In this paper I look at three versions of the charge that liberalism’s emphasis on individuals is detrimental to community—that it encourages a pernicious disregard of others by fostering a particular understanding of the individual and the relation she has with her society. According to that understanding, individuals are fundamentally independent entities who only enter into relations by choice and society is seen as nothing more than a venture voluntarily entered into in order to better oneself. Communitarian critics argue that (...) since liberals neglect the degree to which individuals are dependent upon their society for their self-understanding and understanding of the good, they encourage individuals to maintain a personal distance from others in their society. The detrimental effect this distancing is said to have on communities is often called “asocial individualism” or “asocialism.” I argue that all three versions of the charge fail against liberalism and that liberalism—with its insistence on the normative import of individuals—is not detrimental to communities, but can actually foster strong communities. (shrink)

Strangers by Choice explores voluntary otherness as a philosophy of life. This philosophy is asocial in the sense that its followers tend to privilege separateness over belonging, and yet it does not lead to alienation or isolation from society. Building on Simmel's notion of the stranger, the author sheds light on the experience of spiritual idealists, both real and fictional, who maintain a distance from mainstream society in order to live by the laws of their transcendental homelands. Waśkiewicz addresses representations (...) of strangeness from a broad spectrum of Western culture, including Stoic philosophy, Augustine of Hippo, Henry David Thoreau, the physicist Richard Feynman, and finally Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Highlighting how these writers and thinkers have negotiated individuality and community, this interdisciplinary study contributes to debates on identity in both practical philosophy and the history of ideas. (shrink)

El siguiente ensayo tiene como objetivo delimitar los argumentos bases que dan origen a la teoría política conocida como atomismo. Para ello será necesario hacer un análisis de sus orígenes en las proposiciones del contrato social, así como de las razones por las cuales se considera al individuo como autosuficiente, para luego ver cómo esto mismo les da un fundamento a los derechos de esta índole. Ello nos demostrará la importancia de replantear estos argumentos, si es que hacen posible la (...) convivencia entre otros, y cómo es que un sistema que requiera de mayor cooperación es contrario al atomismo político. Finalmente, se verán las implicaciones contradictorias y los elementos que juegan en contra de formar parte de este pensamiento, sobre todo en su forma radical. (shrink)

Willard Van Orman Quine begins this influential work by declaring, "Language is asocial art.

Cumulative technological culture (CTC) refers to the increase in the efficiency and complexity of tools and techniques in human populations over generations. A fascinating question is to understand the cognitive origins of this phenomenon. Because CTC is definitely a social phenomenon, most accounts have suggested a series of cognitive mechanisms oriented toward the social dimension (e.g., teaching, imitation, theory of mind, and metacognition), thereby minimizing the technical dimension and the potential influence of non-social, cognitive skills. What if we have failed (...) to see the elephant in the room? What if social cognitive mechanisms were only catalyzing factors and not thesufficient and necessaryconditions for the emergence of CTC? In this article, we offer an alternative, unified cognitive approach to this phenomenon by assuming that CTC originates in non-social cognitive skills, namely technical-reasoning skills which enable humans to develop the technical potential necessary to constantly acquire and improve technical information. This leads us to discuss how theory of mind and metacognition, in concert with technical reasoning, can help boost CTC. The cognitive approach developed here opens up promising new avenues for reinterpreting classical issues (e.g., innovation, emulation vs. imitation, social vs. asocial learning, cooperation, teaching, and overimitation) in a field that has so far been largely dominated by other disciplines, such as evolutionary biology, mathematics, anthropology, archeology, economics, and philosophy. (shrink)

Using Kierkegaard's later religious writings as well as his earlier philosophical works, David Gouwens explores this philosopher's religious and theological thought, focusing on human nature, Christ, and Christian discipleship. He helps the reader approach Kierkegaard as someone who both analysed religion and sought to evoke religious dispositions in his readers. Gouwens discusses Kierkegaard's main concerns as a religious and, specifically, Christian thinker, and his treatment of religion using the dialectic of 'becoming Christian', and counters the interpretation of his religious thought (...) as privatistic and asocial. Gouwens appraises both the edifying discourses and the pseudonymous writings, including the particular problems posed by the latter. Between foundationalism and irrationalism, Kierkegaard's ideas are seen to anticipate the end of 'modernity', while standing at the centre of the Christian tradition. (shrink)

The author critiques the expedient application of market valuation principles by the transnational corporations and other large firms in the Indian pharmaceutical industry on a number of issues like patents, pricing, irrational drugs, clinical trials, etc. He contends that ethics in business is chiseled and etched within the confines of particular social structures of accumulation. An ascendant neo-liberal social structure of accumulation has basically shaped these firms' sharp opposition to the Indian Patents Act, 1970, government administered pricing, etc. The author (...) contends that the practice of neo-liberal economics is strongly associated with a "one dimensional" ethics that privileges market valuation principles over all others. This seems to inevitably generate a social counter-movement that struggles for social protections. He critiques neo-liberal business practices from a perspective that derives from the work of the economic anthropologist Karl Polanyi. Before the present phase of liberalization in India, markets were "managed", but without a "welfare state" in place. Moving toward deregulation of the markets without a welfare state in place is unethical. Keeping the debilities of the institutional framework of public policy in mind, the author adopts a Polanyian perspective that places its trust and hope in the growing social legitimacy of the counter-movement in opposition to both neo-liberal business practices and the degenerate behavior of state agencies. (shrink)

