Wnt proteins are involved in a large number of events during development and disease. The crucial element in the transduction of the signal elicited by Wnt is the state and activity of β-catenin. There are two pools of β-catenin, one associated with cadherins at the cell surface and a soluble one in the cytolasm, whose state and concentration are critical for Wnt signalling. In the absence of Wnt, the cytoplasmic pool is low due to targetted degradation of β-catenin. Upon Wnt (...) signalling, β-catenin is stabilized. As a consequence, it can access the nucleus where it interacts with members of the Tcf family of transcription factors to modulate the expression of defined targets. Recent reports indicate that, in addition to Tcfs, β-catenin can interact with other nuclear proteins raising the possibility that Wnt signalling has a wider modulatory effect on transcription than is mediated by its interactions with Tcfs. BioEssays 23:311–318, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

During development of the Xenopus embryo, the formation of the nervous system depends on an inductive interaction between mesoderm and ectoderm. The result is a neural tube that is regionally differentiated along the anterior–posterior axis from forebrain to spinal cord (Fig. 1). The discovery of genes whose transcripts can be used as molecular markers for different regions of the nervous system has permitted reassessment of the existing theories of neural tissue formation. Although the neural inducing molecules remain elusive, the mechanism (...) by which cells interact to form a regionally differentiated nervous system is becoming clearer. (shrink)

Pithy, direct, and bold: essays that propose new ways to think about old problems, spanning a range of philosophical topics. In Philosophical Provocations, Colin McGinn offers a series of short, sharp essays that take on philosophical problems ranging from the concept of mind to paradox, altruism, and the relation between God and the Devil. Avoiding the usual scholarly apparatus and embracing a blunt pithiness, McGinn aims to achieve as much as possible in as short a space as possible while (...) covering as many topics as possible. Much academic philosophical writing today is long, leaden, citation heavy, dense with qualifications, and painful to read. The essays in Philosophical Provocations are short, direct, and engaging, often challenging philosophical orthodoxy as they consider issues in mind, language, knowledge, metaphysics, biology, ethics, and religion. McGinn is looking for new ways to think about old problems. Thus he writes, about consciousness, “I think we have been all wrong,” and goes on to suggest that both consciousness and the unconscious are mysteries. Summing up his proposal on altruism, he remarks, “My suggestion can now be stated, somewhat brutally, as follows: human altruism is the result of parasitic manipulation.” He takes a moment to reflect: “I really don't know why it is good to be alive, though I am convinced that the standard suggestions don't work.” McGinn gets straight to the point and states his position with maximum clarity. These essays offer provocative invitations to think again. (shrink)

(forthcoming) Journal of Medical Licensure and Discipline. Rapid advances in human genetics raise the prospect that one day we may be able to develop genetic enhancements to promote a diverse range of phenotypes (e.g. health, intelligence, behaviour, etc.). Perhaps the biggest challenge that genetic enhancements pose for medical practitioners is that they will compel us to re-think a good deal of the conventional wisdom of the status quo. Radical enhancements are likely to have this affect for a variety of reasons. (...) Firstly, the status quo is premised (at least in large part) on a sharp distinction between treatment and enhancement; a distinction that at least some genetic enhancements will call into question. Secondly, the prospect of radical enhancements requires us to keep an open mind concerning how we conceive of the harm of non-intervention (i.e. the harm of the status quo). And thirdly, some enhancements might compromise the preservation of personal identity. All of these issues may have important consequences for State Medical Boards, ranging from the way we view the aspiration to prevent harm and ensure reasonable standards of care, to malpractice, continuing competency and medical specialization. (shrink)

