This article considers the model of recognition in the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (GRA) and, through a critique of the value of stability pursued through this legislation, argues that recognition as a model is incompatible with the variety of experiences of non-binary trans-identified individuals. The article then moves on to analyse self-declaration, part of the proposed reform recently dismissed by the Government. While self-declaration contains provisions that would minimise the length of the process of recognition as well as the level (...) of intrusiveness and stigma associated with it, this analysis highlights some fundamental theoretical concerns with its over-reliance on the strict dialectical logics on recognition and its structural inability to account for and respond to the challenges posed by non-binary trans individuals. (shrink)

In accordance with the established view that the new social movements since the late 1960s have always pursued an agenda of comprehensive societal change, the new wave of movement activism since the late 1990s has widely been interpreted as evidence of the emergence of a new global movement for a radically different society. A critique of the one-sided reliance in social movement research on traditional actor-centred approaches leads to a systems-centred conceptualization of late-modern society, and via the diagnosis of its (...) particular dilemmas, to the interpretation of contemporary social movements as a vital resource for the stabilization of the socioeconomic order of democratic consumer capitalism. As an addition to the existing social movement theories, the suggested approach contributes to a more complex understanding of non-conventional forms of political articulation and participation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Excited DeliriumThe Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Police BrutalityKathryn Petrozzo (bio)In their timely and pressing piece, Arjun Byju and Phoebe Friesen explore the contentious diagnosis of excited delirium; a syndrome characterized by erratic, aggressive, and “delusional” behavior (2023). Overwhelmingly, this term is used when individuals come in contact with police and/or first responders. Although much attention has been given to debating whether or not this is a “real” diagnosis, the authors (...) want to shift the focus to examining the work that excited delirium is doing in the world, as well as the underlying beliefs guiding it that are perpetuating substantial harm. Drawing significantly on the work of Ian Hacking (1998, 2006) and Sherene Razack (2015), Byju and Friesen explore what kinds of people are being made up by the label of “excited delirium” and the subsequent dehumanization that perpetuates violence towards those in this grouping.Despite the lack of an agreed upon definition, excited delirium tends to frequently group together young Black men and other marginalized people of color, who have a psychiatric history, and those who have taken or are suspected to have taken drugs (Byju & Friezen, 2023). As this is “observed” when individuals come into contact with law enforcement and/or first responders, those who are presumed to be suffering from excited delirium are typically met with physical restraints (chokeholds, hogties, etc.), forced injections of sedatives, and/or taser guns. The violent reactions are often justified not only by this “diagnosis,” but the employment of racial stereotypes; notably, the notion that Black bodies as being less susceptible to pain. As the authors aptly put it:This kind of symptom language helps make up the novel category of a person who suffers from excited delirium: a crazed and inhumane monster, a golem that must be met with unrelenting and superordinate force, who is fated, regardless of interventions, to die a spontaneous death. This paradox, that those with excited delirium are supposedly both too strong and too weak, is at the core of the illness narrative.(2023)It is evident that this label is reinforcing the combination of two harmful stereotypes: the notion that those suffering from severe mental illness occupy a space that is “less than fully human,” and racist stereotyping of Black bodies “superseding human strength.” This perpetuates total dehumanization of the individual, where it is then justified to invoke brutal tactics, as well as signal [End Page 357] to the greater community this is how individuals with mental illnesses and/or belonging to a particular racial group (chiefly, Black men), should be treated. This is despite the fact that those suffering from mental illnesses are significantly more likely to be victims of violent crimes, Black Americans are 3.2 times more likely to be murdered by police, and convergence of these factors (being Black and living with a mental illness) increases likelihood of such fatal interactions (Schwartz & Jahn 2020; Shadravan, Edwards, & Vinson 2021; Stuart, 2003).Although I am in wholehearted support of their account, I take issue with the authors’ conceptualization of excited delirium as non-falsifiable, as well as the notion that diseases, generally, are falsifiable. In an attempt to further criticize the utilization of excited delirium, Byju and Friesen call upon Karl Popper’s falsifiability criterion as a measure for what constitutes as scientific; arguing that excited