In 1976, Jo Freeman wrote an article for Ms. Magazine, entitled ‘Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood’. It provoked an outpouring of letters from women relating their own experiences of trashing during the course of the second wave feminist movement—more letters than Ms. had received about any previous article. Since then, the technology has improved but the climate among feminists has not; trashing is now conducted on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, in front of ever-larger audiences and with (...) the magnified opportunities for destruction that these new platforms bring with them. Women already experience disproportionate harassment on social media; many feel trashing by other feminists to be much harder to accept. It’s one thing for people to hate feminists; resistance from those for whom a social justice movement represents a threat is par for the course. But it’s something else for feminists to hate each other. These are people with shared goals and a common enemy. What are the psychological mechanisms underlying this fact of life for feminist activists? Various explanations might be offered, from internalised misogyny, through volatility caused by histories of oppression, through envy and competitiveness, through ideological purity policing. Which are correct? Is the hatred that motivates trashing within feminism the same in quality and quantity, or different, from the affective dynamics inside other social movements? How does tribalism between warring feminist factions contribute to these dynamics, and to what extent is trashing underwritten by laudable moral goals (such as anti-elitism and anti-hierarchy) even when it goes too far or misfires? Can a liberation movement be successful without ideological purity policing, or is there a tension between achieving social justice outcomes and facilitating a healthy amount of disagreement and constructive criticism within a group? In this paper I’ll focus on potential explanations of the phenomena of trashing, including tribalism, power grabs, and purity policing; and the moral commitments that might lead feminists to trash each other. (shrink)

In Against Purity, Alexis Shotwell proposes a powerful new conception of social movements as custodians for the past and incubators for liberated futures. Against Purity undertakes an analysis that draws on theories of race, disability, gender, and animal ethics as a foundation for an innovative approach to the politics and ethics of responding to systemic problems.

Purity is the principle that fundamental facts only have fundamental constituents. In recent years, it has played a significant role in metaphysical theorizing—but its logical foundations are underdeveloped. I argue that recent advances in higher-order logic reveal a subtle ambiguity regarding Purity’s interpretation; there are stronger and weaker versions of that principle. The arguments for Purity only support the weaker interpretation, but arguments that employ it only succeed if the stronger interpretation is true. As a result, nearly (...) every metaphysician who has appealed to Purity has made a mistake—in that the inferences that they make are not justified by the arguments that they provide. (shrink)

The spiral form of the Periodic Law is proposed as its fundamental graphic representation. This idea is based on the fact that the spiral is the most appropriate form in description transitions from simple to complicated. The spiral is easily obtained from the linear succession of the elements when they are ranged by growing nuclear charge. The spiral can be simply transformed into many other graphic representations, including tables. This paper suggests the conception of the autonomy of blocks. This autonomy (...) is clearly seen in the variation of the outer electronic shells, in the width and the height of the blocks, as well as the number and properties of elements included therein. The regularities in the changes of element properties are pronounced in certain blocks but actually absent in others. The blocks can be permuted to obtain full-fledged versions of Periodic Table. The new stage of the verification of the blocks autonomy is the use of the total number of the differentiating electrons as an independent variable in describing the properties of the elements and their compounds. Consideration of individual blocks made it possible to deduce the periodic equations valid for all the elements within each block. Formulation of the Periodic Law is advanced: while describing characteristic determining the properties of the elements, the nuclear charge is replaced by the total number of differentiating electrons. Two modifications of the conventional Periodic Table are obtained by minimal changes. The first one shows the secondary and the additional periodicites. Another table shows the total number of differentiating electrons for each element. (shrink)

Various ideals of purity are surveyed and discussed. These include the classical Aristotelian ideal, as well as certain neo-classical and contemporary ideals. The focus is on a type of purity ideal I call topical purity. This is purity which emphasizes a certain symmetry between the conceptual resources used to prove a theorem and those needed for the clarification of its content. The basic idea is that the resources of proof ought ideally to be restricted to those (...) which determine its content. (shrink)

