This is a comprehensive collection of readings from the work of Theodor Adorno, one of the most influential German thinkers of the twentieth century. What took place in Auschwitz revokes what Adorno termed the “Western legacy of positivity,” the innermost substance of traditional philosophy. The prime task of philosophy then remains to reflect on its own failure, its own complicity in such events. Yet in linking the question of philosophy to historical occurrence, Adorno seems not to have abandoned his (...) paradoxical, life-long hope that philosophy might not be entirely closed to the idea of redemption. He prepares for an altogether different praxis, one no longer conceived in traditionally Marxist terms but rather to be gleaned from “metaphysical experience.” In this collection, Adorno's literary executor has assembled the definitive introduction to his thinking. Its five sections anatomize the range of Adorno's concerns: “Toward a New Categorical Imperative,” “Damaged Life,” “Administered World, Reified Thought,” “Art, Memory of Suffering,” and “A Philosophy That Keeps Itself Alive.” A substantial number of Adorno’s writings included appear here in English for the first time. This collection comes with an eloquent introduction from Rolf Tiedemann, the literary executor of Adorno’s work. (shrink)

This is a comprehensive collection of readings from the work of Theodor Adorno, one of the most influential German thinkers of the twentieth century. What took place in Auschwitz revokes what Adorno termed the “Western legacy of positivity,” the innermost substance of traditional philosophy. The prime task of philosophy then remains to reflect on its own failure, its own complicity in such events. Yet in linking the question of philosophy to historical occurrence, Adorno seems not to have abandoned his (...) paradoxical, life-long hope that philosophy might not be entirely closed to the idea of redemption. He prepares for an altogether different praxis, one no longer conceived in traditionally Marxist terms but rather to be gleaned from “metaphysical experience.” In this collection, Adorno's literary executor has assembled the definitive introduction to his thinking. Its five sections anatomize the range of Adorno's concerns: “Toward a New Categorical Imperative,” “Damaged Life,” “Administered World, Reified Thought,” “Art, Memory of Suffering,” and “A Philosophy That Keeps Itself Alive.” A substantial number of Adorno’s writings included appear here in English for the first time. This collection comes with an eloquent introduction from Rolf Tiedemann, the literary executor of Adorno’s work. (shrink)

Ever since Kant and Hegel, the notion of autonomy—the idea that we are beholden to no law except one we impose upon ourselves—has been considered the truest philosophical expression of human freedom. But could our commitment to autonomy, as Theodor Adorno asked, be related to the extreme evils that we have witnessed in modernity? In Autonomy after Auschwitz, Martin Shuster explores this difficult question with astonishing theoretical acumen, examining the precise ways autonomy can lead us down a path (...) of evil and how it might be prevented from doing so. Shuster uncovers dangers in the notion of autonomy as it was originally conceived by Kant. Putting Adorno into dialogue with a range of European philosophers, notably Kant, Hegel, Horkheimer, and Habermas—as well as with a variety of contemporary Anglo-American thinkers such as Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, John McDowell, and Robert Pippin—he illuminates Adorno’s important revisions to this fraught concept and how his different understanding of autonomous agency, fully articulated, might open up new and positive social and political possibilities. Altogether, Autonomy after Auschwitz is a meditation on modern evil and human agency, one that demonstrates the tremendous ethical stakes at the heart of philosophy. (shrink)

The phrase after Auschwitz plays a central role in Adorno's oeuvre. To him, the industrialized genocide of Jews, Sinti and Roma, and Slavic people at death camps like Auschwitz, the systematic mass killing of human beings labeled “life unworthy of life” by their murderers and the ideologues behind them, the ruthlessness and utter contempt for humanity of the Nazi German perpetrators of these unimaginable crimes, give those who live after Auschwitz certainties about the extent (...) of human cruelty as well as human torment that undermine any trust in civilization and social progress, in traditional appeals to meaning, beauty, truth, or goodness. The clearest theoretical expression of these certainties can be found in Adorno's impossibility claims about poetry and art, about the good life, about metaphysical fundamentals. This contribution will examine these impossibility claims in order to clarify the philosophical role of Adorno's phrase after Auschwitz in his own works, but also in order to place Adorno's reflections on life and thought after Auschwitz with respect to our contemporary situation. (shrink)

continent. 2.2 (2012): 60–63 Translated by Rodrigo Maltez Novaes. From the forthcoming book Post-History , Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing, 2013. It is not necessary to have a keen ear in order to find out that the steps we take towards the future sound hollow. But it is necessary to have concentrated hearing if one wishes to find out which type of vacuity resonates with our progress. There are several types of vacuity, and ours must be compared to others, if the aim (...) is to understand it. The incomparable is incomprehensible. If we affirm that our situation is incomparable, we give up the effort to grasp it. The comparison that imposes itself is to the vacuity of the Baroque. There are innumerable traces in the present that evoke the Baroque. We bear the mark of the same somber rationalism (logics, informatics, cybernetics), and of the same magic and fanatic irrationalism (mass media, phantastic ideologies). But there is a decisive difference. Humanity advanced over a stage during the Baroque. All of its gestures, even the most sincere, were marked by theatricality. The vacuity that resonated under its feet was of the void under the stage. Baroque man represented. 1 For example he represented faith in waging religious wars. Baroque vacuity was the consequence of a medieval loss of faith in dogmas . Our vacuity is different. We do not represent anything. Our world is not a stage. We are not actors, and if we act, it is not to represent a drama, but to divert the audience's attention and our own from the subjects that really matter. We act like criminals that try to hide their tracks. We pretend. Our progress is a farce. The vacuity under our feet is not Baroque. We have not lost our faith in dogmas: we have lost faith in ourselves . We are as counter-reformists as was the Baroque (we want to cover up the recent revolution with warm cloths), but for different reasons. Although comparable with the Baroque, in certain aspects, our situation is in fact incomparable to any other. That is because an incomparable, unheard of, never before seen event happened recently, which emptied the ground we tread. Auschwitz . Other posterior events; Hiroshima, the Gulags, are nothing but variations of the first. Therefore every attempt to grasp the present leads to the following questions: how was Auschwitz possible? How can we live after this? Such questions relate not only to the ones directly or indirectly responsible, and not only to those who were directly or indirectly hit by it: they relate to everyone who takes part in our culture. Because what is so incomparable, unheard of, never before seen and therefore incomprehensible in Auschwitz, is that it was there that Western culture revealed one of its inherent virtualities. Auschwitz is a characteristic realization of our culture. It is neither the product of a particular Western ideology, nor of specific “advanced” industrial techniques. It springs directly from the depths of culture and of its concepts and values. The possibility to realize Auschwitzes is implicit within our culture from the very start: the Western “project” already harbored it, although as a remote possibility. Auschwitz lies within the initial program of the West, which progressively realizes all of its virtualities as history unfolds. That is why the question that Auschwitz poses before us is not: how did it happen? It serves no purpose to “explain” Auschwitz. The fundamental question is: how was it possible? Because what is being questioned is not the extermination camp, but the West. Thus one other question: how to live within a culture henceforth unmasked? Everything that happened afterwards resonates with such a question, with such vacuity. Every economic, social, political, technical, scientific, artistic, philosophic event is corroded by such an undigested question. The distance that separates us from the event does not mitigate the abyss, it erodes it even deeper. Because the distance progressively dissolves the aura of the horror that envelops the event, and it progressively opens up a vision of the scene. It progressively reveals that there all of our categories, all of our “models”, suffered an irreparable shipwreck. Auschwitz was a revolutionary event, in the sense that it overthrew our culture. Insofar as we seek ways to cover up such revolution with trips to the moon or with genetic manipulations, we are counter-revolutionaries: we are inverting the course of history in order to cover up the past. The unspoken in Auschwitz is not the mass murder, it is not the crime . It is the ultimate reification of people into amorphous objects, into ashes. The Western tendency towards objectification was finally realized and it was done so in the shape of an apparatus . The SS were functionaries of an extermination apparatus, and their victims functioned in function of their own annihilation. The extermination camp's program, once it started functioning, developed in an automatic fashion, autonomous from the decisions of the initial programmers, even if, as it effectively did, it contributed to the defeat of the programmers. The SS and the Jews functioned one in function of the other like cogwheels. The models for such functionality were provided by the highest of Western values: the SS behaved like “heroes” and the Jews like “martyrs”. This is an apparatus that functions at a borderline situation: objective even beyond death. What has just been said is intolerable. We cannot accept it and so we mobilize arguments against it. Good arguments. The SS behaved like criminals: they removed the gold teeth from the cadavers. The Jews behaved like victims: they rose up in the Warsaw ghetto. Such arguments are true, but they do not reach the nucleus, the “ eidos ” of the phenomenon: they do not grasp it. Although there was “normal” behavior: (theft, murder, revolt, heroism), there was also “abnormal” behavior: functionality during a borderline situation. And this is what counts. There, for the first time in the history of humanity, an apparatus was put into operation that was programmed with the most advanced techniques available, which realized the objectification of man, together with the functional collaboration of man. The previous horrors committed by Western society against other societies and against itself (and there are many) were crimes . They were violations of Western models of behavior: anti-Christian, anti-human, irrational. So that it is possible to condemn them and continue to be Western, even if the horror is so colossal, such as the enslavement of Africans. However, it is not possible to condemn Auschwitz and continue to adhere consciously to the West. Auschwitz is not a violation of Western models of behavior, it is, on the contrary, the result of the application of such models. Our culture allowed its mystifying mask to fall and must be rejected in toto if we admit that the purpose of every culture is to allow for the convivial existence of men that recognize each other mutually as subjects. However: it is not possible to reject one's own culture. It is the ground we tread . Those who seek to reject their own culture (as Nietzsche did in rejecting Judeo-Christianity), fall victim to madness. Those who reject their culture's models, are incapable of grasping the world in which they live. Cultural models are traps to catch the world. Those who seek to substitute their own models for other's (for example by shouting “Hare Krishna”) will find that such exotic models have already been caught by the very models to be substituted. There is no exit: we are condemned to use our models and to serve such models, even after they have been unmasked, if we wish to continue living. The only alternative would be to commit suicide. That is: we must continue our economic, political, scientific, artistic, philosophic activities despite Auschwitz. We must continue progressing despite everything . That is why there are those who recommend that we should seek to forget what happened, that we should repress the event. They sustain that enough has already been said and written about the subject and that it is time to “overcome” it. But such an ostrich strategy reveals itself disastrous. Because the result is that Auschwitz transfers itself from Poland of the 1940s to the post-industrial society of the future. What characterizes the extermination camp is precisely that it is not an event that can be “overcome”, because it is the first realization of an inherent virtuality within the Western project, which will repeat itself in other formats unless we become totally conscious of it. The advantage (if this is an appropriate term) that Auschwitz offers us, is to give us a concrete example of the West’s tendency towards the apparatus. For the first time in our history it is possible for us to experience concretely the utopia inherent in our culture. For the first time in our history we have the experience that utopia, no matter in what form, towards which we progress, is the extermination camp. Everywhere we can observe, as of now, the emergence of variations on the theme “Auschwitz”. Everywhere apparatus spring, just like mushrooms after a Nazi rain, from the ground that has become rotten. Certainly: such new apparatus are not externally similar to the Nazi extermination camps. Their labels are different, as are the ideologies that pretend to inspire them. Even the apparatus that admittedly envision extermination, such as the Gulags, the ones of a future nuclear war, or the ones that functioned in Vietnam, claim to be different from Auschwitz. Others claim to be “friends of mankind”, such as the scientific, technical and administrative apparatus. But such labels and such ideologies are deceptive and serve only to cover up the essence of apparatus. They are all just like Auschwitz, black boxes that function with complex inner-workings in order to realize a program. They all function according to an inertia that is inherent to them and such functionality escapes , from a certain point, the control of their initial programmers. In a final analysis such apparatuses function, all of them, towards the annihilation of all their functionaries, including their programmers. Exactly because they objectify and dehumanize man. Thus Western culture reveals itself as a project that seeks to transform itself into an apparatus. What characterizes the West is its capacity for an objectifying transcendence. Such transcendence allows for the transformation of all phenomena, including the human phenomenon, into an object of knowledge and manipulation. The space for such transcendence opened up thanks to Judeo-Christianity and resulted, in the course of our history, in science, technique and recently, in Auschwitz. The ultimate objectification of the Jews into ashes is the ultimate victory of the spirit of the West. It is social technique taken to the extreme. Certainly: the transformation of men into ashes is primitive, incipient social technique that progressively refines itself. It will be followed by less brutal objectifications, such as the robotization of society. But it does not matter which form it will assume: it will always be an objectifying manipulation of mankind. Although the apparatus of the immediate future are not necessarily incineration ovens, all will be, and not only the nuclear ones, apparatus for the annihilation of man. The Western program contains several virtualities, not only apparatus. Numerous virtualities have not yet been realized. In this sense the “history of the West” has not ended yet, the Western game continues. But all not-yet realized virtualities are infected by apparatus. That is why it has become currently impossible to engage ourselves in the “ progress of culture .” As it would be to engage ourselves in our own annihilation. We have lost our faith in our culture, in the ground we tread. That is: we have lost faith in ourselves. It is this hollow vibration that follows our steps towards the future. What remains is for us to analyze the event “Auschwitz” in all its details in order to discover the fundamental project that realized itself there for the first time, so that we may nurture the hope to project ourselves out of that project. Out of the history of the West. This is the “post- historical” climate in which we are condemned to live from hereon. NOTES 1. In Portuguese representar (to represent) also means “to act” or “to play a role.&rdquo. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 30.3 (2000) 73-89 [Access article in PDF] Phantom Rights Conversations Across the Abyss (Hugo, Blanchot) Suzanne Guerlac —"The writer must save the world and be the abyss, justify existence and give speech to what does not exist...."1—Who is speaking?—Maurice Blanchot.—But this was already revealed to me by the Tables. How are what you call the "two sides [deux versants]" of literature to be distinguished from the "double ray (...) [double rayon]" or the "double face" of the work of art, revealed to me by the voice of Death through the table—through the Winds of the Tomb—and which I recognized as the double furrow of the real and the ideal I had always inscribed through my writing?—What is in question at this point is not merely approaches to literature, or the mechanisms of what you call "genius," but literature itself, and with it, the very operations of the human mind. I asked the question "how is literature possible?" in response to Paulhan in 1942.2 A few years later the question returned differently: is literature possible... after Auschwitz?I have responded to the discourse of the death of art with a notion of writing as an art of death. Is this somehow the same as what the Winds of the Tomb revealed to you? Who knows? You have been dead for more than a century, I have been dying for what seems like ages. 1 "I wrote a book... of the cut off head... I stopped at the point where only you can continue."3 Victor Hugo is speaking, alluding to Le dernier jour d'un condamné, a novel written in a first-person voice which cuts off just before the guillotine drops. His remark acknowledges the commonplace that one cannot speak one's own death, not only because one does not live to tell it, but because one never really experiences it. Another literary figure to have given this matter a lot of thought (along with his friend Georges Bataille) is Maurice Blanchot, whose meditations on writing insist on questions of death and voice.In Hugo's remark, however, it is above all the address that arrests our attention and tempts us to engage Hugo in conversation with Blanchot. Hugo is speaking to André [End Page 73] Chénier, or rather to the spirit of Chénier, which ostensibly communicates to participants in séances conducted in Jersey in 1853-54 under the guidance of the celebrated psychic Mme. de Girardin. He addresses the voice of a dead poet, an absent voice that can only speak through a peculiar form of writing that spells out letters one by one through the tappings of a table. It is a voice that writes since it can no longer speak, having lost its head to the guillotine during the French Revolution. During the séances, Hugo asks Chénier to recount the experience of his death. Is it because Chénier is in the unusual position of speaking from beyond the grave that Hugo expects him to do the impossible, to go beyond the silenced voice of the condemned man, that is, beyond the reach of fiction? How are we to read this writing of the Tables, and what does it have to do with "literature"?The transcript dramatizes fundamental notions concerning writing, death, and relations between the two that Blanchot will theorize a century later in his critical writings. Here, Hugo demands Chénier's impossible account of his own death specifically in response to a demand of writing. What is at stake is not only the continuation of the narrative necessarily aborted in Hugo's novel —"I stopped at the point where only you can continue"—but also the continuation of the poetry of Chénier, interrupted by the poet's untimely death. Responding to Chénier's expressed concern, Hugo and his companions offer to assist Chénier in the completion of his poems. "André," Hugo begins:You desire, and we also desire, to see your oeuvre completed. We will gather piously, and with the respect due your... (shrink)

