This book integrates insights from philosophy, gender studies, political theory, and media studies to present an in depth analysis of masculinity politics in contemporary U.S. culture. While primarily a philosophical work, this book also creates a discussion committed to feminist theory and progressive gender politics.

The chapters of Judith Butler's Giving an Account of Oneself originally were given as the Spinoza Lectures for the Department of Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam in the spring of 2002. In this work, Butler returns to the problem of subjectivity and subject formation, but this time in the context of ethics and ethical philosophy. Pulling together ethical considerations and theories of the self from authors including Nietzsche, Foucault, Adorno, and Levinas, Butler deftly and successfully decenters and refocuses ethical (...) analysis by claiming that the subject is not the ground for ethics but rather the problem for ethics. Central to this thesis is the claim that the self is inherently relational, and emerges .. (shrink)

In this groundbreaking work, Christa Davis Acampora offers a profound rethinking of Friedrich Nietzsche’s crucial notion of the agon. Analyzing an impressive array of primary and secondary sources and synthesizing decades of Nietzsche scholarship, she shows how the agon, or contest, organized core areas of Nietzsche’s philosophy, providing a new appreciation of the subtleties of his notorious views about power. By focusing so intensely on this particular guiding interest, she offers an exciting, original vantage from which to view this (...) iconic thinker: Contesting Nietzsche. Though existence—viewed through the lens of Nietzsche’s agon—is fraught with struggle, Acampora illuminates what Nietzsche recognized as the agon’s generative benefits. It imbues the human experience with significance, meaning, and value. Analyzing Nietzsche’s elaborations of agonism—his remarks on types of contests, qualities of contestants, and the conditions in which either may thrive or deteriorate—she demonstrates how much the agon shaped his philosophical projects and critical assessments of others. The agon led him from one set of concerns to the next, from aesthetics to metaphysics to ethics to psychology, via Homer, Socrates, Saint Paul, and Wagner. In showing how one obsession catalyzed so many diverse interests, Contesting Nietzsche sheds fundamentally new light on some of this philosopher’s most difficult and paradoxical ideas. (shrink)

Commonsense morality seems to feature both agent-neutral and agent-relative elements. For a long time, the core debate between consequentialists and deontologists was which of these features should take centerstage. With the introduction of the consequentializing project and agent-relative value, however, agent-neutrality has been left behind. While I likewise favor an agent-relative view, agent-neutral views capture important features of commonsense morality.This article investigates whether an agent-relative view can maintain what is attractive about typical agent-neutral views. In particular, I argue that the (...) agent-relative reasons-wielding deontologist is ultimately able to capture those features ordinarily associated with agent-neutral views, while the agent-relative value wielding consequentialist is left with a dilemma. The consequentializer either succumbs to the concerns of her agent-neutral opponents or else abandons the distinctive and attractive features of her view. Either way, I conclude that agent-relative value is best left behind. (shrink)

Professor Donaldson in his book Corporations and Morality has attempted to use a social contract theory to develop moral principles for regulating corporate conduct. I argue in this paper that his attempt fails in large measure because what he refers to as a social contract theory is, in fact, a weak functionalist theory which provides no independent basis for evaluating business corporations. I further argue that given the nature of a morality based on contract and the nature of the modern (...) corporation, it is highly unlikely that any plausible contract theory of business ethics can be developed. (shrink)

This article seeks to describe in general terms what has become the standard way of conceptualizing moral injury in the clinical psychological and psychiatric literature, which is the key source for applications of the concept in other domains. What we call “the standard model” draws on certain assumptions about beliefs, mental states, and emotions as well as an implicit theory of causation about how various forms of harm arise from certain experiences or “events” that violate persons’ moral beliefs and systems. (...) Our analysis makes these assumptions more explicit and subjects them to critical scrutiny. In so doing, we survey the current literature and identify basic features of how moral injuries are defined, how they are thought to occur, and the forms of treatment or repair that appear to be indicated. We caution that it matters how moral experience is characterized and argue that an alternative understanding of what is the moral in moral injury is important for overcoming critical challenges to the standard model. Moreover, recently evolving approaches to moral repair could be more consistent with an alternative model. Our concluding suggestion is that a more robust account of the nature of moral experience and its relations to self-identity and social experience more generally could advance understanding of the etiology of moral injury and promote rehabilitation. (shrink)

