This article reviews the 2017 English translation of Achille Mbembe’s book _Critique of Black Reason._ It suggests that a key to understanding the work concerns the theme of the double, for instance, the critique of the double discourse on Blackness which explains the title of the book. Despite some passages of the text being overly poetic and difficult to understand, Mbembe’s critical contribution in this work, to not only the philosophical debate on otherness but also critical race theory, is the (...) attempt to rethink the relation of the particular and the universal, or in this instance Africa and the world, in order to think more critically about the responsibility of repairing the dignity of humanity in thinking our shared world beyond race and racism. (shrink)

Business ethics, as it is understood and practised generally, lacks a component of radicality. As part of the contemporary ‘return to ethics’ it displays an undesirable conservatism and blocks off possibilities for systemic alterity. I argue that a normal and ‘apologetic’ business ethics should therefore be supplemented with a radical or utopian business ethics. Put differently, business ethics should not only contribute to more responsible business practices, more morally sensitive business managers and more ethical organisational cultures, but should also facilitate (...) social hope via hermeneutic strategies aimed at changing the way we think about ourselves, our economies and the roles and responsibilities of business as such. (shrink)

In 1850, Jacob Frerichs produced the first and until now the only edition of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s important lectures on Practical Theology. It is a mix and compilation of students’ transcripts from six different semesters, redundant and at times contradictory, which doesn’t correspond to Schleiermacher’s actual lectures. Most of the transcripts used by Frerichs are still preserved and have now been evaluated for a new edition of Schleiermacher’s Practical Theology. This article disassembles Frerichs’ edition into its components giving evidence for every (...) text passage from which source Frerichs took it. (shrink)

Why do artists, poets, philosophers, writers, and others who are usually classified as intellectuals leave the ivory tower to "dirty their hands" in the political arena? In an effort to illuminate the intellectual's struggle to come to grips with the issues raised by political involvement, David Schalk examines the life and thought of five intellectuels engagés in France during the period between 1920 and 1945. From communist to fascist, these figures—Paul Nizan, Jean-Paul Sartre, Emmanuel Mounier, Julien Benda, and Robert (...) Brasillach—cover the full political spectrum, and Professor Schalk studies their diverse reactions to the social, political, and economic tensions of the interwar period. Broadly defining "engagement" as political involvement that is voluntary, conscious, and freely chosen, usually by intellectuals, the author poses the intellectual's dilemma in the following terms: "When we are engagé," he writes, "we fear that we are debasing our highest values; when we are not, we worry that we have become, in Paul Nizan's trenchant phrase, mere chiens de garde [watchdogs]." He then investigates the origins and the popularization of the concept of engagement in the early 1930s, the arguments used to denounce it and to defend it, its different manifestations, and finally its effects on the socio-political actuality of the world. Originally published in 1979. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

This paper elucidates the philosophical origins of the conception of plants as machines and analyses the contemporary technical and ethical consequences of that thinking. First, we explain the historical relationship between the explicit animal machine thesis of Descartes and the implicit plant machine thesis of today. Our hypothesis is that, although it is rarely discussed, the plant machine thesis remains influential. We define the philosophical criteria for both a moderate and radical interpretation of the thesis. Then, assessing the compatibility of (...) current botanical knowledge with both interpretations, we find that neither withstands scrutiny. We trace how biological and agricultural sciences have historically relied upon thinking of plants as machines and how they continue to do so today through rhetoric centred on breeding, biotechnology, and production. We discuss some of the most important legal and ethical consequences of obscuring the vitality of plants. Finally, we explore less reductive and destructive ways of thinking about, and using, plants. (shrink)