In 1988, my book Morality After Auschwitz: The Radical Challenge of the Nazi Ethic first appeared. The book generated a variety of responses, some positive and enthusiastic and some quite negative. The reason for these responses, of course, was that in the book I staked out a discomforting, and so controversial, position. The overarching conviction which led to the writing of the book was that, like in so many other areas, the process of thinking about ethics and doing (...) moral philosophy in the post-Shoah world simply could not continue in the same way as it had up to that point. That is, for me, the events of the Holocaust represent, if I can borrow a concept from Emil Fackenheim, a kind of revelation, a radical challenge to the way we in the West must face and try to understand the human condition.Beginning from this perspective, I came to the conclusion, in brief, that one of the most disturbing implications of the Holocaust for moral theory is that we can no longer assume that there is a universal moral truth to which all normal people have access and to which all normal people will naturally respond. In other words, the optimistic assumption of Western modernity that human beings can know and act on the true and the right, can no longer be taken for granted. This, of course, seriously undermines the very basis for the modern enterprise of moral philosophy.As one engaged in the teaching of Western moral philosophy, I of course did not come to this position easily, nor am I fully comfortable with it. But that uncomfortableness is in the end also part of the point. I am the child of survivors and I live and work in a post-Shoah world, and that world is simply not a comfortable one to inhabit. It is not the optimistic world of Enlightenment thinking. For me, the implications of the Holocaust for what I am doing as a professor of religion and as a scholar of ethics must be taken seriously enough to radically affect the way I, and others, go about our business.Before moving forward, I should give a little bit of the intellectual background that led me to write the book in the way I did. I came to the study of the Holocaust rather late. In fact I only really entered into a systematic study of the Holocaust when I began teaching in 1980, that is after my university education and even after my graduate work. I came to the Holocaust then as a young scholar with little formal background in the field, but with the need to develop and teach a course to American undergraduates.Looking back, I think that coming to the study of the Holocaust relatively late in my professional development was actually a positive situation: I was not, after all, invested in the field, I did not have prior commitments to one view or the other, I did not feel I had a particular set of scholars to defend or uphold. When I began to teach the Holocaust, the only items on my agenda were to understand the events as best as I could and then devise a way of presenting them to the students in the clearest possible way. (shrink)

Given intractable moral pluralism, what ought one to make of the bioethics that arose in the early 1970s, grounded as it was in the false assumption that there is a common secular morality that secular bioethics ought to apply? It is as if bioethics developed without recognition of the crisis at the heart of secular morality itself. Secular moral rationality cannot of itself provide the foundations to identify a particular morality and its bioethics as canonical. One is not just confronted (...) with intractable moral and bioethical pluralism, but with the absence of a secular ground that can show why one should act morally rather than self-interestedly. The result is not merely the deflation of much of traditional Western morality to life-style and death-style choices, but the threat of deflating to political slogans the now-dominant secular morality, including its affirmation of human autonomy, equality, social justice, and human dignity. All of this invites one critically to reconsider the meaning and force of secular bioethics. (shrink)

The spread of Islam from the Arabian Peninsula to the North Africa and al-Andalus in the west, to the Chinese borders and the Indian Subcontinent in the east, helped Muslims to establish close contact with many different cultures. One of the consequences of this is that both the increase in scientific accumulation and the emergence of new needs in military, financial and similar aspects accelerated the studies on geography. Islamic geographers of the first period, not only did they describe the (...) cities to which they travelled but also they depicted the cities about which they could collect data. These first works, which can be considered as a kind of written maps, have some common features, although they are written in different geographies and revealed by different schools. One of these common points is the terminology that they used in depictions of cities. This terminology suggests that there was a common city typology among Muslim geography scholars that stands out in the depiction of cities. In this study, particularly we will try to answer a number of questions such as what the concepts of authors are and what they mean and the relationship between these concepts by examining the uses of authors in their works.SummaryThe depictions of settlements which were designated as madīna in the works of the medieval Muslim geographers have some common characteristics. One of them is the terminology used by the authors in depictions of cities. In this study, particularly I tried to answer a number of questions such as what the concepts of authors are and what they mean and the relationship between these concepts by examining the uses of authors in their works. Then, a common city typology which is prominent in the depiction of cities among the Muslim geography scholars has been put forward. The structural elements that are considered to constitute this typology also revealed the topographic elements of a city at that time.The cities conquered by muslims had a great impact on the emergence of the terminology used by Muslim geographers in depicting cities. I can say that especially Persian influence; the cities in Iran, Khurāsān which were captured from the Sāsānians and Mā Warāʾ al-Nahr districts was effective. However, geography writers did not restrict using this terminology for only these regions, they also had continued to use in depiction of other regions such as North Africa and al-Andalus. This means that a common language and terminology emerged and started to be used.Geography authors point to five main elements that I have examined in separate titles while describing Islamic cities that they called "madīna". These are kuhandiz, shahristān, rabad, the part so-called “the adjacent agricultural fields / agricultural fields surrounded by wall” by us and the last part rustāq connected to main city center. Depending on ways of development of cities, these elements sometimes developed from inside to out, in other words from center to environment, sometimes surrounded by independent walls and sometimes adjacent to each other. However, a city did not have to have all these elements at the same time. This situation was totally related to development level of city, and the cities which had all these elements were the military, administrative and economically developed centers of the period. From the methodical point of view, it should be noted that the examples given in the study were selected from among the other cities in order to ensure that to understand the subject in best way and ensure that the silhouette on the city typology is seen better. Because it is possible to find examples of each element in all city depictions of Islamic geography writers. Kuhandiz, shahristān/madīna, and rustāq are the elements that can be seen in the pre-Islamic period. It is possible to think of the Islamic period as a period in which these words were conceptualized, new madīnas and rabads were formed, surrounded by walls and rabads were gradually transformed into madīnas. In geography texts, it is seen that there is a concept confusion between kuhandiž and buildings named qalʿa, ḥiṣār and ḥiṣn. However, as some writers hade tried to emphasize, "kuhandiz" had been using for these structures which were previously known as fortress (especially ḥiṣn or qalʿa) due to their proportion to shahristāns / madīnas of city centers, and were notably seen in the regions of Khurāsān and Mā Warāʾ al-Nahr. Kuhandižs represent the centers of pre-Islamic cities and were continued to be used for the same purpose in the early Islamic period. But, these old areas were gradually abandoned due to the development of new parts of settlement under Muslim administration. Shahristāns were residential areas where the majority of people lived. With the Islamic period, the word “shahristān” had been terminologically changed to “madīna” and use of this concept by scientific circles was gradually disappeared in time. At this point, it is one of the issues to be considered in the examination of geography works that the use of “madīna” in Arabic both for the concept of the city in which we examine the structural elements in this article, and for “shahristān” which is one of the elements of the city.As it is understood from the geographical texts, madīna was continued to be established by Muslims in cities for centuries. These are also examples of change in cities as a result of development and housing activities after the conquests. However, we don’t have much information in the geography works about the cities which had more than one shahristān /madīna before the inhabit of Muslims. As far as we can reach, the only example in our resources with multiple madīnas/shahristān belonging to the pre-Islamic period is Bukhara.As in the developed cities of the period such as Bukhara, Samarqand, Marw and Balkh, it is seen a generaly circular fortification wall which usually surrounded main center of cities including kuhandizs, madīnas/ shahristān and mostly later rabads. So, it is more appropriate to consider the areas between these walls and other parts of city (kuhandiz, shahristān/madīna, rabad) as an independent element because of the fact that they were lands with determined borders and were defined by separate concepts. I have used “adjacent agricultural area” for this element for now. Thus, this area constitutes one of the structural elements of the cities.Rustāqs were parts of Persian-Sāsānian urbanization and land administration, and had continued to be partially implemented during the Islamic period. They were the source of livelihood of the cities from foundation stage and were an indispensable tool of the society based on agriculture in that ages. Depending on size, the cities could have dozens of them. As can be seen in the case of Balkh, the rustāḳs especially connected to the big city centers were not composed of one or several villages. Moreover, these rustāqs could contain big settlements called madīna which were their centers. (shrink)

