This chapter contains sections titled: Learning Difference Against Ignoring Difference I Am Because We Are and We Are Because I Am Practicing Just Parenting Teaching Alienation? Notes.

On 22 July, 2011, we were confronted with the horror of the actions of Anders Behring Breivik. The instant reaction, as we have seen with similar incidents in the past—such as the Oklahoma City bombings—was to attempt to explain the incident. Whether the reasons given were true or not were irrelevant: the fact that there was a reason was better than if there were none. We should not dismiss those that continue to cling on to the initial claims (...) of a wider Jihadist plot behind the actions of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols as Islamophobes (or merely lacking common sense): for, it is often easier to rely on reason—no matter how fictional—than not to have anything to cling on at all. In many ways, it is even better if the reason is fictional: for, if grounded in a certain fact, or reality, it can then go away. However, if it is in the realm of the imaginary, it is then always already metaphorical: thus, can be applied to any and every situation. And it is this, if we echo Friedrich Nietzsche, that gives us our “metaphysical comfort”; that we can know what is going on. This is why conspiracy theories are so popular: underlying them is the logic that someone—no matter how implausible—is in control of the situation. One would rather believe that all acts of terror stemmed from Osama bin Laden (and the narrative worked even better when he was in a ‘cave in Afghanistan’) than if they were the actions, and decisions, of singular individuals. For, if there is a head organizing everything, it can be cut off; there is no controlling a mass of singularities. As Jean Baudrillard continues to teach us, the term ‘mass’ is not a concept. It is a leitmotif of political demagogy, a soft, sticky, lumpen-analytical notion. A good sociology would attempt to surpass it with ‘more subtle’ categories: socio-professional ones, categories of class, cultural status, etc. This is wrong: it is by prowling around these soft and acritical notions (like ‘mana’ once was) that one can go further than intelligent critical sociology. Besides, it will be noticed retrospectively that the concepts ‘class’, ‘social relations’, ‘power’, ‘status’, ‘institution’, and ‘social’ itself—all these too-explicit concepts which are the glory of the legitimate sciences—but also only ever been muddled notions themselves, but notions upon which agreement has nevertheless been reached for mysterious ends: those of preserving a certain code of analysis. To want to specify the term ‘mass’ is a mistake—it is to provide meaning for that which has none.1 And it is this lack of meaning—this nothingness of not only the mass, but our inability to know in general—that truly scares us. For, if we are never able to legitimately make a generalizing statement, this suggests that we can never actually posit beyond a singular, situational, moment. Hence, we can never claim to know anyone: at best, we can only catch momentary glimpses. It is for this very reason that the insanity plea Breivik’s lawyer will attempt is the one that horrifies us the most. For, if Breivik is insane, this foregrounds our inability to understand, know. And as Aristotle has taught us, it is more important that something is plausible than if something were probable—in this context, we would rather have Breivik as a calculating mass murderer than someone who was completely out of his mind. This is especially ironic in the light of the fact that none of us would say that we have any similarity with Breivik. If that were so, the declaration that he was mad should be no more than a logical consequence. However, we also want Breivik to be accountable for his actions. And in order for that to be so, we need him to be of sound mind. But if that were true, we can then no longer distinguish ourselves from him. And it is precisely this that scares us. For, we are horrified not when there are abnormalities to our way of life. There are usually two different reactions to this—either oppose and destroy it; or subsume it under the dominant logic. We see this most clearly in reactions to immigration: there are either calls for immigrants to ‘pack up and leave’ or pseudo-liberal notions of ‘we are all alike’. Both of which are merely version of “all men are brothers”—the brutal translation of which is that you are my brother if you live the same way as me; otherwise not only are you not my brother, you are also potentially not part of mankind (you might as well be, to echo Giorgio Agamben, bare life ). This is played out in our age of what is commonly termed post-political bio-politics —an instance of horribly awkward theoretical jargon that Slavoj Žižek channeling Agamben unpacks rather elegantly: “ post-politics is a politics which claims to leave behind old ideological struggles and, instead, focus[es] on expert management and administration, while bio-politics designates the regulation of the security and welfare of human lives as its primary goal.”2 Žižek continues: Post-political bio-politics also has two aspects which cannot but appear to belong to two opposite ideological spaces: that of the reduction of humans to ‘bare life,’ to Homo sacer , that so-called sacred being who is the object of expert caretaking knowledge, but is excluded, like prisoners at Guantanamo or Holocaust victims, from all rights; and that of respect for the vulnerable Other brought to an extreme through an attitude of narcissistic subjectivity which experiences the self as vulnerable, constantly exposed to a multitude of potential harassments [….] What these two poles share is precisely the underlying refusal of any higher causes, the notion that the ultimate goal of our lives is life itself. That is why there is no contradiction between the respect for the vulnerable Other and […] the extreme expression of treating individuals as Homini sacer .3 This is why the ones that are harshest towards new immigrants are the recently naturalized citizens of any country. For, if there is no longer any “ideological struggle” and all life is reduced to mere automaton-living, there is the realization that we are all the same—not in a tree-hugging hippie sense—but that the immigrant is the same as us precisely because we are all immigrants. And since all nations, and by extension peoples in a nation (especially those who believe in the notion of nationality, and national identity), have to find some manner, no matter from where or what it is, to distinguish themselves from those around them, the other (in spite, and especially in the light, of its absence) is the most crucial aspect of the discourse of nationality. More precisely, in the interests of what Baudrillard calls “preserving a certain code of analysis” (nationality in this case), what has to be maintained is the absolute otherness of the other. Very rarely is Boris Johnson right: “it is not enough to say he is mad. Anders Breivik is patently mad.”4 However, much like Breivik in his manifesto, he should have stopped whilst he was ahead. By attempting to diagnose Breivik—“the fundamental reasons for their callous behavior lie deep in their own sense of rejection and alienation. It is the ideology that gives them the ostensible cause … that gives them an excuse to dramatize the resentment … and to kill.”—Johnson falls into the same trap that he accuses others of: “to try to advance any other explanation for their actions … is simply to play their self-important game.” More crucially, and this is the point that Johnson completely misses, attempting to rationalize Breivik’s actions—to rehabilitate reason—is a desperate attempt at maintaining his otherness. In fact, we’ll end up going one step further, insist on Breivik’s sanity, put him on the stand, and hope that he will display such a difference from all of us that we can rest safe that we are unlike him and his kind. That, in itself, is a dangerous game to play. One should not forget that the turning point in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is in the central part of her novel where she lets the monster speak. At that moment, the monster moves from an ‘it’ to a fully subjectivized person; with his own stories, historicities, emotions, and so on. In Slavoj Žižek’s reading of Frankenstein , this is the moment where “the ultimate criminal is thus allowed to present himself as the ultimate victim. The monstrous murderer reveals himself to be a deeply hurt and desperate individual, yearning for company and love.”5 But, in the case of Breivik, this goes beyond just a risk of us feeling for him: for, no right-minded person should ever deny another the opportunity to put forth her or his own case. The problem lies with us trying to deny the madness of Breivik’s act by putting him back under reason. The problem is in our inability to differentiate the act from the person; the singular from the universal.6 In our desperation to preserve the notion that we are rational beings incapable of becoming monsters, we’ve had to deny the meaninglessness—in the strict sense of it lying outside of reason—of Breivik’ act; we’ve had to “provide meaning where there is none.” For, if this act were a moment of madness—a moment that comes from elsewhere—we cannot say that it will not descend upon us one day. If Breivik’s actions were that of a sane person, one who is in control of his being, his self, we can then locate the otherness in his being. More importantly, this would allow us to distinguish ourselves from that said being. Breivik’s sanity is the only thing that allows us to say that ‘this act of terror is borne out of one with an ultra-right ideology’; and ‘since I am not of that ideology, I would never do such a thing’. By doing that, we attempt to protect ourselves by claiming that people who share Breivik’s ideology are foreign to us, other to us. However, if Breivik’s act was a moment of insanity, his otherness is no longer locatable: and the notion of ‘us and them’ shifts from a geographical, physical, religious, or cultural notion, to one in the realm of ideas. And this is what truly scares us. For, if what is foreign is not phenomenological, then it cannot be seen, detected, sensed. Anders Behring Breivik, Timothy McVeigh, and Terry Nichols, terrify us not merely for the fact that they were white in a white society, but more pertinently that their skin color did not matter: we would not be able to spot them even if they were blue, even if they were right next to us, even if we had known them all our lives. Even as we are grappling with holding Breivik accountable by declaring him of sound mind, what truly terrifies us is that deep down we know that Breivik’s act is a moment of madness; beyond all comprehensibility. And this means that we would not be able to spot the idea; even if it were in our heads at this very moment. We have gone to lengths to rehabilitate Breivik, McVeigh, Nichols, and such perpetrators of massive incomprehensible violence, in order to preserve our difference from them. What we have really been trying to deny is the fact that everyone, at any given moment, could have a moment of madness. And this is the true radicality of Mary Shelley: in allowing us to momentarily enter the head of the monster, she shows us not just the fact that he is like any one of us, but that any one of us could, in the right (or wrong) circumstance, be like him. Perhaps here, there is a lesson to be learned from Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street . The most dangerous thing that one could do on Elm Street was to mention Freddy’s name—once you had knowledge of him, you were open to the possibility of a visit during your dreams. This suggests that Freddy is a combination of externalities (after all, when you die, he survives) and your self (if you have never heard of him, he cannot come for you). In this sense, Freddy would be the manifestation par excellence of what Avital Ronell calls a “killer text”—it is one’s relationality with the text (and the ideas, notions, in the said text) that opens oneself to it, to the lessons of the text, to being changed, affected, even to the dangers of the text. After all, one should never forget Plato’s warning that ideas can corrupt, can be perilous. To compound matters, as Ronell reminds us, “the connection to the other is a reading—not an interpretation, assimilation, or even a hermeneutic understanding, but a reading.”7 Thus, in attempting to differentiate ourselves from Breivik by concocting some reason(s) why we are not like him, we have done nothing but read him, open a connection to him. *** Bang bang, he shot me down Bang bang, I hit the ground Bang bang, that awful sound Bang bang, my baby shot me down. “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” Sonny Bono, 1966. This is the part that we all know and remember. Whilst never quite remembering that this is a song that is not so much about violence, love, but about remembering. For, after the bridge comes the accusatory stanza: “Now he's gone, I don't know why/ And till this day, sometimes I cry/ He didn't even say goodbye/ He didn't take the time to lie.” Bang Bang is a game that the two lovers used to play; and all she has now is the memory of the game to remember him by. And the only reason she has to recall this game is: he never provided her a reason for his leaving, his death. Not that she will, can, ever get that satisfactory answer. This is precisely the game we are playing with Anders Behring Breivik. Even though he has left a 1500 page manifesto, even though we will allow him to use the court-room as his platform, we will continue screaming at him “tell me why …” For, what we want him to say is that we are not like him: what we really want him to do is, “take the time to lie …” Perhaps here, we should allow the echo of the infans to resound in baby . As Christopher Fynsk reminds us, the infans is one that is pre-language, pre-knowing, pre-understanding: it is the very finitude, and exteriority, of relationality itself.8 And thus, it is a position of openness to the fullness of possibility—and nothing else. This would be, in Ronell’s terms, a “connection to the other” that knows nothing other than the fact that it is a connection. The true horror of 22 July, 2011, is the fact that it is not Anders Behring Breivik who is mad, but the act itself that is. And this is precisely why only “my baby” that could have “shot me down.” For, it is an act that is from beyond, a sheer act of madness that—as Plato warns us—is whispered into our ears (and can so easily be mistaken for inspiration, and even wisdom), an act that can both seize, and cease, us at the same time. And what can this utter openness to an other, the other, be but a moment of love, a true ‘falling in love’. At the moment of whispering, nothing can be known as we are babies as our baby shoots us down …. Hence, all attempts at analyzing this event (including this one) are not only futile, but border on the farcical. The real tragedy is that we forget that all of us have the possibility of becoming Breivik. NOTES Jean Baudrillard. In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities . Trans. Paul Foss, John Johnston, Paul Patton, & Andrew Berardini. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2007. p. 37. Slavoj Žižek. Violence: Six Sideway Reflections . London: Profile Books, 2009. p. 34 Ibid: 35-36. Boris Johnson. “ Anders Breivik: There is nothing to study in the mind of Norway’s mass killer .” The Telegraph . (25 July, 2011): Slavoj Žižek. Violence: Six Sideway Reflections . London: Profile Books, 2009. p.39. What is killing us is the notion that Breivik’s act is beyond reason, beyond knowing, outside understanding itself. This is why Boris Johnson’s plea was for us to ignore Breivik as a madman. But to do so, Johnson conflates the notion of the act and the person; the singular and the universal. This is exactly the same gesture as insisting on his sanity: the ‘madman’ is merely the absolute other, one that we are not. Avital Ronell. The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech . Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989: 380. Christopher Fynsk. Infant Figures: The Death of the Infans and Other Scenes of Origin . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000.  . (shrink)

