Is the Miranda warning, which lets an accused know of the right to remain silent, more about procedural fairness or about the conventions of speech acts and silences? Do U.S. laws about Native Americans violate the preferred or traditional "silence" of the peoples whose religions and languages they aim to "protect" and "preserve"? In Just Silences, Marianne Constable draws on such examples to explore what is at stake in modern law: a potentially new silence as to justice.Grounding her claims (...) about modern law in rhetorical analyses of U.S. law and legal texts and locating those claims within the tradition of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Foucault, Constable asks what we are to make of silences in modern law and justice. She shows how what she calls "sociolegal positivism" is more important than the natural law/positive law distinction for understanding modern law. Modern law is a social and sociological phenomenon, whose instrumental, power-oriented, sometimes violent nature raises serious doubts about the continued possibility of justice. She shows how particular views of language and speech are implicated in such law.But law--like language--has not always been positivist, empirical, or sociological, nor need it be. Constable examines possibilities of silence and proposes an alternative understanding of law--one that emerges in the calling, however silently, of words to justice. Profoundly insightful and fluently written, Just Silences suggests that justice today lies precariously in the silences of modern positive law. (shrink)

As witnessed by recent films such as _Fight Club_ and _Identity_, our culture is obsessed with multiple personality—a phenomenon raising intriguing questions about personal identity. This study offers both a full-fledged philosophical theory of personal identity and a systematic account of multiple personality. Gunnarsson combines the methods of analytic philosophy with close hermeneutic and phenomenological readings of cases from different fields, focusing on psychiatric and psychological treatises, self-help books, biographies, and fiction. He develops an original account of personal identity (...) and offers a provocative interpretation of multiple personality: in brief, "multiples" are right about the metaphysics but wrong about the facts. (shrink)

Is it rational to be moral? Can moral disputes be settled rationally? Which criteria determine what we have a good reason to do? In this innovative book, Logi Gunnarsson takes issue with the assumption made by many philosophers faced with the problem of reconciling moral norms with a scientific world view, namely that morality must be offered a non-moral justification based on a formal concept of rationality. He argues that the criteria for the rationality of an action are irreducibly (...) substantive, rather than purely formal, and that assuming that morality must be given a non-moral justification amounts to a distortion of both rationality and morality. His discussion includes substantial critical engagement with major thinkers from two very different philosophical traditions, and is notable for its clear and succinct account of Habermas' discourse ethics. It will appeal to anyone interested in practical reason and the rational credentials of morality. (shrink)

This contribution presents an adult education workshop implemented in the field of early childhood education. One of the specificities of education and care practices lies in the competences of the professionals to give a central role to the detailed observation of situations, in order to adjust their modalities of action. How can such observational work be developed and transformed? A participatory research-training approach aims to support the co-construction of an analytical view on observable phenomena in the course of interactions. In (...) a perspective of interactional analysis, it focuses on the modalities that favor the construction of such an analytical posture. (shrink)

It is commonly supposed that morality faces a justificatory crisis. Rationalism seeks to resolve this crisis by means of a direct response to the moral sceptic--to the person who doubts that there is a rational way of deciding what moral position to adopt or whether to be moral at all. I argue that the very aspirations of rationalism--to seek a refutation of the sceptic that concedes her initial standpoint and to base morality on a formal concept of rationality--are misguided. As (...) an alternative, I introduce an approach which has neither of these aspirations--the substantive approach--and argue that it offers a more satisfactory justificatory ideal than rationalism. When measured by this ideal morality does not face a justificatory crisis. ;I argue that both subjectivist and inter-subjectivist rationalists fail to refute the sceptic. I consider the possibility that there is something specific to subjectivism which gives rise to the appearance that morality faces a justificatory crisis and argue that the justificatory standards set up by inter-subjective rationalism--if not met--equally give rise to the same appearance. Thus, it might be thought that rationalism's failure to refute the sceptic reveals that morality does indeed face a justificatory crisis. Instead, I contend that the rationalistic standards themselves should be rejected. To demotivate rationalism, I argue that the substantive approach makes better sense of our lives. The task of making sense of our lives includes not only the task of making our lives intelligible but also one of rendering them meaningful. With regard to subjectivist rationalism, I argue that agents employ substantive reasons in the attempt to make sense of themselves, that this employment of substantive reasons is part and parcel of a meaningful life, and that rationalism's formal concept of rationality cannot capture this use of these reasons. In the case of inter-subjectivist rationalism, I claim that in criticizing others for, say, cruel acts it is the cruelty of those acts that we should focus on and that in its attempt to refute the moral sceptic rationalism distorts our view on such matters. (shrink)

