This article offers a detailed reading Gascoigne and Thornton’s book Tacit Knowledge, which aims to account for the tacitness of tacit knowledge while preserving its status as knowledge proper. I take issue with their characterization and rejection of the existential-phenomenological Background—which they presuppose even as they dismiss—and their claim that TK can be articulated “from within”—which betrays a residual Cartesianism, the result of their elision of conceptuality and propositionality. Knowledgeable acts instantiate capacities which we might know we have and of (...) which we can be aware, but which are not propositionally structured at their “core”. Nevertheless, propositionality is necessary to what Robert Brandom calls, in Making It Explicit and Articulating Reasons, “explicitation”, which notion also presupposes a tacit dimension, which is, simply, the embodied person, without which no conception of knowledge can get any purchase. On my view, there is no knowledgeable act that can be understood as such separately from the notion of skilled corporeal performance. The account I offer cannot make sense of so-called “knowledge-based” education, as opposed to systems and styles which supposedly privilege “contentless” skills over and above “knowledge”, because on the phenomenological and inferentialist lines I endorse, neither the concepts “knowledge” nor “skill” has any purchase or meaning without the other. (shrink)

Introduction One of popular science’s primary functions is to make what would otherwise be inaccessible, specialist knowledge accessible to the lay reader. But popular science puts its imagined reader in something of a dilemma, for one does not have to look very far to find bitter argument among science writers; argument that takes place beyond the limits of the scientific community: witness the ill-tempered exchanges between Mary Midgley and Richard Dawkins in the journal Philosophy in the l...

Alex Oliver and Timothy Smiley provide a new account of plural logic. They argue that there is such a thing as genuinely plural denotation in logic, and expound a framework of ideas that includes the distinction between distributive and collective predicates, the theory of plural descriptions, multivalued functions, and lists.

In a companion paper (Pooley & Brown 2001) it is argued that Julian Barbour's Machian approach to dynamics provides a genuinely relational interpretation of Newtonian dynamics and that it is more explanatory than the conventional, substantival interpretation. In this paper the extension of the approach to relativistic physics is considered. General relativity, it turns out, can be reinterpreted as a perfectly Machian theory. However, there are difficulties with viewing the Machian interpretation as more fundamental than the conventional, spacetime interpretation. Moreover, (...) this state of affairs provides little solace for the relationist for, even when interpreted along Machian lines, general relativity is a substantival theory although the basic entity is space, not spacetime. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for a novel reading of Spinoza’s position in his exchangewith Boyle about Boyle’s experiment with nitre. Boyle claimed to have shownthrough experiments that nitre ceased to be nitre after heating. Spinozadisagreed and proposed the alternative hypothesis that nitre has changed itsstate and not its nature. Spinoza’s position was construed in the literature asrational scepticism denying that experiments can yield knowledge ofessences because all sensory experience is underdetermined and open tomultiple interpretations. I argue for an alternative (...) reading of Spinoza’sposition which focuses on Bacon’s notion of crucial instance. According tothis reading, Spinoza did not deny the possibility of knowing byexperimentation whether nitre has changed its nature, he asked for a crucialinstance, i.e. an experiment that would refute the hypothesis that nitre haschanged merely its state. Spinoza’s argumentative strategy shows that,contrary to the mainstream reading, the representational content of sensoryideas can be determined even if it does not represent the essence of theobject: we can know with absolute, rather than merely moral, certaintywhether nitre ceased to be nitre without knowing what nitre is. (shrink)

Introduction: The role of animals in philosophies of man -- Part I: What's wrong with animal rights? -- The right to remain silent -- Part II: Animal pedagogy -- You are what you eat : Rousseau's cat -- Say the human responded : Herder's sheep -- Part III: Difference worthy of its name -- Hair of the dog : Derrida's and Rousseau's good taste -- Sexual difference, animal difference : Derrida's sexy silkworm -- Part IV: It's our fault -- The (...) beaver's struggle with species-being : De Beauvoir and the praying mantis -- Answering the call of nature : Lacan walking the dog -- Part V: Estranged kinship -- The abyss between humans and animals : Heidegger puts the bee in being -- Strange kinship : Merleau-Ponty's sensuous stickleback -- Stopping the anthropological machine : Agamben's tick-tocking tick -- Psychoanalysis and the science of kinship -- Psychoanalysis as animal by-product : Freud's zoophilia -- Animal abjects, maternal abjects : Kristeva's strays -- Conclusion: Sustainable ethics. (shrink)

