BackgroundThe pandemic of Coronavirus Disease 2019 has burdened an unprecedented psychological stress on the front-line medical staff, who are at high risk of depression. While existing studies and theories suggest that factors such as gratitude, social support, and hope play a role in the risk of depression, few studies have combined these factors to explore the relationship between them.ObjectiveThis study examined the mediating roles of social support and hope in the relationship between gratitude and depression among front-line medical staff during (...) the pandemic of COVID-19.MethodsThis study used the Gratitude Questionnaire, the Perceived Social Support Scale, the State Hope Scale, and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale to examine the gratitude, social support, hope, and depression among 344 front-line medical workers in Wuhan, which was the hardest-hit area of COVID-19 in China.ResultsThe results showed that the prevalence of mild depressive disorder was 40.12% and the prevalence of major depressive disorder was 9.59% among front-line medical staff during the pandemic of COVID-19; gratitude has a direct and negative effect on depression. Gratitude was negative predictors of depression through the mediating variables of social support and hope [βgratitude–social support–depression = −0.096, 95%CI; βgratitude–hope–depression = −0.034, 95%CI], as well as via an indirect path from social support to hope [βgratitude–social support–hope–depression = −0.089, 95%CI ].ConclusionThe study findings indicate that gratitude as a positive emotion can reduce depression in medical staff by promoting social support and hope, respectively. Gratitude also reduced depression in health care workers through a chain mediating effect of social support and hope. Overall, gratitude can directly foster social support and hope, and protect people from stress and depression, which has implications for clinical interventions among front-line medical staff during the pandemic of COVID-19. (shrink)

ObjectiveThe large-scale epidemic of Coronavirus Disease 2019 has triggered unprecedented physical and psychological stress on health professionals. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence and risk factors of burnout syndrome, and the relationship between burnout and depressive symptoms among frontline medical staff during the COVID-19 epidemic in China.MethodsA total of 606 frontline medical staff were recruited from 133 cities in China using a cross-sectional survey. The Maslach Burnout Inventory was used to assess the level of burnout. Depressive symptoms were assessed (...) by the Patient Health Questionnaire Depression.ResultsDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, 36.5% of the medical staff experienced burnout. Personal and work-related factors were independently associated with burnout, including age, family income, having physical diseases, daily working hours, and profession of nurse. The correlation coefficients between the scores of each burnout subscale and the scores of depressive symptoms were 0.57 for emotional exhaustion, 0.37 for cynicism, and −0.41 for professional efficacy.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that the prevalence rate of burnout is extremely high among medical staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is associated with other psychological disorders, such as depression. Psychological intervention for medical staff is urgently needed. Young and less experienced medical staff, especially nurses, should receive more attention when providing psychological assistance. (shrink)

This article suggests a new reading for Oribasius’ Libri ad Eunapium 3.13.4. Based on evidence from both Greek and Syriac sources, it argues that the variant contained in Oribasius’ Synopsis ad Eustathium should be adopted as the correct reading of the original.

Gender in Chinese Philosophy The concept of gender is foundational to the general approach of Chinese thinkers. Yin and yang, core elements of Chinese cosmogony, involve correlative aspects of “dark and light,” “female and male,” and “soft and hard.” These notions, with their deeply-rooted gender connotations, recognize the necessity of interplay between these different forces … Continue reading Gender in Chinese Philosophy →.