Mary Astell (1666-1731) relies on a Cartesian account of the self to argue that both men and women are essentially thinking things and, hence, that both should perfect their minds or intellects. In offering such an account of the self, Astell might seem to ignore the inescapable fact that we have bodies. I argue that Astell accommodates the self’s embodiment along two main dimensions. First, she tempers her sharp distinction between mind and body by insisting on their union. The mind (...) and body are united in such a way that they exert reciprocal causal influence and form a whole together. Second, she argues that the mind-body union is good, that the union has its own distinctive form of good or perfection, and that the mind should pursue this good alongside its own. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:SACRIFICE AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE Colin Jager University ofMichigan The Inscription on the Memorial to Irish Freedom in Parnell Square, Dublin, reads: "O generations of freedom, remember us, the generations of the vision." The irony, of course, is that the generations of freedom to whom the inscription is addressed have yet to be born. Or rather: they/we are partly a generation of freedom, while remaining also and of (...) necessity a generation of vision. Freedom—always partial and imperfect where it exists at all—remains bound up with vision. And violence (so the memorial tells us) is never far from vision. Is itpossible to conceive ofa public sphere free from violence? This is the question I address here with the help ofHannah Arendt. I begin by describing Arendt's distinction between the public and private realms and summarizing Seyla Benhabib's interpretation ofthese categories. Arendt, ofcourse, valued the public sphere ofcontestation that she associated with the Greek world; for her, the private realm of the household should remain completely separate from public life—the private was a place ofmere necessity, devoted solely to maintaining the physical body. According to Benhabib, we can follow Arendt in thinking of the public sphere as a place of contestation and hence of potential pain, or we can allow the concerns of the private into the public realm, and thus work to create a public sphere based on association and potential solidarity. Working out of the communicative theories of Jürgen Habermas, Benhabib tries to pull Arendt toward Habermas by emphasizing what she calls Arendt's "reluctant modernism": those elements ofher thought that move away from a sharp distinction between public and private and tend toward association and solidarity. And yet—this is the conviction that motivates this essay—history tells us that we cannot simply exchange one for the other. The poignancy ofmy epigraph springs, I think, precisely from our 58Colin Jager realization that vision never modulates easily into freedom. The monument's inscription, the very fact of its existence, links vision indissolubly with bloodshed and sacrifice, while imagining freedom as a peaceful realm beyond violence, a place ofharmony and solidarity for which the "generations ofthe vision" were willing to sacrifice themselves. Yet we are not that generation of freedom. We have not shed the burden of vision and history, for history is never simply behind us. What the eighty bloody years since the Easter uprising have taught us, if anything, is that the coming offreedom is always delayed and that the hopes for a peaceful transition from vision to freedom, agon to association, revolution to democracy, are forever marred by the reality ofa world where there is more than one vision and where continued sacrifices in the name ofvision seem to bring us no closer to peace, or to freedom. Who is the monument for, then? We must conclude that it is for us who remain somewhere between vision and freedom, forced by our own monuments to acknowledge that history that continues to infect our present. If agon and association, vision and freedom, inevitably bleed into each other, then we cannot talk realistically about one simply replacing the other. In this regard Arendt's work is crucial because it teaches us that movement from an agonistic Greek public to an associative modern public is accomplished only at the cost of displacing the distributive violence of the Greek world onto a figure ofsuffering. The necessity ofsuch suffering is the element that Benhabib, with her emphasis on the ideal communicative community, misses. Therefore, highlighting suffering helps us to understand Arendt: the suffering figures scattered through her work are the only way to make sense of her crucial notions of storytelling and forgiveness. More generally, highlighting suffering helps us understand what is at stake in any Utopian theory of the public sphere: envisioning the transition from an agonistic public sphere, defined by its relationship to violence, to a nonviolent associative public sphere of peace and communicative ethics is impossible wiüiout acknowledging those who pay the price for such a passage. Freedom, ifit does come, comes at a terrific cost—and there is no guarantee that it will still be here tomorrow. 1. Agonism and Associationism... (shrink)

Much of the sustained attention on pandemic preparedness has focused on the ethical justification for plans for the “crisis” phase of a surge when, despite augmentation efforts, the demand for life...

The idea of philosophy as a 'way of life' is not a new one. From the first recorded philosophy by Plato, there has been a tradition of thinking about philosophy as pointing us towards the good life, happiness and an ethical existence. But where does this notion that philosophy has anything to offer in terms of guiding us in how to live and live well come from? In this first ever introduction to philosophy as a way of life, Matthew (...) class='Hi'>Sharpe and Michael Ure take us us through the history of the idea from Plato and the Buddha to Foucault, Hadot and Zizek. They examine the kinds of practical exercises each thinker recommended and practiced to transform their philosophy into manners of living and acting. Philosophy as a Way of Life also examines the recent resurgence of thinking about philosophy as a practical, lived reality and why this ancient tradition still has so much relevance and power in the contemporary world. (shrink)

