This essay explores the important role played by the figure of the virgin girl at the centre of The Beast and The Sovereign. Derrida hints that she may offer a figure between the beast and the sovereign, between the two marionettes of Nature and Culture. Moreover, it seems that she is both what props up the fabled distinction between man and animal and at the same time that upon which man erects himself as sovereign lord and master. Taking Derrida's suggestions (...) further, I argue that the virgin girl both does and undoes sovereign power as phallic power. She is the figure behind the erection of sovereignty. Indeed, her appearance is both necessary and threatening insofar as she both erects sovereign phallic power and threatens to reveal its impotence. In this way, the girl operates between feminine and masculine, between Nature and Culture, between the beast and the sovereign, particularly as her virginity and its deflowering are essential to the cut between the two sides of these traditional binaries. Finally, her appearance is telling in relation to the movements and rhythms of Derrida's deconstructive approach to philosophy and literature in this seminar and in his work more generally. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Little Hans’s Little SisterKelly OliverIn an important sense, Freud’s metapsychology is built on the back of animal phobias, which he repeatedly trots out whenever he needs to substantiate his theories of the castration complex, anxiety, and even the foundational Oedipal complex.1 From a feminist perspective, it is fascinating that behind the animal phobias that define Freud’s work—Little Hans’s horse, the Rat Man, the Wolf Man—there are consistently fantasies of (...) matricide, self-birth, and womb envy. Perhaps more significantly, there are sisters who both torment and titillate their brothers and thereby contribute to the onset of their phobias. Freud relegates to the background these terrible sisters and their abjected mothers to put the father at the center of animal phobia. In this essay, I will explore the mothers and sisters effaced by the father-animal and the ways in which they “bite back” in Freud’s own analysis of animal phobias.Eat or Be EatenIn the major cases of animal phobia that Freud analyzes and repeatedly invokes throughout his writings, from the “Analysis of Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy” (1909a) on, he identifies the threat posed by the animal with the father’s castration threats; the boy-child’s fear of being bitten by the animal in question is interpreted as a fear of castration. For example, in his analysis of Little Hans (the Five Year-Old Boy), Hans is afraid that a horse will bite him. Freud interprets his horse phobia as the substitution of the horse for his father, from whom he fears castration as punishment for his desires for his mother. Hans has ambivalent feelings toward his father, whom he both loves and fears, and “solves” the problem by splitting his father into the good father and the [End Page 9] bad father, the latter represented by the horse. The Rat Man and the Wolf Man both get their names from the animals that they fear will bite or devour them.The Rat Man is named for his famous story of an “Eastern” punishment whereby rats used their teeth to bore into the anus of the victim (Freud 1909b, 166). It doesn’t take long for Freud to discover that one of the imagined victims of this punishment is the patient’s father. The rest of the analysis turns around the patient’s relationship with his father, his father’s disapproval of his sexual relations, and the patient’s imagined punishment associated with sex. The Rat Man’s phobic fantasies involve being devoured by rats, or his father being devoured by rats as a sort of punishment levied for his father’s cruelty and the patient’s own sexual indiscretions. Later in his analysis, Freud links the rat phobia to anal eroticism associated with the patient’s childhood being plagued by worms. The rats come to represent many things, including money, disease, the penis, and children. The association between rats and children involves, among other things, the fact that as a child, the patient liked to bite people.The Wolf Man is also afraid of being devoured by animals. Although the fear of being devoured or bitten by wolves is central to Freud’s analysis, the patient reports other animal phobias—butterflies, caterpillars, swine—some involving similar fears. In the case of the Wolf Man, Freud interprets the dreaded wolf as a father substitute that threatens to devour the patient as he had seen a wolf devour seven little goats in a fairy-tale book that his sister used to torment him with as a child: “Whenever he caught sight of this picture [of a wolf] he began to scream like a lunatic that he was afraid of the wolf coming and eating him up. His sister, however, always succeeded in arranging so that he was obliged to see this picture, and was delighted at his terror” (Freud 1918, 16). Freud surmised that in the cases of the Wolf Man and of Little Hans, their fathers used to pretend to want to gobble them up (Freud 1925, 104). He likens this to another case of a young American whose father read him stories aboutan... (shrink)

