This chapter contains sections titled: Childhood and Christmas Heaven is at Stake Moving around the Spiral Hecate at the Crossroads It's Not about Me? It's Not Me or You: It's Hallmark Spiraling Around the Christmas Tree.

On the 24th and 25th of December every year two very different stories are told: one in people’s homes, by the fireplace or Christmas tree, to pyjamaed but excited and sleepless children; the other to people of all ages in the more imposing setting of candlelit churches and cathedrals. I want to ask, in this essay: Does the telling of these two stories have anything in common? What can we learn by comparing them? The first one, the one I (...) call the ‘secular’ mythology, is the story of Father Christmas. The second, ‘sacred’ mythology is the religious reason why Christmas was ever celebrated as Christmas at all. Although the figure of Santa partly originated in an early Christian bishop (and partly in pagan figures), he has these days become rather more secularized—even, for some, a symbol of secular commercialism. I want to compare these two mythologies as they might effect the way in which we think about Christmas today. I think that philosophical reflection along these lines will allow us to draw some interesting conclusions relevant to theology and the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

In this paper I consider Simone Weil’s notion of attention as the fundamental and necessary condition for mystical experience, and investigate Iris Murdoch’s secular adaptation of attention as a moral attitude. After exploring the concept of attention in Weil and its relation to the mystical, I turn to Murdoch to address the following question: how does Murdoch manage to maintain Weil’s idea of attention, even keeping the importance of mysticism, without Weil’s religious metaphysical background? Simone Weil returns to the (...) importance of attention throughout her writing. To attend, for Weil, means to empty oneself of all that is personal, primarily one’s will, which Weil sees as the essence of the human individual. This act imitates God’s act of creation, considered as a withdrawal in order to let something other than himself exist. Since such withdrawal represents God’s supreme act of love, salvation for human beings lies in the attempt to do likewise. By giving up one’s will, while desiring God with all of one’s soul, one creates the conditions for God to descend into the soul. This ‘passive activity’ is attention. Weil’s writings had a deep impact on Iris Murdoch’s moral philosophy. In particular, Weil’s concept of attention is carried into Murdoch’s thought almost unchanged, with one striking exception: the absence of God in Murdoch’s system. Just as surprisingly, Murdoch at the same time maintains that mysticism and spirituality are crucial for morality, nor does she wish to sever the connection between attention and mysticism. Is Murdoch being inconsistent? I believe not. But the idea of attention as a mystical concept, within a metaphysics which has no room for God, requires further examination. For Murdoch, attention is the central capacity of the morally good person. Attention is, like in Weil, connected with an emptying of the self (for Murdoch the Ego) and a renunciation of will, in order to let something external make an impression in the subject. However, in Murdoch’s philosophy such external impression is not given by God, but by reality itself. Thus far, it appears, the notion of mysticism would be unnecessary. Yet for Murdoch reality is not something that we passively perceive, but something that requires a moral faculty – attention – made up of selflessness and desire for the good, in order to be apprehended. Two elements of mysticism then begin to surface: firstly, apprehension of reality requires a faculty that is not purely intellectual, but that involves the whole of the individual, including intuitions that one may be unable to explain (which Murdoch is happy to call ‘the soul’); secondly, the reality thus apprehended is considered as transcendent, insofar as its truth, infinitely distant, transcends the individual’s complete grasp. Thus the mystic, in Murdoch’s system, is regarded as an ideal moral person, not because s/he is guided by God, but because of his/her selfless ability to attend to the world beyond oneself and intuit its moral and metaphysical truth. (shrink)

The creation of the state of Israel was the outcome of the Zionist movement, which originated in Europe and was itself inspired by fundamental European ideas—Enlightenment, national self-determination, democracy and socialism. From its earliest days Zionism was primarily a secular movement that rejected the religious establishment and religious way of life of the Jews in the Diaspora. In many respects, however, the founders of the state and the principles on which they founded its institutions—the political, judicial, economic, social, (...) and educational—were rooted in the ethical values and cultural practices of the Jewish tradition which they had apparently rejected. To explain this complex process of secularization of a very ancient religious and cultural tradition—which many see as an unresolved or unresolvable conflict between two opposing systems of thought—I draw on the hermeneutic philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer and especially on his Truth and Method (1960). Culture, according to Gadamer, is a continuous flow of tradition within what he called “the horizon.” People, he argued, create and live within a given cultural tradition, but they are at the same time its interpreters, enlarging it by adopting elements from various cultures and ideologies, or “horizons.” From this hermeneutic perspective, the founders of modern Israel and their successors were the active interpreters of the Jewish tradition within the larger historical context of the European Enlightenment. I illustrate this process of cultural interpretation by focusing on the secularization of the Jewish holidays, specifically on the way the Kibbutz movement, a leading symbol of the new Israel, re-interpretated Jewish holidays like Passover, Shavuot (Pentecost) and Yom Kippur, and gave these religious festivals a secular-Israeli content. However, this dynamic pioneering stage of secularization may be said to have ended by the 1980s. From then on, the secular identity of Israeli society has been undergoing a variety of radical changes. (shrink)

The article conceptualizes the term Pedagogy of Fear as the master narrative of educational systems around the world. Pedagogy of Fear stunts the active and vital educational growth of the young person, making him/her passive and dependent upon external disciplinary sources. It is motivated by fear that prevents young students—as well as teachers—from dealing with the great existential questions that relate to the essence of human beings. One of the techniques of the Pedagogy of Fear is the internalization of the (...) view that without evaluation and assessment we cannot know a child’s level or “worth”—and therefore are unable to help him/her if he is “slow in learning.” In contrast, Philosophy for/with Children offers a space for addressing existential questions, some of which deal with urgent social issues. The willingness to make philosophy inquiry an alternative already from an early age seeks to allow the child to challenge him/herself with new and fresh questions. Philosophy for/with Children does not regard children as a “space of lack” (experience, knowledge, values, etc.) The new and fresh philosophical perspective of children demands the presence of a willingness to engage in dialogue and rejection of the fear of the innocent and deep questions of philosophy. Shaking free of the Pedagogy of Fear and restoring honor to children’s questions demands a fundamental conceptual change within education. The replacement of existential certainty as it is depicted by adults in the existing education system with an existential question is a heavy intellectual task that in most cases is viewed as subversive—primarily on the part of the adult. It demands a return to starting points and a willingness to allow children a free and safe educational space in which to ground preliminary and fertile questions about themselves, their lives, their environment, and, most of all, the changing world they discover with the form of originality that is right for them. (shrink)

This article examines the implications of Richard Steigmann-Gall's recent revisionist representation of Nazism as a Christian movement for the increasingly fashionable accounts of Nazism as a secular or political religion. Contrary to Steigmann-Gall's contention that Protestant Nazism undermines these accounts, I suggest that his portrayal of Nazism as a variant of Protestant millennialism is not necessarily inconsistent with the secular religion approach. A closer look at the so-called Löwith-Blumenberg debate on secularization indeed reveals that modern utopianisms containing elements (...) of Protestant millennialism are the best candidates for the label of secularized eschatology. That Steigmann-Gall has reached exactly the opposite conclusion is primarily because his conceptual understanding of secular religion is uninformed by the secularization debate. Insofar as Steigmann-Gall extracts his model of secular religion from contemporary political religion historiography on Nazism, this article points to a larger problem: a disjunction between historians utilizing the concept, on the one hand, and philosophers and social theorists who have shaped it, on the other. (shrink)

The article focuses on the Baltic Song and Dance Celebration, which is analysed in the context of the nation branding concept. It is possible to conditionally distinguish between two kinds of methods how to increase international recognition – special strategies created by professionals, and spontaneous or natural branding, based on marking of significant cultural and symbolic aspects of a particular nation. A strategic process of nation branding in the Baltics became particularly active in the beginning of the 21st century, when (...) the governments of all three nations started a purposeful, state-financed development of nation brands, but generally neglecting the informal brand of the Baltic states as the “singing nations”. Nevertheless, the latter, having been developed alongside with the statehood ideas and particularly manifesting itself in the Song and Dance Celebration phenomena, is still very strong in the Baltic states. Based on the sociological survey data, the authors compare the attitude of the residents of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania towards the Song and Dance Celebrations and discuss their role in the nation brand development. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Without Buddha I Could not Be a ChristianPeter A. HuffWithout Buddha I Could not Be a Christian. By Paul F. Knitter. Oxford: Oneworld, 2009. xvii + 240 pp.Paul Knitter’s contributions to interfaith dialogue and Christian theologies of religions are well known and widely appreciated. Even critics of Christian theories of pluralism, most prominently Pope Benedict XVI, have acknowledged the significance of Knitter’s strategic integration of perspectives from liberation (...) theology into what is sometimes an overly abstract field of inquiry. Colleagues active in Buddhist-Christian studies hold Knitter in especially high esteem as a writer, teacher, translator, [End Page 211] editor, self-described interreligious theologian, and unapologetic person of faith. This book, his first major publication since accepting the Paul Tillich chair at Union Theological Seminary, offers a uniquely first-person reflection on the spiritual fruits of a career profoundly and provocatively shaped by two religious traditions.Written for a popular audience, the book, the author says, has been in the works “for the past forty years” (p. xv). The reader gains valuable insight into the professional and private life of a remarkable “dialogical theologian” (p. xv), whose experience includes a rather conventional upbringing in working-class Midwestern Catholicism, some twenty years of service as a seminarian and missionary priest with the Society of the Divine Word, graduate education in Europe with the likes of Bernard Lonergan (1904–1984) and Karl Rahner (1904–1984) during the revolutionary years of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), and nearly four decades of pioneering work as a productive scholar-activist in mainstream academic theology. At times Knitter even quotes from his unpublished journals in an effort to document fully his unscripted intellectual and spiritual development.Though highly personal, the book is not primarily an autobiography or conversion narrative. Instead, it is an introspective analysis of the internal dialogue that virtually all participants in interreligious affairs recognize as the heart of the global ecumenical encounter. Knitter’s book serves as something of an apologia for what is known today as dual religious belonging or hyphenated religious identity. The author concludes his text with this intriguing but not surprising spiritual self-portrait: both lifelong baptized Christian and “card-carrying Buddhist” (p. 216). The challenge of accounting for this “both /and” orientation grants the book its distinctive character and its reason for being.Knitter borrows his method from the twentieth-century minor classic The Way of All the Earth: Experiments in Truth and Religion (1978). In that work, Notre Dame theology professor and Holy Cross priest James Dunne suggested that the path to holiness in the contemporary West leads inevitably through intimate engagement with the ancient wisdom traditions of the East. Even a casual review of the spiritual history of the last century or so will confirm how earnest seekers in modernity’s secular city have renewed, rediscovered, or critically redefined their native faith commitment through life-changing contact with the ideas and values of Asian religious traditions. It is a story familiar to anyone acquainted with the extraordinary religious pilgrimages of interfaith saints such as Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968), Thomas Merton (1915–1968), and Bede Griffiths (1906–1993).Dunne dubbed this experience the “spiritual adventure of our time” (p. 2); Knitter passionately agrees. He applies Dunne’s dialectical method and his special terminology to his own spiritual odyssey, “passing over” from Christian questions and problems to possible answers and solutions in the Buddhist tradition and then “passing back” to Christian belief and practice with enhanced purpose and a fresh sense of integrity.The starting point for Knitter’s project is cognitive, moral, even emotional dissatisfaction with some of the fundamental structures of the historic Christian worldview: God as transcendent creator and lord of history, Jesus Christ as incarnate Logos and [End Page 212] universal savior, and salvation as the survival of human personality after death and the eschatological redemption of all finite reality. In essence, Knitter claims, traditional theism and the core myth of Christianity as expressed in scripture, creed, and liturgy appear painfully ineffective and to a large extent incoherent in the context of modern life and the international interface of world religions. What especially drives the... (shrink)

In a secular society, does Christmas mean anything anymore? As we stuff ourselves with plumped-up turkeys, unwrap the latest useless gadget, and gather round the family tree, what real relevance does the festive season have and why do we perpetuate it? The Philosophy of Christmas is designed to be a fun book but one underpinned by an exploration of serious philosophical issues. The way we celebrate Christmas says a lot about the way we relate to each (...) other, our society and values. For instance, did you know that Santa's outfit is only red and white because those are the colours of the Coca Cola company? Already a bestselling author, Stephen Law takes a look at such things as the virgin birth (David Hume's theories on miracles), Bertrand Russell's turkey, the existential angst of Santa, and peace on earth to produce a humourous, varied and thought-provoking collection. (shrink)

