As part of an article symposium on Partha Dasgupta and Sanjeev Goyal’s “Narrow Identities”, Peter Finke offers a critical anthropological perspective on the concept of social identity and its modeling in economics.

Disproportional morbidity and mortality experienced by ethnic minorities in the UK have been highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement has exposed structural racism’s contribution to these health inequities. ‘Cultural Safety’, an antiracist, decolonising and educational innovation originating in New Zealand, has been adopted in Australia. Cultural Safety aims to dismantle barriers faced by colonised Indigenous peoples in mainstream healthcare by addressing systemic racism.This paper explores what it means to be ‘culturally safe’. The ways in which New (...) Zealand and Australia are incorporating Cultural Safety into educating healthcare professionals and in day-to-day practice in medicine are highlighted. We consider the ‘nuts and bolts’ of translating Cultural Safety into the UK to reduce racism within healthcare. Listening to the voices of black, Asian and minority ethnic National Health Service (NHS) consumers, education in reflexivity, both personal and organisational within the NHS are key. By listening to Indigenous colonised peoples, the ex-Empire may find solutions to health inequity. A decolonising feedback loop is required; however, we should take care not to culturally appropriate this valuable reverse innovation. (shrink)

The legacy of colonial rule has permeated into all aspects of life and contributed to healthcare inequity. In response to the increased interest in social justice, medical educators are thinking of ways to decolonise education and produce doctors who can meet the complex needs of diverse populations. This paper aims to explore decolonising ideas of healing within medical education following recent events including the University College London Medical School’s Decolonising the Medical Curriculum public engagement event, the Wellcome Collection ’s Ayurvedic (...) Man: Encounters with Indian Medicine exhibition and its symposium on Decolonising Health, SOAS University of London’s Applying a Decolonial Lens to Research Structures, Norms and Practices in Higher Education Institutions and University College London Anthropology Department’s Flourishing Diversity Series. We investigate implications of ‘recentring’ displaced indigenous healing systems, medical pluralism and highlight the concept of cultural humility in medical training, which while challenging, may benefit patients. From a global health perspective, climate change debates and associated civil protests around the issues resonate with indigenous ideas of planetary health, which focus on the harmonious interconnection of the planet, the environment and human beings. Finally, we look further at its implications in clinical practice, addressing the background of inequality in healthcare among the BAME populations, intersectionality and an increasing recognition of the role of inter-generational trauma originating from the legacy of slavery. By analysing these theories and conversations that challenge the biomedical view of health, we conclude that encouraging healthcare educators and professionals to adopt a ‘ decolonising attitude ’ can address the complex power imbalances in health and further improve person-centred care. (shrink)

A significant part of the debate concerning the nature of rational requirements centers on disambiguating ordinary articulations of conditional requirements of rationality. Particular focus has been put on the question of whether conditional requirements of rationality take a wide or a narrow logical scope. However, this paper shows that this focus is misguided and harmful to the debate. I argue that concentrating on syntactic scope renders us more likely to arrive at incorrect formulations of rational requirements and to overlook questions (...) of greater philosophical importance. (shrink)

Eugen Fink is considered one of the clearest interpreters of phenomenology and was the preferred conversational partner of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. In Play as Symbol of the World, Fink offers an original phenomenology of play as he attempts to understand the world through the experience of play. He affirms the philosophical significance of play, why it is more than idle amusement, and reflects on the movement from "child's play" to "cosmic play." Well-known for its non-technical, literary (...) style, this skillful translation by Ian Alexander Moore and Christopher Turner invites engagement with Fink's philosophy of play and related writings on sports, festivals, and ancient cult practices. (shrink)

