In this article I argue that the method of normative reconstruction that is underlying Freedom’s Right undermines Critical Theory’s aspiration to be a force that is unreservedly critical and progressive. I start out by giving a brief account of the four premises of the method of normative reconstruction and unpack their implications for how Honneth conceptualizes social pathologies and misdevelopments, specifically that these notions are no longer linked to radical critique and normative revolution. In the second part, I demonstrate that (...) abandoning forms of radical critique and normative revolution is internally linked to adopting this method, before arguing that Freedom’s Right entails no resources to account for why abandoning them does not amount to a deficiency. In the final part, I point out two problematic implications of turning away from radical critique and normative revolution for the very project Honneth pursues in Freedom’s Right. I show that Honneth’s own view about the limited scope of application of the method of normative reconstruction and his account of the dangers associated with social misdevelopments give us reasons to consider this method to be incomplete. Finally, I contend that the explanatory power of Freedom’s Right is dubious because methodological premises that form part of normative reconstruction lead Honneth to ignore relevant alternative explanations of processes of deviation and disassociation from norms of social freedom, which he characterizes as social misdevelopments. (shrink)

The Pathology of Man is the first comprehensive study of the psychology and epistemology of human evil, long urged by leading psychiatrists and psychologists, including Freud, Jung, Menninger, Fromm, and Peck. The book breaks new ground by offering a clear, empirically based, and theoretically sound understanding of human evil as a widespread, real, non-metaphorical pathology. With deliberate and thorough scholarship the author proposes a new framework-relative theory of disease and justifies the provocative thesis that human evil should be (...) classified as a pathology which is not a deviation from an accepted norm, but rather is a normal state. This break with tradition provides the necessary psychological foundation for the familiar concept of the banality of human evil, a foundation which in the past it has lacked. (shrink)

Pathologizing ugliness refers to the use of disease language and medical processes to foster and support the claim that undesirable features are pathological conditions requiring medical or surgical intervention. Primarily situated in cosmetic surgery, the practice appeals to the concept of “aesthetic pathology”, which is a medical designation for features that deviate from some designated aesthetic norms. This article offers a two-pronged conceptual analysis of aesthetic pathology. First, I argue that three sets of claims, derived from normativist and (...) naturalistic accounts of disease, inform the framing of ugliness as a disease. These claims concern: (1) aesthetic harms, (2) aesthetic dysfunction, and (3) aesthetic deviation. Second, I introduce the notion of a hybridization loop in medicine, which merges the naturalist and normative understanding of the disease that potentially enables pathologizing practices. In the context of cosmetic surgery, the loop simultaneously promotes the framing of beauty ideals as normal biological attributes and the framing of normal appearance as an aesthetic ideal to legitimize the need for cosmetic interventions. The article thus offers an original discussion of the conceptual problems arising from a specific practice in cosmetic surgery that depicts ugliness as the disease. (shrink)

This paper is a response to Christopher Boorse's recent defense of hisBiostatistical Theory (BST) of health and disease. Boorse maintains that hisconcept of theoretical health and disease reflects the ``consideredusage of pathologists.'' I argue that pathologists do not use ``disease'' inthe purely theoretical way that is required by the BST. Pathology does notdraw a sharp distinction between theoretical and practical aspects ofmedicine. Pathology does not even need a theoretical concept of disease. Itsfocus is not theoretical, but practical; (...) class='Hi'>pathology's goal is to contribute tothe healing of patients. Pathology, even experimental pathology, is notvalue-free. Not only ``disease'' but also such terms as ``nerve'' and ``organ''are laden with conceptual values. (shrink)

Pathological morphogenesis on leaves of Fraxinus ornus (ash) and Solanum lycopersicum (tomato) under the influence of mites (Aceria fraxinivora and Eriophyes cladophthirus respectively) leads to a range of structures whose morphology and development cannot be reduced to the classical categories of plant morphology, but present a heterogeneous continuum which links fundamental structural categories. These findings support the pyramid model of plant construction.

