This article takes a close look at the nature offeminine values in congruence with natural law. The thoughts of Tagore primarily and to a lesser degree of Vivekananda, Gandhi and Nivedita on this most momentous area of social-psychological well-beingfor humans are highlighted. Trendy and shallow modernism seems to be aiming at cheap goals in the name of women's liberation, and the long-term damage to humanity is becoming incalculable. The tragic and bizarre events occurring across the whole spectrum, from homes (...) and schools to business and politics, can be traced in a big way to the hot pace of centrifugalized breaking up of stable family values woven around natural, centripetal feminine values. (shrink)

The author of the phenomenal bestsellers He and She discusses the importance of regaining the feminine dimension in our lives. According to Johnson, regaining the power of feminine feeling and value is critical to the development of human peace and consciousness.

This chapter presents a variety of considerations suggesting that autonomy is a valuable ideal, focusing on its value for women. The focus is on women for several reasons. First, autonomy has not always been idealized for women. Even though autonomy is more widely encouraged and supported in women than ever before, it is still not regarded as a particularly feminine value or virtue. If a case for autonomy can be made out for women in particular against this history, then (...) the case for autonomy in general should prove easier to secure. Second, feminist philosophers have figured prominently among those who have expressed doubts and reservations about the value of autonomy. Focusing on the case of women's autonomy in particular helps to answer those criticisms. (shrink)

At a time when some modicum of formal gender equality has been won in many late‐capitalist societies of the West, what explains the persistence of practices that extract labor and value from women and girls while granting a “surplus” of value to men and boys? Gendered shame is a central mechanism of the apparatus that secures the continued subordination of women across a number of class and race contexts in the mediatized, late‐capitalist West. Focusing on the story of Amanda Todd, (...) two forms of shame are distinguished. “Ubiquitous shame” is that shame that accrues to feminine existence as such, and is structured in relation to a futural temporality of redemption. “Unbounded shame” is a brute form of value‐extraction that has found its ecological niche in social media—and destroys all futural aspirations. (shrink)

This article presents an axiological reading of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, reframing its most famous sentence ‘one is not born, but becomes, a woman’ as a claim about femininity, love, and alienation under particular conditions of sexual hierarchy. Because this sentence is often taken to express the thesis of The Second Sex on social constructionist readings, Section 1 rejects the aptness of this approach on three grounds. Section 2 outlines an alternative, axiological reading, which better attends to all (...) of the work’s parts, and to Beauvoir’s emphasis on the concrete inseparability of the physiological, sexual, economic, legal, religious, moral, and aesthetic dimensions of women’s situations. Section 3 turns to the sister ‘one is not born’ clause, in Volume I—‘one is not born, but becomes, a genius’—to show that Beauvoir’s account of frustrated freedom in The Second Sex concerns not only alienated labour, sex, and love, but also aesthetic creativity and moral invention. (shrink)

IntroductionElements mark the reality of reading the female body in symbolic constructions and social symbols in the exercise of their reproductive health. The study aims to identify elements that characterize the female condition while analyzing the reproductive health of Brazilian and French women.Materials and MethodsA qualitative, multicenter, international study was conducted in Brazil and in France between 2016 and 2019. Data were produced through the use of semi-structured scripts. Focus group discussions and individual interviews were conducted with women who gave (...) birth, hetero-female couples who lived the experience of gestation and birth of a baby, and professionals of maternal and childcare services or members of the associations concerned with the health of mothers and babies. It was guided by the theoretical-methodological framework of institutional analysis in line with the French Institutional Socioclinics.ResultsSexual and reproductive health in the realities researched in Brazil and France are sometimes close and sometimes far apart. In what involves the Brazilian health system, abortion is criminalized and often performed illegally. Furthermore, pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period are highly medicalized. In addition, childbirth is not assured as an experience for a woman and her family. This aspect is confirmed by high numbers of cesarean sections performed or by maternal and infant mortality indicators. The French health system prioritizes vaginal deliveries and seems to assure more autonomy to women, but at the same time, it is worn out by the logic of profit, the efficiency of actions, and the rationalization of practices. In association with these, there are other intrinsic elements in the functioning of the institution that delineates the format of each country: notion of women's rights, violence against women, and discussion regarding the oppression markers of race, gender, sexuality, and social class.ConclusionsBoth countries reveal aspects related to the social role of women's bodies. The established logic reflects in the decision to have children, motherhood, women's autonomy over their own bodies, and in the core values linked to the termination of pregnancy and the professional practices developed in prenatal care, childbirth, and postpartum. (shrink)

In this work, I have used many sources because this theme is very complex and it is very useful to follow tracks already well used by other authors who have ventured with these themes. The Gender report is a report on equality. No company will ever be expected to be right if it does not foresee includesive actions rather than excludents. The social constructions of the same company will have to contend with a reality of reference that embraces all the (...) universes and respects the personal values. Everything, therefore, aimed at the growth of Society as a non-arithmetic group of People who, with their history and their characteristics, increase the collective share capital. (shrink)

Childhood innocence has often been treated by scholars as an empty, idealised signifier. This article contests such accounts, arguing that innocence is best regarded as a powerfully unmarked training in heternormativity, alongside class and race norms. This claim will be demonstrated through attention to two recent films addressing childhood: Celine Sciamma’s Tomboy and P.J. Hogan’s Peter Pan. The films characterise young femininity as an ‘impossible space’, in which subjects face the contradictory, schizoid demands to simultaneously show both childhood innocence and (...) heteronormative femininity – or else face the threat of a spoiled identity. The plot of each film traces how the protagonist attempts to manoeuvre in the face of and precisely using this contradiction. In dramatising such manoeuvring, the films reveal the surprising forms of subjectivity that can be inhabited for a time in the interstices between age and gender norms, and which might have lasting value. Both films thus drama... (shrink)

The article is devoted to a comparative analysis of the role of the feminine principle in the cosmogonic ideas of the Slavic peoples and the philosophy of the Ancient East, in particular, India and China, to the establishment of common and distinctive features of female personification. The authors conclude that the ancient tribal culture, which was based on the logic of nature, the maintenance of the world in unity and the balance of opposites, was much more favorable to women (...) than monotheistic religions, which affirmed the sinful nature of women. Ideas about the origin and development of the universe occupy a central place in the mythological heritage, in the cosmic processes and powerful forces of nature, the unbreakable harmony of male and female principles can be traced, where male energy consists in the idea of fertilization, and female energy – in birth and creation. In every mythological system, there is a character of the Mother Goddess, who acts as a co-creator of the world and living beings, but with the establishment of the patriarchal system, the mythological paradigm undergoes changes, and the female principle is gradually recognized as secondary, or it was completely leveled in the processes of world creation. The archetype of the Great Mother reflects the functioning of human values and runs through the entire history of philosophy and culture. (shrink)

Notorious for advancing a strict dichotomy between the masculine “demiurgic father” and the feminine “nurse/receptacle of becoming” as the “natural” origin of the cosmos, Plato's Timaeus has become a site for feminist interrogation. Most critics easily deem the text a masculine fantasy that projects feminine impotence and obligatory heterosexuality, reinforcing patriarchal power structures that are blindly reproduced in their historical reception. Consequently, this article analyzes the Neoplatonic replication of this framework, but with special attention given to Proclus's challenges (...) to this gendered and sexual context. In this late, sometimes forgotten figure, we find, rather surprisingly, a Platonist who neither sequesters the feminine to the domain of the passive receptacle nor charges her simply with being a bastard image of the masculine. Rather, for Proclus, the feminine becomes the site of lived, erotic power that produces and sustains the value of authentic otherness. Furthermore, Proclus offers a challenge to the naturalness of the sex binary, suggesting a radical queerness as the basis of all identity. Overall, we shall see how classical patriarchal thinkers may, despite themselves, offer subversive models that might present readers with possibilities for troubling the sexual prejudices of ancient metaphysical schemas. (shrink)