Preview: /Review: Emmanuel Faye, Arendt et Heidegger: Extermination nazie et destruction de la pensée, (Albin Michel, 2016), 560 pages./ The appearance of Martin Heidegger’s Black Notebooks (1932-38) in 2014 has posed profound questions to philosophers and political theorists. For a long time, in ways that the Black Notebooks have definitively undermined, Heidegger’s National Socialism was widely considered as limited to 1933-34. His larger thought, at least after a proposed turning or kehre in the mid-1930s, was presented as insulated from, or (...) even critical of, Nazism and antisemitism. The work of Emmanuel Faye (led by Martin Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy), has been at the forefront of scholarship which has taken seriously the many questions raised by the ongoing publication of Heidegger’s Nazi-era materials, since the 1990s. On one hand, can great philosophy be implicated in forms of openly ethnonationalist, even exterminist political movements, or does it necessarily involve normative commitments which abhor anything like Nazism? On the other hand, how should we understand a political movement like National Socialism, including its ideological dimensions, such that it could appeal to a thinker of the magnitude of the one-time Fuhrer-Rektor of Freiburg University? Finally, what does publication of Heidegger’s Nazi texts and positions, culminating in the Black Notebooks, say about its limitations, political dimensions, and the postwar reception history of Heidegger in the liberal nations. (shrink)

Animalism is the view that human persons are human animals – biological organisms that belong to the species Homo sapiens. This paper concerns a family of modal objections to animalism based on the essentiality of personhood (persons and animals differ in their persistence conditions; psychological considerations are relevant for the persistence of persons, but not animals; persons, but not animals, are essentially psychological beings). Such arguments are typically used to support constitutionalism, animalism’s main neo-Lockean rival. The problem with such arguments (...) is that they wrongly assume that animalism is incompatible with our essentially being psychological beings. In this paper, I discuss a formulation of animalism, what I call psychologically-serious animalism, according to which human persons are essentially human animals and essentially persons. I show how the availability of this neglected formulation of animalism undermines objections based on the essentiality of personhood. (shrink)

Albert Camus repeatedly denied the label “existentialist,” and pointed to his formative experiences of natural beauty and his early introduction to classical Greek thought and culture as determinative of his philosophy. Pierre Hadot, famous for his post-1970 work on philosophy as a way of life in classical antiquity, continued throughout his life to work on the history of Western conceptions of nature. In Le voile d’Isis, Hadot excavated a second strain of Western attitudes towards nature, alongside the instrumental or “Promethean” (...) approach dominant in modernity: this is that of the contemplative Orphic perspective, closely tied in antiquity to philosophical regimens of spiritual exercises to transform philosophers’ ways of seeing. This paper will argue that Camus and Hadot should be read as two twentieth century “Orphic” figures in this sense, in a way that at once singles them out against almost all other European contemporaries, as well as speaking to our ecological concerns today. Yet the only comparative piece on the two thinkers to date, by Matthew Lamb, misses this shared contemplative, Orphic core to their positions. This paper aims to redress this shortcoming in the reception of the two figures. (shrink)

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angelic Orders? And even if one were to suddenly take me to its heart, I would vanish into its stronger existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear, and we revere it so, because it calmly disdains to destroy us...."So what are you telling me, there's no God, but there's you?"Peter Weir's film Fearless appeared in 1993 to critical acclaim and middling (...) box office fortune. The film draws on all of Weir's considerable art, a stunning sound track, and powerful performances by Jeff Bridges, Rosie Perez, and Isabella Rossellini. Based on the... (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article claims that today’s reading of Francis Bacon’s Essayes as a solely literary text turns upon philosophers’ having largely lost access to the renaissance culture which Bacon inherited, and the renaissance debates about the role of rhetoric in philosophy in which Bacon participated. The article has two parts. Building upon Ronald Cranes’ seminal contribution on the place of the Essayes in Bacon’s ‘great instauration’, Part 1 examines how the subjects of Bacon’s Essayes need to be understood as Baconian contributions (...) to ‘morrall philosophye’ and ‘civile knowledge’, rather than rhetorical or poetic exercises. In Part 2, contesting the interpretations of Crane, Fish, Ferrari and others, I will argue that the Essayes’ striking rhetorical form needs to be conceptualized in light of Bacon’s renaissance account of the ‘duty and office’ of rhetoric in any moral and civil philosophy that would look to actively cure mental afflictions and cultivate the virtuous or canny conduct it extols. Bacon’s Essayes, in this light, are best understood as a legatee and transformation of the popular early modern genre of books of apothegms and maxims designed to guide conduct. (shrink)

john c. briggs has commented that "The reading of Baconian texts resembles the Baconian reading of nature, for in both the interpreter must discover a clue to the labyrinth."1 This thought certainly applies to the Praerogatiuis Instantiarum and their precise role in Bacon's Novum Organum.2 These instances occupy thirty-one of the fifty-two sections of Novum Organum II, whereas only nine are devoted to the much better-known work of the tabulation of affirmative, negative and deviating instances, and one long section on (...) the "first vintage" of eliminative induction. The sections on the prerogative instances fill some 131 of the 183 pages of Novum Organum II... (shrink)