Research has consistently documented that the death of a close family member can disrupt a family’s functional equilibrium and has a deleterious effect on adolescents’ adaptation; however, little attention has been paid to behavioral adaptation of adolescents after a loss in a collective setting. Attempting to fill this research gap, the objectives of the current study are: (1) to identify autonomy support profiles based on two centered figures (parents and head teachers) and (2) to examine whether these emerging profiles may (...) moderate the association between the two dimensions of grit (perseverance and consistency) and externalizing problem behavior in Chinese family-bereaved adolescents. A total of 763 family-bereaved adolescents aged from 13 to 18 years (60.3% girls; M age = 15.74; SD = 1.53) were involved in the current study; they were asked to fill a battery of self-report questionnaires. A latent profile analysis revealed three autonomy support profiles: high parental autonomy support–high teacher autonomy support (HPHT; n = 598), high parental autonomy support–low teacher autonomy support (HPLT; n = 34), and low parental autonomy support–low teacher autonomy support (LPLT; n = 131). Moreover, results from linear regression analyses, after controlling for relevant bereavement variables, sociodemographics, and social desirability, showed that perseverance and consistency were negatively related to externalizing problem behavior for adolescents within the HPHL profile; nevertheless, the association between perseverance and externalizing problem behavior turned to be positive for adolescents within the HPLT profile. The current study sheds light on the variability of the association between grit and family-bereaved adolescents’ behavioral adaptation and further enriches the beneficial effect of autonomy support on adaptive functions in a collective cultural setting. The interplay between grit and autonomy support from parents and teachers has a significant influence on buffering externalizing problem behavior among family-bereaved adolescents. (shrink)

Harry Harlow is credited with the discovery of learning set, a process whereby problem solving becomes essentially complete in a single trial of training. Harlow described that process as one that freed his primates from arduous trial-and-error learning. The capacity of the learner to acquire learning sets was in positive association with the complexity and maturation of their brains. It is here argued that Harlow's successful conveyance of learning-set phenomena is of historic significance to the philosophy of psychology. Learning set (...) is said to reflect the affirmation or rejection of hypotheses. Hypotheses are generated by the learner's brain, not its muscles. Thus, learning-set research served to advance the perspective that even nonhuman primates think and that their thinking reflects the active processing of information accrued from efforts to solve problems. Their learning processes are not simply the strengthening of some motor responses over others. Hence, learning-set research served to advance studies of animals as rational agents. This trend is serving to supplant the radical-behavioristic models, formulated earlier this century, with models predicated on rational processes for animals' complex learning and behavior. (shrink)

For achieving the sustainable development goals, green development has been raised to a high position for cities in China. The economic development in Northwest China is slow, the ecological environment is fragile, and the mineral resources are rich. Only through green development can we realize the comprehensive income of regional production development, rich life, and good ecology. This paper measures the green development efficiency of 30 prefecture-level cities in Northwest China by using DEA-SBM model of unexpected output, explores the differences (...) and causes of green development efficiency from the perspective of time and space through convergence coefficient, coordination matrix, GIS, and other methods, and empirically tests the impact of industrial structure, technological progress, and other driving factors on green development efficiency by using panel Tobit model. The results show that, on the whole, the efficiency of green development in Northwest China is low, path dependence is serious and unbalanced, the coordinated development effect of different regions is weak, and the spillover effect of core urban agglomerations has not been effectively exerted; from the perspective of driving factors, economic development, population density, traffic situation, and education investment can significantly improve the efficiency of urban green development, and the second is that the proportion of industries significantly hinders the improvement of green development efficiency, while the impact of scientific and technological innovation is not significant. Based on the empirical results, this paper believes that the harmonious development of natural environment and economic society can be realized only by improving the coordinated development effect among cities, implementing the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure, introducing excellent talents, and promoting the technological upgrading. (shrink)

Moral virtue development is grounded in social relationships that foster the socioemotional intelligence underlying moral virtue. Recent research shows a decrease in socioemotional intelligence with implications for moral virtue development. This project is a feasibility study of a theatrical intervention with parent-child dyads to increase socioemotional intelligence and proto-virtuous character by improving parent-child mutual responsiveness. Our theatrical approach combines direct development of mutual responsiveness and practice of moral virtue scripts, providing a powerful and seamless integration of philosophy, theatre art and (...) social science. (shrink)

At the point of death, a human being only has had the experience of nonexistence before birth and the experience of having lived his/her life after they were born. In the final analysis from the perspective of strict empiricism, the individual only has two options: the nonexistence before birth or the eventual reliving of one’s life. The return of one’s life is supported by the paradigm of a multiverse and an antimatter universe. This is atheism’s logical certainty.