The problem with remembering Auschwitz is that the neoliberal paradigm of economic utility, demotic happiness, and programmed consumption has tended to erase its facticity from public consciousness. Technoscientific capitalism functions as a regime of amnesic performance that prevents a ‘working through’ of the Nazi genocide. I argue that Agamben’s work on the implicit violence of the biopolitical paradigm gives a crucial insight into the fate of humanity in the time of global capitalism. However, I contend that the idea of (...) testimony he presents in Remnants of Auschwitz recapitulates a Heideggerian ontology of experience that is enacted outside of the technological dynamics of trauma and memory. I employ Stiegler’s concept of epiphylogenetic memory, first, to explore the economy of fascisms that has emerged within the networks of global capitalism and, second, to examine the material affects through which Auschwitz returns to the scene of this economy. (shrink)

Everywhere the 1990s have been characterized by an odd mixture of ideological triumphalism-Fukuyama's "end of history" being only the crassest example-and of ideological uncertainty-can there be, should there be, a "third way"? For all its pretensions to universality, the "New World Order" has never lost a fragility in appearance. Students of historiography can scarcely be surprised to learn that an uneasiness over the present and future has in turn frequently entailed uncertainty about the past and particularly about those parts of (...) the past which had seemed most able to give clear and significant "lessons."One evident example is the history of what in my Explaining Auschwitz and Hiroshima I called the "long" Second World War, that is, that crisis in confidence in the relationship between political and economic liberalism and the nation-state which, by the end of 1938, had left only Britain, France, the Low Countries, and Scandinavia as in any sense preserving those "liberal" freedoms which had spread across Europe since 1789. In this article, I briefly review the most recent difficulties World War II combatant societies have had in locating a usable past in the history of those times. However, my major focus is on the specific case of Italy, very much a border state in the Cold War system, and today the political home of an "Olive Tree" and a "Liberty Pole" whose historical antecedents and whose philosophical base for the future are less than limpid. 1990s Italian historians thus give very mixed messages about the Fascist past; these are the messages I describe and decode. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Second GuessingAnonymous OneThis is difficult for me to write because I have tremendous respect for every doctor that has been involved in my son’s care. I firmly believe that they chose and administered the highest level of care that they assessed as appropriate; that they cared for him both personally and professionally as if he were their own child; and that he was in the care of acknowledged giants (...) in their fields. I write this knowing that I will share this narrative with these doctors, in order that they can better understand the decisions I was faced with and the guilt I must live with feeling that I may not have made the best possible informed choice for my son, because of this trust and relationship.Let me describe my oncologist. I say “my” instead of my son’s whose doctor he really is, because he is mine too in every sense of the word. He cares passionately about his work and about my son specifically; he engenders my trust because he is compassionate, brilliant, and available to me for concerns both great and small. His accomplishments have saved lives and will continue to impact his field. He became the narrow bridge I walk, that is the only thing between me and dangerous water and rocks waiting below; the balancing bar on the tightrope that is the only thing that stands to keep me from falling into the abyss and breaking my neck. And this made it difficult for me to disagree with him and seek a second opinion. Because his unspoken words were, “Don’t you trust me that I will do the best for your child?” and I could not answer then what I would answer now, “Nobody is infallible and sometimes we may miss something that someone else can see despite how much we know or care.”It is ironic, I think, that sometimes a layperson, because of her limited knowledge, can see more clearly where a professional may not.My son was diagnosed at age six with Grade II ependymoma in 2006. He was treated with surgery, a complete resection, and then 33 rounds of conformal radiation. He recurred in 2012, and was diagnosed with anaplastic ependymoma Grade III. He had another surgery, with the same surgeons, who pronounced it another successful total resection. This is where my story begins.The MRI taken the next day showed a sliver of something there. My oncologist, much sought after for his diagnostic abilities in reading MRI’s showed slight concern that it may be residual tumor, but both the surgeons and the MRI report came back negative, identifying the sliver as inflammation. Six [End Page 9] weeks later, 3 days before we were scheduled to leave out of town to receive proton beam radiation, I insisted on another MRI. The sliver was enlarged from the post–op MRI. My oncologist said it was tumor; one surgeon said it was inflammation and the other surgeon abstained from speculation. The MRI report stated it appeared to be recurrent tumor.Now here was my dilemma as a parent. The prognosis today of radiation on residual tumor for ependymomas is very bad, especially with a residual tumor of his size. On the other hand, my oncologist felt that going in for surgery with no guarantee of a total resection anyway, was incurring a risk of damage to my child that may impact severely on his quality of life.My oncologist felt that for many medical reasons, inherent risks of surgery, uncertainty about status of the scan reading, quality versus quantity of life, and—I think—an understandably pessimistic view of the possibility of cure for recurrent anaplastic grade III ependymoma, he was against another surgery, and opted to continue with radiation with the tumor as is.I am part of two support groups on line, one for parents of children with any type of brain tumor and the other specific for ependymoma parents. The clinical and anecdotal knowledge of these groups as a whole is phenomenal because, unfortunately, we have parents who have experienced and researched almost everything about this illness, in all its stages. When I was faced... (shrink)

After reviewing the history, rationale, and Jim Rachels’ varied uses of the notion of biographical lives, the essay further develops its social dimensions and proposes an ontological analysis. Whether one person is leading one life or more turns on the number of separate social worlds he or she creates and maintains. Furthermore, lives are constituted by narrated events in a story. Lives, however, are not stories, but rather are extended “verbal objects,” that is, “narrative objects” with a hybrid character, (...) both linguistic and by inference non-verbal. In this they are like facts, propositions, and histories, grasped only through their verbal expression. Being narrative and socially embedded, lives can arguably be extended beyond the death of the principal liver of a life by the commemorative actions of those who shared it. Jim hoped to persuade doctors to shift from a traditional Sanctity of Life principle to a Sanctity of Lives principle. Accordingly, they could stop pointless prolongation of biological life once a patient permanently loses consciousness, his criterion of the end of a biographical life. It might seem that allowing lives to be extended past that point or death would forego that clinical benefit, but that is not so. (shrink)

Tristan Garcia’s Form and Object has been framed primarily as a contribution to object oriented metaphysics. In this article, I shall explicate and defend four claims that bring it closer to the modern critical tradition: 1) that Garcia’s Form and Object can be read, profitably, within the tradition of reflection upon the nature of possessions, self-possession and possessiveness; 2) that to read the book in this way is to see Garcia as the French heir to C. B. McPherson although it (...) will be argued that what this amounts to is that while McPherson was the anti-Locke, so to speak, Garcia is the anti-Rousseau; 3) that this framing has significant consequences for our reception of Form and Object in that it can be understood as a book that not only marks a moment in debates surrounding speculative realism and object oriented ontology but that it also, and primarily, marks an important moment in debates about the encroachment of things and the culture of possession that, in part, defines modernity; 4) that there is a novel ontological position within Form and Object, one that is neither relational nor individualist, that presents a challenging account of ‘the chance and the price’ of living after possession and how to overcome the deleterious effects of contemporary consumer societies. (shrink)

The Ukrainian translation of the work of the German neo-Marxist philosopher Theodor Adorno "Education after Auschwitz" is dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the liberation of prisoners of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. In this work, which Theodor Adorno read as a report on Hesse Radio on April 18, 1966, the previous theme of special importance – the cultivation of a new, anti-ideological education in post-totalitarian society as a means of humanistic educational influence on this society – (...) was continued. Adorno suggested that his listeners see as a humanistic need for a post-totalitarian society to spread in its cultural space through the education the each person's understanding of own guilt for the Auschwitz tragedy. According to the philosopher, in this way, it is possible to restore the civilization of the coexistence of man and society, and it will make it impossible to repeat the horrors of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Another factor that should prevent the return of Auschwitz crimes, Adorno called the presence of knowledge about the genesis of an authoritarian character, which is the socio-psychological cause of the suffering of innocent people. Having considered the socio-cultural and anthropological factors of the emergence of an authoritarian character, Adorno identified the undoubted psychological dependence of the bearers of a manipulative character on the authoritarian government. The origins of the authoritarian government German philosopher found in the current state of European culture as one that has lost the spiritual energy needed for its own transformation. In accordance with his basic philosophical and educational beliefs, Adorno postulated the new education as an anti-ideological enlightenment, as knowledge that educates primarily politically aware young citizens, as an effective means of preventing the return of authoritarian government and, consequently, the repetition of Auschwitz. (shrink)