Resumo As festas, durante o século XVIII, desempenhavam um importante papel no cotidiano das associações de leigos e religiosas. As ordens terceiras franciscanas organizavam distintas celebrações no intuito de promover a instituição no campo religioso local, difundir suas devoções e, ao mesmo tempo, ampliar o seu recrutamento. Este artigo analisa alguns elementos constituintes das celebrações realizadas pelas ordens terceiras de São Francisco em diferentes cidades do império português (Braga e São Paulo), visando compreender o significado e a valorização atribuídos às (...) celebrações no interior das igrejas por essas agremiações. Para realizar esse estudo foram utilizados, principalmente, os livros contábeis das instituições com o objetivo de vislumbrar o investimento nas celebrações e as suas características particulares. A partir das informações compulsadas constata-se um dispêndio avultado com as cerimônias e com a manutenção do culto pelas ordens terceiras franciscanas, evidenciando a importância dedicada por essas associações às celebrações e às festas executadas em seus templos. Palavras-chave: ordem terceira de São Francisco; festa; império português.The festivals, during the eighteenth century, played an important role in the daily religious and lay associations. The Third Orders of St. Francis organized distinct celebrations in order to promote the institution in the local religious field, spread their devotions, and at the same time broaden their recruitment. This article examines some elements of the celebrations held by the Third Orders of St. Francis in different cities of the Portuguese empire (Braga and São Paulo), aiming to understand the meaning and value attributed to the celebrations inside the churches by these associations. To perform this study were primarily used the accounting books of the institutions in order to glimpse the investment in the celebrations and their characteristics. From the gathered information we find a compulsive spending with the ceremonies and the maintenance of worship by the Third Orders of St. Francis, indicating the importance given by these associations to celebrations and festivals performed in their temples. Keywords : Third Order of St. Francis; festival; Portuguese Empire. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Do Christmas Mythologies Even Exist? The Secular Christmas Mythology: The Santa Story A Sacred Christmas Mythology: The Virginal Conception The Problem of Literal Truth The Philosophical Case Against Literal Truth: Russell's Teapot The Religious Case Against Literal Truth: Tillich's Broken Myths.

This study examines interactions in which students help each other with their learning during classroom instruction, forming groups in the process. From a conversation analytic perspective, helping is assumed to be a sequentially organized activity jointly accomplished by the participants. As an activity that proceeds alongside other ongoing classroom activities, helping can be conceived as part of a multiactivity that poses students with multi-faceted interactional and moral challenges. While previous research on helping in educational contexts has primarily (...) focused on the influence of helping on learning outcomes and social dynamics in helping interactions, the present study investigates how students cope with the intricacies of moral commitments inherent in helping as a concurrent activity. The aim of this paper is two-fold. First, we aim to elaborate on how students’ dual involvements – i.e., their involvement in classroom activities while simultaneously providing help – manifest in the ways in which groups are constituted, maintained, and dissolved. The analyses reveal that both the compatibility of helping with the activity already in progress as well as the students’ problem definition are consequential for the sequential and bodily-spatial unfolding of the help interaction, inducing different arrangements that constitute a continuum, at each end of which there is a dominant orientation toward the shared space of helping or toward the individual/collective space. Furthermore, from a methodological perspective, our study aims to demonstrate the extent to which multimodal interaction analysis is applicable when examining naturally occurring groups, in this case, in interactive processes of helping. The study is based on a data corpus that comprises video recordings of mathematics and German lessons from two fifth-grade classrooms. (shrink)

Participants recruited for high levels of imaginative absorption were administered a questionnaire based on Calkins' original study that first established a wide continuum of childhood synaesthesias and synaesthetic associations, along with separate questionnaires assessing childhood imaginary companions, positive altered states of consciousness and negative states of nightmares and night terrors. Their inter-relation and relation to measures of adult imaginative absorption helps to establish these states as aspects of an underlying imagistic dimension, while their relative differentiation is explored through (...) different forms of adult absorption, early stressors from childhood, and degree of parental support for creative activities. The connection of this wider continuum of adult recalled childhood synasesthesias, imaginary companions, and altered states of consciousness to adult imaginative absorption is consistent with recent neuro-imaging synaesthetic research supporting its relation to symbolic cognition, metaphor, and creativity. (shrink)

The first part of this paper presents the mystery of Eucharist as the symbol or sacrament of, and hence as identical with, the central mystery of Christian faith: the paschal mystery of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It also situates Rahner’s theology of Eucharist within the larger context of his theology as a whole, particularly his Christology. The humanity of Jesus as the real symbol or sacrament of the Logos provides the prime analogate for understanding Eucharist as sacrament, (...) and the two-fold movement of Christology as both descending and ascending provides the basic structure of sacramental activity as embodying both the divine offer of grace and human response to it. The second part considers Rahner’s contribution to specific problems in Eucharistic theology: real presence, the idea of transubstantiation, sacramental causality and institution by Jesus.The third and final part looks to the still unfinished agenda of Karl Rahner’s theology of Eucharist. He describes the task facing theology in the future as that of transposing theoretical beliefs into practical imperatives, “so that the theological as such becomes a principle of action.” For the Eucharist this means seeing Eucharist primarily in the context of the reign of God that was the center of the preaching and ministry of Jesus rather than only in the context of the church. More specifically, this means seeing the church’s Eucharist in the world within the larger context of the liturgy of the world. The liturgy of the world celebrates the ongoing transformation of the secular realm by the power of the Spirit in its movement towards its consummation in the final coming of God’s reign. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Creating a Learning Space That Is Virtual and ExperientialBette E. Schneiderman (bio)The final product of the Rembrandt Project will be a Web site that is intended primarily for use by middle and high school teachers and their students. It is a celebration of Rembrandt’s work in the contexts of his time, place, and culture and all that may emanate from them. A special feature of the site is (...) the integration of art, aesthetic, and social studies education. Other articles in this issue address the rich content of the project’s work, that is, the artworks themselves, their contextual grounding, and the development of skills that maximize learning. This article looks at the creation of a learning space as a home for the development of the project. It explores issues related to learning spaces and features some of the technologies that can be used within them.The Rembrandt Project will not be a Web site that merely flattens images on a computer screen or conveys facts about Rembrandt and his oeuvre. Rather, it is a portal to a learning place with online features and opportunities for learners to have transformative experiences. Learning may occur online in electronic conversations, in opportunities to view and respond to reproductions in collections that cannot be visited in person, and in the creation and display of learners’ products. Learning is facilitated by access to a range of resources and people. Numerous announcements of activities, events, and products will be posted on the site. Some individuals will work in the space of the works themselves while others might undertake learning activities in museums, galleries, and private homes. In some cases special programs will highlight certain works and relate them to the project. Images of places in the Netherlands will also be presented with accompanying learning opportunities for those who may wish to see the paintings in person or simply ponder their influence from afar. All participants will be encouraged to share creations and reflections on the site. [End Page 38]To provide a sense of what this article is about, three cases are presented, each with two scenarios and a sample online discussion. The purpose of these cases is to draw readers into the experience of a virtual learning space before discussing contemporary learning communities, learning spaces, and technologies. The cases will show how to develop lively democratic conversation that makes communal learning possible. Participants can be of all kinds, from experts to those who simply want to learn. They can be located anywhere and participate at whatever time suits them best.Case A: Two ScenariosScenario 1: Viewing a Masterwork by RembrandtStanding before a work by Rembrandt you are drawn into its space. If you have viewed a Rembrandt in the past, recall your experience. If not, perhaps you might want to travel to a place that has one of his works or access some of his images online.1 Or you might think about a work of art that aroused your interest and prompted you to ponder its import and ask questions. Perhaps you returned to the work many times, experiencing it more deeply and differently upon each visit. What is it, specifically, about the encounter that resulted in a satisfying experience? And what changed the moment you viewed the work in a book reproduction, a slide, or a digitized image on a computer? In pursuing its purposes, the Rembrandt Project explores ways multiple skills can help maximize the experience of a wide range of works both online and off. Case A, Scenario 1, will set the stage for an experience with the work itself.Scenario 2: Viewing a Masterwork OnlineSelect a major work by Rembrandt online.2 What makes experiencing this image worthwhile, despite the fact that certain aspects cannot be captured in this flat digitized space? Upon reflecting on these scenarios, thoughts about experiencing the work may be recorded and discussed with others.3Case B: Two ScenariosScenario 1: An Experience of a LandscapeImagine wandering through an open field, tingled by a gentle breeze, warmed by the sun, refreshed by the aromas of moist grasses, mixed flowers, and the woody smells of trees. A village, visible... (shrink)

Multitasking is a critical feature of our daily lives. Using a dual-task paradigm, this experiment explored adults’ abilities to simultaneously engage in everyday motor and cognitive activities, counting while walking, under conditions varying the difficulty of each of these tasks. Motor difficulty was manipulated by having participants walk forward versus backward, and cognitive difficulty was manipulated by having participants count forward versus backward, employing either a serial 2 s or serial 3 s task. All of these manipulations were performed in (...) single-task conditions and dual-task conditions. Both motor performance variables and cognitive variables were assessed in these conditions. Analyses of single-task conditions revealed that both motor and cognitive manipulations predictably influenced performance. Analyses of dual-task performance revealed influences of motor and cognitive factors on both motor and cognitive performance. Most centrally, dual-task costs for motor variables revealed that such costs occurred primarily for temporal or spatiotemporal gait parameters and were driven by cognitive manipulations. Dual-task cost analyses for cognitive measures revealed negative dual-task costs, or dual-task benefits, for cognitive performance. Finally, the effects of dual-task manipulations were correlated for motor and cognitive measures, indicating dual-task performance as a significant individual difference variable. These findings are discussed with reference to theories of attentional allocation, as well as the possible role of auditory–motor entrainment in dual-task conditions. (shrink)

A synodal church makes assumptions about our basic ecclesial experience which takes place when we assemble liturgically, especially when we act eucharistically. The basic assumption is that we are a genuine human community knowing and relating to one another as brothers and sisters in baptism. Only real communities can authentically image the church's nature. This is a ‘bottom – up’ activity. If we wish this, then we must rediscover our liturgy and celebrate it in a new way as flowing (...) out from a community and helping it to discover its own nature. This, in turn, makes demands on our understanding of ministry and its structures. While many Catholics endorse synodality, their willingness to change the shape of the presbyterate is uncertain. (shrink)

The question of the secularity of society still remains open, since scientists have proposed only cautious speculative answers, while every scientist understands that in the social sciences it is a sad experience of predictions, that history is random and therefore unpredictable and the future always remains fundamentally open. The process of transformation of postmodern society, the development of which is actively influenced by the current pandemy of COVID-19, entailed the revival of religious values ​​and the formation of a qualitatively new (...) religious consciousness. In connection with the rise in the social status of religious consciousness and the widespread dissemination of religious ideas, primarily at the everyday level, the analysis of individual religious consciousness as one of the ways to comprehend the world is of particular importance. The social nature of religious consciousness is manifested not only in the fact that religious values ​​are perceived as a kind of khanism of social regulation, but also in the fact that they serve as epistemological guidelines and often compete with scientific values. This determines the growing philosophical interest in the analysis of the epistemological functions of religion and secular reality, as well as the cognitive capabilities of religious consciousness, which is impossible without a consistent study of the methodological basis of religious knowledge. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:TRINITY AND CREATION IN THE THEOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS DAVID A. WALKER* St. Francis' Church Nottingham, England Preface IT IS BY NO MEANS fortuitous that, in the Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas's treatise concerning 'the procession of divine persons ' is succeeded immediately by the treatise concerning ' the coming forth of creatures from God '. If both the freedom of the creative act and the full consubstantiality of (...) the divine persons are to be safeguarded, then, for St. Thomas, these two types of ' procession ' must be distinguished at all costs. But although distinct, they are also related in St. Thomas's thought. It is with this fundamental relation that we shall be primarily concerned here. Therefore, the question we shall seek to explore in this study concerns the way in which St. Thomas's doctrine of the Trinity determines, informs and impinges upon his theological understanding of the created order. Creation: The ' One God, and the ' Triune God, St. Thomas's celebrated identification of essence and existence in God has important significance for St. Thomas's doctrine of creation. God, according to St. Thomas, is Creator in virtue of his nature or essence-although, of course, this fact in no way undermines the sovereign freedom and contingency of the creative act. Because it is God's nature simply to be, all being or existence outside God is ultimately traceable back to God as its source *The Rev. Dr. David A. Walker was Team Vicar of St. Francis', Clifton, Nottingham at the time of his death in 1989. This paper was given to The Thomist on his behalf by Dr. Brian Marshall of Westminster College, Oxford. 443 444 DAVID A. WALKER and first cause. Therefore, to speak of God as Creator is to speak of God's essence in operation: " Hence creation is God's action by reason of his existence, which is his very nature... " 1 The trinitarian significance of this association of creative activity primarily with the divine essence is far reaching. In so far as the divine essence is common to, and identical in, the persons of the Trinity, St. Thomas can maintain that "creative action is not peculiar to any one Person, but is common to the whole Trinity." 2 Creation, therefore, is an act in which the triune God acts as the one God; in which a trinitarian unity of operation corresponds to a trinitarian unity of being. Consequently, the creative act primarily "has to do with the unity of nature, but not with the distinction of persons." 3 However, as we shall subsequently show, this is not St. Thomas's final word on the matter. In the light of this, it is possible to discern in the theology of St. Thomas a fairly clear distinction between truths pertaining to the unity of the divine essence and truths pertaining to the trinity of divine persons. This, indeed, is the basis for the distinction between the ' one God ' (de Deo uno) and the ' triune God' (de Deo trin:o) which operates in his thought. Indeed, this distinction is evident even in the structural arrangement of the Summa Theologiae itself. This distinction is paralleled and determined by the distinction between divine truths accessible to reason and truths accessible to man exclusively through revelation and faith, i.e., between 'natural' and 'revealed' theology. These two distinctions, furthermore, are paralleled by, and culminate in, a third distinction, namely that between nature and grace. But although there is a definite parallel between these three distinctions, it is only an approximate one and must not be construed as if it were an exact correspondence, i.e., as if the truths 1 la, Q.45, a.6. All quotations from the Summa are from Summa Theologiae, Latin text and English translation, Blackfriars edition, gen. ed. Thomas Gilby, 61 vols. (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1964-81). 2 Ibid. s la, Q.32, a.1. THEOLOGY OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS 445 pertaining to the one God were exhaustively co-extensive with the spheres of reason and nature, or those relating to the triune God with faith and grace. The fact that reason and nature do not exhaust the realm of truth concerning the one God the... (shrink)