The first aim of this paper was to investigate how the traditional Protestant work ethic and more contemporary work values were related to one another, and differed across genders and two cultural contexts, namely Turkey and the U.S. The second aim was to elucidate the role of religiosity in PWE among the two cultural groups. Two hundred and sixty six American and 211 Turkish university students participated in this questionnaire study. The analyses examining cross-cultural differences revealed that Turkish university (...) students reported greater scores in the PWE and all contemporary work values as compared to their American counterparts. For the Turkish sample, there were no gender-related differences in the PWE, whereas in the U.S. sample, men reported greater PWE scores than did women. With regard to gender differences in contemporary work values, our results showed that gender groups differed in feminine and entrepreneurship values in both cultural contexts; men emphasized femininity and entrepreneurship more than women in Turkey but the reverse was true in the U.S. Correlations between contemporary work values and the PWE illustrated that the PWE is associated with entrepreneurship and masculine values in both cultural contexts and with feminine values in the Turkish context. Finally, our results regarding the role of religiosity in PWE indicated that highly religious participants reported greater PWE scores than the less religious ones regardless of culture. Findings are discussed with reference both to differences in the two socio-cultural contexts and to recent change in the social structure of Turkish society. (shrink)

Kierkegaard shows two contrary attitudes to woman and the feminine: misogyny and celebration. The Kierkegaardian structure of selfhood, because combined with a hierarchical assumption about the relative value of certain human characteristics, and their identification as male or female, argues that woman is a lesser self. Consequently, the claim that the Kierkegaardian ideal of selfhood is androgynist is rejected, though it is the latter assumptions alone that force this conclusion.

Whilst the distinction between French and Anglo-American feminism was always rather dubious two specific linguistic differences between French and English have nevertheless determined two streams of feminist thought, and complicated the relation between them. Since the 1960s, English-language feminisms, in so far as they are distinctive, have centrally either presupposed or explicitly theorized the category of gender, for which there is no linguistic equivalent in French. At the same time, much (although not all) that came to be categorized as ʻFrenchʼ (...) feminism has been articulated around the category of le féminin, for which there is no ready equivalent in English, although there is an obvious translational choice: ʻthe feminineʼ. Various Anglo-American feminisms have made consideration of what have been seen as feminine attributes and values central to their critical and reconstructive projects, but it is not this (adjectival) sense which is at issue here in the translation of le féminin, a noun. For despite the fact that the French and English words connote differently (in particular, le féminin also covers most of what is meant by the English ʻfemaleʼ), ʻthe feminineʼ, as a direct translation of the different and specific uses of le féminin in various French discourses, has become a common category in English-language feminist discourse, specifically English-language feminist philosophy of a ʻcontinentalʼ disposition, where it is often presumed to be both the proper object of such a philosophy and the proper goal of feminism. But is it? Or what exactly is at stake in making it so? Is ʻthe feminineʼ a necessary or useful category for feminism today? (shrink)

This paper concerns the influence of gender on a firm’s moral and economic performance. It supports Thomas White’s intimation of a male gender bias in the value system underlying extant business theory. We suggest that this gender bias may be corrected by drawing on the concept of substantive rationality inherent in virtue-ethics theory. This feminine-oriented relationship-based value system complements the essential nature of the firm as a nexus of relationships between stakeholders. Not only is this feminine firm morally (...) desirable, but it is also economically more efficient in that trust becomes a more feasible implicit contractual enforcement mechanism. In an organizational context, therefore, from both a moral and an economic perspective, long established economic man is dominated by nascent economic woman. (shrink)

While the central ideal of Roman philosophy exemplified by Lucretius, Cicero and Seneca appears to be the masculine values of self-sufficiency and domination, this book argues, through close attention to metaphor and figures, that the Romans also recognized, as constitutive parts of human experience, what for them were feminine concepts such as embodiment, vulnerability and dependency. Expressed especially in the personification of grammatically feminine nouns such as Nature and Philosophy 'herself', the Roman's recognition of this private ' (...) class='Hi'>feminine' part of himself presents a contrast with his acknowledged, public self and challenges the common philosophical narrative of the emergence of subjectivity and individuality with modernity. To meet this challenge, Alex Dressler offers both theoretical exposition and case studies, developing robust typologies of personification and personhood that will be useable for a variety of subjects beyond classics, including rhetoric, comparative literature, gender studies, political theory and the history of ideas. (shrink)

Drawing on aspects of Foucauldian feminist theory Thomas Hardy, Femininity and Dissent offers original and detailed readings of six critically under-valued novels: Desperate Remedies, A Pair of Blue Eyes, The Hand of Ethelberta, A Laodicean, Two on a Tower and The Well-Beloved, demonstrating Hardy's peculiarly modern appreciation of how individuals negotiate the forces which shape their sense of self. Tracing his interest in the evolutionary debate and the woman question this book reveals a new politically engaged rather than a grimly (...) pessimistic Hardy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:L’Homosexualité féminine dans l’Antiquité grecque et romaine by Sandra BoehringerKirk OrmandSandra Boehringer. L’Homosexualité féminine dans l’Antiquité grecque et romaine. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2007. 405 pp. Paper, €35.00.Until recently, I held several informed assumptions about sexuality in the ancient world: (a) that without exception the ancient Greeks and Romans did not define categories of sexual activity by the sex of the object of desire (as in the modern (...) categories of hetero- and homosexual); (b) that female homoerotic activity occupied roughly the same space of social value in ancient Greece as in ancient Rome; (c) that in so far as it could be discerned, female homoerotic activity was depicted in Greece and Rome according to the male pederastic model; (d) that no significant discourse existed about a form of female homoeroticism that was outside of the asymmetric norm defined by such a model; (e) that in keeping with the male pederastic model, women who were sexually attracted to other women were figured as gender deviants, and particularly as being masculine; and (f) that such women were regularly figured as having monstrously large clitorises which were thought—fantastically—to mimic an erect phallus. Thanks to Sandra Boehringer’s incisive study, I now believe every one of these assumptions to be wrong.Boehringer does three things remarkably well in this book. She argues for the presence of an ancient Greek and Roman discourse about female-female sexual behavior. She demonstrates convincingly that there was an understanding of such behavior that was entirely outside of discussions of hermaphroditism and/or women with unusual masculine traits. And finally, she traces shifts and developments in attitudes toward this idea of female homoeroticism with acute attention to the historical contexts of her literary, visual, and scientific sources. Unlike some other critics who have wanted to see a notion of modern “lesbianism” in the ancient world, moreover, Boehringer develops her arguments within a careful Foucauldian framework. As she says late in the book, “une catégorie n’a de valeur que dans un système, et le système de valeurs des Anciens n’est pas le nôtre” (362). Unlike that of Hallett and Brooten, then, Boehringer’s female homoeroticism is not a transhistorical essence that has been curiously interpreted by the Greeks and Romans. Rather, Boehringer sees a separate category of sexual behavior about which the Greeks and Romans wrote, often obliquely, sometimes disparagingly but, surprisingly, only very rarely with a suggestion that such behavior presented a problem.After laying out her theoretical approach, Boehringer proceeds chronologically, beginning with Greek lyric poetry, including sections on early Greek myth, Attic pottery, Greek comedy, Greek philosophy (esp. Plato and Aristotle), Hellenistic poetry, Augustan poetry (esp. Ovid), Roman satire and invective (Petronius, Martial, Juvenal), a brief section on scientific and astrological writings, and ending with an epilogue on late imperial Greek literature (Lucian). I will focus here on some of the readings that provide the most important challenges to current scholarship on ancient sexual practice.Boehringer’s reading of Sappho, which draws on the work of Winkler and [End Page 163] Stehle, is important for later developments in the book. She is careful to distinguish the “I” of the poem (sometimes, as in poem 1, the multiple Sapphos within the narrative frame) from the figure of Sappho the author (54). She then goes on to demonstrate that, contrary to the arguments of scholars in the middle of the last century, the language that the narrator uses to describe her love affairs is the (usually euphemistic) language of physical pleasure typical of archaic Greek lyric (56–58). But what is particularly important about Sappho’s expressions of desire is that, “cet érôs n’est jamais décrit comme une différence stigmatisée par le monde extérieur et condamnée par la société.” Even more to the point, in a complex poem like 31 (φαίνεταί μοι), the speaker draws no distinction between the feeling of desire expressed by the speaker and the desire suggested to be felt by the young man in the poem who sits opposite the beloved.In fact, as Boehringer makes abundantly clear, no... (shrink)

Le féminisme a réussi à transformer partiellement le monde dans lequel nous vivons. Mais la résistance de la société traditionnelle à ces changements, ainsi que la remontée de la droite et la valorisation forcenée de l'individualisme, risquent de compromettre ses acquis. Dans ce contexte, l'avènement d'un discours pseudo-féministe qui véhicule les valeurs traditionnellement considérées comme « féminines » par les hommes risque d'embrouiller le message féministe pour tous ceux qui y accordaient créance et espéraient le voir aller plus loin dans (...) sa quête d'une société nouvelle. Nous voulons analyser ce discours en montrant comment il tend à remettre en question l'effort de transformation sociale amorcé par le féminisme.Feminism has partly transformed our world. Traditionnal society's resistance to these changes together with the rise of the Right and individualism endanger these gains. In that context, the advent of pseudo-feminist discourse carrying the values traditionnally seen by men as "féminine" might blur the feminist message for those who give it credit and hope to see it progress in its quest for a new society. We wish to analyse that discourse and show how it tends to challenge the social transformation effort launched through feminism. (shrink)

According to Bartky, "To be a feminist, one has first to become one," and to become a feminist, one has to overcome femininity. Although I agree with Bartky's critique of femininity, I argue that feminist consciousness has to involve a contradictory attitude toward femininity-not just a critique, but also an appreciation of the utopian values it harbors.

Background:Personal values influence nursing students’ development of professional values, which affect professional outcomes, and how nursing students react to different situations. Personal values can be shaped by different factors, including culture, gender, and age.Aims:To explore personal values held by nursing students, and to verify if and how gender and year of study affect nursing students’ personal values.Research design:A multicenter, cross-sectional study was used.Participants and research context:The whole population of nursing undergraduate students available at the time (...) was recruited from eight centers of two Universities, composing a sample of 947 students. Demographic data were collected and it was administered the Portrait Values Questionnaire.Ethical considerations:Ethical approval was obtained from the Institutional Review Boards of the University of the participating centers.Findings:The study sample was mainly composed of young (92.6%, n = 877), female (77.3%, n = 732), Italian (95.8%, n = 907), and unmarried (98.6%, n = 934) nursing students. The most important value for nursing students, consistently through the years of nursing school, was Self-transcendence, which has the motivational emphasis on helping others and selflessness. Then, we found that male students had higher levels of Power (p < 0.001) and Achievement (p = 0.031), while female students outscored male students in Benevolence (p = 0.005) and Security (p = 0.006). Year of study showed no statistically significant difference.Discussion:Nursing students express high levels in hetero-directed values. Male nursing students, although they choose a stereotypically feminine profession, outscored females in stereotypical masculine values such as dominance and success. This is the first study that describes the personal value profile of undergraduate nursing students, according to the Theory of Basic Human Values, and it is a starting point for future research.Conclusion:Nursing educators might want to consider the findings from this study while guiding students in developing awareness for their personal values. (shrink)

Existing evidence suggests that children from around the age of 8 years strategically alter their public image in accordance with known values and preferences of peers, through the self-descriptive information they convey. However, an important but neglected aspect of this 'self-presentation' is the medium through which such information is communicated: the voice itself. The present study explored peer audience effects on children's vocal productions. Fifty-six children (26 females, aged 8-10 years) were presented with vignettes where a fictional child, matched (...) to the participant's age and sex, is trying to make friends with a group of same-sex peers with stereotypically masculine or feminine interests (rugby and ballet, respectively). Participants were asked to impersonate the child in that situation and, as the child, to read out loud masculine, feminine and gender-neutral self-descriptive statements to these hypothetical audiences. They also had to decide which of those self-descriptive statements would be most helpful for making friends. In line with previous research, boys and girls preferentially selected masculine or feminine self-descriptive statements depending on the audience interests. Crucially, acoustic analyses of fundamental frequency and formant frequency spacing revealed that children also spontaneously altered their vocal productions: they feminized their voices when speaking to members of the ballet club, while they masculinized their voices when speaking to members of the rugby club. Both sexes also feminized their voices when uttering feminine sentences, compared to when uttering masculine and gender-neutral sentences. Implications for the hitherto neglected role of acoustic qualities of children's vocal behaviour in peer interactions are discussed. This article is part of the theme issue 'Voice modulation: from origin and mechanism to social impact (Part II)'. (shrink)

This paper is about disposability as a technological concern and about how to trace the related issues through the analysis of patents. It examines how moral and social concerns happened to be embedded in technology, based on the case of disposable feminine hygiene products. The focus is placed on what “disposable” means and on exploring relative notions as well as their dynamic and consequences. To conduct such analysis, the paper proposes to perform a classic and computer-assisted analysis of the (...) patents published by Johnson & Johnson over almost a century. Tracing social and moral concerns in patents challenges the existing literature in law, which tends to envision patents as legal assets deprived of moral considerations. The paper shows how hygiene products addressed women, how these products were made disposable, and how what disposability means evolved, both in the heart of technology and in the wider space of “concerned” markets. (shrink)

This essay undertakes a reexamination of the notion of the receptacle/chōra in Plato's Timaeus, asking what its value may be to feminists seeking to understand the topology of the feminine in Western philosophy. As the source of cosmic motion as well as a restless figurality, labile and polyvocal, the receptacle/chōra offers a fecund zone of destabilization that allows for an immanent critique of ancient metaphysics. Engaging with Derridean, Irigarayan, and Kristevan analyses, Bianchi explores whether receptacle/chōra can exceed its reduction (...) to the maternal-feminine, and remain answerable to contemporary theoretical concerns. (shrink)

This essay undertakes a reexamination of the notion of the receptacle/chōra in Plato's Timaeus, asking what its value may be to feminists seeking to understand the topology of the feminine in Western philosophy. As the source of cosmic motion as well as a restless figurality, labile and polyvocal, the receptacle/chōra offers a fecund zone of destabilization that allows for an immanent critique of ancient metaphysics. Engaging with Derridean, Irigarayan, and Kristevan analyses, Bianchi explores whether receptacle/chōra can exceed its reduction (...) to the maternal-feminine, and remain answerable to contemporary theoretical concerns. (shrink)

This report describes the attributional styles of women university students in Taiwan and compares these patterns to those of men students in Taiwan and women students in the United States. Using a self-presentational perspective on attributions and drawing on data involving audience reactions to attributional accounts in Taiwan and the United States, the author explains the patterns in terms of two sociocultural factors: cultural norms and gender-role stereotypes. Women students in Taiwan are more self-effacing than Taiwan men students and are (...) more external and self-effacing than American women students. They are relatively external because they are Chinese; they are self-effacing and modest because they conform to Chinese cultural values and, more important, to gender-role stereotypes within that culture. Both attributional styles and gender-role stereotypes characterize women as socially responsible and likable but relatively incompetent. (shrink)

This article takes the linguistic space of North India during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and tries to see how a nationalistic linguistic ideology that was shaping up at that time, creating Hindi and Urdu linguistic communities, used gender as a tool to portray and assert a masculinist vision of language and nation. It involved not just censoring certain representations of women and their cultural spaces, but also using the issue of ‘vulgar’ representations as a premise to marginalize certain languages (...) and their literature. The article looks at the colonial ideology that worked as an enforcer for the nationalists to work towards achieving what they felt as a sanitized and moral form of literature and culture. The linguistic ideology that accompanied these revisions was of projecting Hindi (Khari Boli) as a national language while limiting spaces of other languages, such as Braj, Urdu and Bhojpuri, in the region, by criticizing either their use of sexual imagery or by stereotyping them in a gendered way. This article investigates the arguments of nationalist writers and highlights their masculinist and patriarchal ideas in their bid for the new national language. (shrink)

In this article, I trace the politics of shame in the context of the problematization of women’s bodies as markers of sexual immorality in modern Ireland. I argue that the post-Independence project of national identity formation established women as bearers of virtue and purity and that sexual transgression threatening this new identity came to be severely punished. By hiding women, children, and all those deemed to be dangerous to national self-representations of purity, the Irish state, supported by Catholic moral (...) class='Hi'>values and teaching, physically removed its embodied instances of national shame through a system of mass institutionalization. Just as shame entails the covering of one’s blemishes, so the shaming of women deemed to be deviant by church and state involved their covering via incarceration in Magdalen laundries, among other institutions. By assessing recent events highlighted by inquiries into Irish institutions—Magdalen laundries, reformatory and industrial schools, and soon mother and baby homes—in terms of the politics of shame, this article aims to shed light on the pervasiveness of institutionalization in Ireland and the complex relationship between said institutions, gender, sexuality, and nation building in the early decades of the Irish state. (shrink)

This article explores how certain feminine voices are adapted or ‘naturalized’ in audiovisual translation in order to conform to the intended audience’s assumed gender beliefs and values. Using purposefully selected examples from the American series Sex and the City, the author analyses elements pertaining to American feminism and how they are rendered in the French dubbing and subtitles. While the subtitles retain most references, the dubbing reveals a marked tendency to delete, weaken and transform allusions to American feminist (...) culture as well as female achievements in the public sphere and feminist ideology. These findings are discussed in relation to the history, place and representation of women and feminism in France. The case study suggests that integrating a feminist approach in audiovisual translation research could help women’s studies detect the unspoken gender values of the cultures for which audiovisual translation is produced. (shrink)

Double standards are widespread throughout biomedicine, especially in research on reproductive health. One of the clearest cases of double standards involves the feminine gendering of reproductive responsibility for contraception and the continued lack of highly effective, reversible methods for cisgender men. While the biomedical establishment accepts diversity and inclusion as important social values for clinical trials, their continued use of inequitable standards undermines their ability to challenge unfair social hierarchies by developing male contraception. Thus, the gender/sex bias present (...) in contraceptive research raises the “New Demarcation Problem”: If we accept that values can and will play important roles in science, how can we nevertheless distinguish positive influences of values from more corrosive bias? I argue that biomedical researchers ought to aim their clinical trials at equity and utilize methodologies that actually achieve that aim. More specifically, I contend that we can avoid the problem of double standards by gender/sex in contraceptive research by utilizing more equitable standards. My demarcation strategy captures dynamic interplay between values and their effects, with direct policy implications for institutions conducting, funding, and evaluating clinical trials. For male contraceptive trials, this involves shifting risk assessment from an individual model to a shared model for sexual partners. (shrink)

Freud's 1911 case study based on Schreber's Memoirs of My Nervous Illness provides the investigator with the opportunity to reexamine Freud's interpretation through a return to the original data Freud used. This study reveals both the insights and limitations of Freud's theory of paranoia. An alternative interpretation of the case is overed from an existential-phenomenological perspective which aims both to expand upon and transform Freud's study without negating its value. Freud draws on the mythologies of the sun to argue for (...) his hypothesis that the "father-complex" lies behind Schreber's God. By following some of the many other mythological themes in Schreber's memoirs, Freud's interpretation is opened to a larger, socially and historically situated context. An examination of cross-cultural and historical studies of mystical experience shows how Schreber's psychosis is simultaneously a form of madness and spiritual breakthrough. Schreber's is viewed as a narcissistic experience of the infant-child in which the imaginal has been exiled from rational, modern adulthood and is inaccessible to Cartesian language. Instead of recognizing the soul-full world of "miracles," Schreber envisions the absorption of the entire world into himself and he thus becomes an inflated caricature of the "heroic ego" at its extreme. (shrink)

This article explores gender inequities and sexual double standards in teens’ digital image exchange, drawing on a UK qualitative research project on youth ‘sexting’. We develop a critique of ‘postfeminist’ media cultures, suggesting teen ‘sexting’ presents specific age and gender related contradictions: teen girls are called upon to produce particular forms of ‘sexy’ self display, yet face legal repercussions, moral condemnation and ‘slut shaming’ when they do so. We examine the production/circulation of gendered value and sexual morality via teens’ discussions (...) of activities on Facebook and Blackberry. For instance, some boys accumulated ‘ratings’ by possessing and exchanging images of girls’ breasts, which operated as a form of currency and value. Girls, in contrast, largely discussed the taking, sharing or posting of such images as risky, potentially inciting blame and shame around sexual reputation (e.g. being called ‘slut’, ‘slag’ or ‘sket’). The daily negotiations of these new digitally mediated, heterosexualised, classed and raced norms of performing teen feminine and masculine desirability are considered. (shrink)

This paper describes the results of a field experiment involving 400 employees from ten financial institutions operating within the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone of the People's Republic of China. It was found that, when faced with an agency-based problem, employees indicated they would be less inclined to advise management of the existence of unethical work practices. Younger employees without supervisory experience displayed significant risk aversion. Traditional Chinese values associated with Confucian work dynamism, were shown to be poor predictors of (...) moral choice response. A parsimonious regression model was developed that provides evidence that the universal trait Masculinity/Femininity acted to offset the negative influence of the agency problem. On the other hand, an operative's level of education attainment exerted a negative influence on moral response scores. (shrink)

The EU Kids Online project aims to enhance knowledge of the experiences and practices of European children and their parents regarding online risks and safety. A crucial research effort by the EU Kids Online network has been a survey in 25 European countries which targeted approximately 1,000 children per country. This article applies a cross-cultural values filter to the data that were gathered on parental mediation and the Internet in this survey. Our intention is to test whether Geert Hofstede’s (...) cross-national research results about national cultural values also apply to the EU Kids Online data on parental mediation. This implies studying collectivism versus individualism, low versus high power distance, masculinity versus femininity and low versus high uncertainty avoidance. We test whether differences between nations on these four dimensions correlate with differences between countries in parental mediation of the Internet and we test which European countries form clusters. (shrink)

Les normes religieuses des Mongols s’ancraient dans le culte des ancêtres patrilinéaires, qui accordait une valeur supérieure au masculin, et assignaient aux individus des statuts et des rôles sexués, réservant en particulier aux hommes la sphère socio-politique. Elles ont orienté par la suite les pratiques bouddhiques des Mongols. Le régime révolutionnaire instauré en 1924 sur le modèle soviétique leur a substitué jusqu’à 1990 un nouveau modèle normatif neutralisant les différences sexuées entre citoyens, imposant l’égalité des droits politiques, promouvant l’accès des (...) femmes à l’éducation et à une activité sociale et professionnelle extérieure. L’urbanisation et l’industrialisation ont participé à la mutation du cadre socio-économique et des relations de parenté et affaibli l’emprise de la tradition sur les individus. Pourtant la valence différentielle des sexes n’a pas été aussi profondément remise en question qu’il y paraît, en particulier dans l’action politique, comme en témoigne a posteriori la société postcommuniste où la question de la subordination du féminin dans ce domaine reste d’actualité. (shrink)

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

Otto Weininger’s work entitled Sex and Character is an important text in the intellectual history of Viennese modernism of the f‌in de siècle period. The author makes a pessimistic diagnosis of modern culture, which, according to him, is infected by anti-cultural feminine values. With desperate passion, he looks for a way to heal this state of affairs and finds it in the project of male reorientation in culture. To make this plan a reality, he thoroughly redef‌ines sex and (...) gender. The aim of the article is to investigate various paradoxes and contradictions contained in this famous work. (shrink)

Predation games—games in which the player is actively encouraged and often required to hunt and kill in order to survive—have historically been the purview of male players. Females, though now much more involved in digital games than before, generally play games that stress traditionally feminine values such as socializing with others, shopping, and nurturing. This article argues that playing games that virtually simulate predation has many benefits for female players. Predation play teaches participants how to survive and succeed (...) in stressful, competitive, aggressive environments. To remain in the game, players have to understand and enjoy the acquisition and negotiation of power, learn to face fear, willingly accept challenges, and accept the inevitability of failure without allowing it to deter future attempts. Through predation play, females can learn to excel in and enjoy high-risk high-reward environments. The author proposes that such play might help address gender disparities outside of play. (shrink)

In this article we propose a philosophical critique of two general, but not exhaustive, approaches to gender studies in sport, namely gynocentric feminism and humanist feminism. We argue that both approaches are problematic because they fail clearly to distinguish or articulate their epistemological and ideological commitments. In particular, humanist feminists articulate the human condition using the sex/gender dichotomy, which fails to account adequately for gendered subjectivity. For them gender difference is a contingent feature of humanity developed through socialisation. As a (...) result, it seems that what humanist feminists regard as women in their natural ?state? is in itself ideological. The generic ?human? condition is by no means a neutral condition but rather an idea tarnished by gender history characterised by the masculine. Consequently, humanist feminists uncritically argue for inclusion in sport, with access to an equal share of the human goods available, without carefully problematising the ideological nature of the practice. Gynocentric feminists also subscribe to the sex/gender dichotomy, suggesting however, that gender subjectivity is the result of a biological imperative. For gynocentric feminists, sexual difference provides authority for adjudicating between a separate and different male and female epistemology. Accordingly, gynocentric feminists commit the genetic fallacy by condemning sport to a masculine activity and therefore incompatible with feminine value in light of its male ancestry. ?Soft? gynocentrism does not fully sanction a conception of sport which allows only traditionally female values to flourish, or at least the reason for celebrating such sports would focus upon the goods and values therein. In other words, the value of the practice for either men or women is to be found, following MacIntyre (1985), in the internal goods that characterise the particular practice. Such internal goods are, as MacIntyre argues, goods of the practice and do not belong to any particular gender or group. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Puzzle of Fanny PriceJoyce L. JenkinsIt is common to open a work regarding the merits of Mansfield Park by noting that Fanny Price is very difficult to like. Nietzsche might have described her as a "moral tarantula." 1 She sits, making negative moral judgments about the actions of others, while doing nothing herself. Fanny spends most of her time, literally, sitting or lying down. Austen describes her character (...) as "supine." Comparing Fanny with her sister Susan, Austen says that "Susan was only acting on the same truths, and pursuing the same system, which her [Fanny's] own judgment acknowledged, but which her more supine and yielding temper would have shrunk from asserting. Susan tried to be useful, where she could only have gone away and cried" (MP, p. 395). 2 And Fanny cries all of the time. She cries at least thirteen times over the course of the novel. So, there are two questions about the novel that need to be answered. Why did Austen create a heroine who is so clearly distasteful? Why do some critics and philosophers see Fanny as a moral ideal or cultural icon? Some (Alasdair MacIntyre, Gilbert Ryle, Lionel Trilling) argue that Fanny is so unappealing just because Austen wants to be didactic 3 and force us to focus on virtue. According to Lionel Trilling, for example, Mansfield Park has a different moral message from Pride and Prejudice. "Its praise is not for social freedom, but for social stasis. It takes full notice of spiritedness, vivacity, celerity and lightness, but only to reject them as having nothing to do with virtue and happiness, as being, indeed, deterrents to the good life." 4 Others think that the infelicities of the novel and its heroine make it a parody of traditional feminine values and conservative moral thought in general. 5 Here, I shall argue that a path between these two extreme ways of reading the novel is correct. I shall argue, using Alasdair MacIntyre's discussion as a starting [End Page 346] point, that Austen does not cast Fanny as a moral ideal. If Austen is Aristotelian (a common view among philosophers) Fanny cannot be an ideal. And, although I agree with Johnson's view that those who have read the novel as morally conservative are wrong, I do not think that the novel exhibits global skepticism about traditional standards for the beautiful/feminine. Austen condemns the idea that women should be passive dolls who do not think for themselves, but she does not parody the traditional idea that women should be sweet, gentle, and caring. In my view, Fanny's character constitutes a criticism of passivity, and of rigid adherence to moral rules.Alasdair MacIntyre's view is that Austen is an Aristotelian moralist with a Christian slant on the make-up of the virtues. He describes Fanny's character as an ideal of virtue. He argues that Fanny is pretty much lacking in charm just because Austen wanted to focus on the nature of virtue, which charm can obscure and which Fanny is meant to epitomize.For charm is the characteristically modern quality which those who lack or simulate the virtues use to get by in situations of characteristically modern social life... And the charm of an Elizabeth Bennett... may mislead us... Fanny is charmless; she has only the virtues, the genuine virtues to protect her... and when she disobeys her guardian, Sir Thomas Bertram, and refuses marriage to Henry Crawford it can only be because of what constancy requires. In so refusing she places the danger of losing her soul before the reward of gaining what for her would be a whole world. She pursues virtue for the sake of a certain kind of happiness and not for its utility. 6So, MacIntyre thinks that Fanny Price is meant to be a stripped down model of virtue, with constancy being the keystone virtue that she exhibits. "Constancy is crucial in at least two novels, Mansfield Park and Persuasion, in each of which it is a central virtue of the heroine... And without constancy all the other virtues to some degree lose their point" (AV, p. 242).But when constancy is discussed... (shrink)

The Education of Henry Adams owes its cultural cachet, in part, to Adams’ elaboration of a dichotomy that has pitted religion against science and technology. Though Western ideologies of modernity have viewed religion in rather negative terms, the current revival of religiosity in the postist context invites a reconsideration of the role of religious belief, practice and objects/symbols in the current society. This article discusses Henry Adams’s dichotomy of the Virgin and the Dynamo, and recontextualizes it from a post-human perspective. (...) It argues that the return of religiosity or spirituality, in its multiple forms, is an ethical stance that signals a cultural need for the feminine values of care, solidarity, affection and affiliation. (shrink)

An advertiser develops visual associations of signs and symbols to create a product image that motivates consumers. Today is characterized by a solid consumer culture based on visual identity consumption that articulates and interacts with each consumer's daily actions, words, and visual perceptions. The frequent use of female role portrayals and physical attractiveness in advertising contributes to an increase in society's awareness of women. Some scholars have developed an ethical discussion out of the phenomenon of female role portrayals not matching (...) the public expectations because the portrayals are too narrowly defined and women are unfavorably depicted. But another group has studied the product-type match-up hypothesis, which emphasizes effectively employing attractive female endorsers that closely match the product type. The shift in female social status in Taiwan contributes to the importation of foreign ideas such as feminine values, rituals, and esthetics. Women in Taiwan have been introduced to a new feminism, a modified perception of appropriate personal appearance and behavior. This current research utilizes content analysis and in-depth interviews to explore contemporary female role portrayals in advertising. In addition, this article examines the relationship between the formation of contemporary physical attractiveness and visual consumption in advertising. The results reveal that most endorsers were celebrities, with fit bodies and pleasant expressions, portrayed as product users who offer personal experiences to deliver product knowledge. Conservation classical beauty was the most common depiction, while sexual expression was the least common. Finally, this article recommends that different types of beauty, posture, and appeal should be carefully selected to match domestic and foreign magazines' readers. (shrink)

Is there something as masculine and feminine values? Attempt of an everyday language approach The aim of the paper is to answer a question that has often been raised but not thoroughly explored, namely, whether there are masculine and feminine values. In axiology values are mostly considered in a gender-blind way, while in feminist critique, e.g., in difference feminism, there is a valorization of the feminine but a differentiated axiological consideration is not undertaken. By (...) the use of the hermeneutic method of interpretation and linguistic analysis, as well as of an axiological and feminist critical approach, the paper will unfold some ambiguities, and respectively the possible answers of the question, by showing the crucial importance of the value system, which defines the order of discourse and thus legitimizes or puts in question the sociocultural order. (shrink)

La autora revisa el papel que las sociedades patriarcales han otorgado a las mujeres, para centrarse luego en la Modernidad,un tiempo cuyos valores dominantes están definidos desde la visión masculina y occidental del mundo, pretendiéndose como valores universales. Profundiza en la invisibilidad de la mujer y la naturaleza en el paradigma moderno y la predominancia del economicismo, y señala que el proceso emancipador de las mujeres anticipa la emergencia de un nuevo paradigma con valores femeninos como propuesta para una reconstrucción (...) compartida. (shrink)

