The first volume presents a collection of papers in honor of the fiftieth birthday of Jean-Yves Béziau. These 25 papers have been written by internationally distinguished logicians, mathematicians, computer scientists, linguists and philosophers, including Arnon Avron, John Corcoran, Wilfrid Hodges, Laurence Horn, Lloyd Humbertsone, Dale Jacquette, David Makinson, Stephen Read, and Jan Woleński. It is a state-of-the-art source of cutting-edge studies in the new interdisciplinary field of universal logic. The papers touch upon a wide range of topics including combination of (...) logic, non-classical logic, square and other geometrical figures of opposition, categorical logic, set theory, foundation of logic, philosophy and history of logic (Aristotle, Avicenna, Buridan, Schröder, MacColl). This book offers new perspectives and challenges in the study of logic and will be of interest to all students and researchers interested the nature and future of logic. (shrink)

The challenge of Levinas to psychoanalysis -- Responsibility for the other -- The horror of existence -- Love without lust -- Eroticism and family love -- Making suffering sufferable -- Religion without promises -- Towards a Levinasian-animated, ethically-infused psychoanalysis.

Being for Beauty: Aesthetic Agency and Value. By LopesDominic McIver.

The category of being-for-self is central for the whole of Hegel's system. It is the category of wholeness, what Hegel calls the true infinite; and, in the preface to the Phänomenologie he has identified the truth as the whole in its self-generation, which is what the entire system of his philosophy presents. The exposition of this category in the Logic is therefore of singular importance, yet it is by no means easy to follow. Although we may be able to (...) understand how Hegel reaches this category, how it emerges from determinate being, the subcategories into which it evolves, and the transition to quantity that it presages, present nosmall difficulty. (shrink)

Expressivism - the sophisticated contemporary incarnation of the noncognitivist research program of Ayer, Stevenson, and Hare - is no longer the province of metaethicists alone. Its comprehensive view about the nature of both normative language and normative thought has also recently been applied to many topics elsewhere in philosophy - including logic, probability, mental and linguistic content, knowledge, epistemic modals, belief, the a priori, and even quantifiers. Yet the semantic commitments of expressivism are still poorly understood and have not been (...) very far developed. As argued within, expressivists have not yet even managed to solve the "negation problem" - to explain why atomic normative sentences are inconsistent with their negations. As a result, it is far from clear that expressivism even could be true, let alone whether it is. Being For seeks to evaluate the semantic commitments of expressivism, by showing how an expressivist semantics would work, what it can do, and what kind of assumptions would be required, in order for it to do it. Building on a highly general understanding of the basic ideas of expressivism, it argues that expressivists can solve the negation problem - but only in one kind of way. It shows how this insight paves the way for an explanatorily powerful, constructive expressivist semantics, which solves many of what have been taken to be the deepest problems for expressivism. But it also argues that no account with these advantages can be generalized to deal with constructions like tense, modals, or binary quantifiers. Expressivism, the book argues, is coherent and interesting, but false. (shrink)

One of the aims of Matthew Boyle’s book is to provide a defense of the view that the capacity for self-knowledge is of radical significance in virtue of the fact that it transforms the nature of human cognition in general. In Boyle’s view, our engagement with the world is always already an implicitly self-conscious engagement. In this sense, the being of humans is, in Sartre’s terminology, a “being-for-itself”. This fact is meant to explain the possibility of reflective self-knowledge (...) as well as to vindicate the general soundness of our self-understanding as self-determined beings. In the first part of this paper, I am inviting Boyle to say more about how his account of implicit (nonpositional) self-awareness avoids the problem of over-intellectualizing while at the same time characterizing a specifically human capacity. In the second part of the paper, I argue that self-consciousness can only be understood in relation to intersubjectivity; hence our being is not just a “being-for-itself”, but most and foremost a “being-for-others” (or better: “being-with-others”). Finally, in the third part of the paper, I discuss some implications for challenges to the soundness of the first-person perspective. (shrink)

