Gadamer's Ethics of Play examines the ethical dimensions of understanding by focusing on the concept of dialogical "play" in Hans-Georg Gadamer's Truth and Method. The book is accessible to an undergraduate audience, while also being relevant to ongoing debates among Gadamer scholars.

Novels and short stories written since the last decades of the nineteenth century and employing discourses of technology have contributed to shaping the idea of the “posthuman condition” in the West to such a degree that some critics already feel entitled to announce the Age of the Posthuman. This essay interrogates some of the embarrassingly quixotic proposals of posthumanism, taking H. G. Wells's Time Machine, William Gibson's Neuromancer, and Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake as paradigmatic texts exploring patterns of mutation, (...) virtuality, and bioengineering. In their concern for the apocalyptic and their sometime depiction of the glorious moment of Herculean victory over classical “human” man, these novels articulate the Western self's undaunted desire for the perfect Other, implying critical and even ironic gestures that question the propagation of a “new” human condition or the idea of absolute boundaries of the human. (shrink)

Solidarity has for a long time been referred to as the core value underpinning European health and welfare systems. But there has been debate in recent years about whether solidarity, with its alleged communitarian content, can be reconciled with the emphasis on individual freedom and personal autonomy. One may wonder whether there is still a place for solidarity, and whether the concept of justice should be embraced to analyse the moral issues regarding access to health care. In this article, I (...) will answer this question by analysing the normative foundations of the concept of justice, followed by a deeper examination of the concept of solidarity in continental philosophy. More specifically, I will compare the philosophical traditions rooted in Kant to approaches rooted in Hegel. In addition, I will present the work of Avishai Margalit on the decent society to criticize a predominantly liberal approach to access to health care. The importance of solidarity lies particularly in its emphasis on relational aspects and the role of recognition in care practices, which are usually ignored in liberal approaches to justice. However, the article will argue that solidarity is not an alternative to a rights-based concept of justice, but must be considered as a necessary complement to it. (shrink)

As we know, Merleau-Ponty was struggling with a dynamic shift in his thinking at the premature end of his life. In those last notes he raises the question of how to elaborate a phenomenology of “’the other world’, as the limit of a phenomenology of the imaginary and the ‘hidden’”—a phenomenology that would open onto an invisible life, community, other and culture. In her essay on “Eye and Mind”, “To Paint the Invisible”, Luce Irigaray argues that Merleau-Ponty was not yet (...) ready to address this question, of the limits posed to his vision by the presence of an other. The artworks of abstract expressionist artist Joan Mitchell are considered in the ways that they open up a different time-space suggesting an other world with which we intertwine without appropriation. Her works, I argue, defy reduction to essences, but also do not rely merely on sensation—for this reason they point in the direction of how to think phenomenology anew. For I do think Merleau-Ponty would be open to these conversations, to these other worlds and other visions. (shrink)

PORTUGUESE: A experiência conceptualizada colhe os seus critérios de dizibilidade pública no contexto da experiência sentida de pessoas, e a noção de prática marca o âmbito desses limites, em conexão tensa com a autonomia do simbolismo linguístico. Tal é a hipótese deste livro, que se junta assim a um debate sobre o sentido da objetividade. O livro articula uma leitura das Investigações filosóficas (1953) como uma expansão do espaço lógico de possibilidades de sentido ou do significado proposicional do Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (...) (1922) para considerar a lógica da experiência sentida do significado em geral. Essa lógica é então ainda pensada nas suas condições de possibilidade, mas vistas como “impuras”, ancoradas em gestos contingentes e contextuais, ou em acordos no nível de uma forma de vida, não apenas em regras de uso da linguagem. A tática dessa estratégia foi tomar um dito anotado nos Cadernos (1916), “A lógica deve cuidar de si própria”, e transformá-lo numa função, “x deve cuidar de si própria”, trocando x por linguagem nos anos 1930 e prática nos anos 1940. Assim buscou Wittgenstein “fazer justiça aos fatos” (Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough) da experiência sentida do significado, a um tempo ancorada na vida humana e ligada a relações modais. Não se trata aqui de um argumento propriamente dito mas, antes, do desenho de um pano de fundo para o exame de alguns dos conceitos operatórios do Wittgenstein tardio, tais como ‘relações intermediárias’, ‘regras/prática’, ‘espírito/objetividade’, ‘certeza/prática’, etc.; e também para o exame de perspectivas de leitura, tais como a dialógica e a do ‘álbum de família’. // ENGLISH: Conceptualized experience gathers its criteria for public meaning in the context of the felt experience of persons, and the notion of praxis marks the scope of these limits, in tense connection with the autonomy of linguistic symbolism. This is the hypothesis with which this book joins the debate on the meaning of objectivity. The book articulates a reading of the Philosophical Investigations (1953) as an expansion of the logical space of possibilities of sense or propositional meaning of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922) to consider the logic of the felt experience of meaning in general. This logic is then still thought of in its conditions of possibility, but seen as “impure”, anchored in contingent and contextual gestures, or agreements at the level of a form of life, not just in rules of language usage. The tactic of this strategy was to take a saying from the Notebooks (1916), “Logic must take care of itself”, and turn it into a function, “x must take care of itself”, switching x for language in the 1930s and practice in the 1940s. Thus, Wittgenstein sought to “do justice to the facts” (Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough) of the felt experience of meaning, as this experience is at once grounded in human life and yet bound by modal relations. This is not intended as an argument per se but rather as a background against which to examine some of Wittgenstein's operative concepts (such as aspect, intermediate relations, rules/practice, spirit/objectivity, certainty/practice, etc.) and reading perspectives (such as the dialogical and “family album” readings). -/- . (shrink)