In this work of philosophy, theology, and intellectual history, Duane Armitage offers a clear interpretation of Heidegger’s enigmatic theology as uniquely Pauline and Lutheran. He argues that the real impetus, aim, and structure of Heidegger’s philosophy of religion as well as his philosophy as a whole, are rooted in Pauline (and Lutheran) ontology. He thus demonstrates that continental philosophy of religion, and, to an extent, continental philosophy as a whole, is indebted to St. Paul and Martin Luther. This examination also (...) shows how much of continental thinking itself is traceable to Heidegger’s onto-theological critique and hence to Luther and St. Paul. Armitage argues that St. Paul and Luther remain the un-thought origins of postmodern thinking on religion, and perhaps postmodern thinking in general. (shrink)

Explore the importance of love with the youngest readers in a wonderfully accessible way. Even little children have big questions about life. Plato believed showing and receiving love makes us wise, and Love with Plato brings his philosophy to the youngest thinkers. Asking young readers what being loved feels like to them and how they can show others love prompts questions about how we treat one another and ourselves. This book will lead to inspiring conversations about loving people for what (...) is on the inside, and helping others do the same. Look for all six Big Ideas for Little Philosophers board books: Equality with Simone de Beauvoir, Happiness with Aristotle,Imagination with René Descartes, Kindness with Confucius, Love with Plato, and Truth with Socrates. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Practicing the Religious Self: Buddhist-Christian Identity as Social ArtifactDuane R. BidwellIt is somewhat paradoxical to write or speak about identity formation in two religious traditions that ultimately deny the reality of any identity that we might claim or fashion for ourselves. In the Christian traditions, a person’s true (or ultimate) identity is received through God’s action and grace in baptism; to foreground any other facet of the self, or (...) to anchor identity in anything but baptism, could be considered a form of idolatry. In the Buddhist traditions human identity is empty, woven not from an inherent or externally granted essence but through the interdependent arising of all things; 1 to cling to self and to identity as independent, enduring, immutable, or autonomous signals a mistaken understanding of reality.2 Indeed, as religious scholar Alice Keefe has written, “belief in the self as independent and self-existent is our fundamental delusion and root poison.” 3Yet day by day most of us experience our identities, including our religious, cultural, and social identities, as neither empty nor erased. On the contrary: they seem to be inscribed with enduring meaning. Knowledge has been chiseled into them through our participation in the rituals and relationships of the world. At times the very fullness of our identities can feel on the verge of overflowing. This sense of dynamic presence and fullness causes our identities to serve as important (and perhaps essential) tools for negotiating the hurly-burly of experience and relationship in the mundane, finite, material world.4 From this perspective, our religious identities are social artifacts, entities and meanings formed in between, or on the margins of, biological selves that are related to one another through communities of practice.5 These communal artifacts may then be interiorized by individuals as resources that can be employed in or offered back to the world—performed, if you will—through particular (and sometimes disciplined) practices.6The primacy of social process in creating and maintaining religious identity implies that community remains central to the process of fashioning the religious self in contemporary Buddhist and Christian practice. If this is true, it raises, of course, important questions about our understandings of ecclesiology and the nature of the sangha, theological anthropology and Buddhist understandings of the person. These questions [End Page 3] deserve to be answered, but they are too broad to be addressed here. My more modest intention is to contribute to generative conversation about religious identity formation by illustrating how my own religious identities as Buddhist and Christian have been practiced and performed as social artifacts in two particular instances. In a secondary sense, this essay serves as a reflection on pastoral work in a multifaith context, something “much needed in the Buddhist-Christian studies milieu.” 7Given the diverse academic approaches to Buddhist-Christian studies, it seems wise to begin by describing my own background and approach. By training I am a pastoral theologian, someone who seeks to understand critically the richness and complexity of human experiences and then to respond with appropriate, faithful, and effective acts of care. The psychological meta-theory of social constructionism serves as a primary conversation partner for my work; it invites me to ask “not what goes on ‘inside’ people, but what people go on inside of.” 8 For pragmatic reasons I tend to utilize David Tracy’s mutual critical (or revised) correlational method,9 and in the dialectic between understanding human experience and responding to it, I privilege liberationist theologies and religio-ethical norms of justice, love, and wisdom. My practice as a spiritual director and pastoral counselor seeks to promote practices of freedom for all people.10As a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) I am accountable to the Reformed tradition of Christian theology. My formal theological education occurred in the ecumenical context of a divinity school affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and at a diocesan seminary affiliated with the contemplative Anglican tradition. My informal training in Buddhist philosophy and practice occurred in the Theravada traditions of Southeast Asia, primarily through five years of participation in an immigrant congregation and weekly study with Thich Phap Nhan, a Vietnamese monk... (shrink)