Depuis la nuit des temps, les relations homme-animal ont reposé sur un principe d'inégalité et de domination. Pourtant, la place et le statut des animaux ont récemment connu de grandes évolutions. L'animalisme, à l'instar de l'antispécisme ou de l'abolitionnisme est progressivement entré dans le débat public, poussé par une actualité brûlante (scandales des abattoirs, vidéos L214, émergence d'un véganisme de masse, etc.). A l'origine, ce courant d'éthique proposant de défendre les droits des animaux était considéré comme une mouvance violente et (...) radicale. Comment cette doctrine a-t-elle séduit un public de plus en plus large? Que nous raconte cet engouement quant à nos valeurs, aux croyances de notre société? Cet ouvrage constitue la première analyse sociologique de ce phénomène émergent. En embrassant les points de vues politiques, écologiques, religieux ou encore celui des contre-cultures, Marianne Celka jette un regard neuf et, pour la première fois, neutre et objectif sur cette question aussi profonde que troublante du rapport entre l'homme et l'animal. (shrink)

In this article, I am concerned with the public engagements of Julian Huxley, Lancelot Hogben, and J. B. S. Haldane. I analyze how they used the new insights into the genetics of heredity to argue against any biological foundations for antidemocratic ideologies, be it Nazism, Stalinism, or the British laissez-faire and class system. The most striking fact—considering the abuse of biological knowledge they contested—is that these biologists presented genetics itself as inherently democratic. Arguing from genetics, they developed an understanding of (...) diversity that cuts across divisions of race, class, or gender. Human diversity rightly understood was advantageous for societal progress. Huxley, Hogben, and Haldane did not hold identical political ideals, but they all argued for democratic reforms and increased planning geared toward greater social equality, and they did so under the label of scientific humanism. Huxley took issue with the notion that evolutionary history does not carry any moral lessons for human societies. Rather than being its antithesis, evolution was the basis of human sociality. In fact, the entire future progress of individuals and communities toward a democratic world order needed to be founded on the cosmic principles of evolution—a process that had to be guided by the biological expert with a strong sense of social responsibility. (shrink)

Background Since the enactment of the euthanasia law in the Netherlands, there has been a lively public debate on assisted dying that may influence the way patients talk about euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide with their physicians and the way physicians experience the practice of EAS. Aim To show what developments physicians see in practice and how they perceive the influence of the public debate on the practice of EAS. Methods We conducted a secondary analysis of in-depth interviews with 28 Dutch (...) physicians who had experience with a complex case of EAS. Respondents were recruited both by the network of physicians working for SCEN as well as via a national questionnaire, wherein participating physicians could indicate their willingness to be interviewed. Results Three themes came up in analysing the interviews. First, the interviewed physicians experienced a change in what patients would expect from them: from a role as an involved caregiver to being the mere performer of EAS. Second, interviewees said that requests for EAS based on non-medical reasons came up more frequently and wondered if EAS was the right solution for these requests. Last, respondents had the impression that the standards of EAS are shifting and that the boundaries of the EAS regulation were stretched. Conclusions The perceived developments could make physicians less willing to consider a request for EAS. Our results also raise questions about the role of physicians and of EAS in society. (shrink)

First Published in 1991. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Norwegian state-owned Petroleum Fund's market value is more than one trillion US dollars, and the Norwegian state has become one of the world's largest stockowners. The Fund was established in 1990 and in 2006 and renamed the ‘Government Pension Fund Global’, as savings for future generations. What kind of values form the basis for describing the Petroleum Fund in this way? This article shows that the idea that present generations should not empty the North Sea of oil and gas (...) without saving something for future generations has been stable since the 1970s. However, over time, the understanding of how to save has changed. More specifically experts, bureaucrats and politicians have shifted their arguments during four phases: moderation in oil extraction (1974–1983); introduction of the national wealth model (1984–1990); a financial fund for the present and the future (1991–2006); and increased income and new protests (2007–2019). These four periods show that over time the idea of weak sustainability and value commensurability have increasingly come to dominate the argumentation in public documents about the Petroleum Fund. (shrink)

Aristotle is generally considered as a philosopher whose authority characterized the Middle Ages.