Don't tell terrible stories—everyone here has enough of their own. Everyone here has a whole bloody sack of terrible stories, and at the bottom of the sack is a hammer the narrator uses to pound you on the skull the instant you dare not believe your ears. Or to pound you when you do believe. Not long ago I saw a tomboyish girl on Khreshchatyk Street demand money of an elderly woman, threatening to bite her and infect her with (...) syphilis. Don't stroll through Volodymyr Hill Park, don't stroll around the botanical garden, and especially don't stroll on Kontraktova Square. Don't stroll anywhere. Don't go to the pavilion with the Golgotha panorama near St. Alexander's Church. Not even the twelve-meter-tall crucified Christ will save you. Don't go outside when it's dark and people turn into shadows a shade darker than dark. Also don't go where you can be seen from far away. Not to imply that people used to be like a bunch of lilies, but now they stink like a cellar of cabbage.The city, which earlier might have had some fun, is now going crazy. It's like a fish in warm water: it doesn't react to anything, swims slowly like it doesn't care if it swallows a hook or not. The excitement and exaltation pass into oppression, just as our necks have sunk into our shoulders, our shoulders into our lumbars, our lumbars into our nether regions. The holiday turns into a funeral, the parades into explosions, depression into mania. Winter passes into summer, people turn into beasts, the hours into ages, and the ages into hours. It's worth simply walking around the city to see a soldier from an unknown army taking a piss near the opera. Farther on is a row of identical old widows selling ball gowns and candelabra. Then there are the aristocrats and manufacturers who throw so much at the prostitutes that they'll soon be richer than their wives.I returned late through the Kyryliv Wood, not heeding all the warnings that I myself have given here. It really is dangerous—the place is famous for it. There's a madhouse nearby, caves where criminals and the sick can hide out. Also, once upon a time, as they say in fairy tales, the great dragon Zmei Gorynich lived here beside the Puchai River. The stench in these places drives away the most committed misanthropes and even one type of philanthrope—that is, perverts. It sounds dumb, but the stench is cleansing. I don't know where it comes from. After the operating theaters and the rooms with amputees, the stench no longer repelled or attracted me; it just was. And this was a great place to think. As I walked, I considered an incident with our patient.The patient, a respectable individual whose name carries too much weight for me to state it directly, one day began to assault people. He nearly strangled a merchant who he believed asked too much for a beaver coat. He likewise wanted to kill his business partner when he didn't say hello loudly enough. But the worst was, he lost all shame of his own nakedness. At first it was the police who took care of it. When our future patient slipped off his pants and undergarments, he was taken to Kyrylivska, which has had means for dealing with such cases dating back to the day when unhinged Cossacks and composers from Kyiv Mohyla Academy were taken there.During the examination we determined that the patient was experiencing a severe breakdown. His wife added that lately, more than once, he had allowed himself strong words in front of the children and often suffered from ennui. Furthermore, she said, the patient had been undergoing treatment for “the French disease” for some years—which was, obviously, where we needed to start.“Syphilis!” Skorsky spat out the matchstick he was chewing on. He was a specialist on the psychological aspects of diseases related to the venereal. “Tertiary syphilis! When poorly treated, over time ‘the French disease’ can destroy the central nervous system. Hence the patient's chicanery. Such theater!”Skorsky and I had not spoken since the incident at Bilinsky's. Meanwhile, something significant had happened to him. The most boring person on earth, Skorsky had simply caught fire. He said hello and kibitzed. I even heard the doctor got drunk alone in his office, then wandered through the forest. Could he be using narcotic substances?“Cocaine!” was the doctor's second proclamation. It was his favorite treatment for the psychological complications of syphilis. Skorsky himself never took what he called “the universal drug”—good for alcoholism and toothaches, neuroses and morphine dependency—though he had read in an article by a respectable Viennese physician, who used cocaine as a panacea, that it was not addictive. That doctor subsequently recanted, but Skorsky paid no attention. He believed the retraction was made under pressure from pharmacologists who had no incentive to cease production of the medications that cocaine might supplant. Their representatives either paid or threatened the Viennese to repent.As the patient was escorted to his room, he assaulted the orderly, Alevtyna. They tried pulling him off her, but, though he released his fingers from her neck, he buried his teeth in her leg. The poor orderly, who had not until then been attacked by a psychotic, nearly died of fear. Later, panic set in over Skorsky's diagnosis. He told her about the consequences of syphilis: grotesque patterns on one's face due to infection of the skin, mucous membranes, cartilage, and bones. He went on about the devastation to the central nervous system, which they had just observed in real life: “The face starts to look like lace some mangy dogs fought over before rolling in the mud.”Alevtyna, who had not yet regained her faculty of speech, straightened up. Ignoring the slavering male orderlies, she bared her leg to get a better look at the wound. She then ran down the hall and out into the garden, where she fell on the ground to rip up grass and small bunches of daisies. Alevtyna ate them along with the soil in their roots.“Minor hysteria. She needs fifteen milligrams of cocaine.”Skorsky took a snuff box out of his pocket and scooped up some white powder with a toothpick made from a goose feather. He gave the order to close Alevtyna's mouth and one of her nostrils, forcing her to snort the medication.We fretted over her so long that evening fell. I decided to walk down, along the ravine, behind the church.It was unlikely there were any large beasts there, but something was rustling. The pits and mounds, ravines, paths, graves of witches whose living sisters flew in the treetops from time to time, the whispers of the forest spirits, the spirits of the nutcases who died in the hospital, the spirits of the monks from the St. Cyril Monastery, Zmei Gorynich and the bogatyrs who wanted to defeat him. The city would be calmer without this forest. I saw the gaps between the trees and went off in the direction of the tram tracks.As I was coming out of the forest, there was a patch of Amanita muscaria that had been trampled into porridge. A bit farther on, the body of Professor Bilinsky lay killed in the blackberry bushes. The way he was lying it looked as though he had not struggled before death. I quickly examined his body but saw nothing out of the ordinary. There were no wounds, no dirt under the fingernails. Animals had not yet smelled the carrion, but swarms of various insects covered him. Oh, why did I have to find the putrid body?The best thing would be to take the tram to his house to inform his relatives. The doors closed, and I noticed my own calm. This death had not evoked any emotions in me other than a feeling of responsibility, the need to tell the family. But also—some alarm at the thought of who the murderer could be. I knew that it was murder.“Your nose is bleeding.” A woman as round as an onion, carrying two baskets full of strawberries, offered me an ironed and starched handkerchief.“Have I dirtied my shirt?”“No, it's as neat as a pin. It's just your nose that's dirty. Wipe it now before you spray blood on my strawberries.”“No one will see the red on red.”“Ah, but it's salty!”“You know why it's not sweet? We'd drink it like syrup.”“Those with Christ in their heart do not talk that way.”“Are your strawberries expensive?”“Why? What?”“I'm checking to see if you have God in your heart.”“Child, if you knew how I have to work for this berry! I have to weed it a hundred times. In a week, the quitch grass grows as high as a horse. And I water it with water I carry from the stream, it kills my arms... ”“How much are the berries?”“They're not for sale. Anyway, soon money won't mean a thing. Soon all money, all these papers made from the skins of sinners on their satanic presses will be annulled. What matters is how we treat each other.”“So if I try your strawberries for free, my ‘thank you’ will be enough?”“Hands off!” she said and thwacked my fingers.I heard loud laughter behind me—same laughter as from the café near the Continental. There was no one sitting near Alina. (This is what fate looks like, remember.) Without asking, I sat next to her, away from the old lady.“Excuse me, but the night before last didn't you, yes, didn't you intrude on my privacy?” She started right away.“I saw it a little differently. Who was that young man with the mustache who paid me for you?”“Are you checking to see if you can flirt?”The tram stopped. People got on and off.“Are you coming back from the hospital?” she asked. “Don't be shocked. My uncle works there. He's told me all about you.”“An uncle by the name of Skorsky?”(Remember: this is what fate looks like.)“Yes. Skorsky's been strange recently—says things that make me wonder if he hasn't lost his mind. Have you noticed anything?”“I don't know.”“You know perfectly well.”“Where are you going?” I tried to change the subject.“I have to send something to my theater friends in Odesa. By the way, they'll be putting on Oedipus Rex soon in Kyiv—in Ukrainian.”“Greek tragedy in Ukrainian! That's a first.”“Exactly. The troupe is rehearsing now in Odesa. The theater where they will perform this fall is being remodeled.”“Wait. Now I remember where I've seen you before—it was at a performance! Vynnychenko's Black Panther and White Bear, at the Bergonier on Fundukleivska.“The same director is doing the Oedipus. He's my friend.”“He's your friend in what sense?”“Again with that tired subject. By the way, I've been thinking about you.”“And I about you.”“That's good. I was thinking not about you, to be precise, but about that elevator you invited me on.”“Who was that man with you?”“Like a broken record! Even if he had been my fiancé, I'm not bought or inherited. I'm not a brooch or a hundred acres of land, and I'm not a house in Kaniv!... Who was with you when you saw Black Panther?“Ah, so.”“Answer!”“That was my mother. She looks very young. She is coming to Kyiv the day after tomorrow. I can introduce you.”“Oh, this is my stop.”I looked out the window and realized that I had long since passed the stop for Bilinsky's.“Can we see each other again?”“We can. But you have only one chance.”Alina the anarchist wrote something on a scrap of paper and handed it to me.Morning, not morning but a thick porridge (I hate porridge). Dew, thick spit, crushed fruits, urine, all on the sparkling cobblestones. The sun, just barely having made its appearance, is already scorching. The human masses scurry and grumble like poorly digested food inside a stomach.I walked diagonally across St. Sofia's Square, then along the perimeter, then one edge, then again diagonally across. I went underground. The basement café of the Continental Hotel was practically empty. I again asked the server to bring the cloth with the embroidered portrait, but I couldn't remember the musician's last name, only that it ended with -sky. The server said that -sky was currently in the southern cities of Yalta and Odesa. I added that Kurbas, the director, Alina's friend, was also in Odesa, rehearsing Oedipus Rex, and that he'd previously put on Black Panther.I was bored, so I walked along Khreshchatyk and then headed down, calling to mind all the Kyiv churches of Podil: there's Birth of Christ, St. Nicholas on the Shore, Intercession, Pyrohoshcha, Holy Presentation, St. Dymytrii Rostovsky, St. Illia's. And also the Epiphany Brotherhood Monastery, Ascension Convent, and St. Katherine's, all these whipped-cream churches on the waffles of our streets. A few of them reminded me of themselves by appearing suddenly out of nowhere.The smells on Kontraktova Plaza where commerce buzzed were like multicolored light bulbs turning on one after another. Here you could catch the aroma of Balabukha jam, which blended with the next smell, English shoe polish at the Raiskys’ shop. Then the crunchy-smelling cabbage from old women standing in a row like herons and spitting out the shells of sunflower seeds. Farther on, the stench of a good-sized rat that crawled under Mrs. Shevchuk's shop where she sells broadcloth. Oh, she can't scream: no, she'll quietly dig that rat out herself so as to not scare off her clients.I bought a paper and two pairs of underwear. I asked two laughing young chambermaids who were secretly puffing in a grape-filled yard for a smoke. I wandered around Podil until evening when I came across a sawmill near the Dnipro that surprisingly smelled pleasantly of mazut fuel oil. The weather was dry, yet in the middle of the road was an enormous puddle, a deep dark black. A forty-year-old woman in a pale pink dress stood near it. The theatricality of it all provoked me to pose her a question,“Ma'am, what should I do?”But she paid me no attention. I shouted,“What should I do?”“What to do, what to do?” she said in Polish. “Jump in the water and swim so far away that you cannot return.”I quickly crossed a section of the forest. The wind brought a mixture of unpleasant air, like a stinky handkerchief held under one's nose. Passing the trees, I saw light in the spaces between them and exited at the hospital.Outside the windows, two orderlies lay in chairs with their heads thrown back. Two others—fools—ran around the yard in different directions, peering out at... something. The lights on the first floor of the hospital were on, and the staff milled about.“You're just in time!” said Ivan, a tall, young orderly.“For what?”“Your patient ran away! We went into his room and he wasn't there.”“What patient?”“The one who bit Alevtyna,” said Danylo, the other orderly, short and middle-aged.“That's Skorsky's patient, not mine.”I had no intention of helping them. This was all history—like my family, Kyiv, and my previous life. I had no intention of thinking about it. I wanted to go to my office, pack up my field surgery kit, and get out. So what? Their psychotic syphilitic ran away—it happened.Of course, that patient could have something to do with Bilinsky's murder. But that was no longer my problem.“What a strange coincidence!” the doctor on duty said. “Comrade doctor, the other one responsible for this patient was just here.”“And where is he now?”“He took off toward the church to look for the patient.”“Didn't the patient escape earlier?”“Don't know.”“How do you not know? You had better call the police, moron, before he kills someone. And get those sleeping orderlies to look for him.”“They can't... ”“Why not? Should I go wake them?”“They're on morphine.”“And you, I can see, have lost your mind. Go, catch your psycho! If it turns out that he killed Bilinsky—and on your watch—you can't imagine what's in store for you.”I adjusted my homburg and set off in the direction of St. Cyril's, that unwelcoming monolithic cube. I glanced around—what if our escaped syphilitic were to jump out of the bushes and bite or strangle me. I looked around because I wasn't sure of my actions, wasn't sure of my choices. Tripping over a clump of clover, I reached the open doors of the church. I couldn't stop myself from going in.The walls and ceiling were covered with frescoes. There was what used to be an angel rolling up the sky on the southern column of the narthex. But also graffiti: people scratched their names on it so as not to be forgotten—their idea of eternity. Prince Volodymyr the Great compared this activity to the desecration of graves. The vandals paid a fine and were beaten with canes. During the raids of Batu Khan, the church was deserted and cracks appeared all over it. Wild martens and feral dogs sought shelter here; insects swarmed under the ceiling with its red mosaics. Birches grew in its midst. Water seeped in the cracks, the water became ice, the ice widened the cracks, more water seeped in the cracks, becoming more ice that further widened the cracks, the wall split and nearly fell over, and then the wall fell over. Yet the angel is still rolling up the sky... When I reached the exit, I heard a rustling behind me. I turned after I stepped outside: in the depths of the church, like a stick in a pot of tar, stood a man with a large bag thrown over his shoulder and a revolver pointed right at me.“Is that you, Doctor?“Don't move!”“What's... Skorsky, what's with you?”“Don't move, I say!”“What are you doing here?”And finally I understood... Skorsky was himself the psycho! (Really, I had known for a while.)“You are the murderer! I knew it! But—why?”“Shut up.”“It was you. You! The stolen cigarettes, the strange behavior, Bilinsky. If I shout, everybody will come running. They've already called the police!”There was heavy breathing behind me. And then a gun rang out.The city is overgrown with new buildings. They encircle everything that was once on the periphery. Kyiv has become an old lady that can no longer restrain herself in the face of pastries. The city climbs farther. It steps over the swamps, turns the old rivers into a series of lakes; the other bodies of water it drives into canals. The grain that falls from the wild wheat is black. When the sun heats it, the grain melts and trickles into the earth. St. Cyril's stands indestructible. No one spackles the small cracks in its walls with either expensive putty or glues, nor with cheap cement and whitewash. One day a small fox appears in the doorway. It runs inside and along the floor of simple gray tiles. The gods watch from the walls, watch and fall into ruin. The fox runs to the iconostasis. Before it is a time-darkened Virgin Mother and Child in oil on sheets of zinc. The fox runs the metal steps that wind up to the second floor. The fox runs past all the vaults, naves, all the frescoes. A buckthorn seed flies in through a broken window. It will be the first. Soon the buckthorn will grow everywhere. A dumb hare will make its nest in the buckthorn bushes and nightingales will settle in the upper branches to sing until the end of the world. The fox runs between the thick rays that penetrate the windows. It catches one of the rays, squints its eyes, and warms itself in the sun.The shot rang out, but I did not fall. I looked around—and on the church threshold was our syphilis patient bearing a rod. His head lay on the rocks by the doorway.“If only he'd been at the stage of nose deformity! Just imagine: a hole instead of a nose plus a hole from the bullet—like an extra pair of eyes!” Skorsky laughed at the corpse.“We need to call the orderlies.”“They heard the shot. They'll run here on their own. You see, Professor Bilinsky believed it would take two or three years to wrap up this patient's case,” Skorsky told me. “But I took care of it much faster!”“Excuse me, but I'm going crazy in this city. I thought that you were Bilinsky's murderer.”“Just so. Why not? I am Bilinsky's murderer.”“Don't tease. You've changed a lot recently, so... ”“Yes, I've started killing people. You might term such a change significant.”“You have the right to irony.”“I am not being ironic.”“Let's call it sarcasm.”“It's the honest-to-God truth.”“And yes, you have the right to mock me.”“Well then, let's be done. To the horses!”“What horses?”“Alina's waiting!”Alina, her uncle Skorsky, a few others I didn't know, and I rode like the wind that ripped off my homburg and carried it back to Kyiv.“There's a fresco in the choir loft at St. Cyril's where Vrubel painted himself and patients from the hospital as the apostles. When I came across it by accident, I really believed they were saints,” Alina said.“I've never been up there. I've only seen the church from below.”“Remember the way back so you can see it sometime.”“The Puchai River used to flow here. You shouldn't trust the landscape,” Skorsky said, reaching for something, perhaps his bag, just when we left the darkness of the trees and saw the endless steppe ahead of us.We rode all night without stopping. Though no one was chasing us. Though we had nowhere to be. We rode like beasts released from a cage. The promises of the horizon turned what we'd left behind into a cage fit for those from whom freedom had been severed, like an anomaly, at birth.The pre-morning sky looked at first like a sack of turnips—filled with something heavy. But with each verst, the sky became lighter. When it was finally light enough to see clearly, we arrived at a knoll at the foot of a stone wall that from a distance had appeared to be a gigantic piece of halva. The exterior ruins of the castle gave no hint of how it was when all was fine here, when people defended themselves successfully from the nomads’ raids. From far off, the wreckage looked like a natural agglomeration of stones—a rocky elevation, no more: a cluster of cliffs. It would rain a few hundred more times, a few hundred more winds from a few hundred directions would blow on this heap, and it would collapse as though nothing had ever been here.A few stalks of wheat grew from one of the rocks. Someone had probably cast a handful of grain here for some birds that forgot to eat it.“Who could this castle belong to?” I asked Skorsky.“I reckon the Swan Princess,” the doctor rejoined, hoping to sound knowledgeable.From behind one of the piles of gray sandstone emerged a young man in a black reptilian coat and a white papakha as lush, bright, and out of place as a dahlia. His name was Artem. The heat was melting our brains, but he was dressed like that, in rooster fashion, which was popular among the otamans. Artem helped Alina dismount her horse and tried to kiss her on the lips, but she offered him a cheek instead.Had she been racing to see this clown?We entered the yard—the ruins had fashioned an internal space that was more or less protected, at least from strangers’ eyes. It turned out that there were even places where it was possible to hide from the rain, and from there the ruins didn't look half bad.In the center of the court was a table, and on it a wooden bucket with pink gladiolas. How romantic! It all looked like it came from outer space. Where on earth, in the middle of the steppe, far from any village or town, did this table, this simple table, come from? And the gladiolas? The steppe hadn't been plowed in so long that any cultivars would have gone wild, degenerated, dried up completely.A campfire crackled nearby—a little preview of what we would soon do to the houses, villages, and cities. Artem the otaman brought over a cezve from the fire and poured the first portion into a small, copper cup for Alina. He also got out a porcelain cup with images of rosy cherubim—but how...?“Who else would like coffee?”Only Skorsky and I responded. The question excited me, even distracted me from the thought of the kiss I had recently witnessed and the Kyiv I had recently left.“It's obvious who the professors here are; cultured people drink coffee. Are you both doctors?”“Uh-huh.”“For wolves of the steppe, like us, doctors are gold, even more precious than gold. Actually, a Hippocrates like you should eat more, because those in your profession will soon be worth your weight in gold. Work on your figures, both of you.”“Who will take pity on the horses that have to carry us?”“We'll find the horses. And very large doctors can be transported on machine-gun carts. We'll need to seat the otamans near you. Only a fool would shoot at a doctor.”“I think we'll find quite enough fools here.”“With your beard, Doctor, you look like Tsar Nicholas II. But even so you won't be shot. You might even be canonized!”“We've only just arrived and you're going on about executions,” Skorsky grumbled and checked to make sure that he still had his bag.“Apologies, apologies, pardonnez-moi. But you are not merely a doctor. A venereologist! Skorsky, you're a specialist! A venereologist is the most important person in wartime. The most valuable! You are the botanists of war. You can't imagine what varieties of flowers grow here, and these beds have long awaited a proper gardener. Or even just a man with a scythe!”“Bite your tongue,” Alina said. “I don't need to listen to this.”“Yes, yes, of course. Excuse me, my r—. ” He almost said “rose.”We rested all day. We went down to a surprisingly close river overgrown with lilies. We rowed the boats left by fishermen. I talked to Skorsky. He took his bag everywhere, refusing even to swim so he wouldn't have to part with it. I asked him what he had in it, but he said it wasn't my damned business.Alina rowed with the otaman to the middle of the river. They were having a loud discussion. She was waving her hands. The current carried their boat downstream slowly and smoothly. What a nuisance, that current!I tried to meet with Alina one-on-one, but she was avoiding me. In the morning I was confused, by lunch I was sad, and after lunch I got angry.In the evening, I lay on the hot grass and drank another cup (I have no idea where they got such good coffee), which had no effect at all on my sleep. I watched the Perseids. Every year, the Earth passes through the tail of Comet Swift-Tuttle. People can see the meteor shower and make a wish. I wished. I counted forty-seven falling stars. All forty-seven of my wishes were for the same thing.Around the campfire, they were sitting, talking. I saw how he tickled her face with a piece of grass and she brushed him off in annoyance. Then they were screaming at each other. Later they again spoke kindly, after which they again quarreled. My joy grew after each tiny mistake that Artem made. I wanted him to show the worst he was capable of.They were screaming at each other, but all I could hear was beautiful opera singing. The stars fell to the sound of their screaming. The stars blessed my joy.Then this happened: Alina kicked the fire, scattered burnt kindling, and burned some of the grass. Artem grabbed her by the arm, but she broke away from him and ran off to the horses.“Go then! I guarantee you'll get to Katerynoslav and return with your tail between your legs.”“I'm going to Huliai-Pole! To Father Makhno!”I jumped up and ran after her.“Where do you think you're going?” Artem shouted.Really—where was I going? I was going after her: to Huliai-Pole, to Katerynoslav, to Rome, to Washington, to Istanbul, to Montevideo... “Go to sleep,” he said. “Come morning, this coquette will be here, right as rain. We've already been through this show. Tomorrow she'll be right here next to my boot!”... No, she won't.In some sort of shape we entered some town. There were some buildings that were some colors, some trees, some streets, some roads, and some signs. Posts, flustered birds’ nests, echoes, colors, shapes—each of some kind. A wedding procession was coming toward us. If you want to make orange, you need to add yellow to red, and then bam—it's black. If you want to salt the soup, shake in a little, and then bam—two handfuls. You want to say a kind word, and then bam—a punch in the face. I was rocked around like a watermelon on a boat and threw up my breakfast straight into the horse's fluffy mane. Sanko found this hilarious, but I said I'd pulverize him. So Sanko sped ahead.No one knew anything about Alina. The daytime sky was like a poorly washed bowl. The sun was a squashed, rotten apricot. The night sky looked like the sole of a boot to me. The moon was a dirty cheap copper coin that had gotten stuck to the sole. Everything seemed spoiled to me, irrelevant, unnecessary. Without her, this journey was a waste of time.“You'd better stay away from everyone,” Artem said. “You'll infect us with your pining, and pining is worse than the clap.”The wedding procession was before us. The young couple, still utter children, walked so calmly it was as if they didn't see us. As if we were made of a light breeze—our bodies, clothes, our horses and their iron shoes—of the lightest gasses. As if we were visible only to ourselves and the coal-black dog that barked, panting and gasping.The wedding was headed straight for us. We were in the middle of the road, and so were they. We approached each other slowly, a wave going toward a wave. Some ten meters before their indifferent faces, I noticed the color of the bride's eyes. And the coral-colored tulips that fell on the road before her. Round goose eggs on meaty stems, the flowers were falling and falling before her. The bride's eyes were almond shaped.“Hey there,” Artem shouted at me. “Wake up!”I came to and saw the whole village, everyone there, not realizing my group had turned left onto a side street away from the procession. The tulips disappeared—where'd they get tulips in the fall? I was sitting alone on my horse in the middle of the road, and the entire wedding procession came to a stop. I moved to the side, and the throng marched on, cutting off our escape route. We rode a few more meters and came across the synagogue.“You know what, you're right,” said the otaman.“Who is?”“Oleksii is the only one here who's right.”“About what?”Artem turned his horse and raced back. Everyone stood still while he ran his horse into the crowd and began firing his revolver. People scattered in all directions. Artem trotted, cackling like an imbecile. The horse kicked an old guy in the mouth. The man fell, spitting out his gold teeth. We rode up to the commotion and formed ranks, but none of us wanted to join the otaman.The bride stopped in the middle of the street. On both sides were buildings and trees, as well as dust, sky, and sun. She stood still, beautiful, as if nothing had happened. Then she adjusted her garland and walked calmly on.“Well, should we get some sugar now?” Artem laughed, looking at the bride, and off he went toward the sugar factory.It was then I noticed that all of the houses had shutters—fuchsia, blue, ocher—and that all the shutters were closed.We flew toward the dirty building, whistling and shouting. If there had been aesthetes among the otamans, they would certainly have razed the abomination in this field after seizing it. They would have spread soil on top and sown buckwheat. Long live buckwheat!, that wonderful crop. Like hunting dogs hot on the trail, we raced to our defenseless victim, with the baying of hundreds of hounds behind us. The field shook beneath us. We became an artist's canvas, evolving from Realism to Romanticism, Romanticism to Expressionism, Expressionism to Suprematism. If we had been painted in black and white, we would have been splotches (until the ink ran, annihilating all remaining patches of white).Two men stood near the gate—unarmed and undressed, in nothing but their undershirts and boots. Our fervor, our kinship with the elements, our entirety, were all for naught.“Jesus Christ! What bores!” Artem exclaimed. “How boring you are!”“Maybe boring for us, but fireworks for them,” Sanko said, dismounting his horse.“The fear of death engenders creativity,” our otaman—a distinguished philosopher of the early twentieth century, that demonic breed—prophesied.He went on, “Excuse me, but with all due respect, we are not going to search you. Just show us right away where the money is. Why are there so few of you? Don't say there's not much money. I want piles and piles of money! If you don't show it to us, we'll print our own on your skin. Believe me, we will.”We entered the factory grounds. There were no workers, only an enormous mountain of sugar beets that looked like a pile of coal from a distance and a pile of dead rats from up close.“So, did you have a good year?” Artem asked a man in an undershirt.“Not really—too dry.”“Nah, that's fine. You wouldn't have been able to gather most of the harvest this year anyway. There's a fire burning across all of Ukraine, all of Russia. The whole world!”While Artem tossed thoughts like well-chewed sunflower seeds into the crowd, the two men quietly stepped aside and then ran fast ahead to the factory's main hall. The gigantic door slammed shut. The gate was locked behind us! The windows were smashed! The factory roared from inside like a cumbersome machine starting up. Bullets whirred through every window.“Bastards! It's a trap! Quick, after me!”Still on horseback, Artem bounded over to a vast window, low to the ground, and smashed it mercilessly. He broke the frame and jumped inside on his horse. I and a few others followed. We broke into their lair, threw open the doors, and let the other warriors inside.Iron vats of hot sugar were steaming, pipes were clattering; machinery groaned.“Parasites!” Artem gritted his teeth. “I'll get you. I'll get you red sons of bitches. Painted whores!”At the word “painted,” his horse fell to the ground. Lying prone, Artem continued fighting, but the red soldiers wouldn't let him stand. Fighting nearby, I rode over to assist but did not know where to aim. Artem got up, ran forward, and brought his sword down on the head of the closest soldier, all the way to the middle of his skull, to the bridge of his nose. It was like butchering a pig. Artem thrust the sword into the buttock of another who was fleeing and cut off his leg at the bend in the knee.“I'll cut off every last one of your asses! Cut off your asses!” Artem bellowed.A half hour later, the dead were lying, the captured sitting, and the victors doing anything they pleased.“Skorsky, are there a lot of casualties?” I asked the doctor, whose hour it was. I hoped not, because I was too tired to help him.“Just a few. The dead are already dead, and the wounded are not ours.”Though Skorsky rarely asked my help, and though I'd become an ordinary soldier, the doctor in me was still present in the most unpleasant attribute—knowledge. Others saw an eviscerated man, pieces of dusty flesh smeared with clay, soil, sand, and straw. I saw a perfectly formed kidney hanging perfectly from the rest of its body like a child's mitten from its coat. You could try this death on for size. Wear it like a sanbenito of the Inquisition.Artem counted the money and then lay on the floor alongside the gigantic sugar mountain in the middle of the room. From time to time, the crystals rustled as they fell.“I didn't think you'd be such a fighter!” the otaman said without turning toward me. “I thought you'd be healing us. You'd keep to the rear and we'd hide you like a girl. But here you are, in the vanguard, like a lion!”“I got excited,” I told him, choosing not to react to the “girl” part.“’Cause Alina said there was no sense counting on you to fight.”“Really?”“Does that sting?”“Why would it? I'm a doctor—not everyone is. It requires a brain. Unlike waving a sword.”“Yeah, yeah. I gave her gladiolas. We were lying in the boat near that castle, doing all manner of things, and she told me all about you. How you met.”“You were lying in that boat talking about me?”“It was the day before you left Kyiv. You agreed to go with the anarchists so quickly!”“Were you surprised? Doctors make fast decisions.”“But you probably had great prospects. Your parents are rich, right?”“And who are your parents?”“Probably all your relatives fled abroad—bourgeois. Why did you stay?”“What the hell's your point?”“Alina, by the way, died a while ago. Probably.”“Don't jinx her.”“Listen here,” he said, staring at the ceiling. “And listen good. If you have designs on her—dead or alive—it's best you castrate yourself now.”“After you.”“If I want to kill somebody, you know, I just do it.”At last he looked at me. I was lying on the floor nearby and looking in his direction, sweaty and relaxed, my appearance complemented by my disdain for his opinion, his authority, his stupid hat. His everything.Artem raised his arm above his head, stuck a finger in the sugar mountain, and licked it. We both got up. Had I anticipated this turn of events, I would have readied a gift for him. Artem held his revolver. Under my hand I found a knife the workers used for gathering beets: it was a deliberately sharpened arc they sank into the swollen brassicas. I jumped up and quickly stepped around the sugar mountain.Artem's bullet hit a pane and broke the glass.“Not man enough for hand-to-hand?”The otaman shot again.“You should've challenged me to a duel, you romantic!”Encrusted with white crystals, I charged Artem from the sugar mountain. We fell in, and the sugar stuck in our hair, mustaches, nostrils, armpits.The gang ran in to get us apart, then backed off because it had nothing to do with them. By now the sugar mountain had burst its banks. Of the once perfect pyramid, a deformed mound remained.Wounded, Artem fell on the sugar mound, turning the white red.I stood before the gang sugar-coated and holding a bloody hook. The old otaman was drawing his last breath. Blood trickled from the corner of Artem's mouth and streamed from the left side of his breast.“What's the commotion?” Old Roman had just come in.“Be quiet,” the boys told him. And a good thing they did.“You killed him? You killed the otaman!”“Shut your mouth,” the boys told him.“You... ”I slugged Roman's stinky herring mouth. How did that son of a bitch find pickled herring in a sugar factory? My fist was now bigger and stronger than ever before, a steel anvil that could split nails and shatter memorial plaques. The unfortunate man's jaw twisted like an upper millstone that had gone off track from the lower.“Let's get out of here and go to Makhno's camp,” I gave my first order.We galloped so fast the grass burned beneath us. The birds and bugs had no time to fly out of the way; hooves trampled the burrows of rodents who didn't dare crawl out of their holes for a long time after. We raced like no one had ever raced before.The steppe, that sly fox, pretended to be an innocent fool. The steppe said, “I'm like Adam: I don't even know my own name.” But its grass harbored the tracks of thousands of armies and the heels of Herodotus, the crunch of Trypillia vessels, and the smell of Scythian hemp, Roman coins, clay figures of wolf people, the chevrons of Denikin's army, glass from the Chekists’ ruby stars, traces of uranium from flying saucers. I threatened it: “Steppe, show me your layers, or I will burn you, plow you under, flood you.” But it just replied: “I'm like Adam: I don't yet know my name.”I lost geography as if it were a silver coin. It fell out of my pocket and rolled through the feather grass that blanketed the steppe in white foam. The open space ahead was so endless that the whole world might as well have been steppe. If people ended up here from somewhere else, they would conclude they were on another planet. The coin fell and became an argentum, became one with the ring on the hand of the princess who had one green eye and one blue, with the twisted candlestick at the monastery on the other side of the steppe, with melted ingots. It broke down into simpler elements, simpler and simpler yet. The horse carried me spreading the seeds of northern plants to the south, just as southern riders had once brought flowers and weeds to the north. And then I turned back. Just as I had no geography, I had no time. Every night I fell asleep with the thought that the next day I would again race. Through all spacelessness, all timelessness. I exchanged one horse for another, got on a train, on a boat, traversed forty versts on foot—in rain that brought the river up to the road, in heat that overturned cattle. The earth I walked on became mine. Mine was the water in the lakes and springs, clean water, dirty water, enlightened water, contaminated with oil, stinking of algae, of fish that died in wells, stinking of the memory of atrocities, water as clean as broken bread. The water did not become Alina.I was doing this for her: I got the basturma out from under my saddle, sodden with the horse's sweat, sliced the throat of a rich man whose daughter I had danced with at a ball, climbed into a vat of beet juice and took a sugar bath, carried out the expropriation of the savings banks, wiped the sweat from my face with my shirt—and the cloth turned red; I didn't know from what. If it was someone else's blood, I didn't care; if it was my own, even less.We mostly came across Reds. We scraped them up like old red paint on a door in order to repaint the boards black. Black looked better. Red is tasteless, but black has style. Healthy men died before us of myocardial rupture like bunnies found in the nest. The ones whose hearts were sewn of steel wire envied the deceased. Seizing estates, banks, distilleries, and prisons reminded us of gathering in the harvest. If you're too lazy to pick an apple, you can shake the tree; some of the fruit gets bruised when it falls. We seized buildings like we were shaking apple trees. No one picked the fruits, we just shook: shook under the beds, under the tables, behind the curtains. No, there was no picking. We just shook until the red juice spurted from the apples.Near the Khorol River with Father Makhno and me in charge, we captured sixteen machine guns and four cannons, as well as five hundred prisoners who immediately came over to our side. The villagers voluntarily gave us bread and cheese, chickens and kvas. People joined us. The front of the machine-gun cart said “You can't run,” and “You won't catch us” at the back. We took factory after factory. Millions of karbovantsi, thousands of poods of sugar, weapons. We smashed the telephone exchanges and captured the telegraphs. We made alliances with some and then with others. Lenin, Wrangel, Frunze, the Germans, Chinese, Australians, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Cleopatra, Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina. We ran the steppe. There were a hundred thousand of us. There were three hundred thousand of them. There were three hundred thousand of us. There were a million of them. There were two million of them. We were all of humanity. We were so many that we were none.The nobles’ estates were long ago forsaken. In the people's deepest trunks lay silks and guipure laces that were once perhaps used only to cover a table. Five steps from the barn in the direction of the pear tree, some silver candlesticks are buried; there's a plaster figure of an angel in the chicken coop, covered with shit and feathers.I was reluctant to be going to my home, but I didn't see any way out. Fate intended me to be a different being from the one I was before.Here my grandfathers and great-grandfathers were born. Here the ones who caused my grandfathers and great-grandfathers to flee had stopped. When we were still far off I noticed that someone was in the house. It was our men—Skorsky had brought them here, about twenty in all. I asked Sanko, whom I had walked with side by side more than once, where the doctor was now. All the men answered that he was around somewhere, but I didn't see him that evening.In 1918, the spirit of my great-grandfather Stepan, along with my mother and uncle, had gotten into a britzka and scrambled off to Paris, to Napoleon, against whom my great-grandfather had fought with the Cossacks, to whom the Russians promised to return self-rule. Following him in the cart went the soul of Grandpa Oleh, who lost a finger when he cut down the old linden near the house; his second finger was blown off by a cannonball near Balaklava, and later his entire hand was cut off by some Turk. Next went the spirit of my father, also Stepan, who did not take part in any war but died of measles at the age of forty. They all got the hell out of here. First, they went to Kyiv, led by my mother, Tamara Makarivna, in order to collect Uncle's family and me, their son. And their son, it turns out, has now come back to rob his own home (I didn't drive my war buddies away, did I?). It's a shame that I didn't know where the bathtub was, or whatever they bathed me in when I was small. It would have been good to walk through the ranks of anarchists with that basin and tell them all to spit into it.Remembering every room, I carried Alina upstairs to my mother's bedchamber. There was no longer furniture or pictures, only bare walls. The bed and mattress remained, but that was enough. Mother hated noise, so she set up her room far away from the running in the halls and the creaks on the stairs. I adjusted the mattress; in a gap, looking like a stalk of wheat, there lay a gold bracelet that she lost in the haste and that the thieves could not find in the mayhem. I tucked it into my pocket.The place could still be saved. It was strong, built under the leadership of my grandfather, who knew how to do it right. He built a sawmill, a gristmill, a dress factory (today it's probably been ransacked, maybe even by our own men).Alina had a complete, displaced break in her right fibula. We needed water first. I went downstairs—the guys were dragging out the piano like an old cow to the slaughter.“What are you doing with that?”“Taking it out.”“Why?”“What's it to you? We want to have fun.”“Can you play?”“We're not your bourgeois lily-handed bitches.”They couldn't play, but they were famous at destruction. “Noise is the music of the new time,” one of the smarter among them might have said. “But noise is the opposite of music. Just as a rose is the opposite of your ugly mugs,” I'd have responded if there was anyone to say it to. I could also have said that this was a Bosendorfer grand piano, that it was very valuable—but do the guys not deserve such a luxury?“Why are you so boring? We're relaxing.”“Then let me play a little first.”“Go ahead, but fast. One-two.”So I played. As before. My fingers ran up and down the black and white keys, which weren't simply keys of these, the simplest, colors. These were the keys that remembered my fingers specifically—achieved by that slovenly German Katerina, our governess. She knew a bundle of languages, could play the piano, and was interested in the latest scientific discoveries. But she had not an ounce of sympathy for anyone who couldn't master anything on the first try. More than once she hit my pinkie against the black key that remembered every one of its four thousand touches. She would pound it on the key and shout, “Si bémol! Si bémol,” and later bang my fingers and translate, “B flach! B flach!”I played. I could not expose myself, so the only thing I could do was believe in miracles. What if these coarse men saw value in this bit of furniture so unintelligible to them? And what if they didn't destroy it, this emblem of my childhood, my land, my air, which I could protect in no other way? My air. My water.“Shchedryk, shchedryk, shchedrivochka,” one of them who recognized the tune began to sing along.“Look at you.” They did not expect music from me, who had until recently been drinking blood like water.They said, “Again, again!”A group of curious men gathered around me. They were ordinary farmers, thieves, and recidivists, peasants and workers, everyone except for Skorsky. They needed this music as they needed baths. The music cleansed them from the inside, perhaps. They had not heard anything besides the whistle of a bullet, the neighing of a horse, or the knocking of a chisel and the whirring of a saw, amputating limbs, for a long time.But it could not go on long. I did not close the piano lid, just stood and went to fetch water for Alina, leaving the unfinished song for later. The well was to the north—that is, at the “Head.” My father once promised to give me a compass if I could learn to identify the ends of the earth by means of the sun. And to make it easier to remember, I gave each one of them a name: the east where the day begins was “Right” (my right hand), the west “Left,” the north “Head,” and the south “Feet.” Back when I could still do whatever I wanted all day long, I would wake in the morning and say: I'm going to the Feet. The mound was at the Feet, Left had the river, Right had the forest. It was only to the Head that I rarely went, because a village was located there. When the villagers saw me, they would speak in whispers and avoid the master's son.... I wiped her brow and her burning, sunken cheeks. I lay down next to her to feel the heat of her skin.When the fire in Alina calmed slightly, I went out into our orchard. My father had once been given a gift from Japan—a tulip tree that blossomed with yellow-green flowers. It had to have grown in the time that I was away. It would have been fatal had it been cut down. I again took the stairs down into the drawing room and came across nobody—they had all disappeared in search of food or were hidden away in their burrows. In the middle of the hall, like an opened rib cage, was the piano, irreparably shattered.B Flach! B Flach!Translation © Ali Kinsella 2022. (shrink)