"Legend is overdue for replacement, and an adequate replacement must attend to the process of science as carefully as Hull has done. I share his vision of a serious account of the social and intellectual dynamics of science that will avoid both the rosy blur of Legend and the facile charms of relativism.... Because of [Hull's] deep concern with the ways in which research is actually done, Science as a Process begins an important project in the study of science. It (...) is one of a distinguished series of books, which Hull himself edits."—Philip Kitcher, Nature "In Science as a Process, [David Hull] argues that the tension between cooperation and competition is exactly what makes science so successful.... Hull takes an unusual approach to his subject. He applies the rules of evolution in nature to the evolution of science, arguing that the same kinds of forces responsible for shaping the rise and demise of species also act on the development of scientific ideas."—Natalie Angier, New York Times Book Review "By far the most professional and thorough case in favour of an evolutionary philosophy of science ever to have been made. It contains excellent short histories of evolutionary biology and of systematics (the science of classifying living things); an important and original account of modern systematic controversy; a counter-attack against the philosophical critics of evolutionary philosophy; social-psychological evidence, collected by Hull himself, to show that science does have the character demanded by his philosophy; and a philosophical analysis of evolution which is general enough to apply to both biological and historical change."—Mark Ridley, Times Literary Supplement "Hull is primarily interested in how social interactions within the scientific community can help or hinder the process by which new theories and techniques get accepted.... The claim that science is a process for selecting out the best new ideas is not a new one, but Hull tells us exactly how scientists go about it, and he is prepared to accept that at least to some extent, the social activities of the scientists promoting a new idea can affect its chances of being accepted."—Peter J. Bowler, Archives of Natural History "I have been doing philosophy of science now for twenty-five years, and whilst I would never have claimed that I knew everything, I felt that I had a really good handle on the nature of science, Again and again, Hull was able to show me just how incomplete my understanding was.... Moreover, [Science as a Process] is one of the most compulsively readable books that I have ever encountered."—Michael Ruse, Biology and Philosophy. (shrink)

The practice of physical activity (PA) contributes to the prevention of chronic diseases such as obesity, metabolic syndrome or cardiovascular diseases, being also directly related to the individual’s physical fitness. Therefore, it is necessary to measure and monitoring the levels of PA in childhood and adolescence, since it may be useful to describe their current health status and the association with physical fitness, as well as to reveal putative consequences in the future. Within the educational field, it has (...) been shown that physical education (PE) classes are a favorable context for the creation of healthy physical-sports habits and self-determined motivation could be a key for explaining the level of PA practice. For this reason, the purpose of this research was to study the mediating role of integrated regulation (IR) on the relationship between PA and physical fitness in children and adolescents. A total of 325 students between 11 and 14 years old participated in the study. The level of PA was estimated through the specific Physical Activity Questionnaire for Children (PAQ-C), while motivation and IR were measured by using the Perceived Locus of Causality scale (PLOC-2). In addition, physical fitness was measured through the Eurofit fitness battery of tests, composed of three body composition measures and seven tests of different physical capacities. The physical fitness score showed no differences when genders were compared. After regression analysis, the resulti... (shrink)

This article explores the nature and consequences of being a successful child YouTuber as a new form of both child labor and play in the social media era. This new child activity can in principle act as an enhancer of child autonomy, creativity, and some specific goods of childhood, such as play, and exploration. However, the impact of becoming a micro-celebrity as a video blogger at a young age is to some extent underexplored. Thereby, I bring into the (...) ethical discussion the specific conditions of this activity, such as overexposure, and adultization. By doing so, I show how it can turn out to be a threat to child’s well-being and well-becoming, especially in relation to the identity construction and intrafamily dynamics. I highlight its double role as both an enhancer of childhood’s specific goods and child vulnerability, especially when it becomes a silent form of subjugation. Thereby, I suggest that the strong version of the precautionary principle could be a normative guide to balance the children’s need to explore and autonomy without jeopardizing other specific goods of childhood and their well-becoming. (shrink)

continent. 2.1 (2012): 56–58 Nechvatal, Joseph, Immersion Into Noise , Open Humanities Press, 2011, 267 pp, $23.99 (pbk), ISBN 1-60785-241-1. As someone who’s knowledge of “art” mostly began with the domestic (Western) and Japanese punk and noise scenes of the late 80’s and early 90’s, practices and theories of noise fall rather close to my heart. It is peeking into the esoteric enclaves of weird music and noise that helped me understand what I think I might like art to be: (...) A way of learning about the world through perturbation—exploration by incitement and speculation of possible conditions. What I have always loved about artistic investigations influenced by noisy aesthetics or sensibilities is that they can be simultaneously transcendent and absurd, amusing and revelatory, singular and pluralistic, mindless and intensely penetrating. The provocative friction that noise brings to bear on aesthetic experience, artistic practice, and “the” Art World acts as a kind of impulse response, proposing new energies while revealing underlying structure; noise signals are a simultaneous synthesis and analysis of spaces, subjects and relations. About two weeks prior to Christmas 2011, Joseph Nechvatal was generous enough to spend some time with me at 39 Quai des Grands Augustins, Paris . We each had one glass of red wine, briefly discussed common acquaintances, shared points of interest, and his published writings. We also, I recall, disagreed lightheartedly about how much contemporary relevance the ideas of telematic-artist Roy Ascott have for today’s art-and-technology practitioner (Joseph > Jamie). After the encounter, I read through a PDF version of Immersion Into Noise Joseph was kind enough to send me ( the HTML version is here ). A number of points of entry into cultures of “noise” are available these days. There are the acoustic-spatial approaches of thinkers like Douglas Kahn, Brandon LaBelle and Salome Voegelin; the techno-cultural musicologies of Jonathan Sterne and David Toop; the political writings of Jacques Attali, former adviser to President François Mitterrand, in his Noise: The Political Economy of Music (spoiler alert: It’s not really about music). Enter the new writings of one Joseph Nechvatal, with his invitation of an Immersion Into Noise . Nechvatal has been active for over 20 years in on- and off-line discussions of art, technology, virtuality, as well as his own set of art-theoretical departures and terminologies. A practicing artist, and instructor at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Immersion Into Noise , is Nechvatal’s third published volume. His writings, broadly, address a concern with the possibilities of a synthesis between the biological and the virtual, and the contemporary artistic resonances that these possibilities suggest. Nechvatal’s project is to try to name contemporary currents of artistic practice within our technologized culture. He comes at this through art history, post-modern philosophy, anthropology and consciousness studies. Portions of Immersion Into Noise have appeared in his PhD dissertation, as well as online art publications like Zing Magazine . An open-access publication, and part of the impressive and heartening activities of the Open Humanities Press, Nechvatal’s book is a somewhat unexpected addition to the Critical Climate Change series edited by Tom Cohen of SUNY University and Claire Colebrook of Penn State. Other titles in the series have address themes of post-globalism and cultures of threat. Joseph Nachvetal’s title is the first to focus entirely on art history, art practice and aesthetics. It is awkward to too easily fit Nechvatal’s writings in with the aforementioned burgeoning canon of cultural and artistic practice in, and writings on, noise (Russolo, Schaeffer, Cage and Yves Klein through to Kahn, LaBelle, Voegelin, et. al). Immersion Into Noise is not primarily an examination of sound-noise or phenomenologies of sound, and the relativist, non-objectivist possibilities arising therefrom in social, public, and exhibition art practices. Although Nechvatal makes mention of sonic practice and experience (his own encounter in 1968 with the technological complex was set in motion at a Jimi Hendrix concert at the Chicago Coliseum), he does so only by way of introducing a broader concept of “art-noise.” The noise-scape can envelope various kinds of involvement in all kinds of art, by artists, audiences, and distributed amalgams of all of these. Midway through the book, we are offered characteristics of an “immersive noise vision theory.” This theory, leading to an even more syncretic thinking about the art experience, is sketched out through further reference to the author’s personal observation, as well as his art-historical research and notes. Personal examples take on the reflex of a kind of art-noise-travel-writing, as Nechvatal visits Ryoji Ikeda’s Datamatics [ver 2.0] installation at the Centre Pompidou, Paris), hears Cecil Taylor at Alice Tully Hall in New York, spends time with the cave paintings of Lascaux, France, and explores the Wagner-inspired Venus Grotto of Linderhof, Bavaria, to name a few. These site-events, to varying degrees, are renderings of noise-art’s potential to “place us back into a ritual position by dragging art down into the felt 360° noise-perspective of the enthusiastic and participatory.” (p.103) The arc of the ideas proposed here position immersiveness, saturation and “scopic all-over tension” as most productively foundational to noise art, or art-noise. An itinerary from the most ancient of artistic expressions (cave drawings) to the most digital of presentations is charted (Ikeda’s minimal/maximal bitwise works for synchronized audio and visual projection). The harsh sonic onslaught of Masami Akita (a.k.a. Merzbow), is, under this analysis, not so far from colossal denseness of the churches of the High Baroque (Nechvatal visits the Rosario Chapel in Santo Domingo Church, Puebla, Mexico). And there is much more here, eaten up by noise: A rethinking of the work of Duchamp, Jackson Pollock, Nicolas Schöffler (whom Nechvatal names the true “the Father of Cybernetic Art”) and the Happenings of Alan Kaprow, all as art-noise in their own right. Each of these artists and moments demonstrate techniques of destabilization, immersiveness, frame-breaking and “all-over fullness and fervor.” Here is writing on art and art history that is as ambitious as it is promising: “wildly visionary,” Nechvatal states as in conclusion. Self-admittedly far-reaching to the point of verging on totalization, we are asked to consider that the moments, spaces, arts and artists Nechvatal appreciates in the book all derive from an increasingly prevalent “noise consciousness.” Along the way we gain an appreciation of noise as a productive and proactive tension in art, rather than an unwanted signal or unwelcome intrusion. Most promising here for me are Nechvatal’s revealing descriptions of the potential for noise to make manifest the material-perceptual framework of individual and collective art experience. How might we allow what we have been repeatedly taught is our contemporary condition of “information overload” to transform itself into a calm, warm, sympathetic kind of inundation. Treatment of experience in this way, dissolves boundaries between the bodily, informational, material and technical complexes that make up our world, and is the promise of a radical, if momentary, Immersion Into Noise. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 123.2 (2002) 293-297 [Access article in PDF] Angela Hobbs. Plato and the Hero: Courage, Manliness, and the Impersonal Good. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. xviii + 280 pp. Cloth, $59.95. Hobbs directs this stimulating but rather unfocused study to a question of considerable interest and centrality in Platonic studies: the engagement of Platonic texts with the traditional Greek ethic of heroic endeavor. As she is (...) able to show, the Platonic texts appropriate much of the traditional language and ideology familiar from archaic literature to a new paradigm in which the eccentric [End Page 293] figure of Socrates is the exemplar. Hobbs emphasizes the rhetorical value of this approach, in that it could help to make the image of philosophy accessible and appealing to the young men whom Plato wished to attract as students and colleagues at the Academy. She points to the difficulties of this appropriation, however; and more can be said about the problems that it poses for Platonic rhetoric.The most cogent and interesting analysis in the book is dedicated to the Republic. Hobbs is able to show the connection between traditional concepts of andreia and the function of the soldier class of the ideal city, the thumoeideis. She traces to a common source the apparently various aspects of Plato's thumos and its corresponding social class—readiness to anger, concern for social status, an intense sense of shame, and indignation at unfairness. Platonic thumos represents "the need to form an ideal image of the self in accordance with one's conception of the fine and noble [kalon]." When the image is threatened, "anger, self-disgust and shame are likely to be the result. This ideal of oneself also needs to be confirmed by social recognition: others must treat one in accordance with one's self-image" (30).Hobbs demonstrates that the susceptibility of the thumos element to the kalon is key to the training of the guardian class from childhood, when intellectual understanding is less developed. She has interesting things to say about the role of the kalon in the value schemes of the Republic and Symposium (222-31), arguing that, as a Form, it must ultimately be identical with the Good (agathon), but that the kalon, because of its greater accessibility to an undeveloped intellect, is an easier way to begin the ascent toward the ideal. She effectively connects the concept of the thymoeidic personality to the description of the timocratic man in Republic 8.549c-550b, and, in the middle chapters of the book, to Callicles in the Gorgias, whose motivation, she argues, is primarily thymoeidic or timocratic, since he values sensual indulgence primarily as a token of the power and autonomy desired by the lover of prestige.While Hobbs is certainly right to use Achilles as the exemplar of the traditional ethic that Plato confronts, she is less successful in arguing that Achilles is a central figure in the Republic. In fact, as she points out, he disappears altogether from the myth of Er, where he is replaced by Aias. Achilles cannot be connected with the Platonic concept of thumos in its positive aspects once it has been argued that he is depicted as greedy and impious (390e, 391c). A number of Hobbs's other claims, that Platonic texts identify Socrates with Odysseus, or that Achilles performs his heroic acts through fear of death, are not supported by an adequate textual analysis. Hobbs tends to push a single allusion out of its context to reach extreme speculative conclusions. That Socrates in the Protagoras (315b9 and c8) quotes Odysseus' words ("And then I noted him," "And I also saw Tantalus") as he lists famous figures in Hades does not necessarily mean that Socrates becomes an Odysseus figure: such an identification would require more than these passing allusions, which function quite sufficiently as an ironic comment on the viewing of celebrities. That Homer's Achilles refers to the bleakness [End Page 294] of life in the underworld or emphasizes what he loses by his heroic choice does not mean that... (shrink)