Throughout history, mathematicians have expressed preference for solutions to problems that avoid introducing concepts that are in one sense or another “foreign” or “alien” to the problem under investigation. This preference for “purity” (which German writers commonly referred to as “methoden Reinheit”) has taken various forms. It has also been persistent. This notwithstanding, it has not been analyzed at even a basic philosophical level. In this paper we give a basic analysis of one conception of purity—what we call (...) topical purity—and discuss its epistemological significance. (shrink)

We examine the spiral structure of the thinking and the work of Marshall McLuhan, which we believe will provide a new way of viewing McLuhan’s work. In particular, we believe that the way he reversed figure and ground, reversed content and medium, reversed cause and effect, and the relationship he established between the content of a new medium and the older media it obsolesced all contain a spiral structure going back and forth in time. Finally, the time structure of his (...) Laws of Media in which a new medium obsolesced an older medium, while retrieving an even older medium and then when pushed far enough flipped into a still newer medium has the feeling of a spiral. We will also examine the spiral structure of the thinking and work of those thinkers and artists that most influenced McLuhan such as Vico, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Joyce, TS Eliot, Wyndham Lewis and the Vorticism movement. (shrink)

This paper explores organizational spirituality, uncovers it as spiralling dynamics of both positive and negative potentialities, and proposes how leaders can shape these dynamics to improve the human conditions at the workplace. Based on case study of five Turkish organizations and drawing on the emerging discourse on spirituality in organizations literature, this study provides a deeper understanding of how dynamic patterns of spirituality operate in organizations. Insights from participant observation, organizational data, and semi-structured interviews yield three key themes of organizational (...) spirituality: reflexivity, connectivity, and responsibility. Each of these themes has been found to be connected to upward spirals (inspiration, engagement, and calling) and downward spirals (incivility, silence, and fatigue). The study provides a detailed and holistic account of the individual and organizational processes through which spirituality is enacted both positively and negatively, exploring its dynamic and dualistic nature, as embodied in the fabric of everyday life and culture. (shrink)

Alternate View Column AV-24 Keywords: cosmic string, oscillation, gravity wave, spiral galaxy Published in the January-1988 issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact Magazine; This column was written and submitted 6/26/87 and is copyrighted © 1987, John G. Cramer. All rights reserved. No part may be reproduced in any form without the explicit permission of the author.

Turning to the question of morality's content, Scheffler undertakes a defense of the view that morality is moderate – that it makes demands and imposes constraints but still allows people, under favorable circumstances, to do as they please within broad limits. Those who oppose this view and see morality as stringent are, according to Scheffler, attributing a kind of purity to the moral point of view, and so he presents the contrast between the stringent and moderate views as a (...) contrast between an Ideal of Purity and an Ideal of Humanity. Scheffler considers and rejects two argumentative strategies that are frequently used in defense of the Ideal of Purity, one that derives stringency from an allegedly uncontroversial property of morality, such as universality or impartiality and another that derives it from ordinary moral language and ordinary moral concepts. Scheffler suggests that, because the claims of stringency and moderation each have a place in our moral consciousness, neither claim can be adequately defended by appealing either to formal properties of morality or to facts about ordinary usage. (shrink)

The Spiral Discovery Method was originally proposed as a cognitive artifact for dealing with black-box models that are dependent on multiple inputs with nonlinear and/or multiplicative interaction effects. Besides directly helping to identify functional patterns in such systems, SDM also simplifies their control through its characteristic spiral structure. In this paper, a neural network-based formulation of SDM is proposed together with a set of automatic update rules that makes it suitable for both semiautomated and automated forms of optimization. The behavior (...) of the generalized SDM model, referred to as the Spiral Discovery Network, and its applicability to nondifferentiable nonconvex optimization problems are elucidated through simulation. Based on the simulation, the case is made that its applicability would be worth investigating in all areas where the default approach of gradient-based backpropagation is used today. (shrink)