Critically engaging the work of Immanuel Kant, Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, and Jacques Derrida together with her own observations on contemporary politics, environmental degradation, and the pursuit of a just and sustainable world, Kelly Oliver lays the groundwork for a politics and ethics that embraces otherness without exploiting difference. Rooted firmly in human beings' relationship to the planet and to each other, Oliver shows peace is possible only if we maintain our ties to earth and world. Oliver (...) begins with Immanuel Kant and his vision of politics grounded on earth as a finite surface shared by humans. She then incorporates Hannah Arendt's belief in plural worlds constituted through human relationships; Martin Heidegger's warning that alienation from the Earth endangers not only politics but also the very essence of being human; and Jacques Derrida's meditations on the singular worlds individuals, human and otherwise, create and how they inform the reality we inhabit. Each of these theorists, Oliver argues, resists the easy idealism of world citizenship and globalism, yet they all think about the earth against the globe to advance a grounded ethics. They contribute to a philosophy that avoids globalization's totalizing and homogenizing impulses and instead help build a framework for living within and among the world's rich biodiversity. (shrink)

In this article I argue that Kant's conception of dignity is commonly misunderstood. On the basis of a few passages in the Grundlegung scholars often attribute to Kant a view of dignity as an absolute inner value all human beings possess. However, a different picture emerges if one takes into account all the passages in which Kant uses ‘dignity’. I shall argue that Kant's conception of dignity is a more Stoic one: He conceives of dignity as sublimity ( Erhabenheit ) (...) or the highest elevation of something over something else. ‘Dignity’ expresses that something is ‘raised above’ all else. What it is raised above, and in virtue of what, depends on the context in which Kant uses ‘dignity’. For instance, he talks about the dignity of a monarch to refer to his rank as the ruler of his subjects. When Kant refers to the dignity of humanity, he expresses the view that human beings have a prerogative over the rest of nature in virtue of being free. What Kant is saying in the famous Grundlegung passage on dignity is that morality is raised above other determinations of will in that morality alone should be valued unconditionally. In unfolding the complicated usage of ‘dignity’ in Kant's works, my reading helps to bring out the coherence of his ethics. (shrink)

Recent advances in evolutionary biology and ethology suggest that humans are not the only species capable of empathy and possibly morality. These findings are of no little consequence for theology, given that a nonhuman animal as a free moral agent would beg the question if human beings are indeed uniquely created in God's image. I argue that apes and some other mammals have moral agency and that a traditional interpretation of the imago Dei is incorrectly equating specialness with exclusivity. By (...) framing the problem in terms of metaphor, following the work of Paul Ricoeur and Sallie McFague, I propose that the concept of the imago Dei could be extended to accommodate moral species other than our own. (shrink)

Shannon information is commonly assumed to be the wrong way in which to conceive of information in most biological contexts. Since the theory deals only in correlations between systems, the argument goes, it can apply to any and all causal interactions that affect a biological outcome. Since informational language is generally confined to only certain kinds of biological process, such as gene expression and hormone signalling, Shannon information is thought to be unable to account for this restriction. It is often (...) concluded that a richer, teleosemantic sense of information is needed. I argue against this view, and show that a coherent and sufficiently restrictive theory of biological information can be constructed with Shannon information at its core. This can be done by paying due attention some crucial distinctions: between information quantity and its fitness value, and between carrying information and having the function of doing so. From this I construct an account of how informational functions arise, and show that the “subject matter” of these functions can easily be seen as the natural information dealt with by Shannon’s theory. (shrink)

In this paper, I want to make two main points. The first point is methodological: Instead of attempting to give a classical analysis or reductive definition of the term “expertise”, we should attempt an explication and look for what may be called symptoms of expertise. What this comes to will be explained in due course. My second point is substantial: I want to recommend understanding as an important symptom of expertise. In order to give this suggestion content, I begin to (...) develop an account of understanding. Finally, I will draw attention to some consequences of this approach. (shrink)

