The Crying of Lot 49 is widely recognized as a significant contemporary work that frames the desire for meaning and the quest for knowledge within the social and political contexts of the '50s and '60s in America. In the introduction to this collection of original essays on Thomas Pynchon's important novel, Patrick O'Donnell discusses the background and critical reception of the novel. Further essays by five experts on contemporary literature examine the novel's "semiotic regime" or the way in (...) which it organizes signs; the comparison of postmodernist Pynchon and the influential South American writer, Jorge Luis Borges; metaphor in the novel; the novel's narrative strategies; and the novel within the cultural contexts of American Puritanism and the Beat movement. Together, these essays provide an examination of the novel within its literary, historical, and scientific contexts. (shrink)

Since the turn of the millennium, theologians and secular scholars of religion have increasingly begun exploring the relationship between transhumanism and religion. However, analyses of anti-transhumanist apocalypticisms are still rare, and those that exist are situated mainly among broader explorations of religious and secular bioconservatism. This article addresses this lack of specificity by drawing analyses of transhumanism and religion into dialogue with explorations of contemporary demonology through a close study of the beliefs of the evangelical conspiracist Thomas Horn and (...) the anti-transhumanist milieu around him. Exploring the milieu's multifaceted demonology of the secular world in light of genealogies of religion and secularity, the article situates Horn's demonology as one attempt to negotiate these genealogies, using what Sean McCloud terms a “‘supernatural’ hermeneutics of suspicion” that sees spiritual forces as the structural base of reality. It argues that, while fringe, milieus like Horn's illuminate broader cultural tensions and genealogical relations surrounding the place of religion in a secular world. (shrink)

L'article commence une analyse de la vertu théologique de l'espérance par une phénoménologie de l'espérance. En plus d'un regard donné aux considérations philosophiques sur l'espérance chez des auteurs tels Gabriel Marcel et Ernst Bloch, il étudie les oeuvres dramatiques de Marcel ainsi qu'un certain nombre d'auteurs utopistes tels Thomas More, Henry David Thoreau et Charles Péguy. Des métaphores de la situation humaine, tels l'emprisonnement et l'exil, sont examinées ainsi que la lumière que les auteurs concernés trouvent dans des expériences (...) d'obscurité. La crise de l'histoire est aussi examinée particulièrement dans les écrits de l'auteur italien, Sergio Quinzio: comment pouvons-nous continuer à espérer deux mille ans après la mort du Christ tandis que l'histoire de la souffrance humaine continue, apparemment sans solution ? Après avoir posé la question de l'espérance, la réponse chrétienne est examinée surtout à travers les oeuvres de Jürgen Moltmann qui base sa théologie sur le Dieu qui vient à nous comme futur, le Dieu qui renouvelle toutes choses, le Dieu créateur qui fait être a partir de rien et ressuscite les morts. Tandis que l'optimisme se base sur les resources humaines et la croyance que les choses iront inévitablement mieux, l'espérance s'enracine en ce que Dieu peut faire dans une situation de souffrance, de mort et de destruction. Une telle espérance ne nous conduit cependant pas à fuir le monde. Au contraire, notre espé. (shrink)

As research therapists with hundreds of hours of clinical experience supporting adults with PTSD in Phase 3 trials of MDMA assisted-therapy (MAT), we appreciate the opportunity to respond to this s...

In this article, I explain Aquinas' approach to philosophy and theology. I then discuss how Aquinas thought the universe having a beginning is a matter of faith, not reason. I then argue that Aquinas' position is still correct despite the cosmological model of the big bang. Men of faith, I argue, ought to have a notion of God that is based on metaphysics, not a physical model, which at best brings us to a Deistic God.

This is a Scholastic text-book of General Ethics, not, as the title might suggest, a discussion of controversial points in Ethics. In the course of four hundred pages it covers the ground adequately, keeping very close to the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. It is not an easy book to read; and the difficulty does not derive exclusively from the subject-matter. One encounters sentences of truly impressive proportions.