This paper forms as it were a draft for an as-yet-unwritten, decisive chapter on the history of philosophy as a way of life (PWL). It closely examines the texts by Schleiermacher, Fichte, Humboldt, and Schelling on the foundation of the modern research university, and the place of philosophy within it, written in the years surrounding the formation of the University of Berlin. Part 1 contends that these texts represent studies of great significance for the history of PWL, the paper suggests, (...) insofar as they are philosophical reflections on the university, its necessity and its purpose, as well as metaphilosophical reflections more specifically on philosophy, its nature and role, within the universities. In part 2, we will show how Hadot’s claim that these texts inaugurate a subordination of philosophy to the state, even in its qualified form, needs to be revised. What stands out is rather the attempt, sketched already in Kant (1794), of trying to grant philosophy a new autonomy within the modern university, as the sole faculty ideally governed by reason alone, not by external authorities. In part 3, we will argue both against and with Hadot concerning his linking of the advent of the modern research university with the construction of philosophy as a system. Our argument contra Hadot is that the classical idealistic texts on the university also each envisage philosophy as implicating a form of pedagogy and Bildung. Our argument with Hadot, is that this Bildung is nevertheless subordinated to the pursuit of systematic, pure, or absolute knowledge in ways which pave the way to today’s expectations around what serious philosophy must be (that is, theoretical, written, publishable in peer reviewed formats, to be read only by other experts or tertiary students). -/- . (shrink)

Three arguments are proposed against the idea that ordinary talk about the mind constitutes a folk psychology, a sort of prescientific theory which explains human behaviour and which is ripe for replacement by a neurological or computational theory with better scientific credentials. First, not all talk of the mind is introduced to explain in the way assumed by those who think that mental talk hypothesizes inner processes to explain behaviour. Second, the individuation of the behaviour which is explained by the (...) inner processes itself requires reference to ?mental? states such as intentions or desires. Consequently the project is circular. Finally, scientific theory is a practice with a history which may be matched in the case of ordinary talk of the mind. Certainly ordinary talk of motives, intentions, and thoughts may be infected by the theorizing of economists and sociologists et al., but it is impossible that all talk of the mind should be theoretical in this way. (shrink)

Robert Sharpe examines the humanist conception of music as a language--as expressive and intelligible--which has been a dominant theory in Western culture. He argues against the view that music is expressive by causing certain states in us. Rather, he contends that our beliefs about music are integral to our appreciation of it. Differences in musical taste are then not just irresolvable differences in sensitivity, but the result of variations in circumstance and upbringing, of associations and ideology.

Unlike the overall framework of Ernest Nagel's work on reduction, his theory of intertheoretic connection still has life in it. It handles aptly cases where reduction requires complex representation of a target domain. Abandoning his formulation as too liberal was a mistake. Arguments that it is too liberal at best touch only Nagel's deductivist theory of explanation, not his condition of connectability. Taking this condition seriously gives a powerful view of reduction, but one which requires us to index explanatory power (...) to sciences as they are formulated at particular times. While we may thereby reduce more than philosophers have supposed, we must abandon hope (as Nagel did) of saying anything useful about reductionism. (shrink)

This article challenges John M. Cooper’s reading of ancient Stoicism as a way of life, one which sets its back against Pierre Hadot’s notion that Stoicism could have philosophically advocated regimens of non-cognitive practices of the kind documented by Hadot. Part 1 examines Arrian’s Discourses, following A. A. Long in seeing in this text Arrian’s portrait of Epictetus as a philosophical persona: one bringing together the different virtues of Socrates, Diogenes, and Zeno. Part 2 then examines Epictetus’s Handbook , seeing (...) in this text—in contrast to Hadot and Sellars—a distinct set of prescriptions for the kinds of existential practices the Roman Stoics advocated, not in place of philosophical argumentation, but as a means to habituate aspirants’ conduct to ways of thinking, desiring and acting harmonious with their philosophical conclusions. (shrink)

