The contribution of Octavia Butler's fiction to utopian studies is becoming more widely recognized, particularly in the wake of a special issue of Utopian Studies (vol. 19, no. 3) devoted to her work. The Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents provide an especially effective exploration of perennial issues in political philosophy, cultural studies, and psychology.1 Civil society and the cultural norms that underlay social and political institutions have crumbled. Crime, violence, and addiction are rampant. Environmental degradation (...) and economic collapse have pushed most to roam about the country searching for food, while others take refuge in walled compounds run by corporations whose power is unchecked. .. (shrink)

DA: I anledning af Judith Butlers forelæsning om klimasorg på KU er jeg blevet bedt om at besvare spørgsmålet om, hvad man kan bruge Butlers tænkning til i dag og om den stadig er aktuel. Min første tanke var at besvare spørgsmålet med svaret: Man kan bruge Butlers tænkning til ALT! Men for at fokusere mit svar, har jeg besluttet mig for at gennemgå Butlers tænkning i forhold til spørgsmålet om prekære liv og vold og ikke-vold, og hvordan disse emner (...) udspringer af Butlers tænkning om køn i 1990’erne. -/- EN: In connection with Judith Butler's lecture on climate grief at KU, I have been asked to answer the question of how Butler's thinking could be used today and whether it is still relevant. My first thought was to answer the question with the answer: You can use Butler's thinking for EVERYTHING! However, to focus my answer, I have decided to review Butler's thinking in relation to the issues of precarious lives and violence and non-violence and how these issues stem from Butler's thinking on gender in the 1990s. (shrink)

The main aim of this dissertation is to examine whether or not Judith Butler’s feminist philosophy (Queer theory) can be interpreted as what Theodor W. Adorno called a dialectical or immanent critique of dialectics. The rationale behind this examination can be found in two essays published by Carrie Hull (1997) and Marcel Stoetzler (2005). In these essays, both authors suggest that Butler’s argument (Gender Trouble 1999[1990]) would benefit significantly from being juxtaposed with Adorno’s reconceptualisation of dialectics as ‘negative (...) dialectics’ (Negative Dialectics 1990[1966]). However, while Hull and Stoetzler provide convincing arguments, their claims are, at best, superficial. Thus, this dissertation addresses this particular lack in state-of-the-art by thoroughly examining Hull’s and Stoetzler’s suggested reading of Butler with Adorno (and vice versa). ; The first chapter deals exclusively with Adorno’s theoretical development and negative dialectics. It focuses on how Adorno’s general philosophical outlook can be interpreted as a critical enterprise aimed at correcting the ‘wrongness of the present’, to show how and where society, politics, or philosophy has failed to live up to what they claim to have achieved e.g. how the notion of a shared national identity fails to consider the diverseness of the individuals it encompasses. Adorno’s central issue is thus with ‘Identity Thinking’ (1990), a mode of thinking aimed at providing an account of everything from a unified perspective. ; The second chapter, as preparation for the third (on Butler), is divided into two shorter examinations of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, two figures whose works have greatly inspired Butler. Foucault and Adorno converge around their shared criticism of social structures, which permits nothing but themselves. Derrida and Adorno converge in their shared mode of criticism that seeks to, in Derrida’s words, deconstruct a text or a theory from within. Hence, by juxtaposing Foucault’s and Derrida’s critical philosophies with Adorno’s negative dialectics, the notion that Butler can be juxtaposed with Adorno is secured by drawing a straight line from Butler’s theoretical inspirations. ; The third chapter engages in a close reading of Butler and subsequently (relying heavily on Hull and Stoetzler) in a critical reinterpretation that reads Butler not as an anti-dialectical thinker but instead as an ambiguous dialectical thinker. Butler interpreted this paves the way for reading Butler’s feminism firmly within Adorno’s negative dialectics. Adding Adorno’s account of materiality to Butler, while still keeping Butler’s criticism of feminism’s ‘totalizing gestures’ (1999) intact, makes it more apparent how Butler’s argument contains a materialist account and gives materiality a more prominent place in Butler’s argument. The lack of materiality in Butler has been criticised by other feminists (New Materialism) since the publication of Gender Trouble. Thus, by adding Adorno to Butler, this criticism is met head-on. ; The conclusion goes beyond the initial scope of the dissertation by showing how Butler, with Adorno, can be juxtaposed with those critics who want to turn contemporary feminism away from the notion that ‘everything is culture/language’ (Butler) and instead focus on materiality and matter (New Materialism; Karen Barad). By reading Butler not against but with New Materialism, the dichotomy between culture and nature turns into a productive difference rather than something that is an unsurmountable contradiction. (shrink)

