In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:390 HUME'S DIALOGUES AND THE COMEDY OF RELIGION Laughter is the key to Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Indeed, I would suggest that if the Dialogues have not made one laugh, and if one has not experienced the sheer delight of Hume's rhetorical excesses and gaiety, then one hasn't really understood this work at all. From this perspective, the usual questions are irrelevant — Is Hume Cleanthes or Philo? (...) Is Philo a mitigated sceptic or a Pyrrhonian? Such debates are sterile and miss the point, for however consistent or inconsistent the characters may be, the actual drama of the text has an intention and a direction all of its own, destroying the religious hypothesis not so much by 'serious' calculated argument as by ridicule and excess. Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion are the expression of a healthy and cheerful malice which strives at every turn to intensify the sense of the absurdity of religion. Hence their flavour is primarily rhetorical, and it would be a mistake to consider them as merely a collection of paraphraseable proofs directed against the possibility of rational theology. This is not to say, however, that Hume did not take religion seriously; on the contrary, he uses all of the devices of comedy in order to overwhelm it — rather as Nietzsche was to argue: "Not by wrath does one kill but by laughter. ml In this paper, I will consider the rhetorical aspect of Hume's Dialogues to show how the literary mode — the elaboration and contrast of characters, the use of parody and sudden turns in the plot, etc. — enables Hume to make a far more compelling assault on the religious hypothesis than the plain recital of 391 'reasonable' objections would ever achieve. I will focus my discussion on three central themes: First, the professed acceptance of God by all of the participants, and the consequent need for an oblique attack upon religion; second, Hume's comic perspectives on the argument from Design; and third, Hume's development of an 'antinomies of religion,' whereby the various religious arguments are used to undermine each other. 1. The Belief in God No man; no man, at least of common sense, I am persuaded, ever entertained a serious doubt with regard to a truth so certain and self-evident. The question is not concerning the being but the nature of God. Ostensibly, the one thing that is never questioned in the Dialogues, the one thing that all the participants remain agreed upon, is that God exists. Indeed, it seems that however limited the scope of natural theology may turn out to be, the actual being of God can never be in dispute, for in the Dialogues, belief in God is often presented as if it were an unchallengeable 'given' of human experience. Cleanthes, for example, apparently follows Locke in arguing for the reasonableness of theism; and yet, when he is pressed he defends the Design hypothesis in terms of its psychological irresistibility, appealing to a natural sentiment of belief rather than the claim of any argument: Consider, anatomize the eye: Survey its structure and contrivance; and tell me, from your own feeling, if the idea of a contriver does not immediately flow in upon you with a force like that of sensation.... it requires time, reflection and study, to summon up those frivolous, though 392 abstruse, objections, which can support infidelity (D 154). According to Cleanthes, the Design hypothesis is so self-evident that it really does not need any philosophical justification at all. It is simply the articulation of what we all already knew to be true: The comparison of the universe to a machine of human contrivance is so obvious and natural, and is justified by so many instances of order and design in nature, that it must immediately strike all unprejudiced apprehensions, and procure universal approbation (D 216). Demea also denies that religion is based upon argument. He claims that each man is brought to feel the truth of religion within himself through the consciousness of his own complete ignorance and misery. And in this respect, 'reason' can only hamper religious belief. Finally, at the end of the Dialogues, even Philo... (shrink)

That truth provides the standard for believing appears to be a platitude, one which dovetails with the idea that in some sense belief aims only at the truth. In recent years, however, an increasing number of prominent philosophers have suggested that knowledge provides the standard for believing, and so that belief aims only at knowledge. In this paper, I examine the considerations which have been put forward in support of this suggestion, considerations relating to lottery beliefs, Moorean beliefs, the criticism (...) and defence of belief, and the value of knowledge. I argue that those considerations do not give us reason to give up the truth view in favour of the knowledge view and, moreover, that reflection on those considerations gives us some reason to reject the knowledge view. Thus, I conclude, we can continue to the take the apparent platitude at face value. (shrink)

James Wetzel in his recent book argues that Augustine's statements in 'Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum' (hereafter, 'C2EP'), especially that "(t)he apostles...were free from consent to evil desire," directly contradict his long-held anti-Pelagian thesis. For in 'C2EP' and his other anti-Pelagian works, Augustine apparently defends the thesis that in this earthly life every human being consents to concupiscence daily. Thus, all need God's forgiveness daily. This is, Augustine argues, the true meaning of the Lord's Prayer. But this seems to contradict Augustine's (...) statement that the apostles "were free from consent to evil desire." By distinguishing different ways that an agent consents to concupiscence, the author argues that this seeming contradiction can be removed. Consequently, Augustine is consistent in his polemic against the Pelagians. (shrink)

The Megarians, as well as their Stoic heirs, are known to have been fatalists or logical determinists in the following, very broad sense of these terms: with respect to at least certain classes or kinds of nontautologous propositions, they held that the mere truth of a proposition entails its necessity. This paper explores, in a very tentative fashion, the relation between several versions of logical determinism and two passages in the Aristotelian corpus, one of which is specifically directed against Megarian (...) doctrine and the other of which is an argument purporting to establish a thesis concerning the necessity of future events which Aristotle wished to reject but which the Megarian logician Diodorus Cronus apparently accepted. (shrink)

Aristotle's requirement that virtuous actions be chosen for themselves is typically interpreted, in Kantian terms, as taking virtuous action to have intrinsic rather than consequentialist value. This raises problems about how to reconcile Aristotle's requirement with (a) the fact that virtuous actions typically aim at ends beyond themselves (usually benefits to others); and (b) Aristotle's apparent requirement that everything (including virtuous action) be chosen for the sake of eudaimonia. I offer an alternative interpretation, based on Aristotle's account of loving (...) a friend for herself, according to which choosing a virtuous action for itself involves choosing it on account of those features of it that make it the kind of action it is, where these features include its intended consequences (such as the benefits it seeks to provide to others). I then suggest that Aristotle may take these consequences (including benefits to others) as contributing (and contributing non-instrumentally) to the agent's own eudaimonia, and that there is no conflict here with Aristotle's view that eudaimonia is an activity of the soul. For just as my activity of teaching is actualized in my students (provided they learn from me), so too my virtuous activity can be actualized in its beneficiaries. If this is right, then Aristotle's view is far from the Stoic (and proto-Kantian) view often attributed to him. (shrink)