The global ecological crisis is upon us. From global warming to the long-term implications of ocean acidification, air and water pollution, deforestation, and the omnipresent dangers of nuclear technology the future of our planetary home is threatened. Yet in the midst of the unfolding crisis, the conventional ideologies of the twentieth century and their representations of nature remain unchallenged by both the defenders of capitalism and capitalism's most radical critics. The Distortion of Nature's Image illustrates how the anti-naturalism of late (...) capitalist society, in which nature is reified into the emptiness of mere matter, simply a thing to be dominated, is subtly complemented by the failure of the Left to go both beyond the historic limitations of Marx's ninteenth-century viewpoint and beyond anarchism's blind faith in "natural law." However, an alternative for comprehending nature and the ecological crisis as historical and social phenomena remains open in the dialectical naturalism of Western Marxism and Murray Bookchin's social ecology. By examining in closer detail how Bookchin's social ecology politicizes the concept of nature, as well as how precursory models in Western Marxist thought provide a foundation for this, Damian Gerber illustrates how the notion of an ecological society remains a decisively political question. (shrink)

Article III of the U.S. Constitution establishes an independent federal judiciary: federal courts constitute a separate branch of the national government, federal judges enjoy tenure during good behavior, and their salaries cannot be diminished while they hold office. The framers who drafted Article III in 1787 were not working from whole cloth. Rather, they were familiar with the preceding colonial and state practices, including those from New York. This essay provides a case study of New York's judicial history: the Dutch (...) period, 1621-1664; the Ducal proprietary period, 1664-1685; the Royal period, 1685-1776; and the early state period. As will be seen, New York—among the most significant of the original thirteen states—was a state groping towards a new ideal of judicial independence: an ideal that became a reality a decade after its own constitution was enacted in 1777 and at a different level of government. Significantly, the uncertain status of New York's judiciary had profound consequences for the ultimate expression of judicial independence, judicial review. (shrink)

Der Berliner Theologe, Philosoph und Reformer Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768–1834) war weitmaschig vernetzt und führte eine umfangreiche Korrespondenz. Band 15 der 5. Abteilung der historisch-kritischen Gesamtausgabe Schleiermachers (KGA) enthält die Briefe von und an Schleiermacher der Jahre 1819 und 1820. Das Ende des zweiten Jahrzehnts ist für Berlin und für Preußen von besonderer politischer Virulenz. Es steht unter dem Vorzeichen zunehmender Repression gegen liberale Kräfte durch den Preußischen Stadt. Verhängnisvoll ist die Ermordung des Schriftstellers Kotzebue durch den Burschenschaftler Sand. (...) Der Trostbrief des Berliner Theologen De Wette an die Mutter des Täters dient der Regierung zum Anlass, Rechte und Freiheiten der Berliner Professorenschaft einzuschränken. Schleiermacher, der selbst immer wieder im Fokus der Demagogenverfolgung stand, setzt sich nachdrücklich und zugleich taktisch klug für die Freiheit der Wissenschaften und der Kirche ein. 1819/20 war Schleiermacher zum vierten und letzten Mal Dekan der Theologischen Fakultät und setzte sich u.a. für die Unterstützung bedürftiger Studenten ein. Privat ist das Jahr 1820 auch von der Geburt seines ersten und einzigen Sohns geprägt. Wissenschaftlich erweitert sich sein System der Wissenschaften um die 1819 erstmals gehaltene Vorlesungen über Ästhetik. Zugleich begann er, seine Dogmatik, der „Glaubenslehre“, in Buchform auszuarbeiten. (shrink)

This paper addresses whether, and to what extent, the African ethic of Ubuntu can contribute to ethical thinking in general and provide an alternative to stakeholder theory specifically. The conception of Ubuntu that is employed to further the analysis is Thaddeus Metz’s Ubuntu principle of right action, which focuses on promoting harmonious social relations premised on a shared identity and solidarity amongst people. This principle is used to develop an Ubuntu heuristic for organisational decision-making, which serves as the basis for (...) a relationholder theory. It is argued that this relationholder theory can overcome the weaknesses identified with a libertarian account of stakeholder theory, as well as serve as a profitable framework for determining both the purpose of the firm, and the responsibilities that management has towards those parties who affect, and who are affected by, the firm. (shrink)