My intellectual journey to philosophy was paved by Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, which intrigued me as a high school student. Once on the path, however, I was frustrated by the inherent barriers to women’s participation both as originators and practitioners of philosophies. Excursions into Daoism and ancient goddess culture offered welcome alternatives. Gradually I realized the problem posed by the delusion of hierarchical dualism—whether male/female, mind/body, reason/emotion, human law and order/natural chaos, or Apollonian/Dionysian—that permeates the “Western Canon.” My PhD (...) dissertation set forth the denigrated perspective and values that had long been perceived as “feminine,” arguing that they were not gender-based but merely the road less traveled and seldom appreciated. More recently I have found validation for this alternative in neuroscience. Ongoing exploration of the bilateral brain has traced two attentional networks that mirror dualism in task-driven and stimulus-driven functions, both of which are required for optimal performance. This wholesome hybrid brain has been promoted by many world philosophies, and is perhaps most fully expressed in Buddhist nondualism. My goal is to promote these philosophies, beginning with a Minor in Global Philosophies, to secure the diversity, equity, and inclusion required to successfully address the many crises we face in the world today. (shrink)

Criticizing Lacan and Levinas, and starting from Freud and Lacan’s denial of the womb and from the Genius-Male-Hero (as theorized by Rank), who is self-creating and holds the power of creation and thus depends on the elimination of the birth-giving begetting mother, I continue my research to formulate a feminine difference that is neither dependency/disguise (Riviere, Butler) nor revolt and struggle in the phallic texture (Kristeva). Unlike other ideas concerning the difference of the feminine, the originary difference that (...) I call matrixial supplies a measure of difference that functions between a woman and a woman, and not only between a man and a woman. With the concepts of the Matrixial, metramorphosis, border-swerving, borderlinking, I outline how both male and female subjects have access to the matrixial sphere and might, as artists, become a ‘woman-artist’; how the Matrixial dissolves the concept of the unitary, separate phallic subject; and how female bodily specificity allows the conceptualization of a field of co-affectivity, shareability and transmissibility. I develop the aesthetic and psychic value of the matrixial voice and its resonance as trans-subjective, based upon a psychic Encounter-Event (rather than just unqualified Thing). Even though the matrixial difference refers both primarily and on the levels of the Imaginary and the Symbolic to the female body – womb, fetus, gestation, pregnancy provide its corpo-real basis – the Matrixial is formulated in terms of a transgressive stratum of subjectivation, where unconscious trans-subjectivity occurs due to particular links and transmission between partial-subjects and partial-objects in co-emergence and co-fading. (shrink)

An essential motif of the Western is the frontier in which people of European descent encounter American Indians as other. Indians were viewed as bloodthirsty savages, despite the fact that Europeans were the primary aggressors. The bloodthirsty savage stereotype finds intellectual support in the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. Governance in most traditional North American Indian communities isn't about ruling over subordinates, but about forging consent among equals. Indigenous government was often based on equal respect for the values and (...) sovereignty of each member of the community. The Federation embodies Star Trek's vision of multicultural liberalism. The history of Western philosophy has placed masculinity in dominance and control over femininity. This breeds a culture of violence and disharmony and people in need of healing. People of European descent are infected by this history in need of the thawing warmth of the South and a vision that harmonizes masculinity with femininity. (shrink)

Resumo: Como uma pérola brilhante na cultura tradicional chinesa, Mulan está profundamente enraizada no coração das pessoas com sua imagem única de heroína feminina. Este trabalho busca retratar a experiência lendária da luta heroica de Hua Mulan, no exército, no lugar de seu pai, e integrar os elementos centrais de família, honra, lealdade, dentre outros, no contexto da cultura oriental, de modo que a história tenha profunda herança cultural. O artigo mostra, em primeiro lugar, o complexo cultural oriental que está (...) claramente refletido em Mulan. As cenas, figurinos, etiqueta e outros detalhes do filme refletem o charme único da China antiga, apresentando ao público um mundo artístico repleto de estética oriental. Além disso, através da personagem Mulan, o filme mostra o alto valor da família, da honra e da lealdade na cultura oriental. Em segundo lugar, explicita que o papel de Mulan incorpora plenamente os valores femininos, no filme. Ela não apenas se juntou corajosamente ao exército, por causa de seu pai, mas também obteve repetidas conquistas no campo de batalha, quebrando as algemas dos estereótipos de gênero. Essa subversão dos papéis tradicionais de gênero destaca o importante estatuto e valor das mulheres, na sociedade, desempenhando um papel na promoção do despertar da consciência feminina, na cultura oriental. Finalmente, o artigo analisa a influência de Mulan na consciência feminina, concluindo que esta desempenha um papel vital na formação e herança da consciência feminina, na cultura oriental. A imagem heroica de Mulan inspira as futuras gerações de mulheres a enfrentarem as dificuldades com coragem e a buscar a autoestima. Ao mesmo tempo, as ações de Mulan, para além das restrições dos papéis sociais tradicionais, também fornecem um modelo para as mulheres concretizarem a independência e a autonomia individuais. (shrink)