This article examines CURE Children’s Hospital of Uganda (CURE), a faith-based pediatric neurosurgery hospital in Sub-Saharan Africa, as a unique nexus of Western biomedical and holistic-spiritual healthcare in their philosophy, staff motivation, and delivery. Offering the concept of a healing narrative, the essential core of their practice is captured, I suggest, in the articulation and practice of a healing narrative of human flourishing, and we might productively think of the ethics of their clinical approach as premised on being with (...) the patient, understood as mutual vulnerability and attending to suffering, and being for the patient, understood as advocating joy within and beyond the clinic. Extrapolating from this case study, the ideas being with and being for might be added to our clinical ethical practices and lexicon as we think through alternatives to a fragmented, compartmentalized biomedical care. (shrink)

For centuries, philosophers have identified beauty with what brings pleasure. Dominic McIver Lopes challenges this interpretation by offering an entirely new theory of beauty - that beauty engages us in action, in concert with others, in the context of social networks - and sheds light on why aesthetic engagement is crucial for quality of life.

Expressivism is the view that normative claims express nondescriptive, practical attitudes. It is widely assumed that this involves denying that normative claims express beliefs, except in a minimal or deflationary sense. However, this assumption is increasingly being called into question. Instead, it is argued, expressivists can and should provide a robust, nondescriptive theory of belief in general which can explain the difference between ordinary descriptive beliefs and nondescriptive normative beliefs. This paper examines one such an attempt due to Mark (...) Schroeder who provides a theory of belief as being for. I argue that the theory fails to deliver on its primary aim: to distinguish between descriptive and nondescriptive beliefs. Accordingly, I conclude that the theory should be rejected as it stands. (shrink)

Can there be phenomenal consciousness without self-consciousness? Strong intuitions and prominent theories of consciousness say “no”: experience requires minimal self-awareness, or “subjectivity”. This “subjectivity principle” faces apparent counterexamples in the form of anomalous mental states claimed to lack self-consciousness entirely, such as “inserted thoughts” in schizophrenia and certain mental states in depersonalization disorder. However, Billon & Kriegel have defended SP by arguing that while some of these mental states may be totally selfless, those states are not phenomenally conscious and thus (...) do not constitute genuine counterexamples to SP. I argue that this defence cannot work in relation to certain experiences of ego dissolution induced by potent fast-acting serotonergic psychedelics. These mental states jointly instantiate the two features whose co-instantiation by a single mental state SP prohibits: phenomenal consciousness and total lack of self-consciousness. One possible objection is that these mental states may lack “me-ness” and “mineness” but cannot lack “for-me-ness”, a special inner awareness of mental states by the self. In response I propose a dilemma. For-me-ness can be defined either as containing a genuinely experiential component or as not. On the first horn, for-me-ness is clearly absent from my counterexamples. On the second horn, for-me-ness has been defined in a way that conflicts with the claims and methods of its proponents, and the claim that phenomenally conscious mental states can totally lack self-consciousness has been conceded. I conclude with some reflections on the intuitive plausibility of SP in light of evidence from altered states. (shrink)

Shelly Kagan notices in a recent, influential paper how philosophers of well-being tend to neglect ill-being—the part of the theory of well-being that tells us what is bad in itself for subjects—and explains why we need to give it more attention. This paper does its part by addressing the question, If desire satisfaction is good, what is the corresponding bad? The two most discussed ill-being options for theories on which desire satisfaction is a basic good are (...) the Frustration View and the Aversion View. I aim to show that the Frustration View is more plausible than Kagan and others think; to introduce and evaluate two additional desire-oriented theories of ill-being worth considering, the Pluralist View and the Deflationary View; and to present a new line of argument for the Aversion View. (shrink)

Book Review of Being for Beauty: Aesthetic Agency and Value, by Dominic McIver Lopes. This review summarizes the book's main thread of argument and Lopes' positive view, which he dubs the "network theory". It ends by reflecting on whether Lopes' account of aesthetic normativity is ultimately satisfactory.

