The primary aim of this essay is to present a case for a heavily revised notion of heterophenomenology. l will refer to the revised notion as ‘enkinaesthesia’ because of its dependence on the experiential entanglement of our own and the other’s felt action as the sensory background within which all other experience is possible. Enkinaesthesia2 emphasizes two things: (i) the neuromuscular dynamics of the agent, including the givenness and ownership of its experience, and (ii) the entwined, blended and situated co-affective (...) feeling of the presence of the other(s), agential (for example, human, horse, cat, beetle) and non-agential (for example, cup, bed, apple, paper) and, where appropriate, the anticipated arc of the other’s action or movement, including, again where appropriate, the other’s intentionality. When the ‘other’ is also a sensing and experiencing agent it is their - in this case, the pair’s - affective intentional reciprocity, their folding, enfolding, and unfolding, which co-constitutes the conscious relation and the experientially recursive temporal dynamics that lead to the formation and maintenance of the deep integral enkinaesthetic structures and melodies which bind us together, even when they pull us apart. Such deeply felt enkinaesthetic melodies emphasise the dialogical nature of the backgrounded feeling of being. (shrink)

The primary aim of this study was to investigate the relation between self-perceived executive functions and the school achievement of young adolescents, while controlling for parental education and sex. We specifically focused on executive aspects of daily life behavior and the higher-order EFs, as measured with self-report, rather than on the more basic EFs which have been the primary focus of prior investigations. In two independent samples of sixth graders, students evaluated their EFs on a self-report questionnaire, the Amsterdam Executive (...) Functioning Inventory. School achievement in the domains of mathematics and reading comprehension were evaluated with nationally used, norm-based achievement tests. Results revealed that the self-perceived EFs of young adolescents were significantly correlated with their school achievement in both study samples. School achievement was also correlated with the level of parental education, but the factor sex did not have such influence. In study 1, self-perceived EFs explained additional variance in school achievement, while controlling for parental education and sex. In study 2, this was only the case for the most robust measure of school achievement, i.e., the end-of-primary-school final achievement test. Furthermore, besides the relation with achievement tests, we also found a relation between self-perceived EFs and teacher ratings behavioral problems in the classroom. Together, our findings imply that young students can properly reflect on the effectiveness and appropriateness of their EFs in a way that is relevant to their academic achievement and classroom behavior. The findings underscore the importance of considering the development of EFs and parental education in the evaluation of academic achievements in early adolescence. (shrink)

The issue of this paper is cultural plurality as a problem for public, general education and for identity. In order to examine this question, one needs to be clear about the meaning of the concepts of general education, on the one hand, and cultural diversity on the other. In the first section, we will fix the meaning of these concepts. A conceptual distinction between ‘cultural diversity’ and ‘cultural pluralism’ will be introduced. In the second section, it will be argued that (...) open pluralism can only be maintained if there is a basic common culture apart from the cultural diversity that pluralism affirms. Therefore, there is yet an indispensable role for general education in an open, pluralistic society. In the third section we will look at two metaphors that give an opposite significance to the relation between identity and diversity: the conversational metaphor and the food metaphor “mishmash”. The final section expands on the ‘conversational’ metaphor by way of an exposition of Ricoeur's hermeneutics of the self. It supplies us with a promising concept of identity that is not in complete opposition to diversity. (shrink)

What can literary education contribute to moral education? In this article the inherent practical, moral or political, relevance of literature and literary education is defended, which is opposed to a moralist approach to (children's) literature. A much debated danger in literature and the arts, viz. that it gives rise to a flight into a "promised land" instead of having relevance for real life and the real world, can be overcome by bringing to the fore the active part the reader plays (...) in realizing the "world of the work." The classical idea of mimesis (i.e. of art mirroring reality) then makes room for a historicity of reading with an ongoing interplay of the (real) worlds of readers and the (fictive) world of the text. This idea is elaborated on from the point of view of Ricoeur's hermeneutics and from that of Iser's reception aesthetics, respectively. In realizing the world of the work the world of the reader is transcended and opened up towards the possible. In this reconfiguration lies the practical relevance of literature. Books, therefore, do not have to mirror the actual world in order to be morally or politically relevant. It is in the act of reading that the lasting significance of so-called classics is renewed time and time again. (shrink)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's thinking about ethics and Christianity is a fascinating attempt to combine different, and often conflicting, strands in the Christian intellectual tradition. In this article, I outline his thinking, analyse the advantages and disadvantages in his approach, and relate it to developments in contemporary philosophy. His critique of an excessive stress upon principles and abstraction in opposition to a concern for concrete circumstances is, I argue, best seen as a necessary critique of what I call moralism rather than morality. (...) It is also related to recent philosophical theories of particularism and the debates about ‘emergency ethics’ in current philosophy. On the negative side, Bonhoeffer has a tendency to treat non-Christian ethics as necessarily relativist and at times is excessively influenced by the elements in Christian theological tradition that are hostile to the natural and to non-Christian philosophy. In addition, his invocation of ‘the Divine mandates’ seems to have undesirable implications for some genuine values in liberal democratic theory and practice. (shrink)