While classical authority is positivistic in form, authority in the age of Radical Democracy is negative in form. The latter produces shame as the pathological a priori of modern subjectivity. Shame springs from unworthiness in the face of the infinite demand emitted by the concept of the “coming community,” which, as the never-there-but-always-to-come, puts every present into the state of a normative subtraction. To be ashamed means to experience oneself as not yet worthy as to what the coming community demands.

Pathological Altruism presents a number of new, thought-provoking theses that explore a range of hurtful effects of altruism and empathy.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Pathology of the Mind: Disorder Versus DisabilityRichard G. T. Gipps (bio)Keywordsorder, disorder, ability, disability, mental illnessAlfredo Gaete (2008) describes mental disorders as impairments in intentionality, phenomenal consciousness, and intelligence that cause harm to the affected person. I found persuasive Gaete’s claim that the concept of ‘mental disorder’ is best understood as nontheoretical and nontechnical. I also find compelling his argument that a previous contribution of my own—which relied (...) in part on specifying different senses of ‘disorder’ in psychological, physiological, and social cases—was misguided. Further, his suggestion that we ought at least to attempt analysis in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions before we seek out less definitive characterizations (in terms of family resemblances) also persuades me, although I find myself less sanguine than he about the general possibility of achieving such analyses.One of Gaete’s principal claims is that mental disorder is helpfully understood in terms of an absence of a capacity—that is, as a disability. There are two related objections—or two aspects of the same objection—that I would like to offer the author with respect to this claim. These may well not be conclusive, but will I hope at least function as foils against which the author can usefully sharpen his argument. One objection suggests that there is a viable distinction between the concepts of mental disorder and mental disability, as commonly used in clinical contexts, which the account offered seems unable to respect. The second suggests that the account may not be able to theorize what is argued to be the essential contribution of the concepts of order and disorder (as opposed to ability and disability) to the everyday concept of mental disorder. Accordingly, it questions the power of a disability approach such as Gaete’s to capture the essential nature of mental disorder.In his paper, Gaete classifies mental retardation and developmental, or (what in the United Kingdom are known as) learning, disabilities (autism, etc.) as cases of mental disorder. I found this surprising because it is not common linguistic practice in the psychological circles in which I operate. It would also seem to make a nonsense of commonly accepted ideas like: “Mental disorders are more likely to occur in patients with developmental disabilities (e.g., in autism, Asperger, or Down syndrome) than in the general population.” (For an example, see Campbell and Malone [1991]). On Gaete’s classification, it would appear that people with autism eo ipso have a mental disorder, and [End Page 341] hence the commonly accepted idea would need to be interpreted as merely a statement about comorbidities of different disorders of the same general (i.e., mental) type. But that is not, I believe, how the term is commonly used, and Gaete’s suggestion must therefore be treated as revisionary rather than descriptively analytical.One way of reconstructing a rationale underlying the distinction between mental disabilities and mental disorders is as follows. A developmental disability involves a failure of (certain aspects of) the mind to grow and reach an expected level or type of organization. A mental disorder by contrast involves a disturbance or disorganization (not simply an impoverishment) within the mind at whichever level of organization it has reached. As the mind develops, and reaches new levels or types of organization, the forms which mental disorders may take accordingly change.Autism and schizophrenia provide helpful illustrations of this distinction. Autism represents a failure of (among other things) the social mind to develop in childhood. The person with moderate to severe autism may attain at best a very shaky grasp on the realities of other minds and social conventions. That is, the degree of mental structure they obtain—their social competencies or capacities—will likely remain limited. It is this fundamental deficit that marks out the disability, and not the social anxieties or other such disturbances that can beset the autistic person.Schizophrenia, by contrast, tends to occur at late adolescence, when the individual has developed higher levels of—albeit often fragile—mental structure. Yet it is not the fragility of such mental structure, but rather the disruptions that can occur within such structures as have developed, that mark them out... (shrink)