delirium is not a legitimate scientific concept as it is impossible to falsify. First, I am not convinced that excited delirium is in principle non-falsifiable; as the way in which it’s conceptualized actually appears to be falsifiable. The authors point out that external factors, such as tasing and violent restraints, are clearly the causal explanation, which should in fact, lead one to reject the hypothesis of an excited delirium diagnosis. However, in practice, those who are seeking to exonerate the police/first responders responsible for these deaths, are not accepting this evidence leading them to reject the excited delirium diagnosis, but rather, are crafting an incorrect causal narrative. This is deeply problematic, but it does not necessarily render excited delirium as non-falsifiable. More broadly, I am concerned with the reliance on the falsifiability criterion, which has been widely criticized in the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Duality and Non-Duality in Christian Practice:Reflections on the Benefits of Buddhist-Christian Dialogue for Constructive TheologyWendy FarleyThe question before us is the desirability of Buddhist-Christian dialogue in the work of (what Christians call) constructive theology. As a feminist theologian whose work is ever more deeply shaped by such a dialogue, my immediate answer is an unequivocal yes.1 This dialogue fits a general pattern over two thousand years in which theologians (...) have drawn from the wisdom of other traditions or cultures to better understand the mysteries of human experience. Without neo-Platonism and Aristotle there could hardly have been anything we recognize as Christian theology. Without pre-Christian Irish religion, there would be no Saint Brigit or Celtic Christianity. Without phenomenology, process, and Marxist philosophy the greatest works of twentieth-century Christian thought would not exist. Christianity, like all religions, is a moving river changed by time and culture and nearly as interiorly diverse as its members. The dialogue with Buddhism might be seen as a contemporary example of Christianity's openness to exchange with other ways of thinking that broadens and deepens its best insights. It is perhaps analogous to Origen's reliance on neo-Platonism or Thomas Aquinas's inspiration by the rediscovery of Aristotle.2The porous boundaries between Christianity and its culture open it to wisdom beyond itself but they also open it to cruelty and ignorance. Nothing protects religions from participating in the human condition and thus the prejudices and power structures that mutilate human society. Consumer culture and oppressions by class, ethnicity, and gender are seamlessly incorporated into Christian identity. The tacit synthesis of a culture's values with those of a religion neutralizes possible critique and can elevate a society's oppressions to a sacred duty. For this reason, too, dialogue with Buddhism is important to call Christianity back to its ethical moorings in the ideal of universal love and compassion.Religions are porous to the world around them, but they tend to conceal this from themselves and often imagine themselves to be not only untainted but also uniquely [End Page 135] qualified to mediate salvation. Religions provide human beings with language and practice through which dimensions of reality that cannot simply be read off of nature or experience are (in some sense) encountered. This is their great gift. The difficulty of religions is that tradition can become an end in itself. Because a tradition really does offer meaning and tools for transformation it is easy to slip into the existential posture of so idealizing a tradition that it seems in some direct and exclusive way to correlate to ultimate truth. The curvature of the ego onto itself, so attached to its own pain and pleasure that everything else seems a mere shadow, moves from the microcosm of the self to the macrocosm of religious tradition. The particular religion—or that element within it with which I identify—becomes identical with sacred reality. In the hostility to other religions characteristic of many Christians we see the illusion of egocentrism in its religious form. Paul Tillich described this tendency to absolutize itself as the demonic distortion of religion.3 Religious dialogue is a potent medicine against this overattachment to one's own tradition.These different senses in which a religion integrates into itself the wisdom and illusions of its time and place create enormous diversity within a religious tradition. Root concepts within Christianity concerning soteriology, divinity, and suffering do not have any agreed upon meaning. That is, there is no "Christian" view of salvation. Gregory of Nyssa's ideal of theosis, Luther's emphasis on salvation by grace through faith, an evangelical's experience of being born again, a liberal Protestant's commitment to social justice are so diverse that they seem to represent almost different religions.In light of the malleability and interior diversity of traditions, dialogue may not be between two self-sufficient religions but between participants who inhabit their tradition in a variety of ways.4 With this in mind, I would like to experiment with practice as a basis for some kinds of dialogue. Practice is concretely located in a religious tradition and yet reflects... (shrink)