Through our hands we construct our world and through our construction of our world we construct ourselves. We reach with our hands and touch with our hands, and with this reaching and touching we come to understand how things feel and are. It is not an utterable knowledge, yet it is knowing the world in a dynamically-engaged affective, effective way. Through affective feedback our reaching and touching becomes a prehensive grasping which leads, through the enkinaesthetic givenness of the agent with (...) its world, to a situated and embodied knowing, and the rudiments of apprehension. With each fresh comprehension a new enkinaesthetic enquiry is engendered; with each enquiry we have afresh the anticipatory dynamics of reaching, touching and feeling, with the hand-to-object of world-investigation, the hand-to-body of auto-investigation and investigating the Other. (shrink)

David Richards here argues that the legal interpretation of the US constitution depends on an understanding of the liberal humanist principles which guided the Founders.

The tapestry of human behaviour in the marketplace today is turbulent, unpredictable, and chaotic. Yet it is also so diverse, rich and global that it presents a rare ethical and moral opportunity, and challenge, to out-behave competition and create enduring value. This is corporate ethics for corporate advantage. Corporate Ethics for Turbulent Markets: The Market Context of Executive Decisions focuses on the HOW of doing business - the economic, social, ethical, moral and spiritual values we bring to our business ventures (...) - and how thereby we impact the world. The book focuses on the LEMS (legality, ethicality, morality, and spirituality) technique that we submit as a prescriptive benchmarking tool for all corporate thinking, deliberation, explanation, evaluation, choices, strategic implementation, accountability and moral responsibility. It demonstrates that by going beyond the legal obligation (legality) to do the "right thing" (ethicality), to do the "right thing rightly" (morality), and doing the "right thing rightly and for the right intentions" (spirituality), we can create a sure strategy for good decision making and implementation that can heal the world from its current addictions to corporate fraud in all its evil forms. Envisioning a moral reawakening, this book will challenge business students and executives alike to re-evaluate the moral justification of business choices, decisions, actions and their consequences. LEMS as a four-dimensional cross-checking skill for all that we think, do, become and be takes time and patience but it can surely heal an otherwise divided and broken world.--back cover. (shrink)

Title: Thinking Matter: Materialism in Eighteenth-Century BritainPublisher: University of Minnesota PressISBN: 0816660581Author: John W. YoltonTitle: Perceptual Acquaintance from Descartes to ReidPublisher: University of Minnesota PressISBN: 0816611629Author: John W. Yolton.

The second issue of Ordo IV of the Amsterdam edition of the Latin texts of Erasmus comprises the Querela Pacis and Erasmus’ Latin translations of some of Plutarch’s Moralia . The Complaint of Peace deals with peace and war, and the tension between love of one’s country and St. Paul’s admonishment to unity in Christianity.

Wilna A J Meijer; The Concept of Education in Contemporary Dutch Philosophy of Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 19, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, P.

© by Journal of the History of Ideas. Federico Commandino can be considered the personification of the renaissance of mathematics in sixteenth-century Italy. Previous scholars have generally reduced the philosophy of mathematics developed by Commandino in the preface to his translation of Euclid’s Elements to a superficial synthesis of Neoplatonic and Aristotelian elements. Until now, no attention has been paid to Commandino’s use of the sixth-century commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima by John Philoponus. In his article I will argue that, (...) in depicting imagination as a mental drawing board for geometrical figures, Commandino directly relies on Philoponus’s concept of mathematical imagination. (shrink)

If in the various books of the Iliad and Odyssey the speeches or personated lines are separated from the rest, the metrical phenomena will, when tabulated, be found to show a perceptible divergence from those of the narrative verse. The differences are worth some notice. They throw into sharp relief the subtle rules that control the narrative type; and, what is more important, they do to some extent suggest the principle, of which these rules are the necessary outcome. There is (...) also involved another point of considerable interest; for the contrast between narrative- and speech-verse exactly coincides, it must be remembered, with a very remarkable difference in the use of the augment; and the more this coincidence is considered, the less easy it will be found to dismiss it as accidental. (shrink)