Dana S. Belu combines Heidegger's phenomenology of technology with feminist phenomenology in order to make sense of the increased technicization of women's reproductive bodies during conception, pregnancy, and birth.

The aim of this inquiry is to investigate Heidegger's ontology of technology. We will show that this ontology is aporetic. In Heidegger's key technical essays, ?The question concerning technology? and its earlier versions ?Enframing? and ?The danger?, enframing is described as the ontological basis of modern life. But the account of enframing is ambiguous. Sometimes it is described as totally binding and at other times it appears to allow for exceptions. This oscillation between, what we will call total enframing and (...) partial enframing, is underscored in the work of two influential scholars of Heidegger's later thought, Hubert Dreyfus and Iain Thomson. We will show that like Heidegger, Dreyfus and Thomson unwittingly perpetuate this dilemma that ultimately covers up the aporetic structure of enframing. (shrink)

John Rawls, among others, has argued that one of aims political philosophy is that it provides reasonable hope in the possibility of justice in the future. But what makes hope reasonable? What sorts of theories of justice are best suited to foster reasonable hope in us? To answer these questions, this paper investigates Rawls’s conception of reasonable hope and the kinds of unreasonableness Rawls sought to guard against with his account of a realistic utopia. Rawls's idea of reasonable hope goes (...) beyond the weaker kind of “reconciliation” put forward by Rousseau’s account of a conjectural history that sketches a picture of how we could have developed into the kind of people and the kind of society where justice is possible. It is one thing to believe, with Rousseau, that our deep natures are not incompatible with the possibility of a just society. It is something further to harbor any hope for this in the future. I argue that this temporal aspect, which is built into what Kant and Rawls mean by reasonable hope, is useful approach to the practice of political philosophy. An approach that takes the need for reasonable hope seriously is one that moves political theorizing from a more passive framework of theoretical imagination toward a more active one that entails political anticipation. (shrink)

This is an appreciative five page book review of Elkholy's Heidegger and a Metaphysics of Feeling (2008). It raises a critical question about the difference between Heidegger's account of aletheia and Elkholy's concept of ontological occlusion.

Abstract: This paper provides a phenomenological interpretation of technological and natural childbirth. By using Heidegger’s ontology of technology to think about childbirth I argue that these two types of contemporary childbirth present us with a false dilemma as both reflect the same norms Heidegger associates with modernity, namely order, control, and efficiency. The paper briefly explains Heidegger’s concept of the enframing as the essence of the technological age while focusing on how it helps us to avoid falling into a technophilic (...) or technophobic trap. Although the technophobic approach popularized by Lamaze gained some favor with feminists who saw the increased use of reproductive technology as an extension of patriarchal control over women’s bodies, I argue that this natural birthing technique incorporated order and control in ways that are similar to its technophilic counterpart. In order to move beyond what I call the reproductive enframing, it is necessary to recognize the false dilemma presented by the technological and natural alternatives. (shrink)

Following decades of maltreatment of women in obstetric care, professional respect for maternal autonomy in obstetric decision making and care have become codified in global and national professional ethical guidelines. Yet, using the example of birth after cesarean, identifiable threats to maternal autonomy in obstetrics continue. This paper focuses on how current scientific knowledge and obstetric practice patterns factor into restricted maternal autonomy as evidenced in three representative maternal accounts obtained prior and subsequent to birth after cesarean. Short- and long-term (...) remedies to improve the current state of restricted maternal autonomy in clinical practice surrounding decision making on birth after cesarean are provided. (shrink)

This essay is a response to Robert Scharff’s “Before Empirical Turns and Transcendental Inquiry: pre-philosophical Considerations”. Scharff digs beneath the empirico-transcendental debate between Ihde and Stiegler in order to critique this debate’s Cartesian presuppositions. He uses the work of Nietzsche and the early Heidegger to further his critique. There is much to like in Scharff’s rich and intricate analytic interpretation but this is also the crux of my critique. The detour into Nietzsche’s and the early Heidegger’s work is ultimately unnecessary. (...) If Scharff looks closer, he will see that Feenberg’s revised theory of instrumentalization already accomplishes the return to technical experience and the critique of Cartesian techno scientific rationality that Scharff desires. (shrink)

This article is an appreciative essay review of Andrew Feenberg's Heidegger and Marcuse: The Catastrophe and Redemption of History (2005).

This review argues that Carman's book is an excellent source for making sense of Heidegger's early work on interpretation.

