Ayn Rand's first novel, We the Living, offers an early form of the author's nascent philosophy—the philosophy Rand later called Objectivism. Robert Mayhew's collection of entirely new essays brings together pre-eminent scholars of Rand's writing. In part a history of We the Living, from its earliest drafts to the Italian film later based upon it, Mayhew's collection goes on to explore the enduring significance of Rand's first novel as a work both of philosophy and of literature.

Traditionally, science has regarded the universe as made up of inert matter and empty space. Duane Elgin brings together extraordinary evidence from cosmology, biology, and physics to show that the universe is not dead but rather uniquely alive, an insight that, he shows, is in harmony with all of the world’s major spiritual traditions. He explores how this view radically transforms our concept of ourselves, our place in the cosmos, and the evolutionary trajectory of the human family. The nonliving view (...) of the universe has led to rampant materialism and global environmental degradation. To transform our planetary crises we need to move past a paradigm of separation and exploitation and learn to live sustainably on the Earth, in harmony with one another, and in communion with the living universe. (shrink)

This is the second edition of the study of Ayn Rand’s first novel, We the Living, which is set in Soviet Russia, and was written in 1936, ten years after she left the U.S.S.R. Topics explored include: the fascinating history behind the novel’s creation; its autobiographical nature; its reception during America’s “Red Decade”; its connection to Victor Hugo ; and, the philosophy of freedom and the sanctity of life which it portrays and defends.

Elegant, suggestive, and clarifying, Lewis Thomas's profoundly humane vision explores the world around us and examines the complex interdependence of all things. Extending beyond the usual limitations of biological science and into a vast and wondrous world of hidden relationships, this provocative book explores in personal, poetic essays to topics such as computers, germs, language, music, death, insects, and medicine. Lewis Thomas writes, "Once you have become permanently startled, as I am, by the realization that we are a social species, (...) you tend to keep an eye out for the pieces of evidence that this is, by and large, good for us.". (shrink)

Why should we respect the wishes which individuals may have about how their body is treated after death? Reflecting on how and why the law respects the bodies of the living, we argue that we must also respect the ‘dead’. We contest the relevance of the argument ‘the dead have no interests’, rather we think that the pertinent argument is ‘the living have interests in what happens to their dead bodies’. And, we advance arguments why we should also (...) respect the wishes of the relatives of the deceased regarding what happens to the bodies of their loved ones. In our analysis, we use objections to organ and tissue donation for conscientious reasons (often presented as religious reasons) to show why the living can have interests in their dead bodies, and those of their dead relatives, and why these interests should be respected. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Living from the Dead: Disaffirming Biopolitics by Stuart J. MurrayMichelle BallifThe Living from the Dead: Disaffirming Biopolitics, by Stuart J. Murray. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, The RSA Series in Transdisciplinary Rhetorics, 2022. 207 pp. ISBN 9780271093413 (hardback) $109.95 ISBN 9780271093406 (paper) $27.50If we but listen, we can hear a voice from the grave—Jacques Derrida's mournful lamentation: "There is no longer, there has never (...) been a scholar capable of speaking of anything and everything while addressing himself to everyone and anyone, and especially to ghosts. There has never been a scholar who really, and as scholar, deals with ghosts" (2006, 12), a scholar who "does not believe in the sharp distinction between … the living and the non-living" (12). But, then, as if in response, we witness the apparition of just such a scholar: Stuart J. Murray, the author of The Living from the Dead, who very much is dedicated to the ethical project of attending to those dead who continue to haunt the living. Indeed, the book's cover features a spectral image, entitled "Ghost," as it were, conjured by artist Si Lewen. As well, the very title of his work renders the "sharp distinction" between "The Living" and "The Dead" porous, quixotically indistinct, as signified by the unattached and unhinged preposition "from." That is, the title does not announce that Murray intends to distinguish the living from the dead, nor separate the living from the dead, nor identify the living from the dead—in some categorical, decisive demarcation. Rather, Murray's use of the preposition "from" might conjure—instead, a Derridean sense of a "borderline"—a relation marked by différance between the living and the dead. Etymologically derived from an Old English preposition, "denoting the distance, absence, or remoteness of a person or thing in fixed position" [End Page 347] (OED)—in time or space, from evokes Derrida's neologism. "Différance as temporization [time/deferral], différance as spacing [space/difference]. How are they [time/space]," Derrida queries, "to be joined?" (1991, 61). Murray's syntactically incomplete phrase suggests that the living and the dead are conjoined in a relation of interminable deferral and indeterminable difference, entangled in a fluxed, symbiotic—parasitic, even—relation.Much more could be said on this t(r)opic of deferred presence (and much more, indeed, of parasitic consumption and carnophallogocentrism), but to our immediate point, as Murray's work entreats us to consider, there is much to learn in conversation with the dead; and indeed, it is our ethical responsibility—burden, even, as he remarks—to "hearken" to their voices. Murray's The Living from the Dead undertakes this burden, listening to "the dead, the dying, the dispossessed" (1), endeavoring to articulate "[u]nder what conditions might we hearken those dead who summon us, and exhort us, perhaps to reckon with our unspeakable complicity in their deaths" (1), while offering the following caveat: "These pages, which arise in care of such summons, exhortations, and calls to reckoning neither speak for nor as the dead, the dying, or lives lost" (1), for as he will reveal in his refrain, speaking for or as amounts to an unethical co-option, a resentencing to death of the dead and dying.Murray describes his work's writing "something akin to thanatography" (1), which is through and through a rhetorical enterprise, necessitating an attunement to and with biopolitics' "speech/acts and its tropological constitution of subjects, political identities, and lives lived" (10). That is, as Steven Mailloux has argued elsewhere, tropes are rotated in order to "rotate the troops" (1993, 299). Tropes, troops; life, death. Much is at stake.The subtitle of the book, Disaffirming Biopolitics, foregrounds Murray's argument: that attending to these voices, to the dead, requires a certain disaffirmation of biopolitics, a disaffirmation of "a politics ostensibly devoted to life (bios)" (1), to the production of "life," which is "governed by increasingly autonomous efficiencies and economies of scale, through techno-administrative mechanisms that include systems of surveillance, segregation, health and welfare regimes" (2), as well as "through education, … law, biomedicine, and popular culture, too" (2). The production of "life" instantiates itself... (shrink)