As one who writes from “the milieu of American university philosophy,” I should no doubt be grateful that Thomas O’Meara, a scholar who has “a slightly different perspective — one derived from medieval, German, and theological study” — has condescended to review my book Schelling: An Introduction to the System of Freedom. Indeed, I am grateful, for Father O’Meara has revealed to me some of the shortcomings of my own perspective. Limited by my “optic of the Enlightenment and modern American (...) philosophy,” I approached Schelling by reading what he wrote, developing interpretations, and arguing in favor of them. O’Meara’s “slightly different” perspective apparently grants him direct access to Schelling’s thought, allowing him to dispense with the tedious business of citation and argumentation. O’Meara’s revelations also bring to light some surprising differences between what Schelling thought and what he wrote. (shrink)

This major collection of essays offers the first serious challenge to the traditional view that ancient and modern ethics are fundamentally opposed. In doing so, it has important implications for contemporary ethical thought, as well as providing a significant re-assessment of the work of Aristotle, Kant and the Stoics. The contributors include internationally recognised interpreters of ancient and modern ethics. Four pairs of essays compare and contrast Aristotle and Kant on deliberation and moral development, eudaimonism, self-love and self-worth, and practical (...) reason and moral psychology. The final pair of essays introduces the Stoics as an example of how the apparently antithetical views of Aristotle and the Stoics might be reconciled. (shrink)

Face transplantation—or, more properly, facial allograft transplantation —generates much public interest and academic debate. In this paper, we suggest that it is up to opponents of FAT to make the case for its impermissibility. We allow that there is a number of apparently strong arguments that might be deployed against FAT. However, all but one of these turn out not to be compelling after examination. The remaining argument is not so easily dismissed—but its central point is fairly workaday and certainly (...) does not tell us anything about FAT in particular. Therefore, qua argument about facial transplant surgery, it fails to hit its target. Overall, we conclude that a compelling case against FAT remains to be made. (shrink)

In an introduction to Louis J. Halle's Civilization and Foreign Policy, Dean Acheson notes with approval that Halle believed a group of men, formerly members of the Policy Planning Staff of the United States State Department, to be seeking a new theory of foreign policy which would lie outside the traditional theory. Halle's work, like that of the others whose names were mentioned (George F. Kennan, Paul Nitze, and C. B. Marshall), represented a serious and searching analysis of the conceptual (...) frame of American foreign policy, a search largely accompanied by a demand for a more realistic consideration of problems of power. The members of the Policy Planning Staff were by no means the only, or even the first, Americans to question American thinking on foreign policy from the standpoint of power politics. Without going back to Alexander Hamilton, we must consider, in particular, Hans J. Morgenthau and Reinhold Niebuhr. This kind of thinking is still being advanced; and, more recently, the warning that Americans misunderstood the problem of power was put with some forcefulness by Robert Endicott Osgood : “More than any other great nation, America's basic predispositions and her experience in world politics encourage the dissociation of power and policy.” There is no doubt that work of recent years has shown the increased seriousness of American interest in the problems of foreign policy and civilization. The contribution which these and other writers have made is a very great one. Despite many differences among themselves, their trend seems to embody a certain oneness, which lies in a perception of the problems of power. Acheson points to the practical experience of the State Department group and their intention to “see life steadily and see it whole,” in Matthew Arnold's famous phrase. Yet, a few years after these writers, whom Acheson so highly regarded, had tried to acquaint the American people with the realities of power in foreign policy, one of them, George F. Kennan, was publicly criticized by Acheson himself for “never having understood the realities of power politics.” Shortly thereafter, Acheson, in his latest book, reiterated the charge that “power politics” was, for Americans, still a derogatory term. Kennan, one of our most thoughtful and sensitive writers on foreign policy, and Acheson, one of our most articulate and eloquent secretaries of state, had failed to satisfy the American people, and Kennan had failed, apparently, to satisfy Acheson regarding the significance and the reality of power politics. Yet in the light of some of the literature which has appeared since the rise of these writers, whom we may call “realists” though they do not necessarily so characterize themselves, one may question whether the danger is still that which Acheson described. One who reads Henry A. Kissinger's Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy may wonder not whether Americans understand the realities of power but whether, indeed, some of them understand anything else. We face the danger that the wheel may come full circle, that a naïve idealism may be replaced by a purely methodical realism, and that the very words “politics” and “strategy” may become interchangeable terms. We face that danger, but let no one suspect that Americans, in general, have succumbed to it. (shrink)

Much of the commentary in the wake of the Charlie Gard litigation was aimed at apparent shortcomings of the law. These include concerns about the perceived inability of the law to consider resourcing issues, the vagueness of the best interests test and the delays and costs of having disputes about potentially life-sustaining medical treatment resolved by the courts. These concerns are perennial ones that arise in response to difficult cases. Despite their persistence, we argue that many of these criticisms (...) are unfounded. The first part of this paper sets out the basic legal framework that operates when parents seek potentially life-sustaining treatment that doctors believe is against a child’s best interests, and describes the criticisms of that framework. The second part of the paper suggests an alternative approach that would give decision-making power to parents, and remove doctors’ ability to unilaterally withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment that they regard is futile. This proposal is grounded in several values that we argue should guide these regulatory choices. We also contend that the best interests test is justifiable and since the courts show no sign of departing from it, the focus should be on how to better elucidate the underlying values driving decisions. We discuss the advantages of our proposed approach and how it would address some of the criticisms aimed at the law. Finally, we defend the current role that the judiciary plays, as an independent state-sanctioned process with a precedent-setting function. (shrink)

Three topics are discussed concerning the application probability and explanation to the confirmation of theories. The first concerns the debate over prediction versus accommodation. I argue that we typically have reason to be more confident of a theory given that it was constructed independently of the knowledge of certain data than if it was designed to accommodate those data. The second concerns the puzzle of the apparent 'fine-tuning' of the universe for life. I argue that the fact that our (...) universe meets the extremely improbable yet necessary conditions for life provides no evidence for the thesis that there are, or have been, very many universes. The third chapter concerns the need to explain the existence of life. I argue that if life's existence needs an explanation at all, the place to look is in a teleological explanation. If this option is rejected, we should be content to see the origin of life as an extremely improbable fluke. (shrink)

Historicism is often regarded as a distortion of properly "historical" understanding; but if one attends to the rhetorical aspects of historical discourse, it appears that ordinary historical narrative prefigures its subject by the language chosen for description no less than historicism does by its generalizing and theoretical interests. Descriptive language is, in fact, figurative and emplots events to suit one or another type of story. Rhetorical analysis shows even an apparently straightforward passage to be an encodation of events in the (...) form of pseudo-tragedy. Generic story-types constitute the latent meaning of narratives and are understood by readers, often subliminally, through the figurative language of the story. The acknowledgement of linguistic determinism resolves a number of problems of historical theory and entails a qualified relativism of historical accounts. (shrink)

