One of the positive ways in which argumentation can improve political thinking is through providing definitions. We can establish definitions through argumentation, filtering out ideas that are irrelevant or unacceptable, and collecting features that offer a comprehensive understanding of a crucial concept. In this paper, we use argumentation to illuminate the concept of extremism. We proceed in this way: first, we discuss the relationship between argumentation and definitions. Second, we look at the current state of affairs by exploring contemporary definitions (...) of “extremism” and by identifying several problems in the definition literature. Third, we assume the burden of proof in providing a definition that avoids problems we have identified. Fourth, we discuss other closely-associated concepts and their definitions—terrorism, radicalism, and fundamentalism, explaining how these concepts are distinct from our definition of extremism. (shrink)

A critical, philosophical engagement of the psychological structures that propagate the continued oppression of women. In this book, the Italian feminist thinker Lea Melandri argues that systemic violence against women has deep psychoanalytic roots. Drawing inspiration from the work of Freud and the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Elvio Fachinelli, along with feminist practices of consciousness-raising, Melandri demonstrates how male dominance and female subservience are established by society through a binary and oppositional understanding of sex and gender. This understanding—and the oppression and (...) violence against women that results—is inscribed in the psyches of both men and women, and is replicated anew from generation to generation. Melandri analyzes women in media, politics, philosophy, and literature to show how this plays out, and calls for awareness of these deep psychic structures and expectations formed within the dynamics of society and primary family relations. Lea Melandri is one of Italy’s best-known feminist thinkers and activists. She is the author of many books and continues to write and advocate for women’s rights. In 2012, she was awarded by the city of Milan the Ambrogino d’oro, one of the city’s highest honors. Antonio Calcagno is Professor of Philosophy at King’s University College at Western University, Canada. He the editor of Contemporary Italian Political Philosophy and the coeditor (with Inna Viriasova) of Roberto Esposito: Biopolitics and Philosophy, both also published by SUNY Press. (shrink)

Global Justice and Avant-Garde Political Agency offers a fresh, nuanced example of political theory in an activist mode. Setting the debate on global justice in the context of recent methodological disputes on the relationship between ideal and nonideal theorizing, Ypi's dialectical account shows how principles and agency really can interact.

In this article, we shed light on the emergence, diffusion, and use of socio-technological future visions. The artificial intelligence future vision of the German federal government is examined and juxtaposed with the respective news media coverage of the German media. By means of a content analysis of frames, it is demonstrated how the German government strategically uses its AI future vision to uphold the status quo. The German media largely adapt the government´s frames and do not integrate alternative future narratives (...) into the public debate. These findings are substantiated in the framing of AI futures in policy documents of the German government and articles of four different German newspapers. It is shown how the German past is mirrored in the German AI future envisioned by the government, safeguarding the present power constellation that is marked by a close unity of politics and industry. The German media partly expose the government´s frames and call for future visions that include fundamentally different political designs less influenced by the power structures of the past and present. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss Heidegger’s conception of philosophy in the Black Notebooks. In particular, we set out a reading of the Notebooks from the 1930s and early 1940s as exhibiting an extremist view of philosophy, and its concern with being, which accords it an absolute and exclusive priority above and beyond everything else. We argue that such overcompensation for philosophy’s declining fortune involves a willful turning away from the realities of human life, and from the multifarious symbolic and functional (...) worlds in which the meaning of being is articulated, refracted, and lived by individuals. In contrast, we suggest that Heidegger’s early Freiburg lecture courses already contain the basis for a critique of such an inflated notion of philosophy, and that the shift in Heidegger’s thinking in the late 1940s—away from an onto-historical and towards a topological understanding—is a consequence of Heidegger’s own reaction against the extremity of his thinking, and a turning back to the properly human dimensions of thinking and the matters that call for thinking. (shrink)