The idea of self-reliance is important not only because it is often taken to be definitive of the ethics of democratic individualism, but because its greatest theorists have been uncommonly forthright about a problem that, though familiar to ordinary civic experience, frequently gets ignored: that self-reliant individuality is a basis for not fully supporting otherwise endorsed social justice causes. This article turns to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Bob Dylan who are unusual for so honestly reflecting upon this (...) problem and who, because of the differences in the way they conceptualize it, are instructive for civic ethics. I demonstrate that Emerson and Thoreau imbue their self-reliant withdrawal from social action with a self-satisfaction that is lacking for Dylan, who is much readier to acknowledge the moral costs of self-reliance. This acknowledgement does not invalidate self-reliance but alters its epistemological, ethical and political features, providing a variant of self-reliance more suitable to contemporary conditions. (shrink)

“Non-Self from the perspective of the Gene” September 2021, Buddhism and Culture (a Korean-language Buddhist magazine sponsored by the Foundation for the Promotion of Korean Buddhism), Korea.

The ancient puzzle of the Liar was shown by Tarski to be a genuine paradox or antinomy. I show, analogously, that certain puzzles of contemporary game theory are genuinely paradoxical, i.e., certain very plausible principles of rationality, which are in fact presupposed by game theorists, are inconsistent as naively formulated. ;I use Godel theory to construct three versions of this new paradox, in which the role of 'true' in the Liar paradox is played, respectively, by 'provable', 'self-evident', and 'justifiable'. I (...) also construct in modal operator logic a paradox involving reflexive empirical reasoning. Unlike the paradox of the Liar, the paradox of reflexive reasoning does not depend on self-reference. ;I consider various solutions to the Liar paradox and evaluate how well these solutions cope with the paradox of reflexive reasoning. I then formalize the solution to the paradoxes which I favor: the indexical-hierarchical approach, first sketched out by Charles Parsons and Tyler Burge. In this solution, occurrences of the predicate 'true' in sentence-tokens are contextually relativized to levels of a hierarchy. Drawing also on some brief remarks of Bertrand Russell and Charles Parsons, I develop an account of the kind of schematic generality needed for this theory to be statable. ;Finally, I demonstrate that the principles shown to be paradoxical are in fact presupposed by contemporary game theorists in their reliance on the notion of common knowledge or, more precisely, mutual belief. I create novel analyses of and corresponding solutions to several recalcitrant puzzles within game theory, including the "chain-store paradox". (shrink)

How is one to navigate between a thinking grounded in the individual and a claim for communality? In Emerson, this kind of difficulty comes into view in familiar sentences such as Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense.’ How does the relationship between the personal and the universal look and function? In this paper, it is argued that Emerson may bring us clarity regarding the difficulties we are facing when it comes to questions about how we (...) are to frame human personality, morality, and knowledge in the field of tension created by distinctions such as private/public, original/conventional, and particular/universal. A crucial thought in this line of reasoning is that that the critical philosophy Emerson pursues is also self-critical. The idea that true critique is self-criticism is then used as a tool to make clear that there’s no fundamental gap to be bridged here. The self-critical dimension makes clear the ways in which coming to share a world—learning from one’s teachers for example—is a matter of earning (shared) words. Therefore, Emersonian self-cultivation does not stand apart from the cultivation of something shared, but should be seen as a form of path towards a shared world. (shrink)

Business management within the United States of America contains unacknowledged, inherent contradictions that constrain individual and collective action, and form barriers against the development of authenticity and solidarity within organizations. The Emersonian themes of conformity, consistency, and knowledge, as developed in his 1841 essay Self-Reliance, were used as constructive points of philosophical inquiry around which to interrogate the theory and praxis of current American business management. The need for such an examination of management is observable in recent social phenomena. Specifically, (...) the great resignation was explored as a potential representative response to dealing with the contradictions between management as currently practiced within the United States and the existential needs of those subjugated by and to its praxis. Philosophy emerges as an effective way to assess the degree to which organizations can achieve their emancipatory potential using the current theory and praxis of business management. (shrink)

The non‐self theory is one of the cornerstones of Buddhist philosophy. This chapter examines this theory and discusses some of the issues it raises for Western philosophy of mind, in particular for the problem of free will. In the first part, it traces the non‐self theory through several formulations, focusing on different Buddhist texts. In the second part, it analyzes some of the similarities and dissimilarities of the non‐self theory with discussions of the mind‐body problem and the free will problem (...) in Western philosophy. (shrink)

This paper studies how Emerson's ‘Self-Reliance’ offers a meaningful account of political and moral self-education in Western democracies. Emerson's moral perfectionism involves an ethical, political and democratic individualism that needs to be reconsidered. This paper explores a perfectionist interpretation of the modern forms of self-education as political and ordinary practices, first with the case of conspiracy theories, which express an individual desire for self-education but appear as the result of a lack of self-reliance and a failure of political self-education, and (...) then through the explicit claim to self-education made by activists in ecological, anti-racial or feminist organisations, which embodies the democratic need for self-reliance. These two examples reveal a new kind of efficient and ordinary political power at the edge of civic commitment. This leads us to define an alternative conception of pedagogy, in which equality in self-reliance matters. This also underlines our moral and ordinary political responsibility and challenges the traditional philosophical opposition between personal and public, subjective and universal. This paper underlines the accuracy of Stanley Cavell's interpretation of Emerson's ‘Self-Reliance’ in order to provide a perfectionist interpretation of activism. It also opens a new crossed perspective between the French and American approaches. (shrink)

In what is portrayed as Buddha's first sermon, the Dhamma‐cakka‐ppavatana Sutta (DCPS), the Buddha highlighted four key aspects or dimensions of existence to which one needs to become attuned so as to become deeply spiritually transformed and end dukkha. Though the DCPS emphasizes dukkha, this is in fact only one of three related characteristics or “marks” of the five khandhas. These “three marks” of all conditioned phenomena are that they are impermanent, painful, and non‐Self. Buddhism emphasizes that change and impermanence (...) are fundamental features of everything. The Four True Realities for the Spiritually Ennobled and statements which point to these realities, such as “This is dukkha,” form the structural framework for all higher teachings of early Buddhism. (shrink)

The idea of self-reliance is important not only because it is often taken to be definitive of the ethics of democratic individualism, but because its greatest theorists have been uncommonly forthright about a problem that, though familiar to ordinary civic experience, frequently gets ignored: that self-reliant individuality is a basis for not fully supporting otherwise endorsed social justice causes. This article turns to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Bob Dylan who are unusual for so honestly reflecting upon this (...) problem and who, because of the differences in the way they conceptualize it, are instructive for civic ethics. I demonstrate that Emerson and Thoreau imbue their self-reliant withdrawal from social action with a self-satisfaction that is lacking for Dylan, who is much readier to acknowledge the moral costs of self-reliance. This acknowledgement does not invalidate self-reliance but alters its epistemological, ethical and political features, providing a variant of self-reliance more suitable to contemporary conditions. (shrink)