This chapter provides a quick primer on the volumes of the comic titles Captain America and Avengers. It talks about the beginnings and endings of which usually coincide with major events in the Marvel Universe. The story starts with the first volume of Avengers, since it was in the classic issue #4 of that title that Captain America was found in a block of ice and revived. These long‐running volumes of Captain America and Avengers lasted until 1996. Both series ended (...) when the Avengers were apparently killed in a battle with the villainous Onslaught. After the Avengers vs. X‐Men event, Marvel Comics relaunched many of its books and introduced new ones. The Watcher only knows what volume Captain America and the various Avengers titles are on, but Cap will live in on comics, movies, and TV long after this book has changed the course of American history. (shrink)

The freedom to create and disseminate pornography has often been defended based on a liberal claim that the free speech of pornographers would be violated if pornography were censored. The classic defense of free speech, given by John Stuart Mill, is often invoked to defend this position. In opposition, many feminist theorists have advocated arguments for regulatory measures against pornography. Some of these authors have also utilized the writings of Mill. They have argued that, contrary to the liberal defense of (...) free speech, Mill’s arguments are compatible with, or even require, the forced regulation of pornography. Logically, unless Mill’s writings are contradictory, they should not be invoked to support diametrically opposed positions. This paper investigates this apparent dilemma and argues that, contrary to the antipornography feminist position, Mill’s writings do not support pornography regulation. In fact, in a surprising twist, the arguments of anti-pornography feminists can, using the writings of Mill, be seen as strongly supporting the liberal anti-censorship position. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Beauty, Transcendence, and the Inclusive Hierarchy of Creation1Thomas Joseph White, O.P.Interpreters of Thomas Aquinas have long argued about whether he holds that beauty is a “transcendental,” a feature of reality coextensive with all that exists, like unity, goodness, and truthfulness.2 In the first part of this article, I will argue that Aquinas can [End Page 1215] be read to affirm in an implicit way that beauty is a transcendental. (...) In the second part, I will consider what it might mean from a Thomistic point of view to speak of a transcendent divine beauty, given Aquinas’s metaphysical commitments, particularly with respect to his doctrine of divine simplicity. In the final part, I will treat the question of how the beauty of the creation both manifests and conceals divine beauty.Beauty as a Transcendental Feature of RealityAquinas does not list beauty as a transcendental term in texts on transcendental notions. Perhaps, then, one should simply exclude it from a responsible account of his teaching on this subject. However, at least two well-known texts should give us reason to pause before reaching such a conclusion. One is found in his Commentary on Dionysius’ Divine Names, chapter 4, lectio 5. The other is in his discussion of the beauty of the eternal Son of God in a discussion of the Holy Trinity in the Summa theologiae I, q. 39, a. 8.In the first of these texts, Aquinas is commenting on Dionysius. The extended text is analytically dense. Aquinas is discussing ways in which one might say that God is beautiful and in what ways one might not say so. I will return to his topic below. Here, however, it is pertinent to consider Aquinas’s discussion of the presence of beauty in all that exists. He makes six main points.3 First, all beauty comes [End Page 1216] from God insofar as God is the cause of all that exists. Second, he gives a first definition of beauty: beauty can be defined ontologically as the splendor (claritas) that results from form; everything has a formal determination of some kind insofar as it has existence (esse); therefore, insofar as anything exists (and has some formal ontological content) it has some degree of beauty. Third, the splendor of the form in created things is a participation in the divine splendor from which it originates. The divine nature is the transcendent exemplar of beauty in diverse finite created realities. Fourth, then (and perhaps most importantly), “ex divina pulchritudine esse omnium derivatur”: literally, the existence of everything originates from divine beauty. Fifth, a second definition of beauty is considered: beauty can be defined ontologically as a property of being that emerges from proportion or harmony (consonantia). For example, authentic relationships of personal friendship imply spiritual harmony or concord and are beautiful and noble in this respect. Sixth, then, the concord or beautiful harmonies we find in the created order are expressive of the wisdom of God, who is the author of creation.Evidently, if the existence of everything derives from divine beauty, and if everything that has existence is in some way beautiful by virtue of its intrinsic form, then it would seem to follow logically that beauty, for Aquinas, is a characteristic of being that is coextensive with all that exists. We see a similar idea expressed in the aforementioned passage of ST. Here, however, Aquinas gives a more synthetic definition of beauty in things that combines both the definitions found in our previous discussion, claritas and proportio, but it also adds a third, integritas: ontological integrity or wholeness.Species or beauty has a likeness to the property of the Son. For beauty includes three conditions, “integrity” or “perfection,” [End Page 1217] since those things which are impaired are by the very fact ugly; due “proportion” or “harmony”; and lastly, “brightness” or “clarity,” whence things are called beautiful which have a bright color.4The implication of this point of view is readily apparent. God is essentially beautiful, and God has created all that exists in light of the eternal Word and Wisdom of God, who is the Son. Consequently, all that exists and that... (shrink)

This article argues that one of the reasons that the unethical character of much human-dolphin contact is not more apparent to ethicists is that discussion of central issues has been colored with unintentional species bias. This article points out weaknesses in the traditional approach to discussing topics that bear on the question of whether dolphins have moral standing. It demonstrates that discussions of the cognitive abilities of dolphins by Steven Wise and Alasdair MacIntyre are unintentionally but fundamentally anthropocentric-largely because (...) the authors are not familiar with enough of the scientific literature about dolphins to draw the conclusions that they do. (shrink)

Plato's dialogue "The Statesman" has often been found structurally puzzling because of its apparent diffuseness and disjointed transitions. This book interprets the dialogue in ways which account for this problematic structure, and which also connect the primary themes of the dialogue with two subsequent dialogues "The Philebus" and "The Laws.".

