Students of philosophy, psychology, sociology, and literature will welcome this collection of original essays on self-deception and related phenomena such as wishful thinking, bad faith, and false consciousness. The book has six sections, each exploring self-deception and related phenomena from a different perspective.

Recent works have invited us to look into how modes of secularism influence the shape of ‘modern’ religion. This literature has remained quite state-centred, paying less attention to how concepts of secularism migrate from one national context to another. This article seeks to investigate these transnational dynamics. More specifically, it aims to explore this process of travelling through the contemporary writings of the Quebec-based essayist Djemila Benhabib. The article approaches her writings as ‘travelogues’: a genre which acts as an invitation (...) to focus on the ‘travelling’ dimension and politics of location of her accounts. A special emphasis is put on analysing how her writings are vehicles for the travel of gendered visions of secularism from France to Quebec. Ultimately, the article argues that taking these processes of transnational migrations into consideration is necessary to better locate and understand the politics of national debates. (shrink)

Starting from the deficiencies of current approaches regarding the description of the hero in medieval narratives, this article aims to functionalise exorbitance as a new category of literary history. Unlike the conceptual and binary typing of the protagonist as ‘hero’ resp. ‘knight’, this category promotes a flexible model that operates relationally and hence enables gradual differentiations between the texts.Examples of medieval epic and romance will show the narrative treatment and stylisation of the exorbitant hero. The focus will be on the (...) varying assessments of his acts: If the epic hero is able to defy social norms and current laws without being penalised, the exorbitance in the romance falls within the scope of ‘ratio’. Thus, exorbitance is on the one hand confined and ‘assessed’, on the other hand excessive acts are rigorously sanctioned and inhibited. Referring to the current manifestations of exorbitance in the socio-political context, the concept of exorbitance emerges as an unchanged productive pattern. Its socio-political relevance encourages a literary-historical, epoch-spanning use of this concept, whose scope is a re-assessment of the history of literature as the history of exorbitance. (shrink)

A decision under ‘complete uncertainty’ is one where the decision maker knows the set of possible outcomes for each decision, but cannot assign probabilities to those outcomes. This way, the problem of ranking decisions is reduced to a problem of ranking sets of outcomes. All rankings that have emerged in the literature in this domain imply transitivity. In the current study, transitivity is subjected to an empirical evaluation in two experiments, where subjects are asked to choose between sets of monetary (...) consequences. After analysis with a Bayes Factor, very few violations of transitivity were found. It can be concluded that transitivity seems a plausible condition for the ranking of sets of monetary consequences. (shrink)

Annette Baier sets the title, the genre, and the task of her book from Hume’s essay "Of Moral Prejudices." Rather than arguing from or towards general principles, these essays call upon a wide range of reading, observation, and experience: we are not only meant to be enlightened, but also invited to adopt the reflective habits of mind they exemplify. Like Hume, Baier analyzes and evaluates our attitudes and customs; like him, she finds that our foibles and our strengths are closely (...) linked; and like him, she is both a proponent and a model of good sense. When she is unfairly prejudiced— as she is against what she sees as the harsh and narrow rigors of Kant—she is, with all the bonnehommie of Hume, more ready to tease than to demolish. (shrink)

Courage is dangerous. If it is defined in traditional ways, as a set of dispositions to overcome fear, to oppose obstacles, to perform difficult or dangerous actions, its claim to be a virtue is questionable. Unlike the virtue of justice, or a sense of proportion, traditional courage does not itself determine what is to be done, let alone assure that it is worth doing. If we retain the traditional conception of courage and its military connotations–overcoming and combat–we should be suspicious (...) of it. Instead of automatically classifying it as a virtue, attempting to develop and exercise it, we should become alert to its dangers. And yet and yet. There is an aspect of traditional courage that serves us: we require the capacities and traits that enable us to persist in acting well under stress, to endure hardships when following our judgments about what is best is difficult or dangerous. If courage is checked, redefined as the virtue that enables virtue–the various sets of dispositions, whatever they may be, that make us resolute in worthy, difficult action–then we need not fear the dangers of courage. We need rather to reform it by diversifying it, as a heterogeneous variety of traits that enable us to act well under stress, against the natural movements of self-protection. (shrink)

PERRON A and HOLMES D. Nursing Inquiry 2011; 18: 191–204Constructing mentally ill inmates: nurses’ discursive practices in correctionsThe concepts of discourse, subjectivity and power allow for innovative explorations in nursing research. Discourse take many different forms and may be maintained, transmitted, even imposed, in various ways. Nursing practice makes possible many discursive spaces where discourses intersect. Using a Foucauldian perspective, were explored the ways in which forensic psychiatric nurses construct the subjectivity of mentally ill inmates. Progress notes and individual interviews (...) constitute discursive spaces within which nurses construct patients’ subjectivities. Progress notes provide a written (and permanent) form of discourse, while interviews set the space for a more fluid and contextual form of discourse. We identified five types of subjectivities – the (in)visible patient, the patient as risk, the deviant patient, the disturbed patient and the disciplined patient. These subjectivities were rooted in various types of discourses circulating in the selected setting. Despite the multiple discursive dimensions of forensic psychiatric nursing, progress notes remain the main formal source of information regarding nursing care even though it is not representative of the care provided nor is it representative of nurses’ complex discursive practices in corrections. (shrink)

The philosopher must inform himself of the relevant empirical investigation to arrive at a definition, and the scientist cannot afford to be naive about the..