Die zentrale Stellung des Po-Konzepts in der polynesischen Religion steht somit fest. Für die Polynesier war Po eine geistige Realität, etwas überaus Heiliges. Es war eine heilige Zeit am Urbeginn der Welt. Es war ewig und allgegenwärtig, ein erhabenes Kontinuum, das in der Nacht und im Kult weiter bestand. Po und Ao bildeten das Ordnungsprinzip der Welt; "Po gehörte den Göttern, Ao den Menschen"48. Mit Konsequenz und logischer Klarheit konstituierten Po und Ao die Ordnung aller Lebensphänomene. Sie erklärten den Ursprung (...) alles auf Erden Bestehenden und gaben allen Wesen, Dingen und Institutionen Sinn und Bedeutung. Sie bildeten ein holistisches Prinzip, das alle Lebensbereiche von Religion bis Sex umfaßte und durchdrang und Urzeit und Gegenwart, Zeit und Raum, Götter und Menschen, das Sakrale und das Profane, Fürsten und Volk, Lebende und Tote, Geburt und Tod in einem großartigen geistig-religiösen System zusammenschloß. (shrink)

In this article, we introduce our interactive art installation Neuro Mirror that was developed in 2017 for the Cybernetic Consciousness [?] exhibition that was held in 2017 at the ITAU Cultural in Sao Paulo. This artwork enables participants to interact with their own images and those of their alter egos with the help of digital mirrors. The installation consists of three screens. The middle one shows a live image of the participant that is somewhat distorted. The one on the left (...) side also displays an image of the interacting person, but with a time delay of a few seconds. On the right screen, however, another person is shown – a young man, who is acting and moving his head. In fact, this person is programmed to be an avatar or an alter ego who reacts to the participant. He ‘learns’ new behaviours by observing and imitating the participant and reacts accordingly. A neural network programme was developed to enable him to predict the participant’s next actions from his previous ones. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ Hélène Cixous a écrit de nombreux essais, consacrés pour la plupart à l’écriture, la sienne et celle d’autres auteurs. Pourtant la place que le genre de l’essai occupe dans l’œuvre de l’auteure est loin d’être claire. Face aux fictions cixousiennes appréciées comme étant les véritables “essais” au sens montaignien du terme, se trouvent les essais en question, souvent écrits à la suite d’une demande extérieure. L’essai même constitue-t-il un genre cixousien à part entière? Une analyse diachronique, qui nous mènera (...) des grands textes qu’Hélène Cixous a écrits en réponse aux urgences de son époque aux textes plus récents dédiés à l’intimité du processus de l’écriture, situera l’essai et son évolution à l’intérieur du développement de son œuvre. (shrink)

Traditionally, weakness of will has been identified with an agent acting contrary to her better judgment, or akrasia. Recent empirical findings, however, have led many to conclude that the folk concept of WOW is not amenable to necessary and sufficient conditions. To this end, it has been argued that WOW attributions point to a cluster concept :341–360, 2012), a disjunctive account of WOW as either judgment or resolution violation :391–404, 2010), and a two-tiered account including both failures to adhere to (...) commitments as well as failures to commit :3935–3954, 2014). Contrary to these views, I argue that there is indeed an underlying unifying feature of the folk concept of WOW. In particular, I argue that WOW is a matter of violating one’s salient reasons for action. I develop and defend this account in three stages. First, I introduce the theory philosophically, by critiquing the traditional view, i.e. judgment violation, as well as its initial competitor, Holton’s :241–262, 1999; Willing, wanting, waiting, Oxford University Press, New York, 2009) view of resolution violation. I then turn to the empirical case for Salient Reasons Violation, arguing that the view best fits the data concerning folk attributions of WOW. Importantly, I argue that folk attributions unsurprisingly include violations of reasons that the attributor finds salient, even when the agent in the case may not. Finally, I turn to an explanatory account of Salient Reasons Violation, which moves beyond establishing the contours of our concept, by providing an explanation as to why the concept functions as it does. (shrink)

