Vagueness is commonly presented as natural language imprecise meaning that is analyzed as borderline cases and formalized in various ways by ‘classical’ theories of vagueness. A different approach to vagueness is presented here, adopting Dascal’s notion of ‘soft rationality’ and interpreting it as the use of ‘similarity’ rather than ‘analysis’ for the understanding of natural language terms. Soft rationality is suggested as a theory of vagueness that remains within the realm of intensionality, rather than seeking a (...) formalized extensional explanation to vagueness. (shrink)

This thesis problematises the bases of soft power, that is, causal mechanisms connecting the agent (A) and the subject (B) of a power relationship. As the literature review reveals, their underspecification by neoliberal IR scholars, the leading proponents of the soft power concept, has caused a great deal of scholarly confusion over such questions as how to clearly differentiate between hard and soft power, how attraction (soft power’s primary mechanism) works and what roles structural and relational (...) forces play in hard/soft power. In an effort to ascertain the bases, I address this issue not from the viewpoint of A’s policies or resources, like do IR neoliberal scholars, but in terms of B’s psychological perception of A. Employing social psychological accounts, I argue that attraction can be produced in three distinct ways, namely 1) through B’s identification with A (“emotional” attraction), 2) via B’s appreciation of A’s competence/knowledge in a particular field (“rational” attraction) and 3) by means of the activation of B’s internalised values which contextually prescribe B to act in A’s favour (“social” attraction). Importantly, depending upon the way attraction is produced, it is peculiar in a number of characteristics, the main of which are power scope, weight and durability. Insights from social psychology also show that unlike soft power, hard power requires not only B’s relevant perception of the A-B relationship (as coercive or rewarding), but also A’s capability to actualise a threat of punishment and/or a promise of reward. I argue this difference can be fairly treated as definitional rather than empirical, which implies that coercion and reward necessarily have both relational and structural dimensions, whereas for attraction, a structural one alone suffices, while a relational one may or may not be present. Having explicated the soft power bases, I illustrate each of them using three “most likely” case studies, namely Serbia’s policies towards Russia (emotional attraction), Kazakhstan’s approach to relations with the EU (rational attraction) and Germany’s policies vis-à-vis Israel (social attraction). (shrink)

Constraints and dependencies among the elements of embodied cognition form patterns or microstrategies of interactive behavior. Hard constraints determine which microstrategies are possible. Soft constraints determine which of the possible microstrategies are most likely to be selected. When selection is non-deliberate or automatic the least effort microstrategy is chosen. In calculating the effort required to execute a microstrategy each of the three types of operations, memory retrieval, perception, and action, are given equal weight; that is, perceptual-motor activity does not (...) have a privileged status with respect to memory. Soft constraints can work contrary to the designer's intentions by making the access of perfect knowledge in-the-world more effortful than the access of imperfect knowledge in-the-head. These implications of soft constraints are tested in two experiments. In experiment 1 we varied the perceptual-motor effort of accessing knowledge in-the-world as well as the effort of retrieving items from memory. In experiment 2 we replicated one of the experiment 1 conditions to collect eye movement data. The results suggest that milliseconds matter. Soft constraints lead to a reliance on knowledge in-the-head even when the absolute difference in perceptual-motor versus memory retrieval effort is small, and even when relying on memory leads to a higher error rate and lower performance. We discuss the implications of soft constraints for routine interactive behavior, accounts of embodied cognition, and tool and interface design. (shrink)

The paper advances a realist analytical model for case studies of national soft power policies. First, it argues that for the purposes of realist analysis, a soft power policy must be considered as a rational strategy pursued under the conditions of competition. Furthermore, it emphasises the importance of taking into account the specificities of the recipient state as well as the fact that a soft power strategy is targeted at both its elite and its public. In addition, (...) the article substantiates the necessity to draw a clear-cut distinction between soft power sources and instruments and shows possible shortcomings that research can have should this distinction fail to be made. Finally, the paper discusses the impact of a competitor’s presence on a soft power strategy and specifies the terms under which disregarding this impact may engender a wrong conclusion. (shrink)

According to rational will views of paternalism, the wrongmaking feature of paternalism is that paternalists disregard or fail to respect the rational will of the paternalized, in effect substituting their own presumably superior judgments about what ends the paternalized ought to pursue or how they ought to pursue them. Here I defend a version of the rational will view appealing to three rational powers that constitute rational agency, which I call recognition, discrimination, and satisfaction. By appealing to these powers, my (...) version of the rational will view can rank the wrongfulness of paternalistic acts in terms of the extent to which such acts (a) amount to supplanting the paternalized individual’s identity as a rational agent with that of the paternalist, and (b) the degree of mistrust the paternalistic act shows in the paternalized individual’s rational agency. My rational powers account thus provides a more complete account of why paternalism is a powerful, but not decisive or absolute, objection to an act or policy. My rational powers account also provides powerful explanations of why rational suasion deflects charges of paternalism; why consenting to intercessions in one’s rational agency negates paternalism; why we ordinarily believe that strong paternalism is more objectionable than weak paternalism; and why we ordinarily believe that hard paternalism is more objectionable than soft paternalism. (shrink)

The authors wish that the psychology of human decision making should borrow methodological rigor from economics. However, unless economics also borrows from psychology this poses a danger of overly limiting the phenomena studied. In fact, an expanded economic theory should be sought that is based in psychology (and ultimately neuroscience) and encompasses both rational and irrational aspects of decision making.

A controversy rages over the question of how should controversial topics be taught. Recent work has advanced the “epistemic criterion” as the resolution to this controversy. According to the epistemic criterion, a matter should be taught as controversial when contrary views can be entertained on the matter without the views being contrary to reason. When an issue is noncontroversial, according to the epistemic criterion, the correct position can be taught “directively,” with the teacher endorsing that position. When there is a (...) legitimate controversy, the view should be taught “nondirectively,” with the teacher remaining neutral. In response, Bryan Warnick and Spencer Smith argue that the proponents of the epistemic criterion fail to recognize the multidimensional nature of what it means to learn to be rational. Recognizing this complexity undermines the link between the epistemic status of the controversy and directiveness of one's teaching, suggesting more flexibility in how teachers approach controversial issues. It also implies the need for a new category of teaching, which Warnick and Smith call “soft-directive” teaching. (shrink)

Significance testing is the primary method for establishing causal relationships in psychology. Meehl [1978, 1990a, 1990b] and Faust [1984] argue that significance tests and their interpretation are subject to actuarial and psychological biases, making continued adherence to these practices irrational, and even partially responsible for the slow progress of the ‘soft’ areas of psychology. I contend that familiar standards of testing and literature review, along with recently developed meta-analytic techniques, are able to correct the proposed actuarial and psychological biases. (...) In particular, psychologists embrace a principle of robustness which states that real psychological effects are (1) reproducible by similar methods, (2) detectable by diverse means, and (3) able to survive theoretical integration. By contrast, spurious significant findings perish under the strain of persistent tests of their robustness. The resulting vindication of significance testing confers on the world a role in determining the rationality of a method, and also affords us an explanation for the fast progress of ‘hard’ areas of psychology. *I would like to thank Dick Boyd and Phil Gasper for helpful comments on the ideas presented here. (shrink)

In a recent paper, under the auspices of an unorthodox variety of bilateralism, we introduced a new kind of proof-theoretic semantics for the base modal logic \(\mathbf{K}\), whose values lie in the closed interval \([0,1]\) of rational numbers [14]. In this paper, after clarifying our conception of bilateralism – dubbed “soft bilateralism” – we generalize the fractional method to encompass extensions and weakenings of \(\mathbf{K}\). Specifically, we introduce well-behaved hypersequent calculi for the deontic logic \(\mathbf{D}\) and the non-normal modal (...) logics \(\mathbf{E}\) and \(\mathbf{M}\) and thoroughly investigate their structural properties. (shrink)

Dascal’s position on scientific controversies is submitted to a critical examination. It is pointed out that his distinction between knowledge and understanding, between ‘hard rationality’ and ‘soft rationality’ is unlikely to survive sustained critical probing. What is egregiously missing in his approach is a recognition of the role of so-called ‘sociology of knowledge’ in the way scientific controversies play out. It is argued that, insofar as they constitute pragmatic events, scientific controversies cannot be studied properly without taking (...) into account their inalienable sociological dimension. (shrink)

In this chapter, the author uses the film Minority Report as a means of reflecting on the age‐old topic of free will. Traditionally, having free will is thought to require two things: alternate possibilities and self‐control. Soft determinism is the view that determinism is true, and yet we have free will anyway. It is not rational to embrace hard determinism, since hard determinism, in conjunction with norms implicit in reasoning, leads to a conclusion that rationally undermines hard determinism itself. (...) A determinist (hard or soft) would instead interpret minority reports as evidence of the pre‐cogs’ fallibility ‐ perhaps the future is predetermined, but sometimes one of the pre‐cogs makes a mistake about what is going to happen. One might take this as grounds for abandoning the Precrime system ‐ until one remembers that any criminal justice system is fallible. (shrink)

Ambivalence of desire and action in light of it are ordinary human engagements and yet received conceptions of desire and action deny that such action is possible. This paper contains an analysis of the possibility of fertile ambivalent compromises conjointly with a reconstruction of (Davidsonian) basic rationality and of action-desire relations. It is argued that the Aristotelian practical syllogism ought not to be conceived as paralysing the ambivalent agent. The practical syllogism makes compromise behaviour possible, including compromise action in (...) the strong sense of acting to satisfy both of one's contrary desires at once. One's action can to a certain extent fulfil both desires by not exactly satisfying either. In showing this, attitudes including desires are analysed in terms of a soft identity, according to which they are both defined by concrete interlinkages with other attitudes and actual and possible behaviour, and transcend any such connections. In particular, not only do desires have a range, but rather the relation of desire and fulfilment is such that to want something allows a wider range as to what counts as fulfilment. (shrink)

We explore the question of whether sustained rational disagreement is possible from a broadly Bayesian perspective. The setting is one where agents update on the same information, with special consideration being given to the case of uncertain information. The classical merging of opinions theorem of Blackwell and Dubins shows when updated beliefs come and stay closer for Bayesian conditioning. We extend this result to a type of Jeffrey conditioning where agents update on evidence that is uncertain but solid (hard Jeffrey (...) shifts). However, merging of beliefs does not generally hold for Jeffrey conditioning on evidence that is fluid (soft Jeffrey shifts, Field shifts). Several theorems on the asymptotic behavior of subjective probabilities are proven. Taken together they show that while a consensus nearly always emerges in important special cases, sustained rational disagreement can be expected in many other situations. (shrink)

Concomitant with the rise of rationalizing accountability in higher education has been an increase in theoretical reflection about the forms accountability has taken and the ones it should take. The literature is now peppered by a wide array of distinctions (e.g. internal/external, inward/ outward, vertical/horizontal, upward/downward, professional/public, political/economic, soft/ hard, positive/negative), to the point that when people speak of ‘accountability’ they risk speaking past one another, having some of these distinctions in mind and not others. Furthermore, often these distinctions (...) are vague and cross-cut each other in ways that are as yet unclear. The field could benefit from having a comprehensive framework in which to place these distinctions and to view their relations. My aim in this article is to provide an analytical tool by which to classify important debate about what accountability in higher education has been and ought to be. Beyond organizing such debate, this schema will serve the purposes of revealing ambiguities in terms, conflations of ideas, assumptions that warrant questioning, and gaps in present research agendas. (shrink)

On Kant's view, we are rational beings who are morally responsible for our actions. The main goal of this paper is to show that this Kantian view of ourselves is not undermined by the Manipulation Argument, which is currently the biggest challenge to compatibilism. To this end, I argue that a Kantian account of freedom offers a new soft-line reply to this argument. On this Kantian account, moral responsibility requires not only positive freedom but also negative freedom. An agent (...) is free in the positive sense just in case the agent has the rational capacity to act in compliance with moral norms. And an agent lacks negative freedom regarding their actions when these actions are determined by internal or external factors beyond their rational control. Based on this Kantian account, I provide a principled explanation of why there is a significant difference between manipulated actions and merely causally determined actions regarding moral responsibility. In addition, I bring out the distinctive characteristics of my Kantian account further by comparing it with two competing conceptions of freedom: leeway freedom and sourcehood freedom. (shrink)