In this article, I present a critique of Robert Geraci's Apocalyptic artificial intelligence (AI) discourse, drawing attention to certain shortcomings which become apparent when the analytical lens shifts from religion to the race–religion nexus. Building on earlier work, I explore the phenomenon of existential risk associated with Apocalyptic AI in relation to “White Crisis,” a modern racial phenomenon with premodern religious origins. Adopting a critical race theoretical and decolonial perspective, I argue that all three phenomena are entangled and they (...) should be understood as a strategy, albeit perhaps merely rhetorical, for maintaining white hegemony under nonwhite contestation. I further suggest that this claim can be shown to be supported by the disclosure of continuity through change in the long‐durée entanglement of race and religion associated with the establishment, maintenance, expansion, and refinement of the modern/colonial world system if and when such phenomena are understood as iterative shifts in a programmatic trajectory of domination which might usefully be framed as “algorithmic racism.”. (shrink)

European women dominate images of beauty, presumably because Europe has dominated the world for the past few centuries. Yet this presumed cause poorly explains “white slavery”-the commodification of European women for export at a time when their continent was much less dominant. Actually, there has long been a cross-cultural preference for lighter-skinned women, with the notable exception of modern Western culture. This cultural norm mirrors a physical norm: skin sexually differentiates at puberty, becoming fairer in girls, and browner and ruddier (...) in boys. Europeans are also distinguished by a palette of hair and eye colors that likewise differs between the sexes, with women more often having the brighter hues. In general, the European phenotype, especially its brightly colored features, seems to be due to a selection pressure that targeted women, apparently sexual selection. Female beauty is thus a product of social relations, but not solely those of recent times. (shrink)

Samuel Johnson has an interesting comment on consequences and the telling of “white lies.” For example “Sick People and Children are often to be deceived for their Good.” David Hume apparently endorses this concept in one of his letters. Both Johnson and Rousseau anticipate Kant’s argument about consequences in that one is to tell the truth under all circumstances. Hume, I argue, would take issue with this claim in that there are cases that warrant telling white lies. Elsewhere he speaks (...) about “harmless liars” who indulge in “lying or fiction... in humorous stories.” And he says “Noble pride and spirit may openly display itself when one lies under calamity [defamation or slander] or opposition of any kind,” especially if the opposition puts one’s life in grave danger, so one’s self-preservation is threatened. Under situations like these, lying is justified. In regard to fiction, if lying is for the purpose of entertainment and where “truth is not of any importance,” it is permissible. These cases are discussed in some detail, and they offer, along with their analysis, a pragmatic defense of Hume’s position. (shrink)

This paper argues that race and class inequalities cannot be fully understood in isolation: their intersectional quality is explored through an analysis of how the White working class were portrayed in popular and political discourse during late 2008 (the timing is highly significant). While global capitalism reeled on the edge of financial melt-down, the essential values of neo-liberalism were reasserted as natural, moral and efficient through two apparently contrasting discourses. First, a victim discourse presented White working people, and their children (...) in particular, as suffering educationally because of minoritised racial groups and their advocates. Second a discourse of degeneracy presented an immoral and barbaric underclass as a threat to social and economic order. Applying the 'interest-convergence principle', from Critical Race Theory, the discourses amount to a strategic mobilisation of White interests where the 'White, but not quite' status of the working class (Allen, 2009) provides a buffer zone at a time of economic and cultural crisis which secures societal White supremacy and provides a further setback to progressive reforms that focus on race, gender and disability equality. The existence of poor Whites, therefore, is not only consistent with a regime of White supremacy — they are actually an essential part of the processes that sustain it. (shrink)

Popular imaginings of Tanzania's Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Conservation Area are founded on the idea of wilderness preserved, but this conception of the ‘park’ is based in colonial-era race-thinking. Rather than simply a colonial-era manifestation of an apparently universal conservationist ideal, Serengeti and Ngorongoro are instead racial projects that embody the historical and ongoing processes of racial formation. The creation of Serengeti and Ngorongoro enabled a racialisation of nature, a process begun by the British and reinscribed via safari ever (...) since. Recognising this racialisation of nature has larger implications for not only the treatment and perception of those in the Global South, the racialised ‘other’ to the Global North, but also for the realities of white privilege and constructions of whiteness. (shrink)

Focusing on a textbook controversy that emerged in Kanawha County, West Virginia, in 1974, Mason explores the discursive production of white ethnicity in the rhetorical, visual, and political strategies used during an organized protest against the new multicultural curriculum adopted by the local school board. What the author finds puzzling is the ways in which these productions of “soul” and “nation” enabled unlikely political alliances between national conservative elites and the local, historically left-leaning working class protesters. The author argues that (...) “soul” is reproduced through racialized discourse signifying the spiritual and ethnic purity of whiteness, the consolidation of white ethnicity, and the spirit of white resistance, articulated through campaigns to save children from future captivity in an “alien” world. Through this on-site theoretical analysis, the author demonstrates how a right-wing narrative of victimhood facilitates the reproduction of ethnic identification among the protesters, whose whiteness apparently can be jeopardized by reading the “wrong” books. (shrink)

From Wodehouse to the White House: A Corpus-Assisted Study of Play, Fantasy and Dramatic Incongruity in Comic Writing and Laughter-Talk In this paper I consider two discourse types, one written and literary, the other spoken and semi-conversational, in an attempt to discover if there are any similarities in the ways in which humour is generated in such apparently diverse forms of communication. The first part of the paper is concerned with the explicitly comic prose of P. G. Wodehouse, whilst in (...) the second part of the paper, we investigate the laughter-talk, defined as the talk preceding and provoking, intentionally or otherwise, an episode of laughter, occurring during press briefings held at the White House during the Clinton era and the subsequent Bush administration. Both studies, by employing corpus analysis techniques together with detailed discourse reading, integrate quantitative and qualitative approaches to the respective data sets. (shrink)

Le Dernier Homme is Blanchot’s last narrative or récit. Afterwards, he would begin to write in a more fragmentary mode, which suggests that he may have felt that the narrative form had been pushed as far it could in this work. This point of extremity is marked in particular by the monotonous style for which he has become notorious. This essay examines why this style arises, and how it leads to an extreme that can be usefully contrasted with Barthes’s notion (...) of écriture blanche. It becomes apparent that the blankness of this writing is not innocent but arises as noise for Blanchot, which not only manifests the material attenuation of the narrative but also its relation with the dead. (shrink)

The perceived strength of darkness enhancement in the centre of surfaces surrounded or not surrounded by illusory contours was investigated as a function of proximity of the constituent elements of the display and their angular size. Magnitude estimation was used to measure the perception of the darkness phenomenon in white-on-grey stimuli. Darkness enhancement was perceived in both types of the stimuli used, but more strongly in the presence of illusory contours. In both cases, perceived darkness enhancement increased with increasing proximity (...) of the constituent parts of the display and with their angular size. These results suggest that the occurrence of darkness (or brightness) enhancement phenomena in the centre of the displays is not directly related to illusory contours, which only reinforce the subjective surface brightness/darkness. (shrink)