Many philosophers now see meaning in life as a key evaluative category that stands alongside well-being and moral goodness. Our lives are assessed not only by how well they go for us and how morally good they are, but also by their meaningfulness. In this article, I raise a challenge to this view. Theories of meaning in life closely resemble theories of well-being, and there is a suspicion that the former collapse into the latter. I develop this challenge (...) showing that it is formidable. I then answer it by offering a novel account of what meaning in life is and how it differs from well-being. The account I offer is able to resist the strongest form of the challenge while also having much intuitive appeal. (shrink)

I discuss Thomas Aquinas’ views on being, power, and logic, and show how together they provide rebuttals against certain principal objections to the notion of divine omnipotence. The objections I have in mind can be divided into the two classes. One says that the notion of omnipotence ends up in self-contradiction. The other says that it ends up contradicting certain doctrines of traditional theism. Thomas’ account is frequently misunderstood to be a version of what I call a ‘consistent description’ (...) account of omnipotence, which is a standard contemporary account. That account of omnipotence, however, succumbs to certain contemporary objections. Thomas’ account withstands those objections because of his view of logic and, specifically self-contradiction. Moreover, a certain thesis found in Thomas’ understanding of God, but almost entirely absent from contemporary debates about omnipotence, is that God is not just a being, but the source of being. This thesis, I argue, puts Thomas’ account in a position that differs greatly from many contemporary accounts since the scope of possibility, and specifically the scope of what possible powers there are, is ultimately grounded in God’s being. Further still, many contemporary accounts of omnipotence do not seek to establish substantive account of power itself. Thomas, by contrast, has a robust and independent account of what power is. And that account informs his account of what it is to have all powers, or to be omnipotent, in a way that makes his account resistant to contemporary objections. Against contemporary objections, Thomas’ account of omnipotence can sustain the claim that God can do all things. (shrink)

A neo-phenomenological and atmospherological approach, mainly based on a first-person perspective, seems perfectly entitled to consider subjective and collective well-being as the starting point for a philosophical reflection. The question is, however, whether and how well-being, also as an atmosphere, can be really investigated and verified. The paper examines many traditional roblems hindering the research and suggests to analyze well-being from a pathic-atmospheric point of view. It therefore focuses especially on the idea of “flow”, wonders how much (...) our well-being depends on the felt-bodily resonances triggered by atmospheric situations, considers the probable parallels between the aesthetic-phenomenologic notion of “atmosphere” and the sociological one of “climate”, finally, underlines the need of an atmospheric competence that is able to partly immunize against today’s widespread manipulative atmospherization. (shrink)

Schroeder argues that proponents of expressivism “have far more work to do before it can earn its place as the sort of hypothesis on which rational investigators can place any significant credence” (p. 179). Expressivists certainly have more work to do, but I hope my comments demonstrate that their situation might not be as bad as Schroeder believes. There is more reason than Schroeder allows for thinking it is possible to develop a plausible alternative to his version of expressivism that (...) avoids its problems. Of course, I have only sketched a possible way of doing so. The devil is, as always, in the details. As Schroeder correctly concludes, any alternative will need to be worked out much more fully to properly evaluate it (p. 187). Being For sets an impressive standard for the level of detail required. (shrink)

This paper challenges the widely held view that ‘good for’, ‘well-being’, and related terms express a distinctive evaluative concept of central importance for ethics and separate from ‘simply good’ as used by G. E. Moore and others. More specifically, it argues that there's no philosophically useful good-for or well-being concept that's neither merely descriptive in the sense of naturalistic nor reducible to ‘simply good’. The paper distinguishes two interpretations of the common claim that the value ‘good for’ expresses (...) is distinctively ‘subject-relative’. One concerns the ground of this value, or the properties that make something good for you; it says these must involve some relation to you. The other concerns the resulting value itself, or what supervenes on this ground; it says that too involves a relation. Neither interpretation, the paper argues, yields a significantly distinct evaluative concept. The ethically fundamental evaluative concept is just ‘simply good’. (shrink)