Vitalism was long viewed as the most grotesque view in biological theory: appeals to a mysterious life-force, Romantic insistence on the autonomy of life, or worse, a metaphysics of an entirely living universe. In the early twentieth century, attempts were made to present a revised, lighter version that was not weighted down by revisionary metaphysics: " organicism ". And philosophers since the Vienna Circle (Schlick, Frank and later Nagel) criticized Driesch and Bergson's " neovitalism " as a too-strong ontological commitment (...) to the existence of certain entities or " forces ", over and above the system of causal relations studied by mechanistic science, rejecting the weaker form, organicism, as well. But there has been some significant scholarly " push-back " against this orthodox attitude, notably pointing to the 18th-century Montpellier vitalists to show that there are different historical forms of vitalism, including how they relate to mainstream scientific practice (Wolfe and Normandin, eds. 2013). Additionally, some trends in recent biology that run counter to genetic reductionism and the informational model of the gene present themselves as organicist (Gilbert and Sarkar 2000, Moreno and Mossio 2015). Here, we examine some cases of vitalism in the twentieth century and today, not just as a historical form but as a significant metaphysical and scientific model. We argue for vitalism's conceptual originality without either reducing it to mainstream models of science or presenting it as an alternate model of science, by focusing on historical forms of vitalism, logical empiricist critiques thereof and the impact of synthetic biology on current (re-)theorizing of vitalism. (shrink)

Philosophers have argued that stakes affect knowledge: a given amount of evidence may suffice for knowledge if the stakes are low, but not if the stakes are high. By contrast, empirical work on the influence of stakes on ordinary knowledge ascriptions has been divided along methodological lines: “evidence‐fixed” prompts rarely find stakes effects, while “evidence‐seeking” prompts consistently find them. We present a cross‐cultural study using both evidence‐fixed and evidence‐seeking prompts with a diverse sample of 17 populations in 11 countries, speaking (...) 14 languages. Our study is the first to use an evidence‐seeking prompt cross‐culturally, and includes several previously untested populations (including indigenous populations). Across cultures, we do not find evidence of a stakes effect with our evidence‐fixed prompt, but do with our evidence‐seeking prompt. We argue that the divergent results reveal a tension within folk epistemology: people's beliefs about when it is appropriate to ascribe knowledge differ significantly from their actual practice in ascribing knowledge. (shrink)

In Animal Rites, Cary Wolfe examines contemporary notions of humanism and ethics by reconstructing a little known but crucial underground tradition of theorizing the animal from Wittgenstein, Cavell, and Lyotard to Lévinas, Derrida, ...

Bringing these two emergent areas of thought into direct conversation in Before the Law, Cary Wolfe fosters a new discussion about the status of nonhuman animals and the shared plight of humans and animals under biopolitics.

Immanuel Kant’s position on special revelation is a matter of debate. Here I discuss Kant’s position in detail and compare it to that of Richard Swinburne. I examine both philosophers’ views on the assertability of special revelation, its contingency, whether it is necessary, the possibility of error, and appropriate methods of interpretation. I argue that, like Swinburne, Kant finds belief in special revelation to be acceptable, even beneficial, under certain circumstances.

Na primeira parte, fazemos um levantamento das ocorrências de pithanon (‘persuasivo’) e termos afins em textos e fragmentos do estoicismo antigo referentes à persuasão de asseríveis e argumentos e em textos e fragmentos em que a lógica estoica se apresenta como ferramenta para evitar a persuasão dos sofismas e o sábio estoico como aquele que capaz de vencer essa persuasão por sua perícia em dialética. Feito isso, consideramos criticamente as teses de Chiaradona, Sedley e Tieleman, para quem Crisipo está interessado (...) em formas extralógicas de discurso. Avaliaremos também a tese de Tieleman segundo a qual Crisipo usa premissas persuasivas para fins construtivos. Em nossas conclusões, descartamos a tese sobre o reconhecimento de verdades extralógicas por Crisipo com base no ideal do sábio estoico. Concluímos que, no estoicismo, (1) pithanon refere-se principalmente a falsas afirmações, argumentos e representações e (2) que o sábio estoico não pode ser persuadido, mas pode persuadir seus ouvintes a fim de preparar suas almas para receber as doutrinas estoicas. (shrink)

An essay on whether or not we today are the 'heirs' of the materialist Enlightenment.