Moral philosophy and education, by H. D. Aiken.--The moral sense and contributory values, by C. I. Lewis.--Realms of value, by P. W. Taylor.--The role of value theory in education, by J. D. Butler.--Does ethics make a difference? By K. Price.--Educational value statements, by C. Beck.--Educational values and goals, by W. K. Frankena.--Conflicts in values, by H. S. Broudy.--Levels of valuational discourse in education, by J. F. Perry and P. G. Smith.--Education and some moves toward a value methodology, by A. (...) S. Clayton.--You can't pray a lie, by M. Twain.--Men, machines, and morality, by J. F. Soltis.--Teaching and telling, by I. Scheffler.--Reason and habit, by R. S. Peters.--The two moralists of the child, by J. Piaget.--Causes and morality, by R. S. Peters.--On education and morals, by R. W. Sleeper.--Moral autonomy and reasonableness, by T. D. Perry. (shrink)

This accessible and provocative collection of science fiction acquaints readers with cutting-edge gender controversies in moral and political philosophy. By imagining future worlds that defy our most basic assumptions about sex and gender, freedom and equality, and ethical values, the anthology’s authors not only challenge traditional standards of morality and justice, but create bold experiments for testing feminist hypotheses. Selections are grouped under four main themes. Part 1, "Human Nature and Reality," concentrates on whether there is an intrinsic difference between (...) males and females. Here the authors inspect opposing views on five related questions: What does it mean to be human? What are women and men really like? How significant is the reproductive difference? How do we define the concepts of "woman" and "nature"? Why is language important? Part 2, "Dystopias: The Worst of All Possible Worlds," first portrays misogynistic societies uncomfortably familiar to the early 21st-century reader. Chilling stories of future possibilities follow, including worlds where women and men separate into armies to fight a literal war of the sexes. Part 3, "Separatist Utopias: Worlds of Difference," assembles stories that scrutinize both the virtues and vices of separatism, in order to address the questions Why should women want to separate from men? and What would and should these all-female worlds be like? In Part 4, "Androgynous Utopias: Worlds of Equality," the authors create intriguing worlds that anticipate the consequences, good and bad, of perfect sexual equality in education, intelligence, capability, and reproduction. With selections from such noted writers as Octavia Butler, Marion Zimmer Bradley, James Tiptree Jr., and many others, plus chapter introductions, discussion questions, and recommended reading list, this stimulating collection offers fresh insights on troubling issues by weaving controversial utopian and dystopian designs from the separate threads of opposing positions. (shrink)

With the coronavirus pandemic and the Omicron variant once again forcing countries into lockdown, this essay seeks to outline a Foucauldian critique of various legal measures taken by the Danish government to cope with COVID-19 during the first year and a half of the pandemic. The essay takes a critical look at the extra-legal measures employed by the Danish government, as the Danish politicians attempted to halt the spread of the, now almost forgotten, Cluster 5 COVID-19 variant. This situation will (...) serve as a critical point from where to start using Foucault’s writings on life and biopolitics in order to expose various legally problematic governmental decisions that became visible during the handling of COVID-19 in general and the Cluster 5 mutation in particular. Reframing the pandemic within Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, this essay concludes that the state of exception has led to an increase in biopolitical logic, where some lives have come to matter more than others. As a critical counterpoint to this logic, the conclusion suggests that the notion of biocommunism could provide a suitable reconfiguration of communism. A reconfiguration that could mitigate some of the issues related to biopolitics is uncovered earlier in the essay. (shrink)

This essay rethinks the concept of biocommunism by rearticulating it via a sensitivity towards individual suffering rather than the human species as a whole. The essay is divided into three parts. The first part outlines Marx’s concept of alienation because of the central role that the fourth kind of alienation plays in Dyer-Witheford’s original conception of biocommunism. The second part briefly elaborates on the discussion of species in the Kyoto School. These two parts lead to the third part, where a (...) novel interpretation of biocommunism is outlined, focusing on individual suffering rather than the human species. (shrink)

Presents general information about meteorology, weather, and climate and includes more than thirty activities to help study these topics, including making a ...