(Spanish) RESUMEN: La libertad absoluta postulada por Viktor Emil Frankl y Jean-Paul Sartre, la Shoah y la creencia en un dios omnipotente, bueno y justo parecen contradecirse. La pregunta por el sentido del sufrimiento de las víctimas del Holocausto (la verdadera catástrofe, el mayor crimen contra la humanidad), simbolizado por Auschwitz, y como punto de inflexión en la historia, es terriblemente dolorosa y parece no tener una respuesta filosófica ni teológica. A mi juicio, es importantísimo distinguir entre las víctimas (...) inocentes de la Shoah que perecieron y las víctimas inocentes que sufrieron un verdadero infierno y perdieron a sus seres queridos, pero que lograron sobrevivir. Ambas son víctimas, por supuesto, pero así como encontrarle un posible sentido al sufrimiento de las víctimas masacradas y gaseadas podría suponer un insulto a su sufrimiento y agonía –en especial, al horror que sufrieron los niños–, el horrible sufrimiento de los supervivientes pudo dar, tal vez, de alguna manera, un sentido a sus vidas después de la liberación de los campos de concentración y exterminio, ya fuera como voz, como protesta o como simple supervivencia. Frankl apuesta por un sentido último (que abraza el sentido del sufrimiento de las víctimas), y Sartre, aunque parezca no apostar por sentido alguno, volcó su vida al compromiso político después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, y ello parece vislumbrar una minúscula pizca de sentido después de la barbarie. La filosofía de Frankl es un sí a la vida incluso en las situaciones más extremas, un grito casi nietzscheano que exalta el valor de la vida más allá de cualquier sufrimiento. Frankl, padre de la logoterapia y superviviente del Holocausto, abre una puerta a Dios al hablar de un dios inconsciente, una dimensión suprahumana y una fe incondicional, y define la religión como espiritualidad y como la búsqueda del hombre por el sentido último. Según Frankl, la libertad no se contradice con Dios, y la religión existe no a raíz de la barbarie, sino a pesar de la barbarie. El existencialismo sartreano es una filosofía de la libertad radical y de la responsabilidad. El hombre está condenado a ser libre. El ser humano es un ser en el que la existencia precede a la esencia. Somos totalmente responsables de lo que somos. Sartre afirma que la libertad humana es incompatible con Dios. En un mundo sin Dios, la moral la construyen los hombres, con sus propias decisiones y sus acciones, y la existencia y el sufrimiento de las víctimas no tienen sentido alguno. Sartre define al hombre como libertad, responsabilidad, angustia y contingencia. Frankl define al hombre como libertad, responsabilidad, espiritualidad y búsqueda de sentido. Con esta tesis me propongo entrar en la resbaladiza dimensión del dolor, la desesperación, el sentido y sinsentido del sufrimiento de las víctimas (teniendo presente los horrores de Auschwitz, que en teología y filosofía ha simbolizado desde la liberación de los campos la muerte de Dios y la muerte de la moral). Es verdad que no solo los hombres, mujeres y niños judíos fueron víctimas de la barbarie alemana, pero, como reza el mensaje de Elie Wiesel en la exposición permanente del Block 27 del Auschwitz-Birkeanu State Museum: "Not all victims were Jewish in this place, but all Jews were victims". La Shoah no es un episodio dentro de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, sino un punto de inflexión en la historia de la humanidad, y es una catástrofe que nos concierne a todos, hombres y mujeres judíos y no judíos, religiosos e irreligiosos, creyentes e increyentes, como seres libres, responsables y morales que somos –o que deberíamos ser. Muchas de las víctimas del Holocausto, en medio de la desesperación, entraron en las cámaras de gas orando, aferrándose a la esperanza de que ese final espeluznante no era un punto final. Con esta tesis no me propongo de ninguna manera responder a la eterna pregunta de si Dios existe o no, sino que propongo interpretar ese grito hacia Dios como un desesperado anhelo de esperanza. También me propongo encontrar una coherencia en las posturas de estos dos grandes pensadores para quienes la libertad y la responsabilidad definen al hombre: Frankl (quien apuesta por una dimensión suprahumana donde existe un sentido último en el que el sufrimiento de las víctimas tiene que tener algún sentido, aunque ese sentido sea completamente incomprensible en la dimensión humana) y Sartre (el existencialista ateo por excelencia, para quien el mundo, la existencia y el sufrimiento son absolutamente contingentes). En el primer capítulo expongo la logoterapia y el existencialismo sartreano: describo las tres dimensiones del hombre y las tres búsquedas de sentido propuestas por Frankl, y expongo las cinco consecuencias de "l'existence précède l'essence", centrándome en la libertad y la responsabilidad, y hablo del suicidio. El segundo capítulo está dedicado al dios inconsciente frankleano, la dimensión suprahumana, la búsqueda por el sentido último y la fe incondicional. En el tercer capítulo ilustro la libertad sin Dios sartreana, la ontología sartreana, el ateísmo sartreano y el humanismo sartreano, y hablo sobre la responsabilidad, la mauvaise foi, la contingencia, la situation y la angustia. El cuarto capítulo es necesariamente histórico (sin dejar de ser filosófico): me pregunto por la muerte de Dios después de Auschwitz, argumento y defiendo la unicidad del Holocausto (la Shoah es un punto de inflexión en la historia de la humanidad), describo las masacres antes de los campos de exterminio (Einsatzgruppen, Ordnungspolizei y Wehrmacht), el gigantesco complejo de Auschwitz (Stammlager, Auschwitz-Birkenau y Monowitz-Buna), reflexiono sobre Dios y el mal (centrándome en los niños de Auschwitz), describo los días de Frankl en Auschwitz, hablo de Dios como esperanza, de la inmortalidad y la escatología, de la crueldad de Dios, de la relación entre el cristianismo y el antisemitismo, del islam y el antisemitismo, critico el silencio de Dios, hablo de la muerte de Dios y del juicio contra Dios. En el quinto capítulo expongo la moral frankleana (una moral que atañe al hombre y no a Dios), basándome en su teoría del amor y en su única obra de teatro (Synchronisation in Binkerwald), y la moral sartreana (una moral que atañe a una humanidad sin Dios), recordando a Dostoyevsky, analizando la famosa cita de Garcin en Huis clos "L'enfer, c'est les Autres", criticando el marxismo de Sartre y cuestionando (con la mirada de Frankl y Sartre) el verso de Brecht "Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral"; al final del capítulo incluyo una reflexión propia y las críticas frankleana y sartreana sobre la impunidad de los verdugos y colaboradores después del Holocausto (con el permiso de Dios). Después de la Conclusión, añado un Apéndice sobre las vidas de Frankl y Sartre, para poder entender mejor su obra. PALABRAS CLAVE: logoterapia, existencialismo sartreano, búsqueda de sentido, libertad, responsabilidad, moral, angustia, sufrimiento, supervivientes, víctimas, contingencia, espiritualidad, religión, Dios, esperanza, antisemitismo, culpa, Auschwitz, Holocausto, Shoah. /// (English) ABSTRACT: The absolute freedom defended by Viktor Emil Frankl and Jean-Paul Sartre, the Shoah and the belief in an omnipotent, benevolent and just God seem to contradict each other. The question of the meaning of the victims' suffering of the Holocaust (the true catastrophe, the biggest crime against humanity), simbolised by Auschwitz and as a turning point in History, is terribly painful and doesn't seem to have an answer. In my opinion, it's crucial to distinguish between the innocent victims of the Shoah who perished and the innocent victims who sufferend a real hell and lost their loved ones, but managed to survive. Both are victims, of course, but just as finding a possible meaning to the suffering of the massacred and gassed victims could result in an insult to their suffering and agony –especially to the horror that the children suffered– the gigantic suffering of the survivors could, maybe, somehow, give a meaning to their lives after the liberation of the concentration and extermination camps, either as a voice, as a protest, or as a simple survival. Frankl believes in an ultimate meaning (that embraces the meaning of the victims' suffering), and Sartre, even if it appears not to embrace any meaning, turned his life to political engagement after War World II, and that attitude seems to give a tiny glimpse of meaning after the barbarity. Frankl's philosophy says yes to life even in the most extreme situations, and it's a Nietzschean-like scream that exalts the value of life beyond any monstrous suffering. Frankl, the father of logotherapy and a Holocaust survivor, opens a door to God when he talks about an unconscious God, a supra-human dimension and an unconditional faith; he defines religion as spirituality and as man's search for ultimate meaning. According to Frankl, freedom is not contradictory with God, and religion exists not because of the barbarity but in spite of the barbarity. Sartrean existentialism is a philosophy of radical freedom and responsibility. Men are condemned to be free. We are beings where the existence precedes the essence. We are completely responsible of what we are. Sartre argues that human freedom is incompatible with God. In a godless world, morality is constructed by people, with their own choices and actions, and human existence and the suffering of the victims don't have any meaning. Sartre defines man as freedom, responsibility, Angst and contingency. Frankl defines man as freedom, responsibility, spirituality and search for meaning. With this dissertation I attempt to enter in the slippery dimension of the pain, despair, meaning and meaninglessness of the victims' suffering (having in mind the horrors of Auschwitz, that in theology and in philosophy have simbolised, since the liberation of the camps, the death of God and the death of morality). It's true that not only Jewish men, women and children were victims of the German barbarity, but, as Elie Wiesel's message from the permanent exhibition from Block 27 of the Auschwitz-Birkeanu State Museum reads: "Not all victims were Jewish in this place, but all Jews were victims". The Shoah is not an episode inside War World II, but a turning point in the history of humankind, and a catastrophe that embraces us all, Jewish and not not Jewish men and women, religious and not religious, believers and not believers, as the free, responsible and moral beings that we all are –or that we should be. A lot of the victims, in the midst of their desperation, entered into the gas chambers praying, holding to the hope that their horrifying end was not the ultimate end. With this dissertation I do not attempt to answer the eternal question of the existence of God, rather, I will try to interpret that scream to God as a longing for hope. I also intend to find a coherence between the thought of these two great thinkers for whom freedom and responsibilty define man: Frankl (who argues that there is a suprahuman dimension where an ultimate meaning exists and where the victims' suffering has to have a meaning, even if this meaning is completely incomprehensible in the human dimension) and Sartre (the atheist existentialist par excellence, for whom the world, human existence and suffering are absolutely contingent). In the first chapter I expose logotherapy and Sartrean existentialism: I describe the three dimensions of man, the three searches for meaning, the five consequences of "l'existence précède l'essence" and I speak about suicide. The second chapter delves into the unconscious God, the supra-human dimension, the ultimate meaning and the unconditional faith. In the third chapter I expose the freedom without God defended by Sartre, Sartre's ontology, Sartre's atheism, Sartre's humanism, and his ideas about responsibility, mauvaise foi, contingency, situation, and Angst. The fourth chapter is necessarily historical (while being philosophical too): I wonder about the death of God after Auschwitz, I argue and defend the uniqueness of the Holocaust (the Shoah is a turning point in the history of humankind), I describe the massacres before the extermination camps (Einsatzgruppen, Ordnungspolizei y Wehrmacht), the gigantic Auschwitz camp complex (Stammlager, Auschwitz-Birkenau y Monowitz-Buna), I reflect on God and evil (focusing on the children of Auschwitz), I describe Frankl's days in Auschwitz, I talk about God as hope, about immortality and escathology, I discuss God's cruelty, the relationship between Christianity and antisemitism and Islam and antisemitism, I question the silence of God, and I talk about the death of God and about the trial against God. In the fifth chapter I talk about the Franklean morality (a morality that concerns man and not God), on the basis of his love theory and his only work of theater (Synchronisation in Binkerwald), and the Sartrean morality (a morality that concerns a humanity without God), remembering Dostoyevsky, analysing Garcin's famous quote in Huis clos "L'enfer, c'est les Autres", crticizing Sartre's marxism and questioning (with Frankl's and Sartre's eyes) Brecht's verse "Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral"; at the end of the chapter I include my own reflection (and Frankl and Sartre's critique) about the impunity of the executioners and collaborators after the Holocaust (with God's permission). After the Conclusion, I add an Appendix about the lives of Frankl and Sartre, which helps understanding better their work. KEYWORDS: logotherapy, existentialism, search for meaning, freedom, responsibility, morality, Angst, suffering, survivors, victims, contingency, spirituality, religion, God, hope, antisemitism, guilt, Auschwitz, Holocaust, Shoah. (shrink)

