Psychoanalysis has had a profound impact on popular morals, for Freud's discoveries have made us aware that unconscious motivations may subvert moral conduct and that moral judgments may be rationalizations of self-interest or expressions of hostility. Freud has, in fact, been called a founder of the "hermeneutics of suspicion" that pervades modern attitudes toward morality. In this book, however, a psychoanalyst who is also a professor of ethics asserts that we do not accurately understand Freud on the various (...) psychological issues relevant to morality and the ethical implications that can be drawn from his views. Ernest Wallwork offers a bold reinterpretation of Freudian theory, showing the ways in which it points toward the possibility of genuine moral behavior. Wallwork provides close textual analyses of Freud's works from a new philosophical perspective, considering such central Freudian doctrines as psychic determinism, the pleasure principle, narcissism, object-love, and defense mechanisms. He demonstrates that, contrary to widespread belief, Freud's views on determinism allow for moral responsibility, his understanding of the pleasure principle and narcissism allows for acting out of concern of others, and his critique of the cultural superego is grounded in an ethic informed by ego rationality. Focusing throughout on Freud's seminal understanding of the self-in-conflict, Wallwork finds and ethical theory suggested by Freud's work that is naturalistic and grounded in a concept of human flourishing and regard for others and concerned with the common good, special relations, and individual rights. (shrink)

The article went deeper into Richard Rorty’s texts that address the self as “a set of beliefs and desires.” In an imbrication of philosophy with psychoanalysis, Rorty’s hermeneutics accompanies the critique of psychoanalysis regarding the self-centralization from Metaphysical tradition, one of the strategies of self-redescription. The other strategy is aesthetic redescription. This redescription is based on understanding the psychic world as an encounter of “beliefs and desires” as “quasi-people.” The thread of our argument is the articulation of (...) psychoanalysis with the concept of “hegemony.” This reflexive line occurs due to the agonist and conflicting context of internal alterity from the “interpersonal” relationship between conscious and unconscious, rediscovering the self. (shrink)

This major discussion takes a look at some of the most important ethical issues confronting us today by some of the world’s leading thinkers. Including essays from leading thinkers, such as Jurgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Julia Kristeva and Paul Ricoeur, the book’s highlight – an interview with Jacques Derrida - presents the most accessible insight into his thinking on ethics and politics for many years. Exploring topics ranging from history, memory, revisionism, and the self and responsibility to democracy, multiculturalism, feminism (...) and the future of politics, the essays are grouped into five thematic sections: * hermeneutics * deconstruction * critical theory * psychoanalysis * applied ethics. Each section considers the challenges posed by ethics and how critical thinking has transformed philosophy today. Questioning Ethics affords an unsurpassed overview of the state of ethical thinking today by some of the world’s foremost philosophers. (shrink)

"A first-rate introduction to the field, accessible to scholars working from a variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives. Highly recommended... " —Choice "... offers both broad theoretical considerations and applications to specific art forms, diverse methodological perspectives, and healthy debate among the contributors.... [an] outstanding volume."—Philosophy and Literature "... this volume represents an eloquent and enlightened attempt to reconceptualize the field of aesthetic theory by encouraging its tendencies toward openness, self-reflexivity and plurality." —Discourse & Society "All of the authors challenge (...) the traditional notion of a pure and disinterested observer that does not allow for questions of race/ethnicity, class, sexual preference, or gender." —Signs These essays examine the intellectual traditions of the philosophy of art and aesthetics. Containing essays by scholars and by the writer Marilyn French, the collection ranges from the history of aesthetic theory to a philosophical reflection on fashion. The contributions are unified by a sustained scrutiny of the nature of "feminist," "feminine," or "female" art, creativity, and interpretation. (shrink)

Since Sigmund Freud developed and popularized psychoanalysis, this psychological theory has significantly influenced contemporary thinking, particularly in philosophical disciplines focused on understanding human behavior and addressing social problems. Take the examples of political philosophy, race theory, and feminist thought, among many others. However, although sport philosophy qualifies as one such discipline, scholars in this field have given little to no attention to psychoanalysis and psychoanalytical theorists. Remarkably, psychoanalytical notions, especially those of Eric Berne and Norman O. Brown, significantly (...) shaped Bernard Suits’ pioneering thoughts on games. Nevertheless, sport philosophers have largely overlooked the importance of psychoanalysis in Suits’ examinations of games and, more broadly speaking, rarely attempted to apply psychoanalytical concepts to their analyses of sport. In this paper, I explain the psychoanalytical roots of Suits’ theory of games and explore how much of his theory of games is indebted to psychoanalysis. Specifically, I first compare Suits’ analysis of unconscious gameplay to psychoanalytic concepts of repression and neurosis. Subsequently, I explore the alignment between Suits’ views on gameplay and psychoanalytic accounts of play and pleasure. To conclude, I examine the therapeutic and emancipatory character of Suits’ proposal, drawing parallels between his philosophical corpus and critical theorists whose critical analyses of modern society are heavily indebted to Freud. (shrink)