A fundamental fact is “pure” just in case it has no grounded entities—ex. Tokyo, President Biden, the River Nile, {Socrates}, etc.—among its constituents. Purity is the thesis that every fundamental fact is pure. I argue that Purity is false. My argument begins with a familiar conditional: if Purity is true, then there are no fundamental “grounding facts” or facts about what grounds what. This conditional is accepted by virtually all of Purity’s defenders. However, I argue that (...) it is also the first step toward Purity’s undoing. For, if every grounding fact has a ground, then some grounded entities have “groundmates” or distinct grounded entities that share their full grounds. But, if there are groundmates, then Purity is false. So Purity leads to a contradiction. Therefore, it is false. I close by noting that my argument against Purity also gives us a powerful reason to think that some grounding facts are fundamental. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay calls attention to two blind spots in Power Without Knowledge. First, the book has little to say about the role that political institutions can play in promoting effective democratic governance. Drawing on the “mixed government” tradition, I argue that properly designed institutions can correct for the epistemic deficits that Friedman describes by creating what I call the “pressure to conflict.” Second and more importantly, the book has nothing to say about the role of responsible leadership in a (...) democratic technocracy. Drawing on Max Weber’s analysis of the ethics of responsibility and the ethics of conviction, I argue that responsible leadership can promote judicious technocracy in a dynamic that I call the “spiral of responsibility.” The responsible leader recognizes that to recuse oneself from the exercise of technocratic power is to empower the unscrupulous and irresponsible. According to Weber, any theory of politics that fails to embrace the ethics of responsibility will therefore occupy an uneasy middle ground between quietism and enthusiasm. This, I fear, is where Power Without Knowledge may leave us. (shrink)

The capitalist mode of production and consumption is caught in a double bind: its expansion destabilises natural systems and fails to curb social inequities, while slowdown destabilises the inner workings of the economic system itself. To better understand what is happening in this phase of instability, this article proposes a System Dynamics representation that combines elements of Georgescu-Roegen's Ecological Economics with Marxian theory. Specifically it draws from a diagram recently developed by David Harvey to communicate Marx's political economy in its (...) totality; Harvey's diagram is then adapted to incorporate the flow-fund model developed by Georgescu-Roegen. The contribution made by this adaptation is twofold: first, it allows us to emphasise key connections and discrepancies between the two traditions; second, it extends System Dynamics into (eco-)Marxian analysis, which serves to visualise the fundamental causes and consequences of a spiralling, ever-expanding capitalist economy. (shrink)

By the early 80s, kids were already trawling the message boards of the Internet for perverse kicks. Well before Star Ways Kid or "flash mobs," one of the first online fads was the "Purity Test," a series of questions to rate your moral purity, from the raunchy to the absurd.The tests would be printed out, brought to school, and pored over with friends in the back of the gym during recess. Then kids would modify the original with their (...) own prurient additions before sending it along. Eventually, the tests became bloated thousand-question Franken-tests that took hours to complete.Doing the test with friends was like playing an endless, filthy, wildly enlightening game of "Did You Ever?"--and because it was a standardized test, you could compare your scores. Assuming everyone was being honest--which they weren't. The Purity Test will offer both a humorous history and analysis of the Purity Test as well as several versions of the test to take at home. (shrink)

Life cycle diagrams are ubiquitous in a variety of scientific materials, ranging from introductory biology textbooks to professional publications. These diagrams typically depict stages of a particular organism’s life connected by arrows, such as, for a frog: egg(s) → embryo → tadpole → tadpole with two legs → tadpole with four legs → young frog → adult frog → egg(s). In this paper, we present a critique of this sort of life cycle diagram, drawing on both metaphysics and epistemology of (...) science. We suggest that these diagrams do not accurately represent an organism’s life stages, its reproduction, or species persistence. These misrepresentations have implications for scientific reasoning, explanatory efficacy, as well as pedagogical efficacy. To address the shortcomings of these diagrams, we propose a new kind of diagram which we call the life spiral diagram. The life spiral diagram more accurately reflects an organism’s life stages, its reproduction, as well as species persistence. Thus, the life spiral diagram better aids scientific reasoning, explanations of life processes, and learning. (shrink)

Over the years many mathematicians have voiced a preference for proofs that stay “close” to the statements being proved, avoiding “foreign”, “extraneous”, or “remote” considerations. Such proofs have come to be known as “pure”. Purity issues have arisen repeatedly in the practice of arithmetic; a famous instance is the question of complex-analytic considerations in the proof of the prime number theorem. This article surveys several such issues, and discusses ways in which logical considerations shed light on these issues.

