores how communicative action could meet the demand of recognition by investigating a complementary source of validity in communicative rationality, apart from Habermas' validity claims, in which ‘inter’ is better characterized as mutuality than as symmetry. By recognizing both sources of validity, communicative action can open the door more fully to all aspects of recognition without giving up its universal pragmatic core. Key Words: communicative action • communicative rationality • discourse ethics • Jürgen Habermas • Axel Honneth • recognition • universal pragmatics. (shrink)

This paper identifies three sets of problems of a specific ethico-political type, generated by the interrelationship between ethics and politics in the areas of world justice and global politics. One instance in which this interrelationship is tested is that of the conflict of duties and values as it appears in the particular domain of the relations amongst sovereign nation states as well as between them and other social groups. Following the general Introduction, the main body of the paper contains (...) the following three sections. (1) Without elaborating on the detailed mechanics of Kant's theory of perpetual peace, Section II discusses criticisms against the Kantian version of world peace in the context of which the first problem is encountered. The problem identified here is the ambiguity as to whether the establishment of a federated kind of peaceful co-existence between sovereign nations depends on the moral improvement of mankind or whether it is the other way round--i.e. whether ethical progress is a necessary presupposition or, rather, a consequence of political peace. That is, what is here identified as worrying is that the direction of dependence is not clear in such a proposal. Furthermore, such an approach, when applied to certain cases of inter-state differences, yields a rather alarming result as to the de-politicization of national states (Section II.2). (2) Yet such a type of international federalism requires a certain, peculiar, kind of legal enforcement of order without recourse to a supra state. So a re-examination of the notion of a legal order in general is needed. Given these requirements, Section III moves on to discuss moral conflict from the standpoint of relativism as it appears in the ethical and in the legal spheres. The second of our problems, identified in this section, is that, before discussing world justice we must first acknowledge the special relation and asymmetry between ethical standards and legal rules required by such a world order. (3) Finally, Section IV asks whether, given the above two problems, it is possible to envisage theoretically the logical possibility of moral conflict-resolution by postulating unchanging and encompassing super-norms of conduct. These special norms, if possible, would be able to direct action unequivocally when confronted with ethical or other dilemmas of duties (involving equally valid but conflicting demands among sovereign nations). This is the third problem. The Conclusion offers an evaluation of the whole discussion. These three ethico-political problems are shown to be interrelated. The overall thrust of the discussion is that it points to a number of philosophical difficulties in understanding the changing role of national states in a globalized political, economic and cultural environment. Accordingly, such difficulties have repercussions for any moral criticism of issues of world justice and global politics. I must make clear at the outset, though, that the discussion does not concern international relations theories per se. (shrink)

Europe's position in the world is analyzed in relation to a specification of globalization into five global processes, whereby Europe stands out as the central node of global flows of trade and capital and as the region of uniquely high transnational entanglements, as an area of transnational normativity. The historical background and inter-relation of foreign trade and trans-polity law within Europe, both in early modern social theory and in post-Second World War institution-building, are highlighted, as well as (...) the spread of European law to other continents. The concepts of position, role, and identity should be distinguished. This historical and current position of Europe in the world is little expressed in the roles that contemporary European leaders want to play and in contemporary formulations of European heritage and identity. This is due partly to a nostalgic misjudgment by former great power politicians, but largely because of the delimited position of conventional trade and law in Europe, and of the actual but untheorized transformation of trading traditions into socially embedded trade and of the legal tradition into democratic international normativity. It is finally argued that these European practices of trade and law in fact correspond to many current critical views on global trade and global governance. (shrink)

A consensus has emerged among many normative theorists of cultural pluralism that dialogue is the key to securing just relations among ethnic or cultural groups. However, few normative theorists have explored the conditions or incentives that enable inter-group dialogue versus those that encourage inter-group conflict. To address this problem, I use Habermas’s distinction between communicative and strategic action, since many models of inter-group dialogue implicitly rely upon communicative action, while many accounts of inter-group conflict rest upon (...) strategic action. Drawing on explanatory accounts of inter-group conflict, I outline five strategic logics of group conflict, what I call the resource, political, information, positional, and security logics. I then argue that these strategic logics cannot be overcome by three motivations commonly thought to support communicative action: moral-cognitive consistency, the normative characteristics of modernity, and publicity constraints. At this point, I turn to an empirical case, the reception of African-American concerns within the Jewish public sphere prior to the Second World War, in order to suggest that, although strategic incentives might hinder inter-group dialogue, they may also encourage it. In conclusion, I provide three recommendations for how theorists might utilize strategic incentives in order to recognize which actors, policies, or institutions can encourage inter-group dialogue. (shrink)

This book is a major contribution to the understanding of Heidegger and a rare attempt to bridge the schism between traditions of analytic and Continental philosophy. Cristina Lafont applies the core methodology of analytic philosophy, language analysis, to Heidegger's work providing both a clearer exegesis and a powerful critique of his approach to the subject of language. In Part One, she explores the Heideggerean conception of language in depth. In Part Two, she draws on recent work from theorists of direct (...) reference (Putnam, Donnellan and Kripke inter alia) to reveal the limitations of Heidegger's views and to show how language shapes our understanding of the world without making learning impossible. The book first appeared in German but has been substantially revised for the English edition. (shrink)