The use of technology and teaching techniques derived from technology is currently a bourgeoning topic in higher education. Teachers at all levels and types of institutions want to know how these new technologies will affect what happens in and outside of the classroom. Many teachers have already embraced some of these technologies but remain uncertain about their educational efficacy. Other teachers have waited because they are reluctant to try tools or techniques that remain unproven or, as is often the case, (...) lack institutional support. This book is designed to help both groups, so that those with technological expertise can extend their knowledge, while technological novices can "ramp up" at their own pace and for their own purposes. Best Practices for Technology-Enhanced Teaching and Learning brings together expert teacher-scholars who apply and assess technology's impact on traditional, hybrid or blended, or completely on-line courses, relying on technology as a teaching tool for classroom management and interaction, as well as student-based uses of technology largely independent of instructors. Each chapter will address how technological improvements can be connected to assessment initiatives, as is now routinely advocated in psychology and social science education. The book features current scholarship and pedagogy involving innovative technology that impacts on student learning in psychology and related disciplines, focusing also on student reactions to these novel technologies, and proper assessments of how well they promote learning. This text will serve as the standard reference on emerging technologies for undergraduate instructors. (shrink)

Articles on future lifes, rebirth and other related issues.

This article proposes building on the success of publicly funded drug research and development and expanding the model to include the full cycle development, testing, manufacture and distribution of innovative and affordable new drugs.

Robert Fogelin claims that interlocutors must share a framework of background beliefs and commitments in order to fruitfully pursue argument. I refute Fogelin’s claim by investigating more thoroughly the shared background required for productive argument. I find that this background consists not in any common beliefs regarding the topic at hand, but rather in certain shared pro-cedural commitments and competencies. I suggest that Fogelin and his supporters mistakenly view shared beliefs as part of the required background for productive argument because (...) these procedural com-mitments become more difficult to uphold when people’s beliefs diverge widely regarding the topic at hand. (shrink)

Anne Channing Porter’s poetry gives witness to an inner life nurtured by a love of the natural world and purified by suffering from a turbulent domestic life. At age eighty-two, she was named a National Book Award finalist for her first collection of poetry. In her poems, she aims for transparency and the revelation of mystery inherent in everyday life. A convert to Catholicism, Porter rejected the designation “religious” poet; nonetheless, her poems combine a contemplative seeing, an incarnational awareness of (...) spirit in matter, and a prophetic urgency to live as “Love’s apprentice,” responding with compassion toward those of “humble goodness.”. (shrink)

This essay examines Aristotle's discussion of the recognition scenes in Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris and in Polyidus' alternative scenario. It suggests that Aristotle might show interest in Polyidus because he intuits the significance of the timing of the recognition scenes within the plot. Gluck's eighteen-century opera, Iphigénie en Tauride, maintains the general structure of Euripides' play but borrows Polyidus' recognition scene. The operatic recognition provides a clear dramatic frame to the brief references to Polyidus in the Poetics and facilitates an (...) analysis of the differences between Euripides and Polyidus. (shrink)

_In Boccacio's Decameron, Cervigni sees a parodic echo of the circles of Dante's Divine Comedy, and asks whether Bocaccio envisions the voyage of the brigata as similar to Dante the Pilgrim's journey toward the center, first the abysmal center of Lucifer, then towards the highest center, God._.

Unwitting omissions pose a challenge for theories of moral responsibility. For commonsense morality holds many unwitting omitters morally responsible for their omissions (and for the consequences thereof), even though they appear to lack both awareness and control. For example, some people who leave dogs trapped in their cars outside on a hot day (see Sher 2009), or who forget to pick something up from the store as they promised (see Clarke 2014) seem to be blameworthy for their omissions. And yet, (...) if moral responsibility requires awareness of one’s omission and of its moral significance, as well as control, then it would appear that the unwitting protagonists of these cases are not, in fact, morally responsible for their omissions. In this paper, we consider, and ultimately reject, a number of influential views that try to solve this problem, including skepticism about responsibility for such omissions, a view we call the “decision tracing” view that grounds responsibility for such omissions in previous exercises of conscious agency, and “attributionist” views that ground responsibility for such omissions in the value judgments or other aspects of the agents’ selves. We propose instead a new tracing view that grounds responsibility for unwitting omissions in past opportunities to avoid them, where having such opportunities requires general awareness of the risk of such an omission, but not an exercise of agency, in contrast to the decision tracing view. We argue that the view can better accommodate cases, and fits well with the most plausible conception of the kind of control required for responsibility. (shrink)