In this paper, I pay tribute to Jonathan Webber, one of the most dependable interpreters among recent Sartre scholars. I do so by challenging both him and Sartre on an issue that has long frustrated my work on Sartre. In short, Sartre contends that the For-itself’s desire to be Being-in-itself-for-itself is in bad faith. This raises two issues: Is this desire to be ens causa sui part of the ontological structure of the For-itself? If so, is bad faith an (...) essential part of the human being? I contend that the desire to be the In-itself-for-itself is, on Sartre’s premises, part of the ontological structure of an existing human being. As our original flight from freedom and “fundamental project,” this constitutes bad faith’s “coming into the world,” and remains part of Being-for-itself’s “natural” disposition to bad faith. (shrink)

Through the exponential growth in digital devices and computational capabilities, big data technologies are putting pressure upon the boundaries of what can or cannot be considered acceptable from an ethical perspective. Much of the literature on ethical issues related to big data and big data technologies focuses on separate values such as privacy, human dignity, justice or autonomy. More holistic approaches, allowing a more comprehensive view and better balancing of values, usually focus on either a design-based approach, in which it (...) is tried to implement values into the design of new technologies, or an application-based approach, in which it is tried to address the ways in which new technologies are used. Some integrated approaches do exist, but typically are more general in nature. This offers a broad scope of application, but may not always be tailored to the specific nature of big data related ethical issues. In this paper we distil a comprehensive set of ethical values from existing design-based and application-based ethical approaches for new technologies and further focus these values to the context of emerging big data technologies. A total of four value lists were selected for this. The integrated list consists of a total of ten values: human welfare, autonomy, non-maleficence, justice, accountability, trustworthiness, privacy, dignity, solidarity and environmental welfare. Together, this set of values provides a comprehensive and in-depth overview of the values that are to be taken into account for emerging big data technologies. (shrink)

In this chapter, I explicate several general views and arguments that bear on the notion and contemporary theories of human welfare, as found in two foundational Daoist texts, the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi. Ideas drawn from the Daodejing include its objections to desire theories of human welfare and its distinction between natural and acquired desires. Insights drawn from the Zhuangzi include its arguments against the view that death is bad for the dead, its attempt to develop a workable theory of (...) well-being for those who are skeptical about such theories, and the prudential benefits of what I call "philosophical double-vision.". (shrink)

"Presents, and in part develops, a systematic philosophy as the universal science, or the theorization of the unrestricted universe of discourse, explicitly including being as such and as a whole. Argues that complete exploration of the theoretical domain requires such a science"--Provided by publisher.

The intimate connection, within Christianity, of theology and ethics is invoked, and the ethical differences between Christian denominations are exposed, as they present themselves inMellon's case studies, in order to call attention to the unsolvable dilemma in which hospital chaplains find themselves, if they understand their role in a merely conciliatory fashion as that of a “comforter, mediator, educator, ethicist, and counselor”. As witnessed by the Calvinist and Anabaptist traditions Mellon introduces, concepts such as “the patient's good” can mean radically (...) different things in these theological contexts. Attempting to merely mediate between such positions in a spirit of merely generic prayer and on the basis of a merely psychological notion of well-being poses a risk to chaplains' spiritual integrity and faithfulness to their mission. (shrink)

The book under review is found to be peerless in its quality as an offering in its niche. This collection also surpasses its predecessor-volume, Beyond Animal Rights, in being open to rights discourse. The call for an ethic that embodies what Marti Kheel calls a "unity of reason and emotion" rings as true today as ever. Yet the new version still carries unsustainable stereotypes about rights. Simply depending on empathy or sympathy is an insufficient guide for ethics. Caring about (...) seeking the good and avoiding the bad is suggested as a partial route for the development of this problematic ethic of care family of theories in animal ethics. (shrink)