Deepfakes are fake recordings generated by machine learning algorithms. Various philosophical explanations have been proposed to account for their epistemic harmfulness. In this paper, I argue that deepfakes are epistemically harmful because they undermine trust in recording technology. As a result, we are no longer entitled to our default doxastic attitude of believing that P on the basis of a recording that supports the truth of P. Distrust engendered by deepfakes changes the epistemic status of recordings to resemble that of (...) handmade images. Their credibility, like that of testimony, depends partly on the credibility of the source. I consider some proposed technical solutions from a philosophical perspective to show the practical relevance of these suggestions. (shrink)

I chart the philosophical development of neglected figure Margaret Macdonald and situate that development in the context of mid-century analytic philosophy more broadly. I examine Macdonald’s changing attitude towards verificationism, and show that these changing views led her, in 1950 and beyond, to a very thorough appreciation of language use as capable of being employed in the execution of distinctive kinds of performative act. I compare Macdonald’s views with the far better known work of J. L. Austin, and I emphasise (...) the extent to which she has, despite her insightful contributions, been omitted from the history of philosophy. (shrink)

Family Values shows how the various contradictions at the heart of Western conceptions of maternity and paternity problematize our relationships with ourselves and with others. Using philosophical texts, psychoanalytic theory, studies in biology and popular culture, Kelly Oliver challenges our traditional concepts of maternity which are associated with nature, and our conceptions of paternity which are embedded in culture. Oliver's intervention calls into question the traditional image of the oppositional relationship between nature and culture, maternal and paternal. Family (...) Values also undercuts recent returns to the rhetoric of a "battle between the sexes" by analyzing the conceptual basis of these descriptions in biological research and the presuppositions of such suggestions in philosophy and psychoanalysis. By developing a reconception of maternity and paternity, Family Values offers hope for peace in the battle of the sexes. (shrink)

One of postmodernism's toughest challenges to Christian thought is its wholesale rejection of metaphysics. This profound book meets the challenge squarely, offering a surer foundation for the idea of being and a new theological perspective of supreme relevance to today's world. In a brilliant turn of postmodern thought itself, Oliver Davies argues for a renewal of metaphysics based on a dynamic new understanding of ontology as narrative and performance. His repairing of the Western metaphysical tradition is grounded both in (...) the divine self-naming in Exodus -- which, for the rabbis, identified God's presence in the world with God's compassionate acts -- and in the compassionate resistance of Etty Hillesum and Edith Stein to the violence of the Holocaust. Building on a new metaphysics of compassion that is attentive to the deepest histories of the contemporary world, Davies offers a renewed systematic theology focused on divine speech and God's compassionate relation to human culture. (shrink)

Ever since Eve tempted Adam with her apple, women have been regarded as a corrupting and destructive force. The very idea that women can be used as interrogation tools, as evidenced in the infamous Abu Ghraib torture photos, plays on age-old fears of women as sexually threatening weapons, and therefore the literal explosion of women onto the war scene should come as no surprise. From the female soldiers involved in Abu Ghraib to Palestinian women suicide bombers, women and their bodies (...) have become powerful weapons in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. In _Women as Weapons of War_, Kelly Oliver reveals how the media and the administration frequently use metaphors of weaponry to describe women and female sexuality and forge a deliberate link between notions of vulnerability and images of violence. Focusing specifically on the U.S. campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, Oliver analyzes contemporary discourse surrounding women, sex, and gender and the use of women to justify America's decision to go to war. For example, the administration's call to liberate "women of cover," suggesting a woman's right to _bare_ arms is a sign of freedom and progress. Oliver also considers what forms of cultural meaning, or lack of meaning, could cause both the guiltlessness demonstrated by female soldiers at Abu Ghraib and the profound commitment to death made by suicide bombers. She examines the pleasure taken in violence and the passion for death exhibited by these women and what kind of contexts created them. In conclusion, Oliver diagnoses our cultural fascination with sex, violence, and death and its relationship with live news coverage and embedded reporting, which naturalizes horrific events and stymies critical reflection. This process, she argues, further compromises the borders between fantasy and reality, fueling a kind of paranoid patriotism that results in extreme forms of violence. (shrink)