This book answers the question of how soft factors such as corporate cultures and individual and corporate values can be transparently steered. With its C4 management tool and reflecting the seven driving forces of corporate culture, the Values Cockpit is a powerful solution designed to steer all dimensions and processes of a company, pursuing a lean approach. The book links strategic approaches on how to steer a company towards excellence with insights into the driving forces of human thoughts and (...) actions. It subsequently introduces the Values Cockpit, which allows individual corporate cultures to be developed and controlled on the basis of a rational approach. "This intriguing book breaks new ground in suggesting that values can be managed quite as systematically as any other centrally important asset" Rebecca Henderson, John and Natty McArthur Professor, Harvard University "... a deeply articulate, profoundly relevant explication of the role played by the culture of commerce... rich with actionable tools, insights and clear examples..." Richard J Hill IV, Founder, Gabriel Consulting Group, LLC "One seldom sees practical advice on HOW strong values can be automatically practiced on a daily basis by all concerned. That is what makes this remarkable book so refreshing... his book is taking the seminal findings of Jim Collins on building great companies a step further..." Julian Clarke, Chartered Accountant and Management Consultant, European Business Ethics Network Ireland "... a brilliant yet succinct guide to teach the significance of values-development in sustainable business management..." Professor Dr. Haifeng Huang, Assistant Dean, Peking University HSBC Business School, Shenzhen, China "He admirably rejects the fatalist interpretation of the immoral might of markets and replaces it with a counter-narrative of why and how companies can be part of the solution rather than part of the problem." Professor Dr. Claus Dierksmeier, Director of the Global Ethic Institute, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen "The values cockpit gives readers a coherent and comprehensive toolkit to help them prepare their companies for lasting success." Dr. Kurt Schmalz, C.E.O and Managing Partner J. Schmalz GmbH, Glatten, Germany. (shrink)

On 22 July, 2011, we were confronted with the horror of the actions of Anders Behring Breivik. The instant reaction, as we have seen with similar incidents in the past—such as the Oklahoma City bombings—was to attempt to explain the incident. Whether the reasons given were true or not were irrelevant: the fact that there was a reason was better than if there were none. We should not dismiss those that continue to cling on to the initial claims of a (...) wider Jihadist plot behind the actions of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols as Islamophobes (or merely lacking common sense): for, it is often easier to rely on reason—no matter how fictional—than not to have anything to cling on at all. In many ways, it is even better if the reason is fictional: for, if grounded in a certain fact, or reality, it can then go away. However, if it is in the realm of the imaginary, it is then always already metaphorical: thus, can be applied to any and every situation. And it is this, if we echo Friedrich Nietzsche, that gives us our “metaphysical comfort”; that we can know what is going on. This is why conspiracy theories are so popular: underlying them is the logic that someone—no matter how implausible—is in control of the situation. One would rather believe that all acts of terror stemmed from Osama bin Laden (and the narrative worked even better when he was in a ‘cave in Afghanistan’) than if they were the actions, and decisions, of singular individuals. For, if there is a head organizing everything, it can be cut off; there is no controlling a mass of singularities. As Jean Baudrillard continues to teach us, the term ‘mass’ is not a concept. It is a leitmotif of political demagogy, a soft, sticky, lumpen-analytical notion. A good sociology would attempt to surpass it with ‘more subtle’ categories: socio-professional ones, categories of class, cultural status, etc. This is wrong: it is by prowling around these soft and acritical notions (like ‘mana’ once was) that one can go further than intelligent critical sociology. Besides, it will be noticed retrospectively that the concepts ‘class’, ‘social relations’, ‘power’, ‘status’, ‘institution’, and ‘social’ itself—all these too-explicit concepts which are the glory of the legitimate sciences—but also only ever been muddled notions themselves, but notions upon which agreement has nevertheless been reached for mysterious ends: those of preserving a certain code of analysis. To want to specify the term ‘mass’ is a mistake—it is to provide meaning for that which has none.1 And it is this lack of meaning—this nothingness of not only the mass, but our inability to know in general—that truly scares us. For, if we are never able to legitimately make a generalizing statement, this suggests that we can never actually posit beyond a singular, situational, moment. Hence, we can never claim to know anyone: at best, we can only catch momentary glimpses. It is for this very reason that the insanity plea Breivik’s lawyer will attempt is the one that horrifies us the most. For, if Breivik is insane, this foregrounds our inability to understand, know. And as Aristotle has taught us, it is more important that something is plausible than if something were probable—in this context, we would rather have Breivik as a calculating mass murderer than someone who was completely out of his mind. This is especially ironic in the light of the fact that none of us would say that we have any similarity with Breivik. If that were so, the declaration that he was mad should be no more than a logical consequence. However, we also want Breivik to be accountable for his actions. And in order for that to be so, we need him to be of sound mind. But if that were true, we can then no longer distinguish ourselves from him. And it is precisely this that scares us. For, we are horrified not when there are abnormalities to our way of life. There are usually two different reactions to this—either oppose and destroy it; or subsume it under the dominant logic. We see this most clearly in reactions to immigration: there are either calls for immigrants to ‘pack up and leave’ or pseudo-liberal notions of ‘we are all alike’. Both of which are merely version of “all men are brothers”—the brutal translation of which is that you are my brother if you live the same way as me; otherwise not only are you not my brother, you are also potentially not part of mankind (you might as well be, to echo Giorgio Agamben, bare life ). This is played out in our age of what is commonly termed post-political bio-politics —an instance of horribly awkward theoretical jargon that Slavoj Žižek channeling Agamben unpacks rather elegantly: “ post-politics is a politics which claims to leave behind old ideological struggles and, instead, focus[es] on expert management and administration, while bio-politics designates the regulation of the security and welfare of human lives as its primary goal.”2 Žižek continues: Post-political bio-politics also has two aspects which cannot but appear to belong to two opposite ideological spaces: that of the reduction of humans to ‘bare life,’ to Homo sacer , that so-called sacred being who is the object of expert caretaking knowledge, but is excluded, like prisoners at Guantanamo or Holocaust victims, from all rights; and that of respect for the vulnerable Other brought to an extreme through an attitude of narcissistic subjectivity which experiences the self as vulnerable, constantly exposed to a multitude of potential harassments [….] What these two poles share is precisely the underlying refusal of any higher causes, the notion that the ultimate goal of our lives is life itself. That is why there is no contradiction between the respect for the vulnerable Other and […] the extreme expression of treating individuals as Homini sacer .3 This is why the ones that are harshest towards new immigrants are the recently naturalized citizens of any country. For, if there is no longer any “ideological struggle” and all life is reduced to mere automaton-living, there is the realization that we are all the same—not in a tree-hugging hippie sense—but that the immigrant is the same as us precisely because we are all immigrants. And since all nations, and by extension peoples in a nation (especially those who believe in the notion of nationality, and national identity), have to find some manner, no matter from where or what it is, to distinguish themselves from those around them, the other (in spite, and especially in the light, of its absence) is the most crucial aspect of the discourse of nationality. More precisely, in the interests of what Baudrillard calls “preserving a certain code of analysis” (nationality in this case), what has to be maintained is the absolute otherness of the other. Very rarely is Boris Johnson right: “it is not enough to say he is mad. Anders Breivik is patently mad.”4 However, much like Breivik in his manifesto, he should have stopped whilst he was ahead. By attempting to diagnose Breivik—“the fundamental reasons for their callous behavior lie deep in their own sense of rejection and alienation. It is the ideology that gives them the ostensible cause … that gives them an excuse to dramatize the resentment … and to kill.”—Johnson falls into the same trap that he accuses others of: “to try to advance any other explanation for their actions … is simply to play their self-important game.” More crucially, and this is the point that Johnson completely misses, attempting to rationalize Breivik’s actions—to rehabilitate reason—is a desperate attempt at maintaining his otherness. In fact, we’ll end up going one step further, insist on Breivik’s sanity, put him on the stand, and hope that he will display such a difference from all of us that we can rest safe that we are unlike him and his kind. That, in itself, is a dangerous game to play. One should not forget that the turning point in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is in the central part of her novel where she lets the monster speak. At that moment, the monster moves from an ‘it’ to a fully subjectivized person; with his own stories, historicities, emotions, and so on. In Slavoj Žižek’s reading of Frankenstein , this is the moment where “the ultimate criminal is thus allowed to present himself as the ultimate victim. The monstrous murderer reveals himself to be a deeply hurt and desperate individual, yearning for company and love.”5 But, in the case of Breivik, this goes beyond just a risk of us feeling for him: for, no right-minded person should ever deny another the opportunity to put forth her or his own case. The problem lies with us trying to deny the madness of Breivik’s act by putting him back under reason. The problem is in our inability to differentiate the act from the person; the singular from the universal.6 In our desperation to preserve the notion that we are rational beings incapable of becoming monsters, we’ve had to deny the meaninglessness—in the strict sense of it lying outside of reason—of Breivik’ act; we’ve had to “provide meaning where there is none.” For, if this act were a moment of madness—a moment that comes from elsewhere—we cannot say that it will not descend upon us one day. If Breivik’s actions were that of a sane person, one who is in control of his being, his self, we can then locate the otherness in his being. More importantly, this would allow us to distinguish ourselves from that said being. Breivik’s sanity is the only thing that allows us to say that ‘this act of terror is borne out of one with an ultra-right ideology’; and ‘since I am not of that ideology, I would never do such a thing’. By doing that, we attempt to protect ourselves by claiming that people who share Breivik’s ideology are foreign to us, other to us. However, if Breivik’s act was a moment of insanity, his otherness is no longer locatable: and the notion of ‘us and them’ shifts from a geographical, physical, religious, or cultural notion, to one in the realm of ideas. And this is what truly scares us. For, if what is foreign is not phenomenological, then it cannot be seen, detected, sensed. Anders Behring Breivik, Timothy McVeigh, and Terry Nichols, terrify us not merely for the fact that they were white in a white society, but more pertinently that their skin color did not matter: we would not be able to spot them even if they were blue, even if they were right next to us, even if we had known them all our lives. Even as we are grappling with holding Breivik accountable by declaring him of sound mind, what truly terrifies us is that deep down we know that Breivik’s act is a moment of madness; beyond all comprehensibility. And this means that we would not be able to spot the idea; even if it were in our heads at this very moment. We have gone to lengths to rehabilitate Breivik, McVeigh, Nichols, and such perpetrators of massive incomprehensible violence, in order to preserve our difference from them. What we have really been trying to deny is the fact that everyone, at any given moment, could have a moment of madness. And this is the true radicality of Mary Shelley: in allowing us to momentarily enter the head of the monster, she shows us not just the fact that he is like any one of us, but that any one of us could, in the right (or wrong) circumstance, be like him. Perhaps here, there is a lesson to be learned from Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street . The most dangerous thing that one could do on Elm Street was to mention Freddy’s name—once you had knowledge of him, you were open to the possibility of a visit during your dreams. This suggests that Freddy is a combination of externalities (after all, when you die, he survives) and your self (if you have never heard of him, he cannot come for you). In this sense, Freddy would be the manifestation par excellence of what Avital Ronell calls a “killer text”—it is one’s relationality with the text (and the ideas, notions, in the said text) that opens oneself to it, to the lessons of the text, to being changed, affected, even to the dangers of the text. After all, one should never forget Plato’s warning that ideas can corrupt, can be perilous. To compound matters, as Ronell reminds us, “the connection to the other is a reading—not an interpretation, assimilation, or even a hermeneutic understanding, but a reading.”7 Thus, in attempting to differentiate ourselves from Breivik by concocting some reason(s) why we are not like him, we have done nothing but read him, open a connection to him. *** Bang bang, he shot me down Bang bang, I hit the ground Bang bang, that awful sound Bang bang, my baby shot me down. “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” Sonny Bono, 1966. This is the part that we all know and remember. Whilst never quite remembering that this is a song that is not so much about violence, love, but about remembering. For, after the bridge comes the accusatory stanza: “Now he's gone, I don't know why/ And till this day, sometimes I cry/ He didn't even say goodbye/ He didn't take the time to lie.” Bang Bang is a game that the two lovers used to play; and all she has now is the memory of the game to remember him by. And the only reason she has to recall this game is: he never provided her a reason for his leaving, his death. Not that she will, can, ever get that satisfactory answer. This is precisely the game we are playing with Anders Behring Breivik. Even though he has left a 1500 page manifesto, even though we will allow him to use the court-room as his platform, we will continue screaming at him “tell me why …” For, what we want him to say is that we are not like him: what we really want him to do is, “take the time to lie …” Perhaps here, we should allow the echo of the infans to resound in baby . As Christopher Fynsk reminds us, the infans is one that is pre-language, pre-knowing, pre-understanding: it is the very finitude, and exteriority, of relationality itself.8 And thus, it is a position of openness to the fullness of possibility—and nothing else. This would be, in Ronell’s terms, a “connection to the other” that knows nothing other than the fact that it is a connection. The true horror of 22 July, 2011, is the fact that it is not Anders Behring Breivik who is mad, but the act itself that is. And this is precisely why only “my baby” that could have “shot me down.” For, it is an act that is from beyond, a sheer act of madness that—as Plato warns us—is whispered into our ears (and can so easily be mistaken for inspiration, and even wisdom), an act that can both seize, and cease, us at the same time. And what can this utter openness to an other, the other, be but a moment of love, a true ‘falling in love’. At the moment of whispering, nothing can be known as we are babies as our baby shoots us down …. Hence, all attempts at analyzing this event (including this one) are not only futile, but border on the farcical. The real tragedy is that we forget that all of us have the possibility of becoming Breivik. NOTES Jean Baudrillard. In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities . Trans. Paul Foss, John Johnston, Paul Patton, & Andrew Berardini. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2007. p. 37. Slavoj Žižek. Violence: Six Sideway Reflections . London: Profile Books, 2009. p. 34 Ibid: 35-36. Boris Johnson. “ Anders Breivik: There is nothing to study in the mind of Norway’s mass killer .” The Telegraph . (25 July, 2011): Slavoj Žižek. Violence: Six Sideway Reflections . London: Profile Books, 2009. p.39. What is killing us is the notion that Breivik’s act is beyond reason, beyond knowing, outside understanding itself. This is why Boris Johnson’s plea was for us to ignore Breivik as a madman. But to do so, Johnson conflates the notion of the act and the person; the singular and the universal. This is exactly the same gesture as insisting on his sanity: the ‘madman’ is merely the absolute other, one that we are not. Avital Ronell. The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech . Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989: 380. Christopher Fynsk. Infant Figures: The Death of the Infans and Other Scenes of Origin . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000.  . (shrink)