The job of being a sports team physician is difficult, regardless of the level, from high school to the National Football League. When a sports league receives the intensity of attention leveled at the NFL, though, a difficult occupation becomes even more challenging. Even for the NFL players themselves, players’ best interests regarding health issues are often unclear. Football players are, as a lot, highly competitive individuals. They want to win, and they want to help the team win. It's (...) a warrior culture, and respect is earned by playing hurt. Should the team physician respect a player's autonomy when this means allowing him to make choices that might lead to further personal harm, especially if the player's choices align with the preference of the coach and management? Or should the doctor set limits and balance the player's choices with a paternalistic set of constraints, perhaps in opposition to both the player's and the team's desires? Simplification of this web of conflicts of interest is the goal of the model proposed by Glenn Cohen, Holly Lynch, and Christopher Deubert. In my view, their proposal is very clever. As an idea, it meets the expectations its authors set, namely, to minimize the problem of conflict of interest in the delivery of health care services to NFL football players. The ethics of the proposal align well with certain moral goals, like treating the player's interests more fairly and treating the player's health as an end instead of as the means to an end. But will such a proposal ever make headway in the pressurized environment of the NFL? (shrink)

Finding true love is a journey of transformation obstructed by numerous psychological obstacles. _Being in Love_ expands the traditional field of psychoanalytic couple therapy, and explores therapeutic methods of working through the obstacles leading to true love. Becoming who we are is an inherently relational journey: we uncover our truest nature and become most authentically real through the difficult and fearful, yet transformative intersubjective crucibles of our intimate relationships. In this book, Judith Pickering draws comparisons between Bion's concept of becoming (...) in O, and being in love. She searches for pathways that lead away from relational confusion towards the discovery of genuine transformational relationships, and works towards finding better ways of relating to one another. This is achieved by encouraging couples to enjoy the actual presence, humanity, otherness and particularity of each other rather than expecting a partner to conform to our own expectations, projections, desires and presuppositions. Pickering draws on clinical material, contemporary psychoanalysis, cultural themes from the worlds of mythology and literature, and a wealth of therapeutic techniques in this fresh approach to couple therapy. _Being in Love_ will therefore interest students and practitioners of psychoanalysis, psychology, and couple therapy, as well as all of those seeking to be more authentic in their relationships. (shrink)

Yve Lomax is a remarkable artist and writer, who has established a practice of writing that is unique within contemporary Fine Art. Her work has helped to establish a new discipline of Art Writing, which provides a particular space for a critical and analytical approach to writing within contemporary art. Passionate Being, as Anne Tallentire observes, "is both a culmination of and a departure from previous work," including her two earlier books for Tauris. Written through both the first and (...) second person singular, Passionate Being takes its author and its reader on a journey that has them thinking of their experience of and belonging to language. At its beginning, it brings to its author the question "What can you say?" The responses that ensue turn our attention toward presupposition and about how "singularity" can be said. The book also brings into play the work of other theorists, notably Giorgio Agamben. It asks us to view both language and the world taking-place without presupposition, revealing both the political implications, and those for living, that this vision holds. It is a work to be read twice with pleasure, and then again. (shrink)

Policy-makers sometimes aim to improve well-being as a policy goal, but to do this they need some way to measure well-being. Instead of relying on potentially problematic theories of well-being to justify their choice of well-being measure, Daniel Hausman proposes that policy-makers can sometimes rely on preference-based measures as evidence for well-being. I claim that Hausman’s evidential account does not justify the use of any one measure more than it justifies the use of any other (...) measure. This leaves us at a loss as to which policy should be chosen in the non-trivial cases for which there is substantial disagreement between the different measures in their assessment of policy. (shrink)