The _Mahabharata _is at once an archive and a living text, a sourcebook complete by itself and an open text perennially under construction. Driving home this striking contemporary relevance of the famous Indian epic, _Mahabharata Now _focuses on the issues of narration, aesthetics and ethics, as also their interlinkages. The cross-disciplinary essays in the volume imaginatively re-interpret the ‘timeless’ classic in the light of the pre-modern Indian narrative styles, poetics, aesthetic codes, and moral puzzles; the Western theories on modern ethics, (...) aesthetics, metaphysics, psychoanalysis, and philosophy of science; and the contemporary social, ethical and political concerns. The essays are all united in their effort to situate the _Mahabharata_ in the context of _here _and _now _without violating the sanctity of the ‘written text’ as we have it today. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of Indian and comparative philosophy, Indian and comparative literature, cultural studies, and history. (shrink)

Feminist aesthetics can be characterized as a critical conceptual framework for analyzing the gender assumptions Western aesthetics, philosophy of the arts and the arts have had and their implications in the categories they have historically employed. It emerged as a result the influence feminism had in the study of gender bias in the artistic production and its reception. Works like Linda Nochlin’s Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? (1971) and Laura Mulvey’s Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) were (...) fundamental for recognizing the exclusion of women from the history of the great visual artists and how the male gaze is a predominant kind of depiction that satisfies and is designed from a masculine and heterosexual point of view. -/- During the 1970s and 1980s it started the analysis of the male gaze in literature, film and visual arts, but also the women’s artistic production demanding its recognition. However, it was not until the 1990s that philosophical feminist aesthetics was first addressed as an important and necessary area of study with the special issues Feminism and aesthetics (Hein, Korsmeyer 1990) in “Hypatia: a journal of Feminist Philosophy”, and Feminism and traditional aesthetics (Brand, Korsmeyer 1990) in “The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism”. And the first introductory book on the field, Gender and aesthetics: an introduction by Carolyn Korsmeyer (2004) was published during the first decade of the 2000s. -/- Although feminist aesthetics came later than feminist political philosophy, it appeared almost at the same time as feminist perspectives of other philosophical fields, such as epistemology and philosophy of science. Like other feminist approaches to different philosophical domains, there is not a unitary feminist perspective on aesthetics, however, despite the variety of approaches, all implicitly or explicitly demand the recognition of women in its sphere of influence, that is, philosophy and the arts. Nevertheless, contrary to other fields it does not only take contributions from analytic and continental feminism, but also from cultural theory, art history, comparative literature, film theory, psychoanalysis, just to name a few disciplines and theories. Feminist aesthetics’ literature covers a broad range of topics, but the most important are the feminist critique of philosophical aesthetics and the feminist philosophy and theory of the arts. (shrink)

This special issue of HYPATIA: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy entitled "Women, Art, and Aesthetics" highlights the expanded range of topics at center stage in feminist philosophical inquiry to date (2003): recontextualizing women artists (essays by Patricia Locke, Eleanor Heartney, and Michelle Meagher), bodies and beauty (Ann J. Cahill, Sheila Lintott, Janell Hobson, Richard Shusterman, Joanna Frueh), art, ethics, politics, law (A. W. Eaton, Amy Mullin, L. Ryan Musgrave, Teresa Winterhalter), and review essays by Estella Lauter and Flo Leibowitz. Annotated (...) bibliography by Joshua Shaw. (shrink)

This chapter covers all the main topics of feminist philosophy, from knowledge and being to good life, justice, and power. The relation between hermeneutical and feminist investigations is constructive and deconstructive: on the one hand, feminist scholars have developed hermeneutical methods further and, on the other hand, they have questioned the very foundations of these methods. The first feminist hermeneuticians and historians of philosophy aimed primarily at reconsidering the works of canonical philosophers and at bringing to light the forgotten and (...) neglected works of individual female thinkers. Feminists have started to search for female or feminine traditions, that is, for topics, problems, and/or ways of thinking that are shared by several generations of women philosophers. The primary self‐constitution and self‐identification of philosophers as subjects of language is governed by the hierarchical opposition. (shrink)

In the years shortly before and after the publication of his classic _Truth and Method_, the eminent German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer returned often to questions surrounding religion and ethics. In this selection of writings from _Gesammelte Werke_ that are here translated into English for the first time, Gadamer probes deeply into the hermeneutic significance of these subjects. Gadamer raises issues of importance to ethicists and theologians as well as students of language and literature. In such outstanding essays as "Kant and (...) the Question of God," "Thinking as Redemption: Plotinus between Plato and Augustine," and "Friendship and Self-Knowledge: Reflections on the Role of Friendship in Greek Ethics," Gadamer discusses the nature of moral behavior, ethics as a form of knowing, and the hermeneutic task of mediating ethos and philosophical ethics with one another. (shrink)

This chapter presents an overview of feminism and aesthetics in the 2007 Blackwell Guide to Feminist Philosophy edited by Linda Martin Alcoff and Eva Feder Kittay. Sections cover the topics of distinguishing aesthetics and philosophy of art, bringing feminist theory into aesthetics, developing feminist challenges to aesthetics, the role of women artists in feminist aesthetics, feminist philosophers reflect on self-portraiture and women as objects of beauty, and future developments.