This article takes issue with Gert Biesta’s lecture and the interpretation that one of his main arguments leads to the conclusion that the world is essentialist in nature. Thus, for any specific kind of entity, there is a set of characteristics, all of which any entity of that kind must have. In this text I will argue that existence “in the world” necessarily demands the belief that many other worlds consisting of diverse identities and communities have long been present and (...) should be acknowledged. It also counters the view that children must be taught to adjust to life in the world—i.e., submit and compromise—by fostering philosophical communities of inquiry that place children’s doubts and uncertainties at the center of their focus, thereby promoting the possibility of Tikkun Olam (social justice or the establishment of godly qualities throughout the world) in its broadest sense. All these “compromises” required from the child are cultivated by the “pedagogy of fear.” I submit that, when allowed to do so from a young age, children can engage in three activities: 1) the exercising of their own thinking processes; 2) the development of the will to fight for improvement of things; and 3) the identification of possibilities for change and Tikkun Olam. Children can take part from an early age in philosophical communities of inquiry in which they can think and consider ideas—including those capable of creating their own unique “worlds.” These three activities necessarily forming part of the basis of young children’s understanding of what needs “repairing” in the world. The community of inquiry can cultivate their ability to identify injustice and social wrongs and be ready to actively seek to change society. At the heart of this change lies the potential of philosophy to serve as the driving force behind action and influence rather than as a power dedicated to preserving the status quo. (shrink)

Arguing against the dominant developmental theories (e.g., Piaget, 1945; Vygotsky, 1978) stating that pretend play is limited to early childhood, we illustrate that pretend play is an adaptive human activity of adulthood as well as childhood. We advance this argument on three levels. First, we offer an analysis of why the discipline of developmental psychology in the Western world considered play only as an activity of childhood by neglecting to explore whether or how pretend play (...) exists during adulthood. Second, we discuss the similarities between adult improvisational theater and children’s pretend play in illustrating our thesis that pretend continues to exist during adulthood. In this discussion, we focus on similarities in the definitions, psychological origins, social functions, and developmental consequences of pretend play and adult improvisation. Finally, we end the article with educational implications of conceptualizing pretend play as a life-span activity and offer directions for future research. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Third Way: Social Disability and Person-Centered AssessmentChristopher Heginbotham (bio)Keywordsimpaired functioning, psychopathic, personality disorder, neurological damage, psychotherapyJohn Sadler’s Fascinating Paper identifies a significant problem with existing diagnostic classifications. But in doing so he raises further unresolved philosophical, nosological, and practical problems. Although he is undoubtedly right in showing that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)-IV (and International Classification of Diseases [ICD]-10) do not provide an adequate (...) categorization, he is I believe wrong to use the term “vice” to describe the cluster of wrongful acts.“Vice” conjures up images of Miami, drugbusting police, prostitution, and other activities that are characterized by one thing—by and large, these are actions undertaken knowingly, usually for financial gain. These are not the actions of people with impaired mental functioning as a result of mental disorder or neurological damage. It is of course true that human trafficking and enforced prostitution may mean women forced into prostitution against their will, but rarely are these women considered mentally disordered solely as a result of their prostitution. Yet it is capacitated, premeditated wrongdoing that is normally considered to be “vice.”By contrast, all the cases cited in the paper describe conditions that are almost certainly the result of some form of impaired functioning, either owing to early childhood experiences (Case A), familial culture and conditioning (Case B), or neurological damage (Case C). The common thread in these cases is impaired capacity—in Case A this could be described as due to psychopathic or personality disorder (I distinguish the two separately rather than describe the phenomenon as “psychopathic personality disorder”) as a result of multiple childhood traumas. Their presentation is not unexpected given the person’s history and, although the condition may have become refractory, it might be amenable to treatment with psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy, given sufficient time and a nurturing environment (Bateman and Fonagy 2006, 2008; Cordess and Cox 1996; Levy 2008).The description of Case B leaves a lot of room for doubt and uncertainties. Did Ms A really try to smother her child? She confessed to one occasion, but was this under duress? Did she feel that if she agreed she would be treated more leniently? And if she was guilty, does it suggest “vice,” a premeditated act, or is there another explanation—attention [End Page 31] seeking because of low self-esteem or a personality disorder as a result of some abuse that had not been identified? Almost certainly from the description given this would not count, for me at any rate, as vice. Her actions may be odd, bizarre, or dangerous, but did they demonstrate a mens rea? Was Ms A making adequate evaluative judgments of her situation and that of her child? We know from clinical work with very damaged women in forensic mental health services that early physical, emotional, or sexual abuse leads in turn to women harming both themselves and their children (Bland et al. 1999; Cordess and Cox 1996; see also for example, Jeffcote and Watson 2004). Or perhaps, speculatively, her condition was Munchausen’s by proxy?Case C is horrendous but does not lend itself readily to the forms of psychiatric classification available. Indeed there is no easy way to describe such actions other than those of someone who is either incapable of understanding the nature and consequence of the actions that he has undertaken, or is simply “mad” in a folk sense. Prima facie this seems to be the result of permanent and little understood neurological damage. However, this case comes closest to the evil that is implied in the term “vice”; and might be diagnosed similarly to a celebrated English murderer, that of Peter Sutcliffe, the so-called Yorkshire Ripper. Sutcliffe was diagnosed as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, although the jury at his trial found that he was fit to plead, and he was initially sent to prison, where he deteriorated. He is now, and has for some time, been in Broadmoor high secure hospital.The result of these comments is that I agree fully with John Sadler’s conclusions, but for rather different reasons. DSM-IV categories try and fail to offer a symptomatology for... (shrink)

Seeing objective thought as passive, Diefenbeck seeks to develop a theory of thought or of reason “appropriate to the subject as an active agent or first cause.” His system would illuminate and render more effective the creation of values that guide lives. George Kimball Plochmann in his foreword describes the book as “a sus­tained inquiry into the character of knowledge, one seeking to prove that our exclusive cognitive allegiance to the so-called objective sciences is misplaced, not so much because they (...) are faulty in detail or deficient in humanitarian feel­ing, as because they cannot enjoy the epistemological support that they would require were they allowed the hegemony over other branches of cognition that is traditionally accorded them.” Diefenbeck would not destroy objec­tive knowledge, but would allow each philosophy to confront subjective phi­losophy and from the results of that confrontation build a better system of values. (shrink)

This article brings into relief two desiderata in childrearing, the importance of which the pandemic has made clearer than ever. The first is to ensure that, in schools as well as outside them, children have ample opportunities to enjoy goods that are particular to childhood: unstructured time, to be spent playing with other children, discovering the world in company or alone, or indeed pursuing any of the creative activities that make children happy and help them learn. I refer to (...) these as “special goods of childhood.” The second desiderata is to turn childrearing into a more communal practice, with lesser parental monopoly of care. For this, we need to give children access to multiple caring adults, and thus more opportunities to form secure and protected relationships. (shrink)

Stuttering is one of the most well-known speech disorders, but the underlying neurological mechanisms are debated. In addition to genetic factors there are also major non-genetic contributions. It is here proposed that infection with group A beta-hemolytic streptococcus (GAS) was a major underlying cause of stuttering until the mid 1900s, when penicillin was introduced for the treatment of streptococcal infections about 1946. The main mechanism proposed is an autoimmune reaction from tonsillitis, targeting specific molecules, for example within the basal ganglia. (...) It is here also proposed that GAS infections may have continued to cause stuttering to some extent, to the present date, though more rarely. If so, early diagnosis of such cases would be of importance. Childhood cases with sudden onset of stuttering after throat infection may be particularly important to assess for possible GAS infection. The support for this hypothesis primarily comes from three lines of argument. First, medical record data from the 1930s strongly indicates that there was one type of medical event in particular that preceded the onset of childhood stuttering with unexpected frequency: diseases related to GAS throat infections. In particular, this included tonsillitis and scarlet fever, but also rheumatic fever. Rheumatic fever is a childhood autoimmune sequela of GAS infection, which was a relatively widespread medical problem until the early 1960s. Secondly, available reports of changes of the childhood prevalence of stuttering indicates striking parallels between stuttering and the incidence of rheumatic fever, with (1) decline from the early 1900s, (2) marked decline from the introduction of penicillin about 1946, and (3) reaching a more stable level in the 1960s. The correlations between the data for stuttering and for rheumatic fever after introduction of penicillin are very high, at about 0.95. Thirdly, there are established biological mechanisms linking GAS tonsillitis to immunological effects on the brain. In addition, a small number of more recent case reports have provided further support for the hypothesis linking stuttering to GAS infection. Overall, it is proposed that the available data provides strong evidence for the hypothesis that GAS infection was a major cause of stuttering until the mid 1900s. (shrink)