Vinay Lal raises doubts about Gandhi’s status as an environmentalist but argues that Gandhi had “a profoundly ecological view of life.” I take issue with Lal’s claims and, to set the record straight, describe Gandhi’s contributions to environmental though and action. When we look at the aims of contemporary environmental spokespersons and activists, Gandhian themes are dominant. Gandhian biocentrism and Gandhi’s recommendation not to harm even nonsentient life unnecessarily are familiar in contemporary environmental thinking. Gandhian non-violence is both a technique (...) of environmental activists and, for some, one of the constituents of the world for which they struggle. Gandhi emphasized simple living, an important theme for many who are concerned about looming ecological crises. Taking a broader perspective, Gandhi criticized what we today call globalization and encouraged, in its place, the decentralization of economic activities. Gandhi’s emphasis on decentralization and local economic self-reliance led to the Chipko movement in India. Gandhi’s emphasis on small-scale economies, on self-reliant communities, and on appropriate technology paved the way for the “small is beautiful” approach. Gandhi’s recommendation that we live in self-reliant rural communities, if implemented, would significantly decrease that consumption which is causing climate change and straining the capacity of the planet. (shrink)

Scholars have long noticed a discrepancy in the way non-Western and Western peoples conceptualize the scientific and religious worlds. Non-Western traditions and communities, such as of India, are better positioned to provide an alternative to the Western dualistic thinking of separating science and religion. The Himalayan Environmental Studies and Conservation Organization was founded by Dr. Anil Joshi in the 1970s as a new movement looking at the economic and development needs of rural villages in the Indian Himalayas, and encouraging them (...) to use local resources in order to open up new avenues to self-reliance. This book argues that the concept of dharma, the law that supports the regulatory order of the universe in Indian culture, can be applied as an overarching term for HESCO s socio-economic work. This book presents the social-environmental work in contemporary India by Dr. Anil Joshi in the Himalayas and by Baba Seechewal in Punjab, combining the ideas of traditional and scientific ecological knowledge systems. Based on these two examples, the book presents the holistic model transcending the dichotomies of nature vs. culture and science vs. religion, especially as practiced and utilized in the non-Western society such as India. Using the example of HESCO, the book highlights that the very categories of religion and science are problematic when applied to non-Western traditions but that Western technologies can be radically transformed through integration with regional legacies to enable the flourishing of a multiplicity of knowledge-traditions and the societies that depend upon them. It will be of interest to students and scholars of South Asian Studies, Religion, Environmental Studies, Himalayan Studies, and Development Studies. ". (shrink)

Vinay Lal raises doubts about Gandhi’s status as an environmentalist but argues that Gandhi had “a profoundly ecological view of life.” I take issue with Lal’s claims and, to set the record straight, describe Gandhi’s contributions to environmental though and action. When we look at the aims of contemporary environmental spokespersons and activists, Gandhian themes are dominant. Gandhian biocentrism and Gandhi’s recommendation not to harm even nonsentient life unnecessarily are familiar in contemporary environmental thinking. Gandhian non-violence is both a technique (...) of environmental activists and, for some, one of the constituents of the world for which they struggle. Gandhi emphasized simple living, an important theme for many who are concerned about looming ecological crises. Taking a broader perspective, Gandhi criticized what we today call globalization and encouraged, in its place, the decentralization of economic activities. Gandhi’s emphasis on decentralization and local economic self-reliance led to the Chipko movement in India. Gandhi’s emphasis on small-scale economies, on self-reliant communities, and on appropriate technology paved the way for the “small is beautiful” approach. Gandhi’s recommendation that we live in self-reliant rural communities, if implemented, would significantly decrease that consumption which is causing climate change and straining the capacity of the planet. (shrink)

Résumé L’auteure souhaite ici réhabiliter une forme d’individualisme, qui serait définie par la capacité de prendre la parole, par la possession d’une voix subjective, et par la confiance en soi au sens du philosophe américain R.W. Emerson ( Self-Reliance ). Dans cette approche, on peut définir la démocratie radicale en termes linguistiques, ceux de l’expression et de l’action individuelle, rendus possibles par mon consentement : mais aussi par la possibilité du dissentiment, de la désobéissance à la règle donnée. C’est alors (...) la difficulté de l’expression et l’obscurité à soi et aux autres, non l’évidence et la clarté, qui permettront de redéfinir l’individu. (shrink)

Emerson was a great moral philosopher. One of his principle contributions is the theory of self-reliance, a view of democratic individuality. 'Nietzsche was Emerson's best reader,' and George Kateb provides an accessible reading of Emerson that is friendly to the interests of Nietzsche and to later Nietzscheans such as Weber, Heidegger, Arendt, and Foucault.