This book is a conceptualization of the literary aesthetic in relation to ethics, in particular, an ethics for a concern for the Self. Bringing Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's constructivist thinking into a practical domain, Sabrina Achilles rethinks the ways in which literature is understood and taught. Through an interdisciplinary approach, literature is viewed from the position of a problem without any pre-given frame.

Questioning Ethics is a major discussion by some of world's leading thinkers of some of the most important ethical issues confronting us today. New essays including Habermas, MacIntyre, Ricoeur and Kristeva discuss issues such as the nature of politics, women's rights, lying, repressed memory, historical debt and forgiveness, the self and responsibility, revisionism, bioethics and multiculturalism. The contributors organize their discussions along the topics of hermeneutics, deconstruction, critical theory, psychoanalysi and the applications of ethics. Also included in this collection (...) is an interview with Jacques Derrida which provides the most accessible insight into his thinking. Contributors: Karl-Otto Apel, Geoffrey Barash, John Caputo, Maeve Cooke, Simon Critchley, Jacques Derrida, Simon Glendinning, Jean Greish, Jurgen Habermas, Richard Kearney, Peter Kemp, Julia Kristeva, Alasdair MacIntyre, Thomas McCarthy, David Rasmussen, William J. Richardson, Paul Ricoeur, David Wood. (shrink)

In this book, Alison Stone develops a feminist approach to maternal subjectivity. Stone argues that in the West the self has often been understood in opposition to the maternal body, so that one must separate oneself from the mother and maternal care-givers on whom one depended in childhood to become a self or, in modernity, an autonomous subject. These assumptions make it difficult to be a mother and a subject, an autonomous creator of meaning. Insofar as mothers nonetheless strive to (...) regain their subjectivity when their motherhood seems to have compromised it, theirs cannot be the usual kind of subjectivity premised on separation from the maternal body. Mothers are subjects of a new kind, who generate meanings and acquire agency from their position of re-immersion in the realm of maternal body relations, of bodily intimacy and dependency. Thus Stone interprets maternal subjectivity as a specific form of subjectivity that is continuous with the maternal body. Stone analyzes this form of subjectivity in terms of how the mother typically reproduces with her child her history of bodily relations with her own mother, leading to a distinctive maternal and cyclical form of lived time. (shrink)

In this article I apply the insights of hermeneutic realism to a practical-theological ethics that addresses the international crisis of families and women’s rights. Hermeneutic realism affirms the hermeneutic philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer but enriches it with the dialectic of participation and distanciation developed by Paul Ricoeur. This approach finds a place for sciences such as evolutionary psychology within a hermeneutically informed ethic. It also points to a multidimensional model of practical reason that views it as implicitly or explicitly involving (...) five levels---background metaphysical visions, some principle of obligation, assumptions about pervasive human tendencies and needs, assumptions about constraining social and natural environments, and assumed acceptable rules of conduct. The fruitfulness of this multidimensional view of practical reason is then demonstrated by applying it to practical-theological ethics and the analysis of four theorists of women’s rights---Martha Nussbaum, Susan Moller Okin, Lisa Cahill, and Mary Ann Glendon. Finally, I illustrate the importance and limits of the visional dimension of practical reason by discussing the concept of “Africanity‘ in relation to the family and AIDS crisis of Eastern Africa. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.1 (2003) 32-39 [Access article in PDF] Aesthetics, Epistemics, and Feminist Theory Jane Duran Recent feminist analysts of aesthetics and analytic aesthetics in particular seem to have come to the conclusion that the redemption of formulated aesthetic theory from the feminist point of view is a difficult and recondite task. 1 If analytic aesthetics now looks problematic, qua fruitful philosophical enterprise, its future appears (...) bleaker still when the intersection of the androcentric nature of analytic philosophy and the larger feminist project, frequently articulated in other than analytic terms, is examined.In this essay I will assume that there is some future for analytic aesthetics, and I will not dispute the basic assumption that any portion of analytic theory is somewhat immiscible with feminist points of view. My concern, rather, will be to try to show what it is specifically in the nature of analytic theory, both aesthetic and otherwise, which renders it of dubious value to the feminist critique (at least on first blush). Although in the past feminist theorists have tried to characterize the androcentric nature of analytic philosophy on the whole in rather striking terms,it is not clear that these terms have been precise enough. 2 Further, it is not clear that analytic modes are obviously unusable for feminist theory or for the development of a still nascent feminist aesthetics, although what one wants to say here is that this task is a terribly danger-fraught one. 3My goal here is twofold: first, to articulate what precisely it is aboutanalytic aesthetics (or any portion of analytic theory, for that matter) thatmakes it a hindrance — at least preliminarily — to the development of feminist views. In order to do this I will need to examine a relatively uncharted area in the literature, that is the parallel between much of analytic aesthetic theory and analytic epistemology. The second portion of my task will runsomewhat contrary to conventional wisdom: having delineated the mostmasculinist parts of analytic endeavors, I inquire if there is, indeed, anypart of rigorously articulated analytic theory that could lend itself to the development of a feminist aesthetic. [End Page 32] Analytic Philosophy and Aesthetics Analytic aesthetics, like analytic philosophy taken as a whole, has often proceeded as if the development of conceptual clarification and theoretical rigor could do much to "solve" or dissolve aesthetic problems. George Dickie's introductory work, for example, presents the student with a number of difficult areas in aesthetics, and then proceeds to address these areas in much the same manner that other contemporary texts employ for the discussion of issues in ethics, epistemology, or metaphysics.In discussing symbolism, Dickie first attempts to clarify the use of theterm, and then notes that there are problematic areas with regard to whether or not a work of art can both contain a symbol and serve itself as a symbol simultaneously. A symbol "stands for" in some establishable way that which it symbolizes. A symbol serves to transfer someone's thought to something other than itself, and the transfer is not a random association. The transfer depends upon certain features of the symbol which give it a place in a certain meaning system. 4I cite this material as exemplary because the flavor of analytic aesthetics is remarkably similar to the flavor of analytic philosophy as a whole. We sometimes need to remind ourselves that the techniques of analysis developed in the earlier part of this century relied on breakthroughs in logic and formal representation which allowed for a certain precision in matching symbol to thing signified. The original hope of philosophers working at the time of Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore had been to develop something close to a logically perfect language with a one-to-one relationship between signifier and signified. However without merit this somewhat arcane task, its goals infused much of the philosophizing that followed it, and even the ordinary language school was, of course, indirectly an offshoot of this work. Nicholas Wolterstorff, for example, notes that "analytic philosophy was to be 'scientific philosophy'....The goal of the analytic philosopher... (shrink)