At the centre of responsible management (RM) learning is the development of managerial competence for ethics, responsibility, and sustainability (ERS). Important contributions have been made from each: the ethics, responsibility, and sustainability disciplines. However, we are yet to integrate these disciplinary contributions into a comprehensive interdisciplinary RM competence framework that corresponds to the interdisciplinary nature of RM challenges. We address this priority in this paper and report on the findings of an integrative structured literature review of 224 management competence articles (...) across the ERS disciplines. Our thematic template analysis has produced an interdisciplinary RM competence framework of three layers of personal, behavioural, and intellectual competences and independent and interdependent competence dimensions. The resulting 3 × 2 competence matrix framework accommodates 33 interdisciplinary ERS competence themes and 90 subthemes in the six competence domains of _being_ and _becoming_, _acting_ and _interacting_, _knowing_ and _thinking_. To the RM discussion, we contribute an interdisciplinary competence framework that enables the development of responsible managers who tackle the inherently interdisciplinary issues of RM. To the competence discussion, we contribute the interdependent competence dimension and future research directions through the lens of response-ability. _JBE Section:_ Business Ethics Learning and Education. (shrink)

Was the zoological garden a place for science in the 19th and 20th centuries? This question cannot be answered with a simple yes or no. Rather, this Special Issue suggests, we need to reconstruct how the concrete conditions of the zoo as an institution influenced, enabled, triggered, facilitated, obstructed, or impeded scientific research. The zoo was and is a multifunctional space serving different constituencies, such as scientists of different disciplines, artists, breeders, and the general public. This collection of articles argues (...) that despite or even because of its hybrid character, the zoo generated knowledge about exotic animals in often unexpected ways. This Special Issue conceives of “science at the zoo” as a an “impure,” yet very rich epistemic constellation with its very own dynamic, tensions, and contradictions. The first part of this introduction provides a historical overview of the topic. Synthesizing the existing secondary literature, it addresses the major themes of science at the zoo: the debate among scientists about the pros and cons of research conducted in and outside the cages; the gap between the promise of doing research at the zoo and the actual practices; and the emergence of new fields of knowledge such as zoo veterinary medicine, zoo biology, and conservation science. The introduction's second part draws out the common topics that connect the eight articles of this Special Issue: the multiplicity of spaces interacting with the zoo; the broad range of historical actors, including academics, animal traders, and zoo keepers; the changing roles of the zoo-going public; and the negotiation of authority and epistemic hierarchies in producing knowledge about zoo animals. The large numbers of zoos and the long temporal range these articles cover bring the constant evolution of “science at the zoo”-and hence its intrinsic historical dimension-to the fore. (shrink)

In "Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics" Dummett recommends the following thesis, (PNP): the correct analysis of any sentence containing a plural noun phrase will show that the phrase is functioning predictively. According to Dummett, (PNP), applied to numerical predications such as the leaves are 1,000' is the key premise in Frege's argument against Mill's theory of numbers. But Frege never subscribed to (PNP) and he rejected such numerical predications, and point out how Frege's own semantic theory for plural noun phrases obscures (...) his idea of a relation. (shrink)

A dual-code model of number processing needs to take into account the difference between a number symbol and its meaning. The transition of automatic non-abstract number representations into intentional abstract representations could be conceptualized as a translation of perceptual asemantic representations of numerals into semantic representations of the associated magnitude information. The controversy about the nature of number representations should be thus related to theories on embodied grounding of symbols.

This article, based on a desk study, connects African spirituality to the phenomenon of poverty and argues that mundane poverty alleviation strategies that ignore the cultural perspective of a people are doomed to fail, especially in the African context. Within this context, a domain such as transcendence is as ‘real’ to the people as the material world. This article delves into the alchemy of the traditions of African people from a Zimbabwean perspective in an attempt to understand some of the (...) causes of poverty. The authors aver that development practitioners stand to gain if they take into account such (African) worldviews. The article shows that there is a disconnect between western culture and indigenous cultural beliefs and suggests that it is necessary to use phenomenological methods to unpack this disconnect because the spiritual world can support or limit the extent to which poverty alleviation programmes are effective. This means that the notion of development rooted in western knowledge frames may require opening discourses that imagine different social ontologies to find solutions in an (African) context. Thus, the challenge for phenomenologists is to research culturally-appropriate approaches to development using phenomenology. (shrink)