Our recent review demonstrates that “purity” is a messy construct with at least nine popular scientific understandings. Cultural beliefs about self-control help unify some of these understandings, but much messiness remains. The harm-centric theory of dyadic morality suggests that purity violations can be comprehensively understood as abstract harms, acts perceived by some people (and not others) to indirectly cause suffering.

This is a paper on a type of purity of proof I call topical purity. This is purity which, practically speaking, enforces a certain symmetry between the conceptual resources used to prove a theorem and those needed for the clarification of its content. The basic idea is that the resources of proof ought ideally to be restricted to those which determine its content. -/- For some, this has been regarded as an epistemic ideal concerning the type of (...) knowledge that proof ought to or at least might ideally provide. -/- For others, including many working mathematicians, it has been largely a strategic or pragmatic ideal. Even these, however, see it (i.e. the ideal of purity) as serving generally epistemic ends. (shrink)

Purity is known as an ideal of proof that restricts a proof to notions belonging to the ‘content’ of the theorem. In this paper, our main interest is to develop a conception of purity for formal (natural deduction) proofs. We develop two new notions of purity: one based on an ontological notion of the content of a theorem, and one based on the notions of surrogate ontological content and structural content. From there, we characterize which (classical) first-order (...) natural deduction proofs of a mathematical theorem are pure. Formal proofs that refer to the ontological content of a theorem will be called ‘fully ontologically pure’. Formal proofs that refer to a surrogate ontological content of a theorem will be called ‘secondarily ontologically pure’, because they preserve the structural content of a theorem. We will use interpretations between theories to develop a proof-theoretic criterion that guarantees secondary ontological purity for formal proofs. (shrink)

In his 1978 paper “Mathematical Explanation”, Mark Steiner attempts to modernize the Aristotelian idea that to explain a mathematical statement is to deduce it from the essence of entities figuring in the statement, by replacing talk of essences with talk of “characterizing properties”. The language Steiner uses is reminiscent of language used for proofs deemed “pure”, such as Selberg and Erdős’ elementary proofs of the prime number theorem avoiding the complex analysis of earlier proofs. Hilbert characterized pure proofs as those (...) that use only “means that are suggested by the content of the theorem”, a characterization we have elsewhere called “topical purity”. In this paper we will examine the connection between Steiner’s account of mathematical explanation and topical purity. Are Steiner-explanatory proofs necessarily topically pure? Are topically pure proofs necessarily Steiner-explanatory? Answers to these questions will shed light on the general question of the relation between purity and explanatory power. (shrink)

Change is an inborn trait of all organisms at every level of existence. This article proposes that the evolution of all life follows a course as if bound by a guiding principle or template. Overcoming disorder and entropy through diversity, this template has the properties of a spiral force, which acts to maintain continuity during change and transitions, and operates at all levels, from the simplest of forms to the most complex. Drawing from Chaos Theory, biology, depth psychology, and Buddhism, (...) the spiral template is presented as a new vision of reality guiding scientific and spiritual perspectives toward evolutionary wholeness. (shrink)

The view that folk psychology is primarily mindreading beliefs and desires has come under challenge in recent years. I have argued that we also understand others in terms of individual properties such as personality traits and generalizations from past behavior, and in terms of group properties such as stereotypes and social norms (Andrews 2012). Others have also argued that propositional attitude attribution isn’t necessary for predicting others’ behavior, because this can be done in terms of taking Dennett’s Intentional Stance (Zawidzki (...) 2013), appealing to social structures (Maibom 2007), shared norms (McGeer 2007) or via solution based heuristics for reaching equilibrium between social partners (Morton 2003). But it isn’t only prediction that can be done without thinking about what others think; we can explain and understand people in terms of their personality traits, habitual behaviors, and social practices as well. The decentering of propositional attitude attributions goes hand in hand with a move away from taking folk psychology to be primarily a predictive device. While experiments examining folk psychological abilities in children, infants, and other species still rest on asking subjects to predict behavior, theoretical investigations as to the evolutionary function of folk psychology have stressed the role of explanation (Andrews 2012) and regulative functions (McGeer 2007, Zawidzki 2013, Fenici 2011). In this paper I argue that an explanatory role for folk psychology is also a regulative role, and that language is not required for these regulative functions. I will start by drawing out the relationship between prediction, explanation, and regulation of behavior according to both mindreading approaches to folk psychology and the pluralistic account I defend. I will argue that social cognition does not take the form of causal reasoning so much as it does normative reasoning, and will introduce the folk psychological spiral. Then I will examine the cognitive resources necessary for participating in the folk psychological spiral, and I will argue that these cognitive resources can be had without language. There is preliminary evidence that some other species understand one another through a normative lens that, through looping effects, creates expectations that community members strive to live up to. (shrink)