This article examines the importation of new gender ideals into a highly masculine organization through top-down and bottom-up processes. We analyze how a dominant group of men undo and redo gender to reproduce their supremacy and create a new, “improved” form of masculinity. Based on qualitative research on the practice of debriefing in the Israel Air Force, we explore how new practices of masculinity are incorporated into a hegemonic masculinity by introducing so-called “soft” organizational practices and thus constructing a (...) new form of “upgraded” masculinity. We show that pilots are involved in two continual and dialectical processes of performing masculinity. The first includes top-down practices neutralizing opportunities to execute exaggerated masculine performances, including new technologies allowing recording and documenting of all flights, a safety discourse emphasizing the protection of human life, and organizational learning based on self- and group critiques aimed at improved performance. The second, a bottom-up process enacted by pilots, is aimed at restoring and mobilizing masculinity and includes rationalized professionalism, competitiveness, and patronizing. Taken together, these constitute a hybrid, “upgraded” masculinity where “soft” characteristics are appropriated by men to reinforce a privileged status and reproduce their dominance within and outside the military. Our case study focuses on the debriefing, a process in which air teams formally reflect on their performance after a particular task/event to improve it. (shrink)

In this essay David Labaree explores the historical and sociological elements that have made educational researchers dependent on statistics. He shows that educational research as a domain, with its focus on a radically soft and thoroughly applied form of knowledge and with its low academic standing, fits the pattern in which weak professions have been most likely to adopt quantification. One problem with educational researchers' seduction by the quantitative turn is that it deflects attention away from many of the (...) most important issues in the field, which are not easily reduced to standardized quanta. Another is that by adopting this rationalized, quantified, abstracted, statist, and reductionist vision of education, educational policymakers risk imposing reforms that will destroy the local practical knowledge that makes the ecology of the classroom function effectively. Quantification, Labaree suggests, may be useful for the professional interests of educational researchers, but it can be devastating for school and society. (shrink)

The Absolute, philosophized most saliently about by Georg Hegel, encompasses the entirety of reality. The absolute is composed of five dimensions – height, length, width, time, and justice. The five dimensions operate dialectically, and the normative values of reality inhere within the fifth dimension – hard, soft, moral, ethical, yellow, etc. ad infinitum. The normative values from the fifth dimension, in combination with the brain, comprise the human mind. With the issues of climate change, world-wide biosphere destruction, nuclear weapons, (...) international trade regimes, humanity has created the phenomenon of global politics – thereby changing the fifth dimension. The argument in this volume is that the broadcast iterations of Star Trek allow us to comprehend significant aspects of justice and the politics of globalism – created through the advent of science, technology, engineering, etc. The creators of Star Trek hold that nationalism is a psychological pathology and internationalism is rationality. (shrink)

Recent articles on teaching controversial topics in schools have employed Michael Hand's distinction between “directive teaching,” in which teachers attempt to persuade students of correct positions on topics that are not rationally controversial, and “nondirective teaching,” in which teachers avoid persuading students on topics that are rationally controversial. However, the four methods of directive teaching discussed in the literature — explicit directive teaching, “steering,” “soft-directive teaching,” and “school ethos endorsement” — make rational persuasion problematic, if not self-defeating. In this (...) essay, Maughn Rollins Gregory argues that “procedurally directive teaching” offers an alternative to such approaches because it derives from the intention to guide inquiry rather than to persuade. He demonstrates that the conceptual frameworks of perfectionism and antiperfectionism, which have been proposed for directive teaching on same-sex marriage, can instead be used to generate open questions for student inquiry, as can a third, civil rights framework. Given these considerations, Gregory maintains that pedagogical guidance on this topic should be procedurally directive rather than substantively directive. Further, the fact that legal, political, and ethics scholars disagree about which framework is more appropriate to the issue of same-sex marriage indicates that such arguments cannot be dispositive of the pedagogical issue of how to frame classroom discussions about it. Rather, students should inquire into this meta-level framing dispute for themselves. (shrink)

This paper describes a research program that focuses on the explanation of political protest and its causes. The starting point is Mancur Olson’s theory of collective action. This theory is modified, extended and applied to explain political protest. In particular, it is argued that only a wide version of Rational Choice theory that includes ‘soft’ incentives as well as misperception is capable of providing valid explanations of protest behavior. Another part of the research program is the utilization of survey (...) research to test the predictions about protest behavior that are generated from the wide version of Rational Choice theory. The research program further aims at (a) comparing empirically Rational Choice and alternative propositions, (b) providing micro-macro explanatory models, (c) dynamic theoretical models, and (d) explaining preferences and beliefs which are usually treated as exogenous variables. The paper further reports, some results of the research program. (shrink)

The theme of this issue of Ethical Perspectives is the French tradition in liberal thought, and the unique contribution that this tradition can make to debates in contemporary liberalism. It is inspired by a colloquium held at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in December of 2008 entitled “In Search of a Lost Liberalism: Constant, Tocqueville, and the singularity of French Liberalism.” This colloquium was held in conjunction with the retirement of Leuven professor and former Dean of the Institute of Philosophy, André (...) Van de Putte, who found much inspiration in this tradition. A revised version of his valedictory lecture from the conference serves as the final contribution to this issue. Much contemporary liberal political philosophy is currently done in conversation with a line of liberal thinkers starting with John Locke, running through Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill, and culminating in the work of John Rawls and his followers. The reasons for the enormous appeal of this philosophical tradition are, among other things, the combination of the central role of the intuitively appealing value of individual liberty with a strong rationalistic, universalistic, and normative character. The thread running through most of these liberal theories is a commitment to what the French liberal Benjamin Constant referred to as “the liberty of the moderns,” that is, liberty in a negative sense, as a lack of interference in one’s activity from others and from government. This focus has expanded over time to include a richer body of civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights, for instance, in the work of liberal thinkers who have tried to integrate the insights of communitarian thought and discourse ethics in their work. However, the emphasis on individual liberty in the negative sense continues to be the normative and theoretical touchstone and default position for many contemporary liberal theories. The limitation of the canon of liberal thought to the aforementioned authors and themes deprives the contemporary debate of a rich source of ideas: the French liberal tradition. Montesquieu, considered to be the father of this tradition, provides a good example of how it can enrich current debates in liberal theory. Montesquieu’s work evinces a keen eye for the dynamics of power relations and the limitations of the power of the better rational argument. His insight that power can sometimes only be checked by an equal and opposing power, so that a system of separation and balance of powers is necessary in order to preserve liberty, is reflected in the foundations of most modern democracies. Montesquieu also argues that contingent environmental, historical, social and economic conditions play a dramatic role in determining what kind of government is appropriate for a particular society. On his view, ignoring these facts when framing a government can inadvertently end in despotism. Montesquieu’s observations challenge us to reexamine some of contemporary liberalism’s universalist and rationalist claims. Benjamin Constant is most famous for his distinction between two kinds of liberty: the liberty of the ancients and the liberty of the moderns. The ancient form of liberty manifested itself in the active political participation of citizens in the ancient republic. While this form of government and decision-making was suitable for small, homogeneous city-states, Constant argues that it is impracticable for large modern nation-states. Hence, the concept of modern liberty shifts to an emphasis on the rule of law and the non-interference of the state in private matters. This form of liberty is familiar to us from contemporary liberalism – and Constant cherishes this form of freedom as much as any liberal does today. However, his position is complex: he also argues that the liberty of the ancients should not be neglected. Active political participation is needed to ensure that the government is executing its duty of preserving the modern form of liberty by publicly pointing out violations. The contemporary relevance of Constant’s work is clear when we consider the alleged “democratic deficit” that plagues the EU and international institutions such as the UN, the IMF, and the World Bank. Not only does this democratic deficit threaten the modern form of liberty by placing decision-making processes out of sight of the people, it also threatens citizens’ sense of self-respect derived from self-governance. Constant’s argument for the necessity of combining the liberty of the ancients with that of the moderns provides a fruitful resource for confronting these contemporary issues. Tocqueville’s work on liberalism benefits from his opportunity to observe a society founded on liberal democratic principles – the United States of America – in action. In his Democracy in America, he examines the social consequences, both intended and unintended, of building a society on ‘the equality of conditions’, as he defines ‘democracy’. Tocqueville sees a tension between the democratic value of equality and the aristocratic value of the rule of the best. He observes that democratic societies do not necessarily choose the best leaders and instead promote mediocrity instead of virtue, talent, and excellence. Democracy also confronts citizens with the threat of ‘soft despotism’, where a government that preserves the outer signs of the liberty of the moderns nevertheless controls the behavior of its citizens in minute detail through a system of detailed rules ostensibly aimed at their welfare. This paternalism is an even more insidious threat to liberal values than the hard variety of despotism, since it is so difficult to detect and done in the name of liberal values themselves. Taking Tocqueville’s observations seriously would add complexity to attempts to theorize about the modern social-democratic welfare state. The contributions to this issue supplement and critique mainstream liberal thought and its relation to contemporary issues through a serious engagement with the French liberal tradition. Annelien De Dijn’s contribution discusses Bertrand de Jouvenel, a lesser-known 20th Century representative of the French political tradition she terms ‘aristocratic liberalism’. This tradition has its roots in the work of Montesquieu, and emphasizes the importance of intermediary bodies, most importantly the aristocracy, in providing a check to the top-down power of despotic state authorities and the bottom-up power of revolutionary leveling tendencies, both of which threaten liberty. De Dijn situates Jouvenel in this tradition, but then indicates an important difference between his thought and that of his predecessors: his most significant work, On Power, is not only on French history, but on European history. Pointing to the enthusiastic reception of this work in the Anglophone world, she suggests that the rise of totalitarianism in Europe gave the anti-totalitarian features of aristocratic liberalism a broader appeal. Valentino Lumowa’s paper concerns Constant’s classic text, The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns. Lumowa argues that in order to understand Constant’s piece, we must be aware that its two parts were written under different historical circumstances and decipher the argumentative thrust inherent in the text. Following Stephen Holmes, he argues that to understand the shift Constant made in the second part of the text, we should read it within the context of the increasing influence of the ultra-Royalists in the legislature during the Bourbon Restoration. However, in contrast to Holmes, he contends that the spirit of both civic and individual freedom, which enlivens representative system, is the backbone of the text in its unity. Demin Duan’s essay investigates an apparent ambivalence between liberal and imperialist tendencies in the work of Alexis de Tocqueville, which has already drawn some attention from Tocquevillian scholars. These interpretations of Tocqueville and his writings on empire generally agree that Tocqueville stands in a recognized tradition of liberalism, which is characterized by respect for human rights, individual freedom and a sense of universal humanism. On this standard view, Tocqueville’s support of imperialism represents nothing but an unfortunate breach of his own otherwise consistent liberal thinking. Duan’s article questions this standard position. By questioning the assumption of Tocqueville’s liberalism in the first place, he tries to gauge the influence of both the old republican tradition and the new liberal perspective on his thinking. In conclusion, he argues that Tocqueville’s overall thought, especially his notion of freedom, is very much informed by an old republican tradition. His support of French imperialism could be better understood from this perspective rather than be rendered simply as a deviation from liberal norms. Pawel Marczewski’s contribution is an attempt to show that Tocqueville’s conception of liberty transcends the divisions between negative and positive aspects of freedom. He begins by juxtaposing this conception with the opposition drawn by Constant between liberty of the ancients and liberty of the moderns. While Tocqueville and Constant shared a concern for the preservation of individual rights, Tocqueville was much more reluctant to accept the modern loss of the communal dimension of liberty. He did not accept the view that jouissances privées, private pleasures, are the main compensation that the modern world has to offer for the lost ancient treasure of political participation. The essay then looks into the relevance of Tocqueville’s standpoint for current debates between liberal defenders of negative freedom and republican advocates of freedom as non-domination. Participants on both sides of the debate seem to be so devoted to showing that their particular approach provides the best guarantees against actual and possible threats to liberty that they overlook the fact that their definitions of freedom remain significantly similar. By arguing that ‘to be free is to be guided by one’s own will’, contemporary republicans, as well as their liberal counterparts, move along the lines drawn by Constant towards private pleasures. By questioning the inevitability of this turn, Tocqueville provides us with a valuable contribution to these discussions in contemporary political philosophy. Finally, André Van de Putte’s contribution, an adaptation of his emeritus speech that closed the conference on French Liberalism, appeals to Tocqueville in order to draw attention to the importance of intermediary, dialogical bodies in mitigating the implicit despotic tendencies of the democratic drive to equality. In Tocqueville’s view, the transition from the feudal corporate inequality to democratic individual equality was not a clean break. Rather, this transition is a continual process of democratization that is driven by a desire for equality, or egalité des conditions. This dissolution of distinctions of estate, class and status has the unintended consequence of concentrating the diffuse power of these entities into a centralized state, which is responsible for ensuring the equality of all under the law. This process leaves increasingly isolated and atomized individuals to face the power of a monolithic state in defense of their freedom, and moves toward a soft, paternalistic despotism. Constant’s freedom of the moderns is not sufficient to protect individuals from this centralized power. Democracy also requires the political freedom of the ancients. Van de Putte argues for a system in which atomized individuals organize themselves into intermediary bodies that, in a Montesquieuian balance of powers, can enter into dialogue with each other and the state on more equitable terms. Van de Putte’s contribution closes with a plea for a conception of democracy as a regime of dialogue. (shrink)