Research and policymaking on positive mental health and well-being have increased within the last decade, partly fueled by decreasing levels of well-being in the general population and among at-risk groups. However, measurement of well-being often takes place in the absence of reflection on the underlying theoretical conceptualization of well-being. This disguises the fact that different rating scales of well-being often measure very different phenomena because rating scales are based on different philosophical assumptions, which represent radically different foundational views about the (...) nature of well-being. The aim of this paper is to examine the philosophical foundation of the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) in order to clarify the underlying normative commitments and the psychometric compromises involved in the translation of theory into practice. SWLS is widely used by psychologists, public health professionals, economists, and is popular in national and international surveys of well-being. This paper introduces the philosophical theory of life satisfaction and explores how three central discussions within life satisfaction theory are reflected in the construction of the SWLS; (1) Whether we should be equally satisfied with our past, present and future, (2) Whether we should be satisfied with all the various domains of our lives, and (3) How to avoid the trap of “false consciousness”, i.e. that people fail to recognize the injustice or misfortune of their lives. In the end, life satisfaction theory is contrasted with affective foundational theories of well-being, to explore the magnitude and limits of SWLS as a rating scale based on life satisfaction theory. (shrink)

Die Autorin geht der Frage nach, welche Raum- und Ortskonzeptionen in den 1990er Jahren - nach der kritischen Relektüre der Ortspezifik - in der Kunst Verwendung gefunden haben. Dabei erweist sich "The Ambient" als Schlüsselphänomen. Ursprünglich für die Musik entwickelt, ist das Konzept des "Ambient" durch die Konstruktion eines vorübergehenden, prozessualen Ortes gekennzeichnet. Hergestellt wird dieser einerseits durch künstlerische Produktionsprozesse, die in bestehende Architektur- und Landschaftsräume verändernd eingreifen. Andererseits basiert "Ambient" auf kollektiven Praktiken. Sabine Gebhardt Fink erläutert, wie die (...) ortspezifische Kunst der 1960er Jahre weiterentwickelt wurde. Sie beschreibt spezifische Formen immersiven ästhetischen Erlebens und beleuchtet den Einfluss des Ortskonzeptes von Ambient Music und Ambient Sound. Anhand künstlerischer Projekte von Ricardo Basbaum, Janet Cardiff, Alice Creischer / Andreas Siekmann / Christian von Borries, Thomas Hirschhorn, San Keller und Hendrikje Kühne / Beat Klein wird schließlich geklärt, was unter einer Ästhetik des Mit-Seins zu verstehen ist. (shrink)

The phenomenon of ‘structural irrationality’ covers a diverse range of combinations of attitudes, including (inter alia) contradictory beliefs, contradictory intentions, means–end incoherence, akratic incoherence, and cyclical preferences. This paper offers a novel, unified account of when a pattern of attitudes qualifies as structurally irrational. It begins by setting up the core of the view I will be defending: a set of attitudes is irrational if and only if it is impossible for those attitudes to be jointly successful. I show that (...) this view can account for a wide range of paradigmatically irrational combinations of attitudes. I then refine the account to make it sufficiently subjective. I argue that a set of attitudes is irrational only if the impossibility of their joint success is (i) logically transparent, (ii) subjectively inferable, and (iii) not justifiably denied. (shrink)

It is not good that nren should be alone. ^ - — Plekhanov Human beings are so divided, are becoming more and more divided, and more subdivided in themselves ...

Die schnell anwachsende Hinneigung zur Existentialanalytik, zur Lebensphilosophie und zur Ontologie am Anfang der 30er Jahre zwang Edmund Husserl dazu, die ursprungliche, als transzendentale ausgereifte Phanomenologie in methodischer und systematischer Hinsicht von diesen neuen Tendenzen scharf abzugrenzen. In den Jahren 1930 bis 1932 entwarf Eugen Fink im Auftrag seines Lehrers eine Reihe von Texten zur Phanomenologie, die grundlegende Bedeutung haben sollten fur ein Systematisches Werk der Phanomenologie bzw. als neue Meditations cartesiennes fur das deutsche Publikum gedacht waren. Diese Entwurfe (...) Eugen Finks kulminierten in der VI. Cartesianischen Meditation (1932), die u. a. von Gaston Berger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty und Tran Duc Thao in Frankreich rezipiert wurde, bevor Fink sie im Jahre 1946 als Habilitationsschrift an der Freiburger Universitat einreichte. Der vorliegende Band, der in chronologischer Reihenfolge die im Auftrag Husserls verfassten Entwurfe Finks aus den Jahren 1930-32 veroffentlicht, schliesst unmittelbar an die Bande 1 (Studien zur Phanomenologie) und 3 (Phanomenologische Werkstatt) der Eugen Fink Gesamtausgabe an. In diesen Texten gewinnt Finks origineller Beitrag zur Phanomenologie Husserls in der Freiburger Zeit eine Konturenscharfe, die von Sartre und Merleau- Ponty fruh erkannt wurde. (shrink)