Attention to the role of phenomenology in Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks is fundamental to an appreciation of the book’s progressive structure. And it is through an appreciation of this structure that it becomes apparent that the book’s engagement with phenomenology amounts to an enrichment, not a critique, of existential phenomenology, although the latter might appear to be the case at first sight, given Fanon’s rejection of certain aspects of Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Black Orpheus.” This is demonstrated through an (...) examination of Fanon’s references to Sartre, Günther Anders, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty in the book’s final crucial pages on temporality. His largely neglected relation to Karl Jaspers and the concept of historicity is also explored. (shrink)

Transparency has evolved from an individual, dangerous power in Plato to a desirable, collective property in the contemporary world. This paper intends to give a brief account of this long and somehow surprising path and extract some interesting consequences for economic and political activities, as well as for information technologies. Six literary masterpieces are used to highlight the contradictions and dangers entailed by the abuse of the fascinating metaphor of transparency. In the end, what is usually intended when demanding transparency (...) from a corporation, a firm or a state is more (or more accessible) information about it, i.e., understandable and abundant black and white data. This means reporting, picturing, producing material, becoming apparent, which is precisely the contrary of being transparent. We don’t want to look through , but to look directly at . The question, then, is not transparency, but opacity: what do we need and want to see, and how is this going to be produced? (shrink)

This discussion contributes to the ongoing debates regarding the (re)sexualisation of female bodies in popular and visual culture. Visual texts display the upper middle-class white female as the carrier of mainstream neo-liberal values in Western societies, and the success of this approach is the twinning of the culture of individualism, self-interest and market values with feminist vocabularies; namely, choice, freedom and independence. Drawing on a broad feminist scholarship that includes discussions on the influence of the HBO series Sex and the (...) City, semiotic analysis is combined with intersectionality to gain an understanding of how gender, class and sexuality shape and reinforce whiteness as entitled to luxury in an advertising campaign for Michael Kors luxury goods. Contemporary representations have expanded to include representations of affluent women who appear to have it all. These new post-feminist subjectivities promote an aesthetic of wealth, to display privileged whiteness, heterosexuality, normative Western beauty ideals and individualism. An intersectional approach reveals the apparent neutrality of neo-liberal values as being an expression of whiteness, specifically in representations of white women as economically independent neo-liberal subjects who display their status through the conspicuous consumption of luxury brands. (shrink)

Hobbes's manuscript refutation of Thomas White bears no title. Some modern scholars have proposed, on the basis of references to it by Mersenne, that the work was entitled 'De motu, loco et tempore', and the abbreviated version of this, 'De motu', has become current in modern scholarship. This research note analyses Mersenne's references, and concludes that this apparent title was a descriptive phrase introduced by Mersenne himself. The full description included the term 'philosophia' ; this suggests a double focus, (...) not only on the manuscript text, but also on Hobbes's 'body' of natural philosophy more generally. (shrink)

We investigated the key anatomical structures mediating interhemispheric integration during the perception of apparent motion across the retinal midline. Previous studies of commissurotomized patients suggest that subcortical structures mediate interhemispheric transmission but the specific regions involved remain unclear. Here, we exploit interindividual variations in the propensity of normal subjects to perceive horizontal motion, in relation to vertical motion. We characterize these differences psychophysically using a Dynamic Dot Quartet (an ambiguous stimulus that induces illusory motion). We then tested for correlations (...) between a tendency to perceive horizontal motion and fractional anisotropy (FA) (from structural diffusion tensor imaging), over subjects. FA is an indirect measure of the orientation and integrity of white matter tracts. Subjects who found it easy to perceive horizontal motion showed significantly higher FA values in the pulvinar. Furthermore, fiber tracking from an independently identified (subject-specific) visual motion area converged on the pulvinar nucleus. These results suggest that the pulvinar is an anatomical hub and may play a central role in interhemispheric integration. (shrink)

The advent of IVF and advances in reproductive technologies largely reflect the importance in our society of biological parenthood and genetic kinship. As illustrated in the controversy piece by Merle Spriggs,1 however, the same technology has confused our understanding of what makes a parent.An embryo mixup in Britain has resulted in a white couple giving birth to two black twins. Genetic tests have established that the wrong sperm was used to inseminate the ova of the white woman who gave birth (...) to the twins. The two couples involved are apparently both seeking custody. Who should have parental rights and responsibilities for the twins?While once it may have been obvious who a child’s parents were and who had obligations and claims with regard to children, the separation of genetic, gestational, and nurturing roles now makes it impossible to “discover” who is the real parent. As Ruth Macklin points out, the question: “Which role should entitle a woman to a greater claim on the baby in the case of a dispute?” is a moral question which cannot be answered by discovery, say through a blood test, but is a matter for decision.2 Which are the morally …. (shrink)

Using the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, the authors compare the gender pay gap at predominantly white institutions with the gap at historically Black colleges and universities. Also, within the HBCU milieu, they examine how class of the institution has an impact on pay gaps. First, they find that HBCUs do seem to have a smaller gap but that pay for all faculty at HBCUs is lower than in PWIs. Second, the gap is only significantly smaller in the rank of (...) associates. Third, the gap is smaller at the associate rank because men make less money in HBCUs than they do in PWIs. Fourth, elite HBCUs are more similar to PWIs than to HBCUs in terms of their gender pay gap. Race, class, and gender effects must be taken into account to understand patterns of wage equity across these institutions. The greater gender equity at HBCUs is apparent because of the absence of the “men's bonus, ” which is prevalent in PWIs and elite HBCUs. (shrink)

Berkeley has made the bold claim on behalf of his theory that it is uniquely able to justify the claim that snow is white. But this claim, made most strikingly in the Third of his "Three Dialogues," has been held, most forcefully by Margaret Wilson, to conflict with Berkeley's argument in the First Dialogue that, because of various facts to do with perceptual variation, colors are merely apparent and hence, mind-dependent. This paper develops an alternative reading of the First (...) Dialogue arguments, in which their project is not to establish the mind-dependence of colors but instead to undermine the position that colors are also mind-independent. Under these circumstances, the coherence of the First and the Third Dialogue arguments is assured, just so long as the Third Dialogue claim to have established that snow is really white is not taken to mean that snow is mind-independently white, but instead, something like that our experiences of snow are stably and regularly white. (shrink)

The election of a British National Party councillor in London in September 1993 was greeted by shock and disbelief in the media, particularly because it happened during controversial preparations to celebrate the anniversary of Britain's role in Hitler's defeat in 1945. This essay sets out to examine some of the ways in which the BNP victory was reported in an attempt to understand how intricately gender and class are interwoven in discourses of racism in contemporary British politics. First, it draws (...) attention to the dramatic images of white, working-class (or rather, non-working-class), violent, masculinity that dominated media representation of the event. In particular, the apparent invisibility of women in the photos and headlines seemed questionable, particularly when their anger and frustration about their own living conditions percolated through the lengthier written reports on the inside pages. Looking beyond superficial media coverage of the election, it was clear that gender was also a significant factor in the construction of a local, exclusively white, organic community fostered by political parties responsible for administering social housing and other public resources. While gender can articulate different forms of racism, the reverse can also be true. Ideas about what it means to be white, for example, defined against the racialized ‘other’, are also implicated in the social construction of gender. The violence perpetrated by those attracted to the xenophobic rhetoric of groups like the BNP is able to represent an aspect of masculinity that is both patriarchal and active in defending the ‘racial’ community. The third voice of beleaguered mothers summons up a version of white femininity that is passively concerned with the task of trying to reproduce the racial purity longed for by their menfolk. Finally, the specific characteristics and dynamics of the area in which the election took place also demands attention, not just because it happened in the heart of one of the most contested territories in London, but also because it was a reminder that the spatial aspects of social conflict are inseparable from the social, political and economic. (shrink)

It has recently been pointed out that the 1989 White PaperWorking for Patients, which provides the basis for the current reforms of the British National Health Service, has some common features with the 1944 White PaperA National Health Service, which was the unadopted model for the service produced by the Wartime Coalition Government. Moreover, it is likely that the Conservatives, if elected in the 1945 General Election, would have introduced a service based on a modified version of the 1944 document. (...) We can compare these two blueprints to shed some light on Conservative thinking on health care over a period of nearly 50 years. There are some similarities in terms of the notions of purchaser and provider, contracts and pluralism. However, there are striking contrasts, notably in their attitude towards planning versus competition and local democracy versus patronage. It is claimed that the profound differences outweigh the apparent similarities and consequently the two blueprints show the discontinuity rather than the continuity of Conservative thinking on health care. (shrink)

Is it a mistake to use "true" or "false" in certain contexts? White sets the stage for dealing with this issue by laying out a field of usages. He develops his position by characterizing and criticizing contemporary treatments of these data, moving rapidly from case to case. His numerous summaries and conclusions, obviously based on a wider view of the material than is presented in the text, may leave the uninitiated alternately puzzled, bristling, or suspicious. While White's data are expressed (...) clearly, the goal of his arguments and his organizational principles are frequently less apparent. White's discussions of fiction and modality are of particular historic interest. Here we find Frege and Russell arguing about whether they can argue about the King of France. We meet with Aristotle's ancient problem of the future naval battle, witness latter-day skirmishes over the nature of moral language, and find Leibniz, Hume, and Kant debating the logic of necessity and contingency. Are there really different types of truth which correspond with different modalities and existence presuppositions, as White seems to assume? This question, harking back to books 5 and 6 of Plato's Republic, is passed over by White in his usage-oriented quest for the sense of "truth." Truth will suit both student and researcher alike and is to be recommended for its breadth of concern and for its 18 pages of bibliography.--M. D. P. [[sic]]. (shrink)

This is a philosophical-moral study on the concept of altruistic happiness, through a hermeneutic analysis of a fundamental episode of the Divine Comedy. The symbol of the White Rose, contemplated by Dante in Paradise XXXI, represents the communion of saints, that is, of those who can experience in their psyche the extinction of desire in full joy. The kingdom of heaven is seen by the pilgrim poet as a beautiful flower with many petals. Its value is in the whole, the (...) flower, but also in its individual parts, the petals. The salvation of the soul is therefore linked to altruism, to denying ourselves for our neighbors, in the name of a collective good. However, the poet shows us that every human individuality is precious, and the paradisiacal abolition of egoism is not the destruction of the uniqueness of the soul but the fulfillment of the self. Inside hell, which is described by Dante like an emblem of selfishness, Beatrice appears as a divine creature, ready to save her beloved poet. This means that Christianity starts the process of human salvation from the lowest material depth of the universe. Consequently, the low is not the opposite of the high: since there is also a high within that low. The individual, if purified from selfishness, becomes in the kingdom of heaven the independent and complementary mirror of a universal joy, a collective joy. Dante, deeply linked to Franciscanism, defends the Mariological concept of ‘Immaculate Conception’ and, in the Divine Comedy, offers us a philosophical-moral message that translates the profound meaning of this same theological idea into secular terms. The solitude of the individual matter that forms the body of every man is only apparent. We are not alone. There is another invisible, silent, very pure reality that has sunk into this matter of ours and into consciousness. This reality can save mankind and bring every person back into joyful wholeness. (shrink)

This paper aims to study the perception of color (representations, synesthesia, denominations, uses and classification) in specific writings such as recipe treatises written from 1520 to 1689. These treatises deal with the manufacture and stages of color in various objects (remedies, blushes and mainly gems). They reveals that color is not only an apparent surface but also a sensitive substance, in particular white and red colors. Although color is a principle of unity for diverse materials, it sometimes becomes contradictory (...) when it is associated with variable signified and signifiers, so that color also offers a play on naming: meaning is sometimes clear, sometimes obscure, and in any case mobile (azure, vermilion). The contemporary reader does not perceive color in the same way as the Renaissance craftsman. Finally, as a principle of classification, it shows an imbalance and hierarchy of colors which, while providing structure to recipes: it gives mainly a place of choice to red and its shades. (shrink)