This book offers a sustained scholarly analysis of Gadamer's reflections on art and our experience of art. It examines fundamental themes in Gadamer's hermeneutical aesthetics such as play, festival, symbol, contemporaneity, enactment, art's performative ontology, and hermeneutical identity. The first two chapters focus on Gadamer's critical appropriation and movement beyond Kantian and Hegelian aesthetics (and includes a coda on Heidegger's influence). The final three chapters argue for the continued relevance of Gadamer's hermeneutical aesthetics by bringing his claims into conversation with (...) contemporary art and music, as well as the ethical and sociopolitical dimensions of the Artworld and art-praxis. The ethical and sociopolitical aspects of art- and music-making are given particular attention in chapters devoted to 20th century African American artist Romare Bearden, Banksy's street art, and a range of jazz expressions, from traditional jazz to the complex practice of free jazz. Gadamer's Hermeneutical Aesthetics will appeal to researchers and advanced students working on Gadamer, philosophical hermeneutics, continental philosophy, aesthetics, and the philosophy of contemporary art and music. (shrink)

The chapter provides a critical survey of English-language feminist work in aesthetics since the early 1970s. The aim is to focus on those areas of feminist inquiry that have most significantly affected philosophical aesthetics in the analytic tradition: the development of a new self-conception of the discipline that sees the philosophy of art and aesthetics as a theoretical enterprise with its own political content and political consequences, one deeply enmeshed in a patriarchal view of the world.

_Columbia Companion to Twentieth-Century Philosophies_ is the first guide to cover both the Anglo-American analytic and European continental traditions. Organized thematically, the volume thoroughly discusses the major movements and fields of each tradition and features the contributions of highly distinguished specialists in their fields. This book is divided into three sections. The first is devoted to highlighting the multidimensional work of philosophers identified with the analytic tradition, with Nicholas Rescher writing on neoidealism, Josephine Donovan commenting on feminist philosophy, Tyler Burge (...) discussing the philosophy of language and mind, and Robert Hanna reflecting on Kant's legacy. The second section presents the thought of those who identified themselves with the continental tradition, featuring Jean Grondin on hermeneutics, Leonard Lawlor on phenomenology, Charles Scott on postmodernism, and Babette Babich on the philosophy of science. This volume also covers logical positivism, naturalism, pragmatism, aesthetics, existentialism, Marxism, the Frankfurt School, structuralism, psychoanalysis, political philosophy, ethics, and the philosophy of religion. The final section addresses concurrent trends in Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and African philosophy, and a comprehensive introduction by the editor not only provides a thorough outline of the problems and issues of the analytic and continental traditions but also boldly challenges the conviction that the two approaches must be rivals. _Columbia Companion to Twentieth-Century Philosophies_ is an invaluable overview of the ideas that have shaped a monumentally important century in the history of philosophy, offering an unusually panoramic perspective that allows readers to form their own interpretations of original materials. (shrink)

In the years shortly before and after the publication of his classic _Truth and Method_ (1960), the eminent German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer returned often to questions surrounding religion and ethics. In this selection of writings from _Gesammelte Werke_ that are here translated into English for the first time, Gadamer probes deeply into the hermeneutic significance of these subjects. Gadamer raises issues of importance to ethicists and theologians as well as students of language and literature. In such outstanding essays as "Kant (...) and the Question of God," "Thinking as Redemption: Plotinus between Plato and Augustine," and "Friendship and Self-Knowledge: Reflections on the Role of Friendship in Greek Ethics," Gadamer discusses the nature of moral behavior, ethics as a form of knowing, and the hermeneutic task of mediating ethos and philosophical ethics with one another. (shrink)