By the year 2000, the management of education in England had lost much of its capacity to ensure the commitment of headteachers and teachers. As market forces engendered competition among schools, the bureaucratic monitoring of schools by agencies of government increased on the grounds that objective and comparable data about schools should be made public so that parents could express a rational choice of school. Levels of stress increased; workloads intensified. Thereafter, a series of ‘softer’ approaches emerged in order to (...) deal with this. They have coalesced around the concept of ‘leadership’, particularly distributed leadership and, more recently, emotional leadership and spiritual leadership. Distributed leadership draws on socio-cultural activity theory; emotional leadership is informed by positive psychology; spiritual leadership by eastern mysticism. Each has its advocates and its critics. At issue, however, is not so much their relative effectiveness but rather it is to relate them to the economic, cultural and political trends which have allowed them to emerge. These ‘soft’ normative leadership approaches have not supplanted a digitally-informed rational bureaucratic form in education; they are supplementing it. The theoretical stance taken falls within the field of critical theory. (shrink)

Michael Hand has defended the “epistemic criterion” for “directive and nondirective teaching” in his 2008 Educational Theory article, “What Should We Teach as Controversial? A Defense of the Epistemic Criterion,” as well as subsequent pieces. Here, John Tillson defends use of the epistemic criterion in the case of what he calls “momentous propositions,” but he rejects two of Hand's key arguments in support of the criterion. This rethinking comes in light of important contributions to the debate made by Bryan Warnick (...) and D. Spencer Smith and by Maughn Rollins Gregory, also published in this journal. Tillson begins the article with an elucidation of the directive/nondirective distinction, and then discusses some limitations of defining the distinction in terms of intention. Next, he draws attention to the problems with the “soft-directive teaching” method that Warnick and Smith advocate. Finally, Tillson provides an additional argument in favor of the epistemic criterion, an argument also grounded in work by Hand, which places emphasis on imparting knowledge alongside cultivating rationality among our educational aims. (shrink)

Incidental findings and secondary findings, being results that are unrelated to the diagnostic question, are the subject of an important debate in the practice of clinical genomic medicine. Arguments for reporting these results or not doing so typically relate to the principles of autonomy, non-maleficence and beneficence. However, these principles frequently conflict and are insufficient by themselves to come to a conclusion. This study investigates empirically how ethical principles are considered when actually reporting IFs or SFs and how value conflicts (...) are weighed. A qualitative focus group study has been undertaken, including a multidisciplinary group of professionals from Belgian centres for medical genetics. The data were analysed thematically. All eight Belgian centres participated in this study. Ethical values were frequently referred to for disclosure policies on IFs and SFs. Participants invoked respect for patient autonomy to support the disclosure of IFs and opt-out options for IFs and SFs, non-maleficence for the professional delineation of reportable IFs and opt-out options for IFs and SFs and beneficence for the mandatory reporting of actionable IFs, the delineation of reportable IFs and a current decline of actively pursued SFs. Professional assumptions about patients’ genetic literacy were an important factor in the weighing of values. In line with the traditional bioethical discourse, the mandatory reporting of actionable IFs might be interpreted as a “technological, soft paternalism”. Restricting patients’ choices might be acceptable, but then its motives should be valid and its beneficent outcomes highly plausible. Hence, the presuppositions of technological, soft paternalism - patients’ inability to make informed decisions, normative rationality, the efficacy of beneficent outcomes and the delineated spectrum of beneficence - should be approached critically. Moreover, distributive justice should be considered an important value in the delineation of the current scope of the ethical debate on IFs and SFs. This study of guiding values may stimulate the debate on the ethical grounds for a solid policy on IFs and SFs internationally. (shrink)