The article focuses on the ontological foundations of lifeworld as Being taken for granted and viewed as a communication phenomenon par excellence, conceptualized as signifying in the presence of others. It is argued that, because there is always a wider horizon of experience against which anything can appear, lifeworld as something continuous can only be thematized in discrete scientific forms. In the article, lifeworld is discussed through the perspectives of four different sciences. From the natural science perspective, lifeworld is (...) conceptualized as an arrangement contingent on the interconnections of human and nonhuman beings. It takes the form of conversation and can be best examined by Conversation Analysis. From the social science perspective, lifeworld is conceptualized as an order that is constituted by symbolic interactions and guided by relevant types and rules that structure our experience. It takes the form of intersubjective action as a meaningful back and forth and can be best examined by Discourse Analysis. From the cultural sciences perspective, lifeworld is the realm of spirit passed from generation to generation that gives human culture its meaning. It takes the form of significant expressions and can be best examined by Textual Hermeneutic Analysis. And, from the philosophical perspective, lifeworld is constituted by phenomena that appear, or monstrate themselves, to consciousness. This lifeworld is of absolute reversibility and immediacy and can be best examined by Critical Analysis, i.e., by postulating our relation to any object through contemplation. Thus, as Being, lifeworld is said in many ways, each lifeworld being relevant in its own way by providing a valuable resource – physico-biological, normative, significational, and transcendental. (shrink)

Why do we act as we do? Why do we assume that the way of being and behaving in our community is right, good, and common sense? Why do we fail to understand those who are, act, and feel differently? These are some of the questions that this book raises and attempts to answer. This ontology is rooted in the phenomenological tradition but with the innovation of taking the "form of life" as the central ontological unit. We are our (...) form of life, but, as a transcendental-immanent reality, this is not directly equivalent to culture or society; it is rather the "political" realisation in the world of an image of the human being shared by a given community. This overcomes the traditional dualities of individual and society, consciousness and body, facticity and freedom, actuality and possibility. The subject is a subject because it identifies with that image, which is equivalent to the intersubjective consciousness of how one should act and be in the world. This gives rise to multiple forms of life. The latter implies a certain power to be who one wants to be. In this way, the book is an invitation to self-examination, for if our form of life is voluntary (i.e., capitalism), it shatters the illusion that one cannot live in any other way, and places us before the anguished but inevitable task of justifying its adoption or resorting to its abandonment. The book offers a dynamic analysis of human existence as the actualisation of a form of life that is, at the same time, the exercise of a certain power over those who seek to live otherwise, especially when that form is institutionalised by a government as the essence of the national or transnational community. (shrink)

The present work finds in Heidegger's 'being towards death' the basis for theological-philosophical thinking. Only the one who embraces 'being towards death' has the courage to think and poetize. This thinking, in turn, makes 'being towards death' possible, and in this circular movement of thinking and being the mystery of being reveals itself and yet remains hidden. In other words, the work describes the human response to the divine gift that precedes every human initiation.

Metaphysical inquiry is indebted to the sceptical dialectic for the earlier moments in its investigation. Through that dialectic the field is cleared of the dubitable. We shall here install Descartes' first Meditation as the initial moment in our program. What if all is a dream? Hume supplies our second moment. Immediate experience, such as sensations of color, is undeniable, and that alone. Our third moment is the familiar retrenchment of Hume to a solipsism of the present instant. The past, like (...) the external world, being removed from our direct perception cannot be verified. (shrink)