Face à la tendance ordinaire de l'homme à l'égoïsme, à la recherche d'intérêts personnels et aux confits variés où la raison du plus fort est la meilleure, il faut des pensées fortes qui montrent la voie d'une humanité retrouvée. La pensée d'Emmanuel Lévinas en est une. Des commentateurs en parlent en termes d'une nouvelle sagesse d'amour au profit d'une altérité vivifiée. Cette pensée décrit en effet ce qui doit normalement meubler toute approche relationnelle : la responsabilité du Moi pour autrui. (...) Rencontré dans la médiation de son visage, ce dernier exige cette responsabilité à travers l'ordre dont il est porteur : "Tu ne tueras". Autrement dit, "Aime" et "Prends soin de celui qui est devant toi". Quand chaque Moi s'évertue à honorer cet ordre, il se constitue ipso facto gardien, messie ou bienfaiteur de son frère. C'est en agissant ainsi que le monde se tracera des sillons pour l'émergence d'une civilisation d'amour. Lésinas en est convaincu. Mais la question qui se pose dans cette étude est de savoir si sa pensée contient vraiment des ingrédients rassurants pour la fondation d'une morale d'interpersonnalité qui assure vraiment la vie des personnes et des peuples. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Observing Environments” by Hugo F. Alrøe & Egon Noe. Upshot: Complementary to Alrøe and Noe’s discussion of constructivist notions of environment, world, etc., this commentary addresses the closely-related notion of agency in constructivist theories – in particular, the question of what would be required for artificial agency – and identifies open questions and fundamental disagreements among constructivist theorists.

The concept of first-personness is well defined in grammar, but it has developed two discrepant senses in common usage and in the psychology and philosophy literatures. First-personness is taken to mean phenomenal experience , and also to mean a person's point of view. However, since we can nonconsciously perceive, judge and behave, all from a point of view which we must name ‘our own', these acts can be called first-person acts even though they are nonconscious. Therefore, I propose that the (...) main idea behind first-personness is the point of view; that it is not a unique property of consciousness; and that consciousness will be easier to understand if it is not freighted with extraneous issues. This essay explores the concepts underlying point of view and entity. Entiticity is viewed as a matter of degree and as a matter of convention. It is found most coherent to consider an entity's point of view as the total set of discriminations or interactions made possible by the entity's present state and context. Whether or not an entity is a person or is conscious is irrelevant to its having a point of view referenced to itself. Even inanimate objects can receive input and act only in so far as they are enabled or limited by their points of view. Since humans find it awkward at first to say that non-human or non-biological entities have a first-person point of view, it would be best to drop the reference to person in this context. C.S. Peirce's term ‘firstness', developed in 1891, might do nicely. This analysis of first-personness applies equally to agents as it does to subjects. Once these terms are clarified, it is easier to see how a superordinate entity reconciles conflict when its relatively autonomous subsystems have points of view discrepant from each other or from the whole. This has application in untangling confusions concerning the duality of the cerebral hemispheres and the results of their disconnection in relation to the popular assumption of personal unity. (shrink)