This piece, included in the drift special issue of continent. , was created as one step in a thread of inquiry. While each of the contributions to drift stand on their own, the project was an attempt to follow a line of theoretical inquiry as it passed through time and the postal service(s) from October 2012 until May 2013. This issue hosts two threads: between space & place and between intention & attention . The editors recommend that to experience the (...) drifiting thought that attention be paid to the contributions as they entered into conversation one after another. This particular piece is from the BETWEEN INTENTION & ATTENTION thread: Jeremy Fernando, Sitting in the Dock of the bay, watching... * R.H. Jackson, Reading Eyes * Gina Rae Foster, Nyctoleptic Nomadism: The Drift/Swerve of Knowing * Bronwyn Lay, Driftwood * Patricia Reed, Sentences on Drifitng * David Prater, drift: a way * * * * * Australia, Summer, 2012. …. essential humanity exists, and runs its course, within a system whose first principle is the preservation of balance. And arching over it all, is the logos of The Dreaming. How shall we state this when we fully understand it I do not know, but I should think we are more likely to ennoble it than not. Equilibrium ennobled is abidingness.” 1 On return to birthplace I write. Caught between jetlag and surprise, a relentless sun cracks my skin. Upright words fall under cockatoo roars. The attempt to settle, to be attentive, is shaken. Some kind of Dreaming surrounds and elements intrude without consent. Homeless at home. Exhausted, I fight sleep’s hard currents. Their victory would confuse the body clock, so the in-between wins. Half-there — half-awake — here in this place — I am driftwood. Driftwood: wood floating in or washed ashore by a body of water. A severed limb set adrift from the birthing body. Tossed from home it’s cast into processes of wind, water, sand, bacteria, decay and movement. Driftwood is orphaned members at the mercy and agency of weather, currents, submersion, and being thrown into dry world. Driftwood — singular plural. White man got no dreaming. Him go ‘nother way. White man, him go different Him got road belong himself. 2 photo: Bronwyn Lay The old man comes from the northern rivers. A while ago, he could no longer pay attention to wage slavery, so retreated north to be with dead redgum that lay abandoned in dry riverbeds. Derived from driftwood peoples tossed here by the sea, he followed the fragile river veins of his birth. He walked along water bodies and through country’s lungs. Some kind of displaced ancestral song compelled his leathered hands to pick up centuries old driftwood from flood plains. It emerged from under muddy creeks, was flung up by salt soaked coves, pushed underground by cracks in the claypan and lay embedded in mud and salinized soil. Smoothed and grooved in equal measure, the branches were marked by an organic alphabet that preceded him. As he held the wood, he touched decomposing circles that started with a blast and never ceased writing into abandoned flesh. When the ute was full the old man returned home having been away with the stuff that ‘growed him up’. His shed filled with red sawdust and the sound of tools at labour. His hands sculptured driftwood. History carved into itinerant skin. I sit opposite the old man. His body no longer holds the repetition of carpentry. He can no longer gift driftwood its detail. Outside redgum bits lie scattered around the fence line and beside the dam. He crouches over an unreliable computer researching the massacres of indigenous peoples that occurred along the same river veins that ‘growed him up’ long ago. Staring into the remnants of frontier resistance that he and I inherit, his eyes nurture fire. He discovers severed limbs and the slicing of tribes. In the ashes of sentences he sifts the lies that smoulder into our histories. In the 30’s the anthropologist Stanner said that due to certain factors — lack of change and isolation — the ideal and real come very close together in indigenous Dreaming. They are a people who were able to defeat history. 3 “If the Ideal and the Real drift too far away from one another (as they did at the end of the middle ages and seem increasingly to do this century) men face some difficult options. They have to change their way of life, or their philosophy, or both, or live unhappily somewhere in-between.” 4 Stanner says Indigenous Dreaming is blackfella thinking. 5 Dreamtime is not ethereal, not utopic, or otherworldly. It’s fused with the real and it’s not mine. I might never understand, but it’s the substance of my home. This here place ‘growed me up’. Is driftwood the unhappy in-between? Is it a radical itinerant written upon by currents? Where are we? The settler restless? photo: Alison Pouliot I return to the bush late one night, tired from high talk in city cafes, to find the old man at his computer. He’s either researching his white farming ancestors, or tracing unrecorded massacres of blackfellas. I laugh, “You know Dad, if you were indigenous you might go out by the dam and sing up your ancestors rather than try find them on a screen.” He peers over his glasses. His stare delivers an ancestral scold. He’s white man. Of course he archives. This is our way. One may see that, like all men, he is a metaphysician in being able to transcend himself. With the metaphysician goes a mood and spirit, which I can only call a mood or spirit of assent, neither despair nor resignation, optimism not pessimism, quietism nor indifference. The mood, and the outlook beneath it, make him hopelessly out of place in a world in which the renaissance has triumphed only to be perverted, and in which the products of secular humanism, rationalism and science challenge their own hopes, indeed their beginnings.” 6 The clinamen sometimes comes abstract — the rarefied swerve of possibility. But in the place we gather &mdash where this text has landed — in the heart of settler colony denial — the clinamen reminds of familiar violence and goes maximum. The earth’s swerve. Topography’s tip. Physics gone violent. Here, drift is initiated by the tear of flesh, scurvy voyages, frontier blood and the deracination from belonging. Here, war precedes drift. We all got tossed. Here. Pay attention. The country has its own gaze. ‘Lest we forget’. The seasonal turn on aborescent substances starts with a fall, an upwards rupture, a drop, a cut, a storm, a violence, a loss, forced migration, refugees, agricultural imperialism, settler wheat and poisoned rations. Pay attention to aftermath debris. Don’t drift too far from the real. History hasn’t settled into the water. It still tosses limbs back and forth. Surrounded by the backdrop of Dreaming country the old man archives and dreams. Both ways of settling into the real. But lest we forget, time, in this place, has no textual tick — tock. Our bodies know this, even though we persist with shipwreck illusions. It’s difficult being here. Here. Pay inattention. I walk through eucalyptus, over dried out clay pans and under kookaburras. It’s been two years in-between. This time country speaks strong underfoot. Forget books, forget texts, forget other lands and times, beginning and end. Be here. All falls raw. Leaves drop and refuse to compost. Bark untethers quick. Light denudes worlds. The heated horizon melts monoliths. It’s enough to make Cartesians shiver. Awake. Refuse the temptation to run. Have enough courage to drift into here. Love with a gum tree. Stand with her whole and dissolving. She moves light between our limbs, tossing them to wind. She — the original romance — is the dream that dares touch flesh and reaches over nightmares with elemental desire. I gaze and lose me. There’s no distance. The land that ‘growed me up’ speaks with symbiotic breath. There’s no division, no separation, no other. The gum is plastic arborescence. You be my body for me, always were. …..but I wake to driftwood histories and recall slaughters. Drifted, wicked fellow citizen — the other is someone else’s blind sleep. Betrayal maintains the other as mine. Archives reveal this place doesn’t belong to me. Body articulates that it became here. Gumtree cares not………her arms take me in anyway. “Like all men he is a philosopher in being able to use his power of abstract reason. His genius, his metier, and in some sense — his fate is that because of endowment and circumstance this power has channelled itself mainly into one activity, making sense out of social relations among men living together.” 7 The old man excavates seven generations of settler ancestors. They’re an ordinary lot with written-upon skin. He records genocides that occurred alongside his peoples fertility. Bodies rise from riverbeds like sovereign sacrifices. It hurts. It disrupts. He labours at the past with gestures that might go unnoticed in a country suffocated by rich amnesia. Inside walls, he seems attentive to historical details. Outside he seems inattentive to time, lost to us and embedded in a family of active matter — the bush. His driftwood skin appears around my eyes - grooves of experience, the rush of cruel sun, the push of blind winds, and the love of everything. The sovereign’s reluctant children are thrown here by, with and through blood, but country gets in and sculpts us here. photo: Chris Corrigan “But his abstractions do not put him at war with himself.” 8 The kangaroo family appears at dusk. When the sun is soft I follow the old man into the back paddock. Children skip behind us. In-between generations, I step into the old man’s driftwood leanings. My feet find traces of his understanding – the archivist that reads trees. Here, on home dirt, inattention and attention collapse as we wander into where we are. The roo family gaze at us. Through the grass the old man’s wooden finger articulates kin’s details. He points to the head male, the mother holding a joey in pouch and the young warriors side by side. My children, quieter than ever, meet the laser - eyed silence of another family. In half-light Dad, me, and the kids mirror the kangaroo constellation and stand gentle together. At the bushblock’s limit we encounter ancestral desires. White peoples are subject to driftwood histories. We’re severed limbs attempting to fuse here now, with what was, only to discover our skin becomes racked and embedded with the weather. Into the shelter and fissures of this difficult and ambiguous inheritance, I fall into dream light until balance saturates. Light breaks when the kangaroos move. They bounce someplace else without effort or impact. We turn and tread through the dark towards home. It’s time to sleep. Driftwood skin covers the country. Dreaming is still. photo: Bronwyn Lay NOTES W.E.H. Stanner, The Dreaming and Other Essays , (Melbourne: Black Inc. Agenda, 2009), 72. Ibid., 56. Stanner is recalling one intelligent old man who said to him, “with a cadence almost as though he had been speaking in verse.” Ibid., 60. Ibid., 69. Ibid., 58. Ibid., 67. Ibid., 68. Ibid., 59.  . 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Can philosophers be good activists? This essay defines activism for the philosopher and then provides a normative conception of a good philosopher-activist that is grounded in rational integrity and sound rational deliberation. I argue that because philosophers have been trained in reasoning and argumentation, they can contribute these skills to an activist movement. An activist with rational integrity exhibits five skills or virtues: they are honest, rational, logical, deliberative, and respectful. Conversely, bad philosopher-activists display five vices: they are dishonest, manipulative, (...) obfuscating, thoughtless, and insulting. Next, I argue that rhetorical and reasoning skills are only part of what define good activism, and describe the soft skills needed for effective activism. Philosophical training sometimes works against the development of these soft skills, but they are critical to the success of the philosopher-activist. I conclude by describing activism within the context of academic life and argue that philosophers who engage in activism can do so in an intellectually responsible way. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume on Tranquillizing the Passions John Immerwahr Borrowingafragmentfrom thelyric poetArchilochus, Sir IsaiahBerlin once divided thinkers into two categories: foxes, who know many things; and hedgehogs, who know only one, "one big thing."1 Although Berlin does not include Hume in either list, it is tempting to put him with the foxes. Indeed, Hume's corpus is brilliantly eclectic, ranging with equal facility over an impressive array of seemingly diverse subjects such (...) as epistemology, ethics, political science, religion, psychology, history, criticism, economics, and demography. Many of Hume's admirers have not even attempted to find a unity here, and Hume's less generous critics have attributed this diversity to an incessant hunger for "literary fame" which supposedly led Hume from topic to topic, always searching for popular acclaim and recognition.2 The dazzling diversity of Hume's thinking has obscured some important underlying themes; Hume is more of a hedgehog than he initially appears. At the centre of many of Hume's discussions is a recurring conviction about the nature of human well-being and the means to obtain it. This insistence—which can be found in each stage ofHume's career and in writings on virtually every topic—provides one way of finding an overarching unity to his thought and invites us to rethink some ofthe conventional wisdom about Hume. In this essay I argue that many of Hume's investigations are informed by his early distinction between calm and violent passions. Wherever we turn we find Hume insisting that people arehappiest and governments are most stable when emotional calmness prevails. Hume alsohas astrategy, which Icall "moderation through opposition," which is designedto"tranquillize and soften"the passions.3 This strategy also becomes a stylistic principle which informs Hume's own writing, especially his popular works. This essay begins with a brief discussion of the calm/violent distinction itself. I then sketch out the role ofcalm passions in Hume's treatment of rationality, happiness, morality, politics and religion. Next I turn from Hume's diagnosis to his proposed cure, and discuss the strategy that Hume presents for enhancing the calm passions; indeed, Hume's writing style itselfis often designed to implement this strategy. I then discuss the context of Hume's insight, arguing that while it grows out of a cosmopolitan continental paradigm of using Volume XVIII Number 2 293 JOHN IMMERWAHR passions to oppose passions, Hume's own use ofit is tailored to rather specific features of the political and intellectual life of eighteenth centuryEdinburgh. The essay concludesby discussingthe implications of these findings for reading ofHume's works. Passions: Calm and Violent One characteristic feature of the thinkers of the "Scottish Enlightenment" was a desire tofound moral concepts in a scientific and empirical understanding ofhuman nature, rather than upon abstract conceptions of virtue and justice.4 These thinkers were particularly interestedin non-cognitivistelements ofhuman nature, such as"taste," "sentiment" and the "passions,"5 and they were also interested in discriminatingamongthe feelings and passions to discover those which were most beneficial to the individual or society. One Scottish philosopher who was particularly influential upon Hume in this connection was Francis Hutcheson. In discussing the passions, Hutcheson distinguished between what he called the "calm desire of good" and the "particular passions towards objects immediately presented to the senses." Hutcheson noted that these calm desires were frequently powerful enough to conquer particular passions such as "lust or revenge."6 The calm passions are thus very important to our understanding ofhuman motivation. As in so many other things, Hume also appears to be influenced by Hutcheson on the existence and importance of "calm passions." Early in Treatise 2, Hume expands on Hutcheson's idea that our experience ofan emotion or passion can be described as either "calm" or "violent"7 (also "soft" or "tender," "rough" or "fierce").8 The main difference between calmness and violence has to do with the intensity with which a passion is experienced. When we experience violent passions we feel an "uneasiness" (T 418) and sometimes "disorders and agitations" (E 17).9 Other passions are "calm" in that they cause "no disorder in the soul" and "little emotion in the mind" (T 417).10 Hume's main point is that... (shrink)

This review of Wendy Brown’s Undoing the Demos considers the claim that contemporary processes of neoliberalism are damaging the core principles of democracy. It is argued that Brown is right to follow Foucault in defining neoliberalism as a form of political rationality, but that core arguments of the book could be developed further through attention to the following points: (1) the operation of neoliberal politics and practices outside of the US context; (2) the position of Austrian thought within the (...) history of neoliberal reason; (3) the problematic status of homo economicus within neoliberal thought; (4) why the ‘soft power’ of neoliberalism has proved so effective; and (5) how a Marxist theory of capital might be developed alongside Foucauldian critique of neoliberalism. (shrink)

Science and emotions are typically juxtaposed: science is considered rational and unattached to outcomes, whereas emotions are considered irrational and harmful to science. Ethnographic studies of the daily lives of scientists have problematized this opposition, focusing on the emotional experiences of scientists as they go about their work, but they reveal little about disciplinary differences. We build on these studies by analyzing Citation Classics: accounts about the making of influential science. We document how highly cited scientists retrospectively describe emotional aspects (...) of their research and assess variation in these narratives across six diverse disciplines: Chemistry; Clinical Medicine; Neurobiology; Physics; Plant and Animal Science; and Psychology and Psychiatry. Using correspondence analysis, we develop a multidimensional model to explain disciplinary variation in scientists’ accounts of emotions and link this variation to internal, external, and material aspects of the disciplines. We find differences in norms of appropriate emotional expression, or “feeling rules,” between the “hard” and “soft” sciences, the basic and applied sciences, and the sciences that study living organisms versus those that study organs, cells, or atoms. By comparing accounts across disciplines and elaborating the structuring principles underlying these patterns, we integrate knowledge from varied case studies into an integrative and multifaceted model. (shrink)

In this paper I will discuss certain aspects of Leibniz's theory and practice of 'soft reasoning' as exemplified by his defence of two central mysteries of the Christian revelation: the Trinity and the Incarnation. By theory and practice of 'soft' or 'broad' reasoning, I mean the development of rational strategies which can successefully be applied to the many areas of human understanding which escape strict demonstration, that is, the 'hard' or 'narrow' reasoning typical of mathematical argumentation. These strategies (...) disclose an 'other' reason, i.e. a complementary set of arguments and methods developed by Leibniz in order to deal with crucial issues such as the 'weighting' of probabilities and truths of fact. I will argue that one of the most compelling examples of the importance and fertility of Leibniz's 'other' reason is provided by his solution to the problems posed by the unique epistemological status of theological mysteries. (shrink)

In the article “Nudging and Informed Consent”, Cohen argues that the use of “nudging” by physicians in the clinical encounter may be ethically warranted because it results in an informed consent where obligations for beneficence and respect for autonomy are both met. However, the author's overenthusiastic support for nudging and his quick dismissal of shared decision-making leads him to assume that “soft” manipulation is un-problematic and that “wisdom” on the side of medical professionals will suffice to guard against abuse. (...) Opposing this view, we propose that: 1) patient preferences and values should not be boiled down to rational or irrational decisions based on cognitive reasoning alone, 2) potential threats to the physician-patient must be mitigated and could be minimized by employing alternative strategies that acknowledge the impact of cognitive heuristics in shaping decision-making but maintain transparency and trust, and 3) patient preferences and values can be legitimately influenced only under specific circumstances. The latter include: (1) exhaustion of other means; (2) evidence that nudging is effective in a specific context; (3) evidence of clear and active public misinformation (e.g., industry promoting smoking); (4) explicit pubic dialogue between various stakeholders including medical professional societies about nudging; (5) upholding shared decision-making as a preferred approach; and (6) a rich understanding of clinical reality beyond the simple dichotomy of beneficence-autonomy. (shrink)