I suggest a way in which metaphysics might cure us of our desire for immortality. Supposing that time is composed of instants, or even that time could be composed of instants, leads to the conclusion that there is nothing good that immortality offers, nothing we might reasonably want, that is in principle unavailable to a mere mortal. My argument proceeds in three stages. First, I suggest a necessary condition for a feature to ground the desirability of a life or a (...) portion thereof. Second, after distinguishing between three different features that could plausibly be meant by ’immortality’, I argue that if time could be composed of instants, only one of those features satisfies the necessary condition, and it evidently fails to ground the desirability of a life. Third, I argue that no feature that entails any of the three features grounds the desirability of a life either. I conclude with reflections on what this means for our longing for immortality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Let Us Be Human:Primo Levi and Ludwig WittgensteinDavide SpartiThe demolition of a man is difficult, almost as much as creating one.— Primo Levi1The modest but also remarkable ambition of Primo Levi's most important book Se questo è un uomo is "to provide material for a quiet [pacato] study of certain aspects of the human soul [animo umano]."2 More precisely, its ethical core (and its title) concerns itself with the (...) loss of our humanity, with the inexorable destruction of what is human.3 The book describes such patterns of dehumanizing through a number of mechanisms operating in the concentration camps of Auschwitz–Birkenau, where Levi was deported. By showing how the Nazis viewed the camp inmates as completely disconnected from their own lives, Levi bears witness to the Nazis' restricted willingness to grant humanity, to their denial of the internal relation which ties them to the inmates. Since the book offers insights for those who ask themselves "what is it to be human?" (and what remains of the human in extreme situations?), its main philosophical issue is whether or not something admits being seen as human.4Wittgenstein describes the attitudes we adopt in reacting to other creatures by analyzing the grammar of "seeing something as something:" only of a living human being, he famously adds, can we say: he [End Page 444] or she has a soul (see also PI, § 281).5 That the human body stands as one of the criteria for the ascription of psychological predicates—that human beings are endowed with an expressive power that neither statues nor animals possess; that human beings around us exert by their very presence a power which belongs uniquely to them—is suggested by the fact that even when we fantasize about living chairs or tables, for example in cartoons, we tend to lend human features to such animated furniture. So, according to Wittgenstein there is a conceptual connection between psychological predicates and certain kinds of human expression. But, one must add, this connection is achieved only through use, and is given only within the context of a form of life. The context of a shared form of life is needed because without it those forms of expressive behavior would not be intelligible: only if I am prepared to regard the object before me as a human being will I smile back and even talk to it. A living body is hence not enough: what is needed is a role through which such expressions are performed and have a point.In a similar vein, Levi shows the extent to which our experience of something as human depends on our relation to it—on the quality of our stance towards it. If it makes sense to speak of seeing somebody as a human being, it is because we can imagine individuals who lack or lose such a capacity or willingness. And it is precisely within the context of the concentration camp that what admits being seen as human changes drastically.In this essay I will draw lines of connection between Levi and Wittgenstein by relying on Stanley Cavell's crucial notions of avoidance and acknowledgment. After showing how such notions play a role in Wittgenstein's remarks on the so called "other mind" problem, I will turn to Levi and show how his remarks on the denial of the human in the concentration camp supplement Wittgenstein's grammatical remarks and can also be fruitfully read using the categories of avoidance and acknowledgment.6Although Wittgenstein does offer some remarks on Nazism, was personally engaged in protecting his family after the annexation of Austria, and mentions the Russian gulags in conversation with Rhees, he was never concerned with any empirical analysis of specific, let alone extreme, human situations. In light of this, it is clear that life in the concentration camp cannot be grasped and explained by simply relying on a few Wittgensteinian categories. However, the points Levi raises, as I will show in the conclusion, reveal an analogy with some of the [End Page 445] questions that worried Wittgenstein. This will also lead me to discuss a stylistic element that links the Austrian philosopher to the... (shrink)

Neither the lived body, taken up by Merleau-Ponty after Husserl, nor the libidinal body theorised by psychanalysts after Freud, can be reduced to the counted, measured, physical body, apprehended only from outside. Both phenomenology and psychoanalysis set forth the priority of a global subjective lived body, approached "from within". However, their perspectives seem to differ when it comes to the conception of the interiority of this lived body, which psychoanalysis deems as imaginary. This paper examines the similarities and (...) discrepancies between the Merleau-Pontyan phenomenological body and the Freudian erogenous body. It attempts to show how the very categories of perception and imagination are reversed when moving from one discipline to the other. It concludes by proposing some lines along which the comparison could be prolonged. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Very often, living beings seem able to change their functioning when external conditions vary. In order to study this property, we have devised abstract machines whose internal organisation changes whenever the external conditions vary. The internal organisations of these machines, are as simple as possible, functions of discrete variables. We call such machines self-modifying automata.These machines stabilise after any transient steps when they go indefinitely through a loop called p-cycle or limit cycle of length p. More often than not, (...) the p in the cycle is equal to one and the cycle reduces to a fixed point. (shrink)

The title of this article is adapted from Theodor W. Adorno’s famous dictum: ‘To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.’ After the catastrophic earthquake in Kocaeli, Turkey on the 17th of August 1999, in which more than 40,000 people died or were lost, Necdet Teymur, who was then the dean of the Faculty of Architecture of the Middle East Technical University, referred to Adorno in one of his ‘earthquake poems’ and asked: ‘Is architecture possible after 17th (...) of August?’ The main objective of this article is to interpret Teymur’s question in respect of its connection to Adorno’s philosophy with a view to make a contribution to the politics and ethics of architecture in Turkey. Teymur’s question helps in providing a new interpretation of a critical approach to architecture and architectural technology through Adorno’s philosophy. The paper also presents a discussion of Adorno`s dictum, which serves for a better understanding of its universality/particularity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:343 'LIVELY' MEMORY ANP 'PAST' MEMORY At the very beginning of the Treatise Hume distinguishes memory from imagination by noting two different features of ideas of memory not shared by ideas of imagination. The distinguishing marks of memory can be described as (1) memory conceived in terms of the liveliness or vivacity of its ideas and (2) memory conceived in terms of the constraints imposed on the order and (...) form of its ideas by the original impressions from which these ideas have been derived. Both of these conceptions of memory, according to Hume in this initial description, serve to distinguish ideas of memory from ideas of imagination. For purposes of brevity I shall call them, respectively, 'lively' memory and 'past' memory. In this paper I shall be concerned with four main issues arising from Hume's dual characterization of memory. First, I shall call attention to a point whose importance Hume scholars have not, I think, fully appreciated; namely, that later in Book I of the Treatise (Part III, Section V) Hume recognizes that his original dual characterization is not viable because it cannot be fit into his general theory of ideas and that, therefore, one of his two distinguishing features of memory must be abandoned. Second, I shall consider some problems generated by his abandonment of this conception of memory. Third, I shall construct a Humean solution to these problems, based on Hume's revised conception of memory -- a solution that he suggests but never develops. Finally, I shall apply Hume's revised characterization of memory to a central issue in his philosophy, his conception of the self, and show that, although he does not himself use it in his own 344 analysis, this characterization can provide a Humean explanation of our belief in our selves. My line of argument, which will depart not only from that of Hume but also of most of his commentators, is by no means free of difficulties; nevertheless, it has, I think, the virtue of being more consistent with Hume's general theory of ideas, hence is more Humean, than his own. To set the stage for our discussion I shall begin with Hume's initial description of memory and its difference from imagination, as it appears at the beginning of the Treatise. He writes as follows: We find by experience, that when any impression has been present with the mind, it again makes its appearance there as an idea; and this it may do after two different ways: either when in its new appearance it retains a considerable degree of its first vivacity, and is somewhat intermediate betwixt an impression and an idea; or when it entirely loses that vivacity, and is a perfect idea. The faculty, by which we repeat our impressions in the first manner, is called the MEMORY, and the other the IMAGINATION ___ There is another difference betwixt these two kinds of ideas, which is no less evident, namely that tho' neither the ideas of the memory nor imagination, neither the lively nor faint ideas can make their appearance in the mind, unless their correspondent impressions have gone before to prepare the way for them, yet the imagination is not restrain'd to the same order and form with the original impressions; while the memory is in a manner ty'd down in that respect, without any power of variation (T 89 ) A few comments on this passage are in order. Hume distinguishes memory from imagination on two grounds: (1) the experienced quality of the ideas 345 themselves and (2) the power or the faculty of the mind that produces them. Memory-ideas, as they actually occupy our consciousness, are lively and strong; imagination ideas are faint and languid. Also, memory and imagination, as separate faculties of the mind, differ in their power. Imagination is free to play with its ideas as it pleases; it can arrange and rearrange them at will, to allow us to contemplate "winged horses, fiery dragons, and monstrous giants." (T 10) Memory, however, has no such power but must reproduce impressions as memoryideas in the same order and form as they originally appeared in the mind. It requires little explanation to understand why... (shrink)

According to MacIntyre, we have the mis fortune of living in a world deprived both of the virtues cherished by the classical tradition and the virtue of rule-following of later traditions. Sad as it may be, it is the case that ordinary people do not aspire any more to live virtuously in a society of unrestrained individualism, and that contemporary moral philosophers have dropped the subject of virtue from the list of their professional concerns. Thus we literally live (...) after virtue. By grasping this simple fact, MacIntyre suggests, one can find an explanation of the great confusion and interminable disagreements of contemporary moral philosophers. (shrink)