An experimental, conceptually driven foray into the Patrician field, Ireland’s ubiquitous national apostle – a former captive – is utilised as a vehicle through which to explore a trinity of salient and interrelated themes within the Catholic and Protestant hinterlands of the Irish imagination: visions of imprisonment; of the island; and of imperialism. The reader is guided through aspects of Patrician literature, visits the island’s hallowed Patrician shrines, and is thus shown Purgatory. Insights into the imaginations exhibited by a range (...) of influential Irish ideologues and intellectuals – Gerry Adams; J.B. Bury; John Hume; Eóin MacNeill; Michael McCarthy; John Mitchel; Peadar O’Donnell; Tomás Ó Fiaich; John Ryan; William Ryan; Ian Paisley; Patrick Pearse; Oscar Wilde – are generated. The cognitive (and conspicuously Platonic) terraforming of the prison-cell into an island, and of the island into a giant prison – of either British or Vatican construction – that recurs in much Irish political thought and reflection, is observed. The concluding section involves historiographical reflection: Bury’s, and by extension St. Patrick’s, influence with regards the development of the discipline of Irish history is highlighted. That the island exhibits a distinctive intellectual micro-climate, one in which visions of Patrick act as a formidable ideological force, is implicit throughout. (shrink)

This essay focuses on three primary issues i. The conceptual resources offered by Spinoza to challenge the idealism and perfectionism underpinning much educational theory and dominant educational imaginaries; ii. His descriptions of a non-ideal, practical and systematic approach to developing understanding that could be applied to educational theorising and practice; and iii. The potential for a different vision of education premised upon understanding the human as simply a part of nature. Decentring the human and treating affective and mental life as (...) one would lines, planes, and bodies, as Spinoza claims we must in Ethics, invites another way of thinking about the politics and ethics of educational practice. Enacting experimental approaches to pedagogy produces new subjectivities and also invents new connections and relations between different bodies and different ideas. I argue that a properly Spinozist understanding of education would require it to be understood through practices of experimentation, in short, developing capabilities to compose relations in such a way that one also develops a the awareness of oneself as finite, dependent, vulnerable and as a part of nature. Seemingly paradoxically then, having understood how and that one is determined, and which bodies agree or disagree with one, one becomes more capable of agency and thus an ethical life. (shrink)

The project of this paper is to deliver a semantics for a broad subset of bare plural generics about racial kinds, a class which I will dub 'Type C generics.' Examples include 'Blacks are criminal' and 'Muslims are terrorists.' Type C generics have two interesting features. First, they link racial kinds with ​ socially perspectival predicates ​ (SPPs). SPPs lead interpreters to treat the relationship between kinds and predicates in generic constructions as nomic or non-accidental. Moreover, in computing their content, (...) interpreters must make implicit reference to socially privileged​ ​ perspectives which are treated as authoritative about whether a given object fits into the extension of the predicate. Such deference grants these authorities influence over both the conventional meaning of these terms and over the nature of the ​ objects ​ in the social ontology that these terms purport to describe, much the way a baseball umpire is authoritative over the meaning and metaphysics of 'strike'/​ strike ​. Second, terms like 'criminal' and 'terrorist' receive default ​ racialized ​ interpretations in which these terms conventionally token racial or ethnic identities. I show that neither of these features can be explained by Sarah-Jane Leslie's influential 'weak semantics' for generics, and show how my own 'socially perspectival semantics' fares better on both counts. Finally, I give an analysis of 'Blacks are criminal' which explores the semantic mechanisms that underlie default racialized interpretations. (shrink)

This is a long critical discussion of Frank Wilderson's Afropessimism, focusing primarily on Wilderson's claim that Blackness is equivalent to Slaveness. The article draws out some strengths of the book, but argues that the book's central arguments often rest on shaky methodological, metaphysical, epistemic, and political grounds. Along the way, we consider some complications endemic to the project of evaluating a text so clearly geared towards Black audiences from the perspective of a non-Black reader.

