The following paper will present some outcomes of research into the topic of clairvoyance in a European context and the depiction of the spiritual in film in order to suggest that a cultural analysis of the perception of the angelic imaginary can offer insights into the interrelation between the subject areas of cinema and consciousness. This research on clairvoyance began in 1997 as part of an interdisciplinary study arising out of the disciplines of Cultural Anthropology and Film Theory at the (...) University of Amsterdam: it focused on the phenomenon of the clairvoyant perception of angels and compared this with the treatment of the spiritual in film. One major outcome of this study reveals a significant correspondence between the general cinema experience and the clairvoyants' perception of apparitions: both could be adequately described as multi-sensorial experiences reaching beyond the audio-visual perception into a stimulation of an internal affection (in the Bergsonian use of the term) imbricated with thought, memory and association, embracing the importance of the often underrated sensations of touch, smell and emotions. What follows will summarize these insights and situate them within a broader theoretical context, in which the work of Henri Bergson will be revisited through the subsequent insights of Gilles Deleuze in order to re-evaluate Deleuze's contribution and place my own research within an interdisciplinary framework of Philosophy, Film Studies and Cultural Anthropology. (shrink)

This paper revisits some early applications of audio-visual imaging technologies used in physiology in a dialogue with reflections on Henri Bergson’s philosophy. It focuses on the aspects of time and memory in relation to spatial representations of movement measurements and critically discusses them from the perspective of the observing participant and the public exhibitions of scientific films. Departing from an audio-visual example, this paper is informed by a thick description of the philosophical implications and contemporary discourses surrounding the scientific inventions, (...) technologies and theories of moving image technologies, representations of time, and the measurement of bodies in motion such as those by the French physiologist Étienne-Jules Marey. The application of Bergson’s thinking will show how the scientific graphing and representations of the body through technologies inevitably stand in tension with the limits and potentials of the ‘human apparatus’ and its abilities, filters and internalised processes of perception, memory and consciousness. It proposes an ontological approach to scientific imaging technologies and a critical engagement with the ‘realism’ debate in the discourse of audio-visual media. (shrink)

“Ordo,” as it has come to be used, suggests the basic structure of Christian worship that centers on table, font, and pulpit, and the shape of Christian living that flows from these centers. It is a commitment to that which grounds and guides our lives in the world.

Martha Nussbuam is one of the most prolific and original philosophers working today. Influenced by ancient philosophy, she has written on the relationship between fiction, the emotions and moral reasoning. With Amartya Sen she developed the capabilities approach to human well-being, which helped shape the UN’s Human Development Index. She is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago.

Visual Agnosia is a comprehensive and up-to-date review of disorders of higher vision that relates these disorders to current conceptions of higher vision from cognitive science, illuminating both the neuropsychological disorders and the nature of normal visual object recognition.Brain damage can lead to selective problems with visual perception, including visual agnosia the inability to recognize objects even though elementary visual functions remain unimpaired. Such disorders are relatively rare, yet they provide a window onto how the normal brain might accomplish the (...) complex task of vision. Visual Agnosia reviews a century of case studies of higher-level visual deficits following brain damage, places them in the general context of current neuroscience, and draws relevant conclusions about the organization of normal visual processing. It is unique in drawing on research in cognitive psychology, computational vision, visual neurophysiology, and neuropsychology to interpret the agnosias and draw inferences from them about visual object recognition.Following a historical account of agnosia research, Visual Agnosia offers a taxonomy of a wide range of agnosia syndromes, describing and interpreting the syndromes in terms of the latest theoretical models of visual processing and ultimately bringing them to bear as evidence on a variety of questions in the study of higher vision.Martha J. Farah is Associate Professor of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. Visual Agnosia is included in the Issues in Biology of Language and Cognition series, edited by John Marshall. (shrink)

This volume brings together Nussbaum's published papers on the relationship between literature and philosophy, especially moral philosophy.

The cosmopolitan tradition begins with Diogenes, who claimed as his identity "citizen of the world." Martha Nussbaum traces the cosmopolitan ideal from ancient times to the present, weighing its limitations as well as merits. Using the capabilities approach, Nussbaum seeks to integrate the "noble but flawed" vision of world citizenship with cosmopolitanism's concern with moral and political justice for all.--.

A revolutionary new theory and call to action on animal rights, ethics, and law from the renowned philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum.

In this critique, Martha Nussbaum argues that our dominant theories of development have given us policies that ignore our most basic human needs for dignity and self-respect.

In this volume based on her 2014 Locke Lectures, Martha C. Nussbaum provides a bracing new view that strips the notion of forgiveness down to its Judeo-Christian roots, where it was structured by the moral relationship between a score-keeping God and penitent, self-abasing, and erring mortals.

