In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXIV, Number 2, November 1998, pp. 335-354 "An Unaccountable Pleasure": Hume on Tragedy and the Passions ALEX NEILL Hume begins his essay "Of Tragedy" with a description of what he calls "a singular phaenomenon": It seems an unaccountable pleasure, which the spectators of a well-written tragedy receive from sorrow, terror, anxiety, and other passions, that are in themselves disagreeable and uneasy. The more (...) they are touched and affected, the more are they delighted with the spectacle; and as soon as the uneasy passions cease to operate, the piece is at an end.... They are pleased in proportion as they are afflicted, and never are so happy as when they employ tears, sobs, and cries to give vent to their sorrow, and relieve their heart, swoln with the tenderest sympathy and compassion. The few critics who have had some tincture of philosophy, have remarked this singular phaenomenon, and have endeavoured to account for it.1 The account of the audience's experience of tragedy that Hume goes on to offer in "Of Tragedy" has been the target of criticism since the essay was published. My purpose in what follows is to show that some of what may appear to be the most damaging of that criticism is based on a misinterpretation of the thesis that Hume develops in the essay. I shall not attempt to argue that Hume's thesis is persuasive; indeed, I believe and have argued Alex Neill is at the Department of Philosophy, University of Southampton, Hants Sl 7 IBJ ENGLAND. 336 Alex Neill elsewhere that it is not.2 My project here is almost entirely interpretive: it is an attempt to get clear about what Hume's thesis concerning our experience of tragedy really is. To that end, it should be noted that the apparently "unaccountable" pleasure Hume describes at the beginning of "Of Tragedy" is something that he has remarked on before. In Book I of the Treatise, he notes that in matters of religion men take a pleasure in being terrify'd, and that no preachers are so popular, as those who excite the most dismal and gloomy passions. In the common affairs of life, where we feel and are penetrated with the solidity of the subject, nothing can be more disagreeable than fear and terror; and 'tis only in dramatic performances and in religious discourses, that they ever give pleasure? The phenomenon that Hume finds so remarkable in these passages from "Of Tragedy" and the Treatise is thus, at a minimum, that in certain circumstances, such as when we are at the theatre, we may find agreeable the experience of "the most dismal and gloomy passions." The explanation he gives of this phenomenon in the Treatise is as follows: In these latter cases the imagination reposes itself indolently on the idea; and the passion, being soften'd by the want of belief in the subject, has no more than the agreeable effect of enlivening the mind, and fixing the attention. (T 115) Hume's explanation of how the experience of "uneasy" passions can be enjoyed when we are in church and at the theatre thus has two components. First, because we do not believe the stories we are told in church4 and at the theatre, the uneasy passions we experience are not so very uneasy; as he puts it later in the Treatise, in such circumstances the passion in question "lies not with that weight upon us: It feels less firm and solid" (T 631). Second, a weakly disagreeable passion of this sort agreeably "enlivens" the mind and "fixes" (or as he says later, "rouzes") our attention. By the time he wrote "Of Tragedy," however, Hume had come to regard this explanation of his "singular phaenomenon" as inadequate. With regard to the idea that the passions, even if "uneasy," have the pleasurable effect of "enlivening" the mind (an idea which in "Of Tragedy" he attributes to Dubos), Hume objects that having one's mind "enlivened," one's attention "fixed" or "rouzed," need not be pleasurable: "the same object of distress, which pleases in a tragedy, were it really set before us, would give the most unfeigned uneasiness; though it... (shrink)

Karl Marx’s acerbic observation in the opening lines of _The Eighteenth Brumaire_ that “all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur the first time as tragedy, the second as farce” may be profitably applied to a reconsideration of literary farce sui generis, a genre represented in this article by a long-neglected work of utopian fiction, Archibald Marshall’s _Upsidonia_ (1915). Although _Upsidonia_’s current disregard is arguably undeserved, the article’s chief interest is not to reclaim the novel on (...) aesthetic grounds but to illuminate the mechanics of what Marx would call its “serious buffoonery.” In its persistent reversal of capitalist principles and relations, _Upsidonia_ naturally invites readers to revisit Marx, whose mordant gambit may serve as a key to Marshall’s own farcical plot and praxis, rooted in return and repetition, the essential maneuvers of farce itself. (shrink)

In this article, Cris Mayo examines the relationship among anti-LGBTQ policies, gay marriage, and sexuality education. Her concern is that because gay marriage is insufficiently different from heterosexual marriage, adding it as an issue to curriculum or broader culture debate elides rather than addresses sexual difference. In other words, marriage may be an assimilative aspiration that closes down discussions of what sexuality is and can mean, that sidesteps other related social issues such as health care for all, and that reinforces (...) sexuality and gender identity as privatized, not political, concerns. Mayo examines different strands of LGBTQ history that complicate the meanings of sexuality and that critique a variety of antigay or heterosexist policies for their exclusions. She concludes by suggesting that the possibilities of sexuality are not served by advocacy for one gay relationship formation and calling for a sexuality education that is instead directed at sexual diversity. (shrink)

