This essay introduces the second installment of a symposium in Common Knowledge called “Apology for Quietism.” This introductory piece concerns the sociology of quietism and why, given the supposed quietude of quietists, there is such a thing at all. Dealing first with the “activist” Susan Sontag's attraction to the “quietist” Simone Weil, it then concentrates on the “activist” William Empson's attraction to the Buddha and to Buddhist quietism, with special reference to Empson's lost manuscript Asymmetry in Buddha Faces (and to (...) Sharon Cameron's work on the topic in her book Impersonality). The author, who is also editor of the journal, argues against the effort of some contributors to substitute new terms for quietism and emphasizes instead what he calls (quoting Sontag) “the need for repose.”. (shrink)

This essay, which is the editor's introduction to part 1 of a multipart symposium on quietism, also constitutes his call for symposium papers. The symposium is meant be comprehensive. It is described as political and broadly cultural as well as religious, and in religious terms is said to cover not only the Catholic and Protestant quietisms (most properly so called) of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but also the proto-quietisms of the medieval Western church and reputedly quietist aspects of (...) the Gnostic, Eastern Orthodox, early Hasidic, Shi'ite, Jain and other Indic, Taoist, and Zen religious traditions. This introduction emphasizes the secular approaches, mostly antipolitical or postphilosophical, that wear the adjective “quietist” metaphorically, including the postmodern currents that Martha Nussbaum has named “hip quietism” and the “minimalist” philosophical version developed by Wittgenstein and some of his successors, notably Richard Rorty. This introduction concludes with attention to Rorty's late essay “Naturalism and Quietism,” then with a dedication of the entire symposium to Rorty's memory. (shrink)

In the last homily he gave before becoming Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger described modern life as ruled by a “dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely” of satisfying “the desires of one’s own ego.” An eminent scholar familiar with the centuries-old debates over relativism, Ratzinger chose to oversimplify or even caricature a philosophical approach of great sophistication and antiquity. His homily depicts the relativist as someone blown about “by every (...) wind of doctrine,” whereas the relativist sticks firmly to one argument—that human knowledge is not absolute. Gathering prominent intellectuals from disciplines most relevant to the controversy—ethics, theology, political theory, anthropology, psychology, cultural studies, epistemology, philosophy of science, and classics—this special double issue of _Common Knowledge_ contests Ratzinger’s denunciation of relativism. One essay relates the arguments of Ratzinger to those of two other German scholars—the conservative political theorist Ernst Wolfgang Böckenförde and the liberal philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas—since all three men assume that social order depends on the existence of doctrinal authority. The contributors here argue for an intellectual and social life free of the desire for an “infantilizing” authority. One proposes that the Christian god is a relativist who prefers limitation and ambiguity; another, initially in agreement with Ratzinger about the danger relativism poses to faith and morals, then argues that this danger is what makes relativism valuable. The issue closes with the first English translation of an extract from a book on Catholic-Jewish relations by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, one of the Catholic Church’s most progressive figures. _Contributors_. David Bloor, Daniel Boyarin, Mary Baine Campbell, Lorraine Daston, Arnold I. Davidson, John Forrester, Kenneth J. Gergen, Simon Goldhill, Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Julia Kristeva, Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini, Christopher Norris, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Richard Shusterman, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Jeffrey Stout, Gianni Vattimo. (shrink)

This essay is the journal editor's introduction to part 3 of an ongoing symposium on quietism. With reference to writings of James Joyce, Francis Picabia, J. M. Coetzee, Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, Elaine Pagels, and Karen King—and with extended reference to Jonathan Lear's study of “cultural devastation,” Radical Hope—Jeffrey Perl explores the possibility that the fear of anomie (“anomiphobia”) is misplaced. He argues that, in comparison with the violence and narrowness of any given social order, anomie may well be (...) preferable, and, in any case, may be no more than another name for quietism. (shrink)

This essay, by the editor of Common Knowledge, introduces the sixth and final installment of “Fuzzy Studies,” the journal's “Symposium on the Consequence of Blur.” Suggesting that “Fuzzy Studies” should be understood in the context of a desultory campaign against zeal conducted in the journal for almost twenty years, he explains that the editors' assumption has been that any authentic case for the less adamant modes of thinking, or the less focused ways of seeing, needs to be unenthusiastic and carefully (...) ramified. To establish the distinction between overenthused and unemphatic approaches to blur, he contrasts the ecstatically amorphous “Blur building” (on Switzerland's Lake Neuchâtel) with examples of classical Chinese landscape painting. Elizabeth Diller and Richard Scofidio, in their book blur: the making of nothing, chronicle the development of their plans for the Blur building and, in the process, inadvertently show that, to overbear various negative associations of blur and fog, the authors/architects grew self-contradictorily emphatic about the need to produce de-emphasis in architecture and in modern life. Perl shows how this self-contradiction appears also in phenomenology-inflected writings on blur by T. J. Clark, Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Kraus, J.-P. Sartre, and Georges Bataille, but not in the work of the phenomenologist (and sinologist) François Jullien, whose book The Great Image Has No Form analyzes the role of blur in classical Chinese art theory and practice. Where traditional Western painting, Jullien argues, calls for voyeuristically intense focus, traditional Chinese painting stimulates “dé-tente, relaxation or ‘untensing’.” Intense focus on a blur is still, Perl observes, an intense focus. In describing a painting by the Yuan Dynasty master Ni Zan, Perl concludes that the only way to be un-self-contradictorily positive about fuzziness, whether in logic or aesthetics, is to de-reify and de-differentiate with the aim of achieving blandness. (shrink)

In this introduction to part three of the Common Knowledge symposium “Fuzzy Studies: On the Consequence of Blur,” the journal’s editor argues that blur is not a medium of concealment, confusion, or evasion. Making distinctions between kinds of relative unclarity, he reserves the word blur for the kind that results from de-differentiating objects or qualities or states of affairs whose differences have been overstated. To refine what blur is and is not, he compares kinds of unclarity found in images by (...) Giotto, Rubens, Hokusai, Kunitora, Manet, Zeshin, and Richter. With reference to art criticism by Hubert Damisch, Wayne Andersen, Anthony Hughes, Robert Storr, Julian Bell, Christopher Prendergast, and especially T. J. Clark, he agrees that choosing between focus and blur can be a moral decision, though not in the sense for which Clark arraigns the Impressionists. Characterizing the way of seeing that Clark encourages in The Painting of Modern Life as a form of staring, this essay argues that “lean and hungry looking” is indecent, whereas unfocused receptivity is irenic. What Bell calls the “aestheticized halfheartedness” of Manet is redescribed here as a genre of moral heroism, and the essay concludes that it is differentiation that is on morally shaky ground. (shrink)

This essay review is focused on Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart's book Peace-Making and the Imagination: Papua New Guinea Perspectives but also discusses in some detail other ethnographic and historical works. The reviewer finds that, in every case of peacemaking in Papua New Guinea that Strathern and Stewart consider, the exodus from one conflict proves to be the genesis of another, and he concludes that the insuperable question posed by their study is whether any peace ever transcends the war (...) that it supposedly concludes. The reviewer also finds that, unobtrusively, Strathern and Stewart offer transcultural wisdom about conflict resolution, and he lists seven exemplary instances. To this list, he adds a few more of his own, drawn from his reading of works by the ethnographer Rupert Stasch and the historians Rogers Brubaker and Tara Zahra. This set of principles, which is commended to the improbable attention of students of diplomacy, is founded on belief that imagination, rather than instrumental reason, and ritual action, rather than negotiation, are the best means of achieving peace. (shrink)

The Alternative Model of Personality Disorders integrates several theoretical models of personality functioning, including interpersonal theory. The interpersonal circumplex dimensions of warmth and dominance can be conceptualized as traits similar to those in AMPD Criterion B, but interpersonal theory also offers dynamic hypotheses about how these variables that change from moment to moment, which help to operationalize some of the processes alluded to in AMPD Criterion A. In the psychotherapy literature, dynamic interpersonal behaviors are thought to be critical for identifying (...) therapeutic alliance ruptures, yet few studies have examined moment-to-moment interpersonal behaviors that are associated with alliance ruptures at an idiographic level. The current study examined the concurrent and cross-lagged relationships between interpersonal behaviors and alliance ruptures within each session in the famous Gloria films. Interpersonal behaviors as well as alliance ruptures were calculated at half minute intervals for each dyad. We identified distinct interpersonal patterns associated with alliance ruptures for each session: Gloria ’s warmth was positively related with withdrawal ruptures concurrently in the session with Carl Rogers; Gloria’s dominance and coldness were related with increased confrontation ruptures in the session with Fritz Perls concurrently, while her coldness was also predicted by confrontation ruptures at previous moments; lastly, both Gloria’s dominance and Albert Ellis’s submissiveness were positively related with withdrawal ruptures. These interpersonal patterns demonstrated the promise of using AMPD dimensions to conceptualize momentary interpersonal processes related to therapy ruptures, as well as the clinical importance of attuning to repetitive, dyad-specific interpersonal cues of ruptures within each session. (shrink)

