Review of Di Stefano, N. and Russo, M.T. (eds) (2022) _Olfaction: an interdisciplinary perspective from philosophy to life sciences. _Cham, Switzerland: Springer. ISBN: 978-3-030-75204-0.

With no precise boundaries, always on the move and too complex to be defined by space and time, is it possible to map the human subject? This book attempts to do just this, exploring the places of the subject in contemporary culture. The editors approach this subject from four main aspects--its construction, sexuality, limits and politics--using a wide ranging review of literature on subjectivity across the social and human sciences. The first part of the book establishes the idea that the (...) subject is constructed through detailed histories of the subject. The second part shows that sexuality cannot be assumed to be natural through the contributors' research on the place of sexuality in subjectivity and subjectivity in sexuality. The essays in the third part take issue with the idea of a singular, self-contained identity. Power relations and the effects of power are consistent themes throughout the book and the final section deals explicitly with relations of power, whether organized around gender, race, class or other kinds of difference. Contributors: Steve Pile, Nigel Thrift, Miles Ogborn, Carolyn Steedman, David Matless, David Sibley, David Bell, Julia Cream, Vic Seidler, Hester Parr, Chris Philo, Marcus Doel, Paul Rodaway, Nigel Rapport, Stephen Frosh, Valerie Walkerdine, Gillian Rose and Michael Keith. (shrink)

Presentación editorial: "Le terme parreŝia signifie en grec ancien "franc-parler, liberte ́de parole, courage de dire la veŕite"́. Il met en ev́idence le lien qui peut unir le langage, le courage et la veŕite.́ Il insiste sur la dimension et́hique dans l'acte de parler et de penser, autrement dit l'implication de celui qui parle dans un eńonce ́qui pret́end a ̀la coin̈cidence du discours et de la veŕite.́ La parreŝia est une manier̀e de dire la veŕite ́qui fait fi des (...) conventions et de la retenue que requier̀ent les bienseánces.0Elle inflige a ̀l'autre ou a ̀l'institution le constat parfois amer d'une veŕite ́qui n'est jamais bonne a ̀dire. Elle peut causer une souffrance et plonger dans la honte. Les et́udes reúnies dans ce volume explorent plusieurs aspects de la parreŝia telle qu'on a pu la consideŕer et la vivre dans l'Antiquite,́ a ̀la Renaissance ou au siec̀le des Lumier̀es.". (shrink)

"--Brian Greene, Columbia University "This book includes material that is intellectually innovative and comes as a surprise even to specialists in the field.

Open peer commentary on the article “A First-Person Analysis Using Third Person-Data as a Generative Method: A Case Study of Surprise in Depression” by Natalie Depraz, Maria Gyemant & Thomas Desmidt. Upshot: Given the claims of Natalie Depraz regarding what she called in 2004 the “practical turn of phenomenology,” I ask the authors how they conceive the research they presented in their 2017 article, particularly regarding transcendental phenomenology.

The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 seems to have broken, for the first time, the immunity from sustained criticism previously enjoyed by Israel and its American supporters. For a variety of reasons, Israel’s status in European and American public life and discourse has always been special, just as the position of Jews in the West has always been special, sometimes for its tragedy and horrendous suffering, at other times for its uniquely impressive intellectual and aesthetic triumphs. On behalf of (...) Israel, anomalous norms, exceptional arguments, eccentric claims were made, all of them forcibly conveying the notion that Israel does not entirely belong to the world of normal politics. Nevertheless, Israel—and with it, Zionism—had gained this unusual status politically, not miraculously: it merged with a variety of currents in the West whose power and attractiveness for supporters of Israel effaced anything as concrete as, for example, an Israeli policy of rigid separation between Jew and non-Jew, or a military rule over hundreds of thousands of Arabs that was as repressive as any tyranny in Latin America or Eastern Europe. There are any number of credible accounts of this, from daily fare in the Israeli press to studies by Amnesty International, to reports by various U.N. bodies, Western journalists, church groups, and, not least, dissenting supporters of Israel. In other words, even though Israel was a Jewish state established by force on territory already inhabited by a native population largely of Muslim Arabs, in a part of the world overwhelmingly Muslim and Arab, it appeared to most of Israel’s supporters in the West that the Palestinian Arabs who paid a large part of the price for Israel’s establishment were neither relevant nor necessarily even real. What changed in 1982 was that the distance between Arab and Jew was for the first time perceived more or less universally as not so great and, indeed, that any consideration of Israel, and any perception of Israel at all, would have to include some consideration of the Palestinian Arabs, their travail, their claims, their humanity.Changes of this sort seem to occur dramatically, although it is more accurate to comprehend them as complex, cumulative, often contradictory processes occurring over a long period of time. Above all else, however, no such process can be viewed neutrally, since for better or for worse there are many interests at work in it and, therefore, many interests also at work whenever it is interpreted or reported. Moreover, while it is worthwhile and even possible to reduce and curtail the gross pressure of those interests for the purpose of analysis or reflection, it is useless to deny that any such analysis is inevitably grounded in, or inevitably affiliated to, a particular historical moment and a specific political situation. Edward Said, Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, is the author of, among other works, The Question of Palestine , The World, the Text, and the Critic , and After the Last Sky . He will give the 1985 T. S. Eliot Lectures, on Culture and Imperialism, at the University of Kent later this year. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry include “Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies, and Community” and “On Professionalism: Response to Stanley Fish”. (shrink)