I describe respects in which an over-emphasis on the role of consent in sexual ethics gives rise to hermeneutical injustices. Although consent is widely invoked with feminist motivations to combat rape culture, the role to which it is often put, I argue, is often antithetical to its laudable feminist aims. Various influential stereotypes about consent and sex influence the public imagination, interacting to produce and reinforce harmful "inference tickets" that impede public and individual understanding of important positive and negative kinds (...) of sexual interactions. Rather than trying to replace inadequate conceptions of consent with more inflationary ones, feminists should use different language and frameworks to express their critiques and motivate positive cultural change. (shrink)

Twenty papers from a conference in Villanova, Pennsylvania discuss the politics, psychoanalysis and feminist theory, aesthetics, and ethics of phenomenology and existentialism in North America, from its beginnings in the 1940s to its ...

Sri Lanka completed eloquent pull Dage described the love of wisdom is a holistic, practical way of life, which of course requires an abstract, theoretical science of meditation, more importantly, it also contains many religious practices is legal, such as flexible do not rot the soul, bitter conduct regular ring legal, social and political reform program, sustained ethics reflection, body control, dietary rules and taboos. However, this Pythagorean philosophy as a better life to all the light and fade away In (...) order to view at any time. The original philosophy of travel to another utterly abnormal interest in the pilgrimage of the way, that is abstract, a clear knowledge and commitment of this knowledge by the certainty of pursuit. "Knowledge" and "real management" into the vocabulary of philosophy In order systems, "smart" In order to become a college corridor in the West has been seriously neglected under the words. With the flow of time driving on the theory and psychiatric abstract admiration, which means practical wisdom, rhetoric and aesthetics into a whole都In order to two yuan regardless. Philosophy - the "love of wisdom" - in all intent and purposes都becomes In order to philo-episteme-"love of knowledge certainty." Started with the ancient Chinese culture, hope臘different. It is rooted in Confucianism, "the next school on up," the admonition of Chinese philosophy from the initial thinking on the road from the daily behavior persist in the pursuit of wisdom, relationships conducted by the "self" as the meaning of things by the event source. Everyone from family, community, political relations, to obtain a unique perspective, they participate in the growth of sperm heart and minds of thinking, their family and community relationships to adjust to a clearer, more meaningful position. Personal self-cultivation increased by the universe meaning, and meaning of the universe has increased over the coming anti-In order for individuals to provide a self fertile soil. For the eloquent Pythagoras, the holistic way of life he described as philosophia-"the love of wisdom"-while entailing the contemplation of abstract, theoretical science, involved much more importantly religious practices based upon the immortality of the soul, ascetic observances, a program of social and political reform, ethical reflection, a physical regimen, and even dietary prescriptions and prohibitions. But this conception of philosophy as a holistic vision of the good life faded in time, and gave way to the search for apodictic knowledge and its promise of certainty. "Knowledge" and "truth" became the vocabulary of systematic philosophy, and "wisdom" was banished from conversation in the corridors of the Western academy. The worship of the theoretically and spiritually abstract meant that in the fullness of time practical wisdom , rhetoric, and the aesthetic were relegated to the down side of a prevailing dualism. The Chinese cultural narrative unfolded differently. Grounded in the Confucian exhortation-"Study what is near at hand and aspire to what is lofty the next school on the up"-the Chinese philosophical narrative has from earliest times sustained a commitment to the pursuit of wisdom by understanding personal cultivation as the ultimate source of an emergent cosmic meaning. It is the revolution currently taking place within the Western philosophical community as an attempt to reinstate wisdom that provides an opening and an invitation to take Chinese philosophy and culture more seriously. An internal critique continues to be waged within professional Western philosophy under the many banners of process philosophy, hermeneutics, post-modernism, neo-pragmatism, neo-Marxism, deconstructionism, feminist philosophy , and so on, that takes as a shared target what Robert Solomon has called "the transcendental pretense"-idealism, objectivism, logocentrism, essentialism, the master narrative, "the myth of the given"-the familiar reductionistic "isms" that have emerged as putatively novel choices as philosophers switch horses on the merry-go-round of systematic philosophy. In place of a Cartesian philosophical language that privileges the function of clear and distinct ideas in our quest for an objective certainty, vocabularies of process, change, and indeed productive vagueness have increasingly come into vogue. These recent developments in Anglo-European philosophy itself have begun to foreground interpretative vocabularies more relevant to the articulation of Chinese culture. In this essay, I will argue that the pragmatic theory of truth as expounded by William James and particularly John Dewey is an attempt to reauthorize "wisdom" as a philosophical goal in the Western philosophical narrative. This development opens a space for a conversation between Deweyan pragmatism and Confucianism on how best to achieve it. (shrink)