There are signs of both secularization and religionization in the world today. Consistent with the modernization-secularization thesis, structural factors such as increasing economic security, societal complexity, and information flow are broadly associated with greater personal autonomy, worldview individualization, and erosion of some religious forms. At the same time, ‘counter-secular’ reassertions or transformations of religion have arisen for psychological, cultural, and political reasons. Amid these broad developments, active or public forms of atheism have also emerged, particularly in Europe and the (...) Anglophone world. Self-conscious, assertive atheism and other forms of philosophical or ideological secularism have both intended and unintended effects in the processes of secularization and religionization. But a quieter and potentially more pervasive result of all these forces may be greater worldview diversity and individualization across the secular-religious spectrum. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:700 BOOK REVIEWS certain violations of justice can be appreciated without " any back· ground of social conventions" (p. 95). The cases he cites-racial and gender bias and the failure to return kindness-may he unproblematic for us, hut is this not because we have been tutored by the institutions of modern liberalism? A strong case can be made, moreover, that our general agreement vanishes when it comes to particular (...) cases. This raises a larger question: can character ethics-with its repudiation of impersonal decision procedures-provide a basis for even limited universalism? A less impersonal route would be that of Thomistic natural law, but Kupperman's meager attention to personhood and his emphasis upon the self as a " metaphysical term of art" makes this an unlikely route. Kupperman seems intent on securing limited universalism as a nee· essary framework for pluralism; the view is central to his thesis that moral education cannot substitute values clarification for absolutism, at least not in its initial stage (pp. 174-78). It is not clear, however, that the primacy of the language of " values " is compatible with an emphasis on strength of character. Kupperman concedes that an "antiphony of values " may make the achievement of strong character more difficult. He fails, however, to entertain seriously the possibility that the pluralism of post-modern liberalism might well generate a society of Nietzsche's last men, with no more than a " qualified loyalty to anything " (p. 137). While the argument of Character may not he fully persuasive, it nonetheless marks an important contribution to recent Hterature attempting to show that liberalism need not be indifferent to questions of the good and of human excellence. THOMAS s. HIBBS Boston College Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts The Magic of Ritual: Our Need for Liberating Rites that Transform Our Lives and Our Communities. By TOM F. DRIVER. San Francisco : Harper, 1991. Pp. 270. $19.95. Tom Driver, former theater critic and author of hooks about theater and religion, is Paul Tillich Professor of Theology and Culture at Union Theological Seminary, New York. He is also an active leader in the Ritual Studies section of the American Academy of Religion. This engagingly written book reflects all of these vocations and interests. When he writes compellingly that we suffer from a void of ritual that could give shape and meaning to human life he critiques the view that BOOK REVIEWS 701 Christianity is primarily about theology and doctrine as well as the shape and content of the liturgy as presently celebrated in many Christian churches. On the one hand, this book is an apologia for the role of ritual in Christian life; on the other, it is a trenchant critique of what and how liturgical churches ritualize their faith. In the Introduction he states that by design this work is about the " deep human longing for ritual; to interpret it in the light of our physical, social, polemical, sexual, moral, aesthetic, and religious existence; and to urge a reform of our ritual life, especially in religion, so that our longing for ritual and our longing for freedom may come together " (4). He poignantly observes that the book is a response to "ritual boredom" (7) and that much Christian liturgical practice " has become moribund " (ll). The book's fairly evenly distributed three parts concern "ritual pathways," a cursory survey of animal, human and church ritual behavior (chapters l to 3), " modalities of performance," relating ritual to theater and reflecting on ritual's relationship to confession and ethics (chapters 5 and 6), and" ritual's social gifts," reflecting on the results of ritual: order, community and transformation of participants (chapters 7 to 9). In many ways the book's Conclusion and two Appendices betray Driver's slant on the state of contemporary Christian liturgy and ritual studies by offering critiques of the celebration of some Christian liturgies (Conclusion and Appendix A) and of the work of the ritual theorist Victor Turner (Appendix B). While there is nothing really new in this last part of the book, these sections offer a particularly clear view of where Driver stands, what his prejudices are, and how current his scholarship really is. Reading these last sections first would... (shrink)

Focusing on Mind, Self and Society, I contend that George Herbert Mead's theory is incapable of explaining the interactions in a song by Oscar Brown Jr., "The Snake," and that a satisfactory explanation of these actions, which illuminate everyday conduct familiar to us all, requires the conceptualization of personality systems grounded in affect and cultural systems understood as symbolic logics that make intelligible certain activities. My argument is important not primarily as a critique of Mead, but of rational-choice and (...) other cognitive theories that reduce emotions to cognitions, and of the currently dominant sociological and anthropological conceptualizations that reduce culture to forms of social practice. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the problem of studying the activities of revolutionary and ideological virtuosi of the XX century by means of the historical sociology of modernity. It attempts both to identify the main trends in the participation of intellectually active strata of modern societies in the radical transformation of social reality, and to clarify the reasons that pushed them to do so. It is noted that the ideological background of such forms of socio-political radicalism were the symbolic means (...) of challenging the old forms of social reality and constructing new forms through secular ideologies of various types (socialism, communism, anarcho-syndicalism, fascism, national socialism, etc.). The role of conductors of the ideological message of these secular religions of salvation to the masses was usually performed by radical-minded intellectuals and students, for whom the worship of new idols and symbols of faith became the true meaning of life and struggle. In the XX century, it was the intellectuals who acted as the main creators and operators of collective salvation religions, and the social communities created on their basis. Moreover, they not only tried to save themselves with their help, but at the same time laid claim to the legitimate monopoly of determining who would be saved, and who would not. Thus, radical intellectuals acted as both the creators of the new norm and as agents of the policy of rationalization. The article pays special attention to the characteristics of the creators and social carriers of radical ideological views — and the worldviews based on them — as well as the refraction of these utopian visions in the socio-political practice of the last century. In conclusion, it is suggested that Max Weber’s historical sociology and Emile Durkheim’s symbolic theory of the “sacred”, supplemented by modern developments in the field of political sociology and socio-historical anthropology, can serve as a relevant system of theoretical coordinates for the study of ideological and revolutionary virtuosi of the XX century. (shrink)

A philosopher of education, Jim Garrison, has suggested that John Dewey's philosophy is a philosophy of cultural retooling and that Dewey adopted both his conception of work and the idea of tool as "a middle term between subject and object” from Hegel. This interpretation raises the question of what the relationship of the idea of cultural retooling in Dewey’s work is to his naturalism and to his allegiance to Darwinian biological functionalism. To deal with this problem, this paper analyzes how (...) the idea of cultural retooling is elaborated in Dewey’s logic and in his theory of reflective thinking and compares it to the concept of retooling in Vygotsky and activity theory. Dewey does recognize the significance of tools in human practice and the role of language in the formation of meaning. However, in his theory of thinking and problem solving, he primarily resorts to the biological or ecological language of the organism–environment, in which the concepts of habit and situation play a central role. It is argued that this language does not deal with the functions and relationships of different kinds of tools and artifacts in changes of activity nor supply satisfactory means of analyzing the historical, institutionalized and cultural dimensions of human activity. (shrink)