Niebuhr's definitions of "Christ" and "culture" set up a problematic dualism that leads to a misrepresentation of the Christ-against-culture type. The paper proposes that instead of Niebuhr's "idealized" Christ, an embodied Christology locates Christ within culture. The tension, then, is not between Christ and culture, but between different cultural visions. A cultural vision with Christ as norm provides a discriminating ethic of normative practices to engage culture. Many scholars have recognized that Niebuhr not only develops a descriptive typology in Christ (...) and Culture, he also argues that the fifth type, Christ-the-transformer-of-culture, is the most adequate position. Almost everyone identifies with this type. Why is that? The problem is that the variety of meanings of "transformation" is not illuminated by Niebuhr's typology. An alternative typology is proposed which addresses these two problems: a richer development of three types that Niebuhr lumps together in his Christ-against-culture type; and the development of a typology to show that there are four different ways to understand what the church has meant by Christ-the-transformer-of-culture. (shrink)

This essay examines a key theme in the work of the medieval mystical theologian, Meister Eckhart, namely, the Father giving birth to the Son in the soul. It explores this theme in the light of feminist theology, and argues that Eckhart is deliberately applying to God a female act and therefore characteristic. Criticisms of the efficacy of such female imagery are considered, but countered through a defence of what is argued to be Eckhart’s incontestable qualification of the male symbol through (...) a metaphor based on a biological fact. In turn the image of women in the limited biological role of giving birth is critically examined, while Eckhart is argued in his life and work to have risen above any position that fixes and limits the roles and identities of women. Further it is shown that Eckhart has not simply substituted female imagery for male, thereby reinforcing binary gender opposition and any negative consequences that befall. Eckhart is rather shown to employ an androgynous and transgendered metaphor in that the male Father-God is simultaneously a female Mother-God. The nature and purpose of Eckhart’s transgendered metaphor is then explored in relation to its apophatic context. (shrink)

Duane Cady views warism and pacifism as polar extremes on a continuum that embraces a full spectrum of ethical positions on the morality of war and peace. Realizing that he could not intellectually defend the notions of just-war theory, he found that he was a reluctant pacifist. In this new edition of From Warism to Pacifism, Cady continues to expose the pervasive, subconscious warism that is the dominant ideology in modern Western culture. He explores the changes over the last twenty (...) years—from the end of the Cold War to the ongoing “war on terror,” as well as Barack Obama winning the Nobel Prize for Peace. Like racism and sexism, the uncritical presumption that war is morally justifiable, even morally required, misguides our attitudes and institutions. In its place, Cady proposes the development of a positive concept of peace. Citing common objections to pacifist values, he describes peace as something more than the mere absence of war and demonstrates that pacifism is a defensible position. (shrink)