In response to the so-called “paradox of deontology,” many have argued that the agent-relativity of deontological constraints accounts for why an agent may not kill one in order to prevent five others from being killed. Constraints provide reasons for particular agents not to kill, not reasons to minimize overall killings. In this paper, I tease out the significance of an underappreciated aspect of this agent-relative position, i.e. it provides no guidance as to what an agent ought to do when faced (...) with the prospect of killing one in order to prevent herself from killing five. After rejecting mere agent-relativity, the view that agents are morally permitted to violate constraints in order to minimize their overall violations, I offer a view that this is both agent- and time-relative, and show how this view exemplifies the underlying motivations for deontological constraints while successfully responding to both the inter- and intra-personal paradoxes of deontology. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Nietzsche's (Artful) Naturalism The Subject Naturalized Nietzsche's Artful Naturalism Toward an Ethos of the Agonized Subject.

In the last sixty years the West-European religious landscape has changed radically. People, and also religious and humanist communities, in a post-sec¬ular world are challenged to develop a new existential, ethical and spiritual language that fits to their global and pluralistic surroundings. This new world-viewing language could rise out of the reflection on contrast experiences, positive and negative disruptive experiences that question the everyday inter pretations of life. The connection of these articulated reflections on contrast experiences with former world-viewing sources (...) and practices with regard to precarious life could provide new meaning and orientation for individuals and communities. Four different sorts of dialogues can be distinguished, which together I call world-viewing dialogues: contrast experiences and the dialogue with oneself, contrast experiences discussed in small groups, contrast experiences and values in our nowadays society and contrast experiences in dialogue with philosophical and religious traditions from different cultures and ages. (shrink)

Apart from motor and behavioral dysfunctions, deficits in cognitive skills are among the well-documented sequelae of preterm birth. However, early identification of infants at risk for poor cognition is still a challenge, as no clear association between pathological findings based on neuroimaging scans and cognitive functions have been detected as yet. The Prechtl General Movement Assessment (GMA) has shown its merits for the evaluation of the integrity of the young nervous system. It is a reliable tool for identifying infants at (...) risk for neuromotor deficits. Recent studies on preterm infants demonstrate that abnormal general movements (GMs) also reflect impairments of brain areas involved in cognitive development. The aim of this systematic review was to discuss studies that included (i) the Prechtl GMA applied in preterm infants, and (ii) cognitive outcome measures in six data bases. Seven studies met the inclusion criteria and yielded the following results: (a) children born preterm with consistently abnormal GMs up to 8 weeks after term had lower intelligence quotients at school age than children with an early normalization of GMs; (b) from 3 to 5 months after term, several qualitative, and quantitative aspects of the concurrent motor repertoire, including postural patterns, were predictive of intelligence at 7–10 years of age. These findings in 428 individuals born preterm suggest that normal GMs along with a normal motor repertoire during the first months after term are markers for normal cognitive development until at least age 10. (shrink)

This article offers a hybrid rhetorical-qualitative discourse analysis of the FDA’s 2011 Avastin Hearing, which considered the revocation of the breast cancer indication for the popular cancer drug Avastin. We explore the multiplicity of stakeholders, the questions that motivated deliberations, and the kinds of evidence presented during the hearing. Pairing our findings with contemporary scholarship in rhetorical stasis theory, Mol’s (2002) construct of multiple ontologies, and Callon, Lascoumes, and Barthe’s (2011) “hybrid forums,” we demonstrate that the FDA’s deliberative procedures elides (...) various sources of evidence and the potential multiplicity of definitions for “clinical benefit.” Our findings suggest that while the FDA invited multiple stakeholders to offer testimony, there are ways that the FDA might have more meaningfully incorporated public voices in the deliberative process. We conclude with suggestions for how a true hybrid forum might be deployed. (shrink)