This paper is an introduction to the special issue on Pathologies of Recognition. The first subsection briefly introduces the notion of recognition and trace its development from Fichte and Hegel to Honneth and his critics, and the second subsection turns to the concept of a social pathology. The third section provides a brief look at the individual papers. -/- The special issue focuses on two central concepts in contemporary critical social theory: namely ‘recognition’ and ‘social pathology’. For defenders (...) of a theory of recognition, adequate recognition is itself a key normative criterion for analysing social wrongs and pathologies which fall short of the ideal. For critics, the focus on recognition – even at its best – rather conceals social wrongs. While the contributors in this collection represent slightly different approaches, the general consensus amongst them is that recognition as such is a good ideal but like all good ideals it can go wrong in various ways and take pathological forms itself. In this introduction we focus first briefly on the concepts of recognition and social pathology, and finally present the papers of this special issue. (shrink)

Girard’s attempts to present his main ideas have been numerous and, according to himself, never fully satisfying: many problems arise when looking for the best way to explain what Mimetic Theory is about, mainly because the order of the discourse and the logic of the underlying long argument, just as the micro level of the analysis and the macro one, are twisted with one another in a hermeneutical circle that can easily be misinterpreted as vicious. A thorough work of analysis (...) of the essential logical features of Mimetic Theory main hypotheses has been done by Jean–Pierre Dupuy. In what follows, we are going to use a few of his concepts in order to set the analysis of secularization and modernity and their consequences both at a micro level, dealing with modern pathologies, and at the macro one, investigating the displacement of the sacred. (shrink)

In recent years, an array of critical emotion theorists have emerged who call for change with respect to how emotion theory is done, how emotions are understood, and how we do emotion. In this chapter, I draw on the work that some of these authors have produced to analyze how emotional marginalization of trans and disabled identities is experienced, considering in particular how this emotional marginalization results from the long history of pathologization of trans and disabled people. The past and (...) current pathologization of trans and disabled people is produced through normative assumptions, values, and beliefs that uphold systems of normalcy, including assumptions, values, and beliefs about how we feel and express emotions. In order to examine these issues, I identify three different stages at which emotional marginalization may take place: emotion experience, emotional display, and emotion recognition. In other words, emotional marginalization of trans and disabled people can occur at any of these stages. The central concern of my chapter is thus to show how emotional marginalization, at each of these stages, affects trans and disabled people. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to inquire into today's social pathologies, i.e. the negative consequences of the developmental processes of society. In a dialogue with Axel Honneth, the article asserts that a shift has occurred in individualization, a shift that implies a fundamental change in social pathologies: Social pathologies no longer derive from social barriers inhibiting self‐realization but from self‐realization itself. As a consequence, philosophy of education, rather than sociology, appears to be the relevant field of study. The article (...) develops a social‐analytical perspective on ‘sickness in self‐Bildung’, which is conceived as a ‘refusal to transcend oneself into sociality’, and offers interpretations of present pathologies such as depression, anorexia, populist freedom of speech, and demonic rage. (shrink)

Pathologizing ugliness refers to the framing of unattractive features as a type of disease or deformity. By framing ugliness as pathology, cosmetic procedures are reframed as therapy rather than enhancement, thereby potentially avoiding ethical critiques regularly levelled against cosmetic surgery. As such, the practice of pathologizing ugliness and the ensuing therapeuticalization of cosmetic procedures require an ethical analysis that goes beyond that offered by current enhancement critiques. In this article, I propose using a thick description of the goals of (...) medicine as an ethical framework for evaluating problematic medical practices. I first describe the goals of medicine based on Daniel Callahan's account. I then propose that the goals work best in conjunction with ancillary ethical concepts, namely medical knowledge and skills, standards of practice and medical duties and virtues. Next, I apply the thick description of the goals of medicine in critiquing the practice of framing ugliness as disease. Here, I demonstrate ethical conflicts between aesthetic judgments that underpin the practice of pathologizing ugliness and medical judgments that inform ethical medical practices. In particular, the thick description of the goals of medicine helps reveal ethical conflicts in at least three key domains common to clinical practices, which include (a) disease determination, (b) diagnostic evaluation and (c) establishing clinical indications. My analysis offers a novel way of critiquing the practice of pathologizing ugliness in cosmetic surgery, which tends to be neglected by enhancement critiques. (shrink)