While Dicer plays an important antiviral role through the RNAi pathway in plants and invertebrates, its contribution to antiviral immunity in vertebrates and more specifically mammals is more controversial. The apparent limited RNAi activity in mammalian cells has been attributed to the reduced long dsRNA processive activity of mammalian Dicer, as well as a functional incompatibility between the RNAi and IFN pathways. Why Dicer has lost this antiviral activity in the profit of the IFN pathway is still unclear. We propose (...) that the primary direct antiviral activity of Dicer has been functionally replaced by other sensors in the IFN pathway, leading to its specialization toward microRNA maturation. As a result, Dicer can regulate the innate immune response and prevent basal activation of the IFN pathway in mammals. Here, we discuss this hypothesis, highlighting how the adaptation of the helicase domain of mammalian Dicer may be key to this process. (shrink)

Why are people interested in money? Specifically, what could be the biological basis for the extraordinary incentive and reinforcing power of money, which seems to be unique to the human species? We identify two ways in which a commodity which is of no biological significance in itself can become a strong motivator. The first is if it is used as a tool, and by a metaphorical extension this is often applied to money: it is used instrumentally, in order to obtain (...) biologically relevant incentives. Second, substances can be strong motivators because they imitate the action of natural incentives but do not produce the fitness gains for which those incentives are instinctively sought. The classic examples of this process are psychoactive drugs, but we argue that the drug concept can also be extended metaphorically to provide an account of money motivation. From a review of theoretical and empirical literature about money, we conclude that (i) there are a number of phenomena that cannot be accounted for by a pure Tool Theory of money motivation; (ii) supplementing Tool Theory with a Drug Theory enables the anomalous phenomena to be explained; and (iii) the human instincts that, according to a Drug Theory, money parasitizes include trading (derived from reciprocal altruism) and object play. (Published Online April 5 2006) Key Words: economic behaviour; evolutionary psychology; giving; incentive; money; motivation; play; reciprocal altruism. (shrink)

This book focuses on a question issued from The Architectonic of Pure Reason, one of the most important sections of Kant's first Critique: what is the human being? It suggests that the answer to this question is tied to a particular account of the unity of reason - one that stresses its purposive character.

Whilst Rahimzadeh et al. (2023) apply a critical lens to the pedagogical use of LLM bioethics assistants, we outline here further reason for skepticism. Two features of LLM chatbots are of signific...

Scholarship on Plato's Timaeus has paid relatively little attention to Tim. 77a–81, a seemingly disjointed passage on topics including plants, respiration, blood circulation, and musical sounds. Despite this comparative neglect, commentators both ancient and modern have levelled a number of serious charges against Timaeus' remarks in the passage, questioning the coherence and explanatory power of what they take to be a theory of respiration. In this paper, I argue that the project of 77a–81e is not to sketch theories of respiration, (...) circulation, and digestion, but to explain how the human body is maintained in light of and despite constant environmental depletion. Further, I argue that in order to understand this account of “the replenishing system,” we need to understand Timaeus' striking analogy of the fish trap or nassa. Commentators have generally focused directly on the workings of the bodily construction that Timaeus likens to a fish trap, but without considering how we should understand the analogy qua analogy. I develop a functional reading of the analogy that yields a coherent account of the replenishing system on which previous criticisms of Timaeus' remarks on respiration do not arise. Aside from lending greater unity to the passage, both internally and within its immediate context in the dialogue, this account of the replenishing system contributes to our understanding of Timaeus' reason-and-necessity explanatory framework as applied to the human body and has noteworthy implications for specific explanatory principles, in particular like-to-like motion and circular thrust. (shrink)

While there is extensive literature on both the expansion of human rights and solidarity movements, and on micro-solidarity and violent actions, here I ask what is the relationship between human rights, micro-solidarity and social action? Based on a case study of structured, face-to-face dialogue group encounters in the Israeli/Palestinian context, I draw on Randall Collins’s interaction ritual chain theory to demonstrate why emotional energy and the ritualization of historical narratives have very limited potential to translate into human rights-based moral actions. (...) Instead, I suggest, these encounters produce micro-solidarity that ascribes additional weight to ethnic categories, serving to polarize and homogenize groups along ethnic lines. (shrink)

This article explores the justification of states' territorial rights. It starts by introducing three questions that all current theories of territorial rights attempt to answer: how to justify the right to settle, the right to exclude, and the right to settle and exclude with reference to a particular territory. It proposes a ‘permissive’ theory of territorial rights, arguing that the citizens of each state are entitled to the particular territory they collectively occupy, if and only if they are also politically (...) committed to the establishment of a global political authority realizing just reciprocal relations. The article is developed by introducing some key features of the permissive theory and by explaining how such an account addresses the questions of settlement, exclusion and particularity in ways that significantly improve on existing rival accounts (most prominently: acquisition theories, legitimacy-based theories and nationalist theories). (shrink)

In international human rights law ‘jurisdiction’ is the centre of the debate on extraterritorial obligations. The purpose of the present paper is to a) analyse how facts and principles contribute t...

