Jaká je role historie v době post-faktické? Může nám filosofie historie pomoci bránit se proti cílenému zneužívání historických narativů na ideologickém základě? Tento článek zkoumá filosofické reflexe historie a jejich vztah k ideologiím. Je ukázáno, že na počátku této filosofické disciplíny filosofové jako Karl Popper nebo C. G. Hempel usilovali o eliminaci politického a ideologického zabarvení historie. Avšak narativistické bádání Haydena Whita naznačuje, že takový cíl je nedosažitelný. Antirealistická filosofie historie, zastoupena L. J. Goldsteinem, dokonce odmítá reálnou minulost jako cíl (...) historického bádání a zdůrazňuje situovanost historiků ve vztahu k důkazům. Představená verze historického antirealismu chápe historii jako současné zkoumání, které sdílí řadu rysů s kritickým myšlením a zaměřuje se především na zkoumání empirických dat, jež vyžadují postulaci nepřístupné minulosti. Tato podobnost by měla být zdůrazněna skrze výuku historie jako zkoumání, nikoliv jako pouhého příběhu. (shrink)

In _Civilization and Its Discontents_, Freud made abundantly clear what he thought about the biblical injunction, first articulated in Leviticus 19:18 and then elaborated in Christian teachings, to love one's neighbor as oneself. "Let us adopt a naive attitude towards it," he proposed, "as though we were hearing it for the first time; we shall be unable then to suppress a feeling of surprise and bewilderment." After the horrors of World War II, the Holocaust, Stalinism, and Yugoslavia, Leviticus 19:18 seems (...) even less conceivable—but all the more urgent now—than Freud imagined. In _The Neighbor_, three of the most significant intellectuals working in psychoanalysis and critical theory collaborate to show how this problem of neighbor-love opens questions that are fundamental to ethical inquiry and that suggest a new theological configuration of political theory. Their three extended essays explore today's central historical problem: the persistence of the theological in the political. In "Towards a Political Theology of the Neighbor," Kenneth Reinhard supplements Carl Schmitt's political theology of the enemy and friend with a political theology of the neighbor based in psychoanalysis. In "Miracles Happen," Eric L. Santner extends the book's exploration of neighbor-love through a bracing reassessment of Benjamin and Rosenzweig. And in an impassioned plea for ethical violence, Slavoj Žižek's "Neighbors and Other Monsters" reconsiders the idea of excess to rehabilitate a positive sense of the inhuman and challenge the influence of Levinas on contemporary ethical thought. A rich and suggestive account of the interplay between love and hate, self and other, personal and political, _The Neighbor_ will prove to be a touchstone across the humanities and a crucial text for understanding the persistence of political theology in secular modernity. (shrink)

The tremendous toll that COVID-19 has taken on this country’s minority population is the most recent reminder of the health disparities between people of color and people who classify themselves as white. There are many reasons for these disparities, but one that gets less attention than it deserves is the lack of physicians of color available to treat patients of color.

Despite the concern with oppressive systems and practices there have been few attempts to analyse the general concept of oppression. Recently, Iris Marion Young has argued that it is not possible to analyse oppression as a unitary moral category. Rather, the term ‘oppression’ refers to several distinct structures, namely, exploitation, marginalisation, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. This paper rejects Young's claim and advances a general theory of oppression. Drawing insight from American chattel slavery and the situation of the German Jews (...) during the 1930's, I argue that to be oppressed is to be unjustly denied the opportunity for what I call ‘resilient autonomy’. I argue that all instances of oppression can usefully be analysed in these terms. I test my analysis against each of Young's five structures of oppression, concluding that in each case they are captured by my analysis. (shrink)

This paper attempts to explore a number of conceptual issues surrounding genetic testing. It looks at the meaning of the terms, genetic information and genetic testing in relation to the definition set out by the Advisory Committee on Genetic Testing in the UK, and by the Task Force on Genetic Testing in the USA. It argues that the special arrangements that may be required for the regulation of genetic tests should not be determined by reference to the nature or technology (...) of the test, but by considering those morally relevant features that justify regulation. Failure to do so will lead to the regulation of genetic tests that need not be regulated, and would fail to cover other tests which should be regulated. The paper also argues that there is little in the nature of the properties of gene tests, using DNA or chromosomes, that in itself justifies a special approach. (shrink)

Hegel’s basic position so far on the various meanings of evil as necessary and thereby intelligible directly in the development of spirit might be summed up as follows. Evil is always a necessary moment of instability which gives impetus in the movement from various meanings of particularity to various meanings of universality; from the more abstract expression of potential unity and truth to the more actualized notion and unity.

Difference is a category of relationship lying between identity and non-identity, and equality and inequality. This concept is both the Confucian reflection of the real relationship between things in the world and the value ideal of Confucianism. The Confucian idea of difference, embodied in the view of human relationships, of world, and of nature, seeks to build a rational order based on difference, so as to reach a harmonious, united and ideal state. Confucians in the past dynasties continually interpreted difference (...) and raised it to the level of ontology, enriching the system of Confucianism. (shrink)

Understanding a proposition for an intelligent agent is an important epistemic concept. We first discuss intuitively general logic characteristics of understanding, and give a language and a semantics containing understanding as a modal operator. Secondly, we develop the system LU for the operator, give some results of its proof theory, and then we prove the frame soundness and frame completeness of LU.

Introduction: 1980s “New Enlightenment” and 1990s Deconstruction Jacques Derrida's Writing and Difference, a collection of essays originally published in the 1960s, was translated into Chinese and introduced to the Chinese-speaking intellectual world in 2001. That year, Derrida visited China for the first and last time before he passed away in 2004. He never had a chance to review his trip to China. However, prior to his trip, during an interview with Zhang Ning, the Chinese translator of Writing and Difference, Derrida (...) expressed that imaginative reference to China had always “occupied an extremely important place” in his…. (shrink)

Qu'y a-t-il de plus paradoxal et de plus profondément décevant que de ne plus pouvoir parler ouvertement aujourd'hui de la beauté sans être soupçonné de naïveté, tant elle a été elle-même frappée de mutisme voire d'interdiction par toutes les "déconstructions" de la métaphysique, toutes les "ruptures" des "avant-gardes artistiques", toutes les industries du divertissement de masse et toutes les formes de nihilisme qui en résultent? La beauté ne continue-t-elle pas, pourtant, de faire l'objet d'une irréductible expérience qui, modestement mais résolument, (...) féconde toujours l'existence humaine, dans sa dimension proprement esthétique, certes, mais aussi dans les domaines éthique (comme en amour et en amitié) et socio-politique (dans le partage du sensible nécessaire à tout sens commun)? C'est à redonner la parole et droit de cité à cette expérience de la beauté que nous espérons ici contribuer, en dialogue avec les Anciens et les Modernes, en nous instruisant à la fois des principes de la philosophie et des révélations de la littérature et des autres arts, comme de la vie la plus quotidienne. (shrink)

Early in the fourth century Constantine made Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire, and at once had reason to regret his having done so; for now not only the Church but the state was convulsed by controversies about the Holy Trinity. These controversies raged for over two hundred years, after which the bishops found new intellectual outlets, if not more rational ones, for their animosities. But Trinitarian trouble was not dead, only sleeping. The Great Schism of the eleventh and (...) twelfth centuries, which split the Western from the Eastern Church, took place, on its theological side, over a question concerning the Trinity. This was, of course, that most famous of all theological questions, the question of the procession of the Holy Ghost, or of the filioque. The Orthodox theory was that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father alone. The Western bishops, however, were equally adamant that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father filioque - 'and the Son'. (shrink)