In this major book Martha Nussbaum, one of the most innovative and influential philosophical voices of our time, proposes a kind of feminism that is genuinely international, argues for an ethical underpinning to all thought about development planning and public policy, and dramatically moves beyond the abstractions of economists and philosophers to embed thought about justice in the concrete reality of the struggles of poor women. Nussbaum argues that international political and economic thought must be sensitive to gender difference (...) as a problem of justice, and that feminist thought must begin to focus on the problems of women in the third world. Taking as her point of departure the predicament of poor women in India, she shows how philosophy should undergird basic constitutional principles that should be respected and implemented by all governments, and used as a comparative measure of quality of life across nations. (shrink)

Theories of social justice are necessarily abstract, reaching beyond the particular and the immediate to the general and the timeless. Yet such theories, addressing the world and its problems, must respond to the real and changing dilemmas of the day. A brilliant work of practical philosophy, Frontiers of Justice is dedicated to this proposition. Taking up three urgent problems of social justice neglected by current theories and thus harder to tackle in practical terms and everyday life, Martha Nussbaum seeks (...) a theory of social justice that can guide us to a richer, more responsive approach to social cooperation. The idea of the social contract--especially as developed in the work of John Rawls--is one of the most powerful approaches to social justice in the Western tradition. But as Nussbaum demonstrates, even Rawls's theory, suggesting a contract for mutual advantage among approximate equals, cannot address questions of social justice posed by unequal parties. How, for instance, can we extend the equal rights of citizenship--education, health care, political rights and liberties--to those with physical and mental disabilities? How can we extend justice and dignified life conditions to all citizens of the world? And how, finally, can we bring our treatment of nonhuman animals into our notions of social justice? Exploring the limitations of the social contract in these three areas, Nussbaum devises an alternative theory based on the idea of capabilities. She helps us to think more clearly about the purposes of political cooperation and the nature of political principles--and to look to a future of greater justice for all. (shrink)

Emotions shape the landscape of our mental and social lives. Like geological upheavals in a landscape, they mark our lives as uneven, uncertain and prone to reversal. Are they simply, as some have claimed, animal energies or impulses with no connection to our thoughts? Or are they rather suffused with intelligence and discernment, and thus a source of deep awareness and understanding? In this compelling book, Martha C. Nussbaum presents a powerful argument for treating emotions not as alien forces (...) but as highly discriminating responses to what is of value and importance. She explores and illuminates the structure of a wide range of emotions, in particular compassion and love, showing that there can be no adequate ethical theory without an adequate theory of the emotions. This involves understanding their cultural sources, their history in infancy and childhood, and their sometimes unpredictable and disorderly operations in our daily lives. (shrink)

“Philosophy is constitutive of good citizenship. It becomes part of what you are when you are a good citizen – a thoughtful person. Philosophy has manyroles. It can be just fun, a game that you play. It can be a way you try to approach your own death or illness, or that of a family member. I’m just focusing on the place where I think I can win over people, and say ‘Look here, you do care about democracy don’t you? (...) Then you’d better see that philosophy has a place.’”. (shrink)

We present a model for several early stages of the sensorimotor transformations involved in targeted arm movement. In psychophysical experiments, human subjects pointed to the remembered locations of randomly placed targets in three-dimensional space. They made consistent errors in distance, and from these errors stages in the sensorimotor transformation were deduced. When subjects attempted to move the right index finger to a virtual target they consistently undershot the distance of the more distal targets. Other experiments indicated that the error was (...) in the sensorimotor transformation rather than in the perception of distance. The error was most consistent when evaluated using a spherical coordinate system based at the right shoulder, indicating that the neural representation of target parameters is transformed from a retinocentric representation to a shoulder-centered representation. According to the model, the error in distance results from the neural implementation of a linear approximation in the algorithm to transform shoulder-centered target parameters into a set of arm orientations appropriate for placing the finger on the target. The transformation to final arm orientations places visually derived information into a frame of reference where it can readily be combined with kinesthetically derived information about initial arm orientations. The combination of these representations of initial and final arm orientations could give rise to the representation of movement direction recorded in the motor cortex by Georgopoulos and his colleagues. Later stages, such as the transformation from kinematic to dynamic parameters, or to levels of muscle activation, are beyond the scope of the present model. (shrink)

