Humans share many aspects of existence and in Karen Green’s short book on Simone de Beauvoir, published as part of the new Cambridge Elements Women in the History of Philosophy series, she reminds...

Anglophone philosophers are often associated with rejecting philosophy’s moral guidance function after 1945. This article builds on existing work on Jean-Paul Sartre’s reception in universities to show that, actually, many British and U.S. philosophers embraced moral guidance roles by engaging with his work and that they promoted creativity and choice in society as a result. Sartre first came to philosophers’ attention in the context of post-war Francophilia, but interest in him quickly went beyond the fact that he was French and (...) expanded to include the wider existentialist movement that he was a part of. Sartre had enduring popularity among English-speaking philosophers because his philosophy resonated with the older British and U.S. philosophies of idealism and pragmatism that, like his, were inspired by Hegel. Sartre’s respondents also valued existentialism because, to them, it made certain Judeo-Christian principles relevant, thus protecting religion at a time when they believed it was threatened with decline and by the advance of specialisation. Anglophone philosophers who were interested in Sartre spread their responses to him through teaching an expanding student population, but also reached the wider public through activism, journalism, broadcasting, and government advisory roles. In doing so, philosophers integrated their interpretations of existential ideas into several aspects of culture in post-war Britain and U.S.A. (shrink)

Transposing differences -- Meta(l)morphoses: women, aliens, and machines -- Animals and other anomalies -- The cosmic buzz of insects -- Matter-realist feminism -- Intensive genre and the demise of gender -- Postsecular paradoxes -- Against methodological nationalism -- Nomadic European citizenship -- Powers of affirmation -- Sustainable ethics and the body in pain -- Forensic futures -- A secular prayer.

The Posthuman offers both an introduction and major contribution to contemporary debates on the posthuman. Digital 'second life', genetically modified food, advanced prosthetics, robotics and reproductive technologies are familiar facets of our globally linked and technologically mediated societies. This has blurred the traditional distinction between the human and its others, exposing the non-naturalistic structure of the human. The Posthuman starts by exploring the extent to which a post-humanist move displaces the traditional humanistic unity of the subject. Rather than perceiving this (...) situation as a loss of cognitive and moral self-mastery, Braidotti argues that the posthuman helps us make sense of our flexible and multiple identities. Braidotti then analyzes the escalating effects of post-anthropocentric thought, which encompass not only other species, but also the sustainability of our planet as a whole. Because contemporary market economies profit from the control and commodification of all that lives, they result in hybridization, erasing categorical distinctions between the human and other species, seeds, plants, animals and bacteria. These dislocations induced by globalized cultures and economies enable a critique of anthropocentrism, but how reliable are they as indicators of a sustainable future? The Posthuman concludes by considering the implications of these shifts for the institutional practice of the humanities. Braidotti outlines new forms of cosmopolitan neo-humanism that emerge from the spectrum of post-colonial and race studies, as well as gender analysis and environmentalism. The challenge of the posthuman condition consists in seizing the opportunities for new social bonding and community building, while pursuing sustainability and empowerment. (shrink)

What are the parameters that define a posthuman knowing subject, her scientific credibility and ethical accountability? Taking the posthumanities as an emergent field of enquiry based on the convergence of posthumanism and post-anthropocentrism, I argue that posthuman knowledge claims go beyond the critiques of the universalist image of ‘Man’ and of human exceptionalism. The conceptual foundation I envisage for the critical posthumanities is a neo-Spinozist monistic ontology that assumes radical immanence, i.e. the primacy of intelligent and self-organizing matter. This implies (...) that the posthuman knowing subject has to be understood as a relational embodied and embedded, affective and accountable entity and not only as a transcendental consciousness. Two related notions emerge from this claim: firstly, the mind-body continuum – i.e. the embrainment of the body and embodiment of the mind – and secondly, the nature-culture continuum – i.e. ‘naturecultural’ and ‘humanimal’ transversal bonding. The article explores these key conceptual and methodological perspectives and discusses the implications of the critical posthumanities for practices in the contemporary ‘research’ university. (shrink)

This book is a brilliant and timely analysis of the complex issues raised by the relation between women and philosophy. It offers a critical account of a wide range of contemporary philosophical and feminist texts and it develops this account into an original project of critical feminist thought. Braidotti examines contemporary French philosophy as practised by men such as Foucault and Derrida, showing that they rely on a notion of 'the feminine' in order to undermine classical thought, which bears no (...) direct relevance to the historical experience of women. Braidotti then looks at the attempts of contemporary feminist thinkers in Europe and the United States to show the gendered nature of discursive power games. She discusses the contributions of Luce Irigaray and many other feminist theorists to the understanding of sexual difference and of its implications for philosophy and politics. This book will be of interest to students and researchers in women's studies, feminist theory, social theory, cultural studies, philosophy and literature, and anyone interested in contemporary feminism and the relation between feminist theory, post-structuralism and psychoanalysis. (shrink)