“Artworks are not being but a process of becoming” —Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory In the everyday use of the concept, saying that something is grotesque rarely implies anything other than saying that something is a bit outside of the normal structure of language or meaning – that something is a peculiarity. But in its historical use the concept has often had more far reaching connotations. In different phases of history the grotesque has manifested its forms as a means of (...) subversive resistance against society’s prevailing notions of form and power. What aids this impact and distinguishes two of its basic stylistic features is the grotesque’s dissolution of form and its hyperbole. Such grotesqueries, however, soon solidify into new forms, new structures of meaning, hierarchy and practice, and in this sense the history of the grotesque is, on one hand, a continual opposition and transgression of the prevailing notions of art as well as of God and humanity, while on the other hand it offers continual resistance to its own solidifying process. As such the grotesque will not and cannot be contained in form without it losing the very thing that makes it grotesque. Even though it is somewhat easy to point out certain stylistic features of the grotesque, the sum of those features tell us very little about what is at play within it. Definitions concerned with the grotesque’s content rather than its form faces similar difficulties. Throughout history, expressions relating to the grotesque have been used in defense of a whole host of different social and cultural discourse including, for instance, Catholicism (See Erhard Schön’s Der Teufel mit der Sackpfeife , 1536), Protestantism (See Lucas Cranach’s Der Papstesel , 1523), a material folk culture (see Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and his World , 1984) and an idealistic romantic structure of meaning (see Wolfgang Kayser’s The Grotesque in Art and Literature , 1957). Thus though the grotesque cannot be reduced to the expression of certain forms or meanings, in order to examine what the grotesque is about one has to try to see how it’s relationship to flow and process and how, by maintaining this relationship, it attempts to avoid solidifying into form and meaning. The process of the grotesque alluded to here revolves around a play between periphery and center, the marginalized and the dominant. Most often this is expressed as a direct negation of the center of power. In the medieval grotesque tradition of the carnival, for example, it is expressed by its emphasis on the nether regions of the body as the center of creation of meaning. Spirit does not come from above, but from the belly, buttocks and genitals, and there is, expressed in this manner, a mockery of the predominant Christian notion of truth and meaning. Such inversions of the sites of meaning most often explicitly express an increased interest in materiality instead of ideal content which comes to the fore through the play between periphery and center. Even in early grotesque Renaissance art (for example in the works of Raphael) the depiction of the mythological or ideal reveals an exploration of the possibilities of the material. The works of art thus explore their own boundaries rather than act as vessels of the divine and in this way the grotesque explores the limits of form and materiality. This in turn brings to the fore a metaphysical dimension in the workings of the grotesque: It is an immanent exploration of its own boundaries. Materiality and metaphysics are joined together, because it is through the awareness of itself as a structuring (dis)order that it places itself in opposition to the prevailing notions of form and power. This way the grotesque expresses an awareness of the division of sign and reality and a search for this reality. It implicitly expresses the awareness that meaning is not something God-given and static, but fluctuating and man-made. In modern explorations of the history of the grotesque it is commonly seen as a form of realism that manifests a shift from the ideal towards the material, freeing art from representing some hidden higher order and instead making the work of art the very site of creation and meaning. Going even further, the grotesque actively opposes the notions of the ideal by marking a shift from an ahistorical view of the world towards the historical. However, this also makes clear why the grotesque has a tendency to solidify into new static forms of meaning, for by establishing itself as a subversive counterforce there is an idea of transgression and emancipation. That is why the grotesque often historicizes and relativizes only to repeat the mistakes of that which it negates: putting itself in the king’s chair. The exploration of the material seems to create new forms and notions of the ideal. The representation of an otherness outside the prevailing notions of meaning and truth becomes a positive manifestation of this otherness as truth itself. Thus the historical “truths” of the grotesque are superseded by history itself. When the expressions of the grotesque solidify into static form and meaning, they become mere objects like anything else in the world. Instead of being this elusive thing of process and flow, it becomes tangible to the existing hierarchy of power as well as history itself. In this way the grotesque can be expunged, included or simply revealed as yet another false notion of truth, which is precisely what has happened with the grotesque throughout the course of history. If from the beginning the expression of the grotesque has not already been in the service of some structure of meaning and truth, it has quickly been included or has quickly included itself in such a structure. But by doing so it rejects its own basis: the tension between periphery and center is replaced by the attempt to create a new center, a new structure of meaning and truth. The doubleness, ambiguity and flow of the grotesque are then rejected by the grotesque itself. THE NON-FORM OF FORM In the critical thinking of Theodor W. Adorno (1903-69) the problem of art, caught between a reductive and prevalent notion of truth and meaning and a peripheral and alienated otherness, is reexamined and reformulated. For Adorno, the instrumental rationality of Enlightenment itself reverts into a new form of mythology which is every bit as static and exclusive as the hierarchies of religion it supersedes. All is excluded that is non-identical to the instrumental mastery of the objects of the world, "For the Enlightenment, anything which cannot be resolved into numbers, and ultimately into one, is illusion; modern positivism consigns it to poetry." 1 As such the non-identical has been banished from the realm of thought and action, and banished specifically to the realm of art. But the realm of art is not able to provide a decent home for it because even modern art is not something entirely autonomous. While it is excluded from the notions of truth and meaning provided by instrumental rationality, it still originates from society. Just like instrumental rationality art is about mastery, structuring and exclusion. Therefore, the problem for art is that it cannot directly provide a space for the non-identical because its mode of operation is similar to that of instrumental rationality. Even worse, art has very few possibilities to free itself from this. If it becomes l’art pour l’art it is at the same time reduced to the very thing instrumental rationality claims it to be: a subjective judgment of taste.expressionism also stands as an example of this. Conversely, art cannot work within the framework of the identity-thinking of society, because any notion of freedom or emancipation would reproduce the exclusive practices of instrumental rationality. For example: Explicit socialist literature may establish itself in opposition to instrumental rationality while at the same time reproducing it. Its language may seem different, but in reality it merely provides a different set of reductive schematics for human life and experience. The problem for the art of the grotesque was, as I mentioned earlier, that far too often it was merely a symbolic manifestation of a notion of otherness—not otherness itself. Because of this the subversive character of the grotesque ends up shaping and containing otherness instead of providing a space for it. According to Adorno the only way to avoid this is to radicalize the grotesque. In order to avoid solidifying into form the work of art has to be an object which cannot be contained in thought or form—a non-form of form. The work of art has to work in a way that it strives for autonomy but without entirely leaving a discernible reality. In other words, it has to pull in two directions at once. Thus the work of art is a paradox. It is autonomous in the sense that it closes itself off from everything outside of the work of art, trying to shy away from the contaminating influence of the identity thinking of instrumental rationality. At the same time though the work of art is heteronomous in the sense that it originates from a specific historical context and is bound to be what society is not. Autonomy and heteronomy are inseparably intertwined. Unable to display otherness itself, but still trying to be a refuge for it, there is only one option for art: It has to turn against itself and destroy its own logic of form, thereby demonstrating how any representation of otherness is impossible. Art becomes a lamentation of the victims of the identity thinking of instrumental rationality and shows the traces of the otherness that is unable to appear. Adorno’s pessimistic theory of art and history stages art as a negative dialectical process where the work of art closes itself off and rejects everything outside, while the individual elements in the work of art destroys its very own logic of form from within: Artworks synthetize ununifiable, nonidentical elements that grind away at each other; they truly seek the identity of the identical and nonidentical processually because even their unity is only an element and not the magical formula of the whole […]. The resistance to them of otherness, on which they are nevertheless dependent compels them to articulate their own formal language, to leave not the smallest unformed particle as remnant. This reciprocity constitutes art’s dynamic; it is an irresolvable antithesis that is never brought to rest in the state of being. 2 Relative to a traditional understanding of the grotesque, Adorno radicalizes the tension between center and periphery, autonomy and heteronomy. In the traditional understanding of the grotesque, as we find it for example in the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin, the grotesque establishes the display of otherness as a new center of meaning and truth. However Adorno rejects such notions and argues instead for a modernism of the grotesque in which both center and periphery are included in a negative dialectical process and continually synthesizing and destabilizing each other’s positions. A modernism of the grotesque works on the inside of the sign or the artwork, continually outlining and questioning the boundaries between materiality and form. This moves the focus away from the relation between the sign or work of art as a conceptual manifestation on one side and the object it refers to on the other side. Instead it implicitly points to the amorphous mass from which the signs and thereby meaning have been carved, the remnants that have been left behind. Modernism of the grotesque does not imply that it is emancipatory or that it reconciles man with nature, and does not represent a new position or a new ideology. It merely remembers and insists on the double nature of man and art: to write or paint yourself or an artwork whole by inscribing meaning in life or by applying form on a canvas is at the same time both creation and destruction. The very signs we use to center meaning in our lives carry its own alienation in them. Meaning surfaces only when process and flow comes to a halt—solidifying, but at the same time excluding parts that do not fit into that particular structure of meaning. NOTHING DONE AND NOTHING UNDONE It has always been difficult for art historians to find a suitable category for the works of the Danish artist Leif Lage (b. 1933). In his paintings the sensitive figuration seems so fragile that it is on the verge of turning into abstraction. Or conversely: the figurative emerges cautiously and hesitantly out of abstraction. As an art critic once wrote, he can almost paint things away. 3 Working in some undefinable space between abstraction and figuration, the Lage’s works shy away from the realm of words, and as a result few critics have been able to write anything meaningful about his works. In fact even fewer have been able to write more than one or two pages. The Danish author and art critic Leif Hjernøe is one of those few, but even he starts off by saying how impossible it is to write about Lage, confessing that his works exist both as process and in a field of in-between which words cannot reach. He writes: Always you find yourself in a place where nothing is done and nothing left undone, and where the elements of the work of art rest in a continuous motion. Always there is the open wound, where infection rather than surgical intervention is considered as an opportunity. And the conflict between matter and antimatter makes all diagnoses uncertain and allows conditions of uncertainty to spread in a place of raw presence. 4 The art works against the diagnosis and the certainty. Words are being eaten up by what is outside the realm of words: tension, process and doubleness. An approach to an understanding of the work of Lage could be to follow his connection to Samuel Beckett (1906-89). One can note, therefore, that Lage has illustrated several of the Danish translations of Beckett’s works. Though one is an author and the other a painter both seek a place where figuration, where the word, erodes. For both this entails an attempt to question and examine and so move in behind the façade of the surface in an exploration of that something or nothing that may be behind representation. At the same time even in the vanishing point of figuration or words, the meaningless words or the disjointed lines still stand as signs of human activity—signs of movement in emptiness. With very few exceptions Lage’s artworks revolve around one motif: Man—most often “en face.” But unlike traditional portraitures Lage’s people are found within. The artworks do not sense the reality of appearances, but rather the existential dimensions within man. As a seismograph they are sensitive to the utmost subjectivity in order to display an objective, sensuous depiction of the very problem of subjectivity. Instead of a static façade of a man, Lage’s “en face” shows the process-character of man. The people in Lage’s paintings are always in process—in the midst of becoming or dissolving. I will take a closer look in the following at the ways in which Lage establishes this sense of being in constant process, of being in-between modes or categories. THE DOUBLENESS OF THE STROKE Lage’s etchings attract attention in particular for the tension conveyed there between the material and the form. The material physically opposes the violence of the needle. But instead of embracing the violence of the needle and the victory over matter—instead of making the artistic creation and figuration express a heroic mastery of the background it is made out of—Lage uses the stroke to express the very tension between stroke and material, figuration and background. In the drypoint etching Untitled from 1983, which illustrated the Danish translation of Beckett’s Ill Seen, Ill Said , the needle tears up the material in long rough lines: Together, the primarily horizontal and vertical lines form a face. Thus the force needed to etch a line in the metal-plate draws attention to itself: It is there in the absence of curves and nuances. Man emerges on the metal-plate after great exertion and in a very simplistic form. This way Lage enhances the nature of the material, as the material’s resistance is not something to overcome. On the contrary the figuration is smitten by its very resistance and as such expresses the violence of its own becoming. Even more pronounced is the fact that the lines do not just show the violence of creation—it actively erases figuration in the same process that creates it. For example the mouth consists of 8-10 horizontal strokes, of which some seem to be connected to each other as if the mouth has been quickly scratched out. The mouth speaks of the inability to speak. In the same way, the eyes are black holes due to a large amount of criss-cross cuts, which together form a dark middle. Those lines, at the same time, form the eyes of the figuration and scratch out the eyes of the figuration. The extroverted aspects of the face—connected to speech and sight—are portrayed as introverted as well. Just as the etchings down into the metal-plate makes something appear. Leif Lage, Untitled , 1983 (etching) The figuration of the etching is connected to creation. It expresses that something is wrought into existence out of nothing by sheer artistic force. However, this force is at the same time presented as a violence of creation, which makes it impossible for form to truly emerge. Herein lies one of the basic principles of Lage’s art, namely that art cannot be that nothing or something behind the realm of words or signs. Without form, art would lose its ability to express anything at all. Form is a necessity if art is to avoid becoming as devoid of expression as the reality is that we cannot reach behind the appearance of things. On the other hand, art cannot raise itself above its own material in joyous celebration of the beauty of form. This would use the material in the manner of an instrument and thus would suppress the otherness it attempts to rescue. When art becomes mere form, any traces of otherness will have dissolved. Then art would be a question of technique, in no way different from the instrumental rationality of society. Therefore art works in a particular space between form and non-form. As Hjernøe says of the works of Lage, it is in the center of the event, in the in-between where things neither are nor are not, "And everything takes place just before it changes character. As the blood just before it coagulates, as the milk just before it separates, as fried egg just before it turns white […]." 5 The precise emphasis on the in-between of Lage’s art points in particular to the work of art as both outside of and in time. The work of art is a singular point in time, but at the same time it is continually in process. In the borderland between form and non-form, between creation and destruction, it shimmers like a fata morgana . The work is done but at the same time undone. It is only there as a cry in response to the inability to come into being. Akin to the etching is the drawing, but while both, of course, use the stroke or line as their main instrument, the paper does not resist the line in the same sense as the metal-plate of the etching. As a result in Lage’s drawings the stroke frolics in a space with almost no tension at all. There is nothing there to keep the pencil stroke at bay, but at the same time this means that there is nothing there to keep it together. One of the more expressive examples of this is found in an untitled drawing from Tegninger og Text ( Drawings and Text ) from 1999. The drawing consists of one unbroken pencil stroke. It is as if the stroke is confused—it darts around on the paper making doodles on the way or gathers itself in more straight lines in the center of the paper. It is in this manner that the semblance of a body is established. A couple of small circles serve as eyes and are the reason that the rest can be read as both face and body instead of pure abstraction. In fact the unbroken stroke serves as both abstraction and figuration as on the one hand it is the stroke that seemingly outlines the shape of a figure, while on the other hand the unbroken stroke dissolves any truly recognizable figuration by continuously, without end or aim, overflowing the boundaries of the figure. Seen again here is a doubleness to the stroke and the act of creation. In the etching it was all about the tension between the resistance of the material which created the doubleness. Here it is the opposite. It is the lack of tension. The stroke is free to do anything, but has no aim: without some kind of resistance, there is nothing to hold figuration together. It threatens to dissolve into nothingness. Conversely, the drawing can also be seen as a process of becoming. Like a form of automatic writing, the pencil darts around until it finds a point of densification. But even in such an interpretation of the drawing, the figuration appears artificial—it points to itself as the result of the artistic act of creation. The stroke is primarily stroke and only secondarily figuration. With its wild movement it calls attention to itself as stroke. Thus the figuration never becomes something in its own right. It points to the basic principle of creation: Someone has drawn me, I am the result of artistic endeavors, and therefore I am not for myself but always overflowing the boundaries that contain me. It is the stroke that in the very same movement creates figuration and dissolves it. Leif Lage, Untitled , 1999 (drawing) THE LIGHTNESS OF COLOR, THE DENSITY OF PAPER Often the watercolor is used as a precursor for larger paintings, because it has an immediacy in which one can quickly paint the main lines of a composition. However, Lage’s watercolors are not temporary points in a process leading to another final painting. They are not sketches, later to be filled with details in another material. For him watercolor is an end in itself. This also implies that he doesn’t try to work against the paper’s absorption of the water color and its tendency to absorb detail. On the contrary, he examines the possibilities inherent in this blurring of the line and absorption of color. As in the previous examples, there are of course recognizable shapes in Lage’s water colors. But these shapes are rarely separable from color, line or even paper. In other words: the figurative and the abstract more or less become one. One of the reasons for this is that Lage often works on wetted paper which means that the paper hungrily absorbs color into its fabric instead of it being on top of the paper. The paper becomes line because it is the absorption of the color which, together with the brush stroke itself, separates the colors from each other. The line is also color and the color is also line, because there is no separation between the different colors other than the colors themselves. At times this results in almost complete abstraction. In such cases Lage add lines with a pencil as if he wants to hold some sort of figuration together. At other times it is the other way around: the strokes of the pencil are a being dissolved by the water color blurring out the figuration. Untitled 1 from 1999 displays various tones of green. The contour of the colors appears unusually rough. Most of all it is reminiscent of a shoreline which has found its form through the work of thousands of years between water and land. Pockets of resistance surface as islands not yet drowned in color—as paper or color not yet consumed by the dominant color. The shape of the colors does not seem created by the hand of the artist, but rather by the inner workings of the watercolor: color against color over time has resulted in this very image, as if it is all a part of a natural process of change and decay. Despite the fact that there are no strong differences in color there seems to be a struggle taking place in the watercolor. For example, inexplicable holes in the dark color, which cover most of the right side of the watercolor, appear as if the underlying color is eating away the dark color, or that the dark color is in the process of covering up the underlying color. The small pockets of resistance demonstrate a process and development that, almost as a happy accident, evokes a couple of small eyes and a large mouth. Behind the colors a few slanted lines can be discerned, but the hand of the artist has long ago disappeared behind the life of the colors. Thus the watercolor seems to be held at precisely the point in time where figuration randomly appears. The small eyes and wide mouth seemingly express the realization of the figuration’s temporality. It is just a moment in time, soon to be consumed again in the life of the colors. The nature, the background it stems from and is part of, moves on undeterred, continuing its everlasting process of creation and decay. In this sense, the watercolor provides an experience of how neither artist nor man is able to transcend the materiality they consist of. The colors of man, the materials man consists of are “becoming” and “progress” but also “decay” and “disappearance”. The artist’s pencil strokes have been eaten up long ago, and the figuration is living on borrowed time. Human or artistic activity is about creating form, transcending mere matter by shaping and applying meaning to it. But Untitled 1 shows the doubleness of such creation: the transience and fragility of human life. Should the figuration come into being, should it rise and transcend the material, which binds it to its temporal existence, it would become nothing because its very existence is conditioned by the life and work of the colors. In the same sense man cannot escape his own temporality. He too, for better or worse, must accept a life in the volatility of sensation. Leif Lage, Untitled 1 , 1999 (watercolor) In most of Lage’s watercolors there seem to be a stronger artistic control than in Untitled 1 . Most often both the arrangement of colors and the technique in which they are painted express the hand of the artist. An example of this is Untitled 2 from 1999. While figuration in Untitled 1 seemed to appear as a happy accident, the figuration is much more “created” in Untitled 2 . Here the most important parts of the figuration, the eyes, the mouth and part of the skull, are colored black and painted on top of the background’s play of colors. The background primarily consists of blue and yellow tones. Only parts of the paper are covered in color, however, which yet again stresses the act of painting: There is a surface which is being filled by color by an artist. The blue tones are concentrated in the figuration, while the yellow tones surround it. All this means that the figuration stands out more clearly in this watercolor. This is also underlined by the fact that the blue and dark tones cover part of the yellow tones as spots here and there. Thus it is not a background which is in the process of consuming figuration, but rather the emerging figuration which blots out the background. Such an understanding is even suggested by how the mouth and eyes are placed in the larger blue color field. The eyes and mouth are in the center of the watercolor, while the blue color field is placed from center out towards the left side. This gives the impression of a face turned slightly to the right and slightly upwards, which again makes the mouth appear to emerge from the paper. It also helps that the mouth cuts the center axis of the watercolor. In other words, the arrangement of the blue and black colors create some depth and perspective which gives the illusion of a figuration, seen partially in profile, emerging from the background. Seen in profile, the eyes and mouth seem extroverted—they almost seem as if they are put on top of the face. But at the same time they are painted as black holes, sucking in the gaze of the onlooker. The watercolor is even more challenging if one follows what may be the faint outline of the skull, which, on the right side of the watercolor, no longer works together with the blue color, but rather alone postulates the outline of the skull. If not the blue color field, but this line, is the outline of the skull, then all of a sudden the face is not in profile but “en face”—staring directly towards the onlooker. Outline and color seemingly work against each other and establish two different expressions. Without the slightly upward tilted expression of the profile, the eyes and mouth do not seem to emerge from the paper. On the contrary, seen “en face,” the eyes and mouth are really gaping pits of darkness. In this sense Untitled 2 is at the same time surface and depth of perspective. The line gives form but at the same time it dissolves the form created by the colors, and vice versa. Leif Lage, Untitled 2 , 1999 (watercolor) As the last example of Lage’s artistic method, I have chosen another untitled work (as indeed nearly all of Lage’s artworks are)—this time from 2000. This is perhaps one of the most figurative watercolors Lage has created, though that doesn’t tell us too much. The painting depicts a human face in blue and green tones on a yellow toned background. The colors create a clear demarcation between the figure and the background, which compensate for the watercolor’s lack of outline. Beneath the face darker tones imply the beginning of the torso, and nuances of color even hint at something which could be a collar. The hair is in even darker tones and its structure is emphasized using pencil strokes on top of the water color. One eye is marked by a brown spot with a darker spot in the middle, while the other eye is added by pencil. The mouth is a round, red dot. In Untitled from 2000 the work between abstraction and figuration is much less pronounced than in the previous examples cited here. Nonetheless the watercolor has a delicacy to it which almost makes the figuration disappear, even as it appears. This has something to do with the fact that all the individual brush strokes have dissolved. The only outlines are those created by the clash of colors. Even the red mouth seems to be more paint than mouth—unable to be formed truly as anything other than a speck of color with some small semblance to a mouth. In contrast to the other watercolors, there is no movement, no progress or decay, just a vibrating standstill. The figure is not emerging or disappearing but embedded in and as surface, and as such it makes the figure seem stuck in its condition rather than freed by the act of giving form: mouth open as a wound. Pencil strokes add detail and life to the hair as an attempt to help the figure emerge. But all this does is create two levels in the watercolor: The pencil strokes are put on top of the figuration rather than being part of it. Thus they end up highlighting the endless distance between the movement and form-giving of the pencil strokes and the static and stuck figure behind these strokes. Leif Lage, Untitled , 2000 (watercolor) MAN AND THE VIEW OF THE ONLOOKER Lage’s works seem at the same time to be an examination of tensions between form and material in art and a display of an image of man full of the same tensions. This is because the people who are emerging in Lage’s images are not just in his works, They are his works. This means that man is not something emerging from a background but is part of this background and vice versa. The art of Lage inscribes man in its surroundings and background. Man is not the ruler of nature. Man does not rise above matter; there is no truly transcendent position for man to occupy in the art of Lage. Instead man is a part of the very matter, it, at the same time, tries to distance itself from in order to distinguish itself from its surroundings. Man emerges in an attempt not to be line, stroke, color. In an attempt to free itself of matter. Should it succeed in this, however, it would turn into nothing. On the other hand, if man fully accepted itself as mere matter it would disappear in it—in instincts, urges and lack of reflection. The appearance of man is thus subject to a state of being in-between. Only in the tension between material and its negation can the outlines of man be traced. However this also means that in the art of Lage man is never something in itself but always in process—on the way to its freedom and its loss. However, Lage’s art is not just about showing the tensions inherent in man but also about showing such tension on the verge of breaking point. In the moment before everything is done, or when nothing yet has been done, the delicate tension between form and material has been stretched to its utmost in such a way that man’s character of process emerges and is contained on the paper or canvas. Therefore, Lage’s art contain traces of human life. Not only is it an autonomous unity of tensions where man is stretched out between its singularity and the surroundings it is a part of. It is also this pulsation between figuration and material which brings about the traces of human endeavor and activity. Even when man almost seems to have disappeared into the material, strokes and lines are still there as a reminder of human activity and potential creative power—as a reminder that hope is still possible and that man is still there. The view of the onlooker seeks out forms and meaning. It seeks outlines and edges. But first and foremost it is the eyes in Lage’s works of art that allow the onlooker to decode the figuration at play. This creates a distinctive relationship between the onlooker and the artwork. The onlooker tries to wrest the enigma from the artwork, tries to reduce it to solid, meaningful form. But the very same moment that hints at such a possibility sees the view of the onlooker confronted with a gaze of its own. The eyes of the figure in the work of art are most often dark pits, as if they were an illustration of the violence committed against the eyes of the onlookers and their search for meaning. Or as if they were a dark reflection of the onlooker’s failed attempts to delineate the traces of life in the artwork to a solid meaningful form. Therefore, the gaze of the figuration speaks not only of its own powerlessness but also of the powerlessness of the onlooker. When the view or sight has trouble finding solid meaningful forms, it has something to do with the fact that the precondition for sight, light, no longer stems from something transcendent. In Lage’s art there is nothing outside the works of art, nothing outside of human life, and as such nothing to shed light on the works of art or human life and reveal solid meaningful forms. All light comes from within. In a western context, light as a medium for sight is central to the understanding of meaning. People speak of the clarity of thought, while knowledge is tied together with enlightenment, and so forth. But the light no longer originates from a divine point of view. It originates from man, who has created himself in the image of God. The problem with this is that light always covers up its own base. Light illuminates something but at the same time it hides itself. 6 While it was previously God who was unknowable, now it is man. It is also problematic that sight and the medium of sight stem from the same place. Following this thought one can posit two final problems. Firstly, the immediacy and presence established by light by making forms and objects accessible to sight is fake. Light is not some independent entity which present things in a neutral manner for the onlooker. It is inextricably tied together with the gaze’s desire after meaning. In other words: Light perverts the appearance of things because it doesn’t originate from some objective entity which allows them to appear as they are. Instead light is based upon and originates from the subject and its conquering gaze, seeking out meaning and form constantly. Secondly, the joining of sight and light makes introspection within human life impossible. Everything can be illuminated by its use value for the subject but only as long as it is separated from the subject, as long as it is an object. But the subject itself cannot be illuminated. Lage’s art tears down such a dividing line between subject and matter, but it does so without reestablishing a divine position from where the light emanates. Therefore, the light in Lage’s art may not illuminate very well. It may not have the certainty presented by modern science or the religions of yesterday. But it does show what such light tries to hide, namely, the subject as it is in its material reality—inscribed in time and death, which are the basic conditions of materiality, but at the same time also full of life in its joy and will to create. For the onlooker the meeting of the gaze in Lage’s works of art is thus also a destruction of the view of the onlooker. The ability to see is challenged in a radical way. Those outlines will not solidify into static form, as if the light was too dim to see. Just as in Lage’s figurations, the view of the onlooker turns to black: turns towards the onlooker in recognition and becoming—or disappearance. NOTES Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment . (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2002): 4-5. Theodor W. Adorno. Aesthetic Theory . (London & New York, 2002): 176. Carsten Bach-Nielsen. “Mere glæde end gru.” Kristeligt Dagblad . September 24, 2002. Leif Hjernøe. “Den yderliggående inderlighed.” LEIF LAGE—Retrospektiv udstilling 1983 . (Copenhagen: Brøndum, 1983): 18. Ibid. Maurice Blanchot. The Infinite Conversation . (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993): 162-163. (shrink)