"I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.1" "Saul Bellow"IntroductionAlthough analyses of artworks are limited in Adorno's oeuvre, I will argue that his critical theory is awash with images crystallizing thoughts to such a degree that it has every reason to (...) be described as aesthetic. Adorno's first and final book-length publications dealt explicitly with…. (shrink)

In recent years, sport entities have begun to prioritise environmental sustainability initiatives in their business strategies with the aim of minimising their environmental impact and engaging stakeholders within the ES movement. There has been minimal academic consideration of the ES movement in professional sport, particularly outside of North America and Europe. The aim of the present study is to provide an overview of the type and profile of ES initiatives being undertaken and communicated to stakeholders in the Asia-Pacific region by (...) the industry bodies. Further, the study offers a conceptual model of the global-, country-, industry- and organisational-level forces impacting these sporting organisations’ ES practices. Various communication mediums of 114 professional sport teams from seven countries—Australia, India, New Zealand, Japan, China, Taiwan and Korea—were evaluated using content analysis. The results reveal low communication of ES practices by professional sport teams in the Asia-Pacific region compared to North America. Extended findings on the existing global profile of ES engagement provide a descriptive understanding of the ES movement in the Asia-Pacific region, and contribute to the identification of possible antecedents and correlatives to be evaluated in future research. (shrink)

Many health problems that elderly people face today relate not only to the nature of their affliction but also to the kind of treatment required. Such treatment often includes artificial nutrition and hydration, (ANH) a procedure which, despite its technical and invasive character, is still considered to be vested with symbolic meanings. It is precisely during the efforts to reach a legal consensus that the discrepancies between various cultural contexts become obvious. The following case explores the Greek clinical territory in (...) comparison with the international situation, and the reasons why, in Greece, the right to refuse treatment is not necessarily interpreted as including the right to refuse artificial nutrition and hydration as well. (shrink)

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Volume 20, Issue 3, Page 315-317, July 2012.

In this essay, I explore the parallel between the historical exclusions of rhetoric from philosophy and of women from fields of rational discourse. After considering the usefulness and limitations of deconstruction for exposing marginalization by hierarchical systems, I explore links between texts of the sophists and feminist proposals for rewriting/rereading history by Cixous, Spivak, and others. I conclude that sophistic rhetoric offers a flexible alternative to philosophy as an intellectual framework for mediating theoretical oppositions among contemporary feminisms.

Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre struggled for the whole of their philosophical careers against one of modern Western philosophy's most pervasive concepts, the Cartesian notion of self. A notion of self is always a complex of ideas; in the case of Beauvoir and Sartre it includes the ideas of embodiment, temporality, the Other, and intersubjectivity. This essay will show the considerable part that gender, especially Beauvoir's position as a woman in twentieth-century France, played in the development, presentation and reception (...) of the couple's alternative formulation. (shrink)

Much of what Stanley Cavell wrote following the publication of The Claim of Reason, was preoccupied with making sense of the sudden “outbreaks” of “moments and lines of romanticism” in the final pa...

In this article the question is asked if Buddhism and Christianity can learn from each other. The investigation starts with a short historical overview of the meeting of Buddhists and Christians in Japan. Although the first encounters in the sixteenth century were friendly and hopeful, shortly afterwards a totally different atmosphere arose. Christianity was forbidden and Christians were persecuted and tortured. The novel Silence from Shusaku Endo, gives an impression of the severe oppression. Christians had to endure. Endo’s book, which (...) was published in 1966, gives not only a historical description, but contains a message as well. According to him, East and West are worlds apart and do not go well together. A vivid discussion resulted from this statement of Endo’s. Many did not agree with him and argued that Buddhists and Christians can learn valuable things from each other . From Endo’ book we go back to the period after the opening of Japan in 1853 and describe some of the major factors in the developing of the exchange between Buddhism and Christianity . Moreover, attention is paid to the Monastic Interreligious Dialogue, an initiative which started in 1979 and has been going on up until now. Some arguments are given as to why everybody involved in interreligious dialogue has something to learn from this existential interfaith dialogue . Then the attention shifts from monks and nuns to lay people interested in the spiritual exchange with the East. Nowadays many Westerners, Christians and non-Christians are interested in Eastern religious ideas and practices. Some results of a research among Zen practitioners in the Netherlands and Belgium are summarized. This research analyzed why Zen is attractive to some people. Finally, an attempt is made to formulate what other religious communities could learn from the attractiveness of Eastern spirituality. (shrink)