David Lewis [1988; 1996] canvases an anti-Humean thesis about mental states: that the rational agent desires something to the extent that he or she believes it to be good. Lewis offers and refutes a decision-theoretic formulation of it, the 'Desire-as-Belief Thesis'. Other authors have since added further negative results in the spirit of Lewis's. We explore ways of being anti-Humean that evade all these negative results. We begin by providing background on evidential decision theory and on Lewis's negative results. We (...) then introduce what we call the indexicality loophole: if the goodness of a proposition is indexical, partly a function of an agent's mental state, then the negative results have no purchase. Thus we propose a variant of Desire-as-Belief that exploits this loophole. We argue that a number of meta-ethical positions are committed to just such indexicality. Indeed, we show that with one central sort of evaluative belief--the belief that an option is right--the indexicality loophole can be exploited in various interesting ways. Moreover, on some accounts, 'good' is indexical in the same way. Thus, it seems that the anti-Humean can dodge the negative results. (shrink)

Argues i) that part of what it is to understand what is being asked, when we ask whether something is good, is being able to distinguish stopping points in a series of "Why?" questions, and ii) that this ability explains how we can reason from observable facts to conclusions about value.

The script focusFollowsMouse.user.js provides a very simple implementation of "click-free" web browsing: it defines a mouseover method for every HTML link, input, select and text area which calls the focus() method on that control. (Click on the link to install it as a Greasemonkey script.).

In this volume of the Dictionary of Literary Biography, notable philosophers of the Anglo-American tradition, analytical philosophy, are represented as well as other philosophers who made significant contributions to American philosophy in the latter half of the twentieth century.

Grace and Freedom in a Secular Age offers a concise exposition of key ideas - contingency, otherness, freedom, vulnerability and mutuality - that inform the work of the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, especially concerning the dynamics of religious belief and religious denial in what he calls a "a secular age." The book integrates discussion of Immanuel Kant and Susan Neiman in particular and seeks to show how Taylor's work can be fruitfully engaged by theologians.

The case of pain asymbolia is a case study that provides evidence of the mechanisms underlying the relationship between bodily experience, affective experience, and self-awareness. On one account pain asymbolia is the result of an affective deficit. Sensory signals of bodily damage are not associated with characteristic negative affect. Cochrane endorses this account as part of his version of a “conceptual act” theory of affective experience. In contrast, I propose an active inference account of affect in general and pain asymbolia (...) in particular. In the active inference framework the self is inferred as the endogenous cause of bodily and affective experience in the process of organismic regulation. This preserves Cochranes ambition to ground affect in bodily regulation but avoids the problem for affective deficit accounts of asymbolia that cannot do justice to the neural correlates. (shrink)

A defense of the modern family, in historical perspective, this book reconstructs political theory with the family in an important and honorable place. By reviewing critically both traditional and contemporary thought on the most special relationships—as well as current public policy issues relating to them—the author addresses concerns shared by professional and lay constituencies. Noting Tocqueville's observation of the American obsession with reevaluating and remodeling the family, Professor Abbott pleads for a balanced view. The development of liberal ambivalence toward the (...) family, along with radical hostility toward it, is clearly traced. For the most part the family was safely incorporated into political theory from Aristotle to Cicero and onward to Augustine and Aquinas until modern times. Then came the challenges of the rational individualists and the romantic individualists, followed by the attacks of social and psychological radicals. Some traditional criticisms of the family are shown to be soundly based, albeit less devastating than the critics supposed. As expanded in contemporary life, however, the great critics' revisionist models take on a fantastic quality. Here we are introduced to pleas for the "eroticization of children" and for freedom from "tyranny of reproductive biology." Proposals for new bureaucratic support structures appear with great frequency: professional guardians, children's camps, cloning hospitals. And people try to act out the roles prescribed for them by theorists who attempted "to set the solitary in new and different units." Liberals and radicals, the author argues, are infatuated with a "rights model," which "takes as its basis self-sufficient rational human beings"—at the expense of "solidarity among human beings." A tradition exists, Professor Abbott holds, that facilitates reconciliation between the modern family and the political order: pluralism. Pluralism is an attempt to balance individual autonomy and mutuality, decentralization and stratification, reform and tradition, reason and sentiment. Public policy in respect to schools, housing, health care, working conditions, and recreation should be designed to foster a pluralistic family-centered society. In line with this thesis the author offers a fresh perspective on such burning issues as abortion, sexual preference, alternative lifestyles, child abuse, and children's rights. _The Family on Trial _therefore is relevant to the concerns of social and behavioral scientists, the helping professions and the clergy, teachers and parents. (shrink)