Currently, there are two bottleneck problems in the research of college students’ entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial behavior: lack of comprehensive and systematic theoretical framework and empirical analysis to reveal the role path that affects entrepreneurial intention, and most studies ignore the gap between entrepreneurial intention and behavior. Based on the literature review, this study adopted the Theory of Planned Behavior as the theoretical framework introduced entrepreneurial situational factors and entrepreneurial implementation intention, and constructed a two-step extended entrepreneurial intention–behavior model. The (...) structural equation was constructed using AMOS24.0 to empirically analyze the antecedent variables of college students’ entrepreneurial intention and the factors influencing entrepreneurial behavior. The empirical results showed that expected material possessions, expected social reputation, expected self-evaluation, mission and responsibility, and career development are the antecedent variables of entrepreneurial attitude. Support from families and friends, college teachers’ views, and the role models are antecedent variables of entrepreneurial subjective norms. Professional ability, entrepreneurial ability, entrepreneurial experiences, and personality traits are the antecedent variables of entrepreneurial perceived behavior control. In the formation stage of college students’ entrepreneurial intention, attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavior control, and entrepreneurial situational factors have significant impacts on the formation of college students’ entrepreneurial intention, while entrepreneurial intention, perceived behavior control, and entrepreneurial situational factors have significant impacts on the transformation phase of entrepreneurial behavior. Entrepreneurial implementation intention plays an intervening role between entrepreneurial intention and behavior of college students. (shrink)

Many authors have argued that Aristotle does not stay true to his official account on which every instance of choice must be preceded by deliberation, and it is a good thing that he does so because his official account has catastrophically bad theoretical implications. I argue that Aristotle does not deviate from his official account, and that the official account does not have the decisively bad implications others have claimed it to have. These objectionable entailments only obtain on a certain (...) conception of what deliberation is like, and I argue that this conception is not Aristotle’s. Once Aristotle’s own conception of deliberation is understood, the terrible putative entailments clearly do not follow from the official account, and so textually Aristotle remains consistent while conceptually he remains plausible. (shrink)

Traditionally, science has regarded the universe as made up of inert matter and empty space. Duane Elgin brings together extraordinary evidence from cosmology, biology, and physics to show that the universe is not dead but rather uniquely alive, an insight that, he shows, is in harmony with all of the world’s major spiritual traditions. He explores how this view radically transforms our concept of ourselves, our place in the cosmos, and the evolutionary trajectory of the human family. The nonliving view (...) of the universe has led to rampant materialism and global environmental degradation. To transform our planetary crises we need to move past a paradigm of separation and exploitation and learn to live sustainably on the Earth, in harmony with one another, and in communion with the living universe. (shrink)