In the early 1990s, Microcebus murinus, a small primate endemic to Madagascar, emerged as a potential animal model for the study of aging and Alzheimer’s disease. This paper traces the use of the lesser mouse lemur in research on aging and associated neurodegenerative diseases, focusing on a basic material precondition that made this possible, namely, the conversion of a wild animal into an experimental organism that lives, breeds, and survives in the laboratory. It argues that the “old” mouse lemur model (...) can be considered as an eco-zootechnical acquisition. This is shown by examining how, since the early 1970s, French mouse lemur researchers have articulated colony productivity and viability with the influence of environmental factors on the demographics and physiology of the species. The appearance and maintenance of a growing number of old mouse lemurs in French research facilities are related to three developments: the application of the ecological notion of “social stress” to the understanding and management of the behavior of the captive population; the experimental demonstration that a variety of seasonal physiological changes in the species were influenced by the photoperiod; and the related attempt to accelerate aging in mouse lemurs through the manipulation of annual light conditions. (shrink)

In German, nouns are assigned to one of the three gender classes. For most animal names, however, the assignment is independent of the referent’s biological sex. We examined whether German-speaking children understand this independence of grammar from semantics or whether they assume that grammatical gender is mapped onto biological sex when drawing inferences about sex-specific biological properties of animals. Two cross-linguistic studies comparing German-speaking and Japanese-speaking preschoolers were conducted. The results suggest that German-speaking children utilize grammatical gender as a cue (...) for inferences about sex-specific properties of animals. Further, we found that Japanese- and German-speaking children recruit different resources when drawing inferences about sex-specific properties: Whereas Japanese children paralleled their pattern of inference about properties common to all animals, German children relied on the grammatical gender class of the animal. Implications of these findings for studying the relation between language and thought are discussed. (shrink)

Eine nähere Untersuchung des semantischen Wahrheitsbegriffes von Tarski ergibt, daß diesen die von konsenstheoretischer Seite gegen ihn vorgebrachten Einwände nicht zu treffen vermögen. Indem Tarski den Wahrheitsbegriff auf eine nur für formale Systeme anwendbare Definition zusammenzieht, vermag er den Aporien der älteren korrespondenztheoretischen Versuche zu entgehen, muß dafür allerdings eine weitgehende praktische Bedeutungslosigkeit in Kauf nehmen, weil er weder ein Wahrheitskriterium noch gar einen Weg der Verifikation angibt. Dies nun jedoch stellt genau die Leistung der Konsenstheorie dar: der Konsens der (...) Beratenden liefert Definition, Kriterium und Verifikation der Wahrheit zugleich. Die Aufgabe einer schlüssigen Begründung dieser Konsenstheorie der Wahrheit wird am Beispiel von Habermas untersucht, wobei sich ergibt, daß eine transzendental vorgehende Argumentationsstrategie sich in Naturalismus- und Idealismusprobleme verstrickt. (shrink)

This paper presents a dynamic perspective in which the psychological contract is treated as a structured set of beliefs that are held by individual employees about the mutual obligations of the organization as employer and themselves as employees. This set of beliefs is assumed to produce a state of commitment to the organization in which the employee is willing to accept work roles and tasks offered by the organization, and to carry them out in accordance with certain standards. The dynamic (...) model that is presented can help to explain why the commitment of employees remains relatively stable over time, and why it may suddenly decrease or increase under circumstances that are perceived as critical by the employee. The model assumes that the employee's evaluation of the organization's behavior changes over time, but that the structure of the psychological contract and the associated commitment change only when certain limits are overstepped. This perspective on changes in the psychological contract transforms the concept into a powerful construct that may lead to fruitful research on the dynamics of organization-employee relationships. Implications for future research are discussed. (shrink)