This essay compares the thoughts of Kant and Marx on revolution. It focuses in particular on two issues: the contribution of revolutionary enthusiasm to the cause of emancipatory political agents and its educative role in illustrating the possibility of progress for future generations. In both cases, it is argued, the defence of revolution is offered in the context of illustrating the possibility of moral progress for the species, even if not for individual human beings, and brings out the centrality of (...) collective agency in moving toward universal moral goals. Discussing the implications of these points is of significant historical interest: it allows us to defend an interpretation of Kant’s political thought which is sensitive to the material conditions of historical development and to rescue Marx from an amoral reading of his philosophy of history. Reflecting on the role and preconditions of transformative collective agency is also of normative interest: it allows us to better evaluate the significance of political events that, firstly, re-shape the boundaries of political feasibility and, secondly, play a crucial educative role in motivating future progressive initiatives. (shrink)

Heidegger scholars consider the philosopher's recently published notebooks, including the issues of Heidegger's Nazism and anti-Semitism. For more than forty years, the philosopher Martin Heidegger logged ideas and opinions in a series of notebooks, known as the “Black Notebooks” after the black oilcloth booklets into which he first transcribed his thoughts. In 2014, the notebooks from 1931 to 1941 were published, sparking immediate controversy. It has long been acknowledged that Heidegger was an enthusiastic supporter of the Nazi Party in the (...) early 1930s. But the notebooks contain a number of anti-Semitic passages—often referring to the stereotype of “World-Jewry”—written even after Heidegger became disenchanted with the Nazis themselves. Reactions from the scholarly community have ranged from dismissal of the significance of these passages to claims that the anti-Semitism in them contaminates all of Heidegger's work. This volume offers the first collection of responses by Heidegger scholars to the publication of the notebooks. In essays commissioned especially for the book, the contributors offer a wide range of views, addressing not only the issues of anti-Semitism and Nazism but also the broader questions that the notebooks raise. Contributors Babette Babich, Andrew Bowie, Steven Crowell, Fred Dallmayr, Donatella Di Cesare, Michael Fagenblat, Ingo Farin, Gregory Fried, Jean Grondin, Karsten Harries, Laurence Paul Hemming, Jeff Malpas, Thomas Rohkrämer, Tracy B. Strong, Peter Trawny, Daniela Vallega-Neu, Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, Nancy A. Weston, Holger Zaborowski. (shrink)

This paper brings into focus the idea that just as no third-personal way of thinking could capture the self-consciousness of first-person thought, no first- or third- personal way of thinking could capture the especially intimate way we have of relating to each other canonically expressed with our uses of ‘you’. It proposes, motivates and defends the view that second-person speech is canonically expressive of a distinctive way we have of thinking of each other, under a concept that refers de jure (...) to its addressee and whose availability depends on standing in a relation of interpersonal self-consciousness with another. (shrink)

It is often argued that multinational companies and other foreign developers have a responsibility to improve the material conditions of the people in whose territories they operate. As a matter of distributive justice it is thought that these companies should be sharing the acquired wealth with these people through the creation of ‘collective goods’ , infrastructure development and compensation disbursements aimed at their benefit. Recently “stakeholder theory” and even legislative changes in the first world have sought to impress on the (...) corporate world the necessity to share the profits with affected “non‐shareholder” groups. Many see these developments as possible advancements for indigenous peoples, indigenous rights and the cause of distributive justice for aboriginal groups. However, it can be shown that the attribution of such ‘imperfect’ duties to corporations results in the generation of excessive costs and of unrealistic expectations on the part of stakeholders. Distributive justice is more efficiently achieved by public sector involvement at the level of policy and project management. (shrink)