Since many varieties of self-deception are ineradicable and useful, it would be wise to be ambivalent about at least some of its forms.1 It is open-eyed ambivalence that acknowledges its own dualities rather than ordinary shifty vacillation that we need. To be sure, self-deception remains dangerous: sensible ambivalence should not relax vigilance against pretence and falsity, combating irrationality and obfuscation wherever they occur.

The harvest and the pigeons. A note on the summit course of the pillar of Prusias at Delphi The remains of the pillar of Prusias, next to the temple of Apollon at Delphi, have generated much comment. Indeed, the course that supported the equestrian statue of the king of Bithynia presents 112 mortises, above and beyond the attachment holes of the statue itself. Until the present, it has been thought that these cavities served to attach vegetal elements, ears of corn (...) reaped by a laborer or, after the identification of the base as belonging to the pillar of Prusias, a field of corn signifying the beneficence of the king. A trail of textual and archaeological indications prompts a different interpretation for this enigmatic arrangement. The mortises would have served the insertion of bronze points (obeloi or meniskoi) forming a system of protection against defacement by birds, as is occasionally the case in sculpture and in temple architecture. (shrink)

L’étude du portique de Delphes attribué initialement aux Étoliens a été entreprise par A. Perrier en 2007 et les campagnes de relevés de terrain, commencées à la fin de l’année 2010 avec J.‑J. Malmary (architecte) et L. Fadin (topographe), se sont achevées en 2013 par des vérifications sur le monument, les derniers relevés ayant été mis au net en 2014. Un mémoire sur l’histoire, l’architecture et la topographie du portique et de sa terrasse a été déposé à l’Académie des inscriptions (...) et belles... (shrink)

While we primarily love individual persons, we also love our work, our homes, our activities and causes. To love is to be engaged in an active concern for the objective well-being—the thriving—of whom and what we love. True love mandates discovering in what that well-being consists and to be engaged in the details of promoting it. Since our loves are diverse, we are often conflicted about the priorities among the obligations they bring. Loving requires constant contextual improvisatory adjustment of priorities (...) among our commitments. Besides delighting in—and being enhanced by—the presence and existence of another person, love requires extended reflection and work. (shrink)

During the period from Descartes to Rousseau, the mind changed. Its domain was redefined; its activities were redescribed; and its various powers were redistributed. Once a part of cosmic Nous, its various functions delimited by its embodied condition, the individual mind now becomes a field of forces with desires impinging on one another, their forces resolved according to their strengths and directions. Of course since there is no such thing as The Mind Itself, it was not the mind that changed. (...) Conceptions of the mind changed. Yet even to say this is misleading, because it suggests that somewhere out there in nowhere there is Nous, Psyche, Soul or Mind, the true but opaque object of all these conceptions. But of course there is no Mind in the realm of things in themselves, waiting for us to see it truly, like a China of the noumenal world, amused that our various conceptions reveal as much about ourselves as about it. (shrink)

This article interrogates the extent to which institutional discourses on the governance of religious minorities are useful to think about the complexity of how religion gets negotiated in the quotidian. It takes as its starting point the exploration of the discourse on religious governance in the province of Quebec organized around the notion of request for accommodations. Through an analysis of public policy documents, it examines facets of this discourse of request, including the role it plays in delimiting what we (...) imagine the religious to be and how we imagine it to work. Second, drawing on interviews with self-identified Muslims in Montreal, the article explores how piety gets negotiated in their everyday. These narratives are approached as fertile sites to think differently about the recognition of difference. This two-pronged perspective acts as an invitation to think more broadly about not only what institutional discourses “produce” but also what they “obscure.”. (shrink)

Many have said, and I think some have shown, that it is irrational to fear death. The extinction of what is essential to the self—whether it be biological death or the permanent cessation of consciousness—cannot by definition be experienced by oneself as a loss or as a harm.

We are all ambivalent at every turn. “Should I skip class on this gorgeous spring day?” “Do I really want to marry Eric?” Despite being uncomfortable and unsettling, there are some forms of ambivalence that are appropriate and responsible. Even when they seem trivial and superficial, they reveal some of our deepest values, the self-images we would like to project. In this paper, I analyze collaborative ambivalence, the kind of ambivalence that arises from our identity-forming close relationships. The sources and (...) resolutions of collaborative ambivalence reveal how much of our thinking—and so also of our motivational structure—emerges from the details of our collaborative and dialogical engagements. The imaginative skills and strategies exercised in remaining justifiably of two minds—of preserving appropriate ambivalence—are central to practical reasoning. Because these skills provide models for addressing conflicts in the public sphere, because they prompt shared deliberation, they are among the civic virtues. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss nurses' ongoing difficulty in engaging with politics and address the persistent belief that political positioning is antithetical to quality nursing care. I suggest that nurses are not faced with choosing either caring for their patients or engaging with politics. I base my discussion on the assumption that such dichotomy is meaningless and that engaging with issues of relationships firmly grounds nursing in the realm of politics. I argue that the ethical merit of nursing care relies (...) instead on positioning nurses squarely at the centre of care activities, experiences, and functions. Such positioning makes possible what Foucault called ‘practices of self‐formation’, that is, micro‐level processes that balance out the ubiquitous economic, cultural, legal, and scientific technologies that steadily constitute subjects in this era of modernity. Nurses, then, become not a group that needs to be controlled and governed, but individuals who must care for their self before they may care for anyone else. (shrink)