'At last, a volume on civilization that truly reflects the complexity of multiple civilizations. The wealth of contributions Arjomand and Tiryakian have assembled demonstrates the value of an old concept for understanding the awful dilemmas confronting human kind in the global age. Its thoroughgoing renewal here establishes this book as the essential benchmark for future scholars of civilization' - Martin Albrow, Founding Editor of International Sociology and author of The Global Age - winner of the European Amalfi Prize, 1997 'In (...) our tension filled world, many are heralding, and others fearing, a"clash of civilizations." The contributors to this volume provides a healthy and persuasive argument about why this clash need not, and certainly should not, take place. They do so, moreover, not by rejecting the concept of civilization, but by developing a less primordial, homogenous, and essentialist concept of it. An important collection that provides illumination in this sometimes frighteningly dark time' - Jeffrey Alexander, Professor and Chair of Sociology at Yale University 'The concept of civilization may well replace the notions of globalization and identity as the core component in the vocabulary of 21st century sociology. The authors contribute a great deal to the clarification of fashionable controversies around the "clash of civilizations" and "multiculturalism". They go a long way toward purging the concept of civilization of its ideological overtones, and they suceed admirably in turning it into powerful analytic tool of an emerging fleld of macrosociology, known already as civilizational analysis' - Piotr Sztompka, President, International Sociological Association Although the concept of 'civilization' has deep roots in the social sciences, there is an urgent need to re-think it for contemporary times. This book points to an exhaustion in using 'the nation state' and 'world system' as the basic macro-units of social analysis because they do not get to grips with the 'soft power' variable of cultural factors involved in global aspects of development. Also, globalization requires us to reconsider the link between civilization and a fixed or given territory. This book focuses upon the dynamic aspect of civilizations. Among the topics covered are: · Civilizational analysis and social theory · Global civilization and local cultures · Civilizational forms · Rationalization and Civilization · Civilizations as zones of prestige · Historical and comparative dimensions of civilization · The clash of civilizations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Response to Randall Allsup, “Species Counterpoint: Darwin and the Evolution of Forms”Lauri VäkeväI was thrilled to be asked to respond to Randall Allsup's paper as his standpoint appears to be close to my own.1 I take it that his interest in Darwinian metaphors [End Page 220] reflects at least moderate interest in naturalism—an approach that should be taken seriously in our field. However, there are many varieties of (...) naturalism. In the following, I will deliberately interpret Allsup's ideas from the standpoint of the so-called 'soft' or 'cultural' naturalism favored by later Dewey and his followers.2As I see it, the most powerful precept of naturalism is its attack on essentialism—paradoxically the doctrine which focuses most deliberately on the nature of things. The essentialist, however, thinks of nature as something inherent in how things are, making them ultimately what they are. This kind of ultimate nature is something that a contemporary naturalist can never touch, for she only relies on empirical inquiry that departs from and returns to the contingent realm of lived experience. It is the latter that we attempt to make sense of as to try to live our life as fully as possible. At its best, philosophy can help us in this undertaking.To a naturalist, then, the essentialist's use of the term 'nature' is an anachronism, a remnant of an age when philosophers searched for the "really real," certain, absolute, and immutable. Were we to follow philosophical naturalism today, we should rather be looking at how things become empirically realized for cultural agents in their various life-practices. Culture is not seen as distinct from nature but as continuous with it: both can be understood through same means. This also covers the realm of value, which naturalism does not conceive as transcendental in any metaphysically binding sense, but rather as something that is realized in daily life and that thus has an empirical stand.Applied to the philosophy of music, naturalism states that it is futile to look for the essence of this art (or for that matter any art) through philosophical introspection or through logical analysis for the simple reason that we are always in the process of formulating it in our lives. The nature of music depends on the interpretative horizons of cultural agents living in a situation. 'Situation' (understood here in the sense that Dewey used the term) is the existential point of departure of our understanding and as situations vary, so do types of inquiry; therefore, we do not have to take as inclusive any particular claims about music, as they are merely particular answers to certain types of problems. Any path of musical inquiry may be worth taking, not because they all lead to the same destination, but because they can guide us through the rich thicket of possible experience that gives music its significance. This implies an open attitude towards all things musical, a theme which I find strong in Allsup's paper.One can also read another important naturalist point in his essay: "music—like life—evolves." Evolution is indeed a recurring theme in contemporary philosophical naturalism: what was previously considered as static or as perennial in nature and in culture can be now seen as being under continuous change. [End Page 221] Even mountains (and this is one of Dewey's favorite similes3 ) can be considered as events in the long run and even the most persistent of culture's beliefs may crumble someday.This awareness of all-encompassing change may not be very comforting: it might be mentally healthier to cling to rationalizations of how things that appear to change in fact do not. It may be more comforting to think that there must be a stable principle, a system of universally set rules, governing the randomness. For centuries, philosophy has been driven by this belief. In the philosophy of music, this is reflected in the problem of how the most ephemeral of the arts can be explained as having everlasting value. Mutatis mutandis, when music educators have argued over the pedagogical significance of music, one of the most pervasive ideas has been that music... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Too Expensive to Treat? Finitude, Tragedy, and the Neonatal ICU by Charles C. CamosyAutumn Alcott RidenourReview of Too Expensive to Treat? Finitude, Tragedy, and the Neonatal ICU CHARLES C. CAMOSY Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010. 208 pp. $18.00In Too Expensive to Treat? Charles Camosy makes an important contribution to bioethics and Christian ethics by making the case for the need to consider social factors when treating imperiled newborns. (...) Arguing for both the full moral status of newborns and Roman Catholic social teaching’s emphasis on the just allocation of resources, Camosy calls the medical community, bioethicists, and [End Page 209] Christian ethicists to account for current practices that disproportionately favor exorbitant costs for imperiled infants over other even more basic medical needs within the US health care system. Written before the adoption of the Affordable Care Act under the Obama administration, Camosy’s argument has only increased in significance given the national need to prioritize resources in view of the government’s expansion of health care coverage.Born within twenty-two to twenty-four weeks of gestation and weighing between 500 and 850 grams, some imperiled infants absorb hundreds of thousands of dollars in short-term care that may extend into millions of dollars given long-term costs (146, 171–93). Recognizing the tragic reality in which “we have virtually unlimited health care needs” coupled with “limited health care resources,” Camosy contends that current Medicaid funds that privilege the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) should be reevaluated (1–3). In an effort to temper the “autonomous,” patient-driven principle with “justice,” Camosy poses a challenging philosophical, theological, and practical proposal for what he identifies as the “gray area” of the NICU.Maintaining a twofold commitment to human dignity that values the moral worth of the infant, on the one hand, and the common good that privileges a preferential option for the poor, on the other, Camosy develops his argument in four major steps. First, he validates the moral status of newborn infants and rejects social quality of life models that dismiss their intrinsic status as “persons.” Second, he dismisses arguments that emphasize personal dignity at the expense of considering the social quality of life, pointing out that such arguments disregard Catholic social teaching’s emphasis on the link between relational anthropology and human personhood (100). Third, he contends that “weak” social quality of life models that privilege the patient or individual over social considerations do not take seriously either Catholic social teaching’s emphasis on the common good or the potentially overwhelming economic and practical burdens they might place on families and society as a whole. Finally, Camosy presents a constructive proposal for limiting NICU resources that seeks to counter a culture of overtreatment that idolizes technology and is at the mercy of an unrestrained free market (162). Emphasizing the need for a just allocation of resources, he supports withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatment in some cases, thus foreseeing the possible death of some infants. Although he does not accept the direct killing of these infants, he does maintain that Catholic social teaching would allow for the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment based on certain criteria.Camosy raises a host of important considerations relevant to decisions about imperiled infants. Yet a few questions remain. First, from a Christian point of view, does he not fall into a kind of soft utilitarianism, even though he himself desires to avoid the pitfalls of utilitarianism? Second, how might Camosy envision Christian practices that care for “exposed” infants left without life-sustaining treatment? Finally, what about the difficult emotions that accompany [End Page 210] the death of an infant or child? Do certain kinds of grief complicate our rationing choices that appear to pit the old against the young? While perhaps unanswerable, these questions merit further discussion.Autumn Alcott RidenourMerrimack CollegeCopyright © 2015 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

If language and thought are to be taken as objective, they must respond to how the world is. I propose to explain this responsiveness in terms of conditions of correction, more precisely, by taking thoughts and linguistic utterances to be assessible as true or false. Furthermore, the paper is committed to a form of quietism according to which the very same thing that can be (truly) thought or expressed is the case: ‘soft facts’ as opposed to hard, free-standing facts, (...) independent of any possible rational activity of grasping them. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Conversion and Religious Identity in Buddhism and ChristianityJohn D'Arcy MayA Benedictine abbey that has been involved in exchanges with Buddhist monks since 1979 was an appropriate setting for serious discussion of double identity and change of identity between Buddhists and Christians. The European Network holds its conferences every two years, and after experiencing the Benedictine hospitality of St.Ottilien once again it was decided that every second conference should be (...) held here in the future, with the intervening ones in different centers throughout Europe. Br.Josef Götz OSB introduced the conference by telling the story of the intermonastic encounters with monks of the Soto, Rinzai, and Shingon traditions over the last twenty-five years at St. Ottilien. Participants in these agreed that they had never learned so much about their own traditions as when they were engaged in dialogue at a spiritual and experiential level with their monastic "others." One Zen monk told the Benedictines, "Working with your carpenter, I understand Christianity," and another asked for baptism in order to participate more fully in the liturgy.The situation in the Buddhist countries of Asia, however, is not necessarily so harmonious, as reports by Fr. Thomas Timpte OSB from Korea and Dr. Elizabeth Harris from Sri Lanka made clear. Just to hear about the religious situation in South Korea, the "great unknown" of East Asian Buddhism, was worthwhile. Though four traditions—Shamanism, Buddhism with elements of Daoism, Confucianism, and Christianity—coexist largely peacefully, the advent of Christianity caused tensions arising from both persecutions and conversions. Though many Koreans would find no contradiction in being both Confucianist (at least in a cultural sense) and Christian, Buddhism itself is coming to be seen as a cultural phenomenon, and those earnestly seeking peace of heart turn to Christianity. Almost half the members of [End Page 189] parliament are either Catholic or Protestant, though there is little evidence of Christian ethics in political practice. Nevertheless, Buddhism is now the fastest-growing religion, as Catholics in particular find themselves attracted to the temple environment, which is experienced as "a kind of homecoming." "Christian in the head, Shamanist in the belly, Buddhist in the heart," though a simplification, sums up the situation.In Sri Lanka, on the other hand, things are considerably more fraught, and with the passage of anticonversion legislation the conference theme of conversion and identity is a charged topic. Elizabeth Harris illustrated the lengths to which certain Christians are prepared to go to win converts, such as working the camps of tsunami survivors. Though British evangelical missionaries had originally been afforded remarkable hospitality by the Buddhists—even being invited to preach in temples —their insistence that if Christianity is right, Buddhism must be wrong polarized relations, and the great public debate of 1815 still sets a precedent. Thus even for contemporary Christian inheritors of the fusion of the European Enlightenment with evangelical Christianity, both the conviction of sin and rational argument assure the superiority of Christianity. In the ethnic conflict presently raging, the religions are "not innocent," with Tamils and Christians being conflated into the "other" against which Sinhalese antipathy is directed. This is all the more tragic in that most Sri Lankan Buddhists accept the traditional ethic of tolerance.Jørgen Skov Sørensen and Kajsa Ahlstrand illuminated the religious situation in Scandinavia from different perspectives. Sørensen reflected on the "soft boundaries" that actually exist in many pluralistic societies, something that puzzled both civil servants and missionaries even in colonial India. There is a danger that contemporary Christians will try to impose the same unambiguous boundaries on postmodern Europe as they did in their former colonies. Ahlstrand's report on an empirical study done in Sweden showed how unrealistic this is. Dual identity as both Buddhist and Christian was more common than complete identification with either, and 42 percent of those who identified completely with Christianity said they did not believe in God!The centerpiece of the conference was a vigorous debate between Paul Williams, a prominent British Buddhist and professor of Indian and Tibetan philosophy who announced his conversion to Catholicism in a provocative book, The Unexpected Way, and two protagonists who disagreed with his reasoning from... (shrink)

continent. 1.1 (2011): 27-32. “My”—what does this word designate? Not what belongs to me, but what I belong to,what contains my whole being, which is mine insofar as I belong to it. Søren Kierkegaard. The Seducer’s Diary . I can’t sleep till I devour you / And I’ll love you, if you let me… Marilyn Manson “Devour” The role of poetry in the relationalities between people has a long history—from epic poetry recounting tales of yore; to emotive lyric poetry; to (...) rude, irreverent limericks; to Hallmark cards which have ditties that allow one to cringe, and somehow fall in love at the same moment. Without going into a notion of aesthetics, or attempting to choose which form of poetry is superior, we might want to consider why the form of poetry itself has long been a part of relationality. And whilst doing so, we might always keep in mind that poetry—especially poetry that moves, transports us—is the form that Plato has been warning us about, particularly if we want to become good citizens.As Avital Ronell teaches us in Stupidity : the poet, irremediably split between exaltation and vulgarity, between the autonomy that produces the concept within intuition and the foolish earthly being, functions as a contaminant for philosophy—a being who at least since Plato, has been trying to read and master an eviction notice served by philosophy. The poet as genius continues to threaten and fascinate, menacing the philosopher with the beyond of knowledge. Philosophy cringes (287). And considering that the philosopher is the lover of wisdom, we might begin to ask ourselves why one lover is warning against another—if the philosopher is in love with wisdom, then is the poet perhaps his rival, his challenger, for that very love? For, one must also remember that Plato—through Socrates—mentions constantly that Homer is his favourite. Moreover, by adopting both his own voice, whilst mixing it with Socrates’, Plato is adopting the form of poetry that he warns most about—the warning almost serves more as a homage to poetry than anything else. Here, we might open the register that one of the main reasons that he ejects a particular kind of poet is on the grounds of effecting effeminacy on the populace—good poetry moves you, affects you, transports you, shifts you beyond reason, puts you “out of your mind.” However, Plato also teaches us that rhetoric in its highest form requires divine inspiration by way of the daemon, or the muse. This moment of divine intervention is one that seizes—perhaps even ceases—you; putting you “beyond yourself.” In other words, a good rhetorician must always already be open to the possibility of otherness—the same otherness that possibly resides in the feminine. One could also trace this back to the poet that he both loved, and feared, most—Homer. Perhaps the effect of effeminacy that Homer's poetry opened is precisely the source of its power: through listening to Homer, one's body, one’s habitus is opened to the possibility of the feminine. And here, one must remember that the source of all learning—and all teaching—also lies in mimesis, in repetition, in habit. Once the habitus is opened to the possibility of invasion, of intervention, of otherness, there is quite possibly no possibility of distinguishing whether the mimesis is that of reproduction, or if there is always already a productive aspect to it. And by extension, if learning cannot be controlled, the very notion of teaching itself is shifted from a master-student relationality to one where the master is potentially changed as well—the relationality between the master and the student is not only inter-changing, but one cannot even know who is teaching, or learning, at any point. All that can be said is that they are in a relationality; which means that one is ultimately unable to locate the locus of knowledge, of wisdom—the site of which Plato is attempting to convince us is the sole domain of the philosopher. And it is this that philosophy is cringing from. To compound matters, philosophy is striving for wisdom; which can only come from the Gods. In other words, this is a gift that has to be bestowed on them—and more than that, wisdom is always already exterior to one’s control and knowledge. At best, it is the role of one to recognise the gift, to answer the call as it were. Here, if we listen carefully, we can hear the echo of Alexander Graham Bell, and the telephone. And as we are attempting to respond to the call of wisdom—the call that both poetry and philosophy are listening out for—it might be helpful to recall the agreement between Alexander Graham Bell and his brother Melville. In the biography, Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude , Robert V. Bruce notes that Aleck and Melly made a “solemn compact that whichever of us should die first would endeavour to communication with the other if it were possible to do so” (63). Since Melville was the one who passed on first, this pact put the onus on Aleck to receive the call of his brother. If you take into consideration the fact that until Melville’s death, both brothers had been working on an early prototype of the telephone, the instrument of distant sound can be read as an attempt by Aleck to maintain the possibility of keeping in touch with Melly, of hearing the voice from beyond. However, this was a connection that was not premised on any knowing, reason, or rationality; it was rather, one that was based on hope, and born out of love. And here, if we eves-drop on a cross-line with The Telephone Book , we can pick up the voice of Avital Ronell once again and hear, “the connection to the other is a reading—not an interpretation, assimilation, or even a hermeneutic understanding, but a reading” (380). In other words, the telephone can be read as the openness to the possibility of responding to the other; one that might always remain unknown. Even in this day of caller-identification, we can never know for sure who the other person on the line is until we pick up: hence, the only decision we can make—the effects of which we remain blind to until it affects us—is to either pick up or not, to either respond or not. And it is not as if the decision to pick up comes without risks: each time we answer a call, we run the risk of it ruining our day. Even when we don’t know who the caller is, perhaps especially when we don’t know who the person on the other end of the line is—and here one only has to think of prank calls—we are leaving ourselves completely open to being affected by another. Thus, philosophy finds itself in the position of Vladimir and Estragon. Since they have no idea who Godot is, they can never know if or when he shows up—thus, if he (and we are taking his gender on the word of the boy, some boy—we don’t even know if it is the same boy—who comes round in the evening) has already come, they would not be in the position to know it. And even if someone comes to them and announces that “I am Godot,” the wait would not be over—without referentiality to the name, they would have to take on faith that that person is indeed Godot. Hence, all they can know is that they are waiting for Godot; and Godot is the name of that waiting itself. All philosophy can know is that it is waiting; and wisdom is the name of that waiting itself. Which brings us to Tina Turner’s eternal question, “what’s love got to do, got to do with it?” In order to begin to consider that, we have to first attempt to examine the notion of love itself. Perhaps we might begin to consider what the difficulty of the statement “I love you.” For, if love is a relationality between two persons—both of whom remain singular, and are attempting to respond to each other—this suggests that neither of them subsume the other under themselves. In other words, the other remains wholly other. If this is so, then the “you” in the statement always remains shrouded in mystery. And even if the “you” was replaced with the name of the person, the veiling remains: for, names refer both to the singularity that is the person, and also every other person bearing that name, at exactly the same time. To compound matters, the only time one has to utter a persons name is in their absence—thus, the correspondence of a name to that particular person is at best an affect of memory. And if we consider the notion of memory, we have to also open the register of forgetting—bringing along with it the problem that there is no object to forgetting. For instance, when one utters “I forgot,” all one is uttering is the fact that one has forgotten, and nothing more—the moment there is an object to the statement, one has strictly speaking remembered what one has forgotten. Moreover, we have no control over when forgetting happens to us. And since it is always already exterior to us, affects us, and has no necessary object, there is no reason to believe that every moment of memory might not bring with it a moment of forgetting. Hence, whenever we utter a name—even if we accept the correspondence between the utterance and the person in front of us—all we are doing is uttering the fact that we are naming. Thus, it is not so much that ‘a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’ but more appropriately, ‘a rose is a rose is a rose’—the relationality between its name and the phenomenon of its sweet smell can only be established after that moment of naming, that instance of catachresis. So, whenever one utters “I love you,” not only is it a performative statement, it is the very naming of that love—all you are doing is establishing a relationality between you and the other. And since there is no necessary referent—one is naming that referentiality as one utters it—this suggests that it is always already a symbolic statement; without which the mystery of the other cannot me maintained. In other words, one cannot love the other without maintaining this symbolic distance—through a ritual; in this case the utterance “I love you.” This might be why Valentine’s Day seems to provoke such a massive reaction: the most common one from people (besides florists) being, Valentine’s Day is mere commercialism. Those among the nay-sayers who maintain a soft spot for Karl Marx would proceed to call it the commodification of relationships; those who prefer the Gods would claim that the sanctity of relationships has been profaned; the gender theorists would note how the fact that males buy the gifts only serves to highlight the unequal power-relation between the genders. Whichever side and variation of the arguments they choose boils down to this: the discomfort lies in the fact that they are confronted with the notion of relationships moving into a mediated sphere. The underlying logic is that love is between two persons only; it should not only remain between them, but more pertinently, be an unmediated experience between two persons. Which of course completely misses the point. For, if we reopen the register that relationships are the result of a negotiation between two persons, there must then be a space between them for this very negotiation to occur. Otherwise, all that is happening is, one person is subsuming the other within their own sphere of understanding; effectively effacing the other. If that were the case, there would no longer be any relationality; all negotiation is gone and the other person is a mere extension of the self—one is in a masturbatory relationality with one’s imaginary. Hence, any relationship must always already carry with it the unknown, and possibly always unknowable. The other person is an enigma, remains—must remain—enigmatic to you. This is the only way in which the proclamation “I love you” remains singular, remains a love that is about the person as a singular person—and not merely about the qualities of the person, what the person is. For, if the mystery of the other is unveiled, then the love for the other person is also a completely transparent love: one that you can know thoroughly, calculate; a check-list. And if they are knowable, this suggests that they can also be negated, and hence, the love can also go away. Only when the love for the other person is an enigmatic one, one that cannot be understood, can that love potentially be an event—and if it is an event, then strictly speaking, it cannot be known before it happens; at best, it can be glimpsed as it is happening, or perhaps even only realised retrospectively. At the point in which it happens, it is a love that comes from elsewhere: this strange phenomenon is best captured in the colloquial phrase, I was struck by love;” or even more so by, “I was blinded by love.” This is a blinding to not only the subject of the encounter—the self—but also of the very object of that encounter, the “you”—all that can be said is that there is an encounter. And it is for this reason Cupid is blind: not just because love is random (and can happen to anyone at any time), but more importantly because even after it happens, both the reason you are in love, and the person you are in love with, remain blind to you. Since there is an unknowable relationality with the other person, the only way you can approach it is through a ritual. This is the lesson that religions have taught us: since one is never able to phenomenally experience the God(s), one has no choice but to approach them symbolically. These rituals are strictly speaking meaningless—the actual content is interchangeable—as it is the form that is important. Rituals allow us momentary glimpses at secrets; and secrets are never about their content(s). Rather, secrets entail the recognition that they are secrets; the secret lies in their form as secret. This can be seen when we consider how group secrets work: since the entire group knows the secret, clearly the content of the secret is not as important as the fact that only members within the group are privy to this secret. Occasionally the actual content can be so trivial that even other people outside the group might know the information; they just do not realize its significance. For instance, if I used my date of birth as my bank-account password, merely knowing when I was born would not instantly give you the key to my life savings. In order for that to happen, you would have had to recognise the significance of the knowledge of my birthday. This means that you have to know that you know something. Since the God(s) are, strictly speaking, unknowable, this suggests that rituals put one in a position to potentially experience the God(s). The meaningless gestures on Valentine’s Day play precisely this ritualised role. It is not so much what you give the other person, but the fact that you give it to them. The gift in this sense is very much akin to an offering; the gift opens the possibility of an exchange. Gift-giving does not guarantee that you will like what is returned; there is always a reciprocation of the gift, but what is returned to you is never known in advance, until the moment it is received. This means that the worst thing that one can do is not give the gift: that would be akin to a cutting off of all possibilities, a complete closing of all communication with the other person. This at the same time also means that you cannot wait for the other person to give you something before you get them their gift: if that were the scenario, the reciprocal gift would be nothing more than a calculated return. The only manner in which both persons can give true gifts is to offer them independently of the other person, whilst keeping them in mind. In this way, the two gifts are always already both uncalculated (in the sense of not knowing what the return is) and also a reciprocation for the other (without knowing whether the other person actually has a gift in the first place). Naturally, this would seem like an irrational, even stupid, way of buying gifts. But it is precisely the stupidity involved that saves the relationship from being banal—more importantly, stupidity prevents it from entering the mere profane. This is not to say that an enigmatic love cannot end—of course it can. However, the difference lies in the fact that if the relationality is wholly transparent, it is subsumed under reason—completely predictable, within the self, and thus never open to the possibility of otherness, exteriority, musing. A love that is an event is one that is also open to the possibility of the divine, the sacred—always already closer to the possibility of wisdom. If we establish that both love and wisdom are exterior, to our knowledge, and the finitude to our selves, this suggests that both are names for the possibility of openness to otherness. In other words, and what choice do we have here but to use the words of the other, the philosopher—the lover of wisdom—is a name for one who is waiting, and nothing more. But that still leaves us with the question of this uncomfortable relationality between philosophy and poetry. But before we address that question, we have to take a momentary detour, and consider the whether it is possible to call one a poet. For, if we take the notion of a poet to be one who reaches the highest levels of rhetoric (beyond the lawyer, and the orator, who only aim to either please the crowds, or convince by way of sophistry), then we must also acknowledge that one can only become a poet at the moment of seizing, the point of inspiration, by the muses. Without this divine moment, all (s)he can do is practice her craft. As no one can control when the muses make their appearance, one could always be practising in vain—in some way, one is always already practising to be least in the way when the muse whispers into one’s ear; one is practising so as not to be vain. And since one cannot know when the muse will appear, there is no time frame to the practising—unlike the lawyer who speaks against a clock, poetry knows no time; the only time that matters is the time appropriate to poetry itself. Thus, all the poet (if one can use this term) is practising for the possibility of effacing her/him self—and waiting. Thus, in order for poetry to occur, in order to be seized, the poet—along with all her concerns—must cease. In other words, there is no poet; there is only the possibility of poetry. However, even as there is no time frame to this waiting, even as all we can say is that poetry is a name for waiting, the one who is practising is always already also in time. And since (s)he is in a symbolic relationality with the possibility of poetry, this suggests that the practising is her sacrifice, and time is precisely what she is sacrificing. Here, it might be helpful to turn to a strange source when it comes to poetry—Georges Bataille—and consider his teachings in the first volume of The Accursed Share where he reminds us that, the “essence [of sacrifice] is to consume profitlessly .” This is where each exchange is beyond rationality, beyond calculability, beyond reason itself, “unsubordinated to the ‘real’ order and occupied only with the present.” He continues: Sacrifice destroys that which it consecrates. It does not have to destroy as fire does; only the tie that connected the offering to the world of profitable activity is severed, but this separation has the sense of a definitive consumption; the consecrated offering cannot be restored to the real order.” (58) Since there is no need for a physical change in the object of sacrifice—“it does not have to destroy as fire does”—this suggests that the tie is severed symbolically. Hence, there is an aspect of trans-substantiation in this sacrifice: the form remains the same; in fact there is no perceivable change—this is the point at which all phenomenology fails—but there is always already a difference, an absolute separation from the “real order,” from logic, calculability, reason. The object of sacrifice, the victim [,] is a surplus taken from the mass of useful wealth…Once chosen, he is the accursed share , destined for violent consumption. But the curse tears him away from the order of things…” (59). And it is this tearing away from the order of things—the order of rationality—that “restores to the sacred world that which servile use has degraded, rendered profane” (55). For, only when it is no longer useful, when it is no longer abstracted—subjected, subsumed under—merely a use-value, can the object be an object as such, can a subject be a subject as such; be a singularity. Thus, it is never so much who or what is sacrificed, but the fact that there is a sacrifice. So even as (s)he is sacrificing her time to poetry, it is always already beyond her knowledge whether what (s)he is doing is actually preparing her for poetry or not—all (s)he can know is that she is sacrificing and nothing more. Hence, all (s)he can do is to open her self to the possibility of this relationality—all (s)he can do is be in love with poetry. At the moment the muse whispers into her ear, (s)he ceases to be, and becomes a medium for poetry—and since this possession is always already beyond our cognitive knowledge, this is also a moment of divine wisdom. In other words, there is no difference between poetry and wisdom—the moment of poetry is the moment of wisdom. And this might be the very reason for the philosopher’s aversion to poets. Not so much because they may corrupt the youth (this is after all the aim of all thinking, all philosophy), but precisely because in order to do so, the philosopher must wait for a moment of possession, for divine musing, for poetry. Hence, all thought, all thinking, all philosophy, is nothing but the waiting for the possibility of poetry itself. (shrink)