Apparently, Latinos are “taking over.” 1 With news that Latinos have become the largest minority group in the United States, the public airwaves are filled with concerned voices about the impact that a non-English dominant, Catholic, non-white, largely poor population will have on “American” identity. Aside from the hysteria, Latino identity poses some authentically new questions for the standard way in which minority identities are conceptualized. Are Latinos a race, an ethnicity, or some combination? What does it mean to have (...) hybridity as the foundation of an identity, as is the case for mestizos and most Latinos? The term “Latino” signifies people from an entire continent, sub-continent, and several large islands, with diverse racial, national, ethnic, religious, and linguistic aspects to their identity. Given all this internal diversity, is “Latino” a meaningful identity at all? Latino identity is, with few exceptions, a visible identity, for all its variability, and I will argue that unless we pay close attention to the way in which Latino identity operates as a visible identity in public, social spaces, our analyses of its social meanings and political effects will be compromised. In the following three chapters, I will address three issues that Latino identity raises, issues that have political ramifications but that also require us to think about the philosophical assumptions at work behind common ideas about race and ethnicity. First, what is the relationship between Latino identity and racial categories? Second, how do Latinos fit into, and challenge, the black/white binary thinking about race that has long dominated public discourse in the U.S.? And third, what does it mean to have a mixed identity, for Latinos or for other mixed race groups? Throughout, we will have to pay close attention to the especially significant heterogeneity of this particular population. Does such diversity threaten identity or does it reveal that identity has never presumed uniformity? Only recently has the concept of pan-Latino, or generic Hispanic, identity overtaken the older identity monikers of “Cuban,” “Mexican,” “Puerto Rican,” etc. in significant national discourses across the United States.. (shrink)

The year 2020 has yielded twin crises in the United States: a global pandemic and a public reckoning with racism brought about by a series of publicized instances of police violence toward Black men and women. Current data indicate that nationally, Black Americans are three times more likely than White Americans to contract Covid-19, a pattern that underscores the more general phenomenon of health disparity among Black and White Americans. Once exposed, Black Americans are twice as likely to die of (...) the virus. Unsurprisingly, Black Americans report higher levels of fear of Covid-19 than their White peers, but they also report higher levels of hesitancy toward a Covid-19 vaccine. This paper explores why this apparent discrepancy exists. It also provides practical recommendations for how government and public health leaders might address vaccine hesitancy in the context of the twin crises of 2020. (shrink)

In this discussion, we look at three potential problems that arise for Whiting’s account of normative reasons. The first has to do with the idea that objective reasons might have a modal dimension. The second and third concern the idea that there is some sort of direct connection between sets of reasons and the deliberative ought or the ought of rationality. We can see that we might be better served using credences about reasons (i.e., creasons) to characterise any ought that (...) is distinct from the objective ought than possessed or apparent reasons. (shrink)

Is truth a substantial feature of truth-bearers? Correspondence theorists answer in the affirmative, deflationists in the negative. Correspondence theorists cite in their defense the dependence of truth on meaning or representational content. Deflationists in turn cite the conceptual centrality of simple equivalences such as ''Snow is white' is true iff snow is white'' and 'It is true that snow is white iff snow is white'. The apparent facts to which these theorists appeal correspond to some of our firmest and (...) most basic convictions about truth. An account of truth that fails to accommodate either sort of apparent fact is inadequate. The account presented in this essay attempts to avoid this inadequacy by 'deflating' truth for propositions but 'inflating' truth for entities that express propositions, thus drawing from the insights of both deflationists and correspondence theorists. (shrink)

The bodies of non-White girls are hyper-visible in humanitarian discourses. This article engages in theoretical reflections around the articulation of Whiteness through the body of the third world girl. I curate and examine an archive of texts and visuals from menstrual hygiene and female genital mutilation (FGM) awareness campaigns to show how the figure of the third world girl is materialised simultaneously as deserving of care/protection and as a contaminant/imperfection. These apparently contradictory registers of legibility are possible due to (...) the reiteration of the non-White female body as ontologically dirty, incomplete and an imperfect representation of full humanity. The third world girl then is the constitutive outside of Whiteness, and her production as such conjoins humanitarian protection codes with penalising political regimes. The latter is reflected by new border patrolling initiatives in the US and UK, launched specifically to identify victims of FGM. Such exercises of state power craft racialised bodies for constant interrogation, prodding and, ultimately, ejection. These bodies then become the loci of benevolent necropower and experience slow social death. (shrink)

According to color realism, object colors are mind-independent properties that cover surfaces or permeate volumes of objects. In recent years, some color scientists and a growing number of philosophers have opposed this view on the grounds that realism about color cannot accommodate the apparent unitary/binary structure of the hues. For example, Larry Hardin asserts, the unitary-binary structure of the colors as we experience them corresponds to no known physical structure lying outside nervous systems that is causally involved in the (...) perception of color. This makes it very difficult to subscribe to a color realism that is supposed to be about red, green, blue, black, and white—that is, the colors with which we are perceptually acquainted.1 Similarly, Evan Thompson says. (shrink)