Awe has been defined as an emotional response to perceptually vast stimuli that overwhelm current mental structures, yet facilitate attempts at accommodation. Four studies are presented showing the information-focused nature of awe elicitors, documenting the self-diminishing effects of awe experience, and exploring the effects of awe on the content of the self-concept. Study 1 documented the information-focused, asocial nature of awe elicitors in participant narratives. Study 2 contrasted the stimulus-focused, self-diminishing nature of appraisals and feelings associated with a prototypical awe (...) experience with the self-focused appraisals and feelings associated with pride. Study 3 found that dispositional awe-proneness, but not dispositional joy or pride, was associated with low Need for Cognitive Closure, and also documented a relationship between dispositional awe and increased emphasis on membership in “universal” categories in participants’ self-concepts. Study 4 replicated the self-concept finding from Study 3 using experimentally elicited awe. Implications for future work on awe are discussed. (shrink)

The longstanding interest in business ethics has been given renewed emphasis by high profile scandals in the world of business and finance. At the same time, many economists--dissatisfied with the discipline's emphasis on self-interest and individualism and by the asocial nature of much economic theory--have sought to englarge the scope of economics by looking at ethical questions. In Ethics and Economic Affairs a group of interdisciplinary scholars provide contributions on international interest in this aspect of socio-economics and economic-psychology. The book (...) is divided into four parts. The first looks at Business Ethics and Management. Part Two enlivens the debate with empirical data. The third part examines the implications for economic theory and asks if the integration of ethics in the economy is possible or if they are fundamentally different systems. Part Four introduces perspectives from other disciplines, sets economics within its wider context and looks to the future. The editors have brought together a group of contributors from nine different countries and a broad range of disciplines, including: Norman E. Bowie, Monroe Burk, Amitai Etzioni, Richard H. Guerette, Ralph E. Miner, Lynne M. Rosansky, N. Craig Smith, Roberts Stallaerts, Philip Stone and John Tomer. (shrink)

Adam Smith's lectures present a bleak theory of history in which the innate human results in the perpetuation of increasingly repressive slave societies. This theory challenges common conceptions about the philosophical and historical foundations of Smith's thought, and accounting for it requires moving beyond traditional dichotomies between an sphere grounded on asocial wants and a sphere grounded on sociability. For Smith, under the influence of earlier thinkers like La Rochefoucauld, Mandeville, and Rousseau, all human behavior is rooted in our esteem-seeking (...) social nature, and the dominant form of esteem-seeking is a one based on external superiority. Understanding these foundations explains why Smith views both European commercial society and its central motive of economic self-interest as historically contingent, the product of a long series of unintended historical consequences. (shrink)

Individualistic traditions of autonomy have long been critiqued by feminists for their atomistic and asocial presentation of human agents. Relational approaches to autonomy were developed as an alternative to these views. Relational accounts generally capture a more socially informed picture of human agents, and aim to differentiate between social phenomena that are conducive to our agency versus those that pose a hindrance to our agency. In this article, I explore the various relational conceptualizations of autonomy profferred to date. I critically (...) review some of the ongoing internal disputes within the relational autonomy literature, and conclude the article by taking stock of the value of relational autonomy despite these unresolved debates. (shrink)

This chapter suggests that the state of nature is a continuum notion that lies in a segment along a larger continuum of the scope of private judgment, as does the continuum notion of civil authority. Jean Hampton saw Thomas Hobbes's state of nature as a “presocietal” condition of “isolated asocial individuals,” “stripped of their social connections.” There is plentiful evidence against Hampton's interpretation of the state of nature as an “asocial” condition in Hobbes's insistence across all his political writings that (...) men care deeply about their relative social standing and reputations, and that this is a major source of conflict in a state of nature. A potentially more promising way of understanding the state of nature is as a lawless condition. Societies exhibiting a high degree of consensus among private judgments may be able to tolerate incomplete removal from the mere state of nature, without threat to their stability. (shrink)

The phrase ‘person‐centred care’ (PCC) reminds us that the fundamental philosophical goal of caring for people is to uphold or promote their personhood. However, such an idea has translated into promoting individualist notions of autonomy, empowerment and personal responsibility in the context of consumerism and neoliberalism, which is problematic both conceptually and practically. From a conceptual standpoint, it ignores the fact that humans are social, historical and biographical beings, and instead assumes an essentialist or idealized concept of personhood in which (...) a person is viewed as an individual static object. From a practical standpoint, the application of such a concept of personhood can lead to neglect of a person's fundamental care needs and exacerbate the problems of social inequity, in particular for older people and people with dementia. Therefore, we argue that our understanding of PCC must instead be based on a dynamic concept of personhood that integrates the relevant social, relational, temporal and biographical dimensions. We propose that the correct concept of personhood in PCC is one in which persons are understood as socially embedded, relational and temporally extended subjects rather than merely individual, autonomous, asocial and atemporal objects. We then present a reconceptualization of the fundamental philosophical goal of PCC as promoting selfhood rather than personhood. Such a reconceptualization avoids the problems that beset the concept of personhood and its application in PCC, while also providing a philosophical foundation for the growing body of empirical literature that emphasizes the psychosocial, relational, subjective and biographical dimensions of PCC. (shrink)

Reasoning, defined as the production and evaluation of reasons, is a central process in science. The dominant view of reasoning, both in the psychology of reasoning and in the psychology of science, is of a mechanism with an asocial function: bettering the beliefs of the lone reasoner. Many observations, however, are difficult to reconcile with this view of reasoning; in particular, reasoning systematically searches for reasons that support the reasoner’s initial beliefs, and it only evaluates these reasons cursorily. By contrast, (...) reasoners are well able to evaluate others’ reasons: accepting strong arguments and rejecting weak ones. The argumentative theory of reasoning accounts for these traits of reasoning by postulating that the evolved function of reasoning is to argue: to find arguments to convince others and to change one’s mind when confronted with good arguments. Scientific reasoning, however, is often described as being at odds with such an argumentative mechanisms: scientists are supposed to reason objectively on their own, and to be pigheaded when their theories are challenged, even by good arguments. In this article, we review evidence showing that scientists, when reasoning, are subject to the same biases as are lay people while being able to change their mind when confronted with good arguments. We conclude that the argumentative theory of reasoning explains well key features of scientists’ reasoning and that differences in the way scientists and laypeople reason result from the institutional framework of science. (shrink)