This 4000 word entry to Routledge’s Handbook of Development Ethics (Jay Drydyk & Lori Keleher, eds., 2018) considers development within United States of America and Canada. Indigenous peoples and their nations are also featured. Canada and USA are both characterized by the UN Development Program as maintaining very high human development. Addressable weaknesses are nevertheless evident when performance is compared, for example, with OECD member nations. This entry focuses upon such comparison, noting characteristic political institutions and attendant social inequality in (...) the areas of social welfare, education and health. The histories of both nations over the past half-century suggest that cultural shifts within USA have displaced the ethos of social responsibility that the country had previously shared with Canada, replacing it with an ideal of self-reliance. The turn may be a factor in the USA’s increasing inequality and general weakness in social welfare programs since the 1980s. Events since 2016 especially also display a turn towards another ideal of self-reliance: isolationism. USA’s reduction in global commitments – to open trade, to limits on environmental impact, and especially, to immigration – contrast greatly with Canada’s evolving commitment to a global society and to a cultural ideal of multiple non-assimilated cultures within its borders, including cultures of new immigrant populations. Canada is by many measures a more equal society, but it shares with USA continued failings in development for aboriginal groups and vulnerability for that group and others. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend a certain moderate version of Humean evidentialism against a Reidian non-evidentialist’s position. My proposal of cooperative viewpoint of trust is based on the following theses: (i) epistemic cooperation is a necessary condition for us to attain knowledge (because of the scope and complexity of the task, capacity inequalities and background information, etc.), (ii) any form of cooperative activity, including division of labor, requires that cooperators trust one another, (iii) in contrast to Reidian non-evidentialism, justified trust (...) cannot be blind but has to rely on some evidence, (iv) crucial evidence that the hearer can have is evidence about the trustworthiness of informants, i.e., their moral and epistemic character, (v) the fact that we depend on other people for most of our knowledge can be a good reason to weaken Humean epistemic self-reliance and to accept as epistemically responsible and rational the trusting partly based on epistemic forward looking reasons (gathering of information). (shrink)

This paper mainly discusses Tan Luan Amitabha created the theory of the nature of salvation. Gein Tan Luan force first proposed trust him, and so as "easy street" and "hard track" distinction, this emphasis on his ability to say, and the traditional Buddhist emphasis on self-liberation is different, each being misunderstood as a Buddhist heresy; but the two kinds of Tan Luan body of law that, on the one hand Chengji Long said the tree two more from the thinking Bian (...) air to the pursuit of Wisdom of Buddha there is generally on the one hand, Cheng Jishi body of law and other pro-flow Buddha body theory, more deepen its Tathagatagarbha ideas for his theory of Amitabha Buddha body exercise through the Mahayana concept of the base and refined with the lies. In addition, Tan Luan "two kinds of bodies of law," the body of law that seems, and Tan Luan - Dao Chao - Sin a series of Pure Land teaching "is the reported non-" of saying different things, but in reality he was a unique dialectic of the "two" terms, indicating Amitabha in San secular representations in two ambiguities, including: self-reliance - his strength, name - for example, the law of the body of law - convenient body of law, etc., and from beyond all relative to the Absolute Dharmakaya Amitabha concept, derived symbol of the Buddha-bit cell of the surface to his power, the willing, the body is good diversion Amitabha's report said the pilot. In the history of Pureland-Buddhism, Tan Luan is the first one who claims to rely on the force of Buddha, and divides Buddhism into two patterns-the easy way vs. The difficult way. The notion of his power is different from the main principle of Buddhism, and always misunderstanded as betrayer. But if we analyze the theory of Tan Luan, we can find two dimensions. In one side, he succeeds the idea of ​​two-kaya from N? g? rjuna, but his notion of? unya is more near Buddha-nature. On the other side, he succeeds the idea of ​​the emanatuon of dharma-k? ya from Vasubandhu, but more inclines to tathagata-garbha thought. So we can say, Tan Luan's theory of the force of Amita-Buddha is rooted on the tradition of Amita-Buddha is rooted on the tradition of Mahayana-Buddhism, and it is exactly the prototype of the Buddha-k? ya. Besides this, in the theory of Tan Luan's two -dharmak? ya, the term of dharmakaya Buddha is looked different to the doctrine of the series that he belongs. But he uses many dialectic terms of two-k? ya, such as: self-power-other power, Name of Buddha - For example, the law of the body of law - convenient body of law, and so on, in order to explain the duality of Amita-Buddha as the Absolute One appears himself between the sacred and the profane. And from the notion of the Absolute dharma-k? ya of Amita -Buddha, the side of the Buddha's personal character, such as the force, vow, and so on, is developed. In fact, his theory of Amita-Buddha is nothing but the pioneer of the theory of samboghak? ya Amita-Buddha in the series of Shandau. (shrink)