_Relevance_. The starting point for embedding CSR as part of the management culture is the vision and values. But first, you need to understand what 'values' means in CSR terms. Companies spend time and effort in creating their mission, vision and values statements, but these are often only from a commercial and internal viewpoint. To achieve CSR values, managers need to take an objective external vie", identifying their various stakeholders, and the company's impacts upon them [1]. Management culture is part (...) of an organizational culture that includes both formal and informal elements of the organizational culture. Management culture reflects the level of the organization’s managerial system development, modernity, efficiency and functionality. It depends on this level how innovations will be implemented in the organization’s management and whether they will be implemented at all, and how effectively the objectives will be solved and the aims will be implemented [2]. Summarizing the results of various research made in different countries, it becomes clear that large companies are not always inclined to coordinate their activities with stakeholders because of their institutional weakness. Research aim: assess the level of cultural and social responsibility of organisational management and discuss their links. Research methods. Analysis of scientific literature, questionnaire survey. Research results. The findings of the research carried out in other countries proved that organizations evaluate not all aspects of corporate social responsibility, and this is influenced by the lack of the employees, as one part of the stakeholders, strong institutional capacity. The quantitative research found that the administration of both groups of companies inadequately evaluate corporate social responsibility activities, there is no feedback guaranteed, there is insufficient care about the relations with employees who are one part of stakeholders, their physical environment and psychological condition. There is no effective internal audit system of social responsibility which should be developed to guarantee feedback, and corporate social responsibility has not become an inseparable part of organizational culture. Having evaluated the weaknesses and the positive trends of management culture and social responsibility characteristics of groups of companies, it should be stated that firstly, management culture expression has influence when aiming for corporate social responsibility; secondly, corporate social responsibility can be regarded as an integral derivative of management culture realized in organizations’ management practice. However, there are also significant differences. There were set personal managerial personnel culture and management knowledge significant amounts of estimates, associated with different approaches to other management work criteria according to which the management culture condition is diagnosed. The clearer dynamics of indicator estimates of the second group of companies leads to the conclusion that the management culture is still being formed, but without clear direction vector. Processes are not clearly focused and uncoordinated. The standards, regulations existing in the second group are not sufficiently linked to the activities practice, so they do not guarantee the optimality of processes, unlike in the first group of companies, where there is a standard peculiar management culture, although the estimates of indicators diagnosing it are not particularly high. In such a situation, the questions of investment in the modernization of management, optimization of working processes remain relevant, unresolved, but the effectiveness of their payoff remains uncertain. Human resources in management policy of both groups of companies are under-estimated; in order to create favorable conditions for their effective use, communication and the interrelationship functionality problems are acute. Organizations (larger problems fixed in the second group of companies) are not adequately prepared to implement corporate social responsibility organization-wide, as management work is not optimally organized, the managerial personnel lacks knowledge and skills working with human resources. Even in the evaluation of formal aspects of corporate social responsibility standards implementation possibilities, the situation existing in groups of companies and organizational abilities of leaders would not allow to realize them systematically and effectively. In this case, corporate social responsibility values would remain more as a declarative form and not the organization’s management culture inseperable part, and a natural, balanced way of functioning of processes based on this philosophy. Though in the second group of companies there is clearer dynamics according to separate management culture parameters, the apparent orientation to modernization of activities shows more open to innovation, in which the elimination of drawbacks and purposeful development can serve the realization of corporate social responsibility more effectively. In both groups of companies the highlighted declarative corporate social responsibility policy trends contradict the actual practice of social responsibility in relations with the organization's internal and external stakeholders. This partly confirms theoretical insights presented in Lithuanian scientific works, which emphasize marketing direction of corporate social responsibility as a general cultural dominant. However, this aspect has not been developed yet in the case of the discussed groups of companies, and the research results lead to the conclusion that organizations lack basic knowledge of corporate social responsibility and motivation to realize them in practice, and the high level of clustering and internal corruption impedes social responsibility transfer to the strategic level. The lack of development of dialogue culture between stakeholders (subjects) became apparent in management culture problem areas and can become a formidable obstacle to the implementation of both individual social responsibility initiatives and installing in complex. This is true in the sense that the organizations do not have universal support from employees, and the procedures are carried out in a superficial manner and have a formal character. Corporate social responsibility is a valuable organization's internal culture category, but this base is not strong enough and balanced. Corporate social responsibility in the activities of both groups of companies (and especially - the first) can be considered still developing and has not taken clear shapes yet. According Hoskins (2006) CSR is a means of developing a management culture. However, the fundamental CSR success factor is that it is a living management process. The strategy needs to be reviewed regularly, and implemented across business units and all CSR components. The delivery of CSR practice is a critical activity. If any of the components are weak, then they detract from the effectiveness of the other components. Like all cultural aspects, CSR is only as strong as its weakest link A CSR management system is essential for CSR to become embedded within the business culture. CSR should not be a separate central activity, but become part of the business process and practice for all business units. (shrink)

In a single generation, the rise of Asia has precipitated a dramatic sea change in the world’s economic and political orders. This reconfiguration is taking place amidst a host of deepening global predicaments, including climate change, migration, increasing inequalities of wealth and opportunity, that cannot be resolved by purely technical means or by seeking recourse in a liberalism that has of late proven to be less than effective. The present work critically explores how the pan-Asian phenomenon of Confucianism offers alternative (...) values and depths of ethical commitment that cross national and cultural boundaries to provide a new response to these challenges. When searching for resources to respond to the world’s problems, we tend to look to those that are most familiar: Single actors pursuing their own self-interests in competition or collaboration with other players. As is now widely appreciated, Confucian culture celebrates the relational values of deference and interdependence—that is, relationally constituted persons are understood as embedded in and nurtured by unique, transactional patterns of relations. This is a concept of person that contrasts starkly with the discrete, self-determining individual, an artifact of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western European approaches to modernization that has become closely associated with liberal democracy. Examining the meaning and value of Confucianism in the twenty-first century, the contributors—leading scholars from universities around the world—wrestle with several key questions: What are Confucian values within the context of the disparate cultures of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam? What is their current significance? What are the limits and historical failings of Confucianism and how are these to be critically addressed? How must Confucian culture be reformed if it is to become relevant as an international resource for positive change? Their answers vary, but all agree that only a vital and critical Confucianism will have relevance for an emerging world cultural order. (shrink)

Table of contentsI1 Proceedings of the 4th World Conference on Research IntegrityConcurrent Sessions:1. Countries' systems and policies to foster research integrityCS01.1 Second time around: Implementing and embedding a review of responsible conduct of research policy and practice in an Australian research-intensive universitySusan Patricia O'BrienCS01.2 Measures to promote research integrity in a university: the case of an Asian universityDanny Chan, Frederick Leung2. Examples of research integrity education programmes in different countriesCS02.1 Development of a state-run “cyber education program of research ethics” in (...) KoreaEun Jung Ko, Jin Sun Kwak, TaeHwan Gwon, Ji Min Lee, Min-Ho LeeCS02.3 Responsible conduct of research teachers’ training courses in Germany: keeping on drilling through hard boards for more RCR teachersHelga Nolte, Michael Gommel, Gerlinde Sponholz3. The research environment and policies to encourage research integrityCS03.1 Challenges and best practices in research integrity: bridging the gap between policy and practiceYordanka Krastev, Yamini Sandiran, Julia Connell, Nicky SolomonCS03.2 The Slovenian initiative for better research: from national activities to global reflectionsUrsa Opara Krasovec, Renata SribarCS03.3 Organizational climate assessments to support research integrity: background of the Survey of Organizational Research Climate and the experience with its use at Michigan State UniversityBrian C. Martinson, Carol R. Thrush, C.K. Gunsalus4. Expressions of concern and retractionsCS04.1 Proposed guidelines for retraction notices and their disseminationIvan Oransky, Adam MarcusCS04.2 Watching retractions: analysis of process and practice, with data from the Wiley retraction archivesChris Graf, Verity Warne, Edward Wates, Sue JoshuaCS04.3 An exploratory content analysis of Expressions of ConcernMiguel RoigCS04.4 An ethics researcher in the retraction processMichael Mumford5. Funders' role in fostering research integrityCS05.1 The Fonds de Recherche du Québec’s institutional rules on the responsible conduct of research: introspection in the funding agency activitiesMylène Deschênes, Catherine Olivier, Raphaëlle Dupras-LeducCS05.2 U.S. Public Health Service funds in an international setting: research integrity and complianceZoë Hammatt, Raju Tamot, Robin Parker, Cynthia Ricard, Loc Nguyen-Khoa, Sandra TitusCS05.3 Analyzing decision making of funders of public research as a case of information asymmetryKarsten Klint JensenCS05.4 Research integrity management: Empirical investigation of academia versus industrySimon Godecharle, Ben Nemery, Kris Dierickx5A: Education: For whom, how, and what?CS05A.1 Research integrity or responsible conduct of research? What do we aim for?Mickey Gjerris, Maud Marion Laird Eriksen, Jeppe Berggren HoejCS05A.2 Teaching and learning about RCR at the same time: a report on Epigeum’s RCR poll questions and other assessment activitiesNicholas H. SteneckCS05A.4 Minding the gap in research ethics education: strategies to assess and improve research competencies in community health workers/promoteresCamille Nebeker, Michael Kalichman, Elizabeth Mejia Booen, Blanca Azucena Pacheco, Rebeca Espinosa Giacinto, Sheila Castaneda6. Country examples of research reward systems and integrityCS06.1 Improving systems to promote responsible research in the Chinese Academy of SciencesDing Li, Qiong Chen, Guoli Zhu, Zhonghe SunCS06.4 Exploring the perception of research integrity amongst public health researchers in IndiaParthasarathi Ganguly, Barna Ganguly7. Education and guidance on research integrity: country differencesCS07.1 From integrity to unity: how research integrity guidance differs across universities in Europe.Noémie Aubert Bonn, Kris Dierickx, Simon GodecharleCS07.2 Can education and training develop research integrity? The spirit of the UNESCO 1974 recommendation and its updatingDaniele Bourcier, Jacques Bordé, Michèle LeducCS07.3 The education and implementation mechanisms of research ethics in Taiwan's higher education: an experience in Chinese web-based curriculum development for responsible conduct of researchChien Chou, Sophia Jui-An PanCS07.4 Educating principal investigators in Swiss research institutions: present and future perspectivesLouis Xaver Tiefenauer8. Measuring and rewarding research productivityCS08.1 Altimpact: how research integrity underpins research impactDaniel Barr, Paul TaylorCS08.2 Publication incentives: just reward or misdirection of funds?Lyn Margaret HornCS08.3 Why Socrates never charged a fee: factors contributing to challenges for research integrity and publication ethicsDeborah Poff9. Plagiarism and falsification: Behaviour and detectionCS09.1 Personality traits predict attitude towards plagiarism of self and others in biomedicine: plagiarism, yes we can?Martina Mavrinac, Gordana Brumini, Mladen PetrovečkiCS09.2 Investigating the concept of and attitudes toward plagiarism for science teachers in Brazil: any challenges for research integrity and policy?Christiane Coelho Santos, Sonia VasconcelosCS09.3 What have we learnt?: The CrossCheck Service from CrossRefRachael LammeyCS09.4 High p-values as a sign of data fabrication/falsificationChris Hartgerink, Marcel van Assen, Jelte Wicherts10. Codes for research integrity and collaborationsCS10.1 Research integrity in cross-border cooperation: a Nordic exampleHanne Silje HaugeCS10.3 Research integrity, research misconduct, and the National Science Foundation's requirement for the responsible conduct of researchAaron MankaCS10.4 A code of conduct for international scientific cooperation: human rights and research integrity in scientific collaborations with international academic and industry partnersRaffael Iturrizaga11. Countries' efforts to establish mentoring and networksCS11.1 ENRIO : a network facilitating common approaches on research integrity in EuropeNicole FoegerCS11.2 Helping junior investigators develop in a resource-limited country: a mentoring program in PeruA. Roxana Lescano, Claudio Lanata, Gissella Vasquez, Leguia Mariana, Marita Silva, Mathew Kasper, Claudia Montero, Daniel Bausch, Andres G LescanoCS11.3 Netherlands Research Integrity Network: the first six monthsFenneke Blom, Lex BouterCS11.4 A South African framework for research ethics and integrity for researchers, postgraduate students, research managers and administratorsLaetus OK Lategan12. Training and education in research integrity at an early career stageCS12.1 Research integrity in curricula for medical studentsGustavo Fitas ManaiaCS12.2 Team-based learning for training in the responsible conduct of research supports ethical decision-makingWayne T. McCormack, William L. Allen, Shane Connelly, Joshua Crites, Jeffrey Engler, Victoria Freedman, Cynthia W. Garvan, Paul Haidet, Joel Hockensmith, William McElroy, Erik Sander, Rebecca Volpe, Michael F. VerderameCS12.4 Research integrity and career prospects of junior researchersSnezana Krstic13. Systems and research environments in institutionsCS13.1 Implementing systems in research institutions to improve quality and reduce riskLouise HandyCS13.2 Creating an institutional environment that supports research integrityDebra Schaller-DemersCS13.3 Ethics and Integrity Development Grants: a mechanism to foster cultures of ethics and integrityPaul Taylor, Daniel BarrCS13.4 A culture of integrity at KU LeuvenInge Lerouge, Gerard Cielen, Liliane Schoofs14. Peer review and its role in research integrityCS14.1 Peer review research across disciplines: transdomain action in the European Cooperation in Science and Technology “New Frontiers of Peer Review ”Ana Marusic, Flaminio SquazzoniCS14.2 Using blinding to reduce bias in peer reviewDavid VauxCS14.3 How to intensify the role of reviewers to promote research integrityKhalid Al-Wazzan, Ibrahim AlorainyCS14.4 Credit where credit’s due: professionalizing and rewarding the role of peer reviewerChris Graf, Verity Warne15. Research ethics and oversight for research integrity: Does it work?CS15.1 The psychology of decision-making in research ethics governance structures: a theory of bounded rationalityNolan O'Brien, Suzanne Guerin, Philip DoddCS15.2 Investigator irregularities: iniquity, ignorance or incompetence?Frank Wells, Catherine BlewettCS15.3 Academic plagiarismFredric M. Litto16. Research integrity in EuropeCS16.1 Whose responsibility is it anyway?: A comparative analysis of core concepts and practice at European research-intensive universities to identify and develop good practices in research integrityItziar De Lecuona, Erika Löfstrom, Katrien MaesCS16.2 Research integrity guidance in European research universitiesKris Dierickx, Noémie Bonn, Simon GodecharleCS16.3 Research Integrity: processes and initiatives in Science Europe member organisationsTony Peatfield, Olivier Boehme, Science Europe Working Group on Research IntegrityCS16.4 Promoting research integrity in Italy: the experience of the Research Ethics and Bioethics Advisory Committee of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Cinzia Caporale, Daniele Fanelli17. Training programs for research integrity at different levels of experience and seniorityCS17.1 Meaningful ways to incorporate research integrity and the responsible conduct of research into undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral and faculty training programsJohn Carfora, Eric Strauss, William LynnCS17.2 "Recognize, respond, champion": Developing a one-day interactive workshop to increase confidence in research integrity issuesDieter De Bruyn, Bracke Nele, Katrien De Gelder, Stefanie Van der BurghtCS17.4 “Train the trainer” on cultural challenges imposed by international research integrity conversations: lessons from a projectJosé Roberto Lapa e Silva, Sonia M. R. Vasconcelos18. Research and societal responsibilityCS18.1 Promoting the societal responsibility of research as an integral part of research integrityHelene IngierdCS18.2 Social responsibility as an ethical imperative for scientists: research, education and service to societyMark FrankelCS18.3 The intertwined nature of social responsibility and hope in scienceDaniel Vasgird, Stephanie BirdCS18.4 Common barriers that impede our ability to create a culture of trustworthiness in the research communityMark Yarborough19. Publication ethicsCS19.1 The authors' forum: A proposed tool to improve practices of journal editors and promote a responsible research environmentIbrahim Alorainy, Khalid Al-WazzanCS19.2 Quantifying research integrity and its impact with text analyticsHarold GarnerCS19.3 A closer look at authorship and publication ethics of multi- and interdisciplinary teamsLisa Campo-Engelstein, Zubin Master, Elise Smith, David Resnik, Bryn Williams-JonesCS19.4 Invisibility of duplicate publications in biomedicineMario Malicki, Ana Utrobicic, Ana Marusic20. The causes of bad and wasteful research: What can we do?CS20.1 From countries to individuals: unravelling the causes of bias and misconduct with multilevel meta-meta-analysisDaniele Fanelli, John PA IoannidisCS20.2 Reducing research waste by integrating systems of oversight and regulationGerben ter Riet, Tom Walley, Lex Marius BouterCS20.3 What are the determinants of selective reporting?: The example of palliative care for non-cancer conditionsJenny van der Steen, Lex BouterCS20.4 Perceptions of plagiarism, self-plagiarism and redundancy in research: preliminary results from a national survey of Brazilian PhDsSonia Vasconcelos, Martha Sorenson, Francisco Prosdocimi, Hatisaburo Masuda, Edson Watanabe, José Carlos Pinto, Marisa Palácios, José Lapa e Silva, Jacqueline Leta, Adalberto Vieyra, André Pinto, Mauricio Sant’Ana, Rosemary Shinkai21. Are there country-specific elements of misconduct?CS21.1 The battle with plagiarism in Russian science: latest developmentsBoris YudinCS21.2 Researchers between ethics and misconduct: A French survey on social representations of misconduct and ethical standards within the scientific communityEtienne Vergès, Anne-Sophie Brun-Wauthier, Géraldine VialCS21.3 Experience from different ways of dealing with research misconduct and promoting research integrity in some Nordic countriesTorkild VintherCS21.4 Are there specifics in German research misconduct and the ways to cope with it?Volker Bähr, Charité22. Research integrity teaching programmes and their challengesCS22.1 Faculty mentors and research integrityMichael Kalichman, Dena PlemmonsCS22.2 Training the next generation of scientists to use principles of research quality assurance to improve data integrity and reliabilityRebecca Lynn Davies, Katrina LaubeCS22.3 Fostering research integrity in a culturally-diverse environmentCynthia Scheopner, John GallandCS22.4 Towards a standard retraction formHervé Maisonneuve, Evelyne Decullier23. Commercial research and integrityCS23.1 The will to commercialize: matters of concern in the cultural economy of return-on-investment researchBrian NobleCS23.2 Quality in drug discovery data reporting: a mission impossible?Anja Gilis, David J. Gallacher, Tom Lavrijssen, Malwitz David, Malini Dasgupta, Hans MolsCS23.3 Instituting a research integrity policy in the context of semi-private-sector funding: an example in the field of occupational health and safetyPaul-Emile Boileau24. The interface of publication ethics and institutional policiesCS24.1 The open access ethical paradox in an open government effortTony SavardCS24.2 How journals and institutions can work together to promote responsible conductEric MahCS24.3 Improving cooperation between journals and research institutions in research integrity casesElizabeth Wager, Sabine Kleinert25. Reproducibility of research and retractionsCS25.1 Promoting transparency in publications to reduce irreproducibilityVeronique Kiermer, Andrew Hufton, Melanie ClyneCS25.2 Retraction notices issued for publications by Latin American authors: what lessons can we learn?Sonia Vasconcelos, Renan Moritz Almeida, Aldo Fontes-Pereira, Fernanda Catelani, Karina RochaCS25.3 A preliminary report of the findings from the Reproducibility Project: Cancer biologyElizabeth Iorns, William Gunn26. Research integrity and specific country initiativesCS26.1 Promoting research integrity at CNRS, FranceMichèle Leduc, Lucienne LetellierCS26.2 In pursuit of compliance: is the tail wagging the dog?Cornelia MalherbeCS26.3 Newly established research integrity policies and practices: oversight systems of Japanese research universitiesTakehito Kamata27. Responsible conduct of research and country guidelinesCS27.1 Incentives or guidelines? Promoting responsible research communication through economic incentives or ethical guidelines?Vidar EnebakkCS27.3 Responsible conduct of research: a view from CanadaLynn PenrodCS27.4 The Danish Code of Conduct for Research Integrity: a national initiative to promote research integrity in DenmarkThomas Nørgaard, Charlotte Elverdam28. Behaviour, trust and honestyCS28.1 The reasons behind non-ethical behaviour in academiaYves FassinCS28.2 The psychological profile of the dishonest scholarCynthia FekkenCS28.3 Considering the implications of Dan Ariely’s keynote speech at the 3rd World Conference on Research Integrity in MontréalJamal Adam, Melissa S. AndersonCS28.4 Two large surveys on psychologists’ views on peer review and replicationJelte WichertsBrett Buttliere29. Reporting and publication bias and how to overcome itCS29.1 Data sharing: Experience at two open-access general medical journalsTrish GrovesCS29.2 Overcoming publication bias and selective reporting: completing the published recordDaniel ShanahanCS29.3 The EQUATOR Network: promoting responsible reporting of health research studiesIveta Simera, Shona Kirtley, Eleana Villanueva, Caroline Struthers, Angela MacCarthy, Douglas Altman30. The research environment and its implications for integrityCS30.1 Ranking of scientists: the Russian experienceElena GrebenshchikovaCS30.4 From cradle to grave: research integrity, research misconduct and cultural shiftsBronwyn Greene, Ted RohrPARTNER SYMPOSIAPartner Symposium AOrganized by EQUATOR Network, Enhancing the Quality and Transparency of Health ResearchP1 Can we trust the medical research literature?: Poor reporting and its consequencesIveta SimeraP2 What can BioMed Central do to improve published research?Daniel Shanahan, Stephanie HarrimanP3 What can a "traditional" journal do to improve published research?Trish GrovesP4 Promoting good reporting practice for reliable and usable research papers: EQUATOR Network, reporting guidelines and other initiativesCaroline StruthersPartner Symposium COrganized by ENRIO, the European Network of Research Integrity OfficersP5 Transparency and independence in research integrity investigations in EuropeKrista Varantola, Helga Nolte, Ursa Opara, Torkild Vinther, Elizabeth Wager, Thomas NørgaardPartner Symposium DOrganized by IEEE, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics EngineersRe-educating our author community: IEEE's approach to bibliometric manipulation, plagiarism, and other inappropriate practicesP6 Dealing with plagiarism in the connected world: An Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers perspectiveJon RokneP7 Should evaluation of raises, promotion, and research proposals be tied to bibliometric indictors? What the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers is doing to answer this questionGianluca SettiP8 Recommended practices to ensure conference content qualityGordon MacPhersonPartner Symposium EOrganized by the Committee on Freedom and Responsibility in the Conduct of Science of ICSU, the International Council for ScienceResearch assessment and quality in science: perspectives from international science and policy organisationsP9 Challenges for science and the problems of assessing researchEllen HazelkornP10 Research assessment and science policy developmentCarthage SmithP11 Research integrity in South Africa: the value of procedures and processes to global positioningRobert H. McLaughlinP12 Rewards, careers and integrity: perspectives of young scientists from around the worldTatiana Duque MartinsPartner Symposium FOrganized by the Online Resource Center for Ethics Education in Engineering and Science / Center for Engineering, Ethics, and Society of the National Academy of EngineeringP13 Research misconduct: conceptions and policy solutionsTetsuya Tanimoto, Nicholas Steneck, Daniele Fanelli, Ragnvald Kalleberg, Tajammul HusseinPartner Symposium HOrganized by ORI, the Office of Research Integrity; Universitas 21; and the Asia Pacific Research Integrity NetworkP14 International integrity networks: working together to ensure research integrityPing Sun, Ovid Tzeng, Krista Varantola, Susan ZimmermanPartner Symposium IOrganized by COPE, the Committee on Publication EthicsPublication without borders: Ethical challenges in a globalized worldP15 Authorship: credit and responsibility, including issues in large and interdisciplinary studiesRosemary ShinkaiPartner Symposium JOrganized by CITI, the Cooperative Institutional Training InitiativeExperiences on research integrity educational programs in Colombia, Costa Rica and PeruP16 Experiences in PeruRoxana LescanoP17 Experiences in Costa RicaElizabeth HeitmanP18 Experiences in ColumbiaMaria Andrea Rocio del Pilar Contreras NietoPoster Session B: Education, training, promotion and policyPT.01 The missing role of journal editors in promoting responsible researchIbrahim Alorainy, Khalid Al-WazzanPT.02 Honorary authorship in Taiwan: why and who should be in charge?Chien Chou, Sophia Jui-An PanPT.03 Authorship and citation manipulation in academic researchEric Fong, Al WilhitePT.04 Open peer review of research submission at medical journals: experience at BMJ Open and The BMJTrish GrovesPT.05 Exercising authorship: claiming rewards, practicing integrityDésirée Motta-RothPT.07 Medical scientists' views on publication culture: a focus group studyJoeri Tijdink, Yvo SmuldersPoster Session B: Education, training, promotion and policyPT.09 Ethical challenges in post-graduate supervisionLaetus OK LateganPT.10 The effects of viable ethics instruction on international studentsMichael Mumford, Logan Steele, Logan Watts, James Johnson, Shane Connelly, Lee WilliamsPT.11 Does language reflect the quality of research?Gerben ter Riet, Sufia Amini, Lotty Hooft, Halil KilicogluPT.12 Integrity complaints as a strategic tool in policy decision conflictsJanneke van Seters, Herman Eijsackers, Fons Voragen, Akke van der Zijpp and Frans BromPoster Session C: Ethics and integrity intersectionsPT.14 Regulations of informed consent: university-supported research processes and pitfalls in implementationBadaruddin Abbasi, Naif Nasser AlmasoudPT.15 A review of equipoise as a requirement in clinical trialsAdri LabuschagnePT.16 The Research Ethics Library: online resource for research ethics educationJohanne Severinsen, Espen EnghPT.17 Research integrity: the view from King Abdulaziz City for Science and TechnologyDaham Ismail AlaniPT. 18 Meeting global challenges in high-impact publications and research integrity: the case of the Malaysian Palm Oil BoardHJ. Kamaruzaman JusoffPT.19 University faculty perceptions of research practices and misconductAnita Gordon, Helen C. HartonPoster Session D: International perspectivesPT.21 The Commission for Scientific Integrity as a response to research fraudDieter De Bruyn, Stefanie Van der BurghtPT. 22 Are notions of the responsible conduct of research associated with compliance with requirements for research on humans in different disciplinary traditions in Brazil?Karina de Albuquerque Rocha, Sonia Maria Ramos de VasconcelosPT.23 Creating an environment that promotes research integrity: an institutional model of Malawi Liverpool Welcome TrustLimbanazo MatandikaPT.24 How do science policies in Brazil influence user-engaged ecological research?Aline Carolina de Oliveira Machado Prata, Mark William NeffPoster Session E: Perspectives on misconductPT.26 What “causes” scientific misconduct?: Testing major hypotheses by comparing corrected and retracted papersDaniele Fanelli, Rodrigo Costas, Vincent LarivièrePT.27 Perception of academic plagiarism among dentistry studentsDouglas Leonardo Gomes Filho, Diego Oliveira GuedesPT. 28 a few bad apples?: Prevalence, patterns and attitudes towards scientific misconduct among doctoral students at a German university hospitalVolker Bähr, Niklas Keller, Markus Feufel, Nikolas OffenhauserPT. 29 Analysis of retraction notices published by BioMed CentralMaria K. Kowalczuk, Elizabeth C. MoylanPT.31 "He did it" doesn't work: data security, incidents and partnersKatie SpeanburgPoster Session F: Views from the disciplinesPT.32 Robust procedures: a key to generating quality results in drug discoveryMalini Dasgupta, Mariusz Lubomirski, Tom Lavrijssen, David Malwitz, David Gallacher, Anja GillisPT.33 Health promotion: criteria for the design and the integrity of a research projectMaria Betânia de Freitas Marques, Laressa Lima Amâncio, Raphaela Dias Fernandes, Oliveira Patrocínio, and Cláudia Maria Correia Borges RechPT.34 Integrity of academic work from the perspective of students graduating in pharmacy: a brief research studyMaria Betânia de Freitas Marques, Cláudia Maria Correia Borges Rech, Adriana Nascimento SousaPT.35 Research integrity promotion in the Epidemiology and Health Services, the journal of the Brazilian Unified Health SystemLeila Posenato GarciaPT.36 When are clinical trials registered? An analysis of prospective versus retrospective registration of clinical trials published in the BioMed Central series, UKStephanie Harriman, Jigisha PatelPT.37 Maximizing welfare while promoting innovation in drug developmentFarida LadaOther posters that will be displayed but not presented orally:PT.38 Geoethics and the debate on research integrity in geosciencesGiuseppe Di Capua, Silvia PeppoloniPT.39 Introducing the Professionalism and Integrity in Research Program James M. DuBois, John Chibnall, Jillon Van der WallPT.40 Validation of the professional decision-making in research measureJames M. DuBois, John Chibnall, Jillon Van der Wall, Raymond TaitPT.41 General guidelines for research ethicsJacob HolenPT. 42 A national forum for research ethicsAdele Flakke Johannessen, Torunn EllefsenPT.43 Evaluation of integrity in coursework: an approach from the perspective of the higher education professorClaudia Rech, Adriana Sousa, Maria Betânia de Freitas MarquesPT.44 Principles of geoethics and research integrity applied to the European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and Water Column Observatory, a large-scale European environmental research infrastructureSilvia Peppoloni, Giuseppe Di Capua, Laura BeranzoliF1 Focus track on improving research systems: the role of fundersPaulo S.L. Beirão, Susan ZimmermanF2 Focus track on improving research systems: the role of countriesSabine Kleinert, Ana MarusicF3 Focus track on improving research systems: the role of institutionsMelissa S. Anderson, Lex Bouter. (shrink)