Is a rational morality a necessary evil—a mean between what an individual would judge best—bettering his situation at whatever cost to others, and worst—having one's situation worsened at other's pleasure? It would seem that Glaucon's fable of the ring of Gyges may be applied to our account of morality. And indeed, matters may be worse—a contractarian morality such as we have developed may seem to be a tool for the clever and strong to use in domination, using the language of (...) cooperation to conceal the reality of exploitation. If we understand ourselves on the model of economic man, treating all basic motivation as exemplifying asociality and all human relationships as contractual, we may find these conclusions hard to escape. Even though we could understand the rational arguments in support of morality, our feelings would be engaged only by our own concerns, and we would lack any affective capacity for morality. (shrink)

The idea of sociability - a person’s disposition and ability to communicate and live in the community - goes through the whole history of philosophy. Due to the peculiarity of translations, this term and the whole tradition related to it have been lost to the Russian reader. The article discusses some tendencies in comprehending the idea of sociability in early modern moral philosophy. The key to this consideration is F. Hutcheson’s essay On the Natural Sociability of Mankind, the title of (...) which contains the very term “sociability” and which presents the main essential points in a discussion of the issue in the first third of the 18 th century. One can distinguish two main approaches to the problem. According to one of them, sociability determined by various human natural needs is the basis of social relations, and a person becomes a moral agent as a social being (H. Grotius, T. Hobbes, S. Pufen-dorf, B. Mandeville). According to another approach, sociability is a manifestation of a person’s natural tendency to care for the good of others, and its consistent implementation leads to the formation of community and supports its stability (Cambridge Platonists, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, J. Butler, D. Hume, A. Smith). Representatives of both approaches recognized contradiction in manifestations of sociability or in its nature. I. Kant theoretically overcame the confrontation between these approaches and conceptualized the contradiction and associated it with the human nature. According to Kant, the “unsociable sociability” is given in the fact that a person has a tendency to sociability but also a tendency to self-assertion at the expense of others. However, despite the presence of asocial features (evil principle), Kant considered the person’s inherent sociability (good principle) as a prerequisite for culture and as one of the most important conditions of possibility of morality. (shrink)

This paper discusses Philippe Van Parijs’ claim that men’s lack of female longevity constitutes an injustice, whether this is caused by asocial factors or by gendered lifestyles. This response argues that, like others, such as John Kekes and Shlomi Segall, Van Parijs underestimates the resources of egalitarian liberalism to avoid this implication. One explanation treats individuals as liable for gendered life-shortening behavior, for example, when they value either life-shortening lifestyles or the choice between lifestyles, and one ca nnot say society (...) has not “done enough” for them. A second explanation claims a trait is not a relative advantage when it is systematically part of a package of traits that do not constitute a relative advantage. A third explanation claims a trait is not an advantage when its value to the trait bearer is conditional, and the relevant conditions are unlikely to be fulfilled. (shrink)

In this article, I consider two interpretations of Spinoza's account of the good life in recent literature, which I call the social activist model and the solitary intellectualist model, in order to shed light on his underexamined views on solitude within this context. The former model has gained more support than the latter due to Spinoza's criticism of the solitary life and the importance he ascribes to friendship and living cooperatively with others within his corpus. While I recognize its strengths, (...) I am skeptical as to whether the social activist model appreciates the complexity of Spinoza's account of the good life in the Ethics. For even though Spinoza clearly values friendship, he has a largely pessimistic view of those he calls ordinary people, which bears on the possibility of friendship between the philosopher and ordinary people. Furthermore, intuitive knowledge is unlike reason in that it concerns an asocial and intellectual insight beyond an identification with humanity and imaginative dimensions of ordinary life. It is, thus, conducive to what psychologists James Averill and Louise Sundararajan have called authentic solitude to the extent that it brings about a metaphysical awareness of our ontological status as finite modes of God. Although neither of the aforementioned models offers an entirely accurate representation of Spinoza's understanding of freedom in the Ethics, considering them enables us simultaneously to appreciate the complexity of Spinoza's thought and recognize a problematic tension within it. This tension is due to the gap between, on the one hand, his pessimistic view of ordinary people and his intellectualist portrayal of the philosopher who becomes disconnected from ordinary people as she increases her knowledge of the eternal, and his insistence on the shareability of knowledge and the importance he ascribes to the task of bringing ordinary people to enlightenment, on the other. (shrink)

Innovation is fundamental to cumulative culture, allowing progressive modification of existing technology. The authors define innovation as an asocial process, uninfluenced by social information. We argue that innovation is inherently social – innovation is frequently the product of modifying others' outputs, and successful innovations are acquired by others. Research should target examination of the cognitive underpinnings of socially-mediated innovations.