In Zizek and Politics, Geoff Boucher and Matthew Sharpe go beyond standard introductions to spell out a new approach to reading Zizek, one that can be highly critical as well as deeply appreciative. They show that Zizek has a raft of fundamental positions that enable his theoretical positions to be put to work on practical problems. Explaining these positions with clear examples, they outline why Zizek's confrontation with thinkers such as Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze has so radically changed how (...) we think about society. They then go on to track Zizek's own intellectual development during the last twenty years, as he has grappled with theoretical problems and the political climate of the War on Terror. This book is a major addition to the literature on Zizek and a crucial critical introduction to his thought. (shrink)

Research Ethics Boards (REBs) at universities are chaired and staffed by researchers who serve to enforce codes of ethics by scrutinizing research proposals. Yet there is widespread dissatisfaction with the REB approval process. This article examines the sources of that dissatisfaction, the place for codes of ethics in the conducting of research, the evidence for risk to research participants as the basis for those codes, and the effectiveness of REBs in protecting research participants. We offer suggestions for how REB chairs, (...) members, and researchers can improve the REB approval process so that it is fair and responsive. (shrink)

Albert Camus can be meaningfully read as an agent-focussed virtue ethicist, as David Sherman has suggested. Yet moving far beyond Sherman’s version of this claim, we show here how Camus accepts what are four definitive parameters of the classical authors’ conception of the virtues—the last of which takes him beyond today’s recognised “virtue ethicists.” Firstly, he understands the virtues as lasting, beneficent dispositions to think, feel, and act in certain ways. Secondly, he conceives the virtues as mastering the untethered passions: (...) the sources of epistemic partiality and behavioural excess. Thirdly Camus conceives of the virtues as necessary accomplishments if people are to live fulfilled lives. Finally—and here bidding farewell to a solely theoretical approach—Camus appreciates that such self-mastery can only be achieved through education and habituation, and through the imitation of the kind of exemplars he holds up before us in his literary fiction. (shrink)

Lucian’s Hermotimus, despite its first appearances of being a merely skeptical, even sophistical discrediting of philosophy, is better read as a powerful protreptic defense of the endeavor, whose key ancient intertext is Plato's Republic. To make this case, the paper involves three parts. In part i, we examine the metaphilosophical framing of the Hermotimus’s exchange between the eponymous hero, aged about 60 (§48) and Lucian’s favored interlocutor, Lycinus. We show that Lucian accepts that philosophy is intended to be an elevated (...) way of life cultivating wisdom and virtue, at the same time as he is concerned at how readily this pursuit can devolve into a hybristic, sectarian endeavor, in which pupils identify uncritically with instructors who do not match their words with their deeds. In part ii., we address the central elenchus and the action of the Hermotimus, the patient work by Lycinus to undermine Hermotimus’ dogmatic self-conceit, by refuting the different solutions he offers to the paradox involved in his having chosen a particular philosophical orientation, Stoicism, as a novice without philosophical training. Part iii. excavates the positive vision of philosophy that the action of the dialogue shows, highlighting the five key places in Hermotimus wherein Lycinus offers us entirely unironic visions of what philosophy at it best could be, in contrast to what it has become in Hermotimus or his teachers: or, as Lycinus heralds it, a kind of Ariadne’s thread out of the maze of Hermotimus’ paradox (§68). (shrink)

Slavoj Zizek has emerged as the pre-eminent European cultural theorist of the last decade and has been described as the ultimate Marxist/Lacanian cultural studies scholar. His large and growing body of work has generated considerable controversy, yet his texts are not structured as standard academic tomes. In Slavoj Zizek: A Little Piece of the Real, Matthew Sharpe undertakes the difficult task of drawing out an evolving argument from all of Zizek's texts from 1989 to 2001, and reads them as (...) the bearers of a single theoretical project, providing an authoritative, reliable, clearly written and well-structured account of Zizek's demanding body of work. From an exposition of Zizek's social and philosophical critical theory the book moves to a critical analysis of Zizek's theoretical project and its political implications. Sharpe concludes by suggesting that Zizek's work, however, raises as many questions as it answers; questions both about Zizek's theoretical system and to the wider new Left in today's world. (shrink)