This Special Issue comes at a time when African countries and the Global South in general are facing unprecedented crises in securing energy to power their economies. The crises are necessitated largely by the developed Western countries exerting enormous power and pressure upon the developing world to move away from fossil fuels, while at the same time the West is increasing its uptake on fossils. However, with critical self-reflection we are able to understand that a crisis of this nature (...) is not without historical precedence, as it is preceded by a series of other forms of injustices meted out upon the formerly and still colonized peoples. And not long ago, the COVID-19 pandemic on the health front, and the handling thereof, showed just how skewed and divided the world still is and laid bare race-laden inequalities both at local and global levels. So to be sure, the current crises are part of the history of struggle against race-based social injustices and demonstrate Western desire to continue its stranglehold over its former colonies. And although the energy transition is dubbed the “Just Energy Transition,” for those in the developing world who are negatively affected, there is clearly nothing “Just” about it. So whereas we generally tend to speak of social or historical injustices such as the energy crises and COVID-19, at an epistemological front we find cognitive injustice. Accordingly, the articles in this issue contribute to a series of responses by the anticolonial movement (broadly defined) in relation to injustice, particularly its epistemological ramifications on knowledge and knowledge production in the relation between the colonizer and the colonized, the center and the periphery. Furthermore, the historical exclusion of African and other non-European peoples from participation in reason had the effect that Africans in particular were precluded from philosophy itself, a phenomenon that African philosophy and associated disciplines are today still grappling with in the academy. So in a word, the articles make an important contribution insofar as reckoning with the impact that race and the history of racism has had in philosophy in particular, both as a discipline and as a human mental activity.It should be remembered that the exclusion of Africans from reason and eventually from philosophy is preceded by an earlier one, the exclusion of Africans from recognition at a human level, qua rational beings. One can talk of a history of depersonalizations and dehumanizations; of massacres and deracination inflicted upon the oppressed owing to the colonial encounter. This is why for a scholar and a philosopher of the periphery, to use Enrique Dussel’s term, philosophical inquiry cannot and ought not be divorced from human reality. In fact, scholars of the periphery often stress the need for philosophy not to abstract too much from reality; and for philosophy to confine itself with liberatory human ends, among other things. There are a number of thinkers of the periphery who famously harp upon this point. For instance, Lewis Gordon has introduced the concept of “disciplinary decadence” by which he laments the fetishization of methods and whereby disciplines become an end in themselves, thus not necessarily serving human needs. Other thinkers in this school of thought include the likes of Enrique Dussel, Charles Mills, Cornel West, Angela Davis, and George Yancy to mention but a few. Yancy speaks of the “Density project” with which he has a normative injunction upon Black philosophers. In a similar vein, Dussel remarks in the Philosophy of Liberation that “Philosophy, when it is really philosophy and not sophistry or ideology, does not ponder philosophy. It does not ponder philosophical texts, except as a pedagogical propaedeutic to provide itself with interpretive categories. Philosophy ponders the nonphilosophical; the reality.”1 This reality, as is averred, is in existential phenomenology, not merely objective reality or perhaps something out there existing on its own accord, but rather it is what Jean-Paul Sartre associates with “human reality,” which is reality as lived by people of flesh and blood. So in a world demarcated between center and periphery, human beings and subhumans, whites and Blacks, the anticolonial thinker cannot afford not to raise questions relating to social existence, “the reality.” Thus for those in the academy, one must be able to come to terms with the reality of non-Western and “non-scientific knowledges” (after Boaventura De Sousa Santos) not being recognized as credible knowledge, coupled with the possibility of being forgotten, of being completely wiped out from history. And, as we see with Bernard Matolino’s article in particular, this is the battle that African philosophy has vigorously had to deal with in the previous two or three decades.In the Western canon, philosophy is generally taken to begin with the Greeks and this, as is observed, is no historical accident but forms part of a project to relegate previous philosophical traditions to relative obscurity, and to preclude the rest of humanity from participation in reason. The idea is that for Western modernity to be a viable project, oppressed cultures must out of necessity be denied reason. On this very point, Frantz Fanon would remark in Black Skin White Masks in the following manner: “That victory [on the rational front] played cat and mouse; it made a fool of me. As the other put it, when I was present, it was not; when it was there, I was no longer.”2 In this regard Mogobe Ramose’s article notes how the Aristotlean concept of man as a rational animal becomes a misnomer insofar as this relates to the Black person. With this sleight of hand, previous civilizations such as the African (Egyptian) and Arab traditions in philosophy are supposed to vanish from history and from the epistemological landscape. In this regard, Mills’s insights will continue to haunt philosophy well into the future, long after his passing. Mills had noted that a typical philosophy program in the Westernized university will normally start off with the two Greek philosophers, namely Plato and Aristotle. From here it moves to cover the Middle Ages and probably end with theories on liberalism. And although this period covers a history of more than two thousand years of Western philosophy, there will be little or no mention of traditions that shaped philosophical thought prior to the Greeks.The above notwithstanding, the articles in this issue show, however, that not only are Africans and oppressed peoples endowed with reflective reason, but that they also possess a unique brand of philosophy. By and large, the articles not only affirm the epistemological standpoint of African philosophy but show its own genealogy, discourse, and objectives among other things.With these short remarks, the following articles cut across these thematic areas: metaphysics of race, epistemic racism, racial ontology, feminism, and decolonial literature. Accordingly, the article by Bernard Matolino begins by delving into the metaphysics of race and notes that while there is no proof that there are distinct races (after Kwame Appiah), race as a matter of social life is alive and relevant. Further, his article goes on to demonstrate how African philosophy emerged as a form of protest and native philosophers’ need to show that indigenous peoples always had a philosophy. In a similar vein, Edwin Etieyibo’s article discusses epistemic racism, and how color prejudice historically translated to other forms of racial injustices such as epistemic racism. His article makes use of the works of such thinkers as Anibal Quijano and Ramon Grosfoguel to trace the genealogy of such injustices in the modern period.Siphiwe Ndlovu’s article looks into the problem of Black marginality, particularly in the modern period. He locates his musings within the social contract tradition but suggests a reading of contemporary marginality through the lens of Mills’s racial contract. Accordingly, instead of seeing Black marginality as a function of exclusion or being cast outside the contract, the article argues that such marginality is due not from exclusions per se but rather from inclusion albeit only as junior—and therefore inferior—partners in the racial contract.Mogobe Ramose’s article begins by endorsing Kwasi Wiredu’s view that there is nothing wrong with African philosophy being preoccupied with questions that are not exactly identical to those of non-African philosophies. Furthermore, his article traces, through D. M. Goldenberg, the roots of anti-Black racism from “colour symbolism” among the Arabs in the classical world, through the Rabbinic era, and later taking the form of race prejudice in Christianity. At the crux of his article is the argument that the prevailing practice of fragmenting the human race into multiple bits and pieces is against the pursuit of justice and peace in human relations.The article by Zinhle ka’Nobuhlaluse considers Anika Mann’s arguments on race and feminist standpoint as an existential standpoint and foundation. She takes up Mamphela Ramphele’s initial autobiography, Mamphela Ramphele: A Life, to critically reflect on what the actions of “non-subservient Blackwomen” reveal about the lived experience of being Black and a woman under Apartheid South Africa.The article by Siseko Kumalo infuses decolonial and literary criticism as projects that may allow for a recognition of the “ontological legitimacy” of amaqaba (those who rejected colonial influences and education). Through a close reading of S. E. K. Mqhayi’s Intshayelelo: Imbali, the article engages with the question How does a model of inclusive national identity in South Africa, once established, get us to the point of recognition for the Indigene? (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)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 36.4 (2003) 330-352 [Access article in PDF] Liberal Irony, Rhetoric, and Feminist Thought: A Unifying Third Wave Feminist Theory Valerie R. Renegar School of Communication San Diego State University Stacey K. Sowards Department of Communication Studies California State University, San Bernardino The meanings of a feminist movement and feminism have changed significantly over the past hundred years. From the women's suffrage movement, to the Supreme (...) Court decision in Roe v. Wade, to the 1980s label "feminazi," feminist theories and movements have emphasized many different issues for a variety of reasons. In part, it is these differences that make identification with feminist principles and practices so difficult. As part of the new generation of feminists, we are often left wondering if we are good enough as feminists, if we do enough as activists, and what it is that we really stand for. Many of us have grown up with the benefits and the victories of the feminists in the second wave and feel a responsibility to continue to seek the end of oppression. However, our experiences as feminists and young women often leave us feeling angry, hopeless, and confused as to where we are supposed to go, how we are supposed to get there, and what battles we are supposed to wage as part of a feminist movement. Resolving these tensions and questions will allow us to better understand and articulate what it is that we want and need in a feminist theory. Recent and ongoing division within and among feminist movements and theories, lack of consensus, in-group fighting, and a focus on singular women's theories and issues have created problems and a lack of solidarity that is counterproductive to feminism as a whole."Third wave feminism" is a term used to describe feminists who were born in the 1960s and 1970s. Although not universally recognized as a discrete wave of feminism, the third wave is increasingly distinguishing itself in both popular culture and academic writing. 1 We believe that third wave feminism is an emerging movement that currently lacks an overarching or coherent philosophy of praxis. While this type of unifying philosophy is not necessarily required by a movement, we believe that the presence of such a theory, in the instance of third wave feminism, would be highly [End Page 330] beneficial since it could provide direction and explain the motives of young feminists who are still in the process of developing and defining their feminist beliefs and actions. Often the philosophy of a movement is not apparent until the movement is well established or has accomplished its goals. Third wave feminists, however, are in a unique position to simultaneously create and embrace a coherent philosophy while developing their feminist ideas and practices. In this essay, we argue that Richard Rorty's notion of liberal irony, as interpreted by third wave feminist experience, is a coherent philosophy of thought and action that will center the emerging feminist movement and allow it to prosper.For us, a rhetorical theory constructed from Rorty's liberal irony and pragmatism, together with various third wave feminist theories, provides the sort of solution that addresses many of our concerns about the direction of feminist theory. Rorty's philosophy of liberal ironism is compelling but has received scant attention from feminist or rhetorical theorists. A few feminist philosophers have examined a pragmatist feminism, but have largely focused on the early pragmatists, ignoring Rorty's liberal ironism entirely or discussing it only in the larger context of pragmatism (Aboulafia 1993; Hart 1993; Leffers 1993; Pappas 1993; Rooney 1993; Shuler and Tate 2001; Seigfried 1996; Sullivan 2001; Upin 1993). Donna Haraway (1990), although not dealing directly with irony from a pragmatist perspective, notes that language politics are strongly associated with feminist struggles. She argues that feminists can utilize ironic methods to negotiate identities that "seem contradictory, partial, and strategic" (197). An ironic perspective recognizes the exclusion inherent in naming and allows contradictory fusions of identity to emerge. In this way, irony blurs the boundaries of language... (shrink)

Due to the development of the Chinese economy, the consolidation of national power worldwide, and the increasing frequency of economic and cultural exchanges with foreign countries, the number of people from various countries who travel to China to engage in exchanges has increased significantly. Given the development of economic globalization, the acceleration of the process of educational internationalization represents a general trend in higher education development and a common requirement for universities. In addition to education, international students also experience (...) cross-cultural adaptation, that is, behavioral adaptation or changes that occur in people in response to changes in their home country, whether in the form of external or internal cultural adaptation. For international students, the problem of cross-cultural adaptation not only hinders their learning progress but also affects their psychology and living conditions. This article explains the construction of Habermas’s theory of communication action. According to this theory, the purpose of communication is to coordinate the common actions of actors, and this coordination is achieved through mutual communication, which is mediated by language. The article also discusses the cross-cultural adaptation experienced by international students in Chinese universities and highlights the importance of developing educational services for international students in the context of international education. Studies have shown that female students exhibit slightly worse psychological adaptation than male students and female students have a slightly higher rate of depression rate than male students. An interpersonal study of 120 international students traveling to China found that most of these students were able to adapt in terms of their interpersonal relationships. To solve the problems associated with cross-cultural adaptation of international students in China, some countermeasures have been proposed, mainly including active participation in interpersonal communication, an enhanced understanding of the new culture, and the amplification of cultural identity. (shrink)

Determining the nature of binding in grapheme-color synaesthesia has consequences for understanding the neural basis of synaesthesia and visual awareness in general. We evaluated type- and token-based letter-color binding using a synaesthetic version of the object-reviewing paradigm. Although mean response times failed to reveal any significant differences between synaesthetes and control participants, RT analyses with ex-Gaussian distributions revealed that the response facilitation in the synaesthesia group reflected type representations exclusively, while response facilitation in the control group, who (...) learned letter-color associations, was dominated by token representations. Thus, letter-color associations in associator synaesthetes are type-based, and do not involve binding to object tokens, consistent with their subjective reports. Contrary to recent studies that failed to find differences between synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes with behavioral measures, response time distribution analyses indicate that color sensations in synaesthetes are not simply the extreme form of normal letter-color associations, and cannot be attributed to demand characteristics. (shrink)

To date, the primary focus of research in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been on the strategic implications of CSR for corporations and less on an evaluation of CSR from a wider political, economic and social perspective. In this paper, we aim to address this gap by critically engaging with marketing campaigns of so-called ‘ethical’ bottled water. We especially focus on a major CSR strategy of a range of different companies that promise to provide drinking water (...) for (what they name as) ‘poor African people’ by way of Western consumers purchasing bottled water. Following Fairclough's approach, we unfold a three-step critical discourse analysis of the marketing campaigns of 10 such ‘ethical’ brands. Our results show that bottled water companies try to influence consumers' tastes through the management of the cultural meaning of bottled water, producing a more ‘ethical’ and ‘socially responsible’ perception of their products/brands. Theoretically, we base our analysis on McCracken's model of the cultural meaning of consumer goods, which, we argue, offers a critical perspective of the recent emergence of CSR and business ethics initiatives. We discuss how these marketing campaigns can be framed as historical struggles associated with neo-liberal ideology and hegemony. Our analysis demonstrates how such CSR strategies are part of a general process of the reproduction of capitalist modes of accumulation and legitimation through the usage of cultural categories. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to examine how young publics in the United States and South Korea perceive the corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices of multinational corporations and evaluate the effectiveness of CSR practices in terms of organization–public relationship (OPR). Results showed that young publics in the United States and South Korea differently characterized CSR practices of multinational corporations and evaluated relationships with them. Young American participants evaluated the CSR practices of multinational corporations more favorably than did the (...) young Korean participants. In addition, four CSR practices (internal environment, moral, discretionary, and relational) were associated with OPR dimensions in the United States, while only relational CSR practices were significantly related to OPR dimensions in South Korea. Overall, the findings highlight that cultural and societal meanings were embedded in identifying CSR practices and evaluating the relationship with multinational corporations involved in CSR practices. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Psychopathy, Other-Regarding Moral Beliefs, and ResponsibilityLloyd Fields (bio)AbstractIn this paper I seek to show that at least one kind of psychopath is incapable of forming other-regarding moral beliefs; hence that they cannot act for other-regarding moral reasons; and hence that they are not appropriate subjects for the assessment of either moral or legal responsibility. Various attempts to characterize psychopaths are considered and rejected, in particular the widely held view (...) that psychopaths are, in general, incapable of understanding moral concepts. The particular disability proposed here, the incapacity to form other-regarding moral beliefs, is then derived from an analysis of what is required for someone to be a responsible agent. This is illustrated with a detailed case history. A defect of this kind is shown to vitiate moral responsibility, because it renders the psychopath irresponsive to the social pressures which normally ensure respect for moral norms. It is also shown that the psychopath is not a suitable subject for the assessment of legal responsibility, because he lacks the capacity to act from common prudence to avoid sanctions. I conclude that the attempt to characterize particular defects from among the heterogeneity of psychopathic subjects, could lead to better targeted, and hence to more effective, management of particular cases.KeywordsCriminality, mental illness, personality disorder, blame, liability, moral beliefs, guilt, social moralityIntroductionThe term “psychopath” has been used with a wide variety of different meanings and, no doubt, covers a heterogeneous group of subjects (Criminal behaviour and mental health 1992). My aim in this paper is to argue that at least a subgroup of those subjects are characterized by an inability to form other-regarding moral beliefs—and hence, for this particular reason, are not morally responsible agents—and that they also lack the capacity for prudence, and hence are not legally responsible agents.I begin by distinguishing the particular sense in which I will be using the term “psychopathy.” I then consider some suggestions in the literature regarding the defect by which psychopaths might be characterized—that they are mentally ill, or incapable of understanding moral concepts. In rejecting these, I come to the suggestion that the relevant defect is an inability to form other-regarding moral beliefs, a defect which is graphically illustrated by a case report from the literature. I explore the implication of this kind of defect for [End Page 261] moral responsibility as a socially-embedded notion, and the implication of the psychopath’s inability to exercise prudence in relation to legal liability.Nothing in this paper should be taken to suggest that psychopaths are irredeemable. On the contrary, as I argue in an endnote, correctly characterizing the defect from which they suffer leads directly to forms of treatment whose effectiveness has acquired a measure of empirical support.The Nature of PsychopathyPsychopathy is not a homogeneous concept; there are different types of psychopaths. For example, Henderson identified a type of psychopath who he classified as “Predominantly Creative,” exemplified by such figures as T. E. Lawrence and Joan of Arc. In people of this type genius is associated with heightened sensitivity, psychosexual immaturity and emotional instability (Henderson 1939, 108–20; Henderson and Gillespie 1969, 317). Predominantly creative psychopaths do not come within my purview.By “psychopathy” I shall mean the specific form of personality disorder described by Cleckley in his book, The Mask of Sanity (Cleckley 1964). Cleckley’s description forms the basis of Hare’s Revised (20-item) Psychopathy Checklist. The Checklist includes the following personality traits and deviant behaviors:1. Glibness/superficial charm.2. Grandiose sense of self-worth.3. Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom.4. Pathological lying.5. Conning/manipulative.6. Lack of remorse or guilt.7. Shallow affect.8. Callous/lack of empathy.9. Parasitic lifestyle.10. Poor behavioral controls.11. Promiscuous sexual behavior.12. Early behavior problems.13. Lack of realistic, long-term plans.14. Impulsivity.15. Irresponsibility.16. Failure to accept responsibility for own actions.17. Many short-term marital relationships.18. Juvenile delinquency.19. Revocation of conditional release.20. Criminal versatility (Hare 1986, 18). 1This conceptualization resembles in many respects the category of Antisocial Personality Disorder as described in the American Psychiatric... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Masafumi Ogawa, “Music Teacher Education in Japan: Structure, Problems, and Perspectives”Peggy WheelerMasafumi Ogawa's paper presents challenge after challenge facing the teacher and the teacher educator in Japan. One has the sense that a lifetime of frustrations with the national curriculum, the set-up of student teaching, and the definition of music as a school subject each made its way into the paper. Even choosing to focus on (...) teacher training still leaves a very broad topic for a relatively short paper. The central challenge seems to be the curriculum. How does the curriculum impact the teacher and the teacher training process? How does the underlying definition of music as well as the purpose that definition implies affect the curriculum? His paper also identifies a series of dualities or tensions that exist between two important components: the curriculum or teacher education. The fact that Japanese and American music education systems seem to be at opposite ends of some of these dualities is a compelling reason for exploring and discussing them.In the arena of teacher preparation, the dualities as they appear in their relative proportion of the teacher education curriculum are (1) performance versus academic music courses, such as history, theory, and composition, and (2) education versus music courses—a familiar lament among music education students. In student teaching, modeling in the classroom by the cooperating teacher is contrasted with providing opportunities for the student teacher to experiment with the teaching process. Evaluation of student teaching is a three-way tension involving the student teacher, the cooperating teacher, and the university professor.In his discussion of the school curriculum, Ogawa deplores the triumph of attitude over skill, and pleads for discernment in the application of national standards to meet the needs of the community and students. He returns to the nature of music and music education at several points in his paper, expanding the meaning and function of music beyond music as art. His dissatisfaction with the seemingly teacher-proof curriculum peaks when he advocates for the autonomy of the teacher in the classroom. Giving teachers the opportunity to devise their own curriculum seems to go to the other extreme. Having taught with colleagues who had virtually no training in music, a standard curriculum at the district or national level provides some essential boundaries.Ogawa's discussion of the impact of the national Course of Study on Japanese music education was particularly intriguing. As teacher certification in the United [End Page 205] States has begun to promote and reward National Board Certification, it is striking to consider the restrictions and disempowerment that Ogawa describes and credits to the omnipresent Course of Study. For someone unfamiliar with the Japanese system of education, some of the descriptions were enticing but brief. Other descriptions were a bit confusing, but after visiting the MEXT website, I think most of this confusion is due to translation. It is difficult to take any phrase that is packed with meaning in one culture and find a suitable phrase in another culture that will convey the associations that are connected with it. I would recommend quoting complete descriptions or including an appendix. A reference to the history of Japanese music education on Kensho Takeshi's website would also provide more context, particularly for the connection between emotion, music, and ethics.I want to thank Ogawa for stimulating me to consider issues of curriculum including how I have changed my views of curriculum since I returned to school teaching. First, I will describe my change of perspective. Then I would like to close by describing an aspect of curriculum and teacher education that has surfaced this past year. I would call this the meta-curriculum, and I wonder how we can prepare new teachers for this part of teaching. It seems to me that the world of philosophy is the quintessential and perhaps the only appropriate arena for this preparation.Beyond Curriculum in the ClassroomLike the first spring rain on newly cut grass, music education has a fresh and vital look to me. I returned to public school teaching this year after a hiatus of seventeen years. After focusing on viola performance and liberal arts... (shrink)