Ninety-five freshmen each recruited three peers to play a "group bidding game," an N-person prisoner’s dilemma in which anyone could win movie tickets depending on their scores in the game. Prior to playing, all participants completed a measure of prosocial value orientation. Replicating and extending earlier findings (Sheldon and McGregor 2000), our results show that prosocial participants were at a disadvantage within groups. Despite this vulnerability, prosocial participants did no worse overall than asocial participants because a counteracting group-level advantage arose (...) for prosocials, who tended to be concentrated in groups. Implications of this assortative process for the egoism/altruism debate, and for hierarchical selection theory, are discussed. (shrink)

In congenitally or prelingually deaf childrencochlear implantation is open to seriousethical challenge. The ethical dimension ofthis technology is closely related to both asocial standard of quality of life and to theuncertainty of the overall results of cochlearimplantation. Uncertainty with regards theacquisition of oral communicative skills.However, in the western world, available datasuggest that deafness is associated with thelowest educational level and the lowest familyincome. Notwithstanding the existence of aDeaf-World, deafness should be considered as ahandicap. Therefore, society should provide themeans for the (...) fulfilment of a deaf child'sspecific needs.For the time being there is no definitiveanswer with regard the best way to rehabilitatea particular deaf child. Therefore,communitarian values may be acceptable. If thedeaf child parents' decide not to implant,their decision should be respected. Guardiansare entitled to determine which standard ofbest interest to use in a specificcircumstance. They are the proper judges ofwhat (re)habilitation process is best for theirdeaf child. However, most deaf children areborn to two hearing parents. Probably, theywill not be acculturated in the Deaf-World. Itfollows that cochlear implantation is awelcomed (re)habilitation technology.If auditory (re)habilitation will in the futureprovide the necessary communicative skills, inparticular oral language acquisition, customs,values and attitudes of the hearing worldshould be regarded as necessary to accomplish adeaf child's right to an open future. Ifcochlear implantation technology will provideall deaf children with the capacity to developacceptable oral communicative skills –whatever the hearing status of the family andthe cultural environment – then auditory(re)habilitation will be an ethical imperative. (shrink)

It’s natural to assume that the bearers of virtues are individual agents, which would make virtues monadic dispositional properties. I argue instead that the most attractive theory of virtue treats a virtue as a triadic relation among the agent, the social milieu, and the asocial environment. A given person may or may not be disposed to behave in virtuous ways depending on how her social milieu speaks to and of her, what they expect of her, and how they monitor her. (...) Likewise, asocial environmental factors such as mood elevators, mood depressors, ambient sounds, and ambient smells mediate morally important behavioral dispositions. Many commentators have responded to such intrusions from outside the agent by arguing for the rarity of virtue understood as a monadic property. In contrast, I claim that we need to rethink the very nature of virtue, which would entail that cultivating virtue can be accomplished not only by habituation and other such interventions on the individual agent but also by selecting, modifying, and reinterpreting the social and asocial aspects of the environment. (shrink)

The article takes on a less developed aspect of the sociology of the stranger: the normalized non-relations people in urban settings establish in their effort to stay strangers for one another. How is their “civil inattention”accomplished in practice? What is the social orderliness of “asocial” relations? In order to answer these questions the article uses the elevator as a sociological research instrument allowing for a highly detailed investigation in structural problems of public encounters: bodily navigation, contact avoidance, feigned preoccupation, and (...) the blocking of the automatism by which co-present bodies start interactions. The setting used for the investigation also raises questions about how the artifact and the bodies present are integrated into the interaction order. The “heteromobile” of the elevator offers specific sociotechnical scripts for interaction. While the human actors work hard at doing nothing, their bodies seem to take over their agency. The specific challenge of elevator riding for the enactment of indifference is the vanishing of actors: undoing presence. (shrink)

In 2004 in Prague, I met Slovak philosopher Miroslav Marcelli, who had attended Foucault's lectures in Paris in 80s. We talked about the legacy of Foucault and contemporary philosophy. Mr. Marcelli taught me philosophy at Comenius University in 1995.. I never visited his lectures, I only passed the exam.. The most interesting point was his answer to my 'provocations' replicating the common prejudice about impracticability of the philosophy. He answered "Do you think that e.g. Descartes didn't know about it?" In (...) fact, people tend to think that philosophers or mathematicians, are "asocial" without "social" intelligence, while their occasional isolation (e.g. Nietzsche) is a product of social exclusion, rather than their choice. In 2013 I applied Foucault's concept of Discontinuity to short 10 minutes movie: Discontinuity, projected in my exhibition "From Animation" in Holland Park, London. The film has 3 parts, ends as it starts to show the significant historical events in 4 windows, when the same idea appears to disappear to re-appear.. Foucault's philosophy doesn't seem to me so unique now, e.g. the idea that many historical changes or progress itself is often illusionary - masking the power structure, had already been explored 515 BC, in depth by Parmenides who concluded: the change is impossible. (shrink)

Honoring the centennial of Sigmund Freud’s seminal paper _Mourning and Melancholia, New Models of Bereavement Theory and Treatment: New Mourning _is a major contribution to our culture’s changing view of bereavement and mourning, identifying flaws in old models and offering a new, valid and effective approach. George Hagman and his fellow contributors bring together key psychoanalytic texts from the past 20 years, exploring contemporary research, clinical practice and model building relating to the problems of bereavement, mourning and grief. They propose (...) changes to the asocial, intra-psychic nature of the standard analytic model of mourning, changes compatible with contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice. Arguing that the most important goal of mourning is often to preserve, rather than give up the relationship to the deceased, this book provides a more positive, hopeful model. Crucially, it emphasizes the importance of mourning together, rather than alone. New Models of Bereavement Theory and Treatment: New Mourning will be the go-to resource for researchers, clinicians and interested lay people seeking a clear, accessible overview of contemporary mourning theory, useful in their daily lives and in clinical practice. It will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, grief counsellors, as well teachers, undergraduates and advanced students studying in the field. (shrink)