Richard Shusterman, Ars Erotica: Sex and Somaesthetics in the Classical Arts of Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 436 pages./ Like other contributors, I would like to begin by expressing my respect and admiration for the scale and scope of Richard Shusterman’s achievement in Ars Erotica. The Preface acknowledges “the vast amount of material” involved in this project of charting “the history of erotic theory in the world’s most influential premodern cultures,” with each chapter on a different cultural tradition potentially (...) meriting its own monograph (AE, x, xi). As a scholar who has worked in depth on the work of Pierre Hadot, as well as Michel Foucault’s works on the practices of philosophy conceived as an art or craft (technê) of living in the Western tradition, my response will necessarily be more limited. It will address in detail just the first major chapter of the book – especially as I note with appreciation the piece in this symposium by Marta Faustino on the relations between the ars vivendi and ars erotica. I take some comfort in accepting these limitations from the statement of a particular debt that Shusterman proffers in his Preface to Foucault’s works in the finally-not-completed History of Sexuality series. The author notes both what he owes to Foucault on sexuality, particularly in his studies on the ancient Greeks and Romans, as well as his differences from Foucault’s work. (shrink)

Carol Gilligan has identified two orientations to moral understanding; the dominant justice orientation and the under-valued care orientation. Based on her discernment of a voice of care, Gilligan challenges the adequacy of a deontological liberal framework for moral development and moral theory. This paper examines how the orientations of justice and care are played out in medical ethical theory. Specifically, I question whether the medical moral domain is adequately described by the norms of impartiality, universality, and equality that characterize the (...) liberal ideal. My analysis of justice -oriented medical ethics, focuses on the libertarian theory of H.T. Engelhardt and the contractarian theory of R.M. Veatch. I suggest that in the work of E.D. Pellegrino and D.C. Thomasma we find not only a more authentic representation of medical morality but also a project that is compatible with the care orientation's emphasis on human need and responsiveness to particular others. (shrink)

This short book is intended to be read in an evening or even a sitting, though it provokes reflections that will go on for far longer. Professor Sharpe is a philosopher and writes as a post-Christian. He does not believe in God for moral reasons and argues that in some ways morality is corrupted by religion.

I argue that David Oelhoffen's 2014 film Far From Men, while departing from the letter of Camus' 1957 story, “The Guest/Host”, does remarkable cinematic justice to its spirit. Oelhoffen's Daru and the Arab character Mohamed, it is suggested, represent embodiments of Camus’ idealised Algerian “first men”, in the vision Camus was developing in Le Premier Homme at the time of his death in January 1960. Part 1 frames the film in light of Camus’ “The Guest/Host”, and Part 2 frames Camus’ (...) story in light of Camus’ agnonised struggle to come to terms with the Algerian situation. Part 3 makes the case that Oelhoffen's departures from Camus’ original story present in cinematic form Camus’ ideal of a post-colonial, post-ethnic solidarity between people, predicated on the overcoming of all arche-ideological fantasies of untained prelapsarian community. (shrink)

Following up on a 1989 paper on the subject, this essay revisits the question of ethical expertise in the court room. Informed by recent developments in the use of ethics experts, the authors argue 1) that the adversarial nature of court proceedings challenges the integrity of the ethicist's pedagogical role; 2) that the use of ethics experts as normative authorities remains dubious; 3) that clarification of the State's interest in “protecting the ethical integrity of the medical profession” is urgently required; (...) and 4) that the expertise of the ethicist may be more appropriately used in advising the legislature than in influencing the court. (shrink)

'Most of us are still groping for answers about what makes life worth living, or what confers meaning on individual lives', writes Charles Taylor in Sources of the Self. 'This is an essentially modern predicament.' Charles Taylor's latest book sets out to define the modern identity by tracing its genesis, analysing the writings of such thinkers as Augustine, Descartes, Montaigne, Luther, and many others. This then serves as a starting point for a renewed understanding of modernity. Taylor argues that modern (...) subjectivity has its roots in ideas of human good, and is in fact the result of our long efforts to define and attain the good. The modern turn inwards is far from being a disastrous rejection of rationality, as its critics contend, but has at its heart what Taylor calls the affirmation of ordinary life. He concludes that the modern identity, and its attendant rejection of an objective order of reason, is far richer in moral sources that its detractors allow. Sources of the Self provides a decisive defence of the modern order and a sharp rebuff to its critics. (shrink)