Pessimists hold that human life is fundamentally a condition of suffering which cannot attain transcendent meaning. According to pessimistic nihilism, life’s lack of transcendent meaning gives us reason to regret our existence. Life-affirming nihilism insists that we can and should affirm life in the absence of transcendent meaning. Yet both of these strains struggle to articulate what practical reasons might compel us to regret or affirm our inability to transcend the immanent conditions of the human predicament in the first place. (...) I suggest that we catch sight of these practical reasons when we shift our attention from the value of transcendent meaning to the desire for temporal transcendence expressed by strong attachments such aslove and devotion. In short, we want the things we love to last forever, and they can’t. This makes human life tragic, but it does not settle the question of what sort of meaning it might have or lack. (shrink)

According to the “standard framing” of racial appeals in political speech, politicians generally rely on coded language to communicate racial messages. Yet recent years have demonstrated that politicians often express quite explicit forms of racism in mainstream political discourse. The standard framing can explain neither why these appeals work politically nor how they work semantically. This paper moves beyond the standard framing, focusing on the politics and semantics of one type of explicit appeal, candid racial communication. The linguistic vehicles of (...) CRC are neither true code words, nor slurs, but a conventionally defined class of “racialized terms.”. (shrink)

In 1886, Nietzsche wrote: ‘I am still waiting for a philosophical doctor in the extraordinary sense of the term’: a doctor who pursues not truth, but an exceptional kind of health. Nietzsche's will to health, his theory of drive organisation, and his insistence that the philosopher put himself at risk, all work together in his overall project, which consists of taking up the very role of the highly revalued physician for whom he is waiting. Deleuze and Guattari engage this same (...) task of a revalued doctoring in the Capitalisme et Schizophrénie books, attacking the disease of oedipality and providing instructions for the deorganisation of the organism as self-cure. Offering tips on this radical treatment, they employ the figure of the hypochondriac to show how it can fail. Both Nietzsche and Deleuze and Guattari perform a revaluation of health as a condition of chronic critique, a condition that wraps itself around illness to keep itself critical. (shrink)

It is widely believed that philosophical pessimism is committed to fatalism about the sufferings that characterize the human condition, and that it encourages resignation and withdrawal from the political realm in response. This paper offers an explanation for and argument against this perception by distinguishing two functions that pessimism can serve. Pessimism’s skeptical mode suggests that fundamental cross-cultural constraints on the human condition bar us from the good life (however defined). These constraints are often represented as immune to political amelioration, (...) leading to the perception that pessimism is intrinsically fatalistic and resigned. Yet pessimism’s critical function emphasizes the political, economic, and cultural contingency of many sources of suffering and crisis while exhorting us to reject and reimagine the social forces that actively harm our capacity to flourish. It also offers an internal critique of skeptical pessimism’s tendency to naturalize and depoliticize the sources of our sufferings. These sometimes contradictory skeptical and critical tendencies should both be grouped under the pessimist banner, and we should see pessimism’s critical mode as especially valuable to political critique. -/- . (shrink)

Many segments of society have systems of values arising from collective beliefs and motivations. For agriculture, and our food system, increasing production to feed the growing human population clearly is a core value. However, a survey we conducted, together with a previously reported survey, showed that the curricula of most U.S. colleges of agriculture do not offer ethics courses that examine the basis of this core value or include discussion of agriculture’s ethical dilemmas such as misuse of pesticides, not progressing (...) rapidly enough toward sustainability goals, relative lack of involvement in addressing diet-related health issues, and lack of commitment to reducing agriculture’s role as a contributor to global climate change. These surveys provide strong evidence that few students have an opportunity to learn ethical concepts and apply them to issues of importance to the agriculture/food system. We suggest that such issues are both growing societal concerns and serious ethical problems that demand attention if our agricultural/food system is not see its relationship with the public further imperiled. Further, we suggest that there is a need for, indeed an obligation of, the faculty of colleges of agriculture to embrace a thorough analysis and discussion of agriculture’s values and their ethical foundation. We offer our thoughts on why curricula of colleges of agriculture do not provide such opportunities and on the importance of agricultural faculties providing leadership in ethical analysis and discussion. (shrink)

The existential, experiential, ethical, pathic and pre-pathic dimensions of education are essential for the creative composition of subjectivities in institutional spaces, yet educational research and policy tend increasingly to privilege technical discourses and prescriptive approaches both when evaluating ‘what is effective in education’ and when determining educational policy. This essay explores those aspects of the educational experience and educational institutions that are often felt and sensed pre-cognitively by students, parents and teachers, but are seldom given further elaboration or articulation in (...) educational research. We will reflect on what is meant by the experience of education and experience in education, including the struggles to make sense of or understand something, the surprises that strike pre-reflectively, and the ways in which such moments are noticed, pursued, and explored rather than reflexively ‘evaluated’. We then explore the idea of experimentation in institutions, in particular in relation to the range of concepts that Jean Oury introduces in order to move our attention and awareness to questions of experience, existence, atmosphere, and the pathic—the way in which we undergo, sense and participate in the world prior to cognition and the desire for mastery and control of our encounters. Finally, we address the question of the ethics of institutions. (shrink)