This is a penetrating reinterpretation and defense of Hegel's social theory as an alternative to reigning liberal notions of social justice. The eminent German philosopher Axel Honneth rereads Hegel's Philosophy of Right to show how it diagnoses the pathologies of the overcommitment to individual freedom that Honneth says underlies the ideas of Rawls and Habermas alike. Honneth argues that Hegel's theory contains an account of the psychological damage caused by placing too much emphasis on personal and moral freedom. Although these (...) freedoms are crucial to the achievement of justice, they are insufficient and in themselves leave people vulnerable to loneliness, emptiness, and depression. Hegel argues that people must also find their freedom or "self-realization" through shared projects. Such projects involve the three institutions of ethical life--family, civil society, and the state--and provide the arena of a crucial third kind of freedom, which Honneth calls "communicative" freedom. A society is just only if it gives all of its members sufficient and equal opportunity to realize communicative freedom as well as personal and moral freedom. (shrink)

The outbreak of a new, potentially fatal virus, SARS‐COV‐2, which started in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, and since developed into a pandemic has stimulated research for an effective treatment and vaccine. For this research to be successful, it is necessary to understand the pathology of the virus. So far, we know that this virus can harm different organs of the body. Although the exact mechanisms are still unknown, this phenomenon may result from the body's secretion of prostaglandin E2 (...) (PGE2), which is involved in several inflammation and immunity pathways. Noticeably, the expression of this molecule can lead to a cytokine storm causing a variety of side effects. In this paper, we discuss those side effects in SARS‐COV‐2 infection separately to determine whether PGE2 is, indeed, an important causative factor. Lastly, we propose a mechanism by which PGE2 production increases in response to COVID‐19 disease and suggest the possible direct relation between PGE2 levels and the severity of this disease. Also see the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/SnPFAcjxxKw. (shrink)

Following the recent practice turn in privacy research, informational privacy is increasingly analyzed with regard to the “appropriate flow of information” within a given practice, which preserves the “contextual integrity” of that practice (Nissenbaum, 2010, p. 149; 2015). Such a practice-theoretical take on privacy emphasizes the normative structure of practices as well as its structural injustices and power asymmetries, rather than focusing on the intentions and moral considerations of individual or institutional actors. Since privacy norms are seen to be institutionalized (...) via the role obligations of the practice's participants, this approach can analyze structural and systematic privacy infringements in terms of “defective role performances and defective social relations” (Roessler & Mokrosinska, 2013, p. 780). -/- Unfortunately, it is still often somewhat unclear what this exactly means within the context of informational privacy, why these performances and relations are defective and for whom. This raises the common objection of a so-called “practice positivism” (Applbaum, 1999, p. 51), that is, the difficulty of practice–theoretical accounts to take a practice-independent standpoint, from which to normatively evaluate the existing practice norms themselves. For example, Nissenbaum herself initially argues for a “presumption in favor of the status quo” with respect to the appropriateness and flow of privacy norms within a practice (Nissenbaum, 2004, p. 127). Such a “practice conservatism” (Nissenbaum, 2010, p. 169) comes dangerously close to committing a naturalistic fallacy, if not undergirded by practice-external criteria (which is ultimately what she does). -/- Merely resorting to existing practice norms to assess what defective role performances amount to, only shifts the question from how to recognize an appropriate flow of information to the question of how to recognize those defective role performances and social relations. Against this backdrop, the central aim of this article is to shed light on this question without resorting to practice-independent first principles or far-reaching universalistic anthropological assumptions. For this, I will analyze the notion of “defective role performances and social relations” in terms of social pathologies.1 Doing so has two advantages: First of all, it can draw on already existing concepts and distinctions, which help to categorize the different levels of analysis that exist in informational privacy research and situate the notion of “defective role performances” within them (Section 1). Second, those concepts and distinctions can serve as a basis for establishing a typology of phenomena with regard to deficient practices of informational privacy (Section 4). (shrink)