The focus of this study was on adolescent mental health. More specifically, the relationship between strength-based parenting (SBP) and subjective wellbeing (SWB) during adolescence, as assessed by a sample of adolescents, was examined at three time points over 14 months (N = 202, Mage = 12.97, SDage =.91, 48% female). SBP was positively related to life satisfaction and positive affect at each of the three time points, and was negatively related to negative affect. SBP and SWB both declined significantly over (...) time. When examining the causal relationships between SBP and SWB, two different statistical models were applied: latent growth-curve models (LGM) and random-intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPM). The LGM revealed a strong positive relationship between changes in SBP and SWB. Specifically, this model showed that SBP at one time point predicted adolescent SWB at future time points. However, when the more stringent statistical test was completed through RI-CLPMs, no cross-lagged paths reached significance. Thus, while parenting is a significant predictor of wellbeing for pre-teens and teens in real time, it is not predictive of wellbeing at future time points. Parents, thus, cannot assume that their current levels of SBP are ‘banked’ by their children to support future wellbeing. Instead, SBP needs to be an ongoing, contemporary parenting practice. Furthermore, the fact that perceptions of SBP decline in this age bracket suggest that SBP interventions may be helpful in supporting adolescent mental health. (shrink)

Is it possible to justify territorial rights? Provided a justification for territorial rights can be found, does it ground claims toparticularterritories? And provided a claim to particular territories can be justified, what kind of claim is it? Is it a claim to jurisdiction? A claim to control resources? A claim to control the movement of people across borders? In this paper I review some prominent accounts seeking to answer these questions. After outlining their main features, I focus on some difficulties (...) they encounter, in particular with regard to the justification of exclusion. (shrink)

Due to the elusive nature of the surviving documentation, it is often difficult to assess in what areas and to what extent the Tridentine prescriptions on sacred images led to acts of censorship directed at works of art. The Milanese diocese at the time of Archbishop Carlo Borromeo (1564–84) stands out as a rare case for which policies concerning the control of sacred art and their practical implementation are relatively well documented. This article examines Borromeo’s legislation on religious artworks and (...) how it was translated into practice, highlighting the role played by the administrative system of his diocese in the effort to identify and censor inappropriate works of art. I bring to light these dynamics through an in-depth analysis of the so-called Index of Profane Paintings, a document recording the results of a systematic enquiry into artworks that did not comply with Tridentine standards, carried out in the Milanese diocese under Borromeo. Despite being the only known evidence of an investigation of this kind made in the sixteenth century, this document has been largely ignored by art historians. I discuss the date and circumstances in which the Index was compiled, as well as the methods and targets of the enquiry it records. I then examine the problems raised by the artworks denounced and the solutions envisaged for them, exploring their relationship with contemporary religious and visual culture. A revised transcription and an English translation of the document are given in the Appendices. (shrink)

Le présent article fait le point sur la théorie aristotélicienne des fonctions cérébrales. La première section établit les raisons qui incitent Aristote à rejeter les théories encéphalocentristes, popularisées par certains de ses devanciers, qui faisaient du cerveau le siège des activités psychiques. Sur la base d’arguments anatomiques, Aristote conclut que le cerveau ne possède aucune fonction sensorielle ou intellectuelle. Or cette exclusion n’implique pas que le cerveau est sans importance physiologique, comme le relève la seconde section. Dans la physiologie aristotélicienne, (...) le cerveau forme avec le cœur et la méninge vascularisée un véritable système intégré de régulation thermique fondé sur l’équilibre des contraires. Tout en étant essentiel à la santé et responsable de la production du sommeil, ce système contribue en outre à l’optimisation des activités sensorielles, et partant, à l’optimisation des activités cognitives qui dépendent de la sensation. Examiner ainsi le rôle du cerveau dans toutes ses ramifications fait incidemment apprécier comment la notion de juste milieu, en l’occurrence de juste milieu thermique, permet à Aristote de problématiser l’efficacité du corps en tant qu’outil de la sensation. (shrink)

Original and critical essays by leading scholars on the question of the human in the philosophy of Martin Heidegger.