This paper has two objectives, neither previously attempted in the published literature—first, to outline J. M. Keynes's theory of knowledge in some detail, and, secondly, to justify the contention that his epistemology is a variety of rationalism, and not, as many have asserted, a form of empiricism. Keynes's attitude to empirical data is also analysed as well as his views on prediction and theory choice. 1This paper is partly based on ideas initially advanced in O'Donnell [1982], a revised and (...) expanded version of which is to be published as O'Donnell [1989]. I should like to thank an anonymous referee for helpful comment, and King's College, Cambridge for permission to quote from the Keynes Papers. (shrink)

Over the last decade, there has been a considerable expansion of mindfulness programmes into a number of different domains of contemporary life, such as corporations, schools, hospitals and even the military. Understanding the reasons for this phenomenon involves, I argue, reflecting upon the nature of contemporary capitalism and mapping the complexity of navigating new digital technologies that make multiple and accelerated solicitations upon attention and our affective lives. Whilst acknowledging the benefits of mindfulness practice, this article argues that it is (...) equally important to attend to the ethical framework that gives orientation to these practices and the outer conditions that shape lived daily experience, such as school or work environments. I suggest that the well-meaning efforts to secularise mindfulness, provide scientific evidence for its effectiveness, and introduce it to wider publics may have served to impoverish the rich contribution that practices of mindfulness, situated within a broader ethical framework, can make to human lives, and arguably contribute to the educational endeavour. For example, the emphasis on transforming inner conditions of students’ lives can lead to the neglect of outer conditions, such as structural inequality, or unhealthy and exploitative work practices. This can result in practices that privilege individual wellbeing over compassion and concern for the happiness of others, providing a buffer against loving attention to the world and others. Instead, I ask how mindfulness in educational settings could come to be viewed in a different light if we reflect upon the ways in which school environments and curricula can promote mindfulness, awareness, sensitive inquiry, and contemplative practices through the day, rather than offering it as a discrete intervention focused on the self and wellbeing. (shrink)

Aenesidemus, the (re-)founder of Pyrrhonian skepticism, is usually said to have begun his career by breaking away from the Academy. This assertion rests on the word “συναιρεσιώτῃ” as it appears in Photius’ summary of Aenesidemus’ Pyrrhonian Discourses. I argue that Photius’ probable understanding of the Academy’s history undermines this traditional reading. I then examine the evidence external to Photius and conclude that it also speaks against the traditional narrative.

Failure is seen as a problem in education. From failing schools, to failing students to rankings of universities, literacy or numeracy, the perception that one has failed to compete or to compare favourably with others has led to a series of policy initiatives internationally designed to ensure ‘success for all’. But when success is measured in comparison with others or against benchmarks or standards, then it is impossible to see how all could be successful given the parameters laid down. What (...) are the implications of a culture that values success and achievement? How difficult is it to become the kind of individual who is flourishing, autonomous and becomes ‘all she can be’, in particular under the precarious conditions of contemporary capitalism? Samuel Beckett was sceptical of the quest for progress, production and prestige. His philosophy invites another way of thinking about failure, not as something one is, but rather as something one does: the pain and fear of inadequacy that can mark educational relations and experiences is alleviated by a more renunciative, gentle philosophy of education. There are two interwoven strands in this article. One questions the emphasis on competition and achievement in contemporary education and explores its implications for our relationship to failure. The second, strongly influenced by Beckett, explores ways of reimagining our relationship to failure in such a way that allows us to reflect on what matters in life. (shrink)

In this article, Aislinn O'Donnell offers a set of reflections on the relation between therapy and education. In the first section, she examines criticisms of therapeutic education, mobilizing the example of prison education to highlight the difficulties that arise from imposing prescriptive modes of subjectification and socialization in pedagogy. In the second section, she addresses the relation between therapy and education by focusing on just one element of the experience of education: those moments at which a subject has the (...) potential of becoming significant in the life of a student. An important dimension of the educator's authority involves noticing such moments, fostering the conditions that make them more likely, and engaging in the creative process and practice of deciding how best pedagogically to respond to these moments. In the third section, O'Donnell develops this idea by detailing a philosophical approach and practice that understands “effectiveness” in education as bound to practice, creative responsiveness, and the judgment of the educator in concrete, singular pedagogical situations, rather than construed in terms of generic models of “best practice.”. (shrink)