Troubled times in education means that philosophers of education, who seem to never stop making defenses of our field, have to do so with more flexibility and a greater understanding of how peripheral we may have become. The only thing worse than a defensive philosopher is a confident and certain philosopher, so it may be that our very marginality will give us renewed energies for problematizing education. Occupying our marginal position carefully and in concert with other marginal inquiries, I think, (...) will do our field good. Because of its attention to what it takes to be willing to learn and to approach theoretical and real world obstacles with open if cautious interest, philosophy of education is about holding concepts and movements in tension, bending the implications of commonplace, commonsensical ideas about education, and carefully examining the all of these maneuvers for the exclusions they wittingly and unwittingly produce. Problematizing the certainties derived from majoritarian positions, be it whiteness, Westernness, or any other dominant perspective, can provide us with a diversity of claims to scrutinize and epistemological positions to be wary of. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to reconceive safety as a form of relation embedded in particular ways of speaking, listening and thinking. Moving away from safety as a relation that is achieved once and for all and afterwards remains safe avoids some of the disappointments of discourses of safety that seem to promise once a risk is taken or a gap is bridged that thereafter relations among people will be easier and calmer. This bumpier version of safety suggests that (...) humor creates the kind of instabilities in discourse that act, perhaps ironically, as an invitation to enjoy the difficulties of communicating complex and challenging ideas. Humor, then, creates a kind of safe space, not devoid of dramatic shifts or emotional response, but organized around those shifts as experiences that are moments apart from conflict. I explore the use of humor as a form of serious play in social justice classrooms, examining the strategies of indirect teaching, contradictory lessons, and jolting pleasure that more traditional pedagogical approaches are less able to create. I see in humor a complex form of address and interaction that plays on the multiple possibilities within an utterance or concept and by reminding classroom communities of those possibilities. Humor can erupt from shared moments and disjunctive understandings and can as easily be mobilized by teachers as by students. By reopening the possibilities of concepts and relations, humor shatters simplistic readings by literally playing out what might be said and what could be tried but often manages to combine a sense of safety via shared laughter with its disruptions. (shrink)

This article focuses on the structures of humor and joke telling that require particular kinds of attentiveness and particular relationships between speaker and audience, or more specifically, between classmates. First, I will analyze the pedagogical and relational preconditions that are necessary for humor to work. If humor is to work well, the person engaging in humor needs to gauge their interlocutors carefully. I discuss, too, the kinds of listening necessary for listening for the joke, including attentiveness to complex possibilities for (...) meaning. This attentiveness to complexity is linked to curiosity and a willingness to be startled, two qualities that are central to the risk and pleasure of learning discussed by Socrates and Maria Lugones. Examining the place of risk in Socrates’ teaching and the place of serious play in Maria Lugones’ discussion of difference, I suggest that humor can help to illuminate complicities and invite more robust interactions with difference, creating pleasurable encounters to work through difficult social divisions. (shrink)

A claim frequently made about European Citizenship is that by decoupling ‘rights’ from ‘identity’ it challenges us to rethink the classical Westphalian model of citizenship. According to some EU scholars and constitutional experts, this beckons a new form of ‘supranational’ citizenship practice based not on emotional attachments to territory and cultural affinities (‘Eros’), but to the rights and values of a civil society – or what Habermas calls ‘constitutional patriotism’. This article uses anthropological insights to critique these arguments and to (...) analyse the EU’s own citizenship-building policies and practices. It concludes that rights cannot be meaningfully divorced from identity and that citizenship devoid of emotion is neither feasible nor desirable. Finally, it considers the idea of ‘post-national democracy’ and what this might entail in a modern European context. (shrink)

I will argue in what follows, following the insights of James Marshall on busno‐cratic power, that resistance to this new power is already well underway, and that this resistance is potentially problematic and potentially transgressive 1 . The self is not only a chooser in busno‐cratic land, it is also re‐commodifying itself and in so doing, beginning to struggle at the limits of its commodified situation. I will argue that commodified selves, as much as they are constrained, are also potent (...) sites for resistance. Part of that resistance is being waged in the terrain of the high stakes test, where the self that could ‘choose’ runs headlong into a product that definitively limits its range of choice. In order to engage critically with this resistance, I examine the cracks in the monolithic power of testing, cracks that point to the uncertainty of numbers and the ambivalent anxieties of test takers. (shrink)

The authors review Judith Suissa's provocative book, Anarchism and Education: A Philosophical Perspective, a text that demonstrates the central role of education in anarchist theory. Suissa compellingly argues against the charges that anarchism is overly idealistic and impractical, instead seeing its potential for innovative and liberatory educational change. The authors suggest, however, that an enhanced conversation among critical pedagogy, antiracist pedagogy and anarchist thinking on education can help to show both the continued relevance of radical and creative thinking, and that (...) anarchist thought has been part of the development of oppositional, critical, collaborative, teaching and learning projects. (shrink)

The French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy passed away last August at the age of 81. In the Netherlands, Nancy became widely known to a broader audience through his short essay The Intruder (2000). In it, he describes the process surrounding the heart transplant he underwent in 1990: the surgery, the trials, the medication to prevent rejection, the cancer that resulted from it, and the chemotherapy required to combat it. -/- Nancy describes how the heart of a stranger—the intruder—penetrated the very core (...) of his being. He writes: "Never before have I been so sharply struck by the strangeness of my own identity, a strangeness that, despite everything, had always been perfectly clear to me (...)." -/- [In Dutch: De Franse filosoof Jean-Luc Nancy overleed vorig jaar augustus op 81-jarige leeftijd. In Nederland is Nancy bij een breder publiek vooral bekