Part philosophical meditation, part cultural critique, The Body in Pain is a profoundly original study that has already stirred excitement in a wide range of intellectual circles. The book is an analysis of physical suffering and its relation to the numerous vocabularies and cultural forces--literary, political, philosophical, medical, religious--that confront it.Elaine Scarry bases her study on a wide range of sources: literature and art, medical case histories, documents on torture compiled by Amnesty International, legal transcripts of personal injury trials, and (...) military and strategic writings by such figures as Clausewitz, Churchill, Liddell Hart, and Kissinger, She weaves these into her discussion with an eloquence, humanity, and insight that recall the writings of Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre.Scarry begins with the fact of pain's inexpressibility. Not only is physical pain enormously difficult to describe in words--confronted with it, Virginia Woolf once noted, "language runs dry"--it also actively destroys language, reducing sufferers in the most extreme instances to an inarticulate state of cries and moans. Scarry analyzes the political ramifications of deliberately inflicted pain, specifically in the cases of torture and warfare, and shows how to be fictive. From these actions of "unmaking" Scarry turns finally to the actions of "making"--the examples of artistic and cultural creation that work against pain and the debased uses that are made of it. Challenging and inventive, The Body in Pain is landmark work that promises to spark widespread debate. (shrink)

Is it possible to interfere with individual decision-making while preserving freedom of choice? The purpose of this article is to assess whether ‘libertarian paternalism’, a set of political and ethical principles derived from the observations of behavioural sciences, can form the basis of a viable framework for the ethical analysis of public health interventions. First, the article situates libertarian libertarianism within the broader context of the law and economics movement. The main tenets of the approach are then presented and particular (...) attention is given to its operationalization through the notion of a ‘nudge’. Essentially, a ‘nudge’ consists in an intervention, which aims to suggest one choice over another by gently steering individual choices in welfare-enhancing directions yet without imposing any significant limit on available choices. Finally, the article concludes that, while it fails as an overreaching framework of ethical analysis, libertarian paternalism nonetheless constitutes a valuable addition to the conceptual toolbox of public health ethics. (shrink)

Most scholars have focused on The Second Sex and Simone de Beauvoir’s fiction, concentrating on gender issues but ignoring her broader emancipatory vision. Though Beauvoir’s political thinking is not as closely studied as her feminist works, it underpinned her activism and helped her navigate the dilemmas raised by revolutionary thought in the postwar period. In Emancipatory Thinking Elaine Stavro brings together Beauvoir’s philosophy and her political interventions to produce complex ideas on emancipation. Drawing from a range of work, including novels, (...) essays, autobiographical writings, and philosophic texts, Stavro explains that for Beauvoir freedom is a movement that requires both personal and collective transformation. Freedom is not guaranteed by world historical systems, material structures, wilful action, or discursive practices, but requires engaged subjects who are able to take creative risks as well as synchronize with existing forces to work towards collective change. Beauvoir, Stavro asserts, resisted the trend of anti-humanism that has dominated French thinking since the 1960s and also managed to avoid the pitfalls of voluntarism and individualism. In fact, Stavro argues, Beauvoir appreciated the impact of material, socio-economic, institutional forces, without forgoing the capacity to initiate. Applying Beauvoir’s existential insights and understanding of embodied and situated subjectivity to recent debates within gender, literary, sociological, cultural, and political studies, Emancipatory Thinking provides a lens to explore the current political and theoretical landscape. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to put into context the historical, foundational and philosophical significance of category theory. We use our historical investigation to inform the various category-theoretic foundational debates and to point to some common elements found among those who advocate adopting a foundational stance. We then use these elements to argue for the philosophical position that category theory provides a framework for an algebraic in re interpretation of mathematical structuralism. In each context, what we aim to show (...) is that, whatever the significance of category theory, it need not rely upon any set-theoretic underpinning. (shrink)