Reconnaissant que la foi en Dieu Créateur est un mystère qui transcende notre pouvoir de compréhension humaine et de mise en concepts, l'auteur met en oeuvre divers modèles théologiques pour jeter quelque lumière sur la richesse de cette croyance. En ce qui concerne le modèle ontologique, il a recours à la théologie de Karl Rahner pour explorer le sens de l'être-créature. De par sa constitution ontologique l'être humain est à la fois différent et dépendant de Dieu en tout acte. Le (...) modèle «fiduciaire» favorisé par les Réformateurs, insiste sur le fait que la foi en Dieu Créateur est réellement un acte de confiance en l'attention que Dieu nous porte. Le modèle eschatologique, proposé par des penseurs tels Moltmann et Pannenberg, met l'accent sur Dieu comme notre futur absolu et l'objet de nos plus profonds désirs. L'article examine également certains modèles écologiques courants ainsi que l'«ecoféminisme» qui soulignent le besoin d'une intendance de la création plutôt que d'une domination. Un modèle de domination conduit à la violation de la terre comme à l'exploitation de la femme. L'article se préoccupe principalement de montrer que la foi en Dieu Créateur dans le Nouveau Testament est toujours liée au Christ comme Nouvelle Création. L'intention divine en créant était de conduire les créatures à partager la filiation du Christ. Les créatures deviennent imago Dei en vivant la relation filiale du Christ vis-à-vis du Père. Ignace de. (shrink)

Cet article propose d’étudier différentes commissions municipales de la vie nocturne à Lille. Depuis les années 2000, ces instances de concertation ont essaimé en France et dans d’autres États européens dans le but d’encadrer le déploiement d’une économie de la fête nocturne. À partir d’une enquête monographique menée depuis 2012, reposant sur des entretiens avec des professionnels de la nuit et des différentes institutions concernées (mairie, préfecture, police), des observations ethnographiques de ces commissions, et une analyse des archives municipales, nous (...) nous proposons d’esquisser une généalogie de ces instances de concertation en mettant de côté la recherche de ses effets sur l’action publique au profit de l’étude de ses usages et _in_ _fine_ de ses fonctions latentes. Notre perspective diachronique nous permet de tester l’hypothèse éliassienne d’une forme de « curialisation » de la vie nocturne. Ces espaces de délibération constituent un moyen pour la mairie de prendre pied dan... (shrink)