Philosophy can be very abstract and apparently remote from our everyday concerns. In this book Ralph Blumenau brings out for the non-specialist the bearing that thinkers of the past have on the way we live now, on the attitude we have towards our lives, towards each other and our society, towards God and towards the ethical problems that confront us. The focus of the book is those aspects of the history of ideas which have something to say to our (...) present preoccupations. After expounding the ideas of a particular thinker there follows a discussion of the material and how it relates to issues that are still alive today, based on the author's classroom debates with his own students. Another feature of the book is the many footnotes which refer the reader back to earlier, and forward to later, pages of the book. They are intended to reinforce the idea that throughout the centuries philosophers have often grappled with the same problems, sometimes coming up with similar approaches and sometimes with radically different ones. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 12.1 (2004) 89-93 [Access article in PDF] Richard Shusterman, Performing Live: Aesthetic Alternatives for the Ends of Art (New York: Cornell University Press, 2000) Performing Live can be ascribed to post-modern American pragmatism in its widest expression. The author's intention is to revalue aesthetic experience, as well as to expand its realm to the extent where such experience also encompasses areas alien (...) to traditional aesthetics (for example, popular art or the somatic arts of self-improvement), reaching "the art of living" and reclaiming life itself as performance.After the introduction, titled "Aesthetic Renewal for the Ends of Art: An Overture," the text is organized in two main parts: "Aesthetic Experience and Popular Art" and "Soma, Self, and Society." Along with its ambitious title, the book's organization and structure promise a consistency of approach and narrative that somewhat dissolves during the reading. Shusterman recognizes that the stylistic problems that arise from a compilation of articles spanning ten years, mixing newly written and revised articles, but appeals to the reader's appreciation of the "quality of the mix" (11). Despite this feature, he is a lucid and thoughtful communicator and his writing style is excellent.In order to propose new or revitalized alternatives for the ends of art, Shusterman [End Page 89] explores the crisis in traditional visions of art, pointing to the compartmentalization and lack of credibility in current artistic thought and practice. Hegel, Walter Benjamin, Gianni Vattimo, and Arthur Danto provide him with the philosophical arguments accounting for the modern "exhaustion" of art. He supports a dialectical approach, both naturalistic and historicist, and builds a solid case for the possibility of alternatives in aesthetic thought and experience. He proposes two alternatives in his introduction: The two most prominent sites for today's aesthetic alternatives are clearly the mass-media popular arts and the complex cluster of disciplines devoted to bodily beauty and the art of living as expressed in today's preoccupation with aesthetic lifestyles. (7) It is unclear why these alternatives are "clearly" "the two most prominent." The author does not build a case for this assumption or for the "newness" of these alternatives. The "compilation style" mentioned above and this lack of justification for one of the most original elements in the book make this text often read as a philosophical drafting board. Keeping these characteristics in mind and also critically pondering the degrees of success in the enterprise, the reader must give Shusterman credit for taking risks while suggesting concrete examples for an experiential, holistic philosophy. In this sense, he mentions (in a different context) that "all of us [are caught] between conceptual history and futuristic speculation" (145), and he takes to heart this situation and its challenges.The first chapter in Performing Live aims to redeem or revalue the concept of aesthetic experience. For Shusterman, the loss of "felt experience" in art makes the interest in this concept utterly relevant for art's survival. He traces the lineage of this aesthetic philosophy to John Dewey, Monroe Beardsley, Nelson Goodman, and Arthur Danto. Besides focusing on these authors, his analysis revisits some of the main currents of thought in Western philosophy on the topic (for example, Plato, Hume, Kant, Dickie, Adorno, Benjamin, Gadamer). He concludes that a pragmatic approach to aesthetics, applying the concept of aesthetic experience directionally (as a means towards the actual experience rather than as a definable concept), can provide new paths for revitalizing art. Throughout the text this concept is also used expansively. The post-modern justification of the proposed aesthetics, by allowing the extension of aesthetic experience to embrace "the art of living," can leave the reader wondering if Shusterman has not simply turned Kierkegaard's existentialist stages to self-realization upside down.The second chapter is an open defense of popular art, carried out by contesting the main complaints found in current art criticism. Shusterman's defense is not directed to the products of popular art, but against the claim that popular art is aesthetically "worthless." His definition of "popular art... (shrink)

This article explores affectivity, temporality, and their interrelation in patients who contracted COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic in Sweden and with symptoms indicative of post-COVID-19 Condition (PCC) that remained one year after the infection. It offers a qualitative phenomenological philosophy analysis, showing how being ill with acute COVID-19 and with symptoms indicative of PCC can entail a radically altered self-world relation. We identify two examples of pre-intentional (existential) feelings: that of listlessness and that of not being (...) able to sense what is real and not real, both of which, in different ways, imply a changed self-world relation. We offer an analysis of intentional feelings: how the fear of not “returning” to one’s previous self and the hope of such a return weave together the present and the absent, as well as the past and the future, in ways that make the future appear as constricted, disquieting, or lost. We argue that a phenomenological differentiation among experiences of living with symptoms indicative of PCC—through attention to the way intentional affectivity and pre-intentional affectivity help shape the embodied self’s attunement to the world—is apt to yield a better understanding of the variations within these experiences and contribute to clinical practice. (shrink)

In terminally ill individuals who would otherwise end their own lives, active voluntary euthanasia (AVE) can be seen as life-extending rather than life-shortening. Accordingly, AVE supports key pro-euthanasia arguments (appeals to autonomy and beneficence) and meets certain sanctity of life objections. This paper examines the extent to which a terminally ill individual’s wish to donate organs after death contributes to those life-extension arguments. It finds that, in a terminally ill individual who wishes to avoid experiencing life he considers to (...) be not worth living, and who also wishes to donate organs after death, AVE maximizes the likelihood that such donations will occur. The paper finds that the wish to donate organs strengthens the appeals to autonomy and beneficence, and fortifies the meeting of certain sanctity of life objections, achieved by life-extension arguments, and also generates appeals to justice that form novel life-extension arguments in favour of AVE in this context. (shrink)

Popular film as a medium of communication, expression and storytelling has proved one of the most durable and fascinating cultural forms to emerge during the twentieth century, and has long been the object of debate, discussion and interpretation. _Film After Jung _provides the reader with an overview of the history of film theory and delves into analytical psychology to consider the reaction that popular film can evoke through emotional and empathetic engagement with its audience. This book includes: an introduction (...) to film scholarship discussions of key Jungian concepts Post-Jungian film studies beyond film. It also considers the potential for post-Jungian contributions to film studies, and the ways in which these can help to enrich the lives of those undergoing clinical analysis. _Film After Jung_ encourages students of film and psychology to explore the insights and experiences of everyday life that film has to offer by applying Post-Jungian concepts to film, image construction, narrative, and issues in cultural theory. It will enhance the film student’s knowledge of film engagement as well as introducing the Jungian analyst to previously unexplored traditions in film theory. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Giubilini and Minerva argue for the moral permissibility of what they call ‘after-birth abortion’, or infanticide. Here I suggest that they actually employ a confusion of two distinct arguments: one relying on the purportedly identical moral status of a fetus and a newborn, and the second giving an independent argument for the denial of moral personhood to infants (independent of whatever one might say about fetuses). After distinguishing these arguments, I suggest that neither one (...) is capable of supporting Giubilini and Minerva's conclusion. The first argument is at best neutral between permitting infanticide and prohibiting abortion, and may in fact more strongly support the latter. The second argument, I suggest, contains an ambiguity in its key premise, and can be shown to fail on either resolution of that ambiguity. Hence, I conclude that Giubilini and Minerva have not demonstrated the permissibility of infanticide, or even great moral similarity between abortion and infanticide. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 30.3 (2000) 90-104 [Access article in PDF] After Death Jonathan Strauss According to Philippe Ariès, the nineteenth century was a turning point in the history of death. On the one hand there emerged a new sense of the irreplaceability of individual people, of the finality of death and the immeasurable preciousness of a single life. On the other hand death, that which followed one's demise, became conceptually (...) more austere. For the first time since antiquity, perhaps ever, the belief that death is pure negativity or nothingness asserted itself with enough success to become a generally accepted cultural attitude. 1 This image of sheer nonexistence, this death stripped down to its ontological minimum, is the most extreme form of mortality that has arisen in the history of the West, the hardest perhaps to take, the most naked. In ways that could not have occurred before, these two developments in the history of death have worked with and against each other to create a new understanding of subjectivity, a set of theorizations about human individuality that, for all their diversity of detail, are bound together by a certain historical determinacy. Hegel's views on the relation between mortality and subjectivity, for instance, like Heidegger's or Blanchot's, have no precedent, but they do have endless repercussions. Whatever their causes, the newness and the effectiveness of these theories indicate that during the nineteenth century a unique cultural formation arose in relation to mortality. The moment still has not passed, since the basic elements of the new death continue to operate on contemporary imaginations and theorizations. What follows is an attempt to draw the portrait of the death that emerged for the first time in the nineteenth century: to critically and analytically examine formulations of the relation between death and identity in order to determine the value of absolute mortality as an individualizing principle. Often these formulations are most clearly articulated by post-nineteenth-century thinkers, but they are the products, and indeed the expressions, of that historical transformation that occurred sometime after the Revolution. When we read these texts and arguments, we are asking not merely whether they are valid as arguments, but about the value of the general attitude they reflect—the value not only of a specific kind of death, but of a kind of subjectivity that is unique to the last two hundred years. And since that subjectivity is probably the most significant product of those centuries, the most pervasive and the most intimately affecting, we are also, intentionally or not, asking about the value of a whole period.To read this relation between mortality and subjectivity, we must come to some understanding about the terms at issue, especially what death is or is not when considered in its most extreme form as simple nothingness. It may seem odd that this is an issue at all, but nonexistence has proven a difficult concept to integrate into theorizations [End Page 90] of human life. The first question to raise in this context is whether death can be considered a state, a divisive proposition on which much hangs. In the introduction to a recent collection of essays on metaphysics and death, John Martin Fischer baldly asserted that "being dead is a condition or a state" [4]. The philosopher Paul Edwards, however, has pointed to some of the "absurdities," as he puts it, of considering death as an ontological condition. To imagine death as a state is, he argues, to attribute to it some sort of being, but death, understood as the permanent loss of consciousness and experience, has no being and is simply absence. To imagine otherwise leads to attempts (made by such existentialist philosophers as Ferrater Mora [175-203] and Tillich) to understand death "from the inside"—that is, to imagine what it would be like to experience the absence of experience. 2 Edwards's approach does not deny the possibility or value of investigations into the psychological significance of that absolute privation (that is, the meaning of death for the living), but it does preclude any understanding of death as such. This is, undoubtedly, part of the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.1 (2001) 171-173 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Literary Lives: Biography and the Search for Understanding Literary Lives: Biography and the Search for Understanding, by David Ellis; ix & 195 pp. New York: Routledge, 2000, $35. In his discussion of biography as a form, Ellis points to his study as a response to the scarcity of "monographs on biography... and [that] none of them are (...) particularly satisfactory" (p. 2). He further points out that "the comparative dearth of analytic enquiry into biography is surprising" (p. 3). In short, his first pages get off to a rocky start in their tatty justification of a critical study. Though a critic of D. H. Lawrence, Ellis uses the English writer sparingly, pointing out in his "Preface" what he feels is a need "to keep illustration involving Lawrence to a decent minimum" (p. viii) while concentrating on those problems which face the biographer. That said, he sets about to characterize biography as an integration of "a disinterested enthusiasm for information... [fashioning a]... compelling story in which many details with no direct relevance to the life of his subject can be considered as contributing successfully to a period atmosphere" (p. 35). Ellis is thinking specifically of Norman Sherry's biography of Graham Greene through which he has brought to the discussion his intent of pointing to an approach which concerns itself with chapters on "Ancestors," "Primal Scenes," "Body Matters," "the Sociological [End Page 171] Imagination," "History, Chance and Self-determination," "Compatibility, Sartre and Long Biographies." All are aspects of biography.As well as the approach he suggests by these areas of concentration, Ellis draws broadly from many subjects of biography, always keeping a critical eye on its form. Anne Stevenson's approach "is towards psychological determinism" (p. 135); Ackroyd in his biography of Dickens raises "through a degree of intellectual play" the questions of when "lineage" is appropriate, that is, the extent to which it has any productive consequence. He also uses Hawthorne and Virginia Woolf as examples. Writing of the role of the historian raises difficulties for writers creating biographies from such an early period as that of Chaucer; Ellis points to Derek Pearsall's "excellent Life of Geoffrey Chaucer" (p. 121).Ellis neither can nor should ignore Lawrence and what better chapter to include him in than "Body Matters" in its concentration on illness. Here Ellis draws on Lawrence's concern with the harm of his health on his work (p. 78). He also considers Flaubert, Sartre, and Woolf. Briefly he mentions Stendhal's imagination of his "future audience" after his death (p. 109), sensibly rejects the long ago depleted and so, parenthetically, apparently permanent speculation on what Keats's might have become had he lived a full life "in a time of drugs for treatment of tuberculosis" (p. 123) and the equally mined issue of what prompted Hemingway's suicide (pp. 132-33). Certainly he is aware of the danger that such a use of material may pander to the pleasure of mere name-hunters (what if there were no index!). At the same time, if the effect of his range of examples invites additions of our own, while keeping before us that his study is about biography as form, it is successful.In "Primal Scenes," the fourth chapter of his book, Ellis gives what he feels is necessary space to Freud, the creator of the term. He points to Wordsworth's "spots of time" as only one indication of the difficulty--if not impossibility--of capturing biographically those moments in childhood by which the individual written about might be defined (p. 57). (Such an impossibility should not be surprising to those of us readers who recognize the nearly impossible task for ourselves in our own lives.) Surely both the biographer and autobiographer share this ignorance and frustration. In a very interesting move, Ellis points to Compton Mackenzie's discussion of a critical event in his six-year old life surrounding the interruption of an Easter evening with his parents and siblings, interrupted by the arrival of friends. Ellis writes... (shrink)