In this essay, I focus on two biographical works by Hannah Arendt and Simone de Beauvoir that I read as political texts: Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess and “Must We Burn Sade?”. Reading Arendt's Varnhagen and Beauvoir's “Sade” side by side illuminates their shared preoccupation with lived experience and their common political premises: the antagonism between freedom and sovereignty, and the centrality of action and constructive relations with others. My argument is that these texts constitute an original style (...) of political thinking, which I call politico-biographical hermeneutics, or reading the life of others as exercises in political theory. Politico-biographical hermeneutics, as I take it, is not a systematic methodology, but an approach to interpreting sociopolitical forces as they come to bear and are embodied and inscribed in the lived experiences, struggles, and works of representative or exemplary individuals. This approach identifies the political lessons of lived experience and supports one of the central claims of feminist philosophy, namely, that the personal and the political are not antithetical, but relational. (shrink)

Despite the iconic roles of coelacanths, cycads, tadpole shrimps, and tuataras as taxa that demonstrate a pattern of morphological stability over geological time, their status as living fossils is contested. We responded to these controversies with a recommendation to rethink the function of the living fossil concept. Concepts in science do useful work beyond categorizing particular items and we argued that the diverse and sometimes conflicting criteria associated with categorizing items as living fossils represent a complex problem (...) space associated with answering a range of questions related to prolonged evolutionary stasis. Turner defends the living concept against a variety of recent skeptics, but his criticism of our approach relies on a misreading of our main argument. This misreading is instructive because it brings into view the value of three central themes for rethinking the living fossil concept—the function of concepts in biology outside of categorization, the methodological importance of distinguishing parts and wholes in conceptualizing evolutionary phenomena, and articulating diverse explanatory goals associated with these phenomena. (shrink)

Studying with Husserl in Göttingen, becoming a Carmelite nun, and finally meeting her death in Auschwitz, the multifaceted life of Edith Stein (1891-1942) is well known. But what about her writing? Have the different aspects of her scholarship received sufficient attention? Peter Tyler thinks not, and by drawing on previously untranslated and neglected sources, he reveals how Stein's work lies at the interface of philosophy, psychology, and theology. Bringing Stein into conversation with a range of scholars and traditions, this book (...) investigates two core elements of her thinking. From Nietzsche to Aquinas, psychoanalysis to the philosophy of the soul, and even the striking parallels between Stein's thought and Buddhist teaching, Tyler first unveils the interdisciplinary nature of what he terms her 'spiritual anthropology'. Second, he also explores her symbolic mentality. Articulating its poetic roots with the help of English poetry and medieval theology, he introduces Stein's self-named 'philosophy of life'. Considered in the context of her own times, The Living Philosophy of Edith Stein unearths Stein's valuable contributions to numerous subjects that are still of great importance today, including not only the philosophies of mind and religion, but also social and political thought and the role of women in society. By examining the richness of her thinking, informed by three disciplines and the tumultuous first half of the twentieth century, Tyler shows us how Edith Stein is the guide we all need, as we seek to develop our own philosophy for life in the contemporary world. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the question of whether the characterization of physicalism that is presupposed by some influential anti-physicalist arguments, namely, the so-called conceivability arguments, is a good characterization of physicalism or not. I compare this characterization with some alternative ones, showing how it can overcome some problems, and I defend it from several objections. I conclude that any arguments against physicalism characterised in that way are genuine arguments against physicalism, as intuitively conceived.

Reason's capacity to take us where we did not expect to go could also lead to a curious diversion from what one might expect to be the straight line of evolution. We have evolved a capacity to reason because it helps us to survive and reproduce. But if reason is an escalator, then although the first part of the journey may help us to survive and reproduce, we may go further than we needed to go for this purpose alone. We (...) may even end up somewhere that creates tension with other aspects of our nature. In this respect, there may after all be some validity in Kant 's picture of tension between our capacity to reason, and what it may lead us to see as the right thing to do, and our more basic desires. We can live with the contradictions only up to a point. (shrink)

The practice of nursing involves ongoing interactions between nurses' and clients' lived bodies. Despite this, several scholars have suggested that the “lived body” (Merleau‐Ponty, 1962) has not been given its due place in nursing practice, education or research (Draper, J Adv Nurs, 70, 2014, 2235). With the advent of electronic health records and increased use of technology, face‐to‐face assessment and embodied understanding of clients' lived bodies may be on the decline. Furthermore, staffing levels may not afford the time nurses need (...) to be as “present” with their clients in embodied ways. The failure to attend to the lived body may contribute to missed opportunities for care and decreased quality of life for both clients and healthcare practitioners. In this paper, we undertake an analysis of selected aspects of the work of Maurice Merleau‐Ponty. The aim is to advance understanding of the affordances this work may offer to enhancing client–nurse interactions within the practice of nursing. Merleau‐Ponty's notions of embodiment, intersubjectivity and intercorporeality as articulated in his seminal texts The Phenomenology of Perception (New York, NY: Routledge, 2012) and The Visible and the Invisible (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968) are examined. These three constructs are discussed as they relate to the lived body in client–nurse interactions in nursing practice and education. Finally, implications of how attention to “the lived body” could shape interactions and have the potential to foster increased quality of life of clients and nurses are considered. (shrink)

The theme of this paper is that people in Northeast Brazil refuse to let a good person who helped them during his (or her) lifetime die. They do this through several of the religious traditions practiced in the region. Beings, human and other, now in another plane of reality established in modern thinking, cross the conceptual divide and return through mediums or other intermediaries to heal the living. We examine two religious traditions, “folk” or “popular” Catholicism and Kardecist‐Spiritism, focusing (...) on the spirit of Argeu Hebster, a medical doctor who lived in the municipality of Marangaupe in the state of Ceará until his death in 1977. The return of the doctor is told in stories told to the authors while doing ethnography that provide the data used in analyzing the enchanted worlds of the two religions. (shrink)