Recent arguments over whether certain public health interventions should be mandatory raise questions about what counts as a "mandate." A mandate is not the same as a mere recommendation or the standard of practice. At minimum, a mandate should require an active opt-out and there should be some penalty for refusing to abide by it. Over-loose use of the term "mandate" and the easing of opt-out provisions could eventually pose a risk to the gains that truly mandatory public health interventions, (...) such as childhood vaccines, have provided over the last 50 years. Already, confusion about what counts as a mandate, and about what criteria should be used to determine when a public health intervention should be implemented as a mandate, has led to some inappropriate public policy decisions. For instance, by any reasonable criteria, the yearly influenza vaccine should be mandatory for health care workers. To enforce this mandate, those who refuse vaccination should be required to sign a waiver, and patients - especially those at high risk from flu - should be informed when they receive care from unvaccinated practitioners. (shrink)

Ockham is sometimes regarded as the chief source for a view of rights as arbitrary powers of radically isolated individuals. In fact he provides a quintessentially “reasonable” conception of natural or human rights, one which suggests a promising answer to the question of what such rights are, namely, capacities for reasonable activity. This view of personal rights is complemented by Ockham’s equally reasonable and suggestive account of what is naturally “right” for human communities in different human conditions. The unusual (...) situation in which Ockham developed these ideas—as a theologian attacking the doctrinal pronouncements of a reigning pope—raises problems for extracting a systematic philosophical theory from his voluminous output, but the polemical setting of his political writings also gives them a certain relevance to current disputes about the place of secular thought in religious contexts. (shrink)

In this work I reject the contention that there is a perceptual stage which is devoid of contributions from the agent's cognitive framework. This contention is expressed in two different noncognitive views of perception. The traditional sensory core view which has prevailed since the seventeenth century; it claims that there is a stage of pure sensory core which precedes the interpretive percepts . The recent ecological approach whose main representative is J. J. Gibson; it claims that not only a certain (...) perceptual stage, but the whole perceptual process, is devoid of cognitive contributions. Before I deal with these views, I discuss the basic features of cognition in general. ;Cognition is concerned with the establishment of relations and order; it is a purposive placing of a cognized object into a meaningful order. Cognition begins with modifying a given order for the purpose of making it fit into a given meaningful framework. Throughout the work I show that, contrary to the aforementioned noncognitive views, perception fulfills this depiction of cognition. ;In the discussion of the sensory core view, I illustrate its main assumptions in various philosophical writings, and then indicate main reasons for its appearance in the seventeenth century. These reasons stem from the intermediate role sensation was supposed to have in the mental-physical gap. Sensations were considered to be primitive mental entities with physical causes; their physical origin prevents them from containing complex mental features such as the cognitive ones, and, thus, they are regarded as pure. This stage of pure sensation was postulated primarily out of theoretical considerations. Those did not coincide with the empirical and phenomenological description of that stage; hence, the empirical characterization and the phenomenological status of that stage were constantly modified. The various suggestions for describing that stage are examined and criticized from both empirical and theoretical respects. The empirical evidence presented indicates that there is no qualitative difference between perceiving what is regarded as pure sensations and what is regarded as inferential perceptions. The theoretical criticism points out that the assumption regarding pure sensation is not necessary for an adequate explanation of perception; and, since it has no empirical grounds, it is superfluous. ;After rejecting the sensory core view, I examine the ecological approach. This view rejects the traditional sensation-perception distinction and contends that we do not have to assume the existence of cognitive activities that interpret meaningless sensations into meaningful perceptions, since the perceiver directly encounters meaningful features. I claim that this solution is similar to Kant's approach, and, therefore, it has to pay a price which is similar to that which Kant pays, viz. the relational nature of the perceptual environment. The neglect of this feature results in unsolvable difficulties in central notions of the ecological approach. ;I conclude the work by suggesting a crude outline for approaching perception; in many respects it is close to Aristotle's view. I contend that causal explanations of the physiological processes cannot wholly explain perceiving; these processes are necessary supportive bases for perceiving and not the causes which precede and produce it. Accordingly, we should not assume the existence of separate percepts in the agent's head. The cognitive system is an integral part of the perceptual system; hence, perception may be conceived of as direct understanding. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Rome and Baetica: Urbanization in Southern Spain, c. 50 B.C.–A.D. 150Leonard A. CurchinA. T. Fear. Rome and Baetica: Urbanization in Southern Spain, c. 50 B.C.–A.D. 150. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. xii 1 292 pp. 3 maps. Cloth, $75. (Oxford Classical Monographs)The Roman province of Baetica has not received a comprehensive treatment since R. Thouvenot’s Essai sur la province romaine de Bétique (Paris 1940; 2d ed. 1973). Since then, (...) important epigraphic finds such as the Tabula Irnitana (AE 1986, 333) and archaeological excavations have greatly modified our understanding of the structure of Roman cities in this province. Fear endeavors to assess the urban phenomenon in Roman Baetica in light of this new evidence. Rather than “Urbanization,” his subtitle might better have read “Urban Change,” since Baetica had already been largely urbanized by the Carthaginians and Iberians, and the real issue is how the native cities were affected by the Roman presence. The author himself concedes that Baetica had a “native urban tradition,” whereas there is “little firm evidence that Rome pursued an active urbanizing policy” (27–29). He also shows that while Romanization may have been passive from a Roman perspective, the inhabitants were actively involved in “bottom-up” initiatives to improve the status and amenities of their cities.An introductory chapter surveys Baetican geography and examines an anthropological model of colonialism. Since Fear later questions “whether the premisses of such a model... are in fact of any use when looking at the life of a Roman province” (274), it is unclear why he includes it at all. The next chapter discusses the characteristics of an ancient city, and (with a range of examples from Britain to Palestine) how urbanism was diffused in new areas. Listing the features of a city mentioned—but incidentally, rather than as a definition—in the Digest, Fear examines to what extent these are reflected in the laws of Urso and Irni. This seems an artificial and otiose exercise, since the colony of Urso and the municipium of Irni were unquestionably cities, even if the Urso law, for instance, contains no reference to bath houses. Moreover, Fear’s tendency to use interchangeably the terms “town” and “city” obscures the issue of urban definition; the pre-Roman oppida of the Baetican highlands may have been towns, but were not cities.Chapter 3 investigates the state of urbanism (including colonies like Carteia and Corduba) in southern Spain around 50 b.c. Fear challenges conventional opinion by discounting the conventus as a major factor in urbanization and by questioning whether mining brought large numbers of Italians to the province. He also shows that while the legends on local coinage were Latinized, the designs (bull, Melqart, Iberian cavalryman) remained pre-Roman. The next chapter asks whether the Late Republican colonies were really miniature replicas of Rome, as Aulus Gellius (16.13) suggests. Fear argues that while the colonies did imitate Rome in such features as law and public architecture, they were “content to adapt native structures” (104) in other areas. This was because the Baetican colonies were not founded on “greenfield” sites (such as Emerita in [End Page 143] Lusitania) but were superimposed on indigenous settlements, thereby including a substantial proportion of Spanish incolae who inevitably had an “Iberianizing” influence on the colonists.The chapter on the Julio-Claudian period is primarily an analysis of the elder Pliny’s list of Baetican privileged towns. Fear finds very few cases in which we can state with certainty whether municipia were of Roman or Latin status. He also maintains that the distinctive cognomina assigned to the cities did not confer legal status (contra M. I. Henderson, JRS 32 [1942] 6, who saw them as “flowery colonial titles”) but simply helped distinguish between homonymous place names. Chapter 6 considers the impact of the Flavian Municipal Law, which Fear sees as a general blueprint, a lawyer’s vision of what life should be like in a municipium. As such the law makes unrealistic assumptions, for instance (in the section on enrollment of iudices) that all the residents will have tria nomina. As for the effect of the law on the inhabitants... (shrink)