We begin with an analysis of the persuasiveness of assertibles and arguments in the texts and fragments of Ancient Stoicism, with a particular focus on those in which Stoic logic is presented as the tool to avoid the persuasiveness of sophisms and the Stoic sage as the one who can efface this persuasiveness by his expertise in dialectics. We then critically assess the contemporary consensus on the interpretation of these texts (notably in Chiaradona, Sedley and Tieleman), according to which Chrysippus (...) is interested in extra-logical forms of discourse. Tieleman further argues that Chrysippus uses persuasive premises for constructive purposes. We reject the thesis concerning Chrysippus' recognition of extra-logical truths, on the basis of the Stoic ideal of the sage, concluding instead that in Stoicism, (1) pithanon refers primarily to false assertibles, arguments and presentations and (2) the Stoic sage cannot be persuaded, but he can persuade his students in order to prepare their souls to receive the Stoic doctrines. (shrink)

Interpretations of family carer empowerment in much nursing research, and in home‐care practice and policy, rarely attend explicitly to families’ choice or control about the nature, extent or length of their involvement, or control over the impact on their own health. In this article, structural empowerment is used as an analytic lens to examine home‐care nurses’ interactions with families in one Western Canadian region. Data were collected from 75 hrs of fieldwork in 59 interactions (18 nurses visiting 16 families) and (...) interviews with 12 nurses and 11 family carers. Generally, nurses prioritized client empowerment, and their practice with families appeared oriented to supporting their role and needs as carers (i.e. rather than as unique individuals beyond the caring role), and reinforcing the caring role through validation and recognition. Although families generally expressed appreciation for these interactions, a structural empowerment lens illustrates how the broad context of home care shapes the interpretation and practice of empowerment in ways that can, paradoxically, be disempowering for families. Opportunities to effectively support family choice and control when a client is being cared for at home are discussed. (shrink)

In a recent Inquiry article Louis Pascal argues that the problem of massive starvation in the modern world is the result of a genetically-based human propensity to produce as many offspring as possible, regardless of ecological conditions. In this paper biological and anthropological objections to Pascal's thesis are discussed as well as the conclusions he draws from it. It is suggested that natural selection has produced humans who are flexible in their reproductive behavior in order to cope with rapidly changing (...) environments. The implications of both arguments for the population movement and the attempt to eliminate starvation are discussed. (shrink)

The B case jumps ahead several years and outlines the turnaround efforts SBM undertook to address its grave missteps: shifting to a consumer-oriented, integrity-focused management style; providing greater transparency and communication; and establishing a corporate ethics committee and a Snow Brands Code of Conduct. In June 2002, after much consideration and reflection on Snow Brand’s issues (as outlined in the A case), Hiwasa joined its new board as its sole outside director, serving as the impetus for the changes the company (...) made. Her appointment indicated SBM was indeed serious about reform and revitalization. (shrink)

In What Is Posthumanism? he carefully distinguishes posthumanism from transhumanism (the biotechnological enhancement of human beings) and narrow definitions of the posthuman as the hoped-for transcendence of materiality.

This is an introduction to a collection of articles on the conceptual history of epigenesis, from Aristotle to Harvey, Cavendish, Kant and Erasmus Darwin, moving into nineteenth-century biology with Wolff, Blumenbach and His, and onto the twentieth century and current issues, with Waddington and epigenetics. The purpose of the topical collection is to emphasize how epigenesis marks the point of intersection of a theory of biological development and a theory of active matter. We also wish to show that the concept (...) of epigenesis existed prior to biological theorization and that it continues to permeate thinking about development in recent biological debates. (shrink)

Este artigo é uma tentativa de esclarecer a relação entre a posição dissidente assumida por estoicos antigos em seu contexto social e a maneira corajosa como defenderam suas posições políticas a partir de alguns princípios do sistema estoico, o que levou muitos deles ao exílio e à morte durante o Período Imperial Romano (terceira fase da civilização romana, que se estendeu de 27 AEC a 476 EC). Sugerimos que a marginalização desses grupos, bem como a sua perseguição, posiciona os estoicos (...) de maneira única, tanto em seu próprio tempo como no nosso. (shrink)

In this Introduction we lay out the context of a ‘Continental philosophy of biology’ and suggest why Georges Canguilhem’s place in such a philosophy is important. There is not one single program for Continental philosophy of biology, but Canguilhem’s vision, which he referred to at one stage as ‘biological philosophy’, is a significant one, located in between the classic holism-reductionism tensions, significantly overlapping with philosophy of medicine, philosophy of technology and other themes moving away from the more common existential and (...) phenomenological motifs of post-war European thought. Chapters examine (among other themes) his relation to Lebensphilosophie, to authors such as Kant, Nietzsche and Marjorie Grene, and to current theoretical biology. (shrink)