In this essay, I examine the concept of thinking in Hannah Arendt's writings. Arendt's interest in the experience of thinking allowed her to develop a concept of thinking that is distinct from other forms of mental activity such as cognition and problem solving. For her, thinking is an unending, unpredictable and destructive activity without fixed outcomes. Her understanding of thinking is distinguished from other approaches to thinking that equate it with, for example, problem solving or knowledge. Examples of a ‘problem-solving’, (...) skills-based approach to thinking that place a premium on behavioural change are drawn from the context of the prison. I offer an alternative example of thinking with others from my philosophy classes in the prison. I draw upon Arendt's insights to develop a concept of ‘thinking-in-concert’. Whilst Arendt believes that thinking must be a solitary activity, I argue that the concept of ‘thinking-in-concert’ helps to capture experiences of thinking with others in a manner that is more hesitant and provisional than some descriptions of communities of enquiry or democratic education. The embodied presence of others matters when ‘thinking-in-concert’. I describe this approach as educational as well as conversational. This helps to communicate the way in which we turn towards others and may be pulled up short by them as we strive to think together or experience moments of conversion or insight whilst enjoying the ordinary activity of talking with others. This concept may help us to understand the difference between the experience of thinking, teaching and learning when we are physically present to one another and the experience of virtual learning or teaching. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Commentary on Augustine City of God, Books 1–5 by Gillian ClarkJames J. O'DonnellCommentary on Augustine City of God, Books 1–5. By Gillian Clark. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. xii + 281. ISBN: 978-0-19-887007-4.Pierre Bayard's masterful How to Talk about Books You Haven't Read offers soothing balm for readers in the daunting presence of Augustine's City of God. Weighing in at a third of a million words, Augustine's (...) magnum opus et arduum,1 offers a Moby-Dick and a half of verbiage spread out over twenty-two books. I make the claim, nervously and looking about for intelligent contradiction, that it is the longest work of sustained and coherent argument to survive from Greco-Roman antiquity. Other behemoths are compilations in the main of one kind or another, but this one has a structure and a linear direction and was tightly enough written that a theme opened in the second book with a promise of returning with later treatment is in fact picked up in the nineteenth book written perhaps a dozen years later.Those who really will read, or at least read in, Civ. benefit from all the help they can get. There are good translations (English alone in my lifetime by McCracken et al. in Loeb, Bettenson, Dyson, and Babcock) but none provides more than a minimalist annotation. Francophone readers have been better served since 1960 by the five volume edition with more ample annotation in the Bibliothèque Augustinienne of G. Bardy et al., and it is the standard point of entrance to serious study for scholars. That work has many strengths but the limitations of arising from a devout tradition of scholarship and of coming before the efflorescence in late antique and Augustinian studies through which we have lived.More help is now at hand in the form of the volume under review and its promise of more to come. Gillian Clark is known and admired among Augustinian scholars for many works, not least the earlier exercise in commentary of her Cambridge "green and yellow"2 edition of Confessions 1–4 (1995). The present work began as an ambitious multi-author collaborative project that proved unwieldy (see the present volume, pp. 31–32) and results in this first installment of [End Page 179] a series now in Clark's hands exclusively, drawing on her strengths as a classical historian specializing in late antiquity and patristics. Four additional volumes are anticipated, ideally on two-year intervals. The task requires multiple competences: at least, the history of the fourth and fifth centuries, the history and presence of ancient philosophy, the history of Christian reception and interpretation of scripture, and the reception of classical literature in late antiquity. It is a work that soars with no middle flight.As commentary on a behemoth, the commentary begins with the virtue of concision. At a rough calculation, commentary here runs at about half again the length of the text under review, producing volumes that can be usefully read alongside Augustine without swamping either Augustine or the reader in an ocean of erudition and detail. After an introduction that is as much to the whole work as to books 1–5, the book is organized strictly by lemmata to passages commented. The lemmata are all in Latin to facilitate use by readers of various editions and translations, with references given by book/chapter and page/line to the standard CCSL 1955 reprinting of the edition of Dombart-Kalb (itself originally a Teubner of 1928).3The focus of the annotation is on the work as historical artifact, well situated in both the moment and controversies of writing and in the apparatus of learning that Augustine brought to his work. Inevitably this includes welcome discussion of argument, rhetoric, and strategy (the very short discussion of how Augustine wrote on pp. 9–12 is remarkably insightful), but readers will welcome the lucid guidance offered to how the text made sense in Aug.'s own time, to what he was evidently reading as he wrote, and to the range of historical realia that make up his argument. Commentary on later... (shrink)

Popper's paradox of ideal evidence has long been viewed as a telling criticism of Keynes's logical theory of probability and its associated concept of the weight of argument. This paper shows that a simple addition to Keynes's definitions of irrelevance enables his theory to elude the paradox with ease. The modified definition draws on ideas already present in Keynes's Treatise on Probability (1973). As a consequence, relevant evidence and the weight of argument may increase, even when new evidence leaves the (...) probability unaltered. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this article the Irish harp tradition is re-configured as a space consisting of visual and sonic dimensions. The visual dimension of the Irish harp space incorporates the employment of the instrument in contemporary iconography; the sonic dimension includes the employment of the instrument as a metaphor in contemporary literature and songs. By employing Bloch’s concept of surplus and tracing the path of the Irish harp from its earliest employment in Christian iconography, its prominence as an icon of colonial (...) and Ascendancy rule, and finally its utilisation as an utopian tool to inspire members of the Volunteer and United Irish movements in the late eighteenth century, I identify how the accumulation of centuries of utopian surplus resulted in the creation of an utopian icon that had the capacity to inspire a generation of Irish men and women to critique the prevailing social and political order in the eighteenth century. (shrink)