continent. 2.2 (2012): 152–154 Levi R. Bryant. The Democracy of Objects . Ann Arbor, MI: Open Humanities Press. 2011. 316 pp. | ISBN 9781607852049. | $23.99 For two decades post-anarchism has adopted an epistemological point of departure for its critique of the representative ontologies of classical anarchism. This critique focused on the classical anarchist conceptualization of power as a unitary phenomenon that operated unidirectionally to repress an otherwise creative and benign human essence. Andrew Koch may have inaugurated this trend in (...) 1993 when he wrote his influential paper entitled “Post-structuralism and the Epistemological Basis of Anarchism.” Koch’s paper certainly laid some of the important groundwork for post-anarchism’s continual subsumption of ontology beneath the a priori of an epistemological orientation, and his work continues to be cited as an early and important venture into post-anarchist philosophy. The problem is that Koch could not conceive of an anti-essentialist and autonomous ontological system, one not subject to regulation or representation by the human mind. Consequently, he was forced to assert a subjectivist claims-making ego as the foundation of a post-structuralist anarchist politics. Saul Newman was indebted to this heritage insofar as he also posited the ego (extrapolated from the writings of Max Stirner) and the subject (extrapolated from Jacques Lacan’s oeuvre ) as the paradoxical ‘outside’ to power and representation. Todd May fell into a similar trap in his book The Political Philosophy of Post-structuralist Anarchism when he wrote that “[m]etaphysics [...] partakes of the normativity inhabiting the epistemology that provides its foundations.” 1 Whereas Newman’s approach did not necessarily foreclose the possibility of metaphysics—at least to the extent that he began with the subject of the Lacanian tradition (wherein the subject is believed to be radically split between thinking and being)—May completely foreclosed the possibility of any escape from the reign of the epistemological. There laid the impasse of yesterday’s post-anarchism. This impasse at the heart of the project of post-anarchism has forced Koch, Newman, May, and many others, to come to similar conclusions about the place of ontology in post-anarchist scholarship. The post-anarchists have all formulated a response strikingly similar to Koch’s argument that any representative ontology ought to be dismantled and dethroned in favour of “a conceptualization of knowledge that is contingent on a plurality of internally consistent episteme .” 2 By dismissing all ontologies as suspiciously representative and as incessantly harbouring a dangerous form of essentialism, post-anarchists have overlooked the privilege that they have placed on the human subject, language, and discourse, at the expense of the democracy that the human subject shares with other animals, objects, and beings in the world. This epistemological characterization of post-anarchism has held sway for far too long. It is not by chance that post-anarchism, as a concept, was first formulated by Hakim Bey as an “ontological anarchism,” 3 and subsequently repressed by the canon of post-anarchist authors. Perhaps Bey’s ontological anarchism also lacked the ‘rigour’ required of today’s scholarly audience and for these two reasons (at least) he has received very little credit for his inaugurating efforts into post-anarchism. In any case, I want to challenge this reluctance and revive the roots of post-anarchism. Levi Bryant gives us a reason to believe that we can achieve the promise of Bey’s ontological anarchism without sacrificing the scholarly standard of rigour. Levi Bryant’s newest open-access book, The Democracy of Objects , is a tour de force . His book challenges post-anarchists to take their radical critique of representation a step further by questioning the “hegemony that epistemology currently enjoys in philosophy.” Bryant maintains that post-structuralism, and radical anti-humanisms, only appear to reject the subject as the locus of political agency. Their rejection is actually more of a disavowal, a replacement of the human subject with the equally human order of language or discourse. What post-structuralism attempts to elucidate is the manner in which the subject is colonized by the Other of language, discourse and social relations. What here appears as a movement away from the determining subject of humanism and existentialism is only replaced with the determining apparatuses of structures as they are conceived by astute analysts of political culture. Post-structuralism thus re-enters the anthropocentric discourse to the extent that the cultural analyst believes himself capable of conceiving the determinative structures of society. In contradistinction to the claims of post-structuralism and post-anarchism, the role of the ontologist is not to suture the gap between epistemology and the real but to de-suture it, as Bryant puts it: “[o]ntology does not tell us what objects exist, but that objects exist, that they are generative mechanisms.” Above all else, the role of ontology, for post-anarchists, ought to be a real de-centering of the subject in relation to other objects in the non-human world such that the subject becomes conceived as one object among others within a living democracy of equality. This inevitably leads to the conclusion that objects exist whether or not the subject or analyst is there to represent them: they represent themselves and are autonomous from our dictation, just as each object finds its autonomy in relation to other objects. Ontology must now be distinguished from representation. We must shift the terms of the debate and interrogate the hegemony that epistemology has been afforded within post-anarchist philosophy. At least two possibilities are now permitted. On the one hand, one could intervene into the reigning mode of philosophy, namely epistemology, by latching onto concepts from meta-ethical philosophy. Meta-ethics allows one to easily separate the ontological from the epistemological and to answer very particular questions about each in order to formulate an overarching meta-ethical position. 