The discussions about the ethical, political and human implications of the postmodernist condition have been raging for longer than most of us care to remember. They have been especially fierce within feminism. After a brief flirtation with postmodern thinking in the 1980s, mainstream feminist circles seem to have turned their back on the staple notions of poststructuralist philosophy. Metamorphoses takes stock of the situation and attempts to reset priorities within the poststructuralist feminist agenda. Cross-referring in a creative way to Deleuze's (...) and Irigaray's respective philosophies of difference, the book addresses key notions such as embodiment, immanence, sexual difference, nomadism and the materiality of the subject. Metamorphoses also focuses on the implications of these theories for cultural criticism and a redefinition of politics. It provides a vivid overview of contemporary culture, with special emphasis on technology, the monstrous imaginary and the recurrent obsession with 'the flesh' in the age of techno-bodies. This highly original contribution to current debates is written for those who find changes and transformations challenging and necessary. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of philosophy, feminist theory, gender studies, sociology, social theory and cultural studies. (shrink)

This volume focuses on the most urgent themes in contemporary cultural theory, namely ecology, the posthuman, and the rise of the digital in a globally interlinked world. Contributions by the most prominent voices in the field provide up-to-date and accessible introductions to complex theories.

For more than fifteen years, _Nomadic Subjects_has guided discourse in continental philosophy and feminist theory, exploring the constitution of contemporary subjectivity, especially the concept of difference within European philosophy and political theory. Rosi Braidotti's creative style vividly renders a productive crisis of modernity. From a feminist perspective, she recasts embodiment, sexual difference, and complex concepts through relations to technology, historical events, and popular culture. This thoroughly revised and expanded edition retains all but two of Braidotti's original essays, including her investigations (...) into epistemology's relation to the "woman question;" feminism and biomedical ethics; European feminism; and the possible relations between American feminism and European politics and philosophy. A new piece integrates Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the "becoming-minoritarian" more deeply into modern democratic thought, and a chapter on methodology explains Braidotti's methods while engaging with her critics. A new introduction muses on Braidotti's provocative legacy. (shrink)

_Nomadic Subjects_ argues for a new kind of philosophical thinking, one that would include the insights of feminism and abandon the hegemonic mode that is conventionally adopted in high theory. Braidotti's personal, surprising, and lively prose insists on an integration of feminism in mainstream discourse. The essays explore problems that are central to current feminist debates including Western epistemology's relation to the "woman question," feminism and biomedical ethics, European feminism, and how American feminists might relate to European movements.

This study explored the impact of facilitating collaborative philosophical inquiry, in the tradition of “Philosophy for Children,” on connectedness pedagogies. The study employed an experimental design that included 59 primary teachers in 2 groups. The experimental group received an intervention that comprised training in CPI and the comparison group received training in Thinking Tools, a subset of the CPI training. Lessons were coded on four variables of connectedness pedagogies, across the two groups, at three time-points. Teacher interviews were conducted to (...) gather participants’ perspectives. Between-groups analysis of variance on particular measures of pedagogy revealed that CPI significantly broadened teachers’ pedagogical repertoires, in ways that included drawing on students’ background knowledge and preparing a problem-based curriculum which connects students to the world beyond the classroom. (shrink)

This major new book offers a highly original account of ethical and political subjectivity in contemporary culture. It makes a strong case for a non-unitary or nomadic conception of the subject, in opposition to the claims of ideologies such as conservatism, liberal individualism and techno-capitalism. Braidotti takes a bold stand against moral universalism, while offering a vigorous defence of nomadic ethics against the charges of relativism and nihilism. She calls for a new form of ethical accountability that takes "Life" as (...) the subject, not the object, of enquiry. This ethics is presented as a fundamental reconfiguration of our being in the world and it calls for more conceptual creativity in the production of worldviews that can better enable us to behave ethically in a technologically and globally mediated world. The nomadic ethical subject negotiates successfully the complex tension between the multiplicity of political forces on the one hand and the sustained commitment to emancipatory politics on the other. _Transpositions_ provides an intellectually rich guide to the leading critical debates of our time and will be of great interest to scholars and students throughout the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

Posthuman, all-too-human -- The posthuman condition -- Posthuman subjects -- Posthuman knowledge production -- The critical posthumanities -- How to do posthuman thinking -- On affirmative ethics -- The inexhaustible.