Philoctetes was a good man and a good soldier. When he was on his way to Troy to fight alongside the Greeks, he had a terrible misfortune. By sheer accident he trespassed in a sacred precinct on the island of Lemnos. As punishment he was bitten on the foot by the serpent who guarded the shrine. His foot began to ooze with foul-smelling pus, and the pain made him cry out curses that spoiled the other soldiers' religious observances. They therefore (...) left him alone on the island, a lame man with no resources but his bow and arrows, no friends but the animals who were also his food. Ten years later, according to Sophocles' version of the story, they come to bring him back: for they have learned that they cannot win the war without him. The leaders of the expedition think of Philoctetes as a tool of their purposes; they plan to trick him into returning, with no empathy for his plight. The Chorus of soldiers, however, has a different response. Even before they see the man, they imagine vividly what it is like to be him– and they enter a protest against the callousness of the commanders: For my part, I pity him– thinking of how, with no living soul to care for him, seeing no friendly face, wretched, always alone, he suffers with a fierce affliction, and has no resources to meet his daily needs. How in the world does the poor man survive? (shrink)

Should laws about sex and pornography be based on social conventions about what is disgusting? Should felons be required to display bumper stickers or wear T-shirts that announce their crimes? This powerful and elegantly written book, by one of America's most influential philosophers, presents a critique of the role that shame and disgust play in our individual and social lives and, in particular, in the law.Martha Nussbaum argues that we should be wary of these emotions because they are associated (...) in troubling ways with a desire to hide from our humanity, embodying an unrealistic and sometimes pathological wish to be invulnerable. Nussbaum argues that the thought-content of disgust embodies "magical ideas of contamination, and impossible aspirations to purity that are just not in line with human life as we know it." She argues that disgust should never be the basis for criminalizing an act, or play either the aggravating or the mitigating role in criminal law it currently does. She writes that we should be similarly suspicious of what she calls "primitive shame," a shame "at the very fact of human imperfection," and she is harshly critical of the role that such shame plays in certain punishments.Drawing on an extraordinarily rich variety of philosophical, psychological, and historical references--from Aristotle and Freud to Nazi ideas about purity--and on legal examples as diverse as the trials of Oscar Wilde and the Martha Stewart insider trading case, this is a major work of legal and moral philosophy. (shrink)

How can we achieve and sustain a "decent" liberal society, one that aspires to justice and equal opportunity for all and inspires individuals to sacrifice for the common good? In this book, a continuation of her explorations of emotions and the nature of social justice, Martha Nussbaum makes the case for love. Amid the fears, resentments, and competitive concerns that are endemic even to good societies, public emotions rooted in love—in intense attachments to things outside our control—can foster commitment (...) to shared goals and keep at bay the forces of disgust and envy. Great democratic leaders, including Abraham Lincoln, Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr., have understood the importance of cultivating emotions. But people attached to liberalism sometimes assume that a theory of public sentiments would run afoul of commitments to freedom and autonomy. Calling into question this perspective, Nussbaum investigates historical proposals for a public "civil religion" or "religion of humanity" by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill, and Rabindranath Tagore. She offers an account of how a decent society can use resources inherent in human psychology, while limiting the damage done by the darker side of our personalities. And finally she explores the cultivation of emotions that support justice in examples drawn from literature, song, political rhetoric, festivals, memorials, and even the design of public parks. "Love is what gives respect for humanity its life," Nussbaum writes, "making it more than a shell." Political Emotionsis a challenging and ambitious contribution to political philosophy. (shrink)

Widely hailed as one of the most significant works in modern political philosophy, John Rawls's _Political Liberalism_ defended a powerful vision of society that respects reasonable ways of life, both religious and secular. These core values have never been more critical as anxiety grows over political and religious difference and new restrictions are placed on peaceful protest and individual expression. In her introduction to the volume, Martha Nussbaum discusses the main themes of _Political Liberalism _and puts them into the (...) context of contemporary philosophical debates. (shrink)

Bringing together a group of outstanding new essays on Aristotle's De Anima, this book covers topics such as the relation between soul and body, sense-perception, imagination, memory, desire, and thought, which present the philosophical substance of Aristotle's views to the modern reader. The contributors write with philosophical subtlety and wide-ranging scholarship, locating their interpretations firmly within the context of Aristotle's thought as a whole.u.

This book is a study of ancient views about 'moral luck'. It examines the fundamental ethical problem that many of the valued constituents of a well-lived life are vulnerable to factors outside a person's control, and asks how this affects our appraisal of persons and their lives. The Greeks made a profound contribution to these questions, yet neither the problems nor the Greek views of them have received the attention they deserve. This book thus recovers a central dimension of Greek (...) thought and addresses major issues in contemporary ethical theory. One of its most original aspects is its interrelated treatment of both literary and philosophical texts. The Fragility of Goodness has proven to be important reading for philosophers and classicists, and its non-technical style makes it accessible to any educated person interested in the difficult problems it tackles. This new edition features an entirely new preface by Martha Nussbaum. (shrink)