Adam Smith’s is often falsely portrayed as having argued that radical selfishness is a force for the good and that this “invisible hand’ is his market mechanism. This paper argues that Smith’s real market mechanism, the sympathy manoeuvre, is a viable alternative to Schumpeterian and mainstream models of innovation in economics and also could help build a firmer theoretical basis for other approaches such as Responsible Innovation. To Smith all human activity was social and must be understood and explained in (...) terms of the sentiments involved. Discovery, for instance, is driven by three sentiments (wonder, surprise, admiration), economic activities by sympathetic imagination, the need for exchange, the need to better one’s position in life, and the need for gratitude. Through sympathetic imagination, his famous model of the impartial spectator, Smith elegantly connects the individual and society. Smith’s innovation process is thus an exercise in social construction and not a destructive process based on radical selfishness. The paper argues that this social innovation process is a viable alternative to the extant approaches that are essentially asocial and amoral (economism) or ideologically normative (Responsible Innovation). (shrink)

Game theory has proven useful in clarifying Hobbes’s argument that the state of nature will inevitably devolve into a state of war. Mathematically-leaning philosophers, however, have paid little attention to Rousseau’s depiction of the state of nature as a peaceful, asocial state of solitary wanderers. This paper articulates Rousseau’s critique of Hobbes in formal terms, which pinpoints two crucial issues in Hobbes’s account: the lack of an exit option and an unrealistic depiction of human nature. Building upon recent game-theoretic treatments (...) of Hobbes, we first construct a model that incorporates Rousseau’s criticisms by permitting an exit option and endogenizing human preferences and capacities. Second, we draw out the implications of Rousseau’s analysis for the question of political authority, which cannot be answered, as Hobbes believed, by invoking a hypothetical state of nature. (shrink)

In the 1950s and 1960s Freudian theory was deemed to be a vital part of the sociological tradition, but since then it has fallen from favor, largely because of the simplifications and misinterpretations both by Freud's sociological critics and by his supporters. Chief among such misunderstandings is the tendency to view Freud's social theory as a variant of that of Hobbes, in which a selfish and asocial human nature is made social through the imposition of external constraints; these constraints, as (...) Durkheim stated, eventually are "internalized" into the personalities of social beings. Against such a claim this paper argues that Freud's views differ profoundly from those of Hobbes and that the myth of the Hobbesian Freud has so distorted Freud's most fundamental concepts that their social theoretical significance has been largely obscured. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 36.1 (2003) 22-38 [Access article in PDF] Descartes's Rhetoric:Roads, Foundations, and Difficulties in the Method Jeanette Bicknell Descartes's Discours de la méthode is an extremely rich text for anyone interested in the rhetorical and literary aspects of philosophical works, as well as for those interested in the history of scientific discourse. 1 Commentators have tended to stress the inclusive and possibly emancipatory aspects of the text: (...) Descartes's use of the vernacular and inclusion of autobiographical elements. 2 Without denying the democratic potential of the Discours, I will argue that close attention to its rhetorical and literary features reveals an unacknowledged tension in Descartes's thought between the individual and the social or communal aspects of method. This tension seems to have been overlooked by commentators.Briefly, the tension I have identified is manifest in the conflicting metaphors Descartes uses to characterize scientific and epistemological progress. The best known and most studied of these metaphors are from architecture and town-planning. Less attention has been paid to the metaphor of the road or path (chemin) in the Discours. Descartes sees cognitive and scientific progress as ultimately the work of a solitary individual. We can call this the "heroic" or "great individual" view of scientific progress. This is clear in his architectural metaphors. Yet recurrent metaphors characterizing cognitive progress as a road point to a more social or communal view of science as the work of many hands (or feet). Roads are social entities par excellence. They pre-exist those who travel them and are available to all who want to travel them. Although roads may be planned and built according to specifications, they may arise simply from the aggregated actions of individuals. I suggest that this tension between two fundamentally different characterizations and conceptions of cognitive progress indicates a deep division in Descartes's thought, unresolved in the Discours.What is at issue, philosophically, in my analysis of Descartes's rhetoric? First and most generally is the problem of bringing together all the [End Page 22] elements of a philosophical text, especially a text with the seminal importance of the Discours. What status and significance should we give to those elements of a text that do not seem to be directly part of the arguments? These elements include the author's self-presentation and indications as to the implied audience, as well as figurative language and illustrative and explicatory metaphors. I shall show how these elements repay close attention, and that it is fruitful to test them for consistency with the text's explicit claims and arguments.More specifically, my interpretation has implications for Descartes's program. Descartes's work is generally taken to be the basis of strict traditional autonomism and reductionist individualism. One critique of such individualism is that methods, not to mention the languages in which they are expressed, are social rather than private. A close examination of Descartes's own language supports this critique, as his rhetoric can be seen to undercut his avowed position in the text. It is open to debate whether or not Descartes was aware of the tension between his autonomism and individualism on one hand, and his hopes for cognitive and scientific progress founded upon method on the other. Thus, it is entirely possible that the quintessentially modern philosopher of the self had excessive expectations of that self, not to mention an incoherent picture of it.Finally, the implications of my analysis reach beyond Descartes's text to broader conceptual issues. The tension I have identified in the Discours is not limited to Descartes's work, but it points to underlying difficulties in trying to think through the problems he discusses. While methods are social, an individualistic element may be ineliminable. But the social is not just the aggregation of asocial selves. The self, its education and development, and its ability to participate in a method, must all be social. Another issue is the nature of scientific and epistemological progress, and the relationship between their individual and more communal aspects. And whatever their relationship, we... (shrink)