Resumen En este trabajo se explora el problema del cuerpo vivo en la fenomenología trascendental de Edmund Husserl y el entrelazamiento que tiene con la conciencia trascendental. Para ello se exploran diversas capas o momentos del tema. Primero: la justificación de la ausencia de un tratamiento del cuerpo en Ideas I debido a su enfoque estático. Segundo: el problema propiamente dicho de la constitución del cuerpo vivo en Ideas II desde una fenomenología genética. Tercero: la posibilidad de una ética de (...) la corporalidad a partir del análisis de las ubiestesias y la constitución de ciertos valores. Cuarto: que el cuerpo representa un problema metafísico o que su tratamiento puede ser enfocado desde la metafísica, ya que se trata del cuerpo y la subjetividad trascendental como factum del mundo.In this work, we explore the problem of the living body in the transcendental phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and the interlacing that it has with transcendental conscience. To do this, we present several layers or moments of the theme. First, the justification of the absence of body in Ideas I due to their static approach treatment. Second, the problem of the constitution of the living body in Ideas II from a genetic phenomenology. Third, the possibility of an ethic of physicality from analysis of the ubiestesias and the constitution of the values. Quarter, that the living body represents a metaphysical problem, because the living body and the transcendental subjectivity are facts factum) in the world. (shrink)

This paper aims to explore the validity of phenomenology in the psychiatric setting. The phenomenological method - as a mode of research, a method of engagement between self and other, and a framework for approaching what it means to know - has found a legitimate home in therapeutic practice. Over the last century, phenomenology, as a philosophical endeavour and research method, has influenced a wide range of disciplines, including psychiatry. Phenomenology has enabled an enrichment of such practice through deepening the (...) way in which we can come to know the experiences of the other. This knowing-of-the-other is explored here within the context of psychiatric and clinica assessment. The question asked is: How best can we come to know those we work with? What method of engagement can be used to most completely come to understand and narrate the experiences of the individual, and how can this be applied in the context of an assessment aimed at psychiatric or psychological intervention? Elements of phenomenological praxis are presented as definitive of the most integral way of approaching the human subject. Husserlian and Heideggerian notions are explicated and related to phenomenological conceptions of intersubjectivity, in an effort to describe a phenomenology that can be used effectively within the psychiatric setting. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 7, Edition 1 May 2007. (shrink)

Traditionally divine life has been conceived as an attribute that belongs to God according to his way of acting. This thesis is based on a notion of life as a purely operational perfection and on the place in which Aquinas develops his thought about divine life in the Summa theologiae. Here we contend that these arguments are not entirely conclusive and introduce the idea that life, in its most radical meaning, is an attribute that belongs to God according to his (...) way of being. In our view, this approach is more consistent with Thomas’s doctrine and avoids some common misunderstandings. (shrink)

Micro-phenomenology is an interview and analysis method for investigating subjective experience. As a research tool, it provides detailed descriptions of brief moments of any type of subjective experience and offers techniques for systematically comparing them. In this article, we use an auto-ethnographic approach to present and explore the method. The reader is invited to observe a dialogue between two authors that illustrates and comments on the planning, conducting and analysis of a pilot series of five micro-phenomenological interviews. All these interviews (...) asked experienced researchers of micro-phenomenology to browse their memories to identify one successful and one challenging instance of working with micro-phenomenology. The interview then focused on this reflective task to investigate whether applying the method to itself might reveal quality criteria. The article starts by presenting a shortened and edited version of the first of these interviews. Keeping the dialogue format, we then outline the micro-phenomenological analysis procedure by demonstrating its application to part of this data and corresponding passages of other interviews. We focus on one unexpected finding: interviewed researchers judge the quality of an interview in part based on a connection or contact between interviewer and interviewee. We discuss these results in the context of the means and intentions of the method and suggest avenues for future research. (shrink)

The book consists of an Introduction, Three Parts (Part One “Lifetime and Society's Suffering: A Sociology of Generativity”; Part Two “The Generative World: Perspectives on Genetic Phenomenology” and Part Three “Promulgation of Generative Time: Towards a Phenomenological Critique of Biocapitalism”) and Epilogue. As the exhibition progresses, there is an increasing relevance of the subject of research, reaching a socio-analytical and critical review of fully presented events in contemporary times such as the global pandemic caused by COVID-19 (2020 – 2022) and (...) the war in Ukraine (2022 – 2023). Special emphasis in the review are the socalled “aporias” of the category of property when it is applied to one's own body. They are the subject of exposition in Chapter Seven, entitled “Biocapitalism and the World of Life”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:March 13, 2008 (7:35 pm) G:\WPData\TYPE2702\russell 27,2 054.wpd 272 Reviews 1 See Brian J.yL. Berry and Donald C. Dahmen, “Paul Wheatley, 1921–1999”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 91 (2001): 734–47. THE LIVES OF THOSE WHO WOULD BE IMMORTAL Richard Henry Schmitt U. of Chicago Chicago, il 60637, usa [email protected] David Leavitt. The Indian Clerk: a Novel. London: Bloomsbury, 2008; New York: Bloomsbury, 2007. Pp. 485. isbn 1-59691-040-2. (...) £16.99; us$24.95 (hb). From the start, this novel interested me for two reasons. First, it attempts to tell us the personal stories of two individuals who were working at the highest level in a very abstract Weld, namely G.yH. Hardy (1877–1947) and Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920) during their collaboration on pure mathematics between spring 1914 and spring 1919. Obviously the same problems would arise in trying to tell the personal story of Bertrand Russell’s supervision of Ludwig Wittgenstein in mathematical logic, which occurred at Cambridge University in the years just before the start of the Great War. It is a great challenge to try to tie personal dynamics and abstract thought into a single coherent narrative. There are implications for the philosophy of mathematics and the history and sociology of science. So, of course, we have to ask: how does author David Leavitt rise to this challenge? Second, a more personal reason: Paul Wheatley1 told me shortly before his death that he thought this period at Cambridge represented the highest accom- March 13, 2008 (7:35 pm) G:\WPData\TYPE2702\russell 27,2 054.wpd Reviews 273 2 G.yH. Hardy, Ramanujan: Twelve Lectures on Subjects Suggested by His Life and Work (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1940). Two lectures were presented at Harvard in 1936; the Wrst, a more personal recollection, was printed unchanged. The quote is from p. 2. The second lecture was expanded into the remaining published lectures, all considering speciWc mathematical topics. plishment possible for an academic institution: its fellows and masters had managed to attract and then recognize the genius of Ramanujan and Wittgenstein and to admit them to advanced studies without any real academic credentials. Wheatley had been the chair of the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago; so, he knew something about such matters, as he did about many things involving humans, human settlements, and their arrangement in the world. Incidentally, Wheatley himself appeared as a character, Battle, in Ravenstein, Saul Bellow’s roman à clef about Allan Bloom. So, to the extent that Cambridge University just before and during the Great War plays a role here, we want to learn as much as we can about the atmosphere of the place. The Indian Clerk is a historical novelz—zin this case naming actual names, elaborating what we know about real people and occasionally adding Wctional charactersz—zall centered on the extraordinary mathematical genius Ramanujan and his equally extraordinary importation from India to Cambridge. The story is told largely in the third person, by an omniscient narrator, but repeatedly we also have the inner voice of G.yH. Hardy: there are a number of chapters with the indication “New Lecture Hall, Harvard University”, dated 1936, in which Hardy speaks in the Wrst person. In these passages David Leavitt uses parts of the published lectures, along with G.yH. Hardy’s private thoughtsz—zas imagined by Leavittz—zabout this “one romantic incident in my life” and about other matters that still haunt him.2 The novel is thus in some sense more about G.yH. Hardy and his inner life than it is about Srinivasa Ramanujan. The triumph of the novel is its ability to reconstruct and convey in a lively manner the circumstances of the time, the look and smell of the place, the crosscurrents, dynamics, and dislocations of people during these years. Leavitt has woven together a great deal, from many diTerent realms: pre-war meetings of the Apostles, the high table, the pre-war mathematics tripos, the method of collaboration between Hardy and J.yE. Littlewood, Cambridge as military training grounds and as hospital for the wounded, vegetarian cookery, feminism, Hindu... (shrink)