This paper states that as there is the “death of God” (Nietzsche), there is also the "death of man" (Foucault). The first will be interpreted either as the truth of the God who dies (theologies of the death of God), or as the death of the principle (Heidegger), or as the death of the living God and of his resurrection power (Nietzsche's true interpretation). The second one can certainly consecrate the human as an “fabricated problem” (Foucault), but even more this (...) way can open up the new power relationship of the Übermensch. Therefore, after the fold of the "forces of finitude" comes the fold of the "new creative infinity" (Deleuze). It is in this way, and only by thinking about “the thread of the body”, that we will perhaps move away from the death of man (Foucault) and the death of God (Nietzsche). Going down to Freud’s “es”, but also reaching Nietzsche’s “Self” will be the condition to echo the power of the Übermensch and of the " Über God". Man does not only stand on the “back of the es” like the rider on his horse (Freud), but also on the “back of the Self” like the “back of the tiger” that cannot be tamed (Nietzsche). (shrink)

“How would Jesus live your life, with your personality, with your talents, with your life experiences, within your life context, if he were you?” is a question posed by Dallas Willard in The Divine Conspiracy. How is it possible for Jesus Christ, Second Person of the Trinity, to know about living a really human life with all of its heartache and struggles? The article presents the biblical teaching for Jesus’ authentic human experience, that Jesus is our genuine example and (...) is the unique one who can show us the way into Kingdom living. After addressing concerns that have been raised about emphasizing the example of Jesus, the NT data affirming Jesus’ authentic human experience are presented, along with some potential objections. The main claim defended: Jesus lived normally within his own human power, relying predominantly on the divine resources of the Father and the Holy Spirit, while using his own divine power infrequently. The article concludes with a few implications for practice, living within our personal human condition as Jesus did, and living beyond our human limitations as Jesus did. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Our Living SocietyJames CampbellIWhen I was working on my history of the early years of the American Philosophical Association (A Thoughtful Profession), I spent a great deal of time immersed in the unhappy genre of the presidential address. Three divisions, each with its own annual president, make for a lot of presidential addresses. One of the things that I learned from this effort was that these addresses can be (...) sorted quite easily into two types. The first reflects some philosophical interest of the individual president; the second considers the ongoing life of the association. My presidential address will be of the latter sort.I thought that I would speak with you today about the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy (SAAP) as a living society. To do so means, of course, that I will be speaking about us. "We" are the members of SAAP—or better, we are SAAP. I will address my remarks primarily to the younger members of the audience: to those who cannot recall a time before SAAP existed. As our Society moves forward, and as the members of the founding generation inevitably pass on, there has been a natural change of focus. Our Society was established nearly forty years ago, at a time when the founders felt great alienation from the American Philosophical Association. The issues that brought them together in the early-1970s, however, are not the issues that we are facing at present. Our issues—your issues as the future of the Society—have fundamentally changed. It is no longer possible, if it ever really was, to define ourselves simply as "not them." We need to articulate, better than we have, not so much who we are as who we desire to become. While our pluralistic ways may no longer stick out in the broader philosophical profession, as Walt Whitman would in a Wall Street brokerage house, we [End Page 128] continue to feel isolation from much of what goes on in the profession. In many ways, SAAP's initial phase has been a tremendous success; but where does SAAP, where do we, go from here?III thought that I might also speak a bit about myself, not because my story is so special, but because it is a small piece of our collective past. Others of you may remember these times differently and may have taken away different lessons. If you will allow me, I will begin my story after I left the Army in 1969 and enrolled at Temple University in Philadelphia, where I had grown up. I was at that time a bit older, and more serious, than most of my fellow students. I enrolled as a philosophy major because, after a number of years entrapped within the military system of blind obedience to unquestioned authority, I wanted to find better justifications for my own, and for society's, practices. Philosophy appealed to me as the place where I might find the answers to my life questions.Unfortunately, philosophy in those days—at Temple and at most other American universities—was not the sort of field in which students found many answers to the questions that puzzled me. We learned a great deal about duck-rabbits and the uncertain location of someone named Brown; we wondered whether a person might know how to sex chickens, and how he or she might know; we explored the apparent menace of female impersonators' conventions for the inherited notion of truth. Overall, philosophy seemed to be a branch of epistemology, rather than vice versa. After several years of this sort of philosophical study, I managed to become very clever. I had a counter-example for any statement more daring than "hello," and I thought that I knew a great deal because I had learned how to avoid all consideration of context or history.Still, through my cleverness, I realized that something was not right. I was not developing answers for my puzzlements about life or the improvement of society. Since I was not doing what I wanted to do in philosophy, the fact that I was doing it quite well mattered little. As I look back now through the eyes... (shrink)

Can one conceive something to say about Allan Bloom’s view of America and the American university that he hasn’t already heard? Setting aside the perhaps undiscussable differences in what we each saw in our students of the 1960s, I find two regions in which Bloom’s experience and mine differ systematically that are specific and clear enough to be stated briefly, perhaps usefully: first, our experience of the position of philosophy in the intellectual economy we were presented with in the two (...) decades prior to the 1960s; second, our experience of the modern and the popular in the arts. My citing of these differences can only prove worthwhile, however, against a background of agreement I find with his work over the centrality of a cluster of issues, of which I specify five: a first agreement concerns the illustriousness of the university in the life of a democracy; a second concerns the irreplaceability of Great Books—what Thoreau calls scriptures—in a humanistic education; a third concerns the unaware imbibing of European thought by a chronically unprepared American constitution—a condition that is as live for us, or should be, as when Emerson was founding American thinking by demonstrating his knack of inheriting, by transfiguring, European philosophy; a fourth moment of agreement concerns the goal of a democratic university education as keeping open the idea of philosophy as a way of life, call it the life of the mind, a name for which might be Moral Perfectionism ; a fifth sense of my agreement with Bloom concerns the threat that a discourse about such issues, such as the prose fashioned in Bloom’s book , is becoming unintelligible to the culture that has produced it, and not alone to the young . Stanley Cavell is the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. His most recent works include In Quest of the Ordinary: Lines of Skepticism and Romanticism and This New Yet Unapproachable America: Essays after Emerson after Wittgenstein. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Grieving One More TimeNeethi Pinto"The deeper sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain."—Kahlil GibranI take care of very sick children in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). When a child dies, grief strikes in three distinct waves. First, I grieve for the child we couldn't heal, the unfairness, and the complete and utter sadness of a life cut too short. Then, I grieve for the (...) survivors—the families whose lives will be changed forever and who must find the strength to go on. It's not until later, in solitude, that I am able to grieve a third time—this time by and for myself.As clinicians, we are also survivors. Yet, our culture in medicine rarely affords us the permission or the grace to unpack the depth of the sorrow and grief we regularly witness and suffer. Instead, we must summon up the fortitude to take care of the child in the next room before we can pause and process our grief. As a field, we have been more intentional about having "hot" (soon after the event) and "cold" (days to weeks later) debriefings, but these short conversations about our shared experience are limited. The sheer reality of our day-to-day lives in the PICU is that the next critically ill patient is waiting.My processing of grief happens when I replay the events leading up to the patient's death over and over and over again. Was there something I missed? Could I have done better? In fact, I teach my medical students, pediatric residents, and PICU fellows that this very questioning makes us better physicians—as long as we don't let our second-guessing or fear of making a mistake paralyze our actions in the future.Little did I know I would grieve a fourth time …"How would you feel if this was your daughter?" These words were harshly spoken by my patient's father, a former police officer, the day his daughter died of respiratory failure. I had cared for her on many occasions during her prolonged admission, including that very sad last day. Undoubtedly, he was grieving, but I could feel his anger when he interrogated me. I wondered if he remembered how he profusely thanked me for caring for his daughter when we first met or the many times our team had resuscitated her, saving her life. I spent countless hours at her bedside, during the day, in the middle of the night, away from my own young family. Sure, these hours—nights, weekends, and holidays—are "part of the job," but I chose a career in pediatric critical care because of a commitment to caring for the most medically vulnerable children—the sickest of the sick—despite these hours. As pediatric intensivists, we have a unique opportunity to help children and their families at the most harrowing times in their lives—when they face the possibility of death. Although we know at the outset that some children will not survive, the grief we experience when a child dies still runs deep. It hurts every single time. In this case, my profound grief was exacerbated by the father's hostility. One year later, my sorrow deepened when I answered my doorbell at home to find a police officer handing me a subpoena for a malpractice lawsuit regarding this child's death—a delivery intended to intimidate me. I found myself grieving a fourth time—grieving for the loss of joy—joy that had been central to my identity as a physician. [End Page 72]Then, the feeling of shame crept in and haunted me. I always understood that I entered a high-risk/high-stakes field where children die because of the severity of their illness despite state-of-the-art medicine and technology. Over the years, I've learned that not only is it rewarding to help a child survive critical illness but it is incredibly moving to forge an intense human connection with families when their children are dying. So, my shame was not due to a sense of failure in preventing this child's death but rather due to the... (shrink)