French cultural theorist and urbanist Paul Virilio is best known for his writings on media, technology, and architecture. Gathered here in _A Winter’s Journey _are four remarkable conversations in which Virilio and architectural writer Marianne Brausch look at a twentieth century characterized by enormous technological acceleration and by technocultural accidents of barbarism and horror. The dialogues in _A Winter_’_s Journey—_structured loosely around the dates 1940, 1950, 1960, and 1980—chart Virilio’s intimate intellectual biography, from his childhood lived against the unstable (...) backdrop of a heavily bombed, wartime Nantes to maturity in a crisis space that is neither entirely militarized nor yet fully civilian, but somewhere between the two. In the course of these conversations, Virilio and Brausch ultimately find hope that in understanding the events of the last century and the cultural responses spawned by them, we can create a more humane era that is more adept at handling the transformations of its technology and culture. _A Winter’s Journey _is a revealing and engaging look into the intellectual life and ideas of one of the most influential theorists of contemporary civilization. (shrink)

In this book, Marianne Moyaert develops a new interreligious appropriation of Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutical philosophy. Viewed in context of his philosophical, anthropological, and ethical work, Ricoeur’s fragmentary reflections on the encounters between religions provide insights on global cooperation practices and religious identity concerns.

The thesis offers a theoretical account of how and why, in contemporary western societies characterized by formal-legal equality and women’s relative economic independence, women continue to be subordinated to men through sexuality and love. By means of an innovative application of Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism, dialectical critical realism and philosophy of metaReality, it investigates and elaborates Anna G. Jónasdóttir’s claim that men tend to exploit women of their ‘love power’. Also, the thesis advances a critique of the state of affairs (...) of contemporary feminist theory, demonstrating that the meta-theoretical framework of critical realism offers tools that can counter the poststructuralist hegemony in feminist theory. Part I engages in a comprehensive evaluation of Catharine MacKinnon’s, Judith Butler’s and Jónasdóttir’s theorizations of sexuality and gendered power. Insofar as the works of these theorists represent different philosophical paradigms, this critique opens up a discussion of more general meta-theoretical issues, which are elaborated in Part II, where poststructuralist feminist positions are challenged. Following Jónasdóttir’s broadening of the concept of sexuality so as to essentially include practices of love, in Part III the focus of the thesis is shifted from sexuality to love. Here a dialectical deepening and partial recasting of Jónasdóttir’s work is offered, by means of an application of dialectical critical realism and the philosophy of metaReality. The thesis outlines a feminist dialectical-realist depth ontology of love, sexuality and power, which constitutes an alternative to dominant discursive approaches to sexuality and attributes to love its proper place in our existence as sexual human creatures. Although the thesis makes a case for the tenacity of female subordination in and through sexuality and love, it ends on a more optimistic note, by offering a model of how women can break the shackles of love. (shrink)

Exploratory studies employing volunteer subjects are especially vulnerable to race and class bias. This article illustrates how inattention to race and class as critical dimensions in women's lives can produce biased research samples and lead to false conclusions. It analyzes the race and class background of 200 women who volunteered to participate in an in-depth study of Black and White professional, managerial, and administrative women. Despite a multiplicity of methods used to solicit subjects, White women raised in middle-class families who (...) worked in male-dominated occupations were the most likely to volunteer, and White women were more than twice as likely to respond to media solicitations or letters. To recruit most Black subjects and address their concerns about participation required more labor-intensive strategies involving personal contact. The article discusses reasons for differential volunteering and ways to integrate race and class into qualitative research on women. (shrink)

Avec les Sophistes, puis Platon et Aristote, les grands philosophes de l’Antiquité classique ont démontré un intérêt marqué pour la question du langage, que ce soit dans ses parties constitutives ou dans sa dimension pragmatique. En revanche, les traces d’une réflexion explicite remontant aux corpus archaïques sont, elles, plus diffuses. Dans le cadre de mon article, scindé en deux parties, je proposerai, tout d’abord, une présentation synthétique des fragments explicites d’Héraclite d’Éphèse – lesquels reposent sur le lexique du λόγος et (...) de l’ὄνομα –, avant que de plonger dans l’analyse détaillée de trois séquences implicites – à savoir B25, B48 et B121 –, ce afin de démontrer que, d’une part, il existe, chez ce penseur archaïque, une perception plus ou moins aiguë des structures de la langue, que, d’autre part, celle-ci se déploie chez lui non pas en une réflexion autonome, mais au travers même de l’usage pratique qui en est fait et que, finalement, cette réflexion enclose dans son objet se révèle au moins aussi intéressante que celle reposant sur le vocabulaire précité. La lecture ciblée de ces séquences permettra de démontrer que, dans une époque antérieure aux grandes formalisations des philosophes et des grammairiens grecs, les structures éminemment complexes mises en place par le poète suggèrent, et parfois démontrent, une compréhension profonde de l’unité de la langue comme organe coordonné et des articulations qui la composent. (shrink)