continent. 1.3 (2011): 208-212. … intervals of destructuring paradoxically carry the momentum for the ongoing process by which thought and perception are brought into relation toward transformative action. —Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation 1 Facing a blank canvas or blank page is a moment of pure potential, one that can be enervating or paralyzing. It causes a pause, a hesitation, in anticipation of the moment of inception—even of one that never comes. The implication is that the (...) blank is yours in that moment, and it calls on you to act on it, to think into it, to create on it. Each blank canvas gives you time, of an undefined length, to transform that canvas’ inherent potential into a work. This two-dimensional plane of potential can be projected into a space, which the body can then occupy. When you “destructure” a space in the same way, prepare it to be a blank, much as you build a canvas, you allow your entire body to enter the space of potential, and you rest in anticipation of work, like the hand poised above the page. Artists have found that the deliberate creation of that space of potential through sealing the space and painting it white, thereby erasing details and distractions, can be such a transformative experience as to help define their whole practice. The cessation of distraction, the absence of indicator that a “blanked” workspace provides allows for a new presence of mind, it gives them the room, literally, to move into their work, and from there to move their work into the world. The workspace for the artist, the studio, is often perceived as a lab-like condensation of the gallery or museum, the traditional and idealized white cube. Similarly, with the blank page, a concrete relation between space and time comes forward as the intentional simplification of the architecture changes behavior and perception within the space. The work of “blanking” the studio space is a meditative reduction, an erasure, and in a way, an attempt at drawing away from the world beyond the studio - the sealed space is meant to recede from reality, to become abstracted by its willed lack of details and distractions. Within that space the time for a new beginning is made more present, more attainable, and the focus it fosters becomes another tool to aid creation. At the formative moment of his artistic practice, Tom Friedman used the blank of his studio, saturated in white, sealed off from the world, to fight velocity. He describes how he projected his vision of the end goal, the museum - a place he believes to be defined by slow contemplation - onto his own studio experience. He then sat and reflected on common objects, one by one, framed by the blank box he had created. The domestic objects he brought into the space to study foreshadow his mature works, where often the quotidian object has a single additional element – his intense labor. Friedman makes discrete objects through absurdly intense and focused labor, epitomized, perhaps by his 1,000 hours of Staring , made from 1992-97: Tom Friedman. 1000 Hours of Staring (1992-1997) His labor, to use his own words, is his way to “bring all of who you are to the experience.” Friedman shares his labor, allows the slow, deliberate pace of his work born in the studio to penetrate the museum. Nothing seems effortless, or a gesture, the labor is apparent, displayed, and tangible. He gives us the labor, the personal investment in the physical that saved art for him, that divorced the work from the language he cites as a factor of alienation. When we see his work we do not see words, we see acts, we see objects. He has forced the studio as workspace into the exhibition space, as he stuffs hundreds of more hours of labor into his shows with each new piece, filling the space with material and labor, material and labor – his involvement, his investment, is his gift to us as the viewers, as he introduces the laborious and contemplative pace he feels belongs to the museum. He saves us also from the alienation of language, which first drove him into the sealed studio and away from the discourse of his school. He presents us with his real, the object which stands in stark contrast to the white slate of the studio, the sealed white box he started from, where his individual, self-contained objects begin and end, completed through the intensity of isolation, first of the individual artist, and then of the material he chooses to slowly, slowly, slowly work: Tom Friedman. Untitled (1992) In his in-depth analysis of galleries as a blank white cube, Brian O’Doherty emphasizes the religious connotations implied in the strict laws of the exhibition space and the valuation, aesthetics and elements of control he feels it imposes upon the work. Like Friedman, he recognizes the power of the restricted space – indicating the “perceptual fields of force” – that act on any object introduced into it. Going beyond Friedman’s assessment of the space as highly utilitarian for focusing his perception, O’Doherty emphasizes the rejection of the physical body of the artist or observer, saying that the cube allows for only observation - eyes and mind. He later parallels the picture frame as a psychological container for the artist with the room as the same for the observer. In both cases, this is an emphasis on the alienating nature of the relationship – just as the artist is kept out of the frame by the picture, in the gallery the art forces the body of the spectator out, calling for a self-referential purity. Patrick Ireland. White Cube (1998) O’Doherty makes a point of saying that the installation shot of the gallery without figures is “one of the icons of our visual culture.” In recent years, however, installation shots have begun to include figures, in some cases they are essential to understanding the scale and even the nature of the work, specifically with work that captures the experience of the space and the way that it varies from a white cube. The work of Olafur Eliasson is a case in point, as the Danish artist uses elements of scientific and natural phenomena to alter perception within the controlled gallery environment, tweaking and redirecting O’Doherty’s “perceptual fields of force” to make points about the act of seeing, or seeing yourself seeing, to quote the artist. This indicates a shift in the role of the artwork, not to exclude the body and stand discretely and self-sufficiently, but to include it, to manipulate it and to make the observer aware of the nature of that manipulation and the work’s ability to manipulate. Olafur Eliasson. 360º room for all colours (2002) So though in O’Doherty’s analysis, the intense blankness of the gallery pushed the observer out in favor of the artwork’s isolation, artists can replicate this inhumane sterility in their own workspace to focus their work on the influence of the gallery right from inception. This can be interpreted as an almost opposite understanding of the purpose of sealing and whitewashing the workspace as stated by Friedman. He sought a refuge from the critical language of the art school, and a space that, like the museum, gave him a protracted sense of time, and, he felt, welcomed him in, “to bring all of who you are,” as opposed to O’Doherty’s feeling that the museum was asking you, at least in body, to leave, and allow the work to take on its own life. Friedman does not seem to imply the tension with the cube and critical stance that O’Doherty prioritizes. Where Friedman finds a refuge, O’Doherty defines an opponent. In a third position, Robert Irwin describes his sealed studio space as “the world.” Though he made the same effort as Friedman to seal out all influences and distractions, he implies that he is in dialogue with the world through his own concentration and perception. This is reminiscent of the nature of the monad, as interpreted by Deleuze, a unity that envelops a multiplicity, a sealed container that contains the universe. He went through the same ritual described by Friedman, sealing up the space, painting it white, and then forcing himself to remain inside, staring at his own work, training his concentration relentlessly. But he found that the room became the distraction: …he became aware that a thin crack along the wall a few yards away from the canvas likewise exerted its presence; that when he plastered that crack over and repainted the wall, the canvas itself presented an entirely new aspect.2 The context was in a relentless dialogue with the work, and trying to neutralize that dialogue, to mute the conversation between space and object, became part of his ritual as he “fixed” his space each day in the hope of total concentration on the work. Ultimately, Irwin shaped the trajectory of his art by relinquishing the studio, establishing a post-studio practice, where the work is conceived and created out in the world, in dialogue with the world and reflective of the conditions it finds surrounding it. The white cube failed to ever achieve neutrality, his heightened concentration prevented him from ever neutralizing the space, so, instead of continuing to try to maintain the charade of a perfect blank, he acknowledged the unstoppable voice of place and turned all his efforts onto the object and the world, as a constant dialogue. Some artists push their studio space far from purity, domesticating it like a lair or a living room, and others destroy it, fill it with chaos or detritus, blacken or clutter it so as never to be starting from a blank, and thereby try to avoid the anxiety of facing that void. Similarly artists may never prepare a white canvas, a clean page, a marble block, or other form that is intentionally lacking, in order to try to escape the dialogue with emptiness. But Irwin, like O’Doherty, found an opponent in the white cube, and he learned not to fight it, rather he ended the conflict by making it an ally, an interlocutor, a collaborator. We can vainly strive to start from nothing, to find the lull, the clearing, and to always consider what we do in balance with the empty set. Somehow that intangible cloud of hazy nothingness, that softness of a lapse continually offers a place to bounce off of, to react to, to wrestle with, to rest with, in tension, or a place to begin. Robert Irwin. Excursus: Homage to the Square3 (1998) NOTES 1 Massumi. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. p271. 2 MOMA, NY. Eliasson, 360 ? Room for All Colours . Installation. 2002. (shrink)

The recent publication of a special number of the SAJP dedicated to a discussion of Samantha Vice’s thoughts on being a white South African prompted this reflection on justice, equity and the modern idea of the state – against the background of moral feelings of guilt and shame, cultural diversity and merging identities. Its aim is to provide a perspective on the unity of the public legal order of the state, the distinct meaning of citizenship and affirmative action in terms (...) of the distinction between constitutive and regulative legal principles also helping white South Africans to understand how affirmative action relates to injustices of the past. The classical understanding of equity will play a key role in this discussion, aimed at showing how we can avoid the apparent impasse of equality before the law and of “fair discrimination.”. (shrink)