Resumen: Una lectura atenta acerca del Cautiverio Feliz de Pineda y Bascuñán, indudablemente, nos despertaría varias asociaciones, no solo con otras formas de literatura histórica propias de la época, sino que con otras obras de las que integra algunos elementos como: los modos de estructuración discursiva y los modelos o perfiles agenciales. En este sentido, la lectura de la obra de Pineda nos remitiría a El Cortesano de Baltazar Castiglione, por cuanto muchos de los rasgos del perfecto caballero, presentados en (...) El Cortesano, se encuentran insertos en algunos personajes de la obra de Pineda. No es raro encontrar en el Cautiverio, entre otras cosas, las cualidades del perfecto caballero plasmadas en los indígenas, virtudes que adornan también a algunos criollos y españoles antiguos.: A close reading to Pineda and Bascuñán’s Cautiverio Feliz, undoubtedly, would wake us a series of asociations, not only with other forms of historical literatura from the epoch, but also with other works that integrate some elements such as: kinds of speech structure and kinds of instrumental profiles. In this sense, reading Pineda`s work would lead us to Castiglione`s El Cortesano, because many of the characteristic of the perfect gentleman presented in El Cortesano, are inserted in some characters of Pineda`s work. It is not strange to find in El Cautiverio, among other things, the qualities of a perfect gentleman, shaped on the natives, virtues, virtues that also adorn some creole and old spaniards. (shrink)

In this paper I consider contemporary expressions of what Freud called the primal crime and collapse of paternal law through an exploration of the cinema of the Danish-American Director Nicolas Winding Refn. Introducing the paper I outline Freud’s theory of the law, crime, and civilization, where social order and its transgression become caught in an endless cycle, before moving on to explore Winding Refn’s cinema. Following this work, where I centrally show how Freud founds the law upon structures of the (...) family and criminality, I consider Winding Refn’s early Danish films, specifically the Pusher trilogy and Bleeder, in order to show how he imagines the collapse of law and order into crime and violence through stories of the ruined family. Moving on, I explore the consequences of this situation through reference to Winding Refn’s middle period films, Bronson and Valhalla Rising, where first crime completely dominates the law, and second this situation conjures the idea of escape from the dystopia of violence and crime into some other utopian space. Finally, I explore Winding Refn’s later works, Drive, Only God Forgives, and The Neon Demon. In these films Winding Refn imagines the ruins of the family and the oedipal law of the father who is no longer on the scene and tells the story of the desperate orphaned child who grows up without the socio-symbolic structures in place in tell them how to live. At this point Winding Refn’s crime system is more or less entirely normalised with the result that it generates the idea of utopian possibility in order to imagine potential escape from the nihilistic horror of an asocial system where exchange is everything. (shrink)

The fast–slow paradigm of life history focuses on how individuals grow, mate, and reproduce at different paces. This paradigm can contribute substantially to the field of personality and individual differences provided that it is more strictly based on evolutionary biology than it has been so far. Our study tested the existence of a fast–slow continuum underlying indicators of reproductive effort—offspring output, age at first reproduction, number and stability of sexual partners—in 1,043 outpatients with healthy to severely disordered personalities. Two axes (...) emerged reflecting a double-track pathway to fast strategy, based on restricted and unrestricted sociosexual strategies. When rotated, the fast–slow and sociosexuality axes turned out to be independent. Contrary to expectations, neither somatic effort—investment in status, material resources, social capital, and maintenance/survival—was aligned with reproductive effort, nor a clear tradeoff between current and future reproduction was evident. Finally, we examined the association of LH axes with seven high-order personality pathology traits: negative emotionality, impulsivity, antagonism, persistence-compulsivity, subordination, and psychoticism. Persistent and disinhibited subjects appeared as fast-restricted and fast-unrestricted strategists, respectively, whereas asocial subjects were slow strategists. Associations of LH traits with each other and with personality are far more complex than usually assumed in evolutionary psychology. (shrink)

Scholarly discussion has treated the account of the state of nature which Locke presents in his Second Treatise as neither an hypothesis nor a description but rather as a fiction. John Dunn, for example, claims that it is a `theoretical analysis of the fundamental relations of right and duty which obtain between human beings, relations which are logically prior to the particular historical situations in which all actual human beings always in fact find themselves'. Here Dunn presents a misleading account (...) of Locke's argument, presumably, as the title of his paper suggests, in order to mount an argument of his own about the `political relevance' of Locke's work to a time when no one takes seriously the early modern idea of the state of nature. However, this article also has a more serious concern. I argue that the representation of the state of nature as a merely imaginary, `theoretical analysis' of social relations obscures the significance of the early modern idea of a state of nature, not only for the work of Locke and his near contemporaries, but also, more importantly, for the broader development of western social and political thought. The idea of an original condition of freedom and equality played a central role in Locke's argument, serving as a means both to undermine the view that humans were born into a natural condition of subjection to the rule of others and to justify European expropriation of land in the Americas. It also represented one end of a developmental continuum, running from the original, most primitive, condition of humanity through to the societies of contemporary western Europe, which was thought to encompass all sections of humanity. While the idea of an original asocial condition on which this continuum was based was later brought into question, a closely related developmental framework nevertheless informed later movements in history and the social sciences. After being abandoned in its original form, this category was finally revived in 20th-century political theory, this time precisely in the form that Dunn mistakenly ascribes to Locke. The article concludes by speculating on the relationship between these normative and empirical perspectives on the state of nature. (shrink)

: In higher education creative writing's focus on producing the well-formed piece rather than the writing's historical and social context puts its pedagogy at odds with the majority of literary studies disciplines. Although problematic for the curriculum, there are good reasons—stemming from the anti-instrumentalism of Kant's notion of aesthetic freedom—why integrating creative writing is difficult. Examining two recent attempts to cross this creative-critical divide by making creative writing part of cultural studies, the article argues that the authors' sociological suspicion of (...) the "aesthetic" leads to a misplaced criticism of the New Critics and T. S. Eliot as the originators of an apolitical, asocial aesthetic formalism perpetuated by creative writing. Instead, their aesthetic principles are shown to derive from Emerson and Schiller's Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, where formal principles of creativity are part of a political program for a united and freely democratic society. Schiller's problems with establishing his aesthetic state, however, are shown to suggest how creative freedom may always necessarily involve recognition of a work's social and historical position, and the article concludes with a series of practical suggestions for seminars that would relate students' experience of creative writing to the social contexts of literary criticism. (shrink)