In “Non-self, Agency, and Women: Buddhism’s Modern Transformation,” Ann A. Pang-White argues that “non-self (anātman 無我)” and “emptiness (śūnyatā 空)” necessarily entail nonduality. Buddha nature is neither male nor female. Nonetheless, conflicting teachings are found in various Theravada and Mahayana texts. The more conservative texts have historically resulted in long-standing patriarchal practices: Buddhist nuns receive much less respect and financial support than monks, often facing the possibility of extinction. In Taiwan, however, in a complete reversal, Buddhist nuns outnumber male monks (...) in an astonishing 75 percent to 25 percent ratio, with the largest number of Buddhist nuns in the world. Many Taiwanese nuns are highly educated and socially engaged activists. Nonetheless, to assert one’s autonomy to become a nun is extremely difficult in a Confucian society. How do Taiwanese women, society, and Buddhism mutually transform each other? In addition to an analysis of selected essential Buddhist texts, Pang-White investigates two Buddhist communities of women to shed light on Buddhism’s modern transformation. She concludes that to reform Buddhism from within is not only theoretically possible but also practically achievable. (shrink)

How is one to navigate between a thinking grounded in the individual and a claim for communality? In Emerson, this kind of difficulty comes into view in familiar sentences such as Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense.’ How does the relationship between the personal and the universal look and function? In this paper, it is argued that Emerson may bring us clarity regarding the difficulties we are facing when it comes to questions about how we (...) are to frame human personality, morality, and knowledge in the field of tension created by distinctions such as private/public, original/conventional, and particular/universal. A crucial thought in this line of reasoning is that that the critical philosophy Emerson pursues is also self-critical. The idea that true critique is self-criticism is then used as a tool to make clear that there’s no fundamental gap to be bridged here. The self-critical dimension makes clear the ways in which coming to share a world—learning from one’s tea... (shrink)

Education has always been at the heart of most, if not all, human endeavours. This explains the growing interest of many scholars in educational issues. Self-Reliance, one of Emerson’s most impressive and influential works, provides an outstanding contribution to education in general and particularly to the personal development of individuals in society. The relevance of the educational values addressed in Self-Reliance makes it an appropriate context for academic reflection. This paper scrutinises the educational dimension of Emerson’s work with a focus (...) on language didactics. My concern is to provide evidence that the educational values expressed instruct didactics. The study of Self-Reliance reveals the expression of some values, the main ones being trust, responsibility, commitment, creativity, autonomy, independence, self-esteem, self-determination, self-evaluation, and individual talents. By reflecting on their educational dimension with a focus on their didactic implications I come to conclude that even though didactics does not draw directly on Emerson’s educational philosophy, it integrates some aspects, notably the values referred to in this paper. (shrink)

Dependency stands for manygrievances and is generally considered asymptom of oppression. An opposing concept,offered as the preferred state, isself-reliance. Dependency and self-reliance arekey concepts in sustainable developmentprograms that feature participatory approaches.Some of the ways in which development projectsemploy the concepts of dependency andself-reliance, however, are troubling.Dependency and self-reliance in two programsfor participatory sustainable development areexamined, one in Canada and the other in NewZealand. Frameworks for dependency and self-reliance aredrawn from social psychology and philosophy toexamine problematic aspects associated with theconcepts. Analysis (...) produced a proposal foruse of the term situatedinterdependence as a way to cast the outcomesof participatory sustainable development moreprecisely. The location of the cases (Canadaand New Zealand) centers the discussion withina context of industrialized agriculture, butalso points to issues pertinent to developingcountries. (shrink)

Self and Non-Self in Early Buddhism. Joaquín Pérez-Remón. Mouton Publishers, The Hague 1980. xii, 412 pp. DM 110.

The deepening U.S. farm crisis has been accompanied by numerous benefit fund raisers, individual donations and volunteer programs—all an expression of cooperation and concern on the part of U.S. citizens, farmer and non-farmer alike. These responses have received wide media attention and much public praise. A sense of patriotism and self-reliance underlies their popularity. Nevertheless, such efforts work to undermine their own ultimate objective—that of improving the economic circumstances of the family farm and farm family.This irony, it is argued, arises (...) from the fact that these charitable responses typically depoliticize the nature of the U.S. farm crisis. First, they deflect public attention away from the larger economic context and the structural inequities within it. Second they revitalize agrarian-based myths which serve to rationalize and to reproduce the ‘independent’ behavior of small, commercial farmers. Finally, it is argued that the depoliticization of the farm crisis is itself a political strategy, one which supports and legitimizes ‘business as usual’ and is compatible with the interests of corporate agriculture. (shrink)

Robert Frost read "The Gift Outright" to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at William & Mary College almost one hundred years after Emerson delivered his famous lecture "The American Scholar" before the Society's Harvard chapter. In his talk, Emerson proclaims, "Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close" (Essays and Poems 53). It is no accident that Frost's poem brings to mind Emerson.1 The possession of the American imagination by other lands (...) and its "withholding from our land of living" declare the same distractions. The distance between ourselves and our own possibilities represents for Emerson the misdirection backwards toward Europe, and not forward to the land .. (shrink)