According to Mathias Risse and Richard Zeckhauser, racial profiling can be justified in a society, such as the contemporary United States, where the legacy of slavery and segregation is found in lesser but, nonetheless, troubling forms of racial inequality. Racial profiling, Risse and Zeckhauser recognize, is often marked by police abuse and the harassment of racial minorities and by the disproportionate use of race in profiling. These, on their view, are unjustified. But, they contend, this does not mean that all (...) forms of racial profiling are unjustified; nor, they claim, need one be indifferent to the harms of racism in order to justify racial profiling. In fact, one of the aims of their paper is to show that racial profiling, suitably understood, “is consistent with support for far-reaching measures to decrease racial inequities and inequality.” Hence, one of their most striking claims, in an original and provocative paper, is that one can endorse racial profiling without being in any way indifferent to the disadvantaged status of racial minorities. In an initial response to these claims, I argued that Risse and Zeckhauser tend to underestimate the harms of racial profiling. I suggested two main reasons why they did so. The first is that they tend to identify the more serious harms associated with profiling with background racism, and therefore to believe that these are not properly attributable to profiling itself. The second reason is that they ignore the ways in which background racism makes even relatively minor harms harder to bear and to justify than would otherwise be the case. Hence, I concluded, racial profiling cannot be a normal part of police practice in a society still struggling with racism, although under very special conditions and with special regulation and compensation in place, it might be justified as an extraordinary police measure. I want to stand by those claims. However, Risse’s response to my arguments persuades me that I misinterpreted his earlier position in one significant respect. So I will start by explaining what interpretive mistake I believe that I made. I will then argue that despite Risse’s patient and careful response to my arguments, my initial concerns with his justification of profiling remain valid. -/- . (shrink)

Background Although, moral distress presents a serious problem among critical care nurses in many countries, limited research has been conducted on it. A validated scale has been developed to evaluate moral distress and has enabled cross-cultural comparison for seeking its root causes. Research aims This study aimed to (1) clarify the current status of moral distress among nurses who worked in critical care areas in Japan, (2) compare the moral distress levels among nurses in Japan with previously reported (...) results from the United States (US), and (3) explore the factors associated with moral distress. Research design A nationwide cross-sectional study was conducted. Participants and research context We conducted a self-administered questionnaire survey using the Measure of Moral Distress–Healthcare Professionals (MMD-HP) among critical care nurses who were randomly selected from hospitals across Japan. The mean differences between the two countries were compared using a Student's t-test with summary statistics. The factors associated with higher levels of moral distress were examined using a multiple regression analysis. Ethical considerations The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Tokyo Medical and Dental University (approval nos. M2018-214 and M2019-045). Results We obtained 955 valid responses from 94 facilities. In Japan, the items with the highest moral distress scores were those related to aggressive/inappropriate treatment. The total MMD-HP score was significantly higher in Japanese nurses compared to US nurses (122.8 ± 70.8 vs 112.3 ± 73.2). Some factors, such as leadership experience, were associated with higher moral distress. Discussion The top root causes of moral distress were similar to potentially inappropriate treatments in both countries. Conclusion This study revealed the factors associated with higher moral distress and its characteristics in each country. These results can be used for reducing moral distress in the future. (shrink)

This article explores the theme of nihilism from the perspective of post-continental philosophy by focusing on semiotics and information theory and the question of “meaning” at stake between them. Nihilism is characterised here as an avatar of the counter-Enlightenment tradition. Post-continental philosophy is defined by a positive revaluation of reason, science, and technology, which were critiqued for their nihilistic effects by key continental philosophers. Rather than critiquing nihilism, then, post-continental philosophers have tended to affirm it. This article argues that, despite (...) appearances, such developments in fact allow a deepened response to nihilism, considered as an existential problem. It does so by using Lyotard’s critique of semiotics to show how the kind of linguistic and cultural meaning associated with continental philosophy is itself a kind of nihilism. It then examines Meillassoux’s theory of the meaningless sign and Laruelle’s idea of the secret truth of Hermes to argue that this new paradigm of post-continental philosophy allows a response to nihilism by offering an alternative to semiotic meaning. Thus freed, this new paradigm allows the embrace of information theory as a plural articulation of meanings grounded in meaningless data, which enables a superior response to nihilism in the information age. (shrink)

The engineering profession has experienced some ethical cases that were rarely reported, scrutinized, or discussed because: they did not necessarily represent violations of existing codes even if they breached ethical principles; those within the organization were not prepared to take steps to address the issues or impose sanction; an/or some of the personnel associated with these cases resorted to silence to avoid being labeled as trouble-makers in their organizations and, perhaps, more broadly, in society. The goal of this (...) paper is to heighten managerial awareness of ethical issues, interrelated ethical lapses, and appropriate responsive actions within professional engineering communities. As such, the authors reviewed recent well-known professional and organizational ethical cases including impact of leadership role and existing standards, and critically analyzed interrelated literature. The paper’s case studies exemplify that because ethical issues are complex, intricate, and nuanced; bylaws are insufficient for establishing the inclusive culture for handling potential ethical situations. In fact, through what is known as the codification of ethics, it is possible that someone’s conduct can totally fulfill all professional responsibilities but still be unethical. As such, ethical leadership is needed to provide the means for establishing appropriate norms so as to set the proper structures for addressing the diverse ethical matters. Perceptions about the responses of leaders to potential ethical lapses are a critical factor in formulating, changing, and maintaining ethical values at the individual and organizational levels. A leader’s passive attitude toward ethical issues can be the signal for the ignored lapses to become the norm at not only the organizational level but also the society. Guided by the new Code of Ethics by the American Society of Civil Engineers, this paper aims to trigger the proper ethical behavior and expectations for the welfare of the engineering profession both in the present and future. (shrink)

Decoding the function and meaning of a foreign culture's sounds and gestures is a notoriously difficult problem. It is even more challenging when we think about the sounds and gestures of nonhuman animals. This essay provides a review of what is currently known about the informational content and function of primate vocalizations, emphasizing the problems underlying the construction of a primate “dictionary.” In contrast to the Oxford English Dictionary, this dictionary provides entries to emotional expressions as well as potentially (...) referential expressions. It therefore represents a guide to what animals do with their vocalizations, as well as how they are represented by signalers and perceivers. I begin by a discussion of the unit problem, of how an acoustic space is carved up into functionally significant components leading to a species‐specific repertoire or lexicon of sorts. This section shows how little we know about the units of organization within animal vocal repertoires, and how such lack of information constrains our ability to tackle the problem of syntactic structure. In Section III, I review research on the production and perception of vocal signals that appear to be functionally referential. This work shows that several nonhuman primates produce vocalizations that share some of the key properties of reference, but certainly not all; the components that are missing raises questions about their role as precursors to human words. In Section IV, I explore the social uses of vocalizations, assessing whether the signal contains sufficient information for listeners to judge a caller's credibility; ultimately, caller credibility determines how receivers select an appropriate response. Results show that individuals can use calls to assess whether someone is reliable or unreliable, and that such attributes are associated with individuals and particular contexts. I conclude by synthesizing the issues presented and then raise some directions for future conceptual and methodological progress. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 695 Salvation Outside the Church? Tracing the History of the Catholic Response. By FRANCIS A. SULLIVAN. New York/Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1992. Pp. i + 224. $12.95 (paper). The subtitle of the volume describes well its purpose and content. The author surveys in chronological order, beginning with the earliest ecclesiastical writers and ending with John Paul II, the various interpretations of the axiom extra ecclesiam nulla (...) salus. What prompted Sullivan to undertake a historical rather than systematic approach in his volume is the conviction that without taking into account the historical and cultural factors that conditioned the formulation of this axiom it is impossible to make sense of the shift from the exclusivism of the pre-Vatican II Church to the inclusiveness of Vatican II and post-Vatican II theology with regard to the salvation of those who are not members of,the Roman Catholic Church. The principle that guides Sullivan's attempt to disclose the meaning embodied in the manifold formulations of the axiom " there is no salvation outside the Church" is Pope John XXHI's distinction between " the substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith " and " the way in which it is presented," and the more recent emphasis of the Declaration Mysterium Ecclesiae (1973) on the historical condition affecting the expression of divine revelation. As a historical study, Salvation Outside the Church? is an excellent continuation of Louis Caperan's two-volume work Le probleme du salut des infideles, which is still unavailable in English. Obviously an over· view of almost two thousand years of theological discussion of this problem has to be highly selective if one is not to miss the forest for the trees, and Sullivan's choice of authors as well as of historical periods for discussion is judiciously made. If a complaint is to be made in this regard, it is that he has focused too much attention on magisterial documents, and Roman documents at that, and not enough on contemporary theology. True, he devotes a chapter to the theory of " anonymous Christians," espoused mainly by Karl Rahner (chapter 10), and defends it against criticisms by Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Hans Kiing, and Max Seckler. He is well aware that Rahner's theory has become the position of mainstream Catholic theology and cites authors who support it in one way or another (p. 181). However, a book that claims to present " the Catholic response " to the problem posed by the axiom extra ecclesiam nulla salus should, one would expect, have discussed in greater detail the various positions of contemporary Catholic theologians on this issue. It is to be fervently hoped that Sullivan will take up this task in his next book. 696 BOOK REVIEWS Sullivan's basic thesis is that the substance underlying the various negative formulations of the axiom extra ecclesiam nulla salus is the positive belief ithat " God has assigned to the church a necessary role in the accomplishment of his plan for the salvation of humanity " (p. 12). Such a thesis is, of course, neither new nor startling. Hans Kling had already said that much in his 1967 Die Kirche (English translation, p. 318). What is helpful in Sullivan's account is his explanation of both the intent of those who affirmed this axiom with its apparent exclusiveness and the limitations that prevented them from perceiving the universality of God's saving grace. With regard to intent, Sullivan shows con· vincingly that the patristic usage of the axiom is intended as a warning for those Christians who had separated themselves from the catholica either by schism or by heresy that they must remain within it in order to be saved, whereas ithe medieval usage is intended to warn pagans and Jews that they should accept the message of the Gospel now that it had been announced to them. With regard to limitations, Sullivan singles out two: the geographical and the psychological. On the one hand, there was before the discovery of America the conviction that the world was identical with Christian Europe. This belief led theologians to postulate that the Gospel had been spread throughout the world. On the other hand, their ignorance... (shrink)

This article deals with political socialization and political participation, in the context of visiting phenomenon, in Turkey. We took the Ali Baba Tomb in central Sivas and Celtek Baba Tomb in Celtek village as the sample of our study. In the study, political socialization and participation was seen as a dialectical process between individual and society. Visiting phenomenon embodying a rich historical, religious and cultural accumulation is important in that it defines the religious tendency of huge masses. As a (...) matter of fact, they have realized their potitical socialization in a pretty much authentic culture with different interests, duties, roles and positions. At the same time, they have shown their political participation with reference to the religious world of meaning. -/- SUMMARY In the contrast to the secular paradigm, religion continues to keep its reciprocal relations with the whole social system without giving an opportunity to any speculation. Religion and politics are two important fields in which this living relationship is stood for institutional structures. This article focuses on political socialization and political participation in Turkey by taking into consideration the phenomenon of visiting. The question of how the visiting phenomenon provided an input to the political system in terms of political socialization and political participation constitutes the problem of the research. Ali Baba Tomb in the center of Sivas province and Celtek Baba Tomb situated in central Celtek Village were selected as samples for the study. The political socialization and participation were talked with 33 visitors who had been selected randomly from different days between September and December 2015 and were tried to understand the data obtained by semi-standardized interview form. It has been examined in terms of its historical development and orientation of relationship between the visiting phenomenon in the research and the political system. For this reason, the basic methodological acceptance of the research has been to understand and interpret political socialization and participation in its specific environment. In this framework, firstly, the socialization of the sample in the context of family, school, mass communication and social environment was evaluated. Later, it has been tried to understand the religiousness in the context of the visiting through the same group. Their political participation has also been resolved according to the classification of Milbrath and Goel’s hierarchical political participation level through the field of political socialization and religiousness. Finally, this research, which is considered as a singular case study, has been subjected to a systematic and phenomenological analysis according to gender, age, education and belief variables on the basis of data obtained through problem-centered interviewing and participatory observation. The visiting in a phenomenological sense involves a trip and travel made with certain requests to the people who are believed to have been buried in places such as tombs, attributed to certain spiritual powers and virtues. The visiting phenomenon in the field of research had brought a rich historical and cultural content, exceeding a simple grave visit. Today, in the religious and traditional meaning world the traumas caused by the modernization and other socio-psychological thrillers have brought a different interest in Turkish society than ever before. The visiting phenomenon has created a continuity with a perception of sanctity and understanding which were shaped by an interaction with many different cultures, pre-Islamic beliefs and eventually mystical and charismatic personalities. However, the visiting phenomenon according to the severity of the individual and social crises experienced in the modern period has also revealed some variations that included popular patterns in both structural and practical contexts. Thus, the visiting phenomenon today is seen in a change by creating new universes appropriate to tradition in different social categories. In the modern era the influence of this change on the political culture is evident. This effect is generally related to the social structure of Turkish society and manifests itself as a closing within the sense of protection of the world of meaning. The visiting phenomenon, which has a special place in the religious life of very large masses in Turkey, has created a peculiar structure of political socialization and political participation around a profound historical accumulation. The participants have realized their political socialization in a unique cultural environment. This culture was formed in the context of family, school, mass communication and social environment. The dramatic situations that have taken place in the process have brought the important socialization problems in this environment. The community associations, the system of obsolete values, the distorted hierarchical relationships and the insecure environments created no longer lead to the searching for meaning by them. These people, who express themselves not like politics (27 people) at last, instead of expressing politics themselves with ideological concepts like ideological rightist, leftist, Islamist, communities people (ʾumma), Kemalist (5 people), but rather Turkish, Muslim, homeland, nation, human and righteousness as the concepts and words to prefer to identify. This should be a socialization that they carry out by transferring the objective world they created outwardly around a set of meanings to their subjective consciousness again. It should be a socialization again that they carry out by transferring the objective world they created outwardly around a set of meanings to their subjective consciousness. The visitors have carried out a political participation with the accumulation created by this field of political socialization. They saw themselves as often religious and the visiting activity as a sign of religiosity. As a result, the visiting a tomb could have been a simple manifestation of inner happiness and ease in a happy moment or an entertainment as much as it was in distress in this environment. The mystical attitude which is far from the world that many poor people built around the visit has caused them to put reserves in the political institution that represents a secular field. As a matter of fact, the visitors often characterize the world with the terms like empty, lie, trial, and so on. Politics, on the other hand, had been seen as a relationship of interest, cheating and lying. It has been understood that it provides a political input in the framework that Milbrath and Goel conceptualize as audience actions when we look at the political participation of the visiting phenomenon in the Sivas universe. According to this visit, in the sample of the phenomenon 29 people of the participants said that they are not open to the politics while 4 of them said that they are open to the politics. However, given that voting attitudes in the elections, only 2 of the participants did not see this very important; others (31 people) regard voting as a responsibility in the name of country, nation, country or even religion. From time to time, those who say either that they have started to the political discussions or that they have participated in political debates (11 people of them) are less than those who have never attended this kind of debates (22 people). In this sample, the number of people trying to persuade a person to vote for a particular party is 6; the number of people carrying a rosette of a party or hanging the symbols of the party to the house, to the car, was only 4 among those participants. Visiting people usually provide the political socializations in a fatalistic and restrictive environment. Their political participation is also in accord with the symbolic world of this hierarchical structure in which life is defined by certain rules. Therefore, they had produced an unquestionability of the authority as it is in family as well as political institutions. The politics is frightening for them; it is not interested in them and they should be away from it. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. ;Typically we maintain two incompatible standards towards right action and good character, and the tension between these polarities creates the paradox of moral luck. In practice we regard actions as right or wrong, and character as good or bad, partly according to what happens as a result of the agent's decision. Yet we also think that people should not be held responsible for matters beyond their control. ;This split underpins Kant's (...) assertion that only the good will is securely good, that its goodness is impervious to outcome ill-luck. Some commentators, such as Martha Nussbaum and to some extent Bernard Williams, think that this simply writes off the paradox. Williams asserts that the paradox is insoluble, and that its inescapability threatens the notion of agent responsibility. In contrast Thomas Nagel argues that agents' most cherished projects may be indeed be subject to luck, but that does not mean that their deepest motivations are moral. This, I suggest, is one of several means whereby we might limit the effect of the paradox without denying that the tension exists. But I also argue that it is wrong to accuse Kant of ignoring the paradox. ;Ethical consequentialists, on the other hand, appear to have no problem with moral luck, because the paradox depends on a dichotomy between the outside world and the locus of moral worth in the individual agent. But this turns out not to be true. The problem of moral luck is not some strange Kantian fixation, but a general dilemma: a variant on what Nagel terms "the problem of excess objectivity" which cuts across all of ethics and metaphysics. ;Retaining a broadly Kantian notion of agent-responsibility, but limiting what agents are responsible for, requires us to delineate the realm of ethics more narrowly than has been done by those who believe that the rational and/or prudential are coterminous with the ethical. This strategy for minimising the paradox's impact is explored in two areas from medical ethics, the allocation of scarce medical resources and informed consent, and two from public policy, secrecy and nuclear deterrence. Throughout, the analysis seeks to test Nagel's maxim that the best we can hope for is to act in such a manner that we would not have to revise our opinion of how we should have acted once the consequences of our actions become apparent. (shrink)

Trolley problems have been used in the development of moral theory and the psychological study of moral judgments and behavior. Most of this research has focused on people from the West, with implicit assumptions that moral intuitions should generalize and that moral psychology is universal. However, cultural differences may be associated with differences in moral judgments and behavior. We operationalized a trolley problem in the laboratory, with economic incentives and real-life consequences, and compared British and (...) Chinese samples on moral behavior and judgment. We found that Chinese participants were less willing to sacrifice one person to save five others, and less likely to consider such an action to be right. In a second study using three scenarios, including the standard scenario where lives are threatened by an on-coming train, fewer Chinese than British participants were willing to take action and sacrifice one to save five, and this cultural difference was more pronounced when the consequences were less severe than death. (shrink)

Psychopathy fascinates. Modernist writers construct out of it an image of alienated individualism pursuing the moment, killing they know not why, exploiting in passing, troubled, if troubled at all, not by guilt, but by perplexity (Camus 1989; Gide 1995; Mailer 1957; Musil 1996). Psychiatrists and psychologists—even those who should know better—are drawn by it to take off into philosophical speculation about morality, evil, and the beast in man (Mullen 1992; Simon 1996). Philosophers succumb to the temptation of attempting to ground (...) speculation in the supposed facticity of psychopathy. -/- Psychopathy is a cultural construct with roots going back to the eighteenth century, but which only came to full flower over the last fifty years (Hare 1998; Lewis 1974). The currently fashionable constructions of psychopathy find wide acceptance among clinicians and academics. The problem is, however, whether the concept has connections that have been established to the behavior, psychopathology, or the structure and function of brain worthy of according even a modest level of scientific status. There is little point in basing an argument on some supposed scientific gold standard if what glitters is iron pyrites (fools' gold). -/- Neil Levy's opening paragraph contains the statement "Yet in other respects they seem quite irrational; so much so that the term moral insanity has sometimes been applied to them" (p. 129). This both asserts that there is a category "them," namely the psychopaths, and connects them to "moral insanity." Moral insanity entered the language of psychiatry when Pritchard chose to use the term to translate Pinel's category of mania sans deliré (Pritchard 1836). Pinel was attempting to conceptualize a range of disorders that bordered on insanity in the sense of severe disturbances of affect, judgment, and behavior, but that were not accompanied by hallucinations or delusions (Pinel 1798/1964). In today's terminology, the cases he described would probably fall into diagnostic groups, including major depression, bipolar disorder, epilepsy, and a range of personality disorders. A number of his more striking case histories involved antisocial and even murderous behavior, which probably reflected Pinel's role in assessing offenders for the criminal courts of Paris. Pritchard's use of the English word "moral" reflected an appeal first to its use at the time to designate something which was like or similar, but not identical (a usage the OED labels "vulgar"), and second moral in the sense of ethical, conforming to virtuous behavior. Anglophones seized on the latter meaning, although Pinel emphasized the former. Forty years later, Henry Maudsley, the most widely read psychiatrist of his generation, could assert that moral insanity was as real as Colour blindness, some people being Colour blind and some moral blind (Maudsley 1879). Moral insanity became connected variously to phrenology with its own bump over the underlying moral cortex, with the twisted genetics of degeneration, with atavistic theories of criminality, and with a range of disorders of brain from epilepsy to frontal lobe damage (Combed 1853; Ellis 1890; Pick 1989). Although it is anachronistic to use the terms "psychopathy" and "moral insanity" together, it is clear they occupied a similar social and psychiatric space, albeit in different era. This should caution against too ready acceptance of psychopathy which may turn out to be as empty and dangerous a conceptualization as moral insanity. Why dangerous? Dangerous to those labeled, because the morally insane and the moral imbeciles were placed in preventive detention in asylums and prisons, and even sterilized in some jurisdictions. Dangerous to society, because it gave a spurious scientific justification for viewing crime not as reflecting the social evils of deprivation, ignorance, and inequality but as the ravages of the born criminals. -/- Psychopaths are not, as Levy asserts, "(causally) responsible for … more than fifty percent of violent crime" (p. 129). A proportion of violent offenders, which varies widely between observers, are labeled psychopaths. This is often on the basis of Hare's psychopathy checklist, which is a subjective, albeit through training aspiring to be reproducible, and to some extent self-sustaining, evaluation system (Hare 1980, 2003). Part of the checklist gathers data on prior antisocial behavior; part constrains the examiner to subjectively estimate such matters as glibness and callousness, part requires judgments about whether the... (shrink)

The research is devoted to a discussion of social and humanitarian problems associated with tectonic changes in human life against the backdrop of total digitalization. The author's attention is focused on the uniqueness of the modern situation: never before have innovative technologies had the ability to penetrate so rapidly and deeply into the foundation of modern society, have they become so widespread and accessible to almost all peoples and cultures. At the same time, the undeniable public good and (...) the most serious threats to society that digital reality technologies bring with them are in a very close relationship. This is especially true for artificial intelligence systems. Innovations transform the entire world order, bringing radical changes not only to the material sphere of life, but also to the spiritual and moral state of a person. The research notes that the introduction of information and communication technologies into the life of modern society occurs without reliable support on the results of preliminary experimental research, without taking into account a deep professional and responsible assessment of the social and psychological consequences of their impact on the individual and on society as a whole. As a result, at this stage, society is constantly faced with many negative aspects of the impact of high-tech means. The work examines some of them: a decrease in cognitive and analytical abilities, the devaluation of human labor, the criminalization of cyberspace, the spread of Deepfake technology. Particular attention is paid to the problem associated with the possibility of using information technology as a tool of psychological influence. Information and psychological warfare is implemented on the basis of social networks and artificial intelligence technologies, which provides the enemy with the opportunity to achieve superiority without the use of military force. Information and humanitarian actions in cyberspace, carried out by Western countries in order to destabilize our society, destroy its value foundations, reformat the consciousness, worldview and spiritual and moral qualities of citizens, are becoming increasingly large-scale and aggressive. The work notes that digitalization is gaining momentum, plunging society deeper into new circumstances and requiring decisive action aimed at overcoming the many threats specific to the modern high-tech era. (shrink)