‘We have the strong ground of common hatreds, though perhaps we hate on different or even opposite grounds’. Thus wrote Tocqueville the liberal of Montalembert the liberal Catholic. What lay in common was a desire for an extension of personal liberties, freedom of association, decentralisation, separation of Church and state; but, in recognizing the differences, Tocqueville tacitly acknowledges the areligious nature of his own plea for religion in modern society and asserts the aliberal nature of Montalembert’s dedication to liberal programmes. (...) Both claimed to unite what the French had set asunder, religion and liberalism; both in fact degraded one end by using it as a tool of the other. (shrink)

This study aimed to identify the antibiotic-relevant lessons from the controlled drug regimen for narcotics. Whereas several elements of the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs could be advantageous for antibiotics, we doubt that an international legally binding agreement for controlling antibiotic consumption would be any more effective than implementing stewardship measures through national AMR plans.

Peter Singer is well known as an ethicist who has contributed much to current debates in ethics and public policy. He has published on topics ranging from vegetarianism to famine relief to bioethics, always with something interesting to say, and often with something provocative as well. How Are We to Live? adds to Singer’s work in the area of applied, or practical, ethics. This book is not as deeply challenging as some of Singer’s earlier work. However, it is not intended (...) for an audience composed exclusively of professional philosophers. It is written for people who feel that ethics doesn’t speak to the concern of living a full and fruitful life, who believe that ethics, at best, is too narrow to guide us in a wide spectrum of decisions, and, at worst, is for “suckers.” This sentiment is one that professional ethicists encounter all too frequently. Singer’s book does a splendid job of addressing these sorts of concerns. He does so with a light touch, without being too moralistic. It is easy to read, engaging, and will appeal to a wide audience. Thus, the book accomplishes its goals admirably. (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue that the experiential-based approaches of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and William James’s radical empiricism can help inform an account of humanism more rooted in concrete experience. Specifically, I will outline a form of humanism closely connected to the conceptual similarities between James’s radical empiricism and the general character of Husserl’s phenomenology of experience. Whereas many forms of humanism are underscored by an eliminativist impulse, I sketch a humanism of lived-experience more motivated by the restrictive and (...) experiential impetus closer to pragmatism and phenomenology than humanism defended on metaphysically eliminativist grounds.This paper is organized in the following way. In the first section, I explain the general character of Husserl’s phenomenology and explain the methodological commitments that underscore his concept of experience. In the second section, I outline the conceptual similarities between James’s later radical empiricism and Husserl’s thought. Finally, in the third section, James’s critique of metaphysics and his radical empiricism allow for a limited acceptability of religious interests in experience as well as scientific interests. These interests result from how we experience the world and affirm freedom and individuality of every person’s lived-experience. (shrink)

Mixing passion and humor, a personal work of literary criticism that demonstrates the power of our greatest books to illuminate our lives. Why do we read literature? For Arnold Weinstein, the answer is clear: literature allows us to become someone else. Literature changes us by giving us intimate access to an astonishing variety of other lives, experiences, and places across the ages. Reflecting on a lifetime of reading, teaching, and writing, The Lives of Literature explores, with passion, humor, and whirring (...) intellect, a professor's life, the thrills and traps of teaching, and, most of all, the power of literature to lead us to a deeper understanding of ourselves and the worlds we inhabit. As an identical twin, Weinstein experienced early the dislocation of being mistaken for another person--and of feeling that he might be someone other than he had thought. In vivid readings elucidating the classics of authors ranging from Sophocles to James Joyce and Toni Morrison, he explores what we learn by identifying with their protagonists, including those who, undone by wreckage and loss, discover that all their beliefs are illusions. Weinstein masterfully argues that literature's knowing differs entirely from what one ends up knowing when studying mathematics or physics or even history: by entering these characters' lives, readers acquire a unique form of knowledge--and come to understand its cost. In The Lives of Literature, a master writer and teacher shares his love of the books that he has taught and been taught by, showing us that literature matters most because we never stop discovering who we are. (shrink)