This article will explore different images of nature and their implications for the meaning of life in the face of death. First we will elaborate on life as creation, as expressed by Francis of Assisi in his Canticle of the Sun, and see how the imaginative power of this story gives meaning to life and death. Then we will go into the evolutionary approach of life by Richard Dawkins. In his work a totally different significance of finitude becomes visible: death (...) as a necessary segment in the development of life. The philosopher Leo Apostel states that an intellectual/scientific understanding of death is not enough; we need to explore our emotional response to the universe in order to be able to create meaning and value. The work of the biologist Ursula Goodenough and the philosopher Ton Lemaire are discussed as examples of such an affective admiration of life and death based on scientific knowledge. In the end I will conclude that scientific insights give us a lot of information about human beings as concerns their nature and the inevitability of death. But how we can affectively value and give meaning to life in the face of death is still an open question which cannot be answered by science alone. (shrink)

- Wo liegt Osteuropa? Mental mapping, Osteuropageschichte und Slawistik - Literaturen exemplarisch: russische und polnische Literatur im Kontext nationaler, ost- und gesamteuropäischer Geschichte - Literatur und nationale Identitätsbildung: Staat und Zensur, Subversion und Emanzipation - Aufklärung von oben, Romantik und Realismus, Moderne zwischen ästhetischem Aufbruch und sozialistischem Realismus, Postmoderne und die neue Lust am Fabulieren - Orientalismus, Stadt und Land, Genderdiskurs.

This text gives business students a sense that problems of business policy can be resolved, in part, by ideas from philosophy, social theory, and law. It enables students to view ethical principles as a response to an evolving set of problems related to harmonizing values in a pluralistic society.

The present study investigated the construct validity of the Test Anxiety Questionnaire, a revised and shortened version of the German Test Anxiety Inventory, by comparing it with math anxiety. A sample of German fifth- and sixth-grade students was analyzed. Math anxiety was measured by a German adaptation of the Math Anxiety Questionnaire. A significant but moderate correlation between test anxiety and math anxiety was found. In regression analyses, math anxiety predicted math performance whereas test anxiety explained additional variance for both (...) math and overall performance. It can be concluded that math and test anxiety have overlaps, but do not constitute the same construct. Thus, the results support the construct validity of the PAF indicating its usefulness in practical application. (shrink)

In this astonishingly rich volume, experts in ethics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, political theory, aesthetics, history, critical theory, and hermeneutics bring to light the best philosophical scholarship on what is arguably Nietzsche's most rewarding but most challenging text. Including essays that were commissioned specifically for the volume as well as essays revised and edited by their authors, this collection showcases definitive works that have shaped Nietzsche studies alongside new works of interest to students and experts alike. A lengthy introduction, annotated (...) bibliography, and index make this an extremely useful guide for the classroom and advanced research. (shrink)

Moderate deontologists hold that while it is wrong to kill an innocent person to save, say, five other individuals, it is indeed morally permissible to kill one if, say, millions of lives are at stake. A basic worry concerning the moderate’s position is whether the view boils down to mere philosophical wishful thinking. In permitting agents to ever kill an innocent, moderates require that agents treat persons as means, in opposition to traditional deontological motivations. Recently Tyler Cook argued that deontologists (...) can be moderate. However, there remains a gap in the literature concerning how such a view might function in practice, as well as why a deontologist might (or perhaps, should) hold the view. This paper works to fill these gaps. I first develop the view that agents can be constrained from an action even though there are instances in which an infringement of this constraint is permissible. Crucially, I appeal to the moral emotions that are fitting in cases of constraint infringements. I then go on to show how this view can be grounded in traditional deontological foundations. Respect for the dignity of persons, I argue, requires not only that we not treat others in certain ways, but also that we acknowledge the direct and indirect effects our actions and inactions have on all persons. This deontological motivation, in turn, leads to a moderate constraint on the actions of agents. (shrink)

Metaethical constructivism aims to explain morality’s authority and relevance by basing it in agency, in a capacity of the creatures who are in fact morally bound. But constructivists have struggled to wring anything recognizably moral from an appropriately minimal conception of agency. Even if they could, basing our reasons in our individual agency seems to make other people reason-giving for us only indirectly. This paper argues for a constructivism based on a social conception of agency, on which our capacity to (...) recognize ourselves as having reasons ties us inescapably to others. It argues that mutual recognition is a pervasive feature of linguistic concepts, and builds this into a view called transformative expressivism. (shrink)

In this paper we attempt to identify which peer collaboration characteristics may be accountable for conceptual change through interaction. We focus on different socio‐cognitive aspects of the peer dialog and relate these with learning gains on the dyadic as well as the individual level. The scientific topic that was used for this study concerns natural selection, a topic for which students’ intuitive conceptions have been shown to be particularly robust. Learning tasks were designed according to the socio‐cognitive conflict instructional paradigm. (...) After receiving a short instructional intervention on natural selection, paired students were asked to collaboratively construct explanations for certain evolutionary phenomena while engaging in dialectical argumentation. Two quantitative coding schemes were developed, each with a different granularity. The first assessed discrete dialog moves that pertained to dialectical argumentation and to consensual explanation development. The second scheme characterized the dialog as a whole on a number of socio‐cognitive dimensions. Results from analyses on the dyadic as well as the individual level revealed that the engagement in dialectical argumentation predicted conceptual learning gains, whereas consensual explanation development did not. These findings open up new venues for research on the mechanisms of learning in and from peer collaboration. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.1 (2003) 17-21 [Access article in PDF] Self-Injury:Symbolic Sacrifice/Self-Assertion Renders Clinicians Helpless Christa Krüger Keywords feminism, iconic communication, moral conflict, oppression, psychiatrist/psychologist roles, societal norms. POTTER'S PAPER CONSIDERS self-injury in women diagnosed with borderline person ality disorder (BPD) to be a form of body modification where the body is used to communicate meaning. She touches on symbolism as a possible explanatory theory for this (...) sort of self-injury. She also refers to the culture of body commodification as underlying self-injury. She then argues that clinicians have a duty to give uptake to the patient's own interpretations about the meaning of the self-injury. Giving uptake is a virtuous approach for ethical interactions with people diagnosed with BPD who self-injure, and it aims to preserve the communicator's integrity, along with other benefits. Potter offers five maxims for giving uptake properly. However, I shall argue that giving uptake can be very difficult for clinicians, and that an appreciation of this difficulty depends on an expansion and linkage of some of the theories that she touched on. Self-injury is revisited experimentally as a double-edged sword of symbolic sacrifice and iconic-symbolic self-assertion. This revisiting aims to illustrate how clinicians might be caught in a double bind, where giving uptake properly might be very difficult if not more or less doomed to fail.Potter's paper starts by situating self-injury in a broader discourse of body modifications. In this discourse the body is being used as a text, a tool to communicate meaning. The meaning that is communicated might be difficult or impossible to articulate otherwise (by using words, for example). The meaning of the communication is embedded in a context of social, cultural, religious, political, and other norms. Potter explores possible interpretations of the meaning of self-injury in women with BPD, including an interpretation of self-injury as symbolic sacrifice. She suggests that a cultural understanding/nonunderstanding of the meaning of a particular instance of self-injury is an important determinant of whether such self-injury is considered pathological/nonpathological. She then shifts the focus to the present-day culture in which women's bodies are commodified and objectified, and where women become alienated from their bodies. Self-injury might then be interpreted as an attempt to re-own one's body as a part of oneself. This re-owning is a socially transgressive act that violates repressive norms for the bodies of women. [End Page 17]Notwithstanding these possible significations of self-injury, Potter then argues that clinicians have a duty to give uptake to the patient's own interpretations, instead of jumping to conclusions (my oversimplification) about the meaning of the self-injury. Giving uptake, then, constitutes a framework for ethical interactions with people diagnosed with BPD who self-injure, and it aims to preserve the communicator's integrity. Potter offers five maxims for giving uptake properly.At the risk of losing their essence, I translate the five maxims for practicing psychiatrists as involving the following: critical self-reflection about one's own conceptual framework and cultural context; being receptive to the patient's conceptual framework and cultural context; giving the patient the benefit of the doubt; being open to the emergence of new meanings of self-injury; and keeping a range of possible interpretative options open, rather than insisting on having the final word. We should try to understand what the world looks like from the patient's position. All of this requires some moral effort.Potter describes a number of benefits that result from giving uptake. Giving uptake is a crucial corrective to the human tendencies of becoming overly committed to prevailing societal norms and conceptual schemes (stuck in our ways), of imposing our views on others, and of silencing or distorting the communications of our patients. Giving uptake allows clinicians to be dialogically responsive and to treat patients with respect and dignity. Giving uptake fosters trust in a therapeutic relationship where clinicians do not exploit their patients' vulnerabilities. Giving... (shrink)