This essay argues that modern demagogy can be understood as a symptom of a kind of social pathology, combining Wendy Brown's account of neoliberal subjectivity with elements of Robert Pippin's interpretation of Hegel to do so. I begin by focussing on Brown's contention that neoliberal society has bred forms of individual subjectivity that are inherently attuned to right-wing rhetoric. Drawing on Pippin's reading of Hegel, the essay casts these modes of individual subjectivity as aspects of a flawed mode of (...) collective subjectivity; the contemporary rise of demagogic politics is thereby presented as a symptom of a pathological failure of collective self-determinacy, caused by inadequacies within the normative structures that articulate social activity. (shrink)

The discourse surrounding mental health conditions (MHCs) can fluctuate between versions of the medical model, which views such conditions as pathologies requiring clinical intervention, and the ne...

The phenomenological method has been fruitfully used to study the experience of illness in recent years. However, the role of illness is not merely that of a passive object for phenomenological scrutiny. I propose that illness, and pathology more generally, can be developed into a phenomenological method in their own right. I claim that studying cases of pathology, breakdown, and illness offer illumination not only of these experiences, but also of normal function and the tacit background that underpins (...) it. In particular, I claim that the study of embodiment can be greatly enhanced, and indeed would be incomplete, without attending to bodily breakdown and what I term bodily doubt. I offer an analogy between illness and Husserl’s epoché, suggesting that both are a source of distancing, and therefore motivate a reflective stance. (shrink)

Aside from the systematic theory of recognition, Honneth’s work in the last decade has also centered around a less commented-upon theme: the critical social theoretic diagnosis of social pathologies. This paper claims first that his diverse diagnoses of specific social pathologies can be productively united through the conceptual structure evinced by second-order disorders, where there are substantial disconnects, of various kinds, between first-order contents and second-order reflexive understandings of those contents. The second major claim of the paper is that once (...) we understand social pathologies as second-order disorders, it becomes apparent that critical social theory must do more than accurately identify and explicate these disorders at the phenomenological and action-theoretic levels. It must further engage in insightful sociological explanations of the social causes of those pathologies in order to further the prognostic and therapeutic tasks implied by the aim of developing a social theory with emancipatory intent. The paper argues that the identificatory and explicative components of diagnostic social theory have been fulfilled by Honneth to a much greater degree than the latter components of explanation, prognosis and therapy. (shrink)

This paper critically examines Christopher Zurn’s suggestion mentioned above that various social pathologies (pathologies of ideological recognition, maldistribution, invisibilization, rationality distortions, reification and institutionally forced self-realization) share the structure of being ‘second-order disorders’: that is, that they each entail ‘constitutive disconnects between first-order contents and secondorder reflexive comprehension of those contents, where those disconnects are pervasive and socially caused’ (Zurn, 2011, 345-346). The paper argues that the cases even as discussed by Zurn do not actually match that characterization, but that (...) it would be premature to conclude that they are not thereby social pathologies, or that they do not have a structure in common. It is just that the structure is more complex than originally described, covering pervasive socially caused evils (i) in the social reality, (ii) in the first order experiences and understandings, (iii) in the second order reflection as discussed by Zurn, and also (iv) in the ‘third order’ phenomenon concerning the pre-emptive silencing or nullification of social criticism even before it takes Place. -/- Research Interests: Critical Theory, Social Theory, Political Theory, Recognition - Social Pathologies, Axel Honneth, Mutual recognition and Dani Zubair . (shrink)

Pathologies of agency affect both groups and individuals. I present a case study of agential pathology in a group, in which supposedly rogue members of a group act in light of what they take the group’s interests and attitudes to be, but in a way that goes against the group’s explicitly stated agential point of view. I consider several practical concerns brought out by rogue member action in the context of a group agent, focusing in particular on how it (...) undermines the agency of the group and whether or not the group agent itself may be responsible for it. (shrink)

In this post the author defends a pathology based approach to the philosophy of mind.