A subject who has a self-transformation behind herself—say, a conversion to Catholicism—may say of herself "before transforming myself, I was a different person�. How are we to understand such a claim? Obviously, there is a sense in which the subject takes herself to be the same as before and another sense in which she considers herself to be somebody else now. One possible way of understanding it would be the following: Despite the change involved in the selftransformation, there is enough (...) similiarity between the preconversion subject—S1—and the converted subject— S2—to say that they are numerically identical. And there is enough difference for the subject to speak of herself before the self-transformation as another person. (shrink)

This article provides an analysis of participation within the framework of language socialization with a focus on the child’s position as overhearer. The study suggests that a particular position as creative imitator is to be included within models of participation in order to account for the particular transition position in which the child transforms his position from overhearer to speaker. Through an empirical study it is demonstrated how an overhearing child embeds his contributions within the local social and interactional order (...) through repetitions of other participants’ contributions. It is argued that these repetitions are social acts by which the child displays involvement in family conversations by orienting to their perspectives. The child can be seen to learn through others and not only from others. (shrink)

Background: While being prepared for abortions, some women experience decisional ambivalence during their encounters with health personnel at the hospital. Women’s experiences with these encounters have rarely been examined. Objective: The objective of this study was to explore ambivalent abortion-seeking women’s experiences of their encounters with health personnel. Research design: The data were collected in individual interviews and analysed with dialogical narrative analyses. Participants and research context: A total of 13 women (aged 18–36 years), who were uncertain of whether to (...) terminate their pregnancies during the first trimester, were interviewed before and after they made their decisions. The participants were recruited at six Norwegian outpatient clinics. Ethical considerations: Approval was granted by the Regional Committee for Medical and Health Research Ethics. Findings: The ambivalent pregnant women sought to make autonomous decisions while simultaneously involving their closest confidants and health personnel in the process. The following three types of narratives of women’s experiences with encounters with health personnel were identified: the respected women; the identified women; and the abandoned women. Discussion: The findings are discussed in terms of the ambivalent pregnant woman’s autonomous responsibility in considering an abortion and how her autonomy can be enabled or impaired during encounters with health personnel. Conclusion and implication: Although the women considered themselves autonomous and responsible for their final decisions, they wished health personnel were involved in their situations. The health personnel contributed by enabling or disabling the possibility of decision-making in accordance with the women’s values. The findings indicate that health personnel who care for women considering abortions must be trained in dialogical competence. (shrink)

Résumé L’analyse quantitative de l’histoire culturelle a été ouverte par la mise à disposition de corpus de masse tel que celui de Google fbooks (500 milliards de mots, 5 millions d’ouvrages, soit environ 4% de la littérature mondiale) et a été popularisé sous le nom de « culturonomics ». Elle s’ouvre désormais aux chercheurs, en promettant un accès profond aux faits culturels et à leurs évolutions qui affleurent à travers leurs traces textuelles dans les corpus textuelles numérisées. Encore faut-il pouvoir (...) interroger ces corpus dont la taille et la nature posent des problèmes scientifiques nouveaux, leur dimension les rendant illisibles directement et mettant échec les méthodes de fouille et les outils traditionnels d’analyse statistique des données en imposant des méthodes statistiques nouvelles et le saut vers des formes d’intelligence visuelles originales. Dans le cadre d’un projet mené entre le Labex « Obvil » de Paris-Sorbonne et le Literary Lab de Stanford sur l’histoire de l’idée de littéraire (la définition de la littérature comme mot, comme concept et comme champ), et visant à produire une histoire empirique de la littérature, nous avons mené depuis deux ans des expériences de fouille d’un corpus de critique littéraire de 1618 titres, 140 millions de mots (dont plus de 50 000 occurrences du lemme « littérature ») de la fin de l’Ancien Régime à la Seconde Guerre mondiale. En présentant des exemples développés dans cette première expérimentation à grande échelle de mesure de l’histoire des idées, on présentera les méthodes de text mining contemporaines en essayant d’éprouver leur pertinence heuristique et de leur capacité à faire remonter des données signifiantes pour l’histoire et la théorie littéraire. On fera l’hypothèse que toute enquête quantitative sérieuse mobilise désormais non une échelle intermédiaire standard et immédiatement lisible, mais le maniement d’outils statistiques dont l’interprétation en sciences humaines pose des problèmes particuliers qui, paradoxalement, ne peuvent être résolus que par leur articulation étroite à du close reading et à des mesures fines. (shrink)