Standard defences of preservationism, and of the intrinsic value of nature more generally, are vulnerable to at least three objections. The first of these comes from social constructivism, the second from the claim that it is incoherent to argue that nature is both 'other' and something with which we can feel unity, whilst the third links defences of nature to authoritarian objectivism and dangerously misanthropic normative dichotomies which set pure nature against impure humanity. I argue that all these objections may (...) be answered by recasting the relationship between man and nature into a tripartite spectrum of ontological form between nature and artifact, with the key question being the extent to which nature has been humanised in accordance with certain modes of strongly instrumental rationality, these in turn being defined by reference to the split between abstract reason and natural feeling which was exacerbated by specific elements in the Enlightenment period. This new model may grant normative force by linking external nature to a broader conception of human psychological wellbeing than that offered by the quantitatively orientated models of human rationality and agency. (shrink)

This paper discusses the phenomenon of ethical purity, namely, the complete orientation of the mind in an ethical direction and the absence of any element that detracts from this ethical orientation. It considers the way this phenomenon is presented in Confucian thought, through ideas such as cheng 誠， xu 虛， and jing 靜. The paper then approaches the phenomenon through a discussion of both the moral trials one goes through in life, and of the state of equanimity that accompanies (...) the purity of the mind. Finally, it concludes with a discussion of the nature of ethical purity, including the nature of moral progress and the oneness of the mind. -/- . (shrink)

A proof of a theorem can be said to be pure if it draws only on what is 'close' or 'intrinsic' to that theorem. In this Element we will investigate the apparent preference for pure proofs that has persisted in mathematics since antiquity, alongside a competing preference for impurity. In Section 1, we present two examples of purity, from geometry and number theory. In Section 2, we give a brief history of purity in mathematics. In Section 3, we (...) discuss several different types of purity, based on different measures of distance between theorem and proof. In Section 4 we discuss reasons for preferring pure proofs, for the varieties of purity constraints presented in Section 3. In Section 5 we conclude by reflecting briefly on purity as a preference for the local and how issues of translation intersect with the considerations we have raised throughout this work. (shrink)

Through a reinterpretation of publications, interviews with long-term activists, and an analysis of change in the social environment, this article explains why feminist ideology failed to create unity among feminist women in the United States during the period 1966-1975, the years when contemporary feminism emerged. In spite of the desire to create a community of women to challenge the existing sociocultural structure, schisms within the movement often created divisive and antagonistic feminist group relations. In contrast to earlier research that attributed (...) this lack of unity to competing ideologies, this article argues that, in many cases, feminist leaders used ideology and theory to promote radical self-identities that maintained existing social structural divisions. Thus, while feminism established a principle of unity for women as a group, disputes over ideological purity created divisions within the movement based on differences among women. (shrink)

This paper describes a model of how musicians make decisions about performing notated music. The model builds on psychological theories of decision-making and was developed from empirical studies of Western art music performance that aimed to identify intuitive and deliberate processes of decision-making, a distinction consistent with dual-process theories of cognition. The model proposes that the proportion of intuitive (Type 1) and deliberate (Type 2) decision-making processes changes with increasing expertise and conceptualizes this change as movement along a continually narrowing (...) upward spiral where the primary axis signifies principal decision-making type and the vertical axis marks level of expertise. The model is intended to have implications for the development of expertise as described in two main phases. The first is movement from a primarily intuitive approach in the early stages of learning toward greater deliberation as analytical techniques are applied during practice. The second phase occurs as deliberate decisions gradually become automatic (procedural), increasing the role of intuitive processes. As a performer examines more issues or reconsiders decisions, the spiral motion toward the deliberate side and back to the intuitive is repeated indefinitely. With increasing expertise, the spiral tightens to signify greater control over decision type selection. The model draws on existing theories, particularly Evans’ (2011) Intervention Model of dual-process theories, Cognitive Continuum Theory Hammond et al. (1987), Hammond (2007), Baylor’s (2001) U-shaped model for the development of intuition by level of expertise. By theorizing how musical decision-making operates over time and with increasing expertise, this model could be used as a framework for future research in music performance studies and performance science more generally. (shrink)