Against claims that cognitive science of religion undercuts belief in God, many defenders of theistic belief have invoked the Religious Reasons Reply: science cannot undercut belief in God if one has good independent reasons to believe. However, it is unclear whether this response helps salvage the god beliefs of most people. This paper considers four questions: (1) What reasons do Christians have for believing in God? (2) What kinds of beliefs about God can the reasons support? (3) Are the reasons (...) rationalizations? (4) Can cognitive science undercut the reasons? Many Christians invoke everyday religious experiences (EREs)—such as experiences of divine presence, guidance, and communication—as reasons to believe. Unlike another popular reason to believe in God (the appearance of design and beauty in nature), EREs can support beliefs about a relational God who is present to me, who guides my life, and who speaks to me. EREs are not rationalizations since they seem to cause and sustain such beliefs. Nonetheless, EREs like experiences of hearing God speak are problematic reasons to believe. ‘Soft’ voice-hearing experiences are easily undercut. ‘Hard’ experiences of an external, audible voice are probably underpinned by similar cognitive processes as audio-verbal hallucinations. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide an interpretation of Plato’s repeated claims in Republic V that women are “weaker” (asthenestera) than men. Specifically, I argue that Plato thinks women have a psychological propensity to get easily dispirited, which makes them less effective in implementing and executing their rational decisions. This interpretation achieves several things. It qualifies Plato’s position regarding women and their position in the polis. It provides the background against which we can interpret Aristotle’s claim in Politics I that women (...) possess a deliberative capacity that is not authoritative (akuron). It expands our understanding of the nature and role of spirit (thumos) in these authors. And, finally, it gives us insight into a kind of moral-psychological success that Plato and Aristotle consider central to both personal and political agency. (shrink)

The aim of the present paper is to show how Plato suggested demarcating between knowledge and other kinds of human intellectual activities. The article proposes to distinguish between two ways of such a demarcation. The first, called `the external demarcation', takes place when one differentiates between knowledge and non-knowledge, the rational and non-rational or the reasonable and non-reasonable. The second, called `internal', marks the difference within knowledge itself and could be illustrated by the difference between the so called hard and (...) soft sciences. The analyses lead tothe following conclusions. Plato refers to the whole of human intellectual activity as doxa, which is divided into two spheres. The first of them is knowledge proper whose criterion is phronesis. Three other kinds of doxa are derived from knowledge proper: 1) the traditional peri phuseos investigation (called also sophia); 2) popular doxai concerning virtues; 3) wisdom of the antilogikoi. The difference represents the external demarcation. There may be, however, a difference in the scope of knowledge proper (the internal demarcation). If the peri phuseos investigators were able to explain the field of values, the result of their investigation could be acknowledged as knowledge, although it would still be characterized as inferior due to its being based on senses. What is interesting about knowledge proper is that it is not firm and reliable but only hypothetical. It does not determine the skeptical reading of the Phaedo but it indicates that Plato has just begun his own philosophical project (which is still in progress) and the knowledge presented in the dialogue is his first positive suggestion how to solve the problem of demarcation. (shrink)

Over the past decades, logicians interested in rational agency and intelligent interaction studied major components of these phenomena, such as knowledge, belief, and preference. In recent years, standard ‘static’ logics describing information states of agents have been generalized to dynamic logics describing actions and events that produce information, revise beliefs, or change preferences, as explicit parts of the logical system. Van Ditmarsch, van der Hoek & Kooi 2007, Baltag, van Ditmarsch & Moss 2008, van Benthem, to appear A, are up-to-date (...) accounts of this dynamic trend (the present paper follows Chapter 9 of the latter book). But in reality, concrete rational agency contains all these dynamic processes entangled. A concrete setting for this entanglement are games – and this paper is a survey of their interfaces with logic, both static and dynamic. Games are intriguing also since their analysis brings together two major streams, or tribal communities: ‘hard’ mathematical logics of computation, and ‘soft’ philosophical logics of propositional attitudes. Of course, this hard/soft distinction is spurious, and there is no natural border line between the two sources: it is their congenial mixture that makes current theories of agency so lively. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Conversion and Religious Identity in Buddhism and ChristianityJohn D'Arcy MayA Benedictine abbey that has been involved in exchanges with Buddhist monks since 1979 was an appropriate setting for serious discussion of double identity and change of identity between Buddhists and Christians. The European Network holds its conferences every two years, and after experiencing the Benedictine hospitality of St.Ottilien once again it was decided that every second conference should be (...) held here in the future, with the intervening ones in different centers throughout Europe. Br.Josef Götz OSB introduced the conference by telling the story of the intermonastic encounters with monks of the Soto, Rinzai, and Shingon traditions over the last twenty-five years at St. Ottilien. Participants in these agreed that they had never learned so much about their own traditions as when they were engaged in dialogue at a spiritual and experiential level with their monastic "others." One Zen monk told the Benedictines, "Working with your carpenter, I understand Christianity," and another asked for baptism in order to participate more fully in the liturgy.The situation in the Buddhist countries of Asia, however, is not necessarily so harmonious, as reports by Fr. Thomas Timpte OSB from Korea and Dr. Elizabeth Harris from Sri Lanka made clear. Just to hear about the religious situation in South Korea, the "great unknown" of East Asian Buddhism, was worthwhile. Though four traditions—Shamanism, Buddhism with elements of Daoism, Confucianism, and Christianity—coexist largely peacefully, the advent of Christianity caused tensions arising from both persecutions and conversions. Though many Koreans would find no contradiction in being both Confucianist (at least in a cultural sense) and Christian, Buddhism itself is coming to be seen as a cultural phenomenon, and those earnestly seeking peace of heart turn to Christianity. Almost half the members of [End Page 189] parliament are either Catholic or Protestant, though there is little evidence of Christian ethics in political practice. Nevertheless, Buddhism is now the fastest-growing religion, as Catholics in particular find themselves attracted to the temple environment, which is experienced as "a kind of homecoming." "Christian in the head, Shamanist in the belly, Buddhist in the heart," though a simplification, sums up the situation.In Sri Lanka, on the other hand, things are considerably more fraught, and with the passage of anticonversion legislation the conference theme of conversion and identity is a charged topic. Elizabeth Harris illustrated the lengths to which certain Christians are prepared to go to win converts, such as working the camps of tsunami survivors. Though British evangelical missionaries had originally been afforded remarkable hospitality by the Buddhists—even being invited to preach in temples —their insistence that if Christianity is right, Buddhism must be wrong polarized relations, and the great public debate of 1815 still sets a precedent. Thus even for contemporary Christian inheritors of the fusion of the European Enlightenment with evangelical Christianity, both the conviction of sin and rational argument assure the superiority of Christianity. In the ethnic conflict presently raging, the religions are "not innocent," with Tamils and Christians being conflated into the "other" against which Sinhalese antipathy is directed. This is all the more tragic in that most Sri Lankan Buddhists accept the traditional ethic of tolerance.Jørgen Skov Sørensen and Kajsa Ahlstrand illuminated the religious situation in Scandinavia from different perspectives. Sørensen reflected on the "soft boundaries" that actually exist in many pluralistic societies, something that puzzled both civil servants and missionaries even in colonial India. There is a danger that contemporary Christians will try to impose the same unambiguous boundaries on postmodern Europe as they did in their former colonies. Ahlstrand's report on an empirical study done in Sweden showed how unrealistic this is. Dual identity as both Buddhist and Christian was more common than complete identification with either, and 42 percent of those who identified completely with Christianity said they did not believe in God!The centerpiece of the conference was a vigorous debate between Paul Williams, a prominent British Buddhist and professor of Indian and Tibetan philosophy who announced his conversion to Catholicism in a provocative book, The Unexpected Way, and two protagonists who disagreed with his reasoning from... (shrink)

In his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, Kant formulates the idea of the empirical investigation of the human being as a free agent. The notion is puzzling: Does Kant not often claim that, from an empirical point of view, human beings cannot be considered as free? What sense would it make anyway to include the notion of freedom in science? The answer to these questions lies in Kant’s notion of character. While probably all concepts of character are involved (...) in the description and explanation of human action, Kant develops a specific notion of character by distinguishing character as a “mode of thought” (Denkungsart) from character as a “mode of sensing” (Sinnesart). The former notion is distinctively Kantian. Only mode of thought reveals itself in human action such that actions can be seen as linked to an agent’s first-person perspective and the capacity to rationally reflect one’s own intentions and desires. By reference to this concept human actions can be empirically explained qua free actions. The point of this paper is not only to rule out the interpretation that Kant is an incompatibilist concerning the dilemma of freedom and causal determinism. It is also argued that Kant defends a version of soft determinism which is more sophisticated and more adequate for the human sciences than Hume’s. (shrink)