Santayana's Life of Reason, published in five books from 1905 to 1906, ranks as one of the greatest works in modern philosophical naturalism. Acknowledging the natural material bases of human life, Santayana traces the development of the human capacity for appreciating and cultivating the ideal. It is a capacity he exhibits as he articulates a continuity running through animal impulse, practical intelligence, and ideal harmony in reason, society, art, religion, and science. The work is an exquisitely rendered vision of human (...) life lived sanely. In this second book, Santayana analyzes several distinctive forms of human association, from political and economic orders to forms of friendship, to determine what possibilities they provide for the life of reason. He considers, among other topics, love and the affinity for the ideal, the family, aristocracy and democracy, the constituents of genuinely free friendship, patriotism, and the ideal society of kindred spirits. This Critical Edition, volume VII of The Works of George Santayana, includes a chronology, notes, bibliography, textual commentary, lists of variants, and other tools useful to Santayana scholars. The other four books of the volume include Reason in Common Sense, Reason in Religion, Reason in Art, and Reason in Science. (shrink)

Phenomenology has been adapted for use in qualitative health research, where it’s often used as a method for conducting interviews and analyzing interview data. But how can phenomenologists study subjects who cannot accurately reflect upon or report their own experiences, for instance, because of a psychiatric or neurological disorder? For conditions like these, qualitative researchers may gain more insight by conducting observational studies in lieu of, or in conjunction with, interviews. In this article, we introduce a phenomenological approach to conducting (...) this kind of observational research. The approach relies on conceptual grounding to focus a study on specific aspects of the participants’ experiences. Moreover, the approach maintains the openness to novel discoveries that qualitative research requires while also providing a structured framework for data collection and analysis. To illustrate its practical application, we use examples of hemispatial neglect—a neurologic disorder in which patients characteristically lack awareness of their own illness and bodily capacities. However, the approach that we describe can be applied more broadly to the study of complex illness experiences and other experiential alterations. (shrink)

Mehr Markt und Wettbewerb im Gesundheitswesen, so der Tenor aktueller gesundheitspolitischer Debatten, soll Transparenz schaffen, Kosten senken, Missbräuche verhindern und die Qualität der Leistungen steigern. Marianne Rychner zeigt anhand objektiv-hermeneutischer Materialanalysen, in welcher Weise professionalisierte ärztliche Praxis und die Logik des Marktes in einem Widerspruch zueinander stehen. Dies wird deutlich anhand einer detailgetreuen Rekonstruktion zweier ärztlicher Konsultationen. In der Interaktion zwischen Ärztin und Patient entfaltet sich eine komplexe Handlungslogik. Diese konfrontiert die Autorin mit aktuellen Versuchen, der ärztlichen Praxis den (...) Charakter eines marktkonformen Produkts zu geben. (shrink)

During the first decades of the 20th century, many anthropologists who had previously adhered to a linear view of human evolution, from an ape via Pithecanthropus erectus and Neanderthal to modern humans, began to change their outlook. A shift towards a branching model of human evolution began to take hold. Among the scientific factors motivating this trend was the insight that mammalian evolution in general was best represented by a branching tree, rather than by a straight line, and that several (...) new fossil hominids were discovered that differed significantly in their morphology but seemed to date from about the same period. The ideological and practical implications of imperialism and WWI have also been identified as formative of the new evolutionary scenarios in which racial conflict played a crucial role. The paper will illustrate this general shift in anthropological theory for one particular scientist, William Sollas. Sollas achieved a synthesis of human morphological and cultural evolution in what I will refer to as an imperialist model. In this theoretical framework, migration, conflict, and replacement became the main mechanisms for progress spurred by 'nature's tyrant,' natural selection. (shrink)

"A discussion of issues raised by Richard Rorty's engagement with feminist philosophy.