4 Post-anarchism is particularly adept at this task because of its resounding ability to frame itself as an ethical political philosophy in relation to the strategic political philosophy of classical Marxism. On the other hand, Bryant argues that “[p]erhaps the best way to defeat [the privilege currently held by epistemology] is to shift the terms of debate.” Shifting the terms of debate is also something that post-anarchists have been very good at doing. Thus, instead of asking the question ‘how do representative ontological systems harbour concealed epistemological orientations toward the political?’ one might ask ‘ do epistemological orientations toward the political always harbour representative and subject-centred ontological systems?” The genius of Bryant’s book rests in its ability to convincingly argue for the radical autonomy of being and of objects. This claim speaks to some of the most compelling theories of the political in anarchist and marxist political philosophy (for instance, hegemony, representation, democracy, and so on) and it re-stages the political drama of our times across a much wider terrain. The fallacy of strategic political philosophy in the Marxist tradition, as Todd May quite correctly points out, is that it remains committed to a concept of power that is unitary in its analysis, unidirectional in its influence, and utterly repressive in its effect. Similarly, Bryant’s ontology allows one to argue that there is a fallacy that occurs “whenever one type of entity is treated as the ground or explains all other entities.” Whereas May’s post-structuralist anarchism moved away from the fallacy of the unitary analysis of power, whereby subjects are constituted by the influence of a single site of power, it nonetheless remained committed to a tactical political philosophy which is monarchical in the final analysis . It remains monarchical to the extent that the human world, the world of epistemology, is treated as the yardstick of democracy. Bryant’s argument is quite instructive: “[w]hat we thus get is not a democracy of objects or actants where all objects are on equal ontological footing [...] but instead a monarchy of the human in relation to all other beings.” The real fallacy is thus not against strategic political philosophy but philosophy itself and the way it has played out over so many centuries. “The epistemic fallacy,” writes Bryant, “consists in the thesis that proper ontological questions can be fully transposed into epistemological questions.” The point that Bryant is making relates to the way ontology is today always reduced to an epistemology and thereby loses its significance as a philosophical question. This book should be applauded for its novelty and its thesis ought to be taken seriously by post-anarchists today. Because of this book, and the attendant post-continental movement that is being called ‘speculative realism,’ we can now distinguish three stages in the life of post-anarchism. First, we can deduce what Süreyya Evren has described as its ‘introductory period.’ The introductory period of post-anarchism is defined by its inability to side-step the ontological problem in the literature of classical anarchism. During this period, post-anarchism needed to distinguish itself from classical anarchism while nonetheless remaining committed to its ethical project. The second period overcomes the problem of the separation of post-anarchism from classical anarchism by re-reading the classical tradition as essentially post-anarchistic. Some of the critiques of post-anarchism—especially that from Cohn & Wilbur 5 —are included into this period insofar as post-anarchism, for them, was always already anarchism. Whereas the first and second phases have included only explicitly anarchist literature under their rubric of worthwhile investigation, in the third period this no longer holds true. To be certain, the second period permitted the incorporation of post-structuralist literature into post-anarchist discussions (but always with a certain amount of reservation). This third period, the one that is to come—the one that is already here if only we would heed its call—will not take such care with attempts at identification or canonization. Indeed, post-anarchism is already here, like a seed beneath the snow, waiting to be discovered. Levi Bryant teaches us that the third period is already here: and yet where is it? NOTES 1) Todd May. The Political Philosophy of Post-Structuralist Anarchism . University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. 1997. 2. 2) Andrew Koch. “Post-structuralism and the Epistemological Basis of Anarchism” [1993] in Post-Anarchism: A Reader . Eds. Duane Rousselle & Sureyyya Evren. London: Pluto Press. 2011. pp. 23-40. 3) Bey, Hakim. “ Post-Anarchism Anarchy .” 1987. 4) I have attempted to do this in my paper on Bataille’s post-anarchism; see Duane Rousselle. “Georges Bataille’s Post-anarchism.” Journal of Political Ideologies . 17(3): in press. 5) Jesse Cohn & Shawn Wilbur. “ What’s Wrong with Post-anarchism? ” 2010. (shrink)