June 2022 A Revolutionary New Metaphysics, Based on Consciousness, and a Call to All Philosophers We are in a unique moment of our history unlike any previous moment ever. Virtually all human economies are based on the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a place in our history where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. As I write, the planet is in deep trouble, heat, fires, great storms, and record flooding, (...) weather patterns drastic everywhere. Capitalism has been so successful in supplying us with an endless array of consumer items, that we have never noticed there is a cost. But there is a cost, the cost is the very life of the Earth herself, and now the day of reckoning is here. Days of reckoning are most often days of rath. But I am hoping that this is a day of major Awakening over the entire planet. We have caused a crisis so great for the Earth we can hardly get our minds around it. But I am proposing that deeply embedded in the crisis are ideas, about who and what the Earth is, Ourselves, and what we are here for. I am proposing that this is a call to all philosophy and philosophers to rethink ourselves from the ground up. The human race has never gotten the Earth right and now we must, for the Earth is the true foundation for civilization. We are in deep trouble with the Earth, and it owes to the fact that the great male thinkers never got the Earth right, they could never make the connection between the life of mind and the life of the Earth. I am proposing that deeply embedded in the crisis we are in are ideas. And that in fact the planet is in the grip of a false metaphysics, and scientific image of nature that really comes most recently from Descartes. His conviction that matter, and with it the Earth, are simply the weighable, the measurable the extended in space and time, utterly devoid of any inner life of mind thoughts or Consciousness. This view of matter and the Earth goes back to the very dawn of thought, Descartes is just its most recent and comprehensive version of things. This view of matter is really a false metaphysics that dominates most of the modern world and underpins the whole scientific image of nature itself. I am proposing this is a false metaphysics and offering a new version of things based on Consciousness. If there is a single idea fueling and driving the destruction of the planet, it is the conviction that the Earth is something without Consciousness. When you intend to ravage and savage the planet, turn it into consumer items to be converted into money in the bank, first pretend that all of the bright beings in the natural world are devoid of Consciousness, just “things” you do not have to have any conscious about destroying them. I am proposing that this term Consciousness, that has appeared as term and a problem for modern science, is the key to getting ourselves right with the Earth. I propose this new theory for science will ramify into every other disciplines as well, and the ways we think just about everything. This old paradigm based on a false theory of matter, has run its course, it has brought us to the brink of our own extinction. We need new ideas, and we need them now. You will find my recent work in the Scientific God Journal under the title: Consciousness as the Organizing Principle, and a very complete version of my arguments for this term Consciousness, along with radical reinterpretation of modern science itself, on the Galileo Commission site. It is a radical moment for all of the thinkers among us, take this as my small contribution to rethinking ourselves in new terms, based on my understanding that the true basis for the whole of Being, the Universe, the Cosmos, and with them Ourselves, is this term Consciousness. And unpack it. And I predict that with this term Consciousness every intractable human problem in both science and the modern world will go down like a line of dominos before it. And so, here are a few new ideas I would offer you. These are the times of the Reappearance of the Feminine, a great Awakening as of Springtime after a long dark and lonely Winter. We are leaving behind us an old civilization based on male dominance, fear lies and control, now in decay, disease, and death disintegrating all around us. We are moving into a whole new civilization based on Love and Truth. A new civilization requires new basic terms values and first principles. And so, I return to Descartes. 1. Just over 300 years ago a young man travelling with the army found himself stranded in a foreign town in a bare room lit by a candle with nothing to do but think. And in a couple of nights Descartes laid the entire thought foundations for modern science and most of the modern world. It isn’t clear that modern philosophers with their funding sources of grants, their graduate students, their reputation and all the perks and privileges of academia can do any better. Descartes claimed there are just two principles in the Universe, Matter and Mind. God was pure mind; human beings were mind and matter. And we are the only ones on the planet with mind. Everything else all of the bright array of beings who share the planet with us are simply matter. And matter? The weighable the measurable the extended in space and time utterly devoid of any inner life of thoughts, feelings, or Consciousness This classification was a boon for developing science. Scientists did not have to worry about any inner life in nature, ideas or Consciousness, they could just set about weighing and measuring, as they have until the present day. But it was a disaster for the Earth. Earth was once worshiped as a Goddess. With Descartes she became almost overnight “things.” Simply commodities and resources, an endless of supply of consumer items, to be turned into money in the bank. And now Descartes concept of matter is up for us. If there is a single idea that is enabling and driving the destruction of the Earth, it is the conviction that Earth is something without Consciousness. This whole scientific image of nature as something devoid of Consciousness is driving the destruction of the Earth, and driving us all insane, and it needs to change. Ever since Descartes formulated Dualism, scientists and philosophers have been trying to get rid of it. They have done this by attempting to make matter the fundamental term of reality, and to explain mind or Consciousness in terms of matter. And now, Consciousness has emerged as term and a problem for modern science. 2. The prevailing Universe picture has been mainly based on the belief that Consciousness appears only at the end of evolution in ourselves and some of the higher animals when matter attains “a certain state of complexity” and it is produced by neurons in the brain. But Consciousness is nothing real in itself, the neurons are doing the work, Consciousness is simply a byproduct of neural activity. As William James summed up this position, not his: Consciousness is to the brain as a shadow to the runner, it runs beside him but never influences his stride. And so, the great problem of neuroscience: How do neurons produce Consciousness? So far, no one has been able to say how. All we have is parallelism. Two processes are running in parallel a train of neural events and a train of Consciousness events. And so, which one is primary? The face of neuroscience and much of the modern world is that the neural events are what is really real, Consciousness is secondary. The conviction that Consciousness is something produced by neurons is so deeply held and has been so for so long, that it seems like an obvious fact. It is in fact an assumption and a theory, and it could all well be the other way around. The scientific image of nature as something devoid of Consciousness is now up for us. It has enabled the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a unique place in our own evolution where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. And so, there are the best reasons for rethinking Descartes concepts of matter. Scientists and philosophers have been trying to escape dualism by making matter the fundamental term. And now, this has not worked. In a nutshell: The mind body problem, the “hard problem of Consciousness” ---how do neurons in the brain, atoms and molecules give rise to ideas thoughts and feelings and who what and where is the “I” who sees them? And then, the near-death experience. I remind you of the truth of the near-death experience. The body in the bed is brain dead eeg flat, but the patient, pure Consciousness is hovering at the ceiling watching the doctors work over the body below, able to read dials he could not have seen from the bed, sometimes able to events in the corridor beyond the room, all subsequently confirmed by the doctors. Evidence as good as it gets that the patient really was out of his body. And so, the patient is able to see without eyes, hear without ears and to think and remember without a brain. There is not a single scientific principle that can account for this. And I am proposing that the near-death experience is a threshold and a key for a much deeper understanding of the Universe. These three problems are so hard they cannot be solved by present scientific principles and therefore call all present principles and ways of thought into question. When your axioms cannot account for the data, it is time to drop them and find better fundamental terms. We have not been able to solve the problems of Consciousness with the assumption that matter is the most basic and fundamental term. And so, if Cartesian dualism is to be overcome at all, we need to try it the other way around. 3. We are in the position of Copernicus. Remember Copernicus? He was making his calculations on the assumption that the Earth was the center of the Universe until they became so unwieldy that he decided to try it all the other way around. To make the sun the center, the Earth revolving around it. And lo, all of his data fell neatly into place. I am proposing a whole new Universe picture. Evolution makes us continuous with every other being, Consciousness would not be in us if it were not in them also, and then, in the atoms and molecules and cells that make up living beings. I propose to make Consciousness the most basic term and see what follows. I am in fact, proposing a new Copernican Revolution, that Consciousness is the true basis for the Universe and the right fundamental term, for science itself all other disciplines as well, and the whole of the modern world. And I predict that every intractable problem in science or the modern world, will go down like a line of dominos before it. In a nutshell: Consciousness and not matter is “first and fundamental” in the Universe, it is there from the very “Beginning” everything has it and all of the true causalities, the explanatory principles belong to it. Not to matter. What then is matter? All matter is an Appearance of something much more real, Consciousness. All matter is an expression of Consciousness, even the least little bit of matter contains Consciousness, and is an expression of Consciousness. And so, we revise the scientific image of nature. Science at present is two termed, matter/energy. It needs to become three termed: Matter/energy/Consciousness, with the recognition that all of the basic principles, the true causalities of events, and of the Universe belong to Consciousness. And now physics. To accommodate this new Universe picture physics needs to alter just one term, energy. All energy contains Consciousness, that idea alone will change our world forever. The animals the trees the plants are just as conscious as we are, as is the Earth herself, a continuum of many forms of Consciousness of which our own is one. The Earth consists of interacting and intersecting forms of Consciousness, Consciousness within Consciousness within Consciousness within Consciousness. A remarkable work has just appeared entitled “Beyond Words What Animals Feel and Think.” Describing in detail how like ourselves all of the animals are. And the more we can see how like us everything else really is, the harder it will be for us to do them all in, in the interest of turning them into consumer items. And so, here is a new principle of understanding, that entails completely new forms of explanation, and a whole new Universe picture to be spelled out in terms of Consciousness and its various properties. This is a Universe that is aware awake and Enspirited throughout. And so, there is only one principle, not two. And so, how does Consciousness work? There is “no mind/body problem.” My Consciousness is aligning the Consciousness of neurons in the brain, that aligns the Consciousness of all other cells in the body, that aligns the Consciousness of molecules and atoms themselves. Mainly from the top down, but also interactive, and not reduction to the purely physical forces. 