This article considers how the new finds have affected one's view of Empedocles, and suggests how interpretation of that material might help solve some longstanding problems about the structure and content of Empedocles' writings. A basic account of the teachings of Empedocles would distinguish between two main components. On the one hand, there is a “Presocratic” physics, including a theory of principles, a cosmology, and a biology. On the other hand, there is a mythical law, clearly inspired by Orphic or (...) Pythagorean legends, which imposes on guilty gods a punishment consisting in their transmigration through a series of mortal beings. The purpose of this article is to show that Empedocles has the habit of referring to divine entities of his physical system both in a physical and in a mythological way and that his uses of the word daimon form part of this twofold language. (shrink)

The use of broad consent for genomics research raises important ethical questions for the conduct of genomics research, including relating to its acceptability to research participants and comprehension of difficult scientific concepts. To explore these and other challenges, we conducted a study using qualitative methods with participants enrolled in an H3Africa Rheumatic Heart Disease genomics study in Zambia to explore their views on broad consent, sample and data sharing and secondary use. In-depth interviews were conducted with RHDGen participants, study staff (...) and with individuals who refused to participate. In general, broad consent was seen to be reasonable if reasons for storing the samples for future research use were disclosed. Some felt that broad consent should be restricted by specifying planned future studies and that secondary research should ideally relate to original disease for which samples were collected. A few participants felt that broad consent would delay the return of research results to participants. This study echoes findings in other similar studies in other parts of the continent that suggested that broad consent could be an acceptable consent model in Africa if careful thought is given to restrictions on re-use. (shrink)

In his 2015 book, Valuing Health, the philosopher, Daniel Hausman, in referring to experienced utility maximization, touches on the question of whether people accept, and ought to accept, the assumption of health maximization vis-à-vis their own lives. This essay introduces Hausman’s arguments on experienced utility, before outlining the intellectual catalyst for the renewed interest in the maximization of experienced utility as an appropriate ethical rule; namely, the literature that arose in the 1990s that demonstrated that due to the so-called gestalt (...) characteristics, an individual’s retrospective and prospective assessments of an event—i.e. the remembered and decision utilities associated with that event—often systematically differ from the utility that he/she experiences or can reasonably expect to experience during the same event. The essay then touches upon some of the implications that this debate has on assuming that the maximization of quality-adjusted life years is the best way to judge the relative worth of different health profiles. To conclude, it is argued that, although contextual, it is sometimes important to consider in the policy discourse the apparent effects of the gestalt characteristics on remembered and decision utility. (shrink)

While the information revolution has ushered in a renewed philosophical interest in the notion of virtuality, the ontological status of virtual entities remains ambiguous. The present paper examines three forms of metaphysical realism about the meaning of the term ‘virtual’: genuine as well as intentionalist and computer-based reductivist realisms. Since all three are found wanting, a nominalist alternative is proposed. It is argued that ‘virtual’ is non-referential, and thus ontologically non-committing. Focusing on the metaphysical problem about the ontological status of (...) virtuality obscures the real issue, namely the ontological status of models as implemented in software. (shrink)

The use of behavioural science to inform policy is one of the main developments in the social sciences over the last several decades. In this book, Adam Oliver offers an accessible introduction to the development of behavioural public policy, examining how behavioural economics might be used to inform the design of a broad spectrum of policy frameworks, from nudges, to bans on certain individual behaviours, to the regulation of the commercial sector. He also considers how behavioural economics can explain (...) and predict phenomena as a challenge to economists' assumptions around how people perceive time, utility and money. The book offers an intellectual foundation for all those concerned with behavioural public policy, from academics, undergraduate and postgraduate students with a diverse range of disciplinary perspectives, such as economics, political science, sociology and anthropology, to policy makers and practitioners working directly with behavioural public policy in their everyday working lives. (shrink)