Ravelingien et al have suggested that early human xenotransplantation trials should be carried out on patients who are in a permanent vegetative state (PVS) and who have previously granted their consent to the use of their bodies in such research in the event of their cortical death. Unfortunately, their philosophical defence of this suggestion is unsatisfactory in its current formulation, as it equivocates on the key question of the status of patients who are in a PVS. The solution proposed by (...) them rests on the idea that it should be up to people themselves to determine when they should be treated as dead. Yet the authors clearly believe (and state) that patients who are in a PVS are in fact dead. Finally, given the public good that their proposal is intended to achieve, the moral importance they place on the consent of a person to the use of his or her body in research is ultimately only defensible in so far as this consent represents the wishes of a living person. It is thus only a gentle caricature of their position to suggest that according to their account, consent to participation in xenotransplantation research is a “right of the living dead”. The equivocation by Ravelingien et al on the question of whether these people are living or dead means that they avoid confronting the implications of their argument. The solution proposed by Ravelingien et al to the problem of how we should proceed with xenotransplantation research is therefore not as neat as it first seems to be. (shrink)

Wolfgang Köhler made the following remark in Gestalt Psychology [1929]: “The ways of real life do not coincide with those of classification, and if, by abstraction, we unite the members of one class, we very probably cut the live bonds of dynamical reality at the same time. Perhaps, the most interesting forms of dynamical context occur between members of altogether different classes” [351]. This paper argues that reflection on Köhler’s remark serves to illuminate how Wittgenstein thought about classification and concepts (...) in his 1940s writings on philosophical psychology. In particular, it provides insight into what is at issue for Wittgenstein in how to characterize concepts connected to seeing and seeing aspects. (shrink)

In nineteenth-century Britain, captive snakes in menageries and zoological gardens were routinely fed with live prey – primarily rabbits, pigeons and guinea pigs. From the late 1860s, this practice began to generate opposition on animal welfare grounds, leading to a protracted debate over its necessity, visibility and morality. Focusing on the c.1870–1914 period, when the snake-feeding controversy reached its zenith, this article charts changing attitudes towards the treatment of reptiles in captivity and asks why an apparently niche practice generated so (...) much interest. By looking at the biological arguments put forward for and against live feeding, the article traces the changing nature of humanitarian activism in the late nineteenth century and shows how the shifting character of the live-feeding debate paralleled wider trends in the animal welfare movement. It also highlights the different types of knowledge and expertise involved in the debate, as naturalists, veterinary surgeons, legal professionals, zookeepers and humanitarians offered conflicting perspectives on questions of reptilian dietary requirements and animal sentience. (shrink)

In his attempt at a renewal of the concept of reification, Axel Honneth has referred to reification as a kind of forgetting. He uses an epigraph from Adorno and Horkheimer’s work to introduce this theme. This article considers the different accounts that are given by Honneth, on the one hand, and Adorno and Horkheimer, on the other, as to the way that reification is a forgetting of core experiential capacities of intersubjective human relations. It argues that Honneth’s account relies too (...) much on a foundational and undifferentiated notion of ‘empathetic engagement’, and that in order to articulate the damage done by reification, we need to contend with the more radical notion of forgetting that is outlined in Adorno and Horkheimer’s work. (shrink)

A colorful history of utilitarianism told through the lives and ideas of Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and its other founders In The Happiness Philosophers, Bart Schultz tells the colorful story of the lives and legacies of the founders of utilitarianism—one of the most influential yet misunderstood and maligned philosophies of the past two centuries. Best known for arguing that "it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong," utilitarianism was developed by (...) the radical philosophers, critics, and social reformers William Godwin, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart and Harriet Taylor Mill, and Henry Sidgwick. Together, they had a profound influence on nineteenth-century reforms, in areas ranging from law, politics, and economics to morals, education, and women's rights. Their work transformed life in ways we take for granted today. Bentham even advocated the decriminalization of same-sex acts, decades before the cause was taken up by other activists. As Bertrand Russell wrote about Bentham in the late 1920s, "There can be no doubt that nine-tenths of the people living in England in the latter part of last century were happier than they would have been if he had never lived." Yet in part because of its misleading name and the caricatures popularized by figures as varied as Dickens, Marx, and Foucault, utilitarianism is sometimes still dismissed as cold, calculating, inhuman, and simplistic. By revealing the fascinating human sides of the remarkable pioneers of utilitarianism, The Happiness Philosophers provides a richer understanding and appreciation of their philosophical and political perspectives—one that also helps explain why utilitarianism is experiencing a renaissance today and is again being used to tackle some of the world's most serious problems. (shrink)

Definition of the problem Assistive technologies, including “smart” instruments and artificial intelligence (AI), are increasingly arriving in older adults’ living spaces. Various research has explored risks (“surveillance technology”) and potentials (“independent living”) to people’s self-determination from technology itself and from the increasing complexity of sociotechnical interactions. However, the point at which self-determination of the individual is overridden by external influences has not yet been sufficiently studied. This article aims to shed light on this point of transition and its (...) implications. Arguments The identification of this “tipping point” could contribute to analysis of familiar issues of conflict between the ethical principles of beneficence and respect for autonomy. When using technology in the living spaces of older adults, relationships, among other factors, may play a crucial role in older adult’s self-determination. We find the tipping point to occur subjectively and variably. To this end, the article combines theoretical ethical considerations with two examples from a qualitative study illustrating the perspective of older adults aged 65–85 years. Conclusion The study of the tipping point underscores the importance of perceiving an older person’s perspective. Particularly at the tipping point, this might be the only way to effectively identify whether the individual concerned perceives their self-determination as externally overridden. In conceptualizing the tipping point itself as well as its variability, we might create the basis for a normative call to shift the tipping point to promote self-determination and prevent overriding the will of older adults. We highlight individual, relational, and societal implications of our findings. (shrink)