4. And so, here is a radical new Universe picture, and with it a new way to think about the Universe itself, the Earth, Ourselves, and Spirit. It requires a complete revision of both of the terms of modern science itself. The problem of the modern world owes in deep measure to Descartes concept of matter as something devoid of interior life. But he is only the most powerful and simple expression of a whole tradition of thought that predates him, that goes back to the very dawn of thought itself. It owes to the conviction of both Plato and Aristotle that the Earth was something devoid of reason, or mind, and therefore something to be held in complete contempt. We are emerging from a civilization based on contempt for the Earth, and down the road, it will become contempt for the body, sex, women, the Native people, and people of color everywhere. And so, this entire tradition is now up for us, it has brought us to the brink of our own extinction, and we need to get beyond it. I am proposing that this term Consciousness is the way out. The missing piece of the puzzle and the idea whose time has come. And it will enable us to move into a completely new civilization based on respect for the Earth, women, sex, people of color, that honors everyone and has a place for all. Revolutions in science occur when new data show up that cannot be accounted for by existing paradigms (Thomas Kuhns: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Consciousness, and all the properties and problems of Consciousness are just such data, and they compel a new scientific revolution. But we are a scientific age. A new Copernican revolution in science is such as revolution everywhere. And Consciousness is the key to getting every other reality at all levels and depths right as well. It will enable us finally to get the Earth right, get ourselves right with the Earth, and with one another. Archimedes: Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world. I am proposing a new synthesis among our fundamental terms in which this term Consciousness is the new lynchpin. And so, I return once more to Descartes. Descartes in the Mediations was a dualist, they were two realities interacting in the pineal gland mind and body. But Descartes age was high on “Cartesianisms,” on Descartes concept of matter. Animals were simply cleverly wired machines (Hobbes called them automata). Rumor had it that Descartes followers went about kicking dogs reasoning that their howls were not due to any feelings of pain, but simply the wiring of the machine. We have been doing this to the Earth ever since, and now the Earth is not going to stand for it any longer. It is time we all woke up. There is no matter in Descartes sense of it, or in Plato and Aristotle’s sense of it. This old concept of matter is embedded in all of the crisis and catastrophes---fires, drought, pandemics, over population, the disintegrating economies, our ways of life, capitalism and consumerism themselves. All matter is Enspirited, contains Consciousness, and is an expression of Consciousness. Now I tell you something about Descartes you may not know. In the Mediations was a dualist, there are minds and bodies. But by the end of his life, he knew the truth. Descartes guided his whole life by these vivid dreams, and toward the end of his life he had this dream: He saw the Universe as a giant machine and in the heart of the machine propelling the whole, was Consciousness. And so, out of the shades and shadows and into the light of day. Here is a renewed and a new science, a new cosmology. And with it, a revolutionary new metaphysics. The whole of the modern world is in the grip of a false metaphysics, based on Descartes theory of matter. Here is a new, and finally true metaphysics based on the single term, Consciousness. 5. And in all my works, I spell out this new metaphysics based on Consciousness, and what it means for how we think about virtually everything: The Universe, the Earth, Ourselves, and Spirit. Of who, what and where Spirit is, that we may connect with Spirit everywhere. There is only one term for the Universe, and not two, this single term Consciousness, that manifests itself in two modes: Consciousness in Form, Consciousness Formless. And so, here is a sketch of what this new term Consciousness really means. For four great aspects of the real, four new cornerstones for a whole new civilization on Earth, based on Love and Truth. A. For the Universe: New causalities, all matter is an expression of Consciousness, awake and aware, Enspirited throughout, which has a place for the causalities of love ideas intent plan and purpose, what Aristotle called final causality, that for the sake of which. And it has a place for subjectivity, the greatest mystery in the whole of the Universe, knowable only in ourselves, but there in everything else as well, bedrock in the chain of causalities. The buck stops here. Here are two very different Universe pictures. The Cartesian Universe consists of things, pushed, and pulled around by the physical forces that function blind. The true Universe consists of selves and not things. Selves at least in ourselves, are organized and focused about an I, an I am, or a sense of self in everything, ever other being dear to itself. Just one aspect of subjectivity. And so, it is Consciousness all the way down, and subjectivity all the way down. Science proceeds on the basis of the negligible of what it can leave out as unimportant. Subjectivity is the ultimate animating principle of the Universe. What Descartes really did was to strip from nature what is most essential about it, its animating principle Consciousness. And so, we come out of a long history of “clunk.” The great male thinkers have killed creation. First in concepts and now in the lived life. And so, after centuries of fruitless search, not all of it in vain, finally, and just in time the true basic principle for the Universe has shown up in virtually all disciplines, this term Consciousness. B. And so, the Earth: What does this term Consciousness really mean for the Earth? It means that all of the bright array of beings around us have Consciousness. And the more we can realize how like us they are, the harder it will be to do them all in. Is this what it really means to be “made in the image of Spirit?” To destroy ever other living being? The god of Genesis is a creator god who has created billions and billions of living forms. Man, taking himself to be made in the image of Spirit has destroyed virtually all of it. The Earth is not things, not commodities and resources, not an endless array of consumer goods. The Earth consists of conscious living spiritual beings like ourselves, who need to be honored and respected, nurtured and cared for, to be Loved. And if the human race can finally pull it off and bring Love here and start helping the Earth rather than destroying her, even our vast numbers now at 8 billion, may not matter. Deeply embedded in the modern world is a false cosmology based on the hitherto useful but ultimately false metaphysics of Descartes. In particular it owes to Descartes concepts of matter, and of the Earth, as something devoid of Consciousness. And now this concept is up for us. If there is a single idea enabling and driving the destruction of the planet, it is the conviction that the Earth is something devoid of Consciousness. And we all have a vested interest in keeping this false concept in place. When you intend to ravage and savage the Earth, to turn it into consumer items, and money in the bank, first pretend she has no Consciousness that way we need not have any conscious about it. We are in deep trouble with the planet. Virtually all human economies are based on the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a place in our history where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. And so, here are a few new guiding principles for the planet, based on Consciousness. Consciousness has field properties. The Earth is Consciousness throughout, connected and interconnected throughout, intersecting and interacting fields of Consciousness of which our own is one. To harm one is to harm all. Only this understanding of the Earth can set our destructive technologies, and capitalism, their goals, and their limits. The real problem with capitalism, and with civilization itself is it has no true understanding of the Earth, all the exquisite networks and webworks that connect all beings with one another. Nor it is about to admit that the Earth is our “life support system,” reason gone insane in the modern world. We are destroying our life support system, capitalism is the full expression of the human death wish in the modern world, and it needs to change. And now, let the barriers between ourselves and all other beings go down. C. And so, Ourselves. This new Universe picture based on Consciousness opens into and has a place for new concepts of human identity. In particular, it has a place for reincarnation, a process whereby one Consciousness dons’ bodies again and again and lays them down. This is a process wholly impossible on materialistic theories. This new view of things puts a higher perspective on Freudian determinism, which is a partial knowing in a greater account. We are something more than the victims of genes drives and childhood. We are immortally eternal evolving spiritual beings who take on a cycle of earthly lives in order to achieve certain goals and abilities, and then, our earthly cycle complete, we depart the Earth plane for other areas of the Universe physical or purely spiritual, to continue our evolution elsewhere. The scientific evidence for reincarnation is increasing on all sides, see for example the work of Michael Newton, a mainstream scientist forced to confront the fact of reincarnation. A completely new reincarnational picture is now emerging everywhere. We choose our parents for abilities we could acquire through them. We all come here with reasons for being here, and we all have free will, an original property of Consciousness, and we work out our issues accordingly. We all come here with the same reason for being here. It is to experience the Earth plane and human society at all levels and depths, in every social role, every climate, both sexes male and female and in all races. We are all here to acquire a deep understanding of the Earth plane with all its challenges and all of its present problems. We are not here to devour and consume the Earth, but to honor her for the learning experience she makes available for us. And so, reincarnation is the great equalizer, the fundamental basis for any bill of rights. Many of the problems of the modern world owe to the fact that reincarnation has not been taught in the West. Reincarnation was the center piece of Jesus teachings. It was banned by a fourth century council that decided the populous could best be controlled through fear. They edited all mention of reincarnation from the scriptures, and inserted fear terms instead, a judgmental god, and so on. If reincarnation had been taught, there would have been no suppression of women, but the gift of both sexes would have been honored and developed. And there would have been no reason for contempt for people of color because who they are, we have been or will be. There is no reason to look down on anyone when we know that our own identity includes membership in theirs. The truth of reincarnation needs to be the foundation for getting ourselves right with the Earth, and with one another. D. And so, Spirit. This new Universe picture, based on Consciousness, has a place for Spirit as simply Infinite Consciousness. All universes all worlds are formed out of this Consciousness, divine and sacred throughout. And Spirit is everywhere in the Earth and can be connected everywhere. And the Native North American people had things right. Everything has its own Spirit, and without contradiction is also an expression of Spirit. And what I am really doing in terms of concepts of modern science is presenting the Native North American version of the Real. And this new Universe picture has a place for the essential insight of all religions almost smothered by church tradition: Love. Not an emotion but a great Oneness, that can be found everywhere, even in a busy city street. But especially in the Earth, that is levels and depths of Oneness everywhere. And so, for the first time in their long and bitter antagonistic history, science and religion now share a common base with this term Spirit, the lynchpin in a new conceptual framework. And I offer an interpretation of where we are in our history, this present moment of historical grace, and these tumultuous times in which we live, the return of the Goddess and the Divine Feminine, the Reappearance of the Feminine in history, the Advent of Women, this great Awakening, as of Springtime after a long dark Winter, the Awakening, the Second Coming. And so, stay tuned! (shrink)