On 7 April 2022 – coinciding with World Health Day – the British Medical Association launched its new report, Health and human rights in the new world order.1 Written during the global upheaval triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, and published just weeks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the report responds to a range of emerging and intensifying threats to health-related human rights globally. As the report establishes, human rights in health and healthcare matter because human suffering, and its relief, (...) are fundamental moral issues. As relief of human suffering is the primary purpose of medicine, it follows that doctors and other health professionals are often active in times of human challenge and extremity. During conflict, humanitarian crises, and, as we have so recently seen, global public health emergencies, health professionals are essential to the response. But these crises – and the response to them – can put fundamental human rights and interests under pressure. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has seen sustained indiscriminate shelling of civilian infrastructure. Whether health facilities were directly targeted is moot – the indiscriminate nature of the assault means they will inevitably be hit. Not only is this a violation of the Geneva Conventions, it undermines fundamental human rights, not least of which the right to health. Destroying health infrastructure drives further suffering and delays post-conflict recovery. Public heath emergencies can rightly require draconian measures – social distancing, enforced isolation, location tracking, economic shutdown. Although we saw their necessity during the COVID-19 outbreak, concerns were raised about disproportionate restrictions on basic rights, including rights to privacy and liberty. Human Rights Watch drew attention to the way governments unlawfully exploited COVID-19 to crack down on fundamental rights.2 Although conflicts and public health emergencies are not new, the report also tracks a number of …. (shrink)

Carrie Figdor presents a critical assessment of how psychological terms are used to describe the non-human biological world. She argues against the anthropocentric attitude which takes human cognition as the standard against which non-human capacities are measured, and offers an alternative basis for naturalistic explanation of the mind.

This article analyses the 1936 “Wotan” essay by Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung in light of one of its reigning motifs, Ergriffenheit. First, this term is examined within the works of Protestant theologian Rudolf Otto and Indologist Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, who used it to describe what they claimed to be the original religious experience, a state of being deeply stirred or even seized by the “the holy” or by “the ultimate reality.” The article then examines antecedents in Jung's theory of (...) states of psychic seizure, in which two halves of the psyche come into conflict, the resolution of which leads to an increased capacity to create the arts of culture. The analysis then moves to the “Wotan” essay itself, where Jung brings together his own theory of psychic seizure with the theory of the original religious experience as proposed by the above-named scholars of religion in order to suggest that, under National Socialism, the Germans were in the midst of a collective confrontation with their own inner divinity, which should lead to a national spiritual rebirth. The article then investigates the works of several of the men Jung mentions in the essay, as well as his use of ancient Germanic mythology, to support his claim. Through his portrait of the Germanic archetype Wotan, Jung psychologizes and thereby essentializes the Romantic image of the Germans as “a people of poets and philosophers” as well as that of a Nietzschean “master-race.” In conclusion, the article argues that, at least in 1936, Jung's attitude towards Hitler and National Socialism was much more favorable than has previously been recognized. (shrink)

This essay analyses how Virginia Woolf's critically under-examined children's story about Nurse Lugton connects the becoming-artistic of writing to animal becomings. Examining the links between creativity and the other-than-human via Gilles Deleuze and Elizabeth Grosz, I claim that the ‘animation’ of the stitched animal figures on Nurse Lugton's ‘canvas’ reveals that art is the enlivenment of vibratory and affective qualities, as opposed to a monumentalising of symbols or concepts. Moreover, the curtain in Woolf's story should be read as creative materiality (...) itself, its folds participating in the self-varying dynamism of the virtual and actual. My analysis of the two published versions of the story, and their accompanying illustrations, outlines an affirmative bio-poetics at the heart of Woolf's aesthetic project and suggests that Woolf's creative sources are embedded in inhuman, biological forces. (shrink)

Presents arguments on both sides of the issue of euthanasia, including questions regarding ethics and legality, physician-assisted suicide, living wills, and removing life support from patients in a persistent vegetative state.

The author investigates the problem with coercive democratization, in regard to the Islamist response to the U.S. Democracy Reform Initiative.

Carrie Jenkins presents a new account of arithmetical knowledge, which manages to respect three key intuitions: a priorism, mind-independence realism, and empiricism. Jenkins argues that arithmetic can be known through the examination of empirically grounded concepts, non-accidentally accurate representations of the mind-independent world.

This essay revisits a debate about literary fiction’s ability to depict the consequences of climate change. Philosopher McKenzie Wark’s 2017 essay, ‘On the Obsolescence of the Bourgeois Novel in the Anthropocene’, offers one of many critiques of climate fiction, such as Amitav Ghosh’s influential book, The Great Derangement. But while Ghosh sees a shortcoming in contemporary novels in their lack of representation of major climate events, Wark emphasises the importance of collective action, conversation, and connection, beyond the limits of literature. (...) Since Wark’s intervention, the global School Strike for Climate in 2019 and 2020 brought more participatory post-literary forms to represent climate change. Jean- Luc Nancy’s theory of participation, that there is no mimesis without participation (methexis), sees a tense relation between the two rather than an opposition or conflict. I argue that Wark, by not undervaluing participation, disrupts a hierarchy that privileges the imitator at the expense of the imitation. To explore this relation, I consider how the slogan ‘there is no Planet B’ forms a snapshot of our twenty- first-century mimetic condition, from which no imitative representation will save us. Can Wark expand the vision of another relational kind of femininity in her later writing to support the demand to take part in transformational action against climate catastrophe, beyond mimetic representation carried in the form of the novel? (shrink)

Academics and professionals working with young women face a series of paradoxes. Over the last 20 years, the lives of young women in the UK and Europe have been transformed. They have gained considerable freedom and independence, but at the very same time, new, less tangible forms of constraint and subordination now play a defining role in the formation of their everyday subjectivities and identities. Young women have come to exemplify the pervasive sensibility of self-responsibility and self-organisation. This new ‘gender (...) regime’ demands both conceptualisation and practical response, drawing on educational research, social and cultural theory, and contemporary feminist thought. Within the overarching theme of pedagogical responses to these trends, through work in schools and within young women’s online and face-to-face communities, this book interrogates the field of sexuality and its visualisation across new and old media in the context of often predictable and endemic ‘moral panics’ about teenage pregnancy rates, sexually transmitted diseases, and internet pornography. In exploring how girls and young women respond to increasing expectations of them as the vanguard of economic, social, and cultural change, contributors to this volume interrogate the ways in which social and educational aspiration interact with young women’s developing and embodied identities. This book was originally published as a special issue of _Pedagogy, Culture and Society. _. (shrink)

Taking seriously Guillaume Apollinaire's wager that twentieth-century poets would one day "mechanize" poetry as modern industry has mechanized the world, Carrie Noland explores poetic attempts to redefine the relationship between subjective expression and mechanical reproduction, high art and the world of things. Noland builds upon close readings to construct a tradition of diverse lyricists--from Arthur Rimbaud, Blaise Cendrars, and René Char to contemporary performance artists Laurie Anderson and Patti Smith--allied in their concern with the nature of subjectivity in an (...) age of mechanical reproduction. (shrink)

The article explores the irreflexivity of metaphysical dependence in the physical structure of reality. It stresses that the word dependence denotes quasi-ireflexivity which affects the metaphysical relations of a physical structure. It focuses on the view that irreflexivity assumption has been made without discussion of the dependence relations on the structure of reality.

Many empirically minded philosophers have used neuroscientific data to argue against the multiple realization of cognitive functions in existing biological organisms. I argue that neuroscientists themselves have proposed a biologically based concept of multiple realization as an alternative to interpreting empirical findings in terms of one‐to‐one structure‐function mappings. I introduce this concept and its associated research framework and also how some of the main neuroscience‐based arguments against multiple realization go wrong. *Received October 2009; revised December 2009. †To contact the author, (...) please write to: Department of Philosophy, 260 English‐Philosophy Building, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242; e‐mail: carrie‐[email protected]. (shrink)

Transplantation is a field of perpetual innovation. In the last 15 years, novel surgical interventions include uterine, tracheal, hand, face, and penile allotransplantation, as well as cardiac xeno...

Mise en lumière par des scandales sanitaires récents et par la montée en puissance d'associations se réclamant de l'antispécisme et du droit des animaux, la " question animale " a pris ces dernières années en France une importance inédite. Cette problématique est portée dans l'espace public par un ensemble de groupes et d'acteurs qui entendent représenter politiquement les intérêts des animaux à ne pas souffrir au sein des dispositifs d'exploitation. Quels sont les ressorts émotionnels, intellectuels et théoriques de cet engagement? (...) Le mouvement " animaliste " contemporain constitue-t-il une nouveauté et quelles sont les conditions historiques de son émergence? En quoi son influence croissante change-t-elle nos perceptions des rapports légitimes entre humains et non-humains? Quels sont les enjeux et les futurs possibles de cette entreprise singulière de représentation politique? (shrink)

Genesis 34 is a troubling tale that includes an ambiguous sexual encounter (possibly rape), deception, brutal violence against an unsuspecting city, and the silence—or silencing—of the only female character, Dinah. This article models wrestling with this difficult passage through linguistic analysis and a narrative ethics framework that monitors the functions of reticence in narrative. Attending to the two major informational gaps—the narrator’s evaluation and the perspective of Dinah—alerts readers to the centrality of the latter as the key to unlocking the (...) former. (shrink)