Photo ID 222412412 © US Navy Medicine | Dreamstime.com ABSTRACT In a non-military setting, the answer is clear: it would be unethical to treat someone based on non-medical considerations such as nationality. We argue that Battlefield Triage is a moral tragedy, meaning that it is a situation in which there is no morally blameless decision and that the demands of justice cannot be satisfied. INTRODUCTION Medical resources in an austere environment without quick recourse for resupply or casualty evacuation are often (...) limited. The shortage extends not only to supplies like blood products and drugs, but physicians and other medical personnel. In the midst of a mass casualty scenario, such as a battle that includes intense ground fighting, the medical staff will stretch scarce resources and triage casualties according to specific criteria. Typically, they proceed by providing care for the most severely wounded first, referred to here as conventional triage. At times, though, the staff may reverse the triage so that soldiers with minor wounds can return to the fight. In a mass casualty situation, when medical personnel apply conventional triage and treat casualties from opposing forces, a dilemma may arise. We argue that it can be permissible for military physicians to prioritize their own soldiers over enemy combatants in a mass casualty triage, where reverse triage does not apply. The case we will focus on is as follows: Battlefield Triage: During combat operations on a remote island in the Pacific Ocean, a compatriot soldier and an enemy combatant arrive at the compatriot soldier country’s medical treatment facility. Both have similar gunshot wounds to the abdomen, and they arrive with similar conditions. Both have low oxygen saturation and excessive blood loss. The sole physician only has enough time to stabilize one person. The scenario is brief, and we are aware that medical rules of eligibility will most often dictate how the physician proceeds,[1] but this scenario is useful in setting up the question we focus on in this paper: would it be wrong to favor the stabilization of a soldier just because the soldier is the physician’s compatriot? In other words, can nationality serve as an ethically justified tiebreaker in a situation such as Battlefield Triage?[2] In a non-military setting, the answer is clear: it would be unethical to treat someone based on non-medical considerations such as nationality. The AMA’s Code of Medical Ethics asserts that physicians have “ethical obligations to place patients’ welfare above their self-interest and above obligations to other groups.”[3] The World Medical Association’s Declaration of Tokyo affirms that “no motive, whether personal, collective or political, shall prevail against this higher purpose” of alleviating distress.[4] Physicians are taught early on that triage decisions must be medically indicated and made without consideration of factors such as race, ethnicity, religion, social status, and nationality. They are taught that public trust and obligations of justice grounded in equality demand that only medical indications be considered. But military physicians in a military setting are beholden to obligations, duties, and responsibilities as members of the military, and when these obligations, duties, and responsibilities conflict, as they do in Battlefield Triage, which loyalties win out and why?[5] Critics of partiality on national grounds argue that partiality undermines public trust in medicine and justice because everyone should be treated equally regardless of nationality.[6] Proponents of partiality argue that military obligations supersede equality and that justice requires partiality in such cases.[7] Despite the critics’ disagreement, both agree that there is a morally right, perhaps even blameless, course of action. Drawing on insights from virtue ethics, we argue that Battlefield Triage is a moral tragedy in which justice is unattainable and there is no action without moral cost. The assumption that there is a morally right choice is flawed. We argue that while no decision in this scenario is free from moral blame, there are reasons to favor treating one’s soldiers over enemy combatants. I. The Case Against Partiality There is a common assumption that there is a morally right or just decision in Battlefield Triage. A number of organizations and scholars claim that it is wrong for military physicians to favor their own soldiers on the grounds of nationality or some form of ‘group membership.’ (In a conflict involving service members from multiple nations working as a coalition, a soldier from an allied country may receive the same priority as the US service member due to ‘group membership.’) The World Medical Association’s WMA Declaration of Lisbon on the Rights of the Patient, which was reaffirmed in 2015, posits that, “[i]n circumstances where a choice must be made between potential patients for a particular treatment that is in limited supply, all such patients are entitled to a fair selection procedure for that treatment. That choice must be based on medical criteria and made without discrimination.”[8] This echoes what was set forth in Article 12 of the Geneva Conventions, which states that “[o]nly urgent medical reasons will authorize priority in the order of treatment to be administered.”[9] The argument for impartiality in Battlefield Triage is that every person is morally equal, and equality entails that medical distribution is, “based on a combination of medical need and urgency.”[10] This is in keeping with the bioethical principles that are generally applied.[11] II. The Case for Partiality On the other side, there are arguments that favoritism is the ethically right decision in Battlefield Triage.[12] The argument asserts that members of the military form a morally significant community of friends and participation in these relationships demands partiality. Just as parents have strong ethical duties to their children and not just any children, military personnel have ethical duties to their group, a group that involves an affirmation of mutual aid and support. Some have termed these ‘associative duties. According to Michael Gross, obligations of friendship, care, and solidarity “leave very little room for generally applicable principles of justice that would obligate a medic to treat enemy or non-compatriot wounded ahead of their compatriots.”[13] This is true in Battlefield Triage, but it may also be true even if the enemy’s soldier were more seriously wounded: “the ethics of small group cohesion, largely an ethics of care, mostly replaces the demands of impartial justice.”[14] In a more recent article, Gross explains that preferential treatment is ethically justified based on fighting capability and “the special obligations people owe friends, family, and, no less, comrades-in-arms.”[15] To not show partiality to the US soldier would be morally wrong on the grounds of friendship and mutual care.[16] III. The Moral Tragedy of Battlefield Triage Defenders and critics of Battlefield Triage favoritism based on nationality both frame their position as just or fair. For example, Justin List argues that physicians are “bound to practice medical neutrality,”[17] Marcus Adams denies that physicians “possess special ethical obligations” to enemy combatants because of their profession.[18] These perspectives assume that there is a morally right decision and that justice is attainable. The assumption that there is or can be a morally right Battlefield Triage decision, and we need to put our heads together to figure it out, remains strongly entrenched. However, the facts of the situation should give us pause; there are too many people and too few resources, and this demands a decision-making process that determines who will receive scarce resources. By its very nature, a battlefield triage decision has to be made based on some characteristic or value, a characteristic or value that will inevitably favor some at the expense of others. This is precisely why competing analyses “in the military context struggle to resolve these conflicts satisfactorily.”[19] Drawing on the insights of virtue ethics, we suggest that Battlefield Triage is a moral tragedy. Virtue ethics suggests that morality is about acting virtuously, which is to say that we should do what a virtuous person would do in the situation. Ethics is about figuring out how a just, wise, compassionate, loving, and fair person would act, and then doing that, as one grows in virtue. But life is not always clear cut, and it is possible that virtuous people may find themselves in a moral tragedy, a situation in which, through no fault of one’s own, a person must make a morally objectionable decision. After the action the virtuous person “emerges having done a terrible thing, the very sort of thing that the callous, dishonest, unjust, or in general vicious agent would characteristically do.”[20] Stated differently, a moral tragedy presents a virtuous person with two or more courses of action, all of which have a moral cost.[21] In Battlefield Triage, no matter how the physician goes about deciding, there is going to be defensible concern from those not saved. The fact that there are more people than can be helped fosters competing values in battlefield triage: maximize lives saved, treat people equally, treat the worse off, and support the war effort. Treating people equally may create tension between treating the worse off, maximizing lives saved, and supporting the war effort. Reverse triage is a case in point, as supporting the war effort conflicts with treating the worse off first, as is a fair lottery system since deploying a lottery may not maximize lives saved or support the war effort. There can be reasons why one person is selected over another, to be sure. Yet, there are reasons for making a decision, and that the decision is subject to legitimate moral concern is another. To recognize the moral tragedy of Battlefield Triage is to recognize the impossibility of acting blamelessly in the situation. In this situation, the virtuous military physician is going to have to sacrifice important values such as justice, compassion, and respect for others, even with a defensible criterion in hand. The physician will grieve this sacrifice accordingly. The physician may find her decision difficult or stressful, and rightly so, because of what her circumstances require of her. This kind of moral tragedy results “in actions which betray and violate the rights of persons to whom there may be a strong duty of care. When this happens, it properly triggers an appropriate moral emotion since our moral integrity has been violated and this affects how we think of ourselves and what we have become.”[22] Rather than view her triage decision as the morally superior choice, the virtuous military physician will view her decisions in these circumstances in a different light: it is the least bad option in a terrible situation, and she did something ethically problematic, something that is contrary to her moral character. She deeply regrets the circumstances in which she had to act. IV. Virtue Ethics A virtue ethicist has insight into how one should go about deciding what to do in a moral tragedy, although virtue ethics may not be as helpful as one may hope. The goal of the virtuous military physician in Battlefield Triage is to adopt the best course of action or the action that she feels she ought to do, all things considered. This does not make her choice devoid of serious wrongdoing—a decision must be made, but that does not make it just. The virtuous military physician will approach the situation with courage, responsibility, and insight. She will think about the decision carefully, wisely, and conscientiously; she will weigh the goods and harms of the choices before her, in conjunction with a proper conception of the good life, human worth, and understanding of her obligations to others—including chain of command, fellow soldiers, and the medical community. She is attuned to the value of human life and has a reasonable idea of the various ways her decisions will affect others. She recognizes that she is in this non-ideal situation through no fault of her own: she is not the one fighting in battles; she is serving her country as a physician, whose job it is to save lives, treat everyone justly, and promote military objectives. She regrets the decision she is forced to make in battlefield triage, acting “with immense regret and pain,” Hursthouse explains, “instead of indifferently or gladly.”[23] This is because, no matter what decision is made, the virtuous military physician “does something terrible or horrible,” something she otherwise would not do and is contrary to her values.[24] V. A Resolvable Moral Tragedy Instead of asking whether there is a morally right decision, in which a decision is morally blameless and above reproach, the virtue ethicist asks whether there is a decision with a convincing rationale, knowing that a decision can have a clear rationale but still be morally tragic. It is perfectly reasonable to think that different virtuous persons will arrive at different courses of action: “two virtuous agents, in the same situation,” Hursthouse writes, “may act differently” in irresolvable moral tragedies, in cases in which there is no clear course of action.[25] Because a person must act in a moral tragedy, one goal is to identify reasons for choosing the chosen action. Some decisions are clearly indefensible—treating neither the compatriot soldier nor the enemy combatant in Battlefield Triage would be wrong—and some decisions are more problematic than others. If the military physician selects to treat the soldier because she does not like the enemy combatant’s skin color, such a reason would be deeply problematic. But much of the debate over how to act in a moral tragedy is not over clearly indefensible or problematic criteria. Instead, the literature is largely about different standards or implementations of justice. Some scholars defend nation-impartial triage as right, while others defend nation-aware triage as right, and each argues that the other side is promoting an unjust or otherwise wrong solution to Battlefield Triage. We suggest that Battlefield Triage is a resolvable moral tragedy and that virtue ethics offers convincing reasons to prefer the treatment of the compatriot soldier rather than the enemy combatant on the grounds of national identity. Virtues are integral to living a good life, a flourishing life, but as Aristotle observed long ago, human beings are inherently social, interdependent and interconnected in profound ways.[26] This goes beyond the obvious fact that we need each other to survive day to day (one person makes clothes, another farms, and another makes tools); the claim is that a good or flourishing life depends in large part on one’s social network or community. This is why many of Aristotle’s moral virtues are other facing: justice, friendship, generosity, and magnanimity, to name a few. Courage, a typically self-facing virtue, is understood by Aristotle to be the virtue that regards one’s fear of death in battle, a battle fought on behalf of one’s city.[27] All of this remains true today. Namely, there is an important sense in which our community matters to our lives: it is easier to live a good, flourishing life if one is part of a good, flourishing community. Our community is made up of smaller groups, and it is more accurate to say that we are simultaneous members of different groups within a broader community. A person may be part of a family, friend group, research team, large state university, city, state, and nation. Groups can function well or not, as we all have experienced, and this suggests that there are virtues or excellences that groups can instantiate. Good groups are unified in purpose, with each member doing their duty alongside others for the attainment of that purpose. Good groups manifest solidarity among their members. Although Aristotle does not list solidarity as a virtue, a number of modern-day virtue ethicists have begun examining how group solidarity can be a virtue that contributes to a good or flourishing life.[28] Solidarity is not conceptualized as an individual virtue, a virtue possessed by a person in isolation of others; instead, it is a collective virtue, a virtue that is shared among members of a defined group with particular ends.[29] “A group has solidarity to the extent that its members are disposed to: (1) share values, aims, or goals; (2) care about those values, aims, or goals; (3) act in accordance with those values, aims, or goals; (4) trust the testimony of other group members with respect to those values, aims, and goals; and (5) feel a sense of belonging to the group.”[30] The virtue of collective or group solidarity involves individuals having special concern for each other, shared aims and values, trust, loyalty, and a sense of belonging with these specific others. There is a oneness to the group in the pursuit of a definite goal or purpose, involving mutual support and affirmation of each member. As such, the group has ends and goods above and beyond the good of each individual person. Sometimes solidarity requires personal sacrifice for the collective (for example, a father sacrificing food so his child can eat). The virtue of collective or group solidarity is important to the military and medical community at every level, and for clear reasons. In the military, there is a clear hierarchy of command, unity of purpose and end, mutual trust and support in complex settings, and so on. Soldiers need to know they can count on one another, and solidarity grounds a soldier’s ability to trust others and be assured of mutual aid. In medicine, solidarity maintains self-regulation of the profession, shared values and goals, as well as public support, not to mention that day-to-day operations require physician trust, engagement, and effort toward the ends of clinical care. Physicians need to work together, along with others, in pursuit of health, and disunity is sowed when there is mistrust, selfishness, or disengagement among the healthcare team and organization. Importantly, just as we are all members of various groups and hence may manifest group solidarity in different settings, the virtuous military physician instantiates collective solidarity with both the medical profession and the military. Her dual loyalty contributes to the moral difficulty of acting in Battlefield Triage. The military physician has competing obligations to distinct groups and cannot satisfy all obligations in Battlefield Triage. Solidarity with the military supports the consideration of favoring the soldier for reasons of national identity, whereas solidarity with the medical community does not. Something has to give, which is why it is a moral tragedy. The virtuous military physician, therefore, must weigh the costs of each course of action. To fulfill her obligations to the medical community would require that she does not use nationality and other non-medical considerations in Battlefield Triage. Since the soldier and enemy combatant are equally injured, justice would demand a random process, perhaps a flip of the coin. Although this may satisfy obligations the military physician has to the medical community, this would be costly to the physician’s military group. If word gets out that the physician decides who to treat based on a coin toss, soldiers, families, and citizens may become frustrated and angry. Soldier morale may go down if it becomes known that a coin flip led to the preventable death of a soldier and the saving of an enemy combatant who had killed (or attempted to kill) other soldiers. As Gross highlights, military solidarity involves a mutual aid promise that military personnel promise to help one another.[31] A military physician is part of the military and, as such, is part of the mutual aid promise, which would appear to be violated if the physician flips a coin. Treating a member of one’s own team may be psychologically more beneficial than treating an enemy combatant and may lead to less moral distress.[32] Finally, treating soldiers rather than enemy combatants promotes broader military and social aims, including returning soldiers to health, maintaining unity of purpose, and minimizing community suffering from a soldier’s death. Favoring members of one’s group, that is, triage based on nationality in Battlefield Triage, would fulfill obligations of military group loyalty, which is contrary to the values and duties of medicine. It does not seem as though showing favoritism in this particular situation is very costly to the medical community or general public, but this is because there is recognition that the physician is in the military. Medicine is impartial to non-medical indications partly because of fairness and to promote public trust in medicine. However, Battlefield Triage is unique, as medicine is being practiced in a non-public, wartime setting. In ordinary circumstances, a patient’s identity is irrelevant, and physicians ought not play favorites. Since Battlefield Triage is not an ordinary circumstance, decisions based on patient identity may not undermine public trust in medicine. In addition, it is contestable that fairness in Battlefield Triage requires that no consideration be paid to one’s nationality. Fairness is about giving each person their due, what is owed to them, and the case can be made that soldiers who place themselves in danger for the sake of the common good or a just cause are owed special attention when they suffer harm in the line of duty. In other words, soldiers voluntarily undergo risk to themselves for the greater good, and society owes them for this sacrifice. This plausibly includes preferential treatment in a situation such as Battlefield Triage. So, while the medical community affirms justice demands non-preferential treatment, the military community can affirm the opposite. The demands of fairness are unclear at best or in conflict in this situation: demands of physician justice decry favoritism, while demands of military justice support favoritism. Triage not based on nationality is arguably unfair and triage based on nationality may not undermine public trust, after all. All things considered, there is a clear rationale for favoring nationality-based preferential treatment in Battlefield Triage. Adopting a nationality-based preference in this situation is more defensible than not. This does not make such a decision ethically right or just. Preference based on nationality is the least bad decision, but it is not morally blameless. It involves one in a serious moral wrong, a wrong otherwise avoided and contrary to one’s character. The virtuous military physician is in a situation in which obligations conflict, and we disagree with Gross, who posits that care of fellow soldiers “is important to the near exclusion of all else.”[33] Gross fails to appreciate the collective virtue of solidarity as applied to those in medicine. The military physician has duties to fellow soldiers but also to fellow physicians, to the medical community, and humanity. To favor a soldier on grounds of nationality violates her duties and responsibilities to this latter group. She is involved in a moral tragedy and can only seek the most just action given the circumstances, yet, at least in virtue ethics, the action remains far from blameless. CONCLUSION We argue that Battlefield Triage is a moral tragedy, meaning that it is a situation in which there is no morally blameless decision and that the demands of justice cannot be satisfied. As such, the virtuous military physician incurs a moral cost to acting as she does—there is a moral residue. However, despite being a moral tragedy, there are clear reasons to act in favor of treating one’s own, considering group solidarity. As such, these kinds of tragedies are resolvable: virtuous military physicians should favor treatment of their own, although they would do so with sorrow. - [1] Militaries set forth medical rules of eligibility or guidelines used to determine whether a person qualifies for specific medical interventions or treatments in certain circumstances, and these guidelines are binding for a military physician. For example, despite opposition from medical organizations, militaries have adopted reverse triage guidelines for military physicians to follow. For ethical discussion, see Falzone, Elisabeth, P. Pasquier, C. Hoffmann, O. Barbier, M. Boutonnet, A. Salvadori, A. Jarrassier, J. Renner, B. Malgras, and S. Mérat. "Triage in military settings." Anaesthesia Critical Care & Pain Medicine 36, no. 1 (2017): 43-51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.accpm.2016.05.004 [2] There are issues that are related to this, including the triage of civilians and allied soldiers. We set related issues aside for purposes of this paper [3] American Medical Association, Code of Medical Ethics: Current Opinions with Annotations, 2004–2005 ed. (Chicago, IL: AMA, 2004), 300. [4] American Medical Association, Code of Medical Ethics: Current Opinions with Annotations, 2004–2005 ed. (Chicago, IL: AMA, 2004), 300. [5] This is termed the “dual loyalty” dilemma in military medicine and has been described at length elsewhere: Institute of Medicine (US) Board on Health Sciences Policy. Military Medical Ethics: Issues regarding Dual Loyalties: Workshop Summary. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2008. Toward a Framework for Resolving Dual Loyalties. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK214853/ [6] See Kenneth G. Swan and K.G. Swan, Jr., “Triage: The Past Revisited,” Military Medicine 161:8 (1996): 448–452. https://doi.org/10.1093/milmed/161.8.448; Jerome A. Singh, “American Physicians and dual loyalty obligations in the ‘war on terror,’” BMC Medical Ethics 4.4 (2003): 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6939-4-4; Beam, Thomas E. "Medical Ethics on the Battlefield." Military Medical Ethics: Sect. IV. Medical ethics in the military. Medical ethics on the battlefield: the crucible of military medical ethics 2 (2003): 369-402; Hereth, Blake. "Health justice for unjust combatants." Journal of Military Ethics 20, no. 1 (2021): 67-81. https://doi.org/10.1080/15027570.2021.1949782. [7] See Adams, Marcus P. "Triage priorities and military physicians." In Physicians at war: The dual-loyalties challenge, pp. 215-236. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2008. Gross, Michael L. "Comradery, community, and care in military medical ethics." Theoretical medicine and bioethics 32 (2011): 337-350. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11017-011-9189-6. Gross, Michael L. "The limits of impartial medical treatment during armed conflict." In Military medical ethics for the 21st century, pp. 71-84. Routledge, 2016. [8] World Medical Association, WMA Declaration of Lisbon on the Rights of the Patient. 5 December 2022, https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-lisbon-on-the-rights-of-the-patient/ [9] Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick in Armed Forces in the Field. 12 August 1949. https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.30_GC-I-EN.pdf. [10] List, Justin M. "Medical neutrality and political activism: physicians' roles in conflict situations." In Physicians at war: The dual-loyalties challenge, pp. 237-253. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2008. 240 [11] Beauchamp, T., and J. Childress. 2013. Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 7th ed. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. [12] Adams, Marcus P. "Triage priorities and military physicians." In Physicians at war: The dual-loyalties challenge, pp. 215-236. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2008. [13] Gross, "Comradery, community, and care in military medical ethics," 347. [14] Gross, “Comradery, community, and care in military medical ethics,” 349. [15] Gross, Michael L. "When medical ethics and military ethics collide." Narrative inquiry in bioethics 13, no. 3 (2023): 199-204. 202 https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/nib.2023.a924191 [16] Our argument draws on virtue ethics, from which care ethics derives, and it is worth clarifying how our argument relates to Gross’s. We do not think that the virtue of friendship grounds triage decisions, for we think it is unlikely that the physician and wounded soldier are friends. Instead, as explained below, we think the collective virtue of group solidarity better captures the moral significance of group loyalty and that Gross would agree with us. But since military physicians are part of distinct groups, with competing obligations, the military physician will be forced to sacrifice a value in battlefield triage cases. In other words, we think Gross downplays the dual group membership of a military physician. [17] List,”Medical neutrality and political activism,” 250. [18] Adams,”Triage priorities and military physicians,” 235. [19] London, Leslie, Leonard S. Rubenstein, Laurel Baldwin-Ragaven, and Adriaan Van Es. "Dual loyalty among military health professionals: human rights and ethics in times of armed conflict." Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 15, no. 4 (2006): 381-391. 383. [20] Hursthouse, R. On Virtue Ethics. OUP 1999. 74 [21] Nussbaum, Martha C. "The costs of tragedy: Some moral limits of cost-benefit analysis." The Journal of Legal Studies 29, no. S2 (2000): 1005-1036, 1007. [22] De Wijze, S. (2005). Tragic-remorse–the anguish of dirty hands. Ethical theory and moral practice, 7(5), 453-471, 457. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-005-6836-x [23] Hursthouse, 73 [24] Hursthouse, 81 [25] Hursthouse, 72 [26] Aristotle, Politics 1253a8. Reeve, C. D. C., Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 2017 [27] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics. III.6.114a, 34-35. 2002, Nicomachean Ethics, Christopher Rowe (trans.), Oxford: Oxford University Press [28] Byerly, T. Ryan, and Meghan Byerly. "Collective virtue." The Journal of Value Inquiry 50, no. 1 (2016): 33-50. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-015-9484-y; Federico, Veronica. "Conclusion: solidarity as a public virtue." Solidarity as a Public Virtue (2018): 495-542. https://doi.org/10.5771/9783845290058. Rehg, William. "Solidarity and the common good: An analytic framework." Journal of Social Philosophy 38, no. 1 (2007): 7-21. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9833.2007.00363.x [29] Byerly and Byerly. "Collective virtue." 43 [30] Battaly, Heather. "Solidarity: Virtue or vice?." In Social virtue epistemology, pp. 303-324. Routledge, 2022. 304 [31] Ibid., 2011: 341 [32] It might be thought that displaying altruism by helping an enemy combatant at the expense of one’s fellow soldier may be psychologically satisfiying. For evidence that military physicians find it difficult to treat enemy combatants, see Lundberg, Kristina, Sofia Kjellström, Anders Jonsson, and Lars Sandman. "Experiences of Swedish military medical personnel in combat zones: adapting to competing loyalties." Military medicine 179, no. 8 (2014): 821-826. https://doi.org/10.7205/MILMED-D-14-00038. Lamblin, Antoine, Clément Derkenne, Marion Trousselard, and Marie-Ange Einaudi. "Ethical challenges faced by French military doctors deployed in the Sahel (Operation Barkhane): a qualitative study." BMC Medical Ethics 22 (2021): 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-021-00723-2 [33] Ibid., 2011: 344. (shrink)