Self-reported lost memory of child sexual abuse (CSA) can be mistaken for “repressed memory.” Based on our longitudinal studies of memory and disclosure in child maltreatment victims who are now adults, we discuss findings relevant to “repressed memory cases.” We examined relations between self-report of temporarily lost memory of CSA (subjective forgetting) and memory accuracy for maltreatment-related experiences (objective memory). Across two studies involving separate samples, we find evidence for memory suppression rather than repression: (1) Most adults who claimed temporary (...) lost memory of CSA reported memory suppression and clarified that they could have remembered the event if asked; (2) subjective forgetting was positively associated with accurate objective memory for maltreatment-related experiences. Subjective forgetting was also related to increased adult trauma symptoms and related to childhood non-disclosure of CSA. Moreover, trauma-related psychopathology mediated the relation between non-disclosure and subjective forgetting. Implications for psychological theory and repressed memory cases are discussed. (shrink)

Theodor Adorno once wrote an essay to "defend Bach against his devotees." In this book Dana Villa does the same for Hannah Arendt, whose sweeping reconceptualization of the nature and value of political action, he argues, has been covered over and domesticated by admirers who had hoped to enlist her in their less radical philosophical or political projects. Against the prevailing "Aristotelian" interpretation of her work, Villa explores Arendt's modernity, and indeed her postmodernity, through the Heideggerian and Nietzschean theme (...) of a break with tradition at the closure of metaphysics.Villa's book, however, is much more than a mere correction of misinterpretations of a major thinker's work. Rather, he makes a persuasive case for Arendt as the postmodern or postmetaphysical political theorist, the first political theorist to think through the nature of political action after Nietzsche's exposition of the death of God. After giving an account of Arendt's theory of action and Heidegger's influence on it, Villa shows how Arendt did justice to the Heideggerian and Nietzschean criticism of the metaphysical tradition while avoiding the political conclusions they drew from their critiques. The result is a wide-ranging discussion not only of Arendt and Heidegger, but of Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, Habermas, and the entire question of politics after metaphysics. (shrink)

This volume explores the themes of vanishing matter, matter and the laws of nature, the qualities of matter, and the diversity of the debates about matter in the early modern period. Chapters are unified by a number of interlocking themes which together enable some of the broader contours of the philosophy of matter to be charted in new ways. Part I concerns Cartesian Matter; Part II covers Matter, Mechanism and Medicine; Part III covers Matter and the Laws of Motion; and (...) Part IV covers Leibniz and Hume. Bringing together some of the world’s leading scholars of early modern philosophy, as well as some exciting new researchers, _Vanishing Matter and the Laws of Motion _stakes out new territory that all serious scholars of early modern philosophy and science will want to traverse. (shrink)

Critical discussion on definition of the work "Mithya" in the Advaitabrahamasiddhi of Madhusudanasarasvati.

In the mid-1800s, there was much debate about the origin or 'exciting cause' of cholera. Despite much confusion surrounding the disease, the so-called miasma theory emerged as the prevalent account about cholera's cause. Going against this mainstream view, the British physician John Snow inferred several things about cholera's origin and pathology that no one else inferred. Without observing the vibrio cholerae, however,-data unavailable to Snow and his colleagues-, there was no way of settling the question of what exactly was causing (...) cholera and how, or if, it was passed on. The question then arises as to how Snow arrived at conclusions so systematically different from those of his opponents. In this paper, I want to look at Snow's reasoning in some detail, and show that there were certain principles, explanatory power in particular, that were epistemologically important to Snow in their own right. I will show that Snow himself takes explanatory power to be an epistemic property, and makes explicit links between explanatory power and confirmation. Systematically juxtaposing Snow's claims and his opponents', I will show that Snow was right to tout the explanatory power of his theory, and that his conclusions about the epistemic superiority of his theory over that of the miasmatists' were justified. (shrink)

The prevailing metaphor for understanding the persistence of gender inequalities in universities is the “chilly climate.” Women faculty sometimes resist descriptions of their workplaces as “chilly” and deny that gender matters even in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary. I draw on interviews with women academics to explore this apparent paradox, and I offer a theoretical synthesis that may help explain it. I build on insights from Ridgeway and Acker to demonstrate that women do experience gender at work, (...) but the contexts in which they experience it have implications for how they understand gender’s importance and whether to respond. Specifically, I find that women are likely to minimize or deny gender’s importance in interactions. When it becomes salient in structures and cultures, women understand it differently. Placing gender in organizational contexts can better inform our understanding of gender inequality at work and can help in crafting more effective efforts to foster gender equity. (shrink)

Does Gulliver's apparent equiphilia (love for equines) at the conclusion of Jonathan Swift's satire signify madness or misanthropy? I say neither, and propose that the neighing narrator is a satirical figure encompassing the animal debate between Michel de Montaigne and René Descartes. Swift's satire, I argue, addresses the early-modern controversy over human-animal distinctions by dramatizing a profound skepticism toward human reason. Swift's stance is registered in a vacillation between literalization of human-animal conversations, lampooning Montaigne, and satirizing Cartesian mechanism. I conclude (...) that the greatest paradox of _Gulliver's Travels_ is that Swift's satirization of skepticism is an endorsement of skepticism itself. (shrink)