This book presents a reading of Martin Heidegger's philosophy as an effort to strike a middle position between the philosophies of Plato and Friedrich Nietzsche. Duane Armitage interprets the history of Western philosophy as comprising a struggle over the meaning of "being," and argues that this struggle is ultimately between materialism and idealism, and, in the end, between atheism and theism. This work therefore concerns the question of the meaning of the so called "death of God" in the context of (...) contemporary Continental Philosophy.. (shrink)

This essay argues that Heidegger’s theological thinking, best expressed by his “last god” from his 1930s Contributions to Philosophy, is a radicalization of his early Pauline phenomenology from the 1920s. I claim that Heidegger’s theological thinking, including his onto-theological critique, is in no way incompatible with Christian philosophy, but in fact furthers the Christian philosophical endeavor. The tenability of this thesis rests on disputing three critiques of Heidegger’s theology put forth by John D. Caputo, Richard Kearney, and Jean-Luc Marion, all (...) of whom argue that Heidegger and Christianity are incompatible. (shrink)

Ethics and rationality -- Moral frameworks -- Experience in context -- Aesthetic aspects of ethical thought -- Morals and metaphors -- Ethics and pluralism -- Moral thinking -- Afterword: diversity, relativism, and nonviolence.

There is something uncanny about the importance of a place we call “home” given that is a designation fraught with apparent arbitrariness, ambiguity, and polysemy. We need to have a better understanding of home. This disproportionality between its designation and its importance reflects an existential rift: the importance of being at any particular place we call home is not designated a priori, permanent, intrinsically meaningful, or valuable yet no one would deny its importance in our experience. The value of being (...) at home is lived. The meaning and value of home are expressions of propriety that are neither capricious nor given as such: they are institutions in the sense that Maurice Merleau-Ponty used that term. Our identity emerges in the context of the institution of home. These elucidations use Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological notion of institution to foreground some insights in the nature of home in the works of fiction and non-fiction by the Nobel Prize-winning writer, Toni Morrison. Her literary work, intimately grounded in lived experience, as well as her critical insights, will help us understand what sets the institution of home apart from other institutions is its orienting propriety. (shrink)

This dissertation is concerned with the ethical nature of language. Contrary to most post-modern and post-structuralist accounts, I argue that a thoughtful examination of the intersubjective relations of interlocutors can be accomplished without unduly privileging the subject, and can open new paths of inquiry into the ethical bonds of the human situation. ;I begin from the existential-phenomenological perspective of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Merleau-Ponty's notion of the self engaged with others in speaking, writing, and gesturing developed continuously over the course of his (...) writings. But this account is one which must be gathered piecemeal from his diverse written works, which range in topic through psychology, political philosophy, aesthetics, philosophy of language, and many others. In the first part of the dissertation, I provide a thematic exegesis of these passages collected from the earliest and latest periods of his work. ;In the second part, I argue that the notion of the self which emerges from part one provides a fruitful starting point for reflection in the domain of ethics. Contrary to thinkers like Derrida, Foucault, and Baudrillard, I contend that the individual engaged in language is best thought of as communicating subjectivity; and this subjectivity is already predisposed toward intersubjective communion. ;Next, I expand upon the work of Calvin O. Schrag. There is an ideality which is manifest in communicative praxis which points toward a radicalized understanding of responsibility, and which undergirds the proper critical standpoint for ethical as well as social philosophy. This can be achieved, I argue, only by rethinking the traditional notions of universality, particularity, and transcendence inherited from our Kantian practical tradition. ;Finally, I show that this notion of responsibility must emerge as distinct from a transcendental posture assumed by thinkers like Apel and Habermas, a volitional posture like Sartre's, or any traditional posture based upon a faculty psychology. The communion of communicative praxis is best understood from an existential-ontological inquiry standpoint, and is defined as care. Responsibility for thoughtful discriminations and discernment within the human ethical and social situation is shown to be an issue due to, and not in spite of, corporeality. (shrink)