Resumen: Durante la década del sesenta, la revista Movie hereda de Cahiers du cinéma las preferencias por la politique des auteurs y por cierto cine norteamericano. No obstante, sin abandonar esa predilección por un “cine de directores”, a lo largo de su trayectoria la revista británica intentará desarrollar un riguroso método de análisis formal a través de detallados close readings de los films. Algunos de sus integrantes buscan aplicar al cine los planteos de F. R. Leavis y la revista Scrutiny (...) a propósito de la crítica literaria. Es esta modulación analítica la que será puesta en cuestión con el auge del estructuralismo y el posestructurailsmo a los que se asocia la revista Screen en los años 70.: During the sixties, the journal Movie inherits from Cahiers du cinéma the preferencies for a politique des auteurs and for certain american films. However, never abandoning this tendency towards a “cinema of directors”, the british journal develops a rigorous method of formal analysis and detailed close readings. Some of its members try to apply to cinema the concepts elaborated by F. R. Leavis and the journal Scrutiny in reference to literary criticism. It is precisely this analytic method that will be questioned during the boom of structuralism and post structuralism to which the journal Screen will be asociated in the 70s. (shrink)

Resumen: Durante la década del sesenta, la revista Movie hereda de Cahiers du cinéma las preferencias por la politique des auteurs y por cierto cine norteamericano. No obstante, sin abandonar esa predilección por un “cine de directores”, a lo largo de su trayectoria la revista británica intentará desarrollar un riguroso método de análisis formal a través de detallados close readings de los films. Algunos de sus integrantes buscan aplicar al cine los planteos de F. R. Leavis y la revista Scrutiny (...) a propósito de la crítica literaria. Es esta modulación analítica la que será puesta en cuestión con el auge del estructuralismo y el posestructurailsmo a los que se asocia la revista Screen en los años 70.: During the sixties, the journal Movie inherits from Cahiers du cinéma the preferencies for a politique des auteurs and for certain american films. However, never abandoning this tendency towards a “cinema of directors”, the british journal develops a rigorous method of formal analysis and detailed close readings. Some of its members try to apply to cinema the concepts elaborated by F. R. Leavis and the journal Scrutiny in reference to literary criticism. It is precisely this analytic method that will be questioned during the boom of structuralism and post structuralism to which the journal Screen will be asociated in the 70s. (shrink)

Purpose. The research is based on the analysis of the cult of Dionysus: the introspection of the irrational content of the "Dionysian states", in the symbolism of which an alternative scenario of gender relations is codified, based on autonomy and non-destructive interdependence. The achievement of this goal involves, firstly, the "archeology" of telestic madness and orgasm as the liberating states the comprehension of their semantic potential for the outlook of the Dionysian neophyte, and secondly, to identify the features that are (...) likened to the cult community of Dionysus to an autonomous gender and, thirdly, to characterize the metamorphosis of the Dionysian imagery in the postmodern consciousness. Theoretical basis. The study of the symbolism of Dionysus and its Genesis in the processes of the mass consciousness is important to clarify trends in gender distancing as in antiquity and in the modern era. Specific sensory and mental qualities encoded in the images of Dionysian madness, vakhtnag of violence and the eternal alien, the awareness of which is determined by the Dionysian thematizes in the cultural consciousness of post-modernism, the research literature presented in fragments. The phenomenological dimension "exempt States" Dionysian elements, activated the process of social distancing up to the formation of Autonomous gender, are poorly known and basically are reduced to manifestations of marginality and asocial. However, the specifics of the cult of Dionysus, the authors see the origins of ideas about a purely female and male and the dynamics of the transmutations of his imagery is proposed to understand how the successive stages of their formation, not the symptoms of the cultural crisis and deviant behavior. Originality. The article examines the phenomenology of the practice of personality transformation as the psycho-psychological basis of ideas about gender identity. Conclusions. The article highlights the socio-cultural and intrapsychic dimension of the study of the cult of Dionysus. It was established that the perception of a cult alien to ancient consciousness occurred during the crisis of the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy, since its meaning associated with the idea of liberation through personality transformation corresponded to the mental state generated by social isolation of women and had a therapeutic effect. (shrink)

Hobbes begins the Elements of Law by claiming that "[t]he true and perspicuous explanation of the elements of laws natural and politic... dependeth upon the knowledge of what is human nature." 1 He agrees that morality and politics are "not to be discovered but to be made," but they are to be made as solutions to problems discovered through a detailed study of human nature.2 Among other things, this study reveals that humans are obsessed both with contemplating their own power (...) and having others recognize it. The former desire is the desire for glory: the latter is the desire for honour. Hobbes goes on to show the conflict these desires cause. They ensure scarcity, since their objects are intrinsically scarce, and they contribute to irresolution, and so make it hard to keep covenants. In addition, they determine the form of any solution: the market is not a fully satisfactory solution, and the sovereign must redirect desires for honour and glory into harmless channels. I shall first argue against David Gauthier, who takes Hobbesian men to pursue honour and glory as mere instruments to the satisfaction of their asocial desires. I shall then present a revamped version of what Jean Hampton calls the "passions account" of conflict, defending it from her objections. I shall close by sketching how Hobbes responds to the problems caused by the desire for honour and glory. (shrink)