This book offers a novel theory of childhood well-being as a social good. It re-examines our fundamental assumptions about parenting, parental authority, and a liberal society's role in the raising of children. The author defends the idea that the good of a child is inexorably linked to the good of society. He identifies and critiques the problematic assumption that parenting is an extension of individual liberty and shows how we run into problems in medical decision-making for children because of (...) this assumption. He develops an objective conception of what is good for a child in liberal society, drawing on the assumptions of liberty, and from here constructs a set of things that society and its members owe children. There are ways in which society should support and intervene in parental decisions to guarantee a child's well-being. Ultimately, raising children is a social activity that requires input from society. The author then applies this theory of childhood well-being to develop a framework for medical decision-making for children. He also uses practical examples, such as vaccinations, parental leave, and healthcare access, to demonstrate the implications of his theory for public policy. The Limits of Parental Authority: Childhood Wellbeing as a Social Good will be of interest to research and advanced students working in bioethics, political philosophy, and public health policy. (shrink)

The evident remoteness between the religious postulates and the secular activity has led us to spiritual disorder and the oblivion of the authentic needs and aspirations of the human being. The current mentality and practice, towards what is considered merely useful or verifiable, has led us to this antinomy of polarized extremes, either towards an anthropocentrism that survives in a paradoxical happiness, disproportionate in the search for the strictly tangible, or towards an economic or ecological discourse that forgets (...) the ontological idea, and the authentic value and meaning of the human being. From a positive and normative analysis, this study aims to emphasize the importance of the so-called 'Integral Training’, taught by some university centers, as a promoter of the psychological and spiritual well-being, as well as the attitudes of sustainable entrepreneurship, in an ethical way and responsible. (shrink)

Some recent studies have highlighted a link between a favorable childhood environment and the strengthening of neuronal resilience against the changes that occur in natural aging neurodegenerative disease. Many works have assessed the factors – both internal and external – that can contribute to delay the phenotype of an ongoing neurodegenerative brain pathology. At the crossroads of genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors, these relationships are unified by the concept of cognitive reserve (CR). This review focuses on the protective effects (...) of maintaining this CR through the cognitive aging process, and emphasizes the most essential time in life for the development and strengthening of this CR. The in-depth study of this research shows that early stimulation with regard to social and sensory interactions, contributes to the proper development of cognitive, affective and psychosocial capacities. Childhood thus appears to be the most active phase in the development of CR, and as such we hypothesize that this constitutes the first essential period of primary prevention of pathological aging and loss of cognitive capacities. If this hypothesis is correct, early stimulation of the environment would therefore be considered as a true primary prevention and a public health issue. The earlier identification of neurodevelopmental disorders, which can affect personal and professional development across the lifespan, could therefore have longer-term impacts and provide better protection against aging. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Free Will and the Rebel Angels in Medieval Philosophy by Tobias HoffmannNicholas OgleFree Will and the Rebel Angels in Medieval Philosophy by Tobias Hoffmann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), xiv + 292 pp.Modern readers are often perplexed by the frequency and rigor with which angels are discussed in medieval philosophical texts. To the untrained eye, it may seem as if debates concerning the various properties and abilities of (...) purely spiritual beings are the epitome of Scholastic extravagance, which can be safely disregarded—if not outright ridiculed—as a fanciful diversion from more essential philosophical concerns. The truth, of course, is that angelological reflection gave rise to some of the most original philosophical ideas of the Middle Ages, from Anselm's two affectiones of the will to Aquinas's "real distinction" between essence and existence. Far from being an idiosyncratic theological addendum to an already complete philosophical system, consideration of the angelic nature was in fact a central component of medieval philosophy, without which certain crucial metaphysical and psychological insights might not have occurred. This often-neglected truth is given detailed expression in Tobias Hoffmann's Free Will and the Rebel Angels in Medieval Philosophy, which explores how philosophical investigation into the fall of the angels—that is, the hypothesis of an evil choice made by rational beings under optimal psychological conditions—helped bring about significant advances in medieval debates about free will. Focusing on the century immediately following the reception of Aristotle's action theory in the Latin West (from roughly the 1220s to the 1320s), Hoffmann examines how theological claims regarding angelic sin influenced medieval thinkers as they sought to reconcile the intellectualism of Aristotelian moral psychology with their understanding of free will as the power to choose between alternatives.This period is particularly deserving of study, Hoffmann argues, because it was then that the existence of free will first began to be "investigated within a philosophical account of action," rather than merely asserted on theological grounds as a necessary corollary of the doctrines of grace and sin (1). Consequently, theological anthropology took what Hoffmann calls a "psychological turn," with theologians newly determined to explain rational agency in terms of the interaction between different powers of the soul. In Hoffmann's estimation, the subsequent debates over the respective roles of intellect and will in the process of decision-making, as well as the relation between faulty cognition and voluntary wrongdoing, gave rise to some of the most innovative theories of free will in the later Middle Ages—including not only those of celebrated thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus, but also those of lesser-known luminaries such as [End Page 388] John of Pouilly and Peter Auriol. Although the concerns that motivated these debates were primarily anthropological, having to do with specifically human psychological processes, Hoffmann's study foregrounds the role that the angels played in the unfolding of various controversies. Comparing medieval angelological discussion to the thought experiments commonly employed by contemporary philosophers, Hoffmann argues that angels proved significant because they provided a subject matter in which rational freedom could be considered in a pure and ideal form, abstracted from any material constraints (3). While the angelic nature was certainly regarded as worthy of study in its own right, it was also often viewed as an opportunity to explore the nature of cognition and volition simpliciter, in relation to which the distinctiveness of human psychology could be better understood.The book is divided into three parts, each of which traces the historical development of a distinct topic related to the free will debate. In the first part, Hoffmann presents a lucid account of the various ways that medieval thinkers employed Aristotelian ideas—including not only the essentials of his action theory, but also metaphysical doctrines such as the distinction between active and passive powers—as they sought to explain the psychological origins of free will. Comprising over half the text, these chapters provide a comprehensive overview of the free will debate from its origins in the writings of Anselm of Canterbury to its culmination in the proto-modern theorizing of William of Ockham, including a thorough discussion of the controversies... (shrink)

Nursing scholars have called for nursing approaches with children that ensure the promotion of their childhood, contesting dominant adult-based approaches that are adapted for practice with children. Although the nursing literature includes many important advances in the promotion of child-centered approaches, there are still significant gaps in fully recognizing the complexities of childhood within nursing. Within this paper, I (a) outline some key advances in nursing approaches with children, sometimes referred to as “Children's Nursing” (shifting away from “Pediatric (...) Nursing” conceptions that may be focused more on diseases than childhood); (b) highlight key gaps in current conceptions of Children's Nursing, namely the inadequate integration of work from the interdisciplinary field of Childhood Studies which challenges dominant age-based developmental models which discount children's voices and experiences as “immature”; and (c) propose a Childhood Ethics-based framework that bridges advances in Children's Nursing with those within Childhood Studies, which I refer to as the VOICE Children's Nursing Framework. The latter is rooted in the recognition of (a) children as active agents with capacities and interests in participating in discussions and decisions that affect them, and (b) best interests as the foundational basis for determining the nursing care required by a child which should be defined in an individualized manner, informed by a child's expressed aspirations and concerns. This Framework integrates biological, relational, and ethical dimensions of children's wellbeing and draws on hermeneutic approaches for eliciting and interpreting children's agential expressions, which involves continuous part/whole shifting to meticulously discern what is meaningful within a situation. The Framework is operationalized for clinical practice through the use of orienting questions, which is demonstrated through discussion of a clinical exemplar. The paper closes with proposed future directions for Children's Nursing development in practice, education, and research. (shrink)

We examine the notion of inquiry and argue that philosophic inquiry is a transcendental activity. Activities, viewed as conforming to intelligible canons, applying to appropriate contexts, and directed to specifiable ends, are contrasted with their empirical descriptions. Inquiry, characterized as an internalized, continuous activity directed to an intrinsic end, and fundamentally presupposed by other activities, is considered at the levels of (1) science, (2) philosophy and (3) transcendental philosophy. We argue that (2) is a transcendental activity which (...) determines non-empirical concepts and is presupposed by (1). Alternative philosophic frameworks are grounded on hypothetical canons conceived by intelligence itself, which imply interpretations of objectivity and universality claiming validity for the community of inquirers, but they can always be rejected. We consider the possibility of categorical canons operating as second-order rules necessarily presupposed for the formulation of alternative philosophic frameworks, and (3) would be the activity of identifying, justifying and applying such transcendental canons of inquiry in general. Finally, we suggest that the only possible justification of such categorical canons would be a kind of ontological proof. Thus, a given philosophic approach reflects the transcendental activity of determining non-empirical concepts through the implementation of its fundamental regulative norms; but transcendental philosophy would determine the concept of philosophy itself through implementation of the categorical canons of inquiry in the construction of philosophic systems. (shrink)

The concept of “interactivity” has routinely been used to differentiate older analogue media and newer digital media. In this usage, interactivity has come to be defined as primarily a physical behavior from the person, as dictated by the media product, which has technological and/or content features that enable, promote, and require specific types and amounts of such activity. However, physical behaviors are only part of the processes involved in engaging with a media product. These also involve cognitive, affective (...) and interpretive behaviors. Additionally, what are considered the most important behaviors may vary in any given media reception situation. This paper reports on a study that considered interactivity as involving interpretive and physical behaviors together. In interviews about people's engaging with new and old media products, the processes of interactivity were mapped for their interconnected components. The results help illustrate the complexity of the concept. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Character of Claus Christmas Crowd Civic Claus Symbol of Supremacy? Common Claus.