In this paper, I begin with a familiar puzzle about forgiveness, namely, how to distinguish forgiveness from excuse on the one hand and “letting go” on the other. After considering three recent and influential accounts of forgiveness that offer answers to this challenge among others, I develop an alternative model of forgiveness as a kind of personal release from debt or obligation. I argue that this model has a number of distinct advantages, including offering a new explanation of the subtle (...) connections between forgiveness, resentment and perspective taking, as well as helping to provide plausible answers to normative questions such as whether forgiveness is ever morally required. Finally, I draw connections between the debate about forgiveness and the debate about free will, and suggest one way in which the compatibility of forgiveness and understanding of an action’s causes can illuminate the debate about the compatibility of freedom and determinism. (shrink)

In this paper, I engage with several of the intriguing theses Michael McKenna puts forward in his Conversation and Responsibility. For example, I examine McKenna’s claim that the fact that an agent is morally responsible for an action and the fact that an agent is appropriately held responsible explain each other. I go on to argue that despite the importance of the ability to hold people responsible, an agent’s being morally responsible for an action is explanatorily fundamental, and in this (...) sense responsibility is response-independent. I then explore some of the specific aspects of McKenna’s conversational theory before turning to his suggestion that the conversational nature of our responsibility practices gives us special kinds of reasons for accepting that agents are deserving of the harms of blame. Finally, I conclude by raising questions for his argument that the scope of blameworthy actions extends beyond that of impermissible actions. (shrink)

This article uses Acker's theory of gendered organizations to frame an analysis of the ways in which policies and practices in a men's and a women's prison reflect and reproduce gendered inequalities. The article offers a working definition of one of Acker's key theoretical concepts, the notion of “gendered organizational logic.” Then, using interview data collected from correctional officers in a men's and a women's prison, the article examines the ways in which officer training and assignments, although designed to be (...) nominally generic, assume a male worker and disproportionately benefit male officers working in men's institutions. These findings imply that the perspective could more usefully be conceived as a theory of “masculinized” organizations. (shrink)

Many critics bemoan the lack of civic engagement in America. Tocqueville's ''nation of joiners'' seems to have become a nation of alienated individuals, disinclined to fulfill the obligations of citizenship or the responsibilities of self-government. In response, the critics urge community involvement and renewed education in the civic virtues. But what kind of civic engagement do we want, and what sort of citizenship should we encourage? In Socratic Citizenship, Dana Villa takes issue with those who would reduce citizenship to (...) community involvement or to political participation for its own sake. He argues that we need to place more value on a form of conscientious, moderately alienated citizenship invented by Socrates, one that is critical in orientation and dissident in practice. Taking Plato's Apology of Socrates as his starting point, Villa argues that Socrates was the first to show, in his words and deeds, how moral and intellectual integrity can go hand in hand, and how they can constitute importantly civic--and not just philosophical or moral--virtues. More specifically, Socrates urged that good citizens should value this sort of integrity more highly than such apparent virtues as patriotism, political participation, piety, and unwavering obedience to the law. Yet Socrates' radical redefinition of citizenship has had relatively little influence on Western political thought. Villa considers how the Socratic idea of the thinking citizen is treated by five of the most influential political thinkers of the past two centuries--John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber, Hannah Arendt, and Leo Strauss. In doing so, he not only deepens our understanding of these thinkers' work and of modern ideas of citizenship, he also shows how the fragile Socratic idea of citizenship has been lost through a persistent devaluation of independent thought and action in public life.Engaging current debates among political and social theorists, this insightful book shows how we must reconceive the idea of good citizenship if we are to begin to address the shaky fundamentals of civic culture in America today. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) was a leading figure in the Neo- Kantian philosophical movement that dominated European thought before 1918. He was also an inaugural figure in modern Jewish philosophy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This book explores Cohen's striking claim that ethics is rooted in law - a claim developed both in his philosophical ethics and his philosophy of Judaism, in particular in his writings on "love-of-neighbor," up to and including his well-known Religion of Reason. Dana Hollander proposes (...) that neither Cohen's systematic philosophy nor his "Jewish" philosophy should be seen as the dominant framework for his oeuvre as a whole, but that his understanding of key philosophical questions take shape in the passages between both corpuses, a trait that could be seen as paradigmatic for modern Jewish philosophy. Ethics Out of Law taps into one of the prime topics of current interest in the field of Jewish philosophy: the nature of Jewish political existence and the changing configurations of "law" that this entails. (shrink)