In this paper, the author attempts to make explicit certain of the key variables that underlie the wide variety of positions which have been offered in answer to the question posed by the title of the paper. Several positions are reviewed briefly, ranging from Bertrand Russell’s to Jasper’s to Milton Meyer’s to Thoreau’s. These are then considered as a group in terms of possible systems of values which traditionally have formed the basis for condemnations or defenses of political and (...) social silence, of marginal commitment, or of individual nonparticipation or complicity. The author does not hope to settle the issue, but rather to increase our sensitivity to it, and to its complexity. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper argues for a version of sceptical invariantism about knowledge on which the acceptability of knowledge-attributing sentences varies with the context of assessment.

John Muir can be interpreted to have employed a similar strategy in his earliest conservation advocacy writings as the strategy Ralph Waldo Emerson employed to overcome the public futility of his personal ideals. Like Emerson, Muir came to offset the despair he felt at the political impotence of his conscience with a positive outlook on his potential to embody his subjective ideals both in his personal character and in his contributions to concrete forms of social practice. Muir thus can be (...) shown to have standing in the environmental virtue ethics tradition by dint of his appreciation for the necessity of virtuous political participation in movements for social reform. (shrink)

Presents volume thirteen of a fourteen-volume series on World Religions exploring the origins of Taoism in China, its central beliefs and restoration under China's religious freedom clause, rituals, sacred sites, and more.

In this essay I argue for the role of positive, community-based black identities in the creation and maintenance of black solidarity. I argue against Tommie Shelby’s attempts to reduce the notion of black identity as it relates to solidarity from something social or cultural to something entirely political—“thin” black identity. As an alternative, I propose a model for the relationship between “thin” and “thicker” identities based on Rawls’ contention that the stability of overlapping political consensus isproduced by different groups’ adherence (...) to, rather than denial of, a plurality of comprehensive doctrines. I also discuss the benefits of positive, community-based black identities in terms of “black love” and show why, even if not possessed by each and every black American, such identities are ultimately indispensible to any black solidarity project. (shrink)

Much of the adverse reaction to the New Atheism is ill-founded. It displays a foolish sentimentalisation of religious faith, and often a failure to appreciate the real-world problem of religion’s persistence. Critics of forthright atheism display a naivety about religion’s ongoing power and influence in the public sphere, all too obvious even in Western democracies.

A well-known term in eighteenth-century literature and philosophy, the “beautiful soul” (die schöne Seele) has resurfaced in recent years. Deleuze refers to the beautiful soul’s “religiosity” and argues that aggressive “selection” is necessary as its antidote. However, in volatile contexts of social destabilization, such selection risks recoiling into reactionary violence. After first developing in more detail the beautiful soul’s background as a discursive figure, I argue that understanding Deleuze’s selection within a context of spiritual experience is necessary to mitigate this (...) worry. Exploration of this experience is pursued through juxtaposition of Deleuze’s thought with Nishida Kitarō’s investigation of the ontological structure of religious consciousness. The comparative resonances I develop suggest an ontological objectivity to the problems and structuring of the logos of religious consciousness and show how a more explicitly spiritual rendering of “selection,” developed through the Deleuze/Nishida encounter, intervenes into the broader beautiful soul problematic. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to specify the chief concern for post-Marxist political strategy as the discovery or invention of a new political logic. Beginning with Laclau and Mouffe’s influential Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, this essay extends Lyotard’s well-known diagnosis of the status of metanarratives to a consideration of the conditions for political resistance and dissent. Using concepts drawn from the work of Althusser, Nealon, and others, it reworks Laclau and Mouffe’s appropriation of Gramsci’s (...) concept of hegemony in order to separate it from any foundational, normative political identity. In conclusion, the essay uses Bergson’s discussion of intuition and fabulation in order to begin to articulate the concepts of a democratic politics. (shrink)

Clinical and philosophical perspectives on key issues and debates in Lacanian psychoanalysis.