Different applications of synthetic biology are alike in that their possible negative consequences are highly uncertain, potentially catastrophic, and perhaps irreversible; therefore, they are also alike in that public attitudes about them are fertile ground for behavioral economic phenomena. Findings from behavioral economics suggest that people may not respond to such applications according to the normal rules of economic evaluation, by which the value of an outcome is multiplied by the mathematical probability that the outcome will occur. Possibly, then, synthetic (...) biology applications challenge the normative postulates of the standard approach, too.I want to first consider how some of the phenomena described by behavioral economists—and behavioral scientists more broadly—might affect people's perceptions of the uncertainties associated with synthetic biology. My analysis will be far from complete, however, because behavioral economics is essentially the study of human behavior, and thus its reach is potentially vast and its development longstanding and ongoing. Nonetheless, I hope to give an indicative perspective on how some aspects of behavioral economics might affect the assessment and perceived acceptability of synthetic biology. I will then consider the issue of agency. Should policy‐makers respect people's reactions to synthetic biology when those reactions are known to be driven by behavioral economic phenomena rather than following the normative postulates of rational choice theory? Or should policy‐makers dismiss these reactions as inherently biased? I will argue that the normative force of these human reactions (probably) depends on phenomenon and context. (shrink)

Mein Beitrag behandelt zentrale Probleme der Methodologie der Textinterpretation im Lichte der neueren Erkenntnis- und Wissenschaftstheorie. Nach Vorbemerkungen zum Begriff der Interpretation wende ich mich den Methoden der Bildung und kritischen Prüfung von Interpretationshypothesen zu. Wie ist das Verhältnis von Daten und Hypothesen im Falle der Textinterpretation? Wie können Interpretationshypothesen epistemisch gerechtfertigt bzw. gestützt werden? Zur Beantwortung dieser Fragen untersuche ich die Anwendung der Hypothetisch-Deduktiven Methode und der Methode des Schlusses auf die beste Erklärung auf die Textinterpretation. Der Vergleich zeigt, (...) dass die Methode des Schlusses auf die beste Erklärung vorzuziehen ist. (shrink)

Transposable elements (TEs) are powerful facilitators of genome evolution, and hence of phenotypic diversity as they can cause genetic changes of great magnitude and variety. TEs are ubiquitous and extremely ancient, and although harmful to some individuals, they can be very beneficial to lineages. TEs can build, sculpt, and reformat genomes by both active and passive means. Lineages with active TEs or with abundant homogeneous inactive populations of TEs that can act passively by causing ectopic recombination are potentially fecund, adaptable, (...) and taxonate readily. Conversely, taxa deficient in TEs or possessing heterogeneous populations of inactive TEs may be well adapted in their niche, but tend to prolonged stasis and may risk extinction by lacking the capacity to adapt to change, or diversify. Because of recurring intermittent waves of TE infestation, available data indicate a compatibility with punctuated equilibrium, in keeping with widely accepted interpretations of evidence from the fossil record. We propose a general and holistic synthesis on how the presence of TEs within genomes makes them flexible and dynamic, so that genomes themselves are powerful facilitators of their own evolution. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Fatherhood and the Promise of EthicsKelly Oliver (bio)Both Paul Ricoeur and Emmanuel Levinas reject the Freudian/Lacanian association of father with law and instead associate fatherhood with promise. For Ricoeur, fatherhood promises equality through contracts, while for Levinas, fatherhood promises singularity beyond the law. The tension between equality and singularity, between law and something beyond the law, is what is at stake in Derrida’s The Gift of Death. There, (...) Derrida describes ethics as a paradox between the universal and the individual, between equality and singularity. Kierkegaard’s reading of the story of Abraham and Isaac from Genesis is the centerpiece of Derrida’s analysis. If we read The Gift of Death, with its focus on this story of father and son, in relation to Ricoeur and Levinas on the question of fatherhood, it reads as the culmination of a dialectical tension between the two. And if we read the Abraham story as a legend about father-son relations rather than just a parable of faith, The Gift of Death appears to uncover not just the paradoxical logic of ethics but also the uncompromising logic of patriarchy and paternal authority.Paternity Begets FraternityIn “Fatherhood: from Phantasm to Symbol” Ricoeur describes fatherhood as a battle of wills struggling for recognition. He brings together what he calls the different perspectives of psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and religion in order to rearticulate the oedipal situation as a process of recognition (rather than a structure) which moves from the father as phantasm to the father as symbol and replaces images of real murder with symbolic sacrifice. Through his dialectical analysis, Ricoeur himself attempts to articulate a recognition of fatherhood that moves us away from the phantasm of the father as castrator to the symbol of the father as compassionate. Relying on Hegelian dialectics, Ricoeur outlines a movement from psychoanalysis’s fantastic image of an omnipotent father who must be killed so that the son might live, through Phenomenology of Spirit’s master-slave dialectic, to the Christian religious representation of the loving father sacrificing Himself through His son for the sake of all His children. In this higher stage of the dialectic of paternity, the murder of the father is replaced by his sacrifice. Oddly, however, Ricoeur’s dialectic remains at the level of the master-slave fight to the death, where—without the Hegelian resolution—the only options available to insure the recognition of the father by the son (or the son by the father) are murder or suicide. For Ricoeur, recognition requires death, symbolic if not imaginary, whereas Hegel insists that recognition comes only when the master and slave are willing to risk death but also realize the necessity of avoiding it; mutual recognition cannot be maintained if one of the parties is dead.For Ricoeur, recognition does not necessitate avoiding death but rather moving away from the realm of the family and the body to the level of the social and the law. In order for the father-son relationship to be one of mutual recognition, the father must sacrifice his absolute authority so that the son might also participate in it. The goal of recognition is equality, which can be achieved only through social contracts that abstract from the particulars of embodied familial relations. One such social operation is designation, [End Page 45] which is removed from the realm of the bodily drives that motivate the oedipal scenario. Designation requires the sublimation of bodily drives into abstract laws that can equalize bodies by turning them into symbols.The move from psychoanalysis to Christianity is a move from a domestic family to a social family: through God the Father’s sacrifice of His son, we all become members of the Christian family; we all become children of God. For Ricoeur, it is not that God is the Father because He gives the Law. Rather, the law, the covenant or contract, enables Him to be recognized as father [490]. Ricoeur implicitly rejects the Lacanian association of the Father with the Law or the Name. He claims that there is no Name of the Father. “Father” is not a name but a designation [Ricoeur 485]. And the father’s proper name is... (shrink)