This chapter explores the powerful consequences of ostracism — being ignored and excluded — at the neurophysiological, emotional, cognitive and behavioral levels. Once ostracized, individuals first recoil in pain, then perceive and respond to their social environments differently, leading them to interpret and attend to particular information that may help them cope, or often, that may perpetuate their state of exclusion. We will discuss the nature and antecedents of adaptive and maladaptive reactions to ostracism. Finally, we will report several experiments (...) aimed at explicating the links between ostracism and pro-social or anti-social behavior. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 13 The article starts with the theses that it is the very concept of action that is at stake in many debates between philosophers and historians. Whereas in philosophy actions are conceptualized by reference to their beginning, namely their motives or intentions, in historiography the consequences of actions are much more in the focus of interest. Especially the debate about the dualism of structure and agency is characterized by different concepts of action. In the article it (...) is argued that this dualism can be overcome by stressing the intentionality of collective actions. First, a concept of action is developed against the background of a theory of intentionality. Second, intentional collective action is distinguished from individual and social actions and an analysis of a collective we-intention is proposed. Third, it is argued that the development of social structures has to be understood by reference to intentional collective actions. (shrink)

Grammatical gender is independent of biological sex for the majority of animal names (e.g., any giraffe, be it male or female, is grammatically treated as feminine). However, there is apparent semantic motivation for grammatical gender classes, especially in mapping human terms to gender. This research investigated whether this motivation affects deductive inference in native German speakers. We compared German with Japanese speakers (a language without grammatical gender) when making inferences about sex-specific biological properties. We found that German speakers tended to (...) erroneously draw inferences when the sex in the premise and grammatical gender of the target animal agreed. An over-generalization of the grammar–semantics mapping was found even when the sex of the target was explicitly indicated. However, these effects occurred only when gender-marking articles accompanied the nouns. These results suggest that German speakers project sex-specific biological properties onto gender-marking articles but not onto conceptual representations of animals per se. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article deals with a cluster of moral problems raised by the new techniques of human fertilisation. It is concerned primarily with the putative rights of embryos brought into being as a by‐product of the practice of in vitro fertilisation. In this connection it investigates the basis for the ascription of rights to entities and asserts the view that consciousness is a pre‐requisite for the possession of rights. It draws attention to the speciesism implicit in attitudes of some of (...) those who have contributed to the debate. It also examines other issues briefly, raising, for example, the question whether children by AID (or by in vitro fertilisation by donor) must be denied access to information about their genetic fathers; and looking at objections to the new techniques based on the so‐called unnaturalness of the procedures involved. (shrink)

: Humility is a virtue that is helpful in a persons relationship with nature. A humble person sees value in nature and acts accordingly with the proper respect. In this paper, humility is discussed in three aspects. First, humility entails an overcoming of self-absorption. Second, humility involves coming into contact with a larger, more complex reality. Third, humility allows a person to develop a sense of perspective on herself and the world.

The miracle play ‘Erscheinung am Lichtmesstage’ of the late medieval ‘Passional’ offers a literary interpretation of the ‘Candlemas’ and its procession with lighted candles. After a woman has been enraptured into transcendent space, she partakes in a light procession together with the Virgin Mary and various other figures. Each of the participants carries a candle, whose light, as the text says, is sacrificed at the end of the procession. One candle, however, becomes subject of a dispute between the woman and (...) a messenger from the Virgin Mary, causing the candle to split in two. The text repeatedly addresses the actual touching of the candle, suggesting that this wax artefact plays an essential role in bridging the immanent and transcendent. This article explores the candle as a ‘Semiophore’, revealing the broad semantic spectrum of the candle and its light. Through the acts of giving, holding, depositing, seizing, pulling, braking, and touching as well as possessing and keeping the candle become the locus of multiple meanings. Ultimately, it functions as a bridge between the ordinary and the divine. (shrink)

This paper is an exploration of the vice of misanthropy particularly as it manifests itself in people who love nature. Misanthropy is a hatred and disgust of humans, particularly of a group of humans. I look to wilderness to illustrate the vice of misanthropy. With regard to wilderness, misanthropy functions in three distinct spheres. First, there is misanthropy in the use of wilderness to flee other people. Second, there is misanthropy in the assumption that humans taint the wilderness. Finally, there (...) is misanthropy in the assumption that humans can only relate to nature in a way that is harmful. In the end, we need to avoid misanthropy and its attendant despair. It is important that we see ourselves, not as a determined mass of people, but rather as individual people who are able to create positive change. (shrink)