Agon as analytic, diagnostic, and antidote -- Contesting Homer: the poiesis of value -- Contesting Socrates: Nietzsche's (artful) naturalism -- Contesting Paul: toward an ethos of agonism -- Contesting Wagner: how one becomes what one is.

In this article the authors1 approach material and symbolic violence through transdisciplinary readings of theoretical debates, fiction and empirical narratives. They make use of the concept of turning points which disrupt dichotomous and static categorizations of victim and survivor, and their association with passivity and agency respectively. In situations of violence, turning points represent temporality instead of timelessness, dialogism instead of monologism, multilayering rather than any fixed identity. The authors draw on the theorists Bakhtin and Certeau, whose work highlights the (...) significance of meaning-making between self and other. They analyse empirical and fictional narratives to understand the creation of dialogic spaces, a space that both subordinates and subverts. Pointing to the procedural nature of turning points within the everyday, the authors argue that women, despite the pain and trauma, are neither just a victim nor just a survivor in a violent relationship. (shrink)

In the introduction to the second volume of Capitalism and Schizophrenia Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari develop, under the tide Rhizome, the principles of a new method of thinking. One could, with the certain approval of the authors, turn around the theorem of Carl Schmitt and claim that, since the “highpoints of great [philosophy] are at the same time those moments in which the enemy is sighted in concrete distinctness as an enemy,” rhizome-thinking also starts out from the definition of (...) the enemy. It is discerned in Western Rationalism, which rhizome-thinking rejects in all its historical manifestations. An argumentational strategy characteristic of rhizome-thinking is thus made visible: that it again and again reproduces the categories that it negates. (shrink)

Today, young people write in their leisure time far more than they did 15 years ago. Most often they use the new media to do their writing. This book explores whether the frequent writing of short messages and e-mails and participation in chats and social networks like Facebook have an influence on writing in school. Are there any similarities and relationships between the texts written in school and the private texts? For the first time, based on comprehensive data from Swiss (...) students, this book provides empirical answers to these questions. (shrink)

A central claim of the Christian faith is that Jesus is not only fully human (and fully God), but that he reveals true humanity to us. This requires that all of our anthropologies, in some way, ground themselves in Christology, providing a ‘Christological anthropology’. Consequently, any Christological anthropology requires some formulation of Christology proper. In light of this, the main contention of the present paper is that one cannot adequately formulate a Christological anthropology without including a pneumatic Christology. The justification (...) for this necessity can be articulated through the concept of fundamental need. The incarnate Logos, Jesus of Nazareth, fundamentally needed the Spirit in the same way that all human persons fundamentally need the Spirit. ‘Fundamental need’, as a technical concept, can help to clarify both the continuity and discontinuity between Jesus’ likeness to all humanity. This does not collapse the ‘who’ of the incarnation into the many ‘who’s’ of humanity since the incarnate Logos always possessed this Spirit as his own Spirit of Sonship, as opposed to how non-divinely hypostasized human persons must receive the Spirit of Sonship by adoption. The distinctiveness and similarity between Jesus and all of humanity can be most clearly seen by paying special attention to the difference between incarnation and indwelling. Thus, by examining incarnation and in-dwelling, as well as introducing fundamental need into theological discourse, the significance of the Spirit for informing both Christology and anthropology will be made clear. (shrink)

This work provides an alternative perspective on human dignity through a care-taking lens.