The Epicureans, Skeptics, and Stoics practiced philosophy not as a detached intellectual discipline, but as a worldly art of grappling with issues of daily and urgent human significance: the fear of death, love and sexuality, anger and aggression. Like medicine, philosophy to them was a rigorous science aimed both at understanding and at producing the flourishing of human life. In this engaging book, Martha Nussbaum examines texts of philosophers committed to a therapeutic paradigm--including Epicurus, Lucretius, Sextus Empiricus, Chrysippus, and (...) Seneca--and recovers a valuable source for our moral and political thought of today.The Epicureans, Skeptics, and Stoics practiced philosophy not as a detached intellectual discipline, but as a worldly art of grappling with issues of daily and urgent human significance: the fear of death, love and sexuality, anger and aggression. Like medicine, philosophy to them was a rigorous science aimed both at understanding and at producing the flourishing of human life. In this engaging book, Martha Nussbaum examines texts of philosophers committed to a therapeutic paradigm--including Epicurus, Lucretius, Sextus Empiricus, Chrysippus, and Seneca--and recovers a valuable source for our moral and political thought of today. (shrink)

Personhood is a foundational concept in ethics, yet defining criteria have been elusive. In this article we summarize attempts to define personhood in psychological and neurological terms and conclude that none manage to be both specific and non-arbitrary. We propose that this is because the concept does not correspond to any real category of objects in the world. Rather, it is the product of an evolved brain system that develops innately and projects itself automatically and irrepressibly onto the world whenever (...) triggered by stimulus features such as a human-like face, body, or contingent patterns of behavior. We review the evidence for the existence of an autonomous person network in the brain and discuss its implications for the field of ethics and for the implicit morality of everyday behavior. (shrink)

In "Upheavals of Thought", Martha Nussbaum offers a theory of the emotions. She argues that emotions are best conceived as thoughts, and she argues that emotion-thoughts can make valuable contributions to the moral life. She develops extensive accounts of compassion and erotic love as thoughts that are of great moral import. This paper seeks to elucidate what it means, for Nussbaum, to say that emotions are forms of thought. It raises critical questions about her conception of the structure of (...) emotion, and about her conception of compassion, in particular. Finally, the paper seeks to show how analyzing the structure, as well as the moral value, of the emotions ultimately requires entering the realm of religious ethics. (shrink)

This book casts new light on the traditional disagreement between those who hold that we cannot be morally responsible for our actions if they are causally determined, and those who deny this. Klein suggests that reflection on the relation between justice and deprivation offers a way out of this perplexity.

El siguiente artículo presenta las conclusiones de la investigación realizada sobre la ética filosófica en la última década del siglo XX en Colombia. Dentro del proyecto investigativo de la Facultad de Filosofía de la Universidad Santo Tomás de Bogotá, Colombia, orientado al estudio y análisis de la historia de las ideas en América latina y Colombia, la investigación llevada a cabo buscó definir y aclarar el lugar que ocupa la ética filosófica en la historia de las ideas en Colombia. Para (...) tal fin, logró complementar la base de datos con que cuenta el centro de Investigación de Filosofía de la Universidad Santo Tomás en lo referente a dicha temática y a partir del análisis de los datos obtenidos, establecer el papel y el lugar que juega la ética filosófica en nuestra historia intelectual. En este orden de ideas, la investigación coadyuvó a analizar el proceso de normalización de la filosofía en Colombia. El procedimiento para construir la base de datos permitió valorar y comprender el fenómeno de la reflexión filosófica en este país. Las características socio históricas de la nación colombiana posibilitan definir y comprender las coordenadas de un fenómeno que hace parte de lo que se ha dado en llamar proceso de normalización filosófica. Los cambios políticos que se gestaron y realizaron durante la década de los 90 y sus incidencias no fueron ajenos a la reflexión de la filosofía práctica, poniendo de relieve la urgencia por analizar el destino de la sociedad colombiana. En este sentido, el compromiso del pensar por parte de los autores colombianos fue avanzando los pasos de una normalización en que la disciplina es vista como haciendo parte de la construcción del proyecto de sociedad. (shrink)

The eye may be window to the soul, but neuroscientists aim to get inside and measure the interior directly. There's also talk about moving some walls.

_From Naming to Saying_ explores the classicquestion of the unity of the proposition, combining an historical approach with contemporary causal theories to offer a unique and novel solution. Presents compelling and sophisticated answers to questions about how language represents the world. Defends a novel approach to the classical question about the unity of the proposition. Examines three key historical theories: Frege’s doctrine of concept and object, Russell’s analysis of the sentence, and Wittgenstein’s picture theory of meaning. Combines an historical approach (...) with discussion and defense of a contemporary causal theory of the unity of the proposition. Establishes a view compatible with, though not dependent on, a causal theory of meaning. (shrink)