Bradley Armour-Garb and James A. Woodbridge, in Pretense and Pathology, make an ambitious and far-ranging case that philosophical fictionalism (particularly the pretence variety that they favour) illuminates several long-standing philosophical puzzles posed by words in ordinary language, such as ‘exist’, ‘true’ and ‘means that’, as well as the more technical, ‘refers to’, ‘proposition’ and ‘satisfies’. Along the way, Armour-Garb and Woodbridge discuss topics in the philosophy of language, philosophical logic, ontology, epistemology and more. An important aspect of their project (...) is its nominalist aspiration: by showing (if they do) that pretence is involved when we use the foregoing terms, they hope to show that it’s false that these uses induce ontological commitments (to, e.g., propositions or properties). In this respect, their pretence approach is yet another attempt to undercut the family of indispensability arguments (pioneered by W.V.O. Quine) that prima facie force ontological commitments by means of indispensable language usage. (shrink)

Benenson et al. provide a compelling case for treating greater investment into self-protection among females as an adaptive strategy. Here, we wish to expand their proposed adaptive explanation by placing it squarely in modern state-based and behavioural life-history theory, drawing on Veit'spathological complexityframework. This allows us to make sense of alternative “lifestyle” strategies, rather than pathologizing them.

Over the last two decades, Axel Honneth has written extensively on the notion of social pathology, presenting it as a distinctive critical resource of Frankfurt School Critical Theory, in which tradition he places himself, and as an alternative to the mainstream liberal approaches in political philosophy. In this paper, I review the developments of Honneth's writing on this notion and offer an immanent critique, with a particular focus on his recent major work "Freedom's Right". Tracing the use of, and (...) problems internal to, Honneth's concept of social pathology serves to demonstrate his increasing reformism. It also serves to catalogue some of the dead ends that Critical Theory should avoid in taking up the idea of social pathology. The implication is not that this idea should be dropped. Rather, the paper is undertaking the necessary step of clearing the ground for further progress to take place on the question of what role the idea of social pathology can and should play in Critical Theory. The paper is critical in nature (and relentlessly so), but ultimately serves a constructive purpose. (shrink)

Recognition is not only a response to social pathologies. It is also an unstable and often ambivalent relationship that has its own pathologies. Owing to the intertwining between recognition and power, certain forms of recognition turn out to be forms of alienation in or from the world. Such pathologies affect inter-individual recognition as well as the recognition between individuals and the socio-political institutions. The article proposes a joint reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and Philosophy of Right, which provide norms (...) for identifying and dealing with these pathologies. The norm for inter-individual recognition is set out in the Phenomenology of Spirit, the norm for state/citizen recognition in the Philosophy of Right. The analysis envisages two other aspects of recognition: the interference of the ‘I–Me’ with the ‘I–You’ relationship and the incorporation of the ‘I–We’ into the ‘We–Us' dimension of recognition. As regards the interpretation of Hegel’s practical philosophy, the article analyses the link between Hegel’s concept of recognition and his theory of action. In this view, the highest form of recognition has more to do with reconciliation – reconciliation between human beings, reconciliation with the ‘finitude of action’ – than with the problematic of individual and collective identity. (shrink)

This article addresses the precarious place of transgender and gender non-cis persons in relation to their discrimination-protections in recent legal, medical, and ethical policies in the United States. At present, there exists a contradiction such that trans persons are considered "pathological" enough that they are included in the latest iteration of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-V) as "gender dysphoric," but they are not included in the category of "disabled" under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). As (...) such, trans persons in America are subject to the stigma of pathology (albeit with medical treatment) without the full protections of the ADA. By contrast, transgender and non-cis-gender Americans find their queer cohorts who are HIV-positive to be fully protected by the ADA. We ask whether transgender and non-cis-gender persons should embrace their (already pathologized) personhood as a disability. Sometimes "choosing disability" affords more rights than it deploys stigma. (shrink)

Postmodernism as a mythologem reflecting the remarkable shift that has taken place in contemporary Western culture as a whole entered the consciousness of our intelligentsia with the usual delay. This is not surprising if one bears in mind the constantly "lagging" character of our consciousness, which also colors in corresponding tones the whole of "Russian civilization," and if one believes that it is condemned to be always "catching up" and making up for lost time. Having arisen in the West as (...) a concept describing certain special characteristics of the latest architectural style that no longer fitted into the rather passé category of modernism, the concept of the postmodern was initially current, both in the West and in Russia, among people close to architecture. At that time it had not yet been able to acquire the "philosophical" subtext that is already felt in the book of Charles Jencks that came out in 1977 in Germany under the gaudy title The Language of Postmodern Architecture. (shrink)