Resumen: Durante la década del sesenta, la revista Movie hereda de Cahiers du cinéma las preferencias por la politique des auteurs y por cierto cine norteamericano. No obstante, sin abandonar esa predilección por un “cine de directores”, a lo largo de su trayectoria la revista británica intentará desarrollar un riguroso método de análisis formal a través de detallados close readings de los films. Algunos de sus integrantes buscan aplicar al cine los planteos de F. R. Leavis y la revista Scrutiny (...) a propósito de la crítica literaria. Es esta modulación analítica la que será puesta en cuestión con el auge del estructuralismo y el posestructurailsmo a los que se asocia la revista Screen en los años 70.: During the sixties, the journal Movie inherits from Cahiers du cinéma the preferencies for a politique des auteurs and for certain american films. However, never abandoning this tendency towards a “cinema of directors”, the british journal develops a rigorous method of formal analysis and detailed close readings. Some of its members try to apply to cinema the concepts elaborated by F. R. Leavis and the journal Scrutiny in reference to literary criticism. It is precisely this analytic method that will be questioned during the boom of structuralism and post structuralism to which the journal Screen will be asociated in the 70s. (shrink)

Resumen: Durante la década del sesenta, la revista Movie hereda de Cahiers du cinéma las preferencias por la politique des auteurs y por cierto cine norteamericano. No obstante, sin abandonar esa predilección por un “cine de directores”, a lo largo de su trayectoria la revista británica intentará desarrollar un riguroso método de análisis formal a través de detallados close readings de los films. Algunos de sus integrantes buscan aplicar al cine los planteos de F. R. Leavis y la revista Scrutiny (...) a propósito de la crítica literaria. Es esta modulación analítica la que será puesta en cuestión con el auge del estructuralismo y el posestructurailsmo a los que se asocia la revista Screen en los años 70.: During the sixties, the journal Movie inherits from Cahiers du cinéma the preferencies for a politique des auteurs and for certain american films. However, never abandoning this tendency towards a “cinema of directors”, the british journal develops a rigorous method of formal analysis and detailed close readings. Some of its members try to apply to cinema the concepts elaborated by F. R. Leavis and the journal Scrutiny in reference to literary criticism. It is precisely this analytic method that will be questioned during the boom of structuralism and post structuralism to which the journal Screen will be asociated in the 70s. (shrink)

From clinical experiences as well as experiments on animals, it is known that certain behavior patterns are asociated with well-defined areas in the brain. Research is done and copies of the experiments are shown.

Imitation, the replication of observed behaviors, has been proposed as the crucial social learning mechanism for the generation of humanlike cultural complexity. To date, the single published experimental microsociety study that tested this hypothesis found no advantage for imitation. In contrast, the current paper reports data in support of the imitation hypothesis. Participants in “microsociety” groups built weight-bearing devices from reed and clay. Each group was assigned to one of four conditions: three social learning conditions and one asocial learning control (...) condition. Groups able to observe other participants building their devices, in contrast to groups that saw only completed devices, show evidence of successive improvement. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that imitation is required for cumulative cultural evolution. This study adds crucial data for understanding why imitation is needed for cultural accumulation, a central defining feature of our species. (shrink)

G. A. Cohen's influential ?technological determinist? reading of Marx's theory of history rests in part on an interpretation of Marx's use of ?material? whose idiosyncrasy has been insufficiently noticed. Cohen takes historical materialism to be asserting the determination of the social by the material/asocial, viz. ?socio?neutral? facts about human nature and human rationality which manifest themselves in a historical tendency for the forces of production to develop. This paper reviews Marx's writings to demonstrate the extensive textual evidence in favour of (...) the traditional interpretation ? that for Marx, the ?material? includes the economic, and is thus ineluctably social in character. Thus those critics of Cohen who have urged the inclusion of the relations of production in historical materialism's explanans do seem to have Marx's terminological and conceptual backing. (shrink)

The critical comments by my fellow symposiasts on my book, Justice: Rights and Wrongs , have provided me with the opportunity to clarify parts of my argument and to correct some misunderstandings; they have also helped me see more clearly than I did before the import of some parts of my argument. In his comments, Paul Weithman points out features of the right order conception of justice that I had not noticed. They have also prodded me to clarify in what (...) way rights are trumps; and both his comments and Bernstein's have prodded me to clarify certain aspects of the theistic account of human rights that I offered. Attridge's comments lead me to see that I was perhaps over-zealous in emphasizing the objective aspects of the semantic range of dikaiosunê as used in the New Testament and downplaying the subjective aspects. And O'Donovan's comments have provided me with the opportunity to make clear that my account of rights is not an immunities account that presupposes nominalism, and to emphasize the ways in which it is not an asocial individualistic account. (shrink)

Three interpretations of theprecautionary principle are identified, namely``soft,'' ``hard,'' and outright rejection. The ECCommunication of February 2000 is largely aresponse to the latter, to provide alegitimation in trade-related WTO disputes.This context leads to an over stress onscientific closure. This is critiqued asidealistic in respect of resolving long termuncertainties inherent in the GM food issue.While offering some useful guidelines in riskmanagement, the EC report seriously fails totake into account the ethical and societaldimension of risk. These are crucial both indetermining when precautionary (...) principle isinvoked and the action to be taken. The EC viewleans too much to a scientific rationalist riskperspective. However, the ``Green''interpretation of the precautionary principleas a reversal of the burden of proof is alsocriticized as inconsistent both with the natureof technology and with the nature of reality asseen in a Christian perspective. Biblicalinsights on risk reveal a balance ofintervention and conservation in a world whererisk is inherent. The notion of risk as asocial contract reveals that ethical andsocietal issues have a crucial role to play inapplying the precautionary principle. (shrink)