Volume 32, Issue 3, May 2024, Page 606-631.

‘Marx on tax’ as an effective antidote to inequality is an overlooked theme within his own output, but also for our own time. Marx theorising on tax is seen even by pre-eminent Marxists as an empty box, but Marx and Engels in fact had plenty to say about tax. Their coverage embraces progressive taxes, both on capital and income, a strong preference for direct over indirect taxation, inheritance tax, land-value tax, taxes on financial transactions, and state finances around the world. (...) Tax also provides the battleground for a rare sight of Marx as campaigning activist, in 1848, matched in the same period by close ally Wilhelm Wolff. The tax policies of Marx and Engels have been neglected because they are primarily to be found in their journalism and letters. They are no anachronistic curiosity but perfectly applicable to the income and wealth inequalities of our own era. (shrink)

Volume 23, Issue 3, June 2024, Page 274-291.

In The Biosemiotic Fundamentals of Aesthetics: Beauty is the Perfect Semiotic Fitting Kull makes a foray into the concept of Beauty. His target article is a welcome contribution not only for providing a biosemiotic notion of beauty but also as a trigger for further enquiry into the matter. Additionally, Kull delivers a new concept: Semiotic Fitting, shining new light on the Umwelt theory. My commentary embraces the challenge Kull presents. Offering an alternate view on beauty, as a matter, and product, (...) of cognition, I suggest reflecting on the philosophy of Alexander von Baumgarten, who coined the term “aesthetics”, offers rich insight that could extend and enrich the definition of beauty Kull presents. (shrink)

Universal Compassion. Training the Mind in Seven Points. Geshe Kelsang Gyatso. Tharpa Publications, London 1988. 176 pp. £6.95.

In The Biosemiotic Fundamentals of Aesthetics: Beauty is the Perfect Semiotic Fitting Kull makes a foray into the concept of Beauty. His target article is a welcome contribution not only for providing a biosemiotic notion of beauty but also as a trigger for further enquiry into the matter. Additionally, Kull delivers a new concept: Semiotic Fitting, shining new light on the Umwelt theory. My commentary embraces the challenge Kull presents. Offering an alternate view on beauty, as a matter, and product, (...) of cognition, I suggest reflecting on the philosophy of Alexander von Baumgarten, who coined the term “aesthetics”, offers rich insight that could extend and enrich the definition of beauty Kull presents. (shrink)

Being able to measure informed choice represents a mechanism for service evaluation to monitor whether informed choice is achieved in practice. Approaches to measuring informed choice to date have been based in the biomedical hegemony. Overlooked is the effect of epistemic positioning, that is, how people are positioned as credible knowers in relation to knowledge tested as being relevant for informed choice. To identify and describe studies that have measured informed choice in the context of prenatal screening and to describe (...) epistemic positioning of pregnant people in these studies. Online databases to identify papers published from 2005 to 2021. The PRISMA-ScR checklist guided data collection, analysis and reporting. Secondary analysis that considered hermeneutics (e.g., knowledge that was tested, study design) and testimony (e.g., population descriptors) developed a priori. Twenty-nine studies explored the measurement of informed choice. None reported that pregnant people were involved in the design of the study. Two studies reported pregnant people had some involvement in the design of the measurement. Knowledge tested for informed choice included technical aspects of screening, conditions screened and mathematical concepts. Twenty-seven studies attributed informed choice to population descriptors (e.g., race/ethnicity, age, education). Population descriptors were reified as characteristics of epistemic credibility for informed choice obtained. For example, when compared to a high school qualification, a tertiary qualification was a statistically significant characteristic of informed choice. When compared by race, white people were found to be significantly more likely to make an informed choice. Additional demographic descriptors such as age, language spoken, faith and previous pregnancies were used to further explain differences for informed choice obtained. Explanations about underlying assumptions of population descriptors were infrequent. Using population descriptors in the biomedical hegemony as explanatory variables for informed choice can position (groups of) people as more, or less, epistemically credible. Such positioning could perpetuate epistemic injustices in practice leading to inequitable access to healthcare. To better uphold (pregnant) people as credible knowers population descriptors should instead be contextual (and contextualising) variables. For example, as indicators of social privilege. Further, making room for ways of knowing that go beyond the biomedical hegemony requires the development of epistemically just ‘measures’ through intentional, inclusive design. (shrink)