Sinous voulions tirer une ligne d'unité à travers les branches si disparates qui se sont épanouies sur les racines cartésiennes, nous pourrions affirmer que l'homme est rentré en lui-même et de plus en plus profondément jusqu'à nos jours. Son regard s'est détourné d'un objet extérieur pour considàrer le produit intérieur de son acte d'esprit, puis pour essayer de pénétrer dans le mystère même de cet acte. L'homme s'est vu responsable de l'homme. Son existence lui est donnée mais il ne peut (...) la maintenir sans lui fournir une forme, une essence dont la spécification dépendra de son “je” libre. Tout un éventail d'humanismes s'est alors déployé à partir d'une concrétude enfouie irrévocablement et désespérément dans la condition charnelle jusqu'à la concrétude la plus spirituelle de la pensée réflexive contemporaine. En un mot, l'histoire de la philosophic moderne devient l'histoire de la prise de conscience de l'immanence. (shrink)

"The purpose of this book is to set out an argument for the existence of God, to show how criticism of this argument arising from modern and contemporary philosophy can be met, to explicate how language is used to talk about God, and to show that various existential and analytic attacks upon the meaningfulness of Christian faith are not cogent." "The methodology used is novel in that scholastic and rationalistic metaphysical theories are avoided and no attempt is made to construct (...) a "science" of metaphysics. However, unlike much analytic argumentation, empiricist presuppositions are excluded."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

Originally a contribution to a symposium on this topic, i argue that metaphysics has little relevance to contemporary unrest. the latter expression gets its meaning from patterns of behavior that involve the use of similar means for very diverse ends. the attempt to develop philosophic theories of contemporary history is likely to ignore the important differences and to make much of rather insignificant similarities.

This article analyzes the remarkable congruence between the ideas of Antonio Gramsci and Mao Zedong regarding the role of consciousness, human will, and culture in socioeconomic change. These spiritual and humanistic concerns that are central to philosophical idealism were prominent in the young Marx’s writings, to which neither had access. Yet both theorists highlighted these elements as powerful, autonomous factors that can impede or accelerate socioeconomic change. It is argued that this congruence is best explained by the intersection of the (...) Italian and Chinese philosophical traditions resulting from the impact of Neo-Confucianism on European idealist philosophy. While their work anticipated the cultural turn in leftist philosophy, it represents a nexus of Chinese and European humanistic and spiritual values that both challenges assumptions regarding the incommensurability of Eastern and Western philosophies and reaffirms the continued significance of these concerns for the continuing struggle between democratizing and authoritarian forces. (shrink)

Little is known about the impact of success and failure events on age-related changes in affect states and, particularly, in self-esteem levels. To fill this gap in the literature, in the present study changes in affect and self-esteem in 100 young (19 - 30 years) and 102 older adults (65-81 years) were assessed after participants experienced success and failure in a demanding cognitive task. Overall, the success-failure manipulation induced changes on affect states and on state self-esteem, not on trait self-esteem. (...) Regarding age differences, older and young adults were affected to the same extent by experiences of successes and failures. Theoretical considerations of the empirical findings are provided in the general discussion. (shrink)

The sting to Aristophanes’ ‘little tale’ inWasps(λογίδιον,Vesp.64) materializes from the comedy's interplay with theOresteia. This article argues that Aristophanes alludes to bothAgamemnonandEumenidesin the scenes running up to (and including) the trial scene, and that he exploits this intertext in the cloak scene (Vesp.1122–264). While isolated allusions to theOresteiahave been identified inWasps, a systematic consideration of these references has not been undertaken: a surprising absence in discussions of the ongoing competition between the comic and the tragic genres permeatingWasps’ dramatic action. Moreover, (...) Aristophanes’ engagement with theOresteiaoffers a special type of tragic intertext, in which the first and the last plays of a connected trilogy are referenced simultaneously, provocatively destabilizing the original. Furthermore, this allusion has implications for our understanding of a scene which recent scholarship has established as pivotal within the comedy, namely the cloak scene. The first part of this article, therefore, establishes the extent ofWasps’ engagement with theOresteiaand considers the significance of the ‘pastiche’ formed through the combined intertextual references toAgamemnonand toEumenides. The second part explores the impact of this intertext on the interpretation of the cloak scene, revealing that its use of costume can be understood as a criticism of Aeschylus’ dramaturgy, inviting a negative reading of Bdelycleon's ideological stance and reinforcing the play's pessimistic view of the Athenian law courts. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to assess the relevance of somatic evolution by natural selection to our understanding of cancer development. I do so in two steps. In the first part of the paper, I ask to what extent cancer cells meet the formal requirements for evolution by natural selection, relying on Godfrey-Smith’s (2009) framework of Darwinian populations. I argue that although they meet the minimal requirements for natural selection, cancer cells are not paradigmatic Darwinian populations. In the second (...) part of the paper, I examine the most important examples of adaptation in cancer cells. I argue that they are not significant accumulations of evolutionary changes, and that as a consequence natural selection plays a lesser role in their explanation. Their explanation, I argue, is best sought in the previously existing wiring of the healthy cells. (shrink)