This Open Access book combines philosophical and historical analysis of various forms of alternatives to mechanism and mechanistic explanation, focusing on the 19th century to the present. It addresses vitalism, organicism and responses to materialism and its relevance to current biological science. In doing so, it promotes dialogue and discussion about the historical and philosophical importance of vitalism and other non-mechanistic conceptions of life. It points towards the integration of genomic science into the broader history of biology. It details a (...) broad engagement with a variety of nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century vitalisms and conceptions of life. In addition, it discusses important threads in the history of concepts in the United States and Europe, including charting new reception histories in eastern and south-eastern Europe. While vitalism, organicism and similar epistemologies are often the concern of specialists in the history and philosophy of biology and of historians of ideas, the range of the contributions as well as the geographical and temporal scope of the volume allows for it to appeal to the historian of science and the historian of biology generally. (shrink)

Our aim in this paper is to bring to light the importance of the notion of économie animale in Montpellier vitalism, as a hybrid concept which brings together the structural and functional dimensions of the living body – dimensions which hitherto had primarily been studied according to a mechanistic model, or were discussed within the framework of Stahlian animism. The celebrated image of the bee-swarm expresses this structural-functional understanding of living bodies quite well: “One sees them press against each other, (...) mutually supporting each other, forming a kind of whole, in which each living part, in its own way, by means of the correspondence and directions of its motions, enables this kind of life to be sustained in the body” (Encyclopédie, article “Observation,” by Ménuret de Chambaud). What is important here is that every component part is always a living part, i.e., every structural unit is always functional. Interestingly, while the twin notions of ‘animal economy’ and organisation are presented as improvements over a mechanistic perspective, they are nonetheless compatible with an expanded sense of mechanism and by extension, with materialism as reflected notably in the writings of Ménuret and Bordeu. We thus propose both a revision and reconstruction of the historical status of the ‘animal economy’, and a reflection on its conceptual status. (shrink)

Whose Keeper? is a profound and creative treatise on modernity and its challenge to social science. Alan Wolfe argues that modern liberal democracies, such as the United States and Scandinavia, have broken with traditional sources of mortality and instead have relied upon economic and political frameworks to define their obligations to one another. Wolfe calls for reinvigorating a sense of community and thus a sense of obligation to the larger society.

This article develops a media philosophical framework for addressing the intersection of epigenetics and complex dynamical systems in theoretical biology. In particular, it argues that the theoretical humanities need to think critically about the computability of epigenomic regulation, as well as speculatively about the possibility of an epigenomics beyond complexity. The fact that such a conceptual framework does not exist suggests not only a failure to engage with the mathematics of complexity, but also a failure to engage with its history. (...) Both epigenetics and the application of complex dynamical systems to biology originate in the mid-twentieth-century work of Conrad Hal Waddington. The article demonstrates how this genealogy of epigenetic complexity reveals the need for a speculative conception of epigenomic mediation beyond mathematical complexity. Using Whitehead’s philosophy as a conceptual anchor, the “epimedial landscape” serves as a first pass at a media philosophical revision of the complex dynamical systems view of the epigenetic landscape. (shrink)

In this paper we will focus on the following points in Epictetus. First, we will concentrate our attention on the celebrated distinction between things up to us and things not up to us. Second, we will survey the distinction between the material and its use. According to this distinction, all external things are not up to us and consequently have no intrinsic value, although, as materials for the capacity of choice, their use has value, since humans can use things well (...) or badly. Third, we will demonstrate that the use of the materials corresponds to the use of presentations. Finally, we will present the three topics of Epictetus’ philosophy: the topic relative to desire, the topic relative to impulse and the topic relative to assent, being the first concerned with judgments about things and our desires; the second, about impulses and adequate actions; and the third, about assent and persuasiveness of presentations. The knowledge contained in these three topics constitute, for Epictetus, what we should know to make good use of presentations and, consequently, to achieve the human good, which is a capacity of choice according to nature that has at its disposal a comprehensive set of correct opinions about reality. (shrink)