Daniel Ellsberg presented in Ellsberg (The Quarterly Journal of Economics 75:643–669, 1961) various examples questioning the thesis that decision making under uncertainty can be reduced to decision making under risk. These examples constitute one of the main challenges to the received view on the foundations of decision theory offered by Leonard Savage in Savage (1972). Craig Fox and Amos Tversky have, nevertheless, offered an indirect defense of Savage. They provided in Fox and Tversky (1995) an explanation of Ellsberg’s two-color (...) problem in terms of a psychological effect: ambiguity aversion . The ‘comparative ignorance’ hypothesis articulates how this effect works and explains why it is important to an understanding of the typical pattern of responses associated with Ellsberg’s two-color problem. In the first part of this article we challenge Fox and Tversky’s explanation. We present first an experiment that extends Ellsberg’s two-color problem where certain predictions of the comparative ignorance hypothesis are not confirmed. In addition the hypothesis seems unable to explain how the subjects resolve trade-offs between security and expected pay-off when vagueness is present. Ellsberg offered an explanation of the typical behavior elicited by his examples in terms of these trade-offs and in section three we offer a model of Ellsberg’s trade-offs. The model takes seriously the role of imprecise probabilities in explaining Ellsberg’s phenomenon. The so-called three-color problem was also considered in Fox and Tversky (1995). We argue that Fox and Tversky’s analysis of this case breaks a symmetry with their analysis of the two-color problem. We propose a unified treatment of both problems and we present a experiment that confirms our hypothesis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sigewiza’s CureJennifer H. Radden (bio)Keywordsbiopsychosocial model, Hildegard of Bingen, associationist presuppositions, causation, power of suggestionSuzanne Phillips and Monique Boivin provide us with a sympathetic and compelling account of how the various elements of Hildegard’s sophisticated amalgam of ritual, magic, religion, dietary and other medical remedies, caring, and community, formed a seamless cure for Sigewiza’s affliction. Whether Hildgard’s approach reflects an early instance of the biopsychosocial “model” is a (...) separate claim, and may be challenged. But that her ministrations somehow effected a cure in this case seems—if not without a doubt, then very likely.Descriptions of Sigewiza’s condition, with its “clumping together of blackness and steam” caused by a “constellation of humors,” echo those of other medieval writers speaking of the humoral disorder of melancholia—at that time an encompassing category for a range of symptoms and syndromes that would today be assigned as different mental disorders. In these descriptions a variety of explanations for mental illness are quite typically introduced, including biological, social, supernatural, dietary and astrological ones. Phillips and Boivin take care to point out that Hildegard was not offering her remedies as alternatives, but rather proposing them as at work jointly and in a range of causal directions, exhibiting mutual influence, and feedback loops. As these authors say, multiple explanations “were often held simultaneously... in reference to a specific case” (Phillips and Boivin 2007, XX). And the factors that might cause the system to move out of balance are many: food, emotions, the soul, the mind, actions, and spiritual forces. So although deeds may cause bodily changes and their psychological accompaniments, “problems in the diet might affect the humors which would then have psychological effects, which demons might... use as opportunities to cause further trouble in the spirit, mind, and body” (Phillips and Boivin 2007, 365).What first struck me about Hildegard’s description of these many distinct causes interacting in complex ways is its compatibility with the multi-causal accounts of depression (and other mental disorder) frequently proffered in our own time. Daily habits (e.g., diet, sleep and exercise regimes), genetic predispositions, including biological states of fragility, external events, experiences of loss, social roles, and cultural beliefs—not to mention spontaneous recovery, and placebo effects—are all regularly implicated in the onset and course of conditions such as depression.Still, the similarity to these modern causal accounts may be somewhat misleading and we must beware of overstating it. In favoring and pressing on Hildegard’s holistic understanding, moreover, Phillips and Boivin perhaps insufficiently emphasize significant dissimilarities between Hildegard’s and our contemporary accounts.It is the interaction between the various elements making up Sigewiza’s cure that is most noteworthy [End Page 373] in this account, as Phillips and Boivin recognize. Yet that relationship itself seems in some ways surprisingly problematic: difficult for us to make sense of, and profoundly unmodern. Granted, we think we see the way these approaches probably influenced how Sigewiza felt and responded; but it is not so clear how Hildegard saw things. Like a lot of thinking in medieval times, Hildegard’s account provides us with glimpses of an understanding of the world that today looks prescientific and in that respect, almost precausal. (So, to the extent that the biopsychosocial model is understood as a causal one, the case of Sigewiza may exemplify it only inexactly.)It is not merely the range and type of causes, including supernatural and astrological ones, in accounts such as Hildegard’s that distinguish it from today’s analyses. It is also the reliance of such accounts on what seems to be a different metaphysics, one of associations or qualities.Associationist presuppositions can be found in accounts of health and illness from before, during, and long after, Hildegard’s time. Three examples of this pervasive, but puzzling thinking serve to illustrate. The melancholiac’s perceived swarthiness and darkened skin color—regularly noted from the time of the Greek physicians and an established part of the medieval iconography in images of melancholy—were not, or not primarily, thought to be a causal result of the darkness of his bile, as one might suppose. Instead, this coloring seems... (shrink)

Amidst the recent threat of COVID-19, home gardens have surged in popularity as seed companies and nurseries find it challenging to keep their supplies fully stocked. The victory garden movement that emerged during WWII has today re-emerged as COVID victory gardens. Yet, the global changes and cognitive shifts associated with COVID-19 have differential impacts. The narrative of COVID victory gardens depoliticizes urban agriculture. It is blind to its long history in marginalized, oppressed, and displaced communities where home gardens (...) have always been part of a struggle for identity, autonomy, and self- and communal-determination. I argue the blindness embedded in the narrative of COVID victory gardens violates our “food-related obligations,” which are our responsibilities to ourselves, our food, and each other. Silencing how communities of color have historically grown food in pursuit of dignity disregards how home gardens in communities of color are not merely a reactionary response to crisis but part of a historical legacy whereby people of color have grown food for generations to create and recreate sustainable ways of living that validate their cultures, knowledges, and ways of being. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Alexandra Kertz-Welzel’s “Two Souls, Alas, Reside within My Breast”: Reflections on German and American Music Education Regarding the Internationalization of Music EducationPhilosophy of Music Education Review, 21, no.1 (Spring 2013): 52–65Leonard TanAs a Singaporean who, like Kertz-Welzel, spent four years residing in the United States, I read the article with great interest. Born to traditional Chinese parents, I was raised steeped in Confucian values, savored Chinese (...) operas, and spoke Mandarin as a child. When I went to school in postcolonial Singapore, however, the medium of instruction was primarily English. I read Enid Blyton in primary school, Shakespeare in secondary school, and Chaucer in Junior College. My university studies in music were Western-centric. All seemed fine until my doctoral studies in the United States when I was inspired by my music education professor to revisit my cultural roots and to read Chinese philosophy. It was [End Page 113] no easy task reading the original texts—they were written on bamboo slips more than two thousand years ago in classical Chinese, and I needed tuition from my mother. Nevertheless, as I worked my way slowly but surely through each character, one thing became unmistakably clear: although I had read more Western than Asian philosophy, many ideas in the ancient Chinese texts resonate with the innermost recesses of my being and are unmistakably a part of who I am as a Chinese Singaporean, albeit one schooled in Western ways.Two souls, alas, have been residing within my breast! Like Kertz-Welzel, I had to find a way to reconcile my two scholarly identities. How may one negotiate the seeming chasm between the Chinese and Western philosophical worlds? In this paper, I sketch some insights gleaned from my journey into the world of comparative philosophy, specifically, classical Chinese philosophy and American pragmatism. In particular, I address two obstacles to the internationalization of music education identified by Kertz-Welzel, namely, the tendency for researchers to know only one scholarly tradition well, and the use of English as an international language. I then proffer Dewey’s metaphor of “friendship” as a way of charting a new “silk road”—one that blends Eastern and Western ideas—for the philosophy of music education.As noted by Kertz-Welzel, many researchers only know one scholarly tradition well. Dangers lurk when scholars have limited knowledge of foreign philosophical enterprises. To begin with, one may fall into the trap of stereotypical preconceptions. For example, I have been asked if it were methodologically sound to juxtapose Chinese philosophical aphorisms with the closely argued texts of the American pragmatists. The basis of this critique is understandable: think Confucius and aphoristic phrases that teach humans how to lead moral lives immediately spring to mind; think Dewey and one is reminded of the depth and breadth of his philosophical arguments. Chinese philosophical texts, however, are by no means mere aphorisms. While the Analects of Confucius may, prima facie, appear as if it were a random collection of brief sayings, many passages relate to one another and cohere as a philosophy. The rich commentarial tradition that spans over two thousand years further augment the range of insights embedded in the Analects. Post Confucius, Xunzi, the philosopher best known for his argument that human nature is evil and ought to be cultivated through ritual (li 禮) and music (yue 乐), articulated his philosophy through thirty-two books that rival Dewey in richness and complexity.1 For two souls to reside within one breast, one has to remain vigilant against potential stereotypes.The tendency to know only one scholarly tradition well may also inadvertently cause one to judge a foreign philosophical tradition using the standards of the familiar one. When encountering Confucius for the first time, scholars schooled in European philosophy may, as Hegel did, criticize him for being a [End Page 114] shallow moralizer obsessed with rituals (li 禮) rather than a speculative philosopher concerned with theoretical matters.2 Such a judgment is misguided as it ignores the fact that the Chinese philosophical tradition was founded on a set of metaphysical assumptions that differed from its Greek counterpart. Seeing the cosmos in discrete, quantitative, and unchanging terms, the ancient... (shrink)

An important fact about human labor is that it can result not just in reproduction of what it started with, but in something new, a surplus product. When the latter is a means of production, it makes possible a mechanism of change consisting of reproduction by means of the expanded means of production. Each iteration of the labor process can differ from the preceding one insofar as it incorporates the surplus generated previously. Over the long-term, this cyclical process can (...) lead to the self-transformation of labor and, through it, of human societies and cultures. In this paper, I argue that this mechanism of change is also at work in the history of science. I argue that the form this mechanism takes in science is that of a feedback loop between discovery and instrument construction. This process requires the integration, and transformation into material form, of different kinds of knowledge. Based on this mechanism, I defend a concept of scientific progress as transcendence of the limitations of native human epistemic abilities. I also criticize narrowly biologistic approaches to the history of science for ignoring the role of surplus generation in transforming the labor process, and discuss some problems associated with viewing science as labor. (shrink)

The meaning of spontaneous skin conductance activity, and its relevance to appraisal theory, are examined. Spontaneous skin conductance activity is hypothesised to reflect task engagement, and thus to be correlated with appraisals of problem-focused coping potential. In a within-subjects design, subjects solved anagrams in which task difficulty was manipulated by varying both the difficulty of the anagrams and the amount of time available to solve them. In the most difficult condition, appraisals of coping potential were expected, (...) and observed, to be especially low, and these appraisals were predicted to produce selective disengagement from the task, yielding reduced skin conductance activity. Within trials, skin conductance activity increased at the start of the trials in all conditions, but decreased by the end of the trials in the most difficult condition only. At the end of the trials, both spontaneous response rate and maximum response amplitude were positively correlated, within-subjects, with appraisals of coping potential, and, even after controlling for task difficulty, with solving the anagram. These findings support the hypothesised relation between appraised coping potential and spontaneous skin conductance activity, and the interpretation of this activity as reflecting task engagement. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 45, no. 1. © 2019 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 67 Leila J. Rupp Queer Dilemmas of Desire The dilemmas of desire confronting young women in contemporary US society are all too familiar. In the face of the persistent double standard that separates sluts from good girls, young women mobilize a variety of strategies: they lack desire, deny desire, restrain desire, police desire, and sometimes embrace desire. They (...) confront expectations to be sexy but not too sexual even as they insist on the right to be just as sexually active as men. Even in the hookup scene on college campuses, potentially liberating in its facilitation of noncommittal sexual encounters, young women worry about hooking up too much. It is a familiar story, but one that most often leaves behind young women with queer desires. Where they do appear, there are hints that they are not as likely to suppress their desires as straight women, no doubt because it is hard to ignore one’s desires when they fly in the face of heteronormative expectations. But it is also hard to come to grips with queer desires, and that is why the dilemmas I explore here are different. Unlike young straight women working to control their desires, the queer students whose stories I tell report awareness and acceptance of their attractions, sometimes from a very young age. Yet they encounter other kinds of dilemmas, especially uncertainty about the boundary between erotic love and intense friendship, a dilemma harking back to an earlier world of romantic friendship. And in the end, despite a contemporary social context in which nonnormative sexualities are more visible than ever before, 68 Leila J. Rupp experiencing queer desires continues to elicit confusion. Much has changed, but much has not. We know a great deal about straight dilemmas of desire. On the one hand, the double standard that separates sluts from good girls has persisted, despite the loosening of restrictions we associate with the sexual revolution of the long 1960s. In the face of slut shaming, young women continue to mobilize a variety of strategies, which Deborah Tolman has documented so eloquently in Dilemmas of Desire. Young women of color face additional obstacles to enjoying their desire, as the Latina girls we encounter in Lorena Garcia’s Respect Yourself, Protect Yourself make clear through their policing of their own and other girls’ sexuality in the face of racist stereotypes of unrestrained sexuality and teenage motherhood.1 On the other hand, a whole raft of commentators depict young women increasingly insisting on the right to be just as sexual as men. From Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs to Peggy Orenstein’s Girls and Sex to Nancy Jo Sales’ American Girls, critics lament young women embracing sex as a form of empowerment.2 The tension arising from the contradictory responses of young women to the demands placed on their sexuality is nowhere clearer than in the ongoing debate about the impact of hookup culture on women. Is hooking up good for women because it allows them to be sexual while pursuing their studies and career goals unencumbered by intimate relationships, as Hannah Rosin has suggested? Or is it, as Kathleen Bogle first argued in Hooking Up, exploitative in fashioning sexual encounters around men’s preference for sex without commitment? Or is it somewhere in between, with some 1. See Leora Tanenbaum, Slut! Growing up Female with a Bad Reputation (New York: HarperCollins, 2000); Emily White, Fast Girls: Teenage Tribes and the Myth of the Slut (New York: Berkeley Books, 2002); Sarah A. Miller, “’How You Bully a Girl:’ Sexual Drama and the Negotiation of Gendered Sexuality in High School,” Gender & Society 30, no. 5 (2016): 721–44; Deborah L. Tolman, Dilemmas of Desire: Teenage Girls Talk about Sexuality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); and Lorena Garcia, Respect Yourself, Protect Yourself: Latina Girls and Sexual Identity (New York: New York University Press, 2012). 2. Ariel Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (New York: Free Press, 2005). See also Peggy Orenstein, Girls and Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape (New York: HarperCollins, 2016); Nancy Jo Sales, American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of... (shrink)

The subject of this article is a study of the problem of metaphysical substantiation of aesthetics in Kant's philosophy, conducted during the analysis of two editions of the introduction to the Critique of the Faculty of Judgment. The results of the conducted research allow us to find out to what extent Kant's interpretation of aesthetics is metaphysically loaded. For the first time since Plato and Aristotle, the metaphysical horizon opens up again in Kantian aesthetics. Special attention is paid to (...) the consideration of the "Critique of the Power of Judgment" as the first work in the history of thought in which aesthetics appears as a system-forming element of the construction of metaphysics. Kant's aesthetics allows us to look at the current problems of the metaphysics of art again and in a new way; being a spiritual motivation for the transformation of human nature, it is something inextricably linked with the manifestation of the metaphysical in us. In domestic and foreign literature, only some approaches to this topic are outlined (V. F. Asmus, T. I. Oizerman, E. Kuenemann, etc.), the author's special contribution to the study of this topic is a holistic analysis of poorly formalized problems associated with the study of metaphysical structures of Kantian aesthetics, with the identification of relevant grounds for it. In both editions, we are talking about the metaphysical prolegomena of aesthetics as a kind of exegesis of the entire transcendental philosophy of Kant. At the same time, aesthetic reflection is embedded in metaphysics as a form of completion of the project of the entire culture of the human mind. The measurement of the aesthetic a priori leads to conclusions about ways to use means to achieve all the goals that befits humanity. (shrink)

Reflexivity and detachment: a discursive approach to women's depression This paper explores a discursive approach to understanding women's depression by presenting the results of research into women's narratives of their experiences. The discursive approach taken acknowledges women's immersion in cultural practices that determine the subject positions available to them and places a value on attributes of reflexivity and detachment that are not usually associated with their performance. The social and cultural context of the individual's experience is significant because (...) if the focus is simply on the individual this supposes that the problem lies solely with the individual. An understanding of cultural expectations and their relation to mental distress is important to mental health nursing practice. The psychotherapeutic relationship that is fundamental to mental health nursing practice requires an understanding of the meaning of individual's responses in their cultural context in order to provide facilitative and meaningful care for the women that they nurse. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Race: Antiquity and Its Legacy by Denise Eileen McCoskeySydnor RoyDenise Eileen McCoskey. Race: Antiquity and Its Legacy. Ancients and Moderns. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. x + 250 pp. Paper, $24.95.This book is part of Oxford’s “Ancients and Moderns” series, the goal of which, as stated in the series introduction by Phiroze Vasunia, is “to stir up debates about and within reception studies and to complicate some of (...) the standard narratives about the ‘legacy’ of Greece and Rome” (ix) by encouraging scholars to consider the connection between the past and how it has been discussed in the history of scholarship. In her introduction, McCoskey states that she wants to “help explain the position of race today by unveiling its relation to structures of thought and practice in the past, and more specifically, those of classical antiquity” (1). Race: Antiquity and Its Legacy does an admirable job of accomplishing this goal. The book covers the whole range of antiquity but also zooms in to focus on key moments and controversial figures. McCoskey offers thought-provoking parallels to ancient constructions of race in more recent history, and the final chapter explicitly investigates through the lens of race how Greece and Rome have been received since the Renaissance.The introduction offers readers a strong definition of race: a social construction imposed upon the human body. Keeping this definition in mind while reading the book is important, because, as McCoskey often points out, Classicists (among many other scholars) have a tendency to hide discussion of race and “racial formation” behind words like “ethnicity” or “cultural” because confronting race as an issue constructed around the body head-on (both in the ancient and modern world) can be uncomfortable and even scary (27, 93). McCoskey uses the terms “race” and “racial formation” precisely because they require readers to confront racism in the ancient world through to the present. In her subsection “Blacks in Antiquity,” McCoskey skillfully argues that, despite the early scholarly consensus that skin color was insignificant in the construction of ancient racial ideology, that does not mean that the ancients did not think racially (with skin color as a criterion rather than the criteria) or that modern ideas which do posit that skin color is significant have not affected how ancient representations of race, and particularly blackness, have been received in the modern world. McCoskey’s extensive analysis of Cleopatra and how she was perceived (and even presented herself) in the ancient world, as well as her exploration of representations of Cleopatra in recent history, reveal the tension between ancient and modern categories of racial thought created by the “hybrid cultures” that flourished in the ancient world. [End Page 525]The first chapter, “Racial Theory,” surveys the development of ideas about race in the ancient world and how they changed over time and differ between Greece and Rome. I assigned this chapter to students in my Race and Ethnicity course because it is useful for identifying key moments that contributed to Greek and Roman racial ideology. Here, however, and also in the third chapter, “Racial Representations,” is where one finds one of the problems with this book. The range of time periods and genres covered invites generalizations about both the nature of the “barbarians” the Greeks and Romans interact with and about the Greeks and Romans themselves. For example, in her discussion of the Greek-barbarian binary (a view which has been complicated since the seminal work of Edith Hall [1989], although McCoskey’s presentation does not consistently acknowledge this), she claims that, “given the specific threat to Greek sovereignty the Persian Wars presented, the barbarian was defined first and foremost by the propensity for a particular mode of government, a theme central, as we have seen, to the Hippocratic Airs, Waters, Places. Whereas barbarians displayed a natural inclination for subservience and tyranny, as the theory went, Greeks were characterized by a commitment to democratic rule and the equality of citizens” (54). Here, as in many other instances in this book, “Greece” feels like a gloss for “Athens.” She does offer a discussion of how Athens itself contributed to the discussions of identity (56–58), but it does... (shrink)

The article analyzes the socio-cultural and theoretical origins of the Russian philosophy of history. These origins determined the development of the philosophy of history as a special feld of philosophical knowledge. This process took place in the second half of the 19th century, a significant factor of which was the split within the cultural and spiritual unity of Russian society on the wave of Alexander II’s reforms associated with the abolition of serfdom. In this period the subject-matter of (...) the philosophy of history was defned. In the author’s opinion, the subject-matter of the philosophy of history includes: 1) the historical process in its universal human dimensions and in “past – present – future” movement, 2) the life of society in historically concrete forms of the organization of human community, 3) historical epistemology. The article shows why the philosophy of history, formed in this research feld, was established in the public consciousness and intellectual context as historiosophy, i.e. knowledge of spiritual senses, the beginning and end of history. This philosophical-historical paradigm excluded the oppositions, on the one hand, between philosophical knowledge and historical science and, on the other hand, between the philosophy of the history and social philosophy. As the main ideas of the Russian philosophy of history during that period, the author considers the idea of the integrity of historical existence as an “organic life” and the idea of the variability of the historical process, interpreted as the constant inclination of history to “permanent improvisation”. The author pays special attention to the development of the concepts of “transitional form” and “chaos,” which provide the acceleration of the progressive movement of history and the possibility of an active and responsible participation of an individual and masses in it. The attention to this problem introduced the spiritual and moral component into the ontological basis of the historical process as well as the concept of necessity and chance, freedom and violence, revolution and evolution into the conceptual apparatus of philosophical and historical knowledge. As a result, simultaneously with the metaphysical principles, the principles of concrete historical and axiological analysis were integrated into the methodology of the philosophy of history. This approach to the analysis of the historical process has preserved its heuristic potential to the present day. (shrink)

Who is to be included in a political community and on what terms? William A. Barbieri Jr. seeks answers to these questions in this exploration of the controversial concept of citizenship rights—a concept directly related to the nature of democracy, equality, and cultural identity. Through an examination of the case of Germany’s settled “guestworkers” and their families, _Ethics of Citizenship_ investigates the pressing problem of political membership in a world marked by increased migration, rising nationalist sentiment, and the ongoing (...) reorganization of states through both peaceful and violent means. Although some of Germany’s foreign workers have gradually attained a degree of social and economic legitimacy, Barbieri explains how they remain effectively excluded from true German citizenship. Describing how this exclusion has occurred and assessing current attitudes toward political membership in Germany, he argues for a just and democratic policy toward the tax-paying, migrant worker minority, one that would combine the extension of the individual rights of citizenship with the establishment of certain group rights. Through a dissection of ongoing public “membership debates” over issues such as suffrage, dual citizenship, and immigration and refugee policy, Barbieri identifies a range of competing responses to the question of who “belongs” in Germany. After critiquing these views, he proposes an alternative ethic of membership rooted in an account of domination and human rights that seeks to balance individual and group rights within the context of a commitment to democracy and equal citizenship. Indispensable for scholars of German studies, _Ethics of Citizenship_ also raises questions that will attract moral philosophers, constitutional scholars, and those interested in the continuing, global problems associated with migration. (shrink)

Much thought is being given nowadays to the ways in which society might continue to substantiate the principle of solidarity in the economic sphere. Predictable cost increases in the social security system stand at the root of a number of problems that have arisen. While those concerned look for solutions, a discussion is emerging concerning the communal scope of solidarity. People are not only asking themselves how they are to remain in solidarity, but also with whom they should share (...) the means at their disposal. The concomitant question ‘with whom?’ is not always as evident as it might seem, since the ethical scope of solidarity appears, in principle at least, to be unlimited.De facto, however, the limits of solidarity tend to coincide with those of the political community. The ongoing unification of Europe should broaden matters in this regard, but whether this process will also broaden our perspective on world-wide solidarity remains to be seen. At the same time, certain groups are calling for a stricter delimitation of our solidarity. The elections in Europe during the past ten years have made it clear that a number of emotional factors play a role in this context, factors which are not infrequently expressed in the slogan ‘our own first’.The intention of this article is to confront, with the Christian principle of solidarity, certain spontaneous and emotional motivating forces which call for a limitation of our solidarity. Solidarity implies both a feeling and a rational decision. In line with any other emotion, the feeling of solidarity is rooted in motivating factors of which we are not always consciously aware. Such factors are rarely thematised in an explicit fashion, partly because they are as such difficult to discuss and partly because they are difficult to make operational at the ‘scientific’ level. As a rule, our attention tends to be focused on the ethical desirability and practical-economical achievabilty of solidarity.Ours is a talkative age. Never before have people talked so much. The telephone, radio, cinema, television, audio and video recording have all increased our opportunities for speaking to one another not only when we are together but across distance and across time as well. This has been the century of chatter .Chattering carries in itself the risk of superficiality. Before we realise it, we are talking without thinking deeply. Messengers of doom, such as Postman and Finkielkraut , warn the western world against the dangers of the television and video culture which they contend constitute a threat to western democracy. As we grow accustomed to the high speed and fleeting character of the ‘new media’, we tend to gradually lose our capacity to think things over and reflect. Ultimately, its cursory and uncritical approach to things becomes the norm.For those who consider television as the summit of idle chatter, reading is not merely a relief but a threatened activity which needs all our support. If we consider thoughtfulness and consideration to be virtues, then the unhurriedness associated with reading must be seen as a virtuous quality. More than at any other time in our history, being literate is of great importance in our industrialised societies. Hence, there is a growing awareness of the need to link critical thinking with literacy skills. More than ever before, we need the writings of others – distant in history, geography and profession – to understand our complex world. Such writings provide information, recommend actions and promote political and philosophical orientations.Discourse analysis proves that the complexity of the discourse is higher in written than in spoken language. Written language integrates more idea units in a clause, making use of nominalisation, embedded constituents, etc. Gaining access to such thorough knowledge is a first step in the long process of asserting control. Being literate creates the opportunity for increasing access to knowledge not generally available in the direct experience of life. Being able to read enables the individual to transcend time and space and to liberate his or her own mind and spirit. It removes the individual from dependence on immediate senses, direct contacts, commonplace talk.All these elements are important in the shaping of one’s personality. Confrontation with challenging, original and even provocative ideas forces the individual to make up his or her own mind. Democracy needs this kind of individualism. (shrink)

Obnoxious labels are derogatory terms which speak extensively on the ignorant dispositions of scholars who either rush into faulty conclusions, or have prior decisions to promote class distinction through the uncomplimentary colours they paint of what others hold as divine, spiritual, and transcendental. For such derogatory terms to gain wide audience in a globalized age explain the frame of mind of discordant voices which have been based on arm-chair scholarship. The thrust of this article therefore, is to use Igbo experience (...) to explore the problems of atheism and humanism in a globalized world. The exploratory research will help adopt cultural centred approach in analyzing the dichotomy between the various philosophical view points on God, spirits and man’s religious belief system in Igbo land in particular and Africa in general. It is hoped that the analyses of the challenges posed by atheism and humanism in a globalized world will balance ideas, views, attitudes and behaviour that will reposition Igbo religious beliefs, values and practices in line with the proposed theistic humanism associated with Igbo culture in particular and African culture in general. This will breach the persisted conflict between the sacred and the secular pointing to a dynamic and progressive Igbo culture. (shrink)