Bien qu’on ne puisse réduire la cohérence narrative des actions racontées par le quatrième évangile à une intrigue unique, une intrigue principale articule et unifie toutes les autres: c’est l’intrigue d’action de Jésus qui le montre «posant son âme» dans une souveraine liberté, accomplissant ainsi l’oeuvre que le Père lui a donnée. La trajectoire des autres personnages est subordonnée à cette intrigue centrale, comme le montre l’exemple des disciples; quant aux micro-récits, ils peuvent pour la plupart être lus comme des (...) anticipations ou des figures de l’oeuvre unique accomplie par Jésus à la croix. (shrink)

In the first part of the article the author discusses the use of the word 'fact'. In the second he uses his conclusions to "throw light on some of the discussions of the logical atomists." he discusses austin, Russell, And strawson. The author concludes that it a mistake to identify questions of ontology with questions of language, Which arises because of a confusion with the term 'fact'. (staff).

Gold & Stoljar 's attempt to disentangle the body-mind problem in time for the end of the decade of the brain deserves praise for its diligence and courage in moving onto the treacherous ground of interdisciplinary discourse. In making their point, they should not have stopped half-way: a more clearly defined experimental paradigm seems necessary to solve this exciting and substantial problem.

This paper considers Cassius Dio's account of the early worship of Augustus. Its main focus is the number of cults consecrated to the worship of Rome's new undisputed leader and his father, the now deceased and deified Divus Iulius, after the triumvir, on his way back from Alexandria in 29 b.c.e., wintered in Asia Minor. In his account of how the first official worship of Augustus was organized, Dio describes how Augustus let two separate cults inaugurate: a joint cult to (...) the worship of Divus Iulius and the goddess Thea Roma—a Greek deity, which since the second century served as a personification of Roman rule or Roman power—and a personal cult to the worship of the victorious triumvir. (shrink)

Este breve trabajo trata de presentar a personas poco expertas en temas filosóficos esa realidad cotidiana y misteriosa que es el valor. Se pone en relación la dimensión axiológica con las etapas biográficas del ser humano, en especial, con la de la juventud -a quien esta comunicación se dirigía-. Y, puesto que hoy es un tema recurrente el de la crisis de los valores, se trata de entender en que estriba esa famosa crisis.

In an article in an earlier edition of the Journal of Medical Ethics (1) Dr Iglesias bases her analysis upon the mediaeval interpretation of Platonic metaphysics and Aristotelian logic as given by Aquinas. Propositional forms are applied to the analysis of experience. This results in a very abstract analysis. The essential connection of events and their changing temporal relationships are ignored. The dichotomy between body and soul is a central concept. The unchanging elements in experience are assumed to be more (...) real than the actual world of experienced process. Such a view makes the analysis of the temporal factors in experience impossible. Its abstractness is quite unsuitable for the analysis of the ontological structure and development of the neonate from fertilisation to birth. A N Whitehead made the notion of organism central to his philosophy. He refused to place human experience outside nature, or admit dualism. His philosophy of organism is an attempt to uncover the essential elements connecting human experience with the physical and biological sciences. Time, change and process are, in his view, more real than the static abstractions obtainable by the use of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. Use of the latter negates the essential connectedness of events and the importance of temporarily and change (2). In this paper I argue that the embryo, being an organism, is not analysable in terms of thinghood. It is a process. To apply Aristotelian logical concepts to it is to distort the real nature of the datum. (shrink)

El libro del italiano Paolo Flores D'arcais "el desafío oscurantista", recientemente traducido al español, representa un intento vigoroso de afirmación del humanismo y de la ciencia moderna en clave explícitamente antirreligiosa, reduciendo toda referencia transcendente a los mecanismos de la ilusión humana. Es un texto apto para ensayar un dialogo polémico sobre cuestiones de fondo. Especialmente pertinente es el estudio del concepto de autonomía moral y de las consecuencias epistemológicas y éticas de la idea de ciencia presentadas por el autor (...) y con las que este trabajo pretende confrontarse desde una perspectiva explícitamente creyente. (shrink)

Intentaré primero decir qué significa "progreso" y "progresismo" en el uso que habitualmente se hace de estos términos hoy ; trataré, en segundo lugar, de ofrecer los referentes fundamentales que componen la idea de progreso para, desde ahí, hacer ver la incoherencia de ciertos progresismos hodiernos ; a continuación presentaré el vínculo histórico entre la idea de progreso y la religión judeo-cristiana. Entonces veremos el proceso de secularización moderno y su mentalidad progresista como una "mundianización" (legítima y ambigua al tiempo) (...) de la visión judeo-cristiana del mundo y de la historia. Al final, ofreceré alguna reflexión sobre lo que considero legítimo e ilegítimo en la actitud progresista. (shrink)