This book confronts the challenges that hermeneutics brings to ethics and education by thematizing the critical influence which ethics and contemporary educational theory and practice have on the self-understanding of philosophical hermeneutics. In the hermeneutic spirit of commitment to cultivating lifelong habits of critical thinking, moral reflection, and articulate expression, the book presents many voices that illuminate a rich cultural diversity with the profound hope of nurturing the full-flourishing of human beings. The hermeneutics of education calls for (...) diverse ways of thinking about education, which deeply cares for the common good of individuals, communities, and nations. This diversity promotes a genuine interest in different approaches to the event (Ereignis) of education. (Series: International Studies in Hermeneutics and Phenomenology - Vol. 8) [Subject: Hermeneutics, Ethics, Education]. (shrink)

This essay considers the foundations of reasonable evaluation in the arts. These we argue concern the relations that constitute our experience of art, and the ontology of the art work itself. The being of the artwork, the experience and the interpretation of it all involve over-lapping modes of part–whole relations. The experience of meaningfulness is not an experience of a singular object or framework of meaning as closed and complete but an experience of relational meaning whereby exposure to one set (...) of meaningful relations transforms another in an on-going and open manner. This suggests that the experience of art itself provides the norms for reasonableness of evaluation. These norms are not rules in the sense of offering a method. They are characteristic of the features of an experience of meaningfulness itself. The essay suggests that the reasonableness of a response to a work can be considered in terms of its appropriacy relative to the context of its own horizon and the horizon surrounding the production of the work; its plausibility, that is, its internal coherence and consistency as a reading; whether the structure of the response is consistent with, supplements, or expands the intelligible content of the work; and whether it gives a sense of the latent possibilities still held within a work and intimates where the movement of a work’s subject-matter might. (shrink)

Many feminist philosophers have been highly critical of Kant’s ethics, either because of his rationalism or because of particular claims he makes about women in his writings on anthropology and political philosophy. In this paper, I call attention to the aspects of Kant’s ethical theory that make it attractive from a feminist standpoint. Kant’s duties to oneself are rich resource for feminism. These duties require women to act in ways that show respect for themselves as rational human agents by, e.g., (...) avoiding servility, self-deception, self-mutilation, and sexual self-degradation, and cultivating their natural talents (as well as their virtue). Duties to others demand that other people treat women respectfully by requiring that they avoid mocking, degrading, or acting arrogantly toward others. Indeed, even when one sets out to promote others’ happiness, Kant’s ethics requires that one not act paternalistically. Kant’s ethics insists that every rational agent recognize the equality and dignity of all rational agents. Thus, it pushes women to respect themselves and to demand respect from others; and it pushes men to respect women as a basic moral requirement. (shrink)

_Living Poetically_ is the first book to focus primarily on Kierkegaard's existential aesthetics as opposed to traditional aesthetic features of his writings such as the use of pseudonyms, literary techniques and figures, and literary criticism. _Living Poetically_ traces the development of the concept of the poetic in Kierkegaard's writings as that concept is worked out in an ethical-religious perspective in contrast to the aesthetics of early German romanticism and Hegelian idealism. Sylvia Walsh seeks to elucidate what it means, in Kierkegaard's (...) view, to be an authentic poet in the form of a poetic writer and to clarify his own role as a Christian poet and writer as he understood it. Walsh shows that, in spite of strong criticisms made of the poetic in some of his writings, Kierkegaard maintained a fundamentally positive understanding of the poetic as an essential ingredient in ethical and religious forms of life. Walsh thus reclaims Kierkegaard as a poetic thinker and writer from those who would interpret him as an ironic practitioner of an aestheticism devoid of and detached from the ethical-religious as well as from those who view him as rejecting the poetic and aesthetic on ethical or religious grounds. Viewing contemporary postmodern feminism and deconstruction as advocating a romantic mode of living poetically, Walsh concludes with a feminist reading of Kierkegaard that affirms both individuality and relatedness, commonalities and differences between the self and others, men and women, for the fashioning of an authentic mode of living poetically in the present age. (shrink)

Our contributors explore a rich variety of aesthetic problems that bring about the self-reflexive re-evaluation of ideas.

"These essays advance a reinterpretation of pivotal categories such as self-knowing, moral agency, and altruism... A must for all students and researchers/faculty engaged in the study of ethics." —Choice "This is an extraordinarily valuable collection of essays in feminist ethics." —Teaching Philosophy A range of recent work in feminist ethics, exploring such issues as the ethic of care, a viable feminist ethics, Pythagoreanism, existentialism, utilitarianism, self-knowing, emotion, and moral vision. Also discussed is the process of applying feminist ethics to work (...) situations. The concluding essays point to the future and present new visions for the field. (shrink)