Daniel Ellsberg presented in Ellsberg various examples questioning the thesis that decision making under uncertainty can be reduced to decision making under risk. These examples constitute one of the main challenges to the received view on the foundations of decision theory offered by Leonard Savage in Savage. Craig Fox and Amos Tversky have, nevertheless, offered an indirect defense of Savage. They provided in Fox and Tversky an explanation of Ellsberg’s two-color problem in terms of a psychological effect: ambiguity (...) aversion. The ‘comparative ignorance’ hypothesis articulates how this effect works and explains why it is important to an understanding of the typical pattern of responses associated with Ellsberg’s two-color problem. In the first part of this article we challenge Fox and Tversky’s explanation. We present first an experiment that extends Ellsberg’s two-color problem where certain predictions of the comparative ignorance hypothesis are not confirmed. In addition the hypothesis seems unable to explain how the subjects resolve trade-offs between security and expected pay-off when vagueness is present. Ellsberg offered an explanation of the typical behavior elicited by his examples in terms of these trade-offs and in section three we offer a model of Ellsberg’s trade-offs. The model takes seriously the role of imprecise probabilities in explaining Ellsberg’s phenomenon. The so-called three-color problem was also considered in Fox and Tversky. We argue that Fox and Tversky’s analysis of this case breaks a symmetry with their analysis of the two-color problem. We propose a unified treatment of both problems and we present a experiment that confirms our hypothesis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Spiritual Experience and Psychopathology”Francis G. Lu (bio), David Lukoff (bio), and Robert P. Turner (bio)Jackson and Fulford have written an impor-tant paper which addresses an area of increasing interest in the United States—the relationship between religious/spiritual experiences and psychopathology. Using primarily the Present State Examination as the diagnostic framework, the authors describe in rich clinical detail three patients where certain phenomena lead to a possible diagnosis of (...) schizophrenia. However, the patients’ outcomes were uniformly positive—how can this be? The authors argue persuasively for the importance of a contextual assessment “in which psychotic phenomena themselves are embedded in the values and beliefs of the person concerned.” In this commentary, we will first present innovations in the DSM-IV relevant to cultural and religious/spiritual issues, which complement the authors’ conclusions, and then comment upon the paper from this perspective.In the DSM-IV Introduction (1994), a section entitled “Ethnic and Cultural Considerations” provides a rationale for innovations in DSM-IV that better enables its use with culturally diverse individuals: “A clinician who is unfamiliar with the nuances of an individual’s cultural frame of references may incorrectly judge as psychopathology those normal variations in behavior, belief, or experience that are particular to the individual’s culture. For example, certain religious practices or beliefs (e.g., hearing or seeing a deceased relative during bereavement) may be misdiagnosed as manifestations of a Psychotic Disorder” (xxiv). In the introduction, three types of information are cited: 1) sections entitled “Age, Gender and Cultural Considerations” in the text of ninety diagnostic categories discuss clinical variations due to these factors; 2) an Outline for Cultural Formulation designed to assist the clinician in systematically evaluating and reporting the impact of the individual’s cultural context; and 3) a Glossary of Culture-Bound Syndromes. These innovations, based on recommendations of the NIMH Workgroup on Culture, Diagnosis and Care to the Task Force on DSM-IV, are described in extensive detail in an important recent book (Mezzich, Kleinman, Fabrega, and Parron 1996).As an example of the importance of the Age, Gender, and Cultural Consideration section relevant to religious and spiritual experiences, consider the section in the text describing schizophrenia, where the following appears: “Clinicians assessing the symptoms of Schizophrenia in socioeconomic or cultural situations that are different from their own must take cultural differences into account. Ideas that may appear to be delusional in one culture (e.g., sorcery and witchcraft) may be commonly held in another. In some cultures, visual or auditory hallucinations with a [End Page 75] religious content may be a normal part of religious experience (e.g., seeing the Virgin Mary or hearing God’s voice)” (281). Secondly, in the analogous section of the text describing Brief Psychotic Disorder, the following appears: “It is important to distinguish symptoms of Brief Psychotic Disorder from culturally sanctioned response patterns. For example, in some religious ceremonies, an individual may report hearing voices, but these do not generally persist and are not perceived as abnormal by most members of the person’s community” (303).The Outline for Cultural Formulation provides the clinician a concise tool to specify the following information concerning the cultural context that is relevant to clinical care: cultural identity of the individual, cultural explanations of the individual’s illness, cultural factors related to psychosocial environment and levels of functioning, cultural elements of the relationship between the individual and the clinician, and overall cultural assessment for diagnosis and care. Religion is explicitly mentioned in the third section so as to encourage the assessment of “the role of religion... in providing emotional, instrumental, and information support” (1994, 844). This outline for cultural formulation is more fully explicated in a recent chapter by Lu, Lim, and Mezzich (1995).A major innovation in DSM-IV relevant to this topic is the new diagnostic category entitled Religious or Spiritual Problem defined as follows: “This category can be used when the focus of clinical attention is a religious or spiritual problem. Examples include distressing experiences that involve loss or questioning of faith, problems associated with conversion to a new faith, or questioning of spiritual values that may not necessarily be related to an organized... (shrink)

Against Nature – Chapter Abstracts Chapter 1. A Transdisciplinary Approach. In this short book you will find philosophy – metaphysical and political - economics, critical theory, complexity theory, ecology, sociology, journalism, and much else besides, along with the signposts and reference texts of the Information Systems field. Such transdisciplinarity is a challenge for both author and reader. Such books are often problematic: sections that are just old hat to one audience are by contrast completely new and difficult to another. (...) My hope is that in the interconnections, arguments and thrust of this polemic, readers will discover both interest and insight, alongside a range of new avenues to explore. This introductory chapter sets the scene – today’s digital world of Tech Giants and Fake News, its roots in the philosophical arguments of the 1920s, and the book’s key claims: (i) that the early 20th century philosophical grounding of today’s digital revolution is culpable in digital’s (growing) contribution to the ecological catastrophe unfolding in the 21st century; (ii) that process philosophy offers a new way to rethink that philosophical grounding, and reshape the digital revolution to support strategies to counter that catastrophe. Chapter 2. The Problem with Digital. This chapter begins with a brief overview of the research approaches in information systems as an academic field, before turning to the deeper roots of its malaise, in individualism, and its looming consequences. The three branches of Information Systems research, in academia, prove to be a useful lens through which to understand the field: Positivism, Interpretivism, and the Critical stance taken by this book. The ‘scientism’ at the root of positivism is examined, and the positivism in Information Systems critiqued as a historically contingent response to the ascendancy of a new brand of economics in Business Schools after the Second World War. But the computational market-fundamentalist form of economics sponsored in the 1950s (and applied by governments since the 1970s) centred around notions of the individual rational actor as an information processor. The philosophical underpinning of methodological and possessive individualism in this approach is exposed, and its influence upon the development – long before computing – of the science of ecology, and our notion of ecosystems, introduced. Chapter 3. The Future Does Not Exist. The philosophical core of the book, this chapter introduces process philosophy. Through an examination of the irreversible reality of subjectivity, Bergson’s famous notion of the durée reélle, and Whitehead’s critique of the bifurcation of subject and object, are introduced. The causally closed ‘time’ of positive science determines existence from the beginning to the end of the universe, be it three seconds or three trillion years. But the reality, of course, is that the future does not exist: our choices are real, and only one of myriad potential futures comes into being at each moment. As Bergson insists, durational succession exists, I am conscious of it; it is a fact. Bergson’s star – once the brightest of any living philosopher in the world – faded almost as quickly as it rose, under the onslaught from the logical positivists whose verificationism insisted that any proposition has no factual meaning if no evidence of observation can count for or against it: all ethics, aesthetics, romance, and metaphysics – and the very subjectivity with which duration is experienced - were thus closed down and dismissed. In this chapter it is reintroduced, to a new audience. Chapter 4. The World in a New Light. Many fundamental problems in the world can be seen as resulting from the false philosophy of bifurcation, fixity, and the reification of abstractions critiqued by process philosophy. Being – with all the isolation and focus upon the individual that it entails – must, if we are to address these problems, be seen as secondary to Becoming, with all the connection, interrelatedness, and complex collectivity that it implies. Choices become clearer, between positivism and interpretivism, between accents upon individualism or collectivism, between reductionist and complex adaptive systems approaches. The systemic individualism in Anglo-American societies can be regarded as actually harmful: the Tech Giants severing ties and bonds rather than connecting us; algebraic ecological models actually breaking the co-dependencies and co-requisites upon which real – complex - ecological health depends. Positivism, built as it is upon methodological individualism, seen in the light of process philosophy, becomes a danger to personal psychological balance – cutting us off from one another; a danger to the social fabric – undermining and impoverishing our civic life; and a danger to the ecological health of the planet – ignoring the immense (eco)systemic impact of our activities over the last centuries upon everything around us in the natural world. Chapter 5. A Theoretical Manifesto for Green IT. We are not islands, and in a process-relational social organisation much must be held in common. We are individuals, but we cannot survive alone. Four different perspectives on individualism show it to be little more than greed. An ecological economics reintegrating the household, the social, the supportive State, and – crucially – the life-giving earth into our polities is introduced and promoted. I introduce the concept of ‘Infomateriality’ – a non-bifurcated digital world where the physical bodies of people - fingers touching keyboards and eyes scanning screens - are as much ‘hardware’ as cabling, circuitboards and haptic interfaces, and the social practices, power relations, and embedded politics within IT artefacts define all such techné as fundamentally social. Abstract divisions are false, and whole, socially embedded systems should be the focus of IS, and from a philosophically and sociologically much deeper perspective. ‘Tech for Good’ is held up as movement in the right direction. My hope is that this book will help promote action, in the field of information systems, toward a better world, where Green Tech for Good is deployed for Nature, rather than against it. (shrink)

Hatred As A Sign Of Life. We've seen a lot of this in the last year, in the last four to five years, in fact. So much hatred that people were willing to risk their lives rather than wear a mask to protect themselves (and others) from COVID-19.So much hatred against them... against the other... against those others.If nothing else, this past year made strikingly visible the divides that exist in the United States, and yet the nature of the major (...) divide remained unspoken.It is not race; it is socioeconomic class.Race is the smoke and mirrors used to hide the class disparities that exist. The truth is really very simple. For every black, urban member of the poor, there are several white members of the rural poor who are wondering why they are not getting as much attention. Members of the (predominantly white and middle- to upper-class) intelligentsia are so focused on not being racist that they don't see how prejudiced they are against the poor. We see a black student and think “Poor kid! All the prejudice he or she has faced!” We fail to see the poverty in a white face. We also fail to see wealth in a black face.I once had a black student come to my office in a fury. A professor had told her that she wrote well, “all things considered,” which she took to mean that she wrote very well for a black student. I believe her interpretation was correct. Why was she upset? Because both of her parents were lawyers. Of course, she knew how to write! One assumes that all children of lawyers know how to write—regardless of skin color. Apparently, there was doubt about the existence of black lawyers.Furthermore, we shouldn't talk about white privilege. As many whites will point out, they're white, but they're not privileged. This term is part of why Clinton failed so miserably in 2016. The truth is that it's wealth privilege. You may disagree with this. But it's the inability to see the suffering of poverty in rural white communities that led to the creation of Trump supporters. I know that middle-class and wealthy people (black and white) also supported Trump, but not for the same reasons as the white rural poor. The white rural poor had had enough.Moreover, when you make the comparison by the right measures, you find that blacks and whites of the same socioeconomic class have the same rates of college graduation, the same rates of employment, and the same leverage of wealth and class. A black kid from West Philly has nothing in common with the black wealthy elites that summer at Oaks Bluff on Martha's Vineyard. That black kid has more in common with the poor “white trash” kid from Alabama who also can't afford the opportunity costs that go with attending college.Until we own up to the problem of socioeconomic class, we will face continued trouble in the United States. Let us be honest with ourselves. The “problem of race” in the United States is about economics. The notion of reparations is about money. The idea that most black families have not acquired as much wealth as some white families is a matter of money. It's not a “problem of race” per se. It's the problem that your skin color may be making it hard for you to make money. Well and good. But being white does not ipso facto help you to make money either. I hate to break it to people, but not all white people are wealthy. White privilege gives off the impression that they are.For every force, there is an equal and opposite force. For every BLM protester, there is somewhere in the hinterland a Proud Boy. For every window smashed by looters, evidence increased that the Capitol needed to be retaken from the powers that be because they were leading our nation astray. For every black person shot illegitimately by police, the white rural poor could name a white person shot for equally illegitimate reasons. I've often wondered why the black urban poor get so much attention. I think it's because they are closer to the TV stations that create our reality.Hatred is usually a product of fear. If whites fear blacks, it's because they fear that blacks will do unto them what they did unto blacks. But they are also jealous—another primeval source of hatred. Why is their poverty and pain being ignored? Was it only made visible by the opioid epidemic?Johnson's “War on Poverty” was never won. Urban renewal renewed nothing. But race is the cause célèbre du jour. Perhaps by this time next year, it won't be. But the fear will remain. Fear of the Other. Jealousy of the Other. Hatred toward the Other. Such hatred can turn into violence at the drop of a hat. Ask the Russians. Ask the Chinese. We don't want a race war, if only because blacks are easier to pick out in a crowd than Jews. It would end very badly. If you want to prevent the race war, solve the poverty problem. Then peace and justice can—even if only in a limited sense—prevail. This is a better kind of life than one based on hatred. We must ignore the dog whistle of race. Instead, we must focus on the numbing reality of poverty. Everybody's poverty. (shrink)

On the Notion of Communicational Grammar in Political Linguistics Any communicational grammar may be viewed as a linguistic study concerned with rules responsible for efficient communication, and can be used as a tool for researching almost any issue that falls under the term political linguistics-a sub-field of linguistics which analyzes how ideologies are put into service to legitimate power and inequality. From the linguistic point of view we would perceive discourse to be a dynamic and changing phenomenon, profoundly rooted (...) in its nonverbal context. The core of any discourse is established by particular texts formed by their speaker/writer. The meaning of the texts and their decoding by the hearer/reader seems to depend to a great extent not only on the cognitive processes that take place in the mind of the information receiver but also on the contextual embeddings which are: a) the situational embedding, that is where the text is produced ; b) the social embedding, that is within what social group the text is produced ; and c) the cultural embedding, which is apparently the most difficult to grasp, for it directly translates into what we understand under the nebulous term culture. The cultural embedding of texts should be held responsible for the projected associations it may induce in the receiver of textual messages and at the same time types of nonverbal cultural scripts and schemata that are supposed to accompany a verbal text. In light of the above, a model in which one has certain verbal texts that trigger certain socially and culturally specific behaviors can be called the communicational grammar of a particular discourse. (shrink)

Both similarities and differences were observed when comparing scenic beauty evaluations of rural landscapes made by persons from different cultures. Differences seem due to the westernized tourists' misinterpretation or ignorance of the meaning associated with certain landscape features by the Balinese. This implies scenic beauty is dependent upon meanings assigned to landscape features, which in turn implies that scenic beauty is, to some extent, learned. Similarities between tourists' and Balinese' scenic evaluations are significant and correspond to consistencies (...) found in other landscape preference studies. Multiple methods were used, including participant photography, rating scales, and a variety of statistical analyses. A review of the literature reveals evidence and theory which suggests both similarities and differences are to be expected when comparing scenic evaluations made by persons of different cultures. This review also suggests three methodological concerns which should be addressed in landscape studies: a concern for the participant's purpose for evaluating a landscape; a concern for the participant's familiarity with a landscape; and a concern for the criterion's appropriateness to all participants. Research designs which ignore these concerns may mask true cultural differences. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.2 (2002) 120-137 [Access article in PDF] Discursive Mobility and Double Consciousness in S. Weir Mitchell and W.E.B. Du Bois 1 Susan Wells Here are two stories about double consciousness: they will become, eventually, stories about the public sphere: W. E. B. Du Bois formulating the theory of double consciousness, and S. Weir Mitchell presenting Mary Reynolds's case history, an instance of a mental disorder known (...) in the nineteenth century as double consciousness. I will begin with Du Bois's story, by far the most familiar to us: few texts are more central to contemporary rhetoric or cultural studies than the discussion of double consciousness in the opening pages of The Souls of Black Folk. 2 In the theory of double consciousness, Du Bois concentrated his contradictory experiences of scholarship, activism, social isolation, and active cosmopolitanism. Double consciousness was a methodological constraint that enabled Du Bois to build into the structure of The Souls of Black Folk a recognition that the complexity of African American life requires more than one perspective. And double consciousness was also a technique of writing, shaping the ironic and urgent voice of the book, by turns indignant and tender, eloquent and colloquial, a form of double address to both African American and Caucasian readers that allowed Du Bois to be two places at once. Double consciousness therefore controlled both the development and the presentation of The Souls of Black Folk, from the arc of its argument to its formal elements, includingDu Bois's famous use of chapter epigraphs to link canonic poetry with the melodies of the sorrow songs. Like the most relentlessly formal high modernist poem, the book continually enacts in its form not only its informing idea, but the circumstances of its composition and the constraints that shape its reading.The book's initial essay, "Of Our Spiritual Strivings," offers an analysis of double consciousness as it is shaped by three central categories of modernity: temporality, embodiment, and expertise. Double consciousness is located in time, in history; it is placed in a story of the epochal succession [End Page 120] of races, and in the specific history of slavery. Double consciousness emerges as strategically shaping African American responses to the problems of disenfranchisement, poverty, and the denial of civil rights after the suppression of Reconstruction. The historical sections of The Souls of Black Folk, therefore, do not simply rectify the facts, setting the record straight on Reconstruction or Afrocentric scholar and theorist Alexander Crumell. These local arguments all motivate an understanding of consciousness as temporally constituted, so that the work of previous generations can be effective only when it is appropriated in the present. Such appropriation is supported and mediated by the form of the book: Du Bois ends with an invocation to "God the Reader," who alone can ensure that "these crooked marks on a fragile leaf be not indeed THE END" (19).Double consciousness is also connected with embodiment, specifically the embodiment of African Americans, externalized and displaced in two images: blood, which I will discuss later in the essay, and the veil or caul that grants second sight. Like skin color, the caul is an inconsequential physical object invested with enormous symbolic power (8); it is a mark of origins that foretells the future. The "second sight" offered to the Negro is a vision of "two warring ideals," a vision that can barely be supported by "one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder"(9). At moments in The Souls of Black Folk, the veil is generalized, and becomes a physical barrier between the white world and the world of African American culture; the work of separating these worlds, of rendering them invisible to one another, is staged on the bodies of African Americans. The veil is usually seen as a separation between the races, something that has happened ("Feeling deeply and keenly the tendencies and opportunities of the age in which they live, their souls are bitter at the fate which drops the Veil... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Witness of the Body: The Past, Present, and Future of Christian Martyrdom ed. by Michael L. Budde and Karen ScottElizabeth Sweeny BlockWitness of the Body: The Past, Present, and Future of Christian Martyrdom Edited by Michael L. Budde and Karen Scott Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2011. 238 pp. $22.00In Michael L. Budde’s introduction to this volume, he asserts its twofold purpose: to identify criteria for distinguishing authentic Christian (...) martyrdom from inauthentic and to return martyrdom to a more central place in Christian life. This collection of essays—some of which were presented as part of a lecture series at DePaul University during the 2006–7 academic year—aspires to reconsider and redefine martyrdom in order to remove both the “freak-show element” and the “heroic exceptionality” associated with martyrdom in modern culture (viii). The goal of the volume, which is part of the Eerdmans Ekklesia Series, is to resituate martyrdom within the everyday life of the church, and the majority of the essays argue for the ongoing significance of a revised martyrdom for this distinctive community. These eleven essays are as much about martyrs themselves as they are about how martyrdom is perceived, received, and remembered. The interdisciplinary volume [End Page 211] is successful in encouraging a broader understanding of martyrdom, one that may not necessarily include death, and in drawing attention to the ongoing need for memorializing Christian martyrs to inspire commitment and transformation.The volume is divided into four parts representing both chronological and substantive distinctions. Part 1, “Martyrdom as the Church’s Witness,” introduces the problem of isolating the requirements of martyrdom and defining who fits into this category, a challenge addressed throughout the volume. Part 2, “Martyrdom Builds the Church,” discusses positive elements of martyrdom, especially with respect to the value of women’s bodies, drawing on both the early female martyrs in general and Joan of Arc in particular. Part 3, “Martyrdom Destroys the Church,” recounts some of the most difficult aspects of modern martyrdom, calling for a more accurate history and recognition of the emergence of a new kind of martyrdom in which one’s loyalty is to country, not faith. Part 4, “Martyrdom and the Future Church,” calls attention to the need to continue celebrating the memory of martyrs and describes the contemporary Christian martyr as a peacemaker not seeking martyrdom in the traditional sense of the word.What stands out as a theme across a number of the essays, and what I judge to be a valuable contribution to Christian ethics, is an emphasis on the way martyrs live(d), suggesting that what can and should be emulated by Christians today is a commitment to action on behalf of conversion and transformation. Tripp York’s essay rightly argues that martyrdom need not be viewed as merely reactionary, as a way of life in opposition to something, but as transformative and “for the sake of the world” (37). Michael Budde makes a similar assertion that martyrdom is better defined as deep loyalty than as treason, thereby suggesting that this kind of loyalty to Christ ought not to be limited to the special calling of a few but seen as the commitment of all Christians. Stephen Fowl’s essay conveys the meaning of the title of this volume, identifying martyrdom as part of the larger practice of “believers’ witness of the body to God’s drama of salvation” (44). He argues that in life or death, one can magnify Christ, and one’s bodily actions and responses can reflect one’s character and commitments. Emmanuel Katongole provides powerful recognition of the ways in which Christian martyrs “keep the church from sleeping” (193) and “embody the mundane gestures and practice of peaceableness in their everyday living” (199). This volume succeeds in shifting the focus from martyrdom in the traditional sense—being put to death because of one’s faith—to the ways Christians today remember, respond to, and emulate the lives and actions of martyrs. [End Page 212]Elizabeth Sweeny BlockUniversity of ChicagoCopyright © 2013 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Athenian Religion: A HistorySusan Guettel ColeRobert Parker. Athenian Religion: A History. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. xxix 1 370 pp. Cloth, $55.Parker begins by acknowledging Durkheim’s claim that “religion is something eminently social” (1), but he is not interested in demonstrating how ritual activity was embedded in Athenian social relationships or even how traditional rituals colored Athenian political life. His target is not Athenian society itself, and his (...) project is not an analysis of the ways and means by which ritual created or defined community. His real interest, in fact, is not religion at all, but rather the administration of public ritual.Parker admits that issues of topography and the organization of space are important for understanding Attic ritual, but his preference for Athenian literature and epigraphical sources inevitably shapes his view of a “web of religious life in Attica... spun by the spider at the centre” (25). The calendar of the Salaminians is more important to his argument as a source on institutions than it is as a source for administration of ritual at the edges of Attica. This preference for center over hinterland overcomes even the lack of sources. Solon’s calendar of festivals and that shadowy ghost, the Attic genos, assume more importance than the great sanctuaries at Eleusis and Brauron.Recognizing archaeological material when relevant, Parker is nevertheless skeptical about current work that claims a relationship between material culture and the expression of polis identity (citing in particular Snodgrass, De Polignac, and Morgan). For Parker the “polis” is an abstraction, and an abstraction, he claims, cannot have a history. He does comment on issues of identity and community organization, but these issues are important only in the context of the community’s regulation of ritual, where Parker prefers the written word, preferably inscribed, to the material artifact.The history of Athenian religion, as laid out here, is a history of collective decision making and collective ritual. Parker begins with mountain rituals of Zeus, chiefly because Mount Hymettos preserves our earliest Attic inscriptions, but his interests and chronological range are otherwise limited by the evidence for Attic public record keeping. His interests are also limited by a narrow definition of collective ritual, conditioned perhaps by modern notions of political autonomy and an exaggerated affection for the institutions of Athenian democracy. His targeted time period therefore begins rather conventionally with Solon’s calendar of “sacrifices from the kurbeis” (Lys. 30.17) and ends with the latest evidence for tribe and deme decrees, evidence that trails off in the middle [End Page 293] of the third century b.c. In between we have chapters arranged chronologically, on hereditary priesthoods and the Attic genos, the sixth century and the organization of festivals, democracy and empire, new gods in the fifth century, the trial of Socrates, and the ritual innovations of the fourth century. This looks like a conventional list of topics, but with Parker’s interest in public institutions this sequence is actually only a chronological framework for his real project, the administration of ritual. Seen in this context the Attic genos is not, as once argued, a relic of archaic aristocratic institutions or a privileged group within the phratry, but an administrative solution to an organizational problem. In Parker’s view, the genos provided priests for public cults. Expansion of political rights in the fifth century eventually required ritual by committee, and although, he argues, the genos, as an institution, did not go out of existence, the privileged families that controlled the traditional priesthoods had to yield to the boards of officials that now supervised some of the more important public rituals.Innovations, perhaps because they are more easily detectable in the kind of evidence Parker prefers, stand out more than tradition. Ritual innovations of the fifth century included rites modeled on those elsewhere in Greece (Artemis Agrotera, Pan, and Boreas, for example). Parker explains these innovations in political terms, describing their introduction as a reflection of Athenian pride in overcoming the Persian threat. Religious innovations of the second half of the fifth century (rituals associated with Adonis, Sabazius, and Cybele, for instance) are treated not as an incoming surge of foreign influence (as... (shrink)