Flush with the juices of adolescence, American philosophy declared independence from its European parentage in the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson and his generation. In 1837, Emerson addressed the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa Society on the occasion of its inaugural meeting for the year, which he called a "holiday." Emerson began: I greet you on the recommencement of our literary year. Our anniversary is one of hope, and, perhaps, not enough of labor. We do not meet for games of strength (...) or skill, for the recitation of histories, tragedies, and odes, like the ancient Greeks; for parliaments of love and poesy, like the Troubadours; nor for the advancement of science, like our contemporaries in the British and European capitals. Thus far, our holiday has been simply a friendly sign of the survival of the love of letters amongst a people too busy to give letters any more. Perhaps the time is already come when it ought to be, and will be something else; when the sluggard intellect of this continent will look from under its iron lids and fill the postponed expectations of the world with something better than the expectations of mechanical skill. Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close. The millions that around us are rushing into life, cannot always be fed on the sere remains of foreign harvests. Events, actions arise, that must be sung, that will sing themselves. (shrink)

In spite of its everyday connotations, the term independence as republicans understand it is not a celebration of individualism or self-reliance but embodies an acknowledgement of the importance of personal and social relationships in people’s lives. It reflects our connectedness rather than separateness and is in this regard a relational ideal. Properly understood, independence is a useful concept in addressing a fundamental problem in social philosophy that has preoccupied theorists of relational autonomy, namely how to reconcile the idea of individual (...) human agency with the inevitable and necessary influence of other people, both directly and indirectly. I derive my account from the work of Mary Wollstonecraft and Catharine Macaulay, whose contributions have remained largely overlooked by current republican theorists. I have three purposes in this chapter. First, I set out the relational character of independence. Secondly, I outline a republican approach to the problem of structural social threats to agency. Finally, I hope to establish the basis for a fruitful dialogue between republicans and relational autonomy theorists on the requirements and dynamics of individual agency and freedom in oppressive social situations. I identify three distinctive features of the internal logic of freedom as independence that give it a relational character: it always locates the person within a community; there is a mediating role played by the notion of arbitrariness in connecting individual and collective perspectives; a causal relationship exists linking each person’s freedom as independence such that that the dependence of one class of persons jeopardizes the independence of the whole community. (shrink)

This essay explores Emerson’s reflections on self-reliance with particular reference to Emerson’s understanding of the concept of self-reliance, his view of ‘conformity’ as the major obstacle to self-reliance, and the moral significance of his thought. The essay is based on the premise that Emerson’s philosophy of self-reliance, self-reference and self-responsibility has a relevance and an application to our contemporary lives which are often conducted through subtle shades of compliance and acquiescence to popular opinion and prevailing fashions of thought and behaviour.

travel, emerson often insisted, is only for the fool-hearted. He said it so many times in his popular essays and public lectures, he had actually gained a reputation for it. [It] is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in (...) Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.... (shrink)

There is a clear and controlling philosophical concern that governs Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays: freedom from limitation and self-reliance from external authority. What makes it difficult to understand his essays, however, is his style, which is characterized by disconnection, paradox, and negation. These rhetorical techniques make the meaning of his writings elusive and slippery. Though many scholars have analyzed Emerson’s style, none have approached it through the writings of Laozi, an ancient Chinese philosopher. There are two reasons I compare Emerson (...) and Laozi. First, in spite of their differences, there are important parallel themes and stylistic innovations in their writings. Second, attentiveness to a key figure in the Eastern philosophical tradition can help to explain how Emerson’s thoughts disappoint Western readers, precisely because they employ techniques beyond the method of habitual intellect in the Western frame. This essay tries to approach several features in Emerson’s writing style from a Daoist perspective to show that both philosophers purposefully use linguistic strategies such as disconnection, paradox, and negation to provoke readers into participating in understanding truth, instead of telling them directly what truth is. (shrink)

In the science of administrative and constitutional law, administration science and many other sciences, including political science, it is widely accepted that the basic, inherent feature of a municipality, deciding the essence of the territorial self-government unit as an entity of public administration, is the self-reliance it is entitled to. The self-reliance of territorial self-government units is even defined as a constitutional norm.In principle, self-reliance is perceived as a fundamental attribute of a decentralised public authority and constitutes one of the (...) fundamental systemic principles of the Republic of Poland. It was formulated expressis verbis in art. 165 par. 2 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, which states that the self-reliance of territorial self-government units is subject to judicial protection, meaning that TSGUs can defend themselves against illegal attempts, not grounded in the law to interfere in their self-reliance. This protection seems to encompass both the private-law and public-law spheres of territorial self-government activity.The essence and guarantees of territorial self-government units’ self-reliance also arise from other constitutional principles, including the aforementioned decentralisation principle, subsidiarity principle, separation of powers, supremacy of the nation and democratic state under rule of law.The goal of this article is to interpret the principle of municipal self-reliance in the context of constitutional principles of law, in the light of the Polish Constitution. The studies were conducted based on analysis of normative acts, doctrinal views and case law. (shrink)

This book is an enquiry into the concept of the 'self', transcending the barriers of 'non-self' and realizing the non-dual Consciousness within and without.