Prior to the publication of his first work on the co-origination of hominization and technicization, Bernard Stiegler formulated the elements of his philosophical outlook, embodied in the concept of the “idiotext,” conceived as a way of thinking beyond the metaphysical opposition of the empirical and the transcendental. This concept describes the meeting of the spirals of different kinds of memories, and the way this meeting also involves the spiraling of a milieu that supports this encounter, and which is itself (...) a kind of memory—and a support of dreams. The profound reflection that underlay the formulation of this concept never ceased to inform the continued unfolding of Stiegler’s work, and never ceased to return in constantly renewed ways. This article elaborates Stiegler’s notion of the “idiotext” and attempts to indicate its significance for Stiegler’s work and for any thought that wishes to take the measure of our decomposing times. (shrink)

Employers must determine the types of health care plans to offer and also set employee premiums for each plan provided. Depending on the structure of the employee share of premiums across different health insurance plans, the incentives to choose one plan over another are altered. If employees know premiums do not fully reflect the risk differences among workers, such pricing can give rise to a so-called “death spiral” due to adverse selection. This paper uses longitudinal information from a natural experiment (...) in the management of health benefits for a large employer to explore the impact of moving from a fixed-dollar contribution policy to a partially risk-adjusted employer contribution policy. Our results show that implementing a significant risk adjustment had no discernable effect on adverse selection against the most generous indemnity insurance policy. This stands in stark contrast to previous studies, which have tended to estimate large impacts attributed to selection when employers move to a fixed-dollar policy from one with some risk adjustment. Further analysis suggests that previous studies, which appeared to detect plans in the throes of a death spiral, may instead have been reflecting an inexorable movement away from a non-preferred product, one that would have been inefficient for nearly all workers even in the absence of adverse selection. (shrink)

Hans Kelsen’s purity thesis is the basic methodological principle of the Pure Theory of Law. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that virtually everything that is peculiar to Kelsen’s legal theory stems from the purity thesis. This includes Kelsen’s normativism or non‐naturalism and his polemic against various dualisms in legal science. I set out Kelsen’s position on these issues after looking at the nomenclature of purity in his writings as well as the philosophical and contextual sources (...) of purity as he understands them. (shrink)

Until recently, as market forces gradually prevailed over government intervention, the contractarian view had emerged as a preferred method of economic governance due to its attractiveness for business. Following the recent collapse of financial markets and the resulting recession, however, this structural form is now being called into question as the calls for more regulation and government intervention increase. In this context, this article revisits the law versus contract debate in the field of corporate law and governance. Following a theoretical (...) framework utilizing elements of game and resource-based theory of the firm, the company is envisaged as a central counterparty in repeated bargains with its stakeholders. It is shown that power dynamics, which are inherent in the repeated bargains between stakeholders and the company, are prone to imbalance rather than balance by causing cumulative increases in the relative power of stronger parties and vicious spirals of relative power loss for weaker ones. This cumulative power imbalance is then reflected in the organizational rent appropriation process, as weaker parties are eventually expropriated by stronger ones. It is therefore argued that since the contractual model is inherently prone to instability, mandatory power-balancing rules are necessary. Such (re)balancing regulation, however, would need to follow a systemic approach because stakeholder and company power is drawn from, and affected by numerous structural arrangements in the legal and economic system. (shrink)

In Glas Derrida asserts that Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, in its reading of Antigone, favors consciousness (over the unconscious) by first acknowledging the achievement of ethical plenitude by Antigone, as she comes to full recognition of two contradictory laws, that of the divine and that of the communal spheres, and consequently repressing this speculative accomplishment by her fateful disappearance from both texts. This article complicates the argument by looking at the role that literature takes not only in philosophy, but in (...) the expression of speculative dialectics as such. What for Hegel can be included in a system? How does the impossible figure (Antigone), its expression and then exclusion enter and abandon the system? This text looks at war, burial and incest expressed by the role of Antigone in the Phenomenology of Spirit. (HC) © 2011 by The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System . (shrink)