We seek to advance place-sensitive theory on cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) by investigating how partners cope with difficult place characteristics that affect their collaboration. To this end, we conduct an in-depth case study of a disaster relief CSP in which the partners had to cope with what we label _place intensity_ of disasters, as well as with what emerged as _place diversity_ of pre-/post-disaster contexts. Our findings illustrate the collaborative effects of these different place contexts and reveal two practices of _CSP (...) place work_ by which the partners sought to leverage their cross-fertilizing potential: They used the pre-/post-disaster contexts to anticipate and prepare for the place intensity and conveyed such intensity to pre-/post-disaster contexts to manage the place diversity and sustain the collaborative commitment. These insights advance CSP research, first, by outlining places’ agentic forces and exposing their different collaborative effects. Second, by introducing practices of cognitive and emotional CSP place work, we show how partners may integrate places into their CSP management to better handle their adverse effects. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungLokale, religionsbezogene Ereignisse werden vermehrt global diskutiert – auch die „Handschlag-Affäre“. Bauend auf Forschung zu Öffentlichkeit, zusammenfallenden Kontexten und islamfeindlichen Online-Diskursen argumentiert der Beitrag, dass in der medialen Verbreitung der Affäre geografische, zeitliche und soziale Räume zusammenfielen, was die negativen Folgen für die involvierten Akteure miterklärt. Das geografische und zeitliche Zusammenfallen wird anhand von Metadaten von 279 Nachrichten- und 152 Webseiten-/blog-artikeln (dt. und engl.; veröffentlicht 2015–2017) veranschaulicht. Das soziale Zusammenfallen wird durch eine thematische Analyse von 45 Webseiten-/blog-artikeln der islamfeindlichen Online-Öffentlichkeit (...) illustriert. Ergebnisse zeigen eine mediale Ausbreitung von lokal zu global (geografische Räume), eine Zeitverzögerung zwischen Ereignis und Skandalisierung (zeitliche Räume) und eine ideologische Rekontextualisierung in der islamfeindlichen Öffentlichkeit (soziale Räume). (shrink)

Do we think in a language-like format? Taking the marker of language-like formats to be the property of unconstrained systematicity, this paper considers the following master argument for the claim that we do: language is unconstrainedly systematic, if language is unconstrainedly systematic then so is thought, so thought is unconstrainedly systematic. It is easy to feel that there is something right about this argument, that there will be some way of filling in its details that will vindicate the idea that (...) our thought must be unconstrainedly systematic given that the language in which we express it is. Clearly, however, the second premise needs support—we need a principled reason for moving from the unconstrained systematicity of language to the unconstrained systematicity of thought. This paper gives three passes at formulating such a principle. This turns out to be much harder than it might seem. We should, I conclude, resist falling too easily for the lure of this master argument for the language-like format of thought. (shrink)

This article analyses the teleological argument justifying historical progress in Kant's Guarantee of Perpetual Peace. It starts by examining the controversies produced by Kant's claim that the teleology of nature supports the idea of a providential development of humanity towards moral progress and the possibility of achieving a cosmopolitan political constitution. It further illustrates how Kant's teleological argument in Perpetual Peace needs to be assessed with reference to two systematically relevant issues: first, the problem of coordination linked to the necessity (...) of realizing the ‘highest good’ as a historical end of practical reason, and secondly the problem of continuity posed by the temporal limitation of all individual efforts to cultivate moral dispositions. To illustrate the implications of both issues for the teleological argument in Perpetual Peace, the article draws attention to some important developments in Kant's analysis of teleology following the Critique of Judgment. (shrink)

This essay responds to the question "Where Are We Going? Zygon and the Future of Religion-and-Science" and was first presented on 9 May 2009 at a symposium honoring Philip Hefner's editorship of Zygon. It offers four suggestions for the future of religion-and-science: Ask big questions; encourage cultural literacy in the public sphere; bring a critical voice to other academic disciplines; and include the history of philosophy.

This paper comments on Richard Bourke's Hegel and World Revolutions, focusing on its analysis of Hegel's relevance for debates on revolution, freedom, and the Enlightenment. While agreeing with Bourke's call for critically engaging with Hegel's ideas rather than dismissing them outright, the paper raises some questions concerning Bourke's reconstruction of Hegel's interpretation of Kant, his account of the French Revolution, and the impact of Hegel's work on contemporary debates.

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.