Under this title, I wish to clarify the philosophical perspective that has run through my work for the last fifteen years, in three volumes: L’hystérique entre Freud et Lacan, La folie dans la raison pure, and Les constructions de l’universel. In the first of these works, I reflected on the status of the body in psychoanalysis, on the distance that needed to be taken with regard to the two Western traditions of thought concerning the body, namely those of Aristotle and (...) Descartes, in order to understand Freud’s conceptions of the erogenous body and the drive. I also raised the question of the divergence between the physiological- and the drive-constructions of the body. In my second book, I tried to understand to what degree a philosophical system, in this case Kant’s transcendental theory of the object, may be the meeting point between a new logic—a new logic of negation in Kant’s case—and a fantasized encounter with a mad thinker. I also considered the way in which a philosophical text weaves several active heterogeneous directions like the warp and the weft within thought, and how they may be spotted in the text. Finally, in Les constructions de l’universel, I considered the relevance of the concept of the universal for understanding how conceptual thought detaches itself from its author, and compared art, philosophy, and dream analysis from this point of view. I also tried to evaluate the pertinence of Lacan’s project of producing a logic of sexuation, and the degree of autonomy such a project has with respect to the internal ambiguities of the logical and philosophical concept of the universal. In these three books, I have practiced a philosophy of contingency—contingency of the relation between discourses and contingency of the real with respect to the thought which knows it. It is this philosophy of contingency that I would like to explain. (shrink)

On a souvent dit que la bioéthique émergea au confluent des sciences de la santé, de la théologie, de la philosophie et du droit. Or, pour poursuivre son évolution, la bioéthique se doit d’adopter une position critique vis-à-vis de cet héritage, notamment en ce qui concerne le droit.

Ce texte offre quelques réflexions épistémologiques et méthodologiques en réponse au texte d’Antoine Boudreau LeBlanc qui plaide pour une bioéthique renouvelée, capable de faire le lien entre science et politique afin de relever les défis majeurs auxquels l’humanité est actuellement confrontée. Cette proposition apparait nécessaire, compte tenu du paradoxe qui émerge du fait que l’expertise et la spécialisation grandissante ne se traduisent pas toujours par des solutions aux problèmes complexes qui affligent l’humanité. Il apparaît nécessaire de réfléchir à la nature (...) même de ces problèmes et de reconnaitre qu’ils se situent à une échelle qui dépasse l’individu. De même, il apparait nécessaire de considérer la dimension pratique de mise en oeuvre des solutions proposées. L’ouverture épistémique de la bioéthique semble être un atout important à cet égard. Toutefois, on peut se demander si le potentiel d’hybridation entre les savoirs défendu par Boudreau LeBlanc risque d’être atténué par la professionnalisation et la centralisation de la médiation entre ceux-ci. De même, il importe de préserver le caractère distinctif de la bioéthique. (shrink)

Elaine Kuzmeskus retraces historical sâeance sessions and retells firsthand accounts of spirits reaching from beyond the veil so that we, the living, can better understand what happens in these encounters and why.

Just Business provides the first comprehensive, reasoned framework for resolving questions of business ethics and corporate governance. Innovative, accessible, and global in scope, its powerful Ethical Decision Model can be used to manage the ethical problems of business as they arise in all their complexity and variety. Just Business combines business realism with philosophical rigor, and demonstrates that it is not necessary to emasculate or to adulterate business for business to be ethical. The book benefits from Elaine Sternberg's extensive experience (...) as an academic philosopher, an international investment banker, and head of successful businesses. She is now Principal of a London-headquartered consultancy firm, and Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Leeds. (shrink)

David-Ménard examines the problem of the genesis of Kant's moral philosophy. The separation between Kantian practical reason and the inclinations of sense which it regulates is shown by the author to originate in Kant's attempt to regulate his own tendency to hypochondria. Her argument links the themes from two of Kant's precritical works which attest to this tendency-"An Essay on the Maladies of the Mind" and Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime-to the final form of (...) the critical philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that category theory ought to be seen as providing the language for mathematical discourse. Against foundational approaches, I argue that there is no need to reduce either the content or structure of mathematical concepts and theories to the constituents of either the universe of sets or the category of categories. I assign category theory the role of organizing what we say about the content and structure of both mathematical concepts and theories. Insofar, then, as the (...) structuralist sees mathematics as talking about structures and their morphology, I contend that category theory furnishes a framework for mathematical structuralism. (shrink)

This paper considers Freud's 1920 text, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, in light of Jacques Derrida's critical commentary on it in The Post Card. Against the deconstructive reading that highlights the performative aspects of Freud's speculative remarks, David-Ménard reads Freud's theory of the death drive as an epistemological and experimental hypothesis necessary for giving an account of the complexity and diversity of the clinical phenomenon of repetition in psychoanalysis. Though the death drive never appears locatable as such in the various (...) examples given by Freud, it is nonetheless accessible in the constellation of differences produced by traumatic dreams, children's games, etc. (shrink)

"--J.M.Coetzee "Here is a writer almost magically summoning up the world through words and ideas, in a new way, and so guiding the reader, lovingly, to receive the treasures and accept the pleasures of this book as naturally as breathing.

The just war tradition assumes that civil war is a possible site of justice. It has an uneasy relationship with liberalism, because the latter resists the idea that insurgency and counterinsurgency can be justified in moral terms. The paper suggests that, even if this is true, these two schools of thought are closer to each other than often appears to be the case. In particular, the paper argues that insurgency and counterinsurgency can be justified using the liberal assumptions that nonviolent (...) opposition is the proper non-institutional technique to fight oppressive regimes, and that law enforcement is the appropriate response to unjustified rebellions. Given these assumptions, insurgent warfare is limited to circumstances in which, firstly, nonviolent resistance is no longer a reasonable course of action; and secondly, insurgents have the intention to create the political conditions that are needed to make it a coherent option again.Counter insurgent warfare, in turn, is restrained to those situations in which, first, there is a rebellion or revolution even though the use of nonviolent strategies for conflict and change remains a reasonable choice; and second, police agencies lack the resources that arerequired for managing and suppressing rebel activities. Of course, these requirements should be taken as presumptions, and there may be cases when they do not hold. (shrink)

Recent semantic approaches to scientific structuralism, aiming to make precise the concept of shared structure between models, formally frame a model as a type of set-structure. This framework is then used to provide a semantic account of (a) the structure of a scientific theory, (b) the applicability of a mathematical theory to a physical theory, and (c) the structural realist’s appeal to the structural continuity between successive physical theories. In this paper, I challenge the idea that, to be so used, (...) the concept of a model and so the concept of shared structure between models must be formally framed within a single unified framework, set-theoretic or other. I first investigate the Bourbaki-inspired assumption that structures are types of set-structured systems and next consider the extent to which this problematic assumption underpins both Suppes’ and recent semantic views of the structure of a scientific theory. I then use this investigation to show that, when it comes to using the concept of shared structure, there is no need to agree with French that “without a formal framework for explicating this concept of ‘structure-similarity’ it remains vague, just as Giere’s concept of similarity between models does ...” (French, 2000, Synthese, 125, pp. 103–120, p. 114). Neither concept is vague; either can be made precise by appealing to the concept of a morphism, but it is the context (and not any set-theoretic type) that determines the appropriate kind of morphism. I make use of French’s (1999, From physics to philosophy (pp. 187–207). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) own example from the development of quantum theory to show that, for both Weyl and Wigner’s programmes, it was the context of considering the ‘relevant symmetries’ that determined that the appropriate kind of morphism was the one that preserved the shared Lie-group structure of both the theoretical and phenomenological models. (shrink)

This article takes an autobiographical approach to the development of practical theology as a discipline over the past 30 years, with particular attention to my own context of the United Kingdom. The unfolding of my own intellectual story in relation to key issues within the wider academic discourse provides an opportunity to reflect on some of the predominant themes and trends: past, present and future. Changing nomenclature, from 'pastoral studies' to 'practical theology', indicates how the discipline has moved from regarding (...) itself as the application of theory into practice, into a more performative and inductive epistemology. This emphasis continues to the present day and foregrounds the significance of the human context and the realities of lived experience, including narrative and autobiography. Whilst the methodological conundrums of relating experience to tradition and theory to practice continue, further challenges are beckoning, including religious pluralism, and so the article closes by surveying the prospects for a multicultural practical theology. (shrink)

Retail banking is facing many challenges, not least the loss of its customers’ trust and loyalty. The economic crisis is forcing banks to examine their relationships with stakeholders and to offer greater reassurance that their brand promises will be delivered. More than ever, banks need to stand for something positive and valued by stakeholders. One way to achieve this is through paying more attention to brand values. Our article explores how values are adopted by employees within a bank. When employees (...) ‘live’ their brand’s values, their behaviour during customer interactions reflects this, encouraging the strengthening of customer relationships. Specifically, we test the relationship between leadership style, employee commitment, and the adoption of values. Data was collected from a survey of 438 branch employees in a leading Irish retail bank. The study found that a structured and directive leadership style was effective at encouraging the adoption of the bank’s values. Moreover, when employees are committed to the organisation, this has a significant impact on their adoption of values. Thus, this study supports the literature which suggests that leadership and commitment are prerequisites for values adoption. (shrink)

This essay addresses the implications of German Idealism and Romanticism, and in particular the philosophy of Schelling as it is informed by Kant and Goethe, for contemporary environmental philosophy. Schelling's philosophy posits a nature imbued with freedom which gives rise to human beings, which means that any ethics, insofar as ethics is predicated upon freedom, will be an ‘environmental ethic’. At the same time, Schelling's organismic view of nature is distinctive in positing a fundamental gap between nature and human beings. (...) Without this absolute alterity, there could be no real ethical relationship between human beings and nature. I conclude by briefly gesturing toward Schelling's role in the development of an ethics of alterity (which I apply to environmental ethics) in continental philosophy through Heidegger, Derrida, and Levinas. (shrink)

While philosophy and psychoanalysis privilege language and conceptual distinctions and mistrust the image, the philosopher and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva recognizes the power of art and the imagination to unblock important sources of meaning. She also appreciates the process through which creative acts counteract and transform feelings of violence and depression. Reviewing Kristeva's corpus, Elaine P. Miller considers the intellectual's "aesthetic idea" and "thought specular" in their capacity to reshape depressive thought on both the individual and cultural level. She revisits Kristeva's (...) reading of Walter Benjamin with reference to melancholic art and the imagination's allegorical structure; her analysis of Byzantine iconoclasm in relation to Freud's psychoanalytic theory of negation and Hegel's dialectical negativity; her understanding of Proust as an exemplary practitioner of sublimation; her rereading of Kant and Arendt in terms of art as an intentional lingering with foreignness; and her argument that forgiveness is both a philosophical and psychoanalytic method of transcending a "stuck" existence. Focusing on specific artworks that illustrate Kristeva's ideas, from ancient Greek tragedy to early photography, contemporary installation art, and film, Miller positions creative acts as a form of "spiritual inoculation" against the violence of our society and its discouragement of thought and reflection. (shrink)

This paper reports on the development of a research instrument designed to explore ethical reasoning in a tax context. This research instrument is a version of the Defining Issues Test originally developed by Rest [1979a, Development in Judging Moral Issues ; 1979b, Defining Issues Test ], but adapted to focus specifically on the environment encountered by tax practitioners. The paper explores reasons for developing a context- specific test, and details the manner in which this was undertaken. The study on which (...) it is based aims to compare the reasoning of tax practitioners in the taxspecific context and in the general social context covered by the original DIT, and to compare this with the reasoning of non-specialists in these two contexts. The paper therefore also considers the issues that arise when using such tests to compare reasoning in different domains or to compare groups. The focus on instrument development to measure ethical reasoning in a specific domain will contribute to the literature on research methods in the area of the DIT and will facilitate cross-study comparisons. (shrink)

Bioethics conjures images of dramatic healthcare challenges, yet everyday clinical ethics issues unfold regularly. Without sufficient ethical awareness and a relevant working skillset, clinicians can feel ill-equipped to respond to the ethical dimensions of everyday care. Bioethicists were interviewed to identify the essential skills associated with everyday clinical ethics and to identify educational case scenarios to illustrate everyday clinical ethics. Individual, semi-structured interviews were conducted with a convenience sample of bioethicists. Bioethicists were asked: (1) What are the essential skills required (...) for everyday clinical ethics? And (2) What are potential educational case scenarios to illustrate and teach everyday clinical ethics? Participant interviews were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Twenty-five (25) bioethicists completed interviews (64% female; mean 14.76 years bioethics experience; 80% white). Five categories of general skills and three categories of ethics-specific skills essential for everyday clinical ethics were identified. General skills included: (1) Awareness of Core Values and Self-Reflective Capacity; (2) Perspective-Taking and Empathic Presence; (3) Communication and Relational Skills; (4) Cultural Humility and Respect; and (5) Organizational Understanding and Know-How. Ethics-specific skills included: (1) Ethical Awareness; (2) Ethical Knowledge and Literacy; and (3) Ethical Analysis and Interaction. Collectively, these skills comprise a Toolbox of Everyday Clinical Ethics Skills. Educational case scenarios were identified to promote everyday ethics. Bioethicists identified skills essential to everyday clinical ethics. Educational case scenarios were identified for the purpose of promoting proficiency in this domain. Future research could explore the impact of integrating educational case scenarios on clinicians’ ethical competencies. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, Volume 52, Issue 3, Page 344-361, Fall 2021.