B'Imagine that you could choose a book that everyone in the world would read. My choice would be this book.' Roger Crisp, Ethics -/- Many people have an uneasy feeling that they may be missing out on something basic that would give their lives a significance it currently lacks. But how should we live? What is there to stop us behaving selfishly? In a highly readable account which makes reference to a wide variety of sources and everyday issues, Peter Singer (...) suggests that the conventional pursuit of self- interest is individually and collectively self-defeating. Taking into consideration the beliefs of Jesus, Kant, Rousseau, and Adam Smith amongst others, he looks at a number of different cultures, including America, Japan, and the Aborigines to assess whether or not selfishness is in our genes and how we may find greater satisfaction in an ethical lifestyle. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of friendship in the lives of people with psychiatric disabilities through the use of narrative. We suggest that the use of phenomenologically based investigation in experimental or other traditional research designs provides a more in-depth and complex view of the lives of people with serious mental illness. We offer the example of the Partnership Project, which provides people with psychiatric disabilities a consumer or non-consumer "partner" with whom to enjoy community activities and spend a weekly (...) stipend. Through the lens of narrative, we examine the ways that friendship differs between people matched with either a consumer or non-consumer partner and delve into the importance of connection and friendship in the lives of people with psychiatric disabilities. (shrink)

The locus classicus for Plutarch's own views on his methods is in the Alexander He has begun by asking for the indulgence of his readers if they do not find all the exploits of Alexander and Caesar recounted by the biographer or if they discover him not reporting some famous incident in detail (); and he goes on to compare his own search for evidence which will indicate the kind of soul, with the activity of the painter, who, in order (...) to create a likeness, concentrates on the eyes and pays little attention to the other parts. Commentators and critics have been right to take this as a key text for the purpose of understanding Plutarch's attitude towards his biographical work; nevertheless there are other passages in the Lives where we can at least glimpse his attitude to his subject, and we can only see the Alexander-remarks in correct perspective if we take these other passages into account. I propose therefore, starting with the Alexander, to see how far these critical remarks apply to Plutarch's theory and practice elsewhere in the Lives. (shrink)

We are living through a new phase in human development where much of everyday life – at least in the most technologically developed parts of the world – has come to depend upon our interaction with “smart” artefacts. Alongside this increasing adoption and ever-deepening reliance on intelligent machines, important changes have been taking place, often in the background, as to how we think of ourselves and how we conceptualize our relationship with technology. As we design, create and learn to (...) live with a new order of artefacts which exhibit behavior that, were it to be carried out by human beings would be seen as intelligent, the ways in which we conceptualize intelligence, minds, reasoning and related notions such as self and agency are undergoing profound shifts. We argue that the basic background assumptions informing our concepts of mind, and the underlying conceptual scheme structuring our reasoning about minds has recently been transformed in the process. This shift has changed the nature and quality of both our folk understanding of mind, our scientific psychology, and the philosophical problems that the interaction of these realms produce. Many of the traditional problems in the philosophy of mind have become reconfigured in the process. This introduction sets the scene for our book that treats this reconfiguration of our concepts of mind and of technology, and the new casting of philosophical problems this reconfiguration engenders. (shrink)

In recounting some of the key sociological insights offered by over 30 years of research on emotion management, or emotion regulation, we orient our discussion around sociological answers to the following questions: What is emotion management? How does emotion management occur? Why does it occur? And what are its consequences or benefits? In this review, we argue that emotion and its management are profoundly social. Through daily interactions with others, individuals learn to differentiate which emotions are appropriate when, as well (...) as the most effective ways to bring their feelings in line with culturally agreed-upon emotion norms. Emotion management is also functional, not only for the individuals who perform it, but also for the dyads, groups, institutions, and societies in which they are embedded. The social processes through which individuals learn to display culturally appropriate emotions have important implications on many levels, from interpersonal interactions to the development of social movements. (shrink)

Argues that death is not unchanging, but rather has evolved over time.

Human existence is structured as an interruption that is forever calling us into question (interrupting our everyday routinized ways of being) and confronting us with the related challenges of having a conscience, being open to and acknowledging others, striving to better ourselves when improvement is necessary for maintaining our well-being, and enacting our rhetorical competence to disclose the truth of the matters at hand.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Affective Spaces: Architecture and the Living Body by Federico de MatteisJasna SersicAffective Spaces: Architecture and the Living Body BY FEDERICO DE MATTEIS New York, NY: Routledge, 2021What is architectural space? For architects, urban planners, and all involved in the design and transformation of the environment, space is a central subject. However, despite this fact, nobody accurately states what space is all about. As a result, the (...) concept of space remains ambiguous, challenging to transmit, and a point of fundamental misunderstandings, with consequences on how we move, inhabit, and transform the world around us (1).In the attempt to provide order in today’s theory of space in architecture, De Matteis’ Affective Spaces invites the reader to explore the question of space from the subject’s point of view by asking what the encounter with architecture is like, and how do I feel, here, now?, borrowed from Eugene Minkowski (7). De Matteis offers an interconnected yet clear and instructive way to explore further what first-hand, direct experience with architecture can tell us about the effects it produces on us. Through this exciting intellectual journey, De Matteis thus shows how architecture, generally understood as an art of building space, does not regard the built environment alone. As people are also emotionally affected by the (built) world they live in, this book can ultimately be read as a quest to understand the relation between the feelings and moods arising from the bodily, corporeal experience of the built environment and the way they invite us to respond and act within environments we inhabit and modify (130).To accept De Matteis’ invitation to join him on his quest entails two things. The first is to take the position that the root of the emergence of sense and feelings is the subject’s corporeity. We must thus acknowledge the primacy of feeling (130). The second, by extension, is to put aside preconceived notions and conceptual tools for representing space inherited from modernity, as they are grounded in dualistic contraposition between physical reality, which is seen as objective (9). In contrast, experience and feeling are seen as subjective (9). Consequently, [End Page 142] they cannot adequately grasp the non- measurable dimensions of the lived space and thus the experience that the subject makes of it.Instead, De Matteis argues that one cannot describe space as a thing separate from us and that we are always a part of the space we inhabit. For this purpose, the book derives its theoretical model of space from phenomenology, which considers the felt body as a sounding board for the built environment and human experience of the world.The book is arranged into fourteen chapters that show the thematic progression of the argument, and is structured in three parts that explore space, the living body and corporeal dynamics, and the experiential character of some specific families of space. Titles of the chapters provide clear signposts to the reader about where the story is going and are much appreciated in this unique exploration. They also show that the author carefully weaves the conceptual intersections between phenomenology and its model of space with investigations in several fields of knowledge. Drawing across a multitude of disciplines, ranging from geography, anthropology, psychology, philosophy of mind, and aesthetics to neurosciences, and offering many examples from art, literature, film, and everyday life, the book helps the reader visualize the content discussed. This panoramic character and accessible language and format make it an engaging read for experts in the field and to a broader audience interested in topics addressed in the book.Perhaps one of the most compelling arguments the book brings forward is that the corporeal dynamics of space enable understanding of space as a thing that is not separate from us. It is from the coming together of persons and things that atmospheres arise. They are not objective, yet they exist as the natural qualities of things; neither are they subjective, yet they belong to sensing beings. This understanding implies a possible workable definition with no boundary between the subject and object. However, it also clearly points out that the book emerged in response to our modern understanding and critique... (shrink)