This article analyzes the influence of Chinese Neo-Confucianism on the development of German idealism. Information obtained by Leibniz from Jesuit missionaries included key concepts in Neo-Confucian philosophy that not only confirmed Leibniz’s belief in the universality of his organic image of the cosmos but also influenced Leibniz’s later writings. Such influence is also exhibited in Kant’s work, especially in his crucial noumenon-phenomenon distinction, as well as in Hegel’s phenomenology and philosophy of history. Recognition of these influences, unacknowledged by either Kant (...) or Hegel, enhances our assessment of the import of both Neo-Confucianism and German idealism in international religio-philosophical discourse. (shrink)

Rosi Braidotti's contribution to the Deleuze Studies Conference 2016 held in Rome, later transcribed and then revised by the author, points firmly to the current need for an affirmative thinking approach, actively standing to the present, while assessing its becoming and imagining new configurations. Saying yes to the world, being worthy of it, does not entail passive acceptance but rather the activation of transformative and critical thinking. To this aim, Braidotti looks at Deleuze as well as at feminist theory. The (...) ontology of immanence turns into a materialist, collective, vital, embodied and relational ethics. (shrink)

If art, science, and the humanities have shared one thing, it was their common engagement with constructions and representations of the human. Under the pressure of new contemporary concerns, however, we are experiencing a “posthuman condition”; the combination of new developments-such as the neoliberal economics of global capitalism, migration, technological advances, environmental destruction on a mass scale, the perpetual war on terror and extensive security systems- with a troublesome reiteration of old, unresolved problems that mean the concept of the human (...) as we had previously known it has undergone dramatic transformations. The Posthuman Glossary is a volume providing an outline of the critical terms of posthumanity in present-day artistic and intellectual work. It builds on the broad thematic topics of Anthropocene/Capitalocene, eco-sophies, digital activism, algorithmic cultures and security and the inhuman. It outlines potential artistic, intellectual, and activist itineraries of working through the complex reality of the 'posthuman condition', and creates an understanding of the altered meanings of art vis-à-vis critical present-day developments. It bridges missing links across disciplines, terminologies, constituencies and critical communities. This original work will unlock the terms of the posthuman for students and researchers alike. (shrink)

Este ensaio consubstancia uma reflexão tecida do interior da Teoria Crítica, conjugando aportes da Psicologia e da Filosofia. Para tanto, busca-se argumentos em 'Opinião, loucura e sociedade', de Adorno, para, a seguir, iluminar a temática delimitada - ensino da filosofia: preconceito 'versus' experiência-, juntamente a outros autores, propositores, também, da relevância da 'experiência' para a filosofia. Concebe-se o filosofar como expressão da auto-reflexão, do conhecimento forjado na experiência.

O artigo analisa as causas do fracasso escolar de alunos negros e pardos como resultante da estigmatização e práticas educacionais discriminatórias, bem como a influência das teorias racistas sobre as mesmas indicando a persistência da desigualdade racial no Brasil. Para tal análise realizamos uma pesquisa bibliográfica e documental, no interior de uma perspectiva sociohistórica, concluindo que, apesar das políticas voltadas ao enfrentamento do racismo fincado na sociedade brasileira, as desigualdades raciais permanecem expressivamente justificando a ênfase na formação de professores para (...) a docência na educação básica voltada ao enfrentamento do preconceito étnico. (shrink)

This book traces the roots of the contemporary abortion debate in the tradition of existential philosophy of the Sartrian type by investigating the work of four feminist writers on abortion—each with a specific focus: Simone de Beauvoir, Mary Daly, Carol Gilligan, and Beverly Wildung Harrison. _No Higher Court_ attempts to envisage a pro-life feminism that is able to provide a "new world for women without abortion as its linchpin and bedrock.".