This essay is a critique of Derrida's ethical works, using Camus's last novella The Fall as a critical sounding board. It argues that a danger pertains to any such highly self-reflexive position as Derrida's: a danger that Camus identified in The Fall, and staged in his character, Jean-Baptiste Clamence. Clamence is a successful Parisian lawyer, on top of his personal and professional life, whose equanimity is troubled after he is the unwitting passer-by as a young woman suicides one night on (...) the Seine. After this time, he comes to consider all his former virtues as concealed vices. He also becomes acutely aware of what he terms the 'duplicity' of human beings as such. In Part I, I consider how Clamence's fall from innocence can be read 'with' Derrida's deconstructive registration of a 'double bind' pertaining to our standing vis-á-vis what he terms 'logocentrism'. I argue that Derrida's is a post-lapsarian philosophy, which challenges all attempts to construct closed conceptual systems that would confer an epistemic and/or moral certitude upon their expositors. In Part II, I then enter into a more detailed exposition of Derrida's 'later' works broaching friendship, the invitation, the gift, and other 'matters moral'. I read these texts in the light of an examination of what is involved, for Camus, in being a 'judge-penitent' (what Clamence in The Fall calls his profession). I suggest that Derrida runs the risk of a certain 'puritanism of difference' in his moral reflections, which defend the aporetic formulation: 'tout autre est tout autre' [every other is every bit other] (The Gift of Death). The problem is that, while Derrida's position allows one (everywhere) to say what one is against, it problematizes any affirmative moral stance. Like Clamence, who assumes the right to judge everyone else because he has subjected himself to a severe penitence, I suggest that we have a right to wonder whether Derrida's deconstructive critique of metaphysics can validate only endless repetitions of itself. Key Words: Camus • Derrida • ethics • The Fall • innocence • 'puritanism of difference. (shrink)

Although features of the dentition figure prominently in discussions of early hominid phylogeny, remarkably little is known of the developmental basis of the variations in occlusal morphology and dental proportions that are observed among taxa. Recent experiments on tooth development in mice have identified some of the genes involved in dental patterning and the control of tooth specification. These findings provide valuable new insight into dental evolution and underscore the strong developmental links that exist among the teeth and the jaws (...) and cranium. The latter has important implications for cladistic studies that traditionally consider features of the skull independently from the dentition. BioEssays 23:481–493, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

In _Camus, Philosophe: To Return to our Beginnings_ Matthew Sharpe reads Camus as a _philosophe_ in the classical and enlightenment lineages, arguing that his defense of _mesure_ singles him out amidst 20th century French thought and makes him of renewed relevance today.

In Part 1, we situate Dugin’s interpretation of Heidegger in relation to the better known, broadly left-liberal approaches to interpreting Heidegger’s thought, stressing Dugin’s unusual focus on the German thinker’s “middle” or Nazi-era texts, and showing how this periodizing optic affects Dugin’s culminating reading of Sein und Zeit and its key axiological notion of authenticity (Part 1). Part 2 examines Dugin’s appropriation of Heidegger’s radically pessimistic, trans-epochal critique of Western thought, centring around his striking reading of the esoteric notion of (...) the “fourfold” or Gewiert. In this account, the essence of reality itself, the “crosshairs” of the fourfold, is provocatively depicted by Dugin as war, Polemos, Kampf, or Krieg, following the Heidegger of 1933–1936. In a move which echoes Heidegger’s own post-1938 relativizations of all distinctions between Nazism, liberalism and socialism – as well as the Shoah and mechanized agriculture – the Russian thinker hence ends by obviating any distinctions between liberal or democratic and totalitarian regimes, war and peace, and genocide and consumerism. All must be overcome in the “another beginning” destined for the new Russia, if it has the ears to hear. (shrink)

The cause of Paget's disease is still unknown, despite many years of intensive study. During this time, evidence has sporadically emerged to suggest that the disease may result from a slow viral infection by one or more of the Paramyxoviruses. More recently, epidemiologic and molecular studies have suggested that the canine paramyxovirus, canine distemper virus, is the virus responsible for the disease. If true, then along with rabies, this would be a further example of a canine virus causing human disease. (...) Studies in the natural host have now supported these findings. Further investigations have proposed that the bony abnormalities seen in Paget's disease are due to the effects of the virus on osteoclastic interleukin‐6 and c‐FOS production, possibly via the transcription factor NF‐kB. (shrink)