Nietzsche has the reputation of being a virulent misogynist, so why are feminists interested in his philosophy? The essays in this volume provide answers to this question from a variety of feminist perspectives. The organization of the volume into two sets of essays, "Nietzsche's Use of Woman" and "Feminists' Use of Nietzsche," reflects the two general approaches taken to the issue of Nietzsche and woman. First, many debates have focused on how to interpret Nietzsche's remarks about women and femininity. Are (...) all of Nietzsche's comments to be read literally, or is he being ironic, perhaps even parodying and subverting stereotypes about women? Second, is his philosophy useful to feminist theory? Can we separate his philosophy from his seemingly derogatory remarks about women? Can feminists use his criticisms of truth, objectivity, reason, and the autonomous subject to challenge the exclusion of women from the history of philosophy? Some view his critiques of dualism and essentialism as well as his perspectivism and social constructivism as adumbrating later feminist positions. Others find troubling his privileging of masculinity and paradigms of domination; they see Nietzsche's sexual dualism as countering otherwise transgressive themes. Contributors are Debra Bergoffen, Maudmarie Clark, Daniel Conway, Jacques Derrida, Jean Graybeal, Kathleen Higgins, Luce Irigaray, Sarah Kofman, Tamsin Lorraine, Kelly Oliver, David Owen, Marilyn Pearsall, Ofelia Schutte, Linda Singer, Lynne Tirrell, and Kathleen Wininger. (shrink)

My short essay on Irigaray’s relation to Nietzsche could be divided into the beginnings of six arguments: First, Nietzsche continues to hold a special place in Irigaray’s thinking. Second, Amante Marine is an important part of Irigaray’s elemental philosophy. Third, Irigaray’s insistence on depth over surface in Amante Marine points to two different ways Nietzsche has been taken up in French Philosophy, which could be characterized as the difference between surface and depth. Fourth, Irigaray’s Amante Marine anticipates the most recent (...) direction in Nietzsche scholarship, which focuses on plants and the earth. Fifth, following Nietzsche, Irigaray suggests that we can learn lessons about sharing the earth from plants. And, finally, Irigaray’s elemental philosophy resonates with my own conception of earth ethics as responsiveness to other earthlings and our environment, which I develop in my recent book Earth and World. (shrink)