Il y a une énigme chez Foucault : la mise en plan de l’histoire de la sexualité en faveur d’un retour au sujet s’explique plutôt mal. Qui plus est, le projet d’élaborer une subjectivité sans sujet n’était pas sans poser quelques problèmes. Dans cet article, nous mettons en contexte ces difficultés afin de montrer qu’une autre forme de subjectivité était malgré tout possible. Pour ce faire, nous solutionnons une part de l’énigme en justifiant le recours à des formations historiques de (...) longue durée dès 1978 (I). Nous décrivons ensuite la subjectivation qui, dans le cadre d’une esthétique de l’existence, répond aux critères d’une subjectivité sans sujet (II). Et pour illustrer comment Foucault dépasse le sujet moderne, nous introduisons la parrêsia qui, dans le cours de 1982, rattache le sujet et la vérité de manière à offrir une résistance au pouvoir (III). En conclusion, nous tentons de cerner l’originalité méthodologique de Foucault sur cette question en précisant le sens d’une approche poststructuraliste de la signification. (shrink)

Por que la vida?, para que nuestra vida? A esta necesidad de interrogarnos y respondernos sobre el modo de ser para encontrarle sentido a la vida responde la parte mas antigua y esencial de la filosofia: la metafisica, que es el fundamento de nuestro comportamiento, de nuestra vida etica. Reconociendo otros aspectos filosoficos estrechamente vinculados con ella: el metodo, la teoria del conocimiento, la moral, Xirau propone entender la filosofia como una cuestion que trasciende la vida misma: convivir con el (...) pensamiento de los tiempos pasados, pues siempre los hombres se han planteado esas preguntas, tal como lo hacen cada uno de los filosofos que se explican en esta obra a traves de su presentacion historica en tres periodos: grecorromano, cristiano-medieval y renacentista-moderno. (shrink)

Die Herrschaft des Behaviorismus in der Psychologie ist gebrochen! Das ist die Ausgangsthese dieses Buches, die im Rahmen des Modells revolutionärer Wissenschaftsentwicklung (Kuhn) als Behauptung eines Paradigmawechsels präzisiert wird. Die Argumentation beschränkt sich nicht nur auf den Nachweis des Niedergangs des Behaviorismus, sondern gibt auch konstruktiv das mögliche neue Paradigma an: als Psychologie des reflexiven Subjekts, das wie der Wissenschaftler (subjektive) Theorien aufstellt, überprüft, bewertet. Der Aufriss einer solchen Psychologie des epistemischen Subjekts unter allgemein-, sozial-, pädagogisch- und klinisch-psychologischem Aspekt thematisiert (...) vor allem: die Rationalität der Reflexionen, Normenkritik und -begründung im Austausch von wissenschaftlichen und naiven Theorien sowie die Berücksichtigung von Reflexivität in der therapeutischen Praxis. Die Rückwendung dieser pychologisch-metatheoretischen Perspektiven auf die Wissenschaftstheorie führt auch zu einer neu. (shrink)

Divine traditions and moral deviation; also social ethics and social aspects in Islam.

On evidence of ancient cosmology found in Khmer temple ruins in Sakon Nakhon Province, Thailand.