One of the explicit goals of the 1996 welfare reform in the United States was to create conditions that would encourage marriage as a means of reducing poverty and welfare “dependency.” With the exception of a few notable studies that examine reliance on abusive partners and former partners, relatively little scholarly attention has been given to the contours of partnering after welfare reform. Using a feminist lens on data from two qualitative studies, the author examines the partnership experiences of (...) a sample of mostly white women three to four years after they had left welfare. An exploration of women’s views of their transitions into and their experiences with partnering reveals that women align with a logic of heterosexual partnering that holds the potential to complicate their lives. The analysis sounds a precautionary note and provides empirical evidence that partnering in the context of the reduced options of welfare reform can diminish women’s long-term stability and that encouraging partnering is, ultimately, an unsustainable policy direction for the support of lone mothers. (shrink)

From his return to Europe in 1949 to his death in 1969, Adorno was one of the most prominent public voices in West Germany. As a professor and institute director, a frequently heard expert on radio, a prolific cultural critic, and even a sort of public counselor, he helped shape the self‐image of German postwar society. The very term “postwar society” is partly an achievement: Adorno approached Germany sociologically, as a configuration of organizations and groups, as opposed to a community (...) of blood, race, and fate, and he sought to encourage an earnest postwar and post‐genocide reckoning with the crimes committed under National Socialism, against widespread tendencies of evasiveness and disavowal. More insistently and effectively than most, Adorno reminded Germans that they lived “after Auschwitz.”. (shrink)

After 50 years of debate, the ethics of aggregation has reached a curious stalemate, with both sides arguing that only their theory treats people as equals. I argue that, on the issue of equality, both sides are wrong. From the premise that “each counts for one,” we cannot derive the conclusion that “more count for more” or its negation. The familiar arguments from equality to aggregation presuppose more than equality: the Kamm/Scanlon “Balancing Argument” rests on what social choice theorists (...) call “(Positive) Responsiveness,” Kamm’s “Aggregation Argument” assumes that “equal” lives are fungible, and Hsieh et al. have it that spreading goods broadly best approximates equality. In each case, the crucial premise is not equality itself but a further idea that Taurek, I argue, can safely reject. I conclude with a conjecture: there is no theory-neutral argument that settles the question of whether the numbers count. (shrink)

_A positive assessment of secularism and the possibilities it offers for a genuinely meaningful life without religion_ Although there is no shortage of recent books arguing against religion, few offer a positive alternative—how anyone might live a fulfilling life without the support of religious beliefs. This enlightening book fills the gap. Philip Kitcher constructs an original and persuasive secular perspective, one that answers human needs, recognizes the objectivity of values, and provides for the universal desire for meaningfulness. Kitcher thoughtfully (...) and sensitively considers how secularism can respond to the worries and challenges that all people confront, including the issue of mortality. He investigates how secular lives compare with those of people who adopt religious doctrines as literal truth, as well as those who embrace less literalistic versions of religion. Whereas religious belief has been important in past times, Kitcher concludes that evolution away from religion is now essential. He envisions the successors to religious life, where the senses of identity and community traditionally fostered by religion will instead draw on a broader range of cultural items—those provided by poets, filmmakers, musicians, artists, scientists, and others. With clarity and deep insight, Kitcher reveals the power of secular humanism to encourage fulfilling human lives built on ethical truth. (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 his posthumously published Living Up to Death Paul Ricoeur left an impressive testimony on what it means to live at a high old age with death approaching. In this article I present him as a teacher who reminds us of valuable lessons taught by patients in palliative care and their caretakers who accompany them on their way to death, and also as a guide in our search for a modern ars moriendi, after—what many at least experience as—the (...) breakdown of traditional religious belief in a personal afterlife. These lessons can be summarized in the following theses. ‘Living up to death, one cannot experience one’s own death. Therefore, never consider someone dying as moribund’. ‘Though everybody is alone in dying, nobody should die alone.’ ‘The preparation for death is an affirmation of life’. ‘Life experienced as a gift can be given up’. The plausibility of the last thesis, however, may go beyond the confines of austere philosophical thinking. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Summaries and CommentsElizabeth C. Shaw, Staff*, and James ChamberlainBAGGINI, Julian. The Great Guide: What David Hume Can Teach Us about Being Human and Living Well. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2021. 319 pp. Cloth, $24.95; paper, $19.95Throughout this engaging and accessible book, Julian Baggini encourages his readers to treat the life and works of David Hume as a "model of how to live." Baggini presents summaries of Hume's (...) most famous philosophical arguments, along with biographical details about Hume's life, but always with the aim of learning from Hume about living well. He also discusses his own visits to several locations of importance to Hume.Over the course of The Great Guide, Baggini suggests many "Humean maxims and aphorisms" related to the good life. Some are drawn from Hume's own writings, such as the maxim that "the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue." Others are arrived at by considering aspects of Hume's own life and character, including his failings. For example, after considering Hume's racism, Baggini clearly has his own admiration for Hume in mind when he suggests the maxim "never slavishly follow even the greatest minds, for they too have prejudices, weaknesses, and blind spots."Baggini begins by describing those parts of Edinburgh and southern Scotland that Hume would have known in his youth. He recounts the young Hume's rejection of religious belief and of the Stoic project of attempting to find happiness by making oneself independent of others. However, Baggini notes, Hume never rejected the racist views he expressed in his essay "Of National Characters." Baggini argues that, although we should condemn Hume's views, we should treat his possession of these views primarily as evidence of the extent to which we are all socially conditioned. In Baggini's view, Hume's empiricist commitments are such that, were he to be alive today, experience would lead him to reject racism. Baggini thus aims to excuse Hume, at least somewhat, without excusing his racism.In chapter 2, Baggini follows Hume to La Flèche, in France's Loire valley, where Hume wrote most of his Treatise of Human Nature. As well as providing an account of Hume's time there, Baggini summarizes Hume's arguments about miracles, reason, and causation. He approvingly [End Page 809] notes Hume's skeptical conclusions concerning miracles, which he takes to demonstrate Hume's insistence on philosophizing only about the world as it really is. Baggini treats Hume's conclusions about cause and effect as significantly less skeptical. Although he observes that some scholars deny this, Baggini understands Hume to assert that causation is a "real power." His is a clear and helpful introduction to Hume's arguments concerning cause and effect, but readers of the relevant passages might hope for a little more discussion of what certainly appear to be Hume's skeptical claims about causal powers.Chapter 3 examines Hume's arguments about free will and personal identity, via a discussion of the complex factors which shaped his identity as a man of letters. Baggini observes Hume's sociability and his satisfaction in his success. He also commends Hume's broad-minded approach to philosophy and his willingness to write a wide variety of essays and, eventually, historical works.In chapter 4, Baggini discusses Hume's relationship with Paris. Returning to the topic of Hume's broad understanding of philosophy, Baggini argues that many of Hume's greatest insights were psychological ones. By comparing Hume's views on religion with the fervent atheism of the French philosophes, Baggini admiringly stresses Hume's moderation and his denial of any knowledge about "the ultimate ground of being." Since Hume believed he knew no more about the origins of the universe than anyone else, Baggini argues, he was able to develop friendships with and respect for moderate religious thinkers, as many philosophes were not. However, Baggini also suggests that Hume's "conservative instincts" sometimes led him astray, as where he "broadly endorsed the patriarchal attitudes of his time."Chapter 5 begins with an account of the dispute between Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which then forms the background for a discussion... (shrink)

The American philosopher Thomas Nagel famously argued that no matter how many objective facts we may know about bats, we cannot know what it is like to be a bat. There is an irreducible subjectivity to the experience of being a bat. I can only imagine what it would be like for a subject like me to be a bat but never what it is like for the actual bat to be a bat.In her book, Benvenuti demonstrates extraordinary sensitivity to (...) the subjectivity of the nonhuman animals she discusses. In addition to being an organic farmer in southern Italy, Benvenuti is also a licensed psychologist. Her training and interest in neurobiology is evident throughout the work. She walks the middle path between human exceptionalism (the “old meme” as she puts it of humans being “distinct from” and “superior to” all other animals, p. 15) on the one side and collapsing the differences on the other. While she might agree with the thrust of Nagel's claim (she never mentions him in the book) that we cannot truly know what it is like to be a bat, we are not so different to bats that we cannot empathetically understand something of a bat's experiences. We are, after all, kin. Kinship, she argues, rather than “distinct and superior” is the more correct scientific understanding (p. 18).Her work is clearly influenced by that of her mentor, Jaak Panksepp, on affective neurobiology. Like the biologist and ethologist Marc Bekoff, Benvenuti argues that it is possible to be “biocentrically anthropomorphic and do rigorous science” (p. 66). Of course, kinship does not entail sameness. “The central core of my life's work,” Benvenuti writes, “is to articulate the grounds for real relationships between humans and other animals. This implies the capacity to empathize accurately and to be able to communicate across species differences, but also the capacity to recognize that the other is not ‘just like me’” (p. 82). Importantly for her, it is not just our learning about other animals but our learning from them and they from us. It is the complex—and it is very complex—relationship that matters.Kindred Spirits is a beautifully written book, part travelogue, part personal anecdotes, with a nice mixture of scientific and philosophical musings. It begins in her own backyard (in the United States at the time) with a friendship struck up with a crow named Jason and then transports us to destinations around the world and species including bees, dogs, elephants, cheetahs, whales, and rescued farmed animals. Benvenuti spends much of her time with people trying to research, rescue, and rehabilitate endangered species. Above all, she intends it as a hopeful book. She finds great inspiration and hope in the fact that so many people around the world care about animals. She finds hope in the decline of circuses that merely use and abuse animals for human entertainment. She points to the growing understanding of animal studies and general interest in animals’ internal lives and feelings.The book makes a useful contribution to the growing literature of cognitive ethology. It is along similar lines as the works of Marc Bekoff and Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson. For those of us already convinced of our kinship and similarity with nonhuman animals, there are inspiring stories of others engaged in trying to save the world, or at least the part of it they can. One of the real strengths of the book is the constant questioning of the animal's experience. While we all appreciate those “animal ambassadors” who come to represent their kind and educate us, Benvenuti raises the important ethical question as to whether those animals want to be ambassadors at all. Sometimes a quick bite, as she once received from an African gray parrot, is enough to remind us to mind our manners around other species. It was a lesson in respecting differences and boundaries. The book does in the end inspire hope that if enough European and American scientists continue to advance the study of animal intelligence and emotion, we might one day come to the understanding that our indigenous brothers and sisters around the world have had since the beginning—that we, human and nonhuman, are all kin. (shrink)

Does cultural evolution happen by a process of copying or replication? And how exactly does cultural transmission compare with that paradigmatic case of replication, the copying of DNA in living cells? Theorists of cultural evolution are divided on these issues. The most important objection to the replication model has been leveled by Dan Sperber and his colleagues. Cultural transmission, they argue, is almost always reconstructive and transformative, while strict ‘replication’ can be seen as a rare limiting case at most. By (...) means of some thought experiments and intuition pumps, I clear up some confusion about what qualifies as ‘replication’. I propose a distinction between evocation and extraction of cultural information, applying these concepts at different levels of resolution. I defend a purely abstract and information-theoretical definition of replication, while rejecting more material conceptions. In the end, even after taking Sperber’s valuable and important points on board, the notion of cultural replication remains a valid and useful one. This is fortunate, because we need it for certain explanatory projects. (shrink)