In his investigation of the concept of "Being", Aristotle relates the question of "existence" to the question "essence" and considers essence as "whatness" and quiddity. Although in his logical discussions he treats the concepts of "existence" and "whatness" separately and makes a distinction between them, but does not extend this distinction to the area of philosophical topics. But in the prepatetic Islamic system of Philosophy, explanation and distinction between "Being" and "quidity" is without doubt one of the most (...) fundamental philosophical doctrines and beliefs. In the history of Islamic philosophy, the theory of metaphysical distinction between being and essence has been attributed to Ibn Sina, but it is Farabi who for the first time has propounded clearly and decisively a two – part division between "being" and "quiddity" and has prepared the way for Avecinian philosophy. In addition to his logical distinction between "existence" and "whatness" of things he has stressed on a metaphysical distinction between them and has made this distinction the foundation of his metaphysical system. From Farabi's view, being is an inherent accident of quiddity. In this article we try to explain the concepts of "existence" and "whatness" of things and their relation as one of the most fundamental topics in prepatetic philosophy in the philosophical thought of these two great prepatetic philosophers, ie Aristotle and Farabi, with specific stress on comparing their views. (shrink)

It is often maintained that participants in inter-religious dialogue will benefit from increased access to other perspectives that deepens understanding of their own tradition and the traditions of others, but this is rarely examined empirically and with attention to bringing the human sciences into conversation with theological thinking about dialogue. Drawing on theory and methods from social network analysis, this research conceptualized inter-religious dialogue as a communication network and investigated the impact of differences in access to communication flows on dialogue (...) participants. Interviews with those most connected and those least connected showed differences in the characterization of dialogue experiences, relationships to the home community, and the ability to recognize similarities and differences and to engage in perspective-taking. Hubs were more freely able to migrate into the experiences and practices of the dialogue partners tradition, while being rooted in their home tradition. This research highlights the importance of the network perspective for studying dialogue as a relational and community practice and offers a description of the unique experiences and capacities of network hubs situated in the middle. It also underscores the way in which theological and human scientific analyses can interact in a complementary and enriching way. (shrink)

Cybernetic-Existentialism: Freedom, Systems, and Being-for-Others in Contemporary Art and Performance offers a unique discourse and an original aesthetic theory. It argues that fusing perspectives from the philosophy of Existentialism with insights from the 'universal science' of cybernetics provides a new analytical lens and deconstructive methodology to critique art. In this study, Steve Dixon examines how a range of artists' works reveal the ideas of Existentialist philosophers including Kierkegaard, Camus, de Beauvoir and Sartre on freedom, being and nothingness, eternal (...) recurrence, the absurd, and being-for-others. Simultaneously, these artworks are shown to engage in complex explorations of concepts proposed by cyberneticians including Wiener, Shannon, and Bateson on information theory and 'noise', feedback loops, circularity, adaptive ecosystems, autopoiesis, and emergence. Dixon's ground-breaking book demonstrates how fusing insights and knowledge from these two fields can throw new light on pressing issues within contemporary arts and culture, including authenticity, angst and alienation, homeostasis, radical politics, and the human as system. (shrink)

The poet speaks in a particular way that can “bring things to nearness”. This particular way of bringing things to nearness may have some useful implications for understanding human well-being. Sometimes I have noticed that, when I read a poem that really “speaks to me”, the poetic language puts me in touch with well-being in a very palpable way, and this has brought me to wonder about this question: What is it that is taking place in a much (...) loved poem that can bring me close to a felt sense of well-being? This paper will draw upon some philosophical insights from the writings of Heidegger and Gendlin to explore what poetry opens up and holds in order to speak of well-being. What is it about poetry that is adequate to hold the deepest roots of hearing with the fullness of what is speaking? Heidegger’s later ideas about the essence of language and its non-representational power held within the unity of “the fourfold” may be helpful here. And what is it about poetry that can open up worlds, open us to sensation, and carry us beyond the literal words into the experience of well-being? Gendlin’s ideas concerning “thinking beyond patterns” and “carrying forward” may illuminate how poetry holds open what other language cuts off for us. The paper will conclude by pointing to poetry as a crucial form of adequate human discourse that is up to the task of understanding well-being and is therefore highly relevant to health and social care. (shrink)