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of cool have informed the American ethos since at least the 1970s. Whether we strive for it in politics or fashion, cool is big business for those who can sell it across a range of markets and media. Yet the concept wasn't always a popular commodity. Cool began as a potent aesthetic of post-World War II black culture, embodying a very specific, highly charged method of resistance to white supremacy and the globalized exploitation of capital. (...) _Way Too Cool_ follows the hollowing-out of "coolness" in modern American culture and its reflection of a larger evasion of race, racism, and ethics now common in neoliberal society. It revisits such watershed events as the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, second-wave feminism, the emergence of identity politics, 1980s multiculturalism, 1990s rhetorics of diversity and colorblindness, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina, as well as the contemporaneous developments of rising mass incarceration and legalized same-sex marriage. It pairs the perversion of cool with the slow erasure of racial and ethical issues from our social consciousness, which effectively quashes our desire to act ethically and resist abuses of power. The cooler we become, the more indifferent we grow to the question of values, particularly inquiry that spurs protest and conflict. This book sounds an alarm for those who care about preserving our ties to an American tradition of resistance. (shrink)

For the purpose of advancing the feminist commitment to inclusion and nonliberal articulations of pluralism, in this essay I conceptualize the Native account of individual autonomy that itself evolves from a commitment to pluralism. I demonstrate that Native individual autonomy is concurrently strong and feminist in nature—what I call “radical-cum-relational.” That is, Native autonomy is more radical than the traditional liberal conception and is simultaneously grounded in relationality, which is the basis of much of feminist ethics. I demonstrate that the (...) Native conception of autonomy is radical and promotes the highest degree of individual self-determination and independence qua individuality and particularity. Yet this radical self-determination depends on intense social interdependency. The grounding metaphysics and epistemology of the Native framework are conceived entirely in terms of ethical relationships between and responsibilities to other individuals, animals, and the Earth. That is, no part of the Native paradigm can be understood outside of the ethical connections persons have by virtue of their primary position as community members. It is by situating radical autonomy against a background of ethical social interdependence, together with thebackground condition of gender equality of Native practices, that the radical construal of Native individual freedom is feminist. To shore up and illustrate the connection between Native autonomy and feminism, I argue that an identification between the Native social practice of gifting and feminist reciprocity can be made, specifically Iris Marion Young’s notion of asymmetrical reciprocity. Finally, I argue that this connection avoids the problem of incommensurability and so is theoretically possible, responsible, and fits the criterion of respectfulness also at the foundation of the Native framework. Broadly speaking, the problem of incommensurability is concerned with theorists’ inability to recognize foundational incompatibilities between paradigms and their forced attempts to mergethem, often at the price of ignoring inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and contradictions that result from impossible translations and conversions. Historically and to the present day, Western philosophy has been egregiously guilty of distorting Native theories and practices. In this essay I argue that since translation takes place at the level of praxis rather than at the level of language, my argument circumvents problems that arise from failed attempts to map cultural concepts onto others that do not share similar foundations. (shrink)

The role of agape in Christian ethics has been a major concern for twentieth century ethicists. In America, the dominant ethical position has stressed other-regard--often pressed to the point of significant personal sacrifice--as the content of agape. Feminist ethicists are now criticizing an exclusive emphasis on other-regard. They are stressing the need for a healthy self-regard and hence they are exploring mutuality as the most appropriate image of Christian love.

This collection contains some of Gadamer’s best essays, including: “Kant and the Question of God” ; “On the Possibility of a Philosophical Ethics” ; “On the Divine in Early Greek Thought” ; “The Ontological Problem of Value” ; “Thinking as Redemption: Plotinus between Plato and Augustine” ; “Myth in the Age of Science” ; “The Ethics of Value and Practical Philosophy” ; “Reflections on the Relation of Religion and Science” ; “Friendship and Self-Knowledge: Reflections on the Role of Friendship in (...) Greek Ethics” ; and “Aristotle and Imperative Ethics”. Rather than describe each essay, this review will content itself with presenting the predominant ethical and theological doctrines found in this compilation. (shrink)

In the paper, I pose the question of how, on artistic, aesthetic, and philosophical levels, decoration and domestic handicrafts as subversive strategies enable the undermining and breakdown of class-based and patriarchal divisions into high and low, objective and subjective, public and private, masculine and feminine. I explore whether handicrafts, in accordance with feminist postulates, are transgressive, transformative, and inclusive. I link handicrafts with the feminist perspective, since, in the second half of the twentieth century, it was precisely the feminist movement (...) that initiated significant changes in the social and cultural perception of women, femininity, and gender relations. Thus I apply this perspective in the first place to the analysis of selected works of contemporary art in which handicrafts is used not only as a means of artistic expression but also as a subversive aesthetic strategy. I also demonstrate how the world of fashion transforms and aesthetizes handicrafts, whose presence in fashion makes it an area in which, in addition to imperatives and aesthetic values, social attitudes, ethical values, and world views are shaped. Finally, referring to the works of selected feminist authors (Mary Field Belenky, Mary Daly, Evelyn Fox-Keller, Donna Haraway), I show how these researchers have metaphorically interpreted handicrafts as specifically feminine ways of creating and developing knowledge. (shrink)