The topic of disease mechanisms is of clinical importance, as our understanding of such mechanisms plays an important role in how we approach devising treatments for disease. In this paper, I critique an argument made by Mauro Nervi, in which he asserts that pathology is often better viewed in the context of distinct theoretical mechanisms. I use this critique as a starting point to argue that viewing pathology as a broken-normal, malfunctioning mechanism is more therapeutically practical and more (...) relevant to clinical drug design, than creating a theoretical separation of pathology from physiology. (shrink)

For denoting ill, abnormal, generally undesirable social phenomena the term social pathology is most often accepted. It embodies also the sanctioned forms of deviant behaviour and the study of the causal relations of their origin and existence. The difficulty with delimitating precisely what is pathological stems from the fact that we are not able to give a satisfactory definition of the normal. The normal cannot be identified with the mediocrity. The paper supports the view that the normality is opposite (...) to anomy. The analogy to pathologization is "medicinalization" stemming out from the principle that while a deviant person, e.g. an offender of a crime, is as a rule responsible for his deed, in other kinds of offences the offender is usually referred to as "ill" and while an ill person cannot be expected to be responsible for his/her deeds, he/she must be "cured" . In this way the person is not only disburdened of his/her deed, but also of his/her responsibility. A negative phenomenon accompanying the pathologization and medicinalization is d e p r i v i n g sociology, social pedagogy and social work of their competencies in favour of medicine or pathopsychology. As a result the remedy is reduced to "therapy" and "custody" with consequent labelling of the persons concerned. The author sees social pathology as a branch of sociology investigating negative phenomena which result from social deviation and which are to a decisive degree the subject matter of social work. (shrink)

The taxonomy proposed by Pessoa et al. should be extended to include “pathological” completion phenomena in patients with unilateral brain damage. Patients with visual field defects (hemianopias) may “complete” whole figures, while patients with parietal lobe damage may “complete” partial figures. We argue that the former may be consistent with the brain “filling-in” information, and the latter may be consistent with the brain ignoring the absence of information.

Does a diagnosis of brain dysfunction matter for ascriptions of moral responsibility? This chapter argues that, while knowledge of brain pathology can inform judgments of moral responsibility, its evidential value is currently limited for a number of practical and theoretical reasons. These include the problem of establishing causation from correlational data, drawing inferences about individuals from group data, and the reliance of the interpretation of brain findings on well-established psychological findings. Brain disorders sometimes matter for moral responsibility, however, because (...) they change an individual’s moral psychology in a way that is beyond their control. While control over psychological changes is not an excusing factor, brain disorders can mitigate moral responsibility because they confront individuals with new psychological deficits or urges for which their previous moral education and existing external and internal moral resources have not prepared them. (shrink)

This article reveals the pathologies of the Turkish republican project of laicism by focusing on the differences between the ideas of Ziya Gökalp and the leading architects of this project. Ziya Gökalp reasoned within the logic of the empire and envisioned a synthesis among Turkism, westernism and Islam. The logic of the republic à la Turca, on the other hand, was shaped by a radical break from Islam. The distaste that the architects of the republican laicist project had developed towards (...) Islam became apparent during the years between 1920 and 1925. Accordingly, the republican project of laicism nurtured a highly visible control of the state over religion rather than a separation between the affairs of the state and religion. This article also discusses the possibilities of reforming the republican project of laicism that is congenial with democratization processes in Turkey. (shrink)

In Vagueness and Contradiction (2001), Roy Sorensen defends and extends his epistemic account of vagueness. In the process, he appeals to connections between vagueness and semantic paradox. These appeals come mainly in Chapter 11, where Sorensen offers a solution to what he calls the no-no paradox—a “neglected cousin” of the more famous liar—and attempts to use this solution as a precedent for an epistemic account of the sorites paradox. This strategy is problematic for Sorensen’s project, however, since, as we establish, (...) he fails to resolve the semantic pathology of the no-no paradox. (shrink)