Volume 11 of Eugen Fink’s ‘Collected Works’ brings together Fink's contributions on ancient philosophy since the 1940s: three main texts—the lecture on the ‘Basic Questions of Ancient Philosophy’ (winter semester 1947/48), the seminar on the ‘Principle of Contradiction’ (winter semester 1959/60) and the seminar on Heraclitus (winter semester 1966/67), which he held together with Heidegger—, two smaller works entitled ‘Time and the Concept of Time in Aristotle’ and ‘Asebeia and Techne in the 10th Book of the Nomoi’ (1963 (...) and 1969), and drafts in the context of several seminars on Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plato and Aristotle. The volume shows the important role played by Fink’s analysis of the ancient philosophers for the development of his phenomenological cosmology in the tension between Husserl and Heidegger: In the early thinkers, Fink finds traces of an original philosophy that has the world as a whole as its centre and guiding principle. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Identity Transitions Connection or Alienation? “I want to be involved” Rites of Passage Daddy at Last Postscript Notes.

"Ronald Bruzina’s superb translation... makes available in English a text of singular historical and systematic importance for phenomenology." —Husserl Studies "... a pivotal document in the development of phenomenology... essential reading for students of phenomenology twentieth-century thought." —Word Trade "... an invaluable addition to the corpus of Husserl scholarship. More than simply a scholarly treatise, however, it is the result of Fink’s collaboration with Husserl during the last ten years of Husserl’s life.... This truly essential work in phenomenology should (...) find a prominent place alongside Husserl’s own works. For readers interested in phenomenology—and in Husserl in particular—it cannot be recommended highly enough." —Choice "... a thorough critique of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology... raises many new questions.... a classic." —J. N. Mohanty A foundational text in Husserlian phenomenology, written in 1932 and now available in English for the first time. (shrink)

Die vorliegende Abhandlung ist die erste systematische Darstellung einer wissenschaftstheoretischen Konzeption, die ich in den Jahren 1976-1978 an der Fakultat fur Linguistik und Literaturwissenschaft der Universitat Biele­ feld entwickelt habe. Zweck dieser Arbeit war es, die Konstruktionsphase einer empirischen Theorie der Literatur, und damit einer empirischen Wis­ senschaft liber Literatur, von einer Reihe von Inadaquatheiten, Vorurteilen und Irrationalismen zu befreien, die nach meiner Ansicht den bekannten Grundlagenstreit der Literaturwissenschaftler belasten, aber auch in man­ chen Arbeiten zur konzeptionellen Innovation der Literaturwissenschaft (...) zu finden sind. Ich wlirde es als Erfolg ansehen, wenn es mir gelungen ware zu zeigen, daB die Entwicklung des empirischen Paradigmas der Literatur­ wissenschaft tatsachlich mit jenem "Gestalt-Switch" einhergeht, den Thomas Kuhn fur die Struktur einer die normalen Pfade wissenschaftlicher Ent­ wicklung verlassenden Forschung beschrieben hat. Das Maa an wissenschaft­ licher Toleranz, das dabei der Mehrheit der Literaturwissenschaftler abver­ langt wird, ist ohne Zweifel ganz erheblich. Der zentrale Gedanke dieser Abhandlung ist der, daB die wissenschaftstheo­ retische Rationalitat nirgends so gebraucht wird wie in den fruhen, vorpara­ digmatischen Phasen der Entwicklung einer neuen Konzeption, und daa die libliche Wissenschaftstheorie nirgends so versagt wie gerade dort. Ich ver­ suche daher, die Grundlagen einer Konzeption zu umreiBen, die ich einen "Konstruktiven Funktionalismus" nenne, und ihre Brauchbarkeit als eine intradisziplinare Wissenschaftstheorie der empirischen Literaturwissen­ schaft zu demonstrieren. Das Bild der Literaturwissenschaft, das durch die Brille dieser Konzeption sichtbar wird, ist das einer nicht unwesentlich veranderten Disziplin. (shrink)