Love is most often associated with happiness, satisfaction and pleasure. But it has a darker side we ignore at our peril. Love is often an uncomfortable and difficult feeling. The people we love can let us down badly. And the ways we love are often quite different to the romantic ideals society foists upon us. Since we are inevitably disappointed by love, wouldn't we be better off without it? No, says Carrie Jenkins. Instead, we need a new philosophy of (...) love, one that recognizes that the pain and suffering love causes are a natural, even a good part of what makes love worthwhile. What Jenkins calls "sad love" offers no bogus "happy ever afters." Rather, it tries to find a way properly to integrate heartbreak and disappointment into the lived experience of love"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Plato's Symposium depicts a group of men giving a series of speeches about the nature of love, with themes ranging from religion and metaphysics to medicine and pregnancy. The lone woman in the room, a "flute girl," is sent away as the discussion turns to serious matters; at the same time, the wisest of the men attributes his theories to a woman, the possibly fictional Diotima. Despite their absence from this important intellectual exchange, women are part of Symposium. What can (...) contemporary feminist readers do with this troubling yet immeasurably influential work? In Uninvited historian Carla Nappi and philosopher Carrie Jenkins talk back to Plato in poetry, inspired by the voices of women characters who were not previously permitted to speak. Images and ideas from Symposium are refracted through multiple lenses to reveal a tumult of mystical, intellectual, pedagogical, and sexual ideologies. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes horrific, these poems dance within and between the lines of Symposium, carving space for new kinds of conversations about love, with themes ranging from gender and voice to power and violence. Designed to be read with or without prior knowledge of Plato, this book invites the uninvited to join a strange, amorphous, and unending conversation on the nature of love and desire - and on the possibilities intellectual and creative activity can offer. (shrink)

A surgeon offers an imperfect kidney (Kidney Donor Profile Index1 > 85%) to a patient for transplantation, knowing that it poses a higher-than-average risk of complication. However, the organ is ne...

Understanding why individuals opt out of living donation is crucial to enhancing protections for all living donors and to identify modifiable barriers to donation. We developed an ethical approach to conducting research on individuals who opted out of living kidney donation and applied it in a small-scale qualitative study at one US transplant centre. The seven study participants had varied reasons for opting out, the most prominent of which was concern about the financial burden from lost wages during the postoperative (...) period. Several reported feeling alone during their decision-making process. Although no participants used an alibi, a centre-provided statement of non-eligibility to donate, all believed that centres should offer alibis to help preserve donor autonomy. Given the complexity of participants' decisions and the emotions they experienced before and after deciding not to donate, we suggest approaches for independent living donor advocates to support this population. This study demonstrates that research on individuals who opt out of donation is feasible and yields valuable insight into methods to improve the evaluation experience for potential living donors. (shrink)

Contemporary neo-Aristotelians disagree about whether Aristotle’s work can contribute to rather than compete with or replace modern political theories, particularly theories that take individual rights seriously. In his Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle’s Politics, Fred Miller says “yes.” In After Virtue, drawing on Aristotle to provide an alternative to what he sees as the moral bankruptcy on which modern political theories rest, Alasdair MacIntyre says “no.” However, I maintain—as does Miller (though on somewhat different grounds)—that MacIntyre is mistaken to (...) think that Aristotelianism and modern political theories are entirely at odds with one another. They are mostly reconcilable, a position I call the ‘compatibility thesis.’ An implication of this is that Aristotle’s thought, especially concerning the common advantage, can clarify and strengthen modern political theories that regard individuals (not the state or society) as morally primary and that advocate protecting them equally via rights under the rule of law. (shrink)

This book unpicks the conceptual, ideological, and metaphysical tangles that get in the way of understanding romantic love. -/- Written for a general audience, What Love Is And What It Could Be explores different disciplinary perspectives on love, in search of the bigger picture. It presents a "dual-nature" theory: romantic love is simultaneously both a biological phenomenon and a social construct. The key philosophical insight comes in explaining why this a coherent—and indeed a necessary—position to take. -/- The deep motivation (...) behind this work is that we have a collective responsibility to figure out romantic love. It is a formidable and potentially dangerous force, its power underwritten by its twin footholds in our biological natures and in our most treasured social practices. Often we pretend that it is incomprehensible and out of control, but this is a way of abdicating our responsibility to understand love and fix it when it's broken. -/- What Love Is And What It Could Be explains that romantic love is currently broken in multiple interlocking ways, but also that we can change this status quo. Once we understand what love is, we will be able to take control of what it could be. (shrink)

This article examines the cross-national relationship between a divorce culture on a national level and gender equality in intact marriages. Based on multilevel analysis of data from 22 countries in the International Social Survey Programme, the results indicate that a divorce culture on the national level is associated with greater marital equality. In other words, in countries where divorce is accepted and practiced, the distribution of work between women and men in marriage is more equal. These findings support the enhanced (...) equality hypothesis that the possibility of divorce provides women with leverage to gain more equal status within marriage. (shrink)

This paper advances the development of a phylogeny-based psychology in which cognitive ability types are individuated as characters in the evolutionary biological sense. I explain the character concept and its utility in addressing (or dissolving) conceptual problems arising from discoveries of cognitive abilities across a wide range of species. I use the examples of stereopsis in the praying mantis, internal cell-to-cell signaling in plants, and episodic memory in scrub jays to show how anthropocentric cognitive ability types can be reformulated into (...) cognitive characters, thereby promoting the integration of psychology with other sciences of evolved traits. (shrink)