This book explores the causes behind Trump's victory in the 2016 US Presidential election and asks how a psychoanalytic understanding of the social unconscious can help us plot a new direction for the future in US politics and beyond. It first describes the social/psychological threads that are the now of American culture. Seeds of hope are discovered through an in-depth examination of the American idea of excess as represented by Trump, its archetypal figure. Essential psychoanalytic ideas such as, the fundamental (...) human condition of living with both individual and social unconscious, the psychic feminine principal, the notion of psychic valence and more are illustrated as psychic integrations necessary for America to move towards a redemptive positive social change. This book combines feminist exploration with playful illustrative imagery and mythic story-aiming to awaken minds across generations. America's Psychological Now is key reading for psychoanalysis, psychologists, political theorists, and anyone wishing to understand better how the social and political systems could be changed for the future. (shrink)

How Buddhism Began. The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings. Richard F. Gombrich. Jordan Lectures 1994. Published by Athlone Press for The School of Oriental and African Studies, London 1996. xi, 180 pp. £25.00. ISBN 0-485-17417-0.

Space is a product of semiosis. It is a condition pertinent to an organism’s semiotic freedom, which is articulated by the organism as a consequence of its capacity to manipulate the world in the course of its unfolding interaction with its environment. Spatial configuration is thus the result of agency inherent in the organism-in-its-environment. Space, a consequence of social cohesion, is effected through constraints and processes of enaction which are semiotic. These processes are productive and offer architects a novel means (...) by which to configure space, which they should embrace to articulate the nature of inhabitation. The model presented identifies activity as the essential building block to the generation of form. Modelled as a form of artificial life, swarm-like components, referred to as ‘actants’, represent discrete activities and self-configure according to differences in the environment they detect, to form a body-of-swarms. Thus, depicting the spatiality of being. (shrink)

Carl F. H. Henry has widely been acknowledged for his contributions to evangelical social concern. What has not been fully appreciated though is theological foundations that undergirded Henry’s priority model as it relates to the relationship between the church social and evangelistic mandates. For Henry, the key to both was the doctrine of revelation, and this foundation enabled Henry to uniquely argue for both integration and prioritization. As such, Henry presents a challenge to many contemporary models of evangelism and social (...) concern that set the two on an even plane by locating them within a kingdom rubric. Despite accusations that his theological method fosters information over transformation, Henry hold forth a revelation centered approach with Augustinian roots capable of guiding the contemporary church on the elusive issue of finding a biblical approach to its mission. (shrink)

Sartre's conflicted relationship with his theatrical audience is explained by showing how Sartre's initial theatrical venture, Bariona, created in a POW camp in December 1940, sparked an idealized conception of the audience. The particular context in which the play was produced brought its performers and audience together into an almost mystical fusion. But these virtues, derived from pre-textual “oral“ culture, lost much of their luster with Sartre's second play, The Flies. Like its predecessor, The Flies used myth to counter German (...) censorship, but in occupied Paris in front of a much more heterogeneous audience. The resulting comparative failure complicated Sartre's relationship to the mass audiences he sought in the post-war years. Theater audiences became emblematic of a wider public Sartre never fully trusted to accept or understand his ideas. Furthermore, Sartre's decision to stage almost all his plays between 1946 and 1959 at the “bourgeois“ Théâtre Antoine only made him even more mistrustful of audiences he often found himself writing “against.“. (shrink)

This article offers an interpretive reconstruction of Heidegger’s first reference to the “inner truth of National Socialism” in the 1934/35 lecture course, Hölderlin’s Hymns “Germania” and “The Rhine”, which has remained unknown due to an editorial error. Focusing on the distinction Heidegger draws between Greek φύσις and natural science, it examines the way Heidegger conceives politics more originally through Hölderlin and the naming force of Nature. It then contextualizes Heidegger’s specific reference to National Socialism in terms of the then contemporary (...) debate between liberalism and the racially determined “new science,” arguing that Heidegger thinks the “inner truth of National Socialism” as a φύσις-event. (shrink)