Sinceits founding by Jacques Waardenburg in 1971, Religion and Reason has been a leading forum for contributions on theories, theoretical issues and agendas related to the phenomenon and the study of religion. Topics include (among others) category formation, comparison, ethnophilosophy, hermeneutics, methodology, myth, phenomenology, philosophy of science, scientific atheism, structuralism, and theories of religion. From time to time the series publishes volumes that map the state of the art and the history of the discipline.

After distinguishing between a metaphysical and a contemplative strategy interpretation of the no-self doctrine, I argue that the latter allows for the illumination of significant and under-discussed Kantian affinities with Buddhist views of the self and moral psychology. Unlike its metaphysical counterpart, the contemplative strategy interpretation, understands the doctrine of no-self as a technique of perception, undertaken from the practical standpoint of action. I argue that if we think of the contemplative strategy version of the no-self doctrine as a process (...) engaged in, in order to free oneself from delusion and to see things more objectively in order to promote right action, then we find a clear parallel in Kant’s duty of self-knowledge which demands that we rid ourselves of deluded moral self-descriptions. While in Buddhism the aim is a selflessness that liberates one from suffering, for Kant the aim is an agency free of the conceit that interferes with clear moral vision, sound judgement, and dutiful action. I conclude by responding to objections advanced by Charles Goodman which aim to show that the Kantian position is deeply at odds with Buddhist thinking, arguing that neither Kantian agency nor Kantian self-legislation is undermined by the doctrine of no-self. (shrink)

Why should we think that there is such a thing as pre-reflective self-awareness? And how is this kind of self-awareness to be characterized? This paper traces a theoretical and a phenomenological line of argument in favor of the notion of pre-reflective self-consciousness and explores how this notion can be further illuminated by appealing to recent work in the analytical philosophy of language and mind. In particular, it argues that the self is not represented in the (nonconceptual) content of experience, but (...) is rather implicit in the mode. Further, it argues that pre-reflective self-consciousness is best understood as a form of knowledge-how. Finally, it will be argued that our sense of self is thoroughly social, even at the basic, pre-reflective level. (shrink)

Philosophers have long held that epistemic self-reliance has a special value. But, this view has recently been challenged by prominent epistemologist Linda Zagzebski. Zagzebski argues that potential sources of support for the claim that epistemic self-reliance has a special value fail. Here I provide a novel defense of the special value of epistemic self-reliance. Self-reliance has a special value because it is required for attaining certain valuable cognitive achievements. Further, practicing self-reliance may be all-things-considered worthwhile even when doing so is (...) a less reliable way of getting to the truth than relying on others and even when doing so is flatly unreliable in getting to the truth. (shrink)

This article examines the Buddhist versions of the no-self conception of the self. It defines the self as one part of the psychophysical complex and the person as the whole of the psychophysical complex. It suggests that the Buddhist anti-realist or reductionist position denies that the self exists and considers the person to be a conceptual fiction. It argues that there are some Buddhist personalists who hold something close to an emergentist view, which suggests that, although the self does not (...) have real existence, the person does. (shrink)

AbstractSpirituality continues to exert a strong influence in people’s lives both in work and beyond. However, given that spirituality is often non-formalized and personal, we continue to know little about how moral reasoning is strategized. In this paper, we examine how Buddhist leader-practitioners interpret and operationalize a process of self-decentralization based upon Buddhist emptiness theory as a form of moral reasoning. We find that Buddhist leader-practitioners share a common understanding of a self-decentralized identity and operationalize self-decentralization through two practices in (...) Buddhist philosophy—skillful means and the middle way—to foreground social outcomes. However, we also find that practitioners face tensions and challenges in moral reasoning relates to agency—the ‘re-centering’ of the self as an enlightened self and the use of karmic reasoning to justify (un)ethical behavior—and contextual constraints that lead to feelings of vulnerability and exclusion. We present a model that elaborates these processes and invite further research that examines novel approaches and dynamic interpretations of the self in moral reasoning. (shrink)

The concept of the self and its relation to moral action is complex and subject to varying interpretations, not only between different academic disciplines but also across time and space. This paper presents empirical evidence from a cross-cultural study on the Buddhist and Confucian notions of self in SMEs in Vietnam and Taiwan. The study employs Hwang’s Mandala Model of the Self, and its extension into Shiah’s non-self-model, to interpret how these two Eastern philosophical representations of the self, the Confucian (...) relational self and Buddhist non-self, can lead to moral action. By demonstrating the strengths of the model, emphasizing how social and cultural influences constrain the individual self and promote the social person leading to moral action, the paper extends understanding of the self with empirical evidence of the mechanisms involved in organizational contexts. (shrink)