In contrast to the “normativist” view, “naturalist” theorists claim that the concept of health refers to natural or normal states and propose different characterizations of healthy and diseased conditions that are meant to be objectivist and biologically grounded. In this article, we examine the core concept of these naturalist accounts of disease, i.e., the concept of biological malfunction, and develop a new formulation of the notion of malfunction following the recent organizational approach to functions in the philosophy of biology. We (...) focus on the notions of adaptive regulation and functional presupposition to develop a new conceptual framework that justifies the ascription of malfunctional behaviors to biological systems according to the embodied normativity of biological organizations. (shrink)

This chapter aims to distinguish between pathologies of agency in the strict sense and mere sources of impediments or distortion. Expanding on a recent notion of necessarily less-than-successful agency, it complements a mainstream approach to mental disorders and anomalous psychological conditions in the philosophy of mind and action. According this approach, the interest of such clinical case studies is heuristic, to differentiate between facets of agency that are functionally and conceptually separate even though they typically come together. Yet, in the (...) absence of independent criterion for a pathology of as opposed to inner obstacle to agency, this heuristic is at risk of becoming circular or uninformative, falling back on a clinical diagnosis it is meant to take as a starting point only. The chapter develops such a criterion and shows how it could work tracking agential achievement across two core dimensions of agency: planning and responsiveness to reasons. The discussion concludes with some implications on assessing decisional capacity and safeguarding agent autonomy in psychiatric settings. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to provide an account of the fallaciousness of begging the question without thereby indicting as fallacious all otherwise acceptable deductively valid reasoning. The solution that we suggest exploits the intuition that all good arguments are weakly circular. The fallaciousness of begging the question is not that the reasoning is circular simpliciter. Rather, begging the question is a fallacy because the conclusion relies on an undischarged assumption that the audience cannot accept without further argumentation. In (...) the face of such an argument the arguer might just as well have merely asserted the conclusion. (shrink)

An original study of late Enlightenment aesthetics, poetics, and environmental medicine as overlapping ways of comprehending the dislocations of historical existence lodged in the movements of bodies and minds This book studies later eighteenth-century medicine, aesthetics, and poetics as overlapping forms of knowledge increasingly concerned about the relationship between the geographical movements of persons displaced from home and the physiological or nervous "motions" within their bodies and minds. Looking beyond familiar narratives about medicine and art's shared therapeutic and harmonizing ideals, (...) this book explores Enlightenment and Romantic-era aesthetics and poetics in relation to a central but less well known area of eighteenth-century environmental medicine: pathology. No mere system of diagnosis or classification, philosophical pathology was an art of interpretation, offering sophisticated ways of reading the multiple conditions and causes of disease, however absent from perception, in their palpable, embodied effects. For medical, anthropological, environmental, and literary authors alike, it helped to locate the dislocations of modern mobility when a full view of their causes and conditions remained imperfectly understood or still unfolding. Goodman traces the surprising afterlife of the period's exemplary but unexplained pathology of motion, medical nostalgia, within aesthetic theory and poetics, arguing that nostalgia persisted there not as a named condition but as a set of formal principles and practices, perturbing claims about the harmony, freedom, and free play of the mind. (shrink)

This essay examines the connection between fear and the psychopathologies it can bring, looking in particular at the fears that individuals experience in the face of the climate crisis and environmental degradation more generally. We know that fear can be a source of good and ill. Fears of climate-change-driven heat waves, for instance, can spur both activism and denial. But as of yet, we don’t have a very good understanding of why eco-fears, as we will call them, shape our thoughts (...) and actions in the ways that they do. More importantly, we also don’t really understand why some experiences of eco-fear can lead to depression, PTSD, and other psychopathologies. In an effort to make some progress on this front, we look more closely at the role that feelings of agency – our general feeling that we have enough ability to address the threats and challenges we face – play in shaping our fears. (shrink)