Sarah Grand was one of the most prominent New Women of the 1890s and a notable social purity feminist and suffragist. This collection offers important insights into the full range of her journalistic output and lesser-known fictional writings. It also makes available biographical and autobiographical material, and previously unpublished manuscript sources. The first volume reproduces Grand's articles and the contemporary critical reception of her work. The letters in volume two, written mostly in the 1920s and 1930s, shed light on (...) Grand's genesis as a writer and her interaction with 1890s artistic and feminist circles. The third and fourth volumes contain a selection of short stories from three collections published at and after the turn of the century. These comment on some of the explosive issues of that time: feminism, decadence, eugenics, class, race and war. They also reflect Grand's exploration of the interplay between gender and genre. (shrink)

The essay analyses the notion of ‘purity’ in the early writings of Walter Benjamin, focusing more specifically on three essays written around the crucial year 1921: ‘Critique of Violence’, ‘The Task of the Translator’, and ‘Goethe's Elective Affinities’. In these essays, ‘purity’ appears in the notions of ‘pure means’, ‘pure violence’, ‘pure language’, and, indirectly, the ‘expressionless’. The essay argues, on the one hand, that the ‘purity’ of these concepts is one and the same notion, and, on (...) the other, that it is strongly indebted to, if not a by-product of, Kant's theorisation of the moral act. In order to make this claim, the essay analyses Benjamin's intense engagement with Kant's writings in the 1910s and early 1920s: ‘purity’ is a category strongly connoted within the philosophical tradition in which the young Benjamin moved his first steps, namely Kantian transcendental criticism. The essay argues that the notion of ‘purity’ in Benjamin, though deployed outside and often against Kant's theorisation and that of his followers, and moreover influenced by different and diverse philosophical suggestions, retains a strong Kantian tone, especially in reference to its moral and ethical aspects. Whereas Benjamin rejects Kant's model of cognition based on the ‘purity’ of the universal laws of reason, and thus also Kant's theorisation of purity as simply non empirical and a priori, he models nonetheless his politics and aesthetics around suggestions that arise directly from Kant's theorisation of the moral act and of the sublime, and uses a very Kantian vocabulary of negative determinations construed with the privatives-los and -frei (motiv-frei, zweck-los, gewalt-los, ausdrucks-los, intention-frei, etc). The essay explores thus the connections that link ‘pure means’, ‘pure language’ and ‘pure violence’ to one another and to the Kantian tradition. (shrink)

"Moore's provocative conclusion is that monotheism - with its monopoly on virtue and failure to provide supernatural scapegoats - is responsible for some of the most virulent forms of intolerance and is a major cause of human nastiness and suffering.

Purity violations overlap with other moral domains. They are not uniquely characterized by hypothesized markers of purity – the witness's emotion of disgust, taint to perpetrator's soul, or the diminished role of intention in moral judgment. Thus, Fitouchi et al.'s proposition that puritanical morality (a subset of violations in the purity domain) is part of cooperation-based morality is an important advance.

In this paper I will be concerned primarily with purity in morals. I will begin by considering an analysis of the pure person offered by Nicolai Hartmann. While I think there is much that is correct in his discussion, I will criticize it for focusing on naive innocence. I will then suggest some components of what I refer to as “mature purity,” and contrast it with Hartmann’s conception. I will also consider whether mature purity involves certain sorts (...) of attitudes and feelings, or merely conscientious action. I go on to discuss forms of impurity, and finally to discuss the relation of purity to other virtues. (shrink)

This paper analyses the traditionally recognized dependence between observation statements and theories. The analysis proceeds by working out the interrelationship between classification systems and theoretical frameworks. Cuvier's and Darwin's theories are used as examples to illustrate this issue. The second part of the paper develops a model designed to give an account of the historical development of this interrelationship. It is argued that the interdependence is not circular and that it is an integral part of scientific research. It is suggested (...) that an interdependence of the type reflected in the model can be helpful in evaluating research programmes in the history of all the sciences. (shrink)