This essay is an overview of recent research aimed at establishing a link between environmental aesthetics and environmental ethics. I review the work of several prominent environmental philosophers and environmental aestheticians, spelling out some of the difficulties confronting various attempts to find such a link. While I argue that a case can be made for a connection between environmental aesthetics and environmental ethics concerning human‐created and human‐influenced environments, I find that there are a number of problems facing attempts to establish (...) a similar connection for natural or pristine environments. I examine some attempts to support such a connection, including each of two different accounts of the aesthetic appreciation of nature in contemporary Western environmental aesthetics as well as the union of these two accounts, sometimes called ecoaesthetics. I briefly discuss two Western versions of ecoaesthetics and then turn to research by Chinese aestheticians, who defend a more robust version of ecoaesthetics. I suggest that this latter work may succeed in connecting environmental aesthetics and environmental ethics, although not in exactly the way in which such a link has been pursued by Western philosophers. (shrink)

This paper begins from the context of virtue ethics theory as applied to business ethics. We note that the concept of a practice therein lacks the full richness of the Aristotelian concept of virtue. In essence, when applied to business in the virtue ethics literature, the practice loses its reflective quality. It becomes beholden to, and irredeemably interdependent with, the economic institution (i.e., the for-profit firm) that houses the practice. Furthermore, the conventional practice of virtue ethics lacks the self-reflective ability (...) to challenge and overcome this interdependence. As a solution to this problem, we suggest tapping into a relatively recent stream in the business ethics literature, namely the application of aesthetics. We integrate aesthetics into virtue ethics in the form of a reflective practice. This reflective practice can be defined as one which embraces the firm as pure phenomenon. It opens a space or clearing that enables business practitioners to reflect and act within a broadened perceptual and conceptual understanding of the ‘true’ nature and purpose of business. (shrink)

This article discusses Everyday Aesthetics seen from philosophical hermeneutics where aesthetics is understood as a form of knowledge. Two approaches are made, one concerning content, i.e. the knowledge made apparent to us in the aesthetic situation which is usually, but not exclusively, an exception to the everyday; another concerning the appearance of knowledge in form which, likewise, is also in danger of becoming isolated from the everyday. Everyday Aesthetics is reviewed through the same two approaches to understand how it (...) differs from hermeneutics and where possible exchanges between them appear. (shrink)

Genealogies -- Psychoanalysis and archaeology -- Freud in the sacred grove -- Colonial rescriptings -- War, decolonization, psychoanalysis -- Colonial melancholy -- Haunting and the future -- The ethical ambiguities of transnational feminism -- Hamlet in the colonial archive.

It is sometimes asked whether virtue ethics can be assimilated by Kantianism or utilitarianism, or if it is a distinct position. A look atAristotle’s ethics shows that it certanly can be distinct. In particular, Aristotle presents us with an ethics of aesthetics in contrast to themore standard ethics of cognition: A virtuous agent identifies the right actions by their aesthetic qualities. Moreover, the agent’s concernwith her own aesthetic character gives us a key to the important role the emotions play for (...) Aristotle, which further distinguishes him from the other two theories we have mentioned. (shrink)

Feminist care ethicshas for some time guided contemporary artists and curators in their search for sustaining and sustainable practices in the current neoliberal backwash and climate crisis. With a focus on current Australian art in the context of recent care ethics scholarship, this article considers what contemporary art – in its processes as well as aesthetic outcomes – can offer in imagining and practising care for the human and more-than-human world. The article focuses on a series of exhibitions that comprised (...) a key exploratory methodology of The Care Project: Feminism and art in neoliberal times (La Trobe University, 2019–2022). The exhibitions featured the work of regionally based artists. This accent on creative practices emerging from the experience of living in regional communities that are often on the frontline of climate change and social inequality offers unique perspectives on care ethics in practice. (shrink)

This paper addresses two recent debates in aesthetics: the ‘moralist debate’, concerning the relationship between the ethical and aesthetic evaluations of artworks, and the ‘cognitivist debate’, concerning the relationship between the cognitive and aesthetic evaluations of artworks. Although the two debates appear to concern quite different issues, I argue that the various positions in each are marked by the same types of confusions and ambiguities. In particular, they demonstrate a persistent and unjustified conflation of aesthetic and artistic value, which in (...) turn is based on a more general failure to explicitly tackle the demarcation of aesthetic value. As such, the claims of each side are rendered ambiguous in respect of the relation that is supposed to hold between all these types of value and artistic value. These issues are discussed in light of a recent argument proposed by Matthew Kieran, to undermine, to some extent, the conceptual distinction between aesthetic, cognitive-ethical, and artistic values in our appraisal of art works. In rejecting his argument, I defend the conceptual distinction and a pluralistic conception of artistic value that allows for cognitive and ethical values to count as artistic, but not aesthetic, values. (shrink)

This work interlinks three rapidly developing fields: human reproduction, applied ethics, and feminism. The convergence of the three, each of which is interesting and important in its own right, creates a synergistic effect by which each mutually illuminates the others.

In ____Maternal Ethics and Other Slave Moralities__ which includes the first extended philosophical discussion of the works of Frederick Douglass, Cynthia Willett puts forward a novel theory of ethical subjectivity that is aimed to counter prevailing pathologies of sexist, racist Eurocentric culture. Weaving together accounts of the self drawn from African-American and European philosophies, psychoanalysis, slave narratives and sociology, Willett interrogates what Hegel locates as the core of the self: the desire for.