When managing their emotions, individuals often recruit the help of others; however, most emotion regulation research has focused on self-regulation. Theories of emotion and aging suggest younger and older adults differ in the emotion regulation strategies they use when regulating their own emotions. If how individuals regulate their own emotions and the emotions of others are related, these theorised age differences may also emerge for interpersonal emotion regulation. In two studies, younger and older adults’ intrapersonal and interpersonal emotion regulation strategy (...) choices were examined via self-report and behavioural assessments of regulating the emotions of another participant (Study 1; N = 80) and of a virtual human (Study 2; N = 100). Across both studies, younger adults reported greater intrapersonal suppression but not greater reappraisal. Younger and older adults were generally similar (supported by Bayesian analyses) for both self-reported and behavioural interpersonal emotion regulation strategies. Behavioural interpersonal emotion regulation was not related to self-reported intra- and interpersonal preferences. These results suggest interpersonal emotion regulation in ageing may show distinct patterns from theorised age differences in intrapersonal emotion regulation. (shrink)

There are many lessons that bioethics can learn from the Holocaust. Forefront are the lessons from the Nuremberg trials and the formation of research ethics. An often-overlooked lesson is how the Nazi regime was able to construct a hierarchy in such a way that influenced people to act in horrendous ways. Fernandes & Ecret, writing in Conatus – Journal of Philosophy 4, no. 2, highlight the influence of hierarchy on the moral silence of nurses and physicians within the Nazi regime. (...) While we greatly enjoyed the paper, and think it is an important contribution, we find several misrepresentations of current bioethical discourse. There is not a global acceptance of euthanasia or medical aid in dying, the contemporary position in bioethics does not favor removal of conscience-based protections, and the lack of personal conscience-based protections was not the main factor in the analysis of Nazi medical hierarchy. The authors’ overall conclusion that their analysis suggests the importance of strengthening personal conscience-based objections to prevent medical hierarchy from influencing immoral behavior misses the more significant issue of institutional behavior. Instead, we argue, that the lessons from the analysis of Nazi nurses and physicians speak to the importance of protecting patients from institutional conscience-based objections that violate patient rights of access to legal medical services. This paper will respond to the misrepresentations. We highlight the growing threats to health care access from religious affiliated institutions, the threats to professional ethics and physician and nurse scope of practice. We conclude that the analysis by Fernandes & Ecret does point out an important lesson, but rather than showing the importance of individual conscience protections, it speaks to the importance of protecting patient rights. (shrink)

Nurse Ethicists bring a unique perspective to clinical ethics consultation. This perspective provides an appreciation of ethical tensions that will exist beyond the consult question into the moral space of patient care. These tensions exist even when an ethically preferable plan of action is identified. Ethically appropriate courses of action can still lead to moral dilemmas for others. The nurse ethicist provides a lens well suited to identify and respond to these dilemmas. The nurse–patient relationship is the ethical foundation of (...) nursing practice and this relational ontology is well suited to addressing ethical dilemmas that exist prior to and beyond the initial consult question. This paper will describe one nurse ethicist’s phronetic and pragmatic approach to a clinical ethics consult elucidated through feminist ethics and systems thinking. This paper will describe the theoretical basis for this method, present a case, and describe how this consultation approach provides a rich analysis based around relationships and responsibilities that also highlights the important ethical tensions within the social structure that exists around the patient and continue after the consult question is answered. (shrink)

Cet article vise à expliciter la notion de « rêve matérialiste » à partir d’une réflexion sur l’ouvrage de Diderot, Le Rêve de D’Alembert. Quel lien y a-t-il entre le matérialisme philosophique proclamé dans ce livre et la forme du rêve qui donne un caractère inédit à la présentation de cette philosophie? Une approche purement textuelle montrerait, déjà, une indissociabilité particulière entre forme et contenu; mais l’approche proposée ici s’attache à la manière dont une certaine idée du rêve sert de (...) condition nécessaire conceptuelle à l’élaboration du matérialisme de Diderot : à l’affirmation de l’unicité du monde matériel sans perdre de vue l’état mental d’un sujet rêvant.This article seeks to explicate the notion of what I term the ‘materialist dream’, on the basis of an examination of Diderot’s work D’Alembert’s Dream. What might the connection be, between the materialist philosophy put forth as the content of the work, and the form of the dream which gives a highly idiosyncratic character to the presentation of this philosophy? A purely textual, literary analysis would itself show a particular kind of inseparability between form and content here; but the analysis suggested here focuses on how a certain idea of the dream serves as a necessary conceptual condition for the elaboration of Diderot’s materialism : for the affirmation of the unity of the material world without losing sight of the mental states of a dreaming subject. (shrink)