In this book, the second in the Heart of Christian Faith series, Alister E. McGrath provides an exploration of how we can best understand God using analogies, illustrations, and stories. This short, accessible guide also provides a pastoral and spiritual consideration of the difference that our belief in God makes to the way in which we think about ourselves and our world. With future volumes to examine other core Christian principles, McGrath’s new series will define “mere Chrisitianity” to a new (...) generation for many years to come. (shrink)

This book analyses the dynamic relationship between art and subjective consciousness, following a phenomenological, pragmatist and enactive approach. It brings out a new approach to the role of the body in art, not as a speculative object or symbolic material but as the living source of the imaginary. It contains theoretical contributions and case studies taken from various artistic practices (visual art, theatre, literature and music), Western and Eastern, the latter concerning China, India and Japan. These contributions allow us (...) to nourish the debate on embodied cognition and aesthetics, using theory-philosophy, art history, neuroscience-and the authors' personal experience as artists or spectators. According to the Husserlian method of "reduction" and pragmatist introspection, they postulate that listening to bodily sensations-cramps, heartbeats, impulsive movements, eye orientation-can unravel the thread of subconscious experience, both active and affective, that emerge in the encounter between a subject and an artwork, an encounter which, following John Dewey, we deem to be a case study for life in general. Ce livre analyse la relation dynamique entre l'art et la conscience subjective, selon une approche phénoménologique, pragmatiste et enactive. Il vise à faire émerger une nouvelle approche du rôle du corps dans l'art, non pas comme objet spéculatif ou matériau symbolique, mais comme source vivante de l'imaginaire. Les contributions théoriques et les études de cas sont prises à diverses pratiques artistiques (arts visuels, théâtre, littérature et musique), occidentales et orientales, ces dernières concernant la Chine, l'Inde et le Japon. Selon la méthode husserlienne de réduction, en écho à l'introspection pragmatiste, les textes témoignent que l'écoute des sensations corporelles - crampes, battements de coeur, mouvements pulsionnels, orientation des yeux - mises en jeu par l'oeuvre, permet de dénouer le fil de l'expérience inconsciente, à la fois kinesthésique et affective, qui émerge dans la rencontre entre un sujet et une oeuvre d'art, une rencontre comprise, à la manière de Dewey, comme un cas d'école de la vie en général. (shrink)

Most mental health research largely ignores or minimises gender and age differences in depression. In ‘Don't mind the gap: Why do we not care about the gender gap in mental health?’, Patalay and Demkowicz identify a dearth of research on the causal factors of depression in young women. They attribute this to an over-reliance on biological accounts of gender differences in depression. Patalay and Demkowicz conclude that a person-centred approach that meaningfully engages with the reports of young women with depression (...) is more likely to expose the social drivers of depression that impact this group. This commentary focuses on Patalay and Demkowicz's call to examine the patient's lived experience. We argue that there is an urgent need to reflect upon the methodologies involved in examining lived experience and how they can be best utilised. Ultimately, we advocate for an approach known as ‘phenomenological psychopathology’, through a phenomenological investigation of depression in young women, we can go some way towards closing the gender gap. (shrink)

Following the tradition of the philosophical dialogue, we reimagine our real conversation where we come to understand our respective views on the sublime. We aim to do so in a way that respects both the sublime’s complex philosophical past and its emerging future in empirical research. As in a traditional dialogue, this contrivance is supposed to enact a philosophical exchange. The following conversation reveals the interlocutors’ diverging, converging, and shifting understanding of the sublime in a way that a verbatim interview (...) transcript or a co-authored treatise could not. Moreover, its setting is indicative of the conversation’s current moment: the scene is the virtual Zoom room. (shrink)

This special issue on the semiotics of perception originates from two workshops arranged in Tartu, Estonia, in February 2009. We are located at the junction of nature and culture, and of semiotics and phenomenology. Can they be reconciled? More particularly, can subfields such as biosemiotics and ecophenomenology be mutually enriching? The authors of the current special issue believe that they can. Semiotic study of life and the living can emerge as properly informed only if it is capable of incorporating (...) observations made in natural science, philosophy and cultural studies. The semiotic study of nature entails an experiential turn in the study of life processes. Perception is—or should be—at the heart of the life sciences. (shrink)

City Living is about urban spaces, urban dwellers, and how these spaces and people make, shape, and change one another. More people live in cities than ever before: more than 50% of the earth's people are urban dwellers. As downtown cores gentrify and globalize, they are becoming more diverse than ever, along lines of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, sexuality, and age. Meanwhile, we are in the early stages of what seems sure to be a period of intense civil unrest. (...) During such periods, cities generally become the primary sites where tensions and resistance are concentrated, negotiated, and performed. For all of these reasons, understanding cities and contemporary city living is pressing and exciting from almost any disciplinary and political perspective. Quill R Kukla offers the first systematic philosophical investigation of the nature of city life and city dwellers. The book draws on empirical and ethnographic work in geography, anthropology, urban planning, and several other disciplines in order to explore the impact that cities have on their dwellers and that dwellers have on their cities. It begins with a philosophical exploration of spatially embodied agency and of the specific forms of agency and spatiality that are distinctive of urban life. It explores how gentrification is enacted and experienced at the level of embodied agency, arguing that gentrifying spaces are contested territories that shape and are shaped by their dwellers. The book then moves to an exploration of repurposed cities, which are cities materially designed to support one sociopolitical order, but in which that order collapsed, leaving new dwellers to use the space in new ways. Through detailed original ethnography of the repurposed cities of Berlin and Johannesburg, Kukla makes the case that in repurposed cities, we can see vividly how material spaces shape and constrain the agency and experience of dwellers, while dwellers creatively shape the spaces they inhabit in accordance with their needs. The book concludes with a reconsideration of the right to the city, asking what would be involved in creating a city that enabled the agency and flourishing of all its diverse inhabitants. (shrink)

Moral or ethical questions are vital because they affect our daily lives: what is the best choice we can make, the best action to take in a given situation, and ultimately, the best way to live our lives? Health ethics has contributed to moving ethics toward a more experience-based and user-oriented theoretical and methodological stance but remains in our practice an incomplete lever for human development and flourishing. This context led us to envision and develop the stance of a “ (...) class='Hi'>living ethics”, described in this inaugural collective and programmatic paper as an effort to consolidate creative collaboration between a wide array of stakeholders. We engaged in a participatory discussion and collective writing process known as instrumentalist concept analysis. This process included initial local consultations, an exploratory literature review, the constitution of a working group of 21 co-authors, and 8 workshops supporting a collaborative thinking and writing process. First, a living ethics designates a stance attentive to human experience and the role played by morality in human existence. Second, a living ethics represents an ongoing effort to interrogate and scrutinize our moral experiences to facilitate adaptation of people and contexts. It promotes the active and inclusive engagement of both individuals and communities in envisioning and enacting scenarios which correspond to their flourishing as authentic ethical agents. Living ethics encourages meaningful participation of stakeholders because moral questions touch deeply upon who we are and who we want to be. We explain various aspects of a living ethics stance, including its theoretical, methodological, and practical implications as well as some barriers to its enactment based on the reflections resulting from the collaborative thinking and writing process. (shrink)

Most developed nations have a statutory minimum wage set at levels insufficient to alleviate poverty. Increased calls for a living wage have generated considerable public controversy. This article draws on 25 interviews and four focus groups with employers, low-pay industry representatives, representatives of chambers of commerce, pay consultants, and unions. The core focus is on how participants use prominent narrative tropes for the living wage and against the living wage to argue their respective perspectives. We also document (...) how both affirmative and negative tropes are often combined by participants to craft their own rhetorical positions on the issue. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Psychiatric Practice and the Living Force of the Social in the BiopsychosocialGeorge Ikkos, BSc, FRCPsych (bio) and Giovanni Stanghellini, MD, DPhil (HC) (bio)One of the handful of universally acknowledged founders of his discipline, sociologist Emile Durkheim (1857–1917; see Fournier, 2013) is best known to psychiatrists for his seminal “Suicide: A Study in Sociology” (1897/2002). Arguably, he should have been at least as well known for his last completed (...) work “The Elementary Forms of Religious Life” (1912/1995), the best book of sociology ever written according to some (Bellah, 1995). In this magisterial work, through a comprehensive survey of the anthropological evidence available at the time and fine conceptual analysis, Durkheim came to define from a strictly secular perspective phenomena such as the sacred and the profane, soul and magic, but also “mana” (a penetrating and connecting force) and collective “effervescence” (wild gesticulating, copulating, or aggressing when aboriginal family groups came together). The last two concepts can help us to understand the origin and persistence of the living force of the social in our daily experience, that is, what it is, what it feels like and how it plays itself out in relationships (Ikkos & McQueen, 2019). Although he makes no reference to Durkheim, nor to mana nor effervescence, social anthropologist Ongaro’s welcome ambition is to lift the social out of the shadow of the dominating bio- and psychological in the use of the biopsychosocial model and, thus, bring it to bear as an immediately experienced and enacted living force akin to mana and effervescence in contemporary psychiatric practice.In this commentary, we first review issues relating to the biopsychosocial model, Ongaro’s externalist foundations, and predictive processing and functional neurological, somatic and mental symptoms. We then discuss our formulation of contemporary anorexia nervosa and hysteria as examples of our attempts at enhanced engagement with the social. We conclude by suggesting the work of social historian and cultural critic Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) as a vital resource for better engagement with the social in biopsychosocial practice in the future. [End Page 325]The Biopsychosocial ModelMany find that in current practice the biopsycho-social model is simply the biomedical cloaked in another name (Mohtashemi et al., 2016). Those most expert in it acknowledge doubts about what it is exactly (Bolton, 2022). Most would agree with Ongaro and Williamson that though not yet dead, if it is to survive as a clinical force in practice, it needs clarification and revival (Williamson, 2022). Bolton suggests that “we can make use of the term ‘biopsychosocial model’ as a shorthand for methodological assumptions that causes and/or cures of specific conditions at specific stages, including matters of adjustment and quality of life, will generally—across a wide range of conditions—include biological, psychological and social factors, and interactions between them. The contrast here is with the ‘biomedical model’, which deals with biological factors only” (Bolton, 2022). Bolton then discusses the utility and advantages of his definition of the model specifically in relation to research on the social determinants of disease and on pain. That is fine, as far as it goes, that is, research methodology and clinical theory. Ongaro, however, wants to ensure that the social is understood as a more immediately experienced and directly enacted force in clinical encounters. To achieve his aim, he argues, we need a more balanced and persuasive integration of all three components of the model: bio-psycho-social. In effect what he proposes is to vitalize psychiatry with something related to Durkheim’s ideas of mana and effervescence.Externalist FoundationsIn his first paper, Ongaro argues that he can partly achieve his aims by using the tools provided by our contemporary neuroscience research on “predictive processing” and philosophical theories of “enactivism” (Ongaro, 2024a). In his second paper he reports on his anthropological experience of living for 19 months with the Akha, a group of swidden farmers in highland Laos. Here he investigated how they respond to functional neurological disorders (FNDs), functional somatic symptoms (FSS) (Burton et al., 2020), also to what Western medicine defines as (functional) mental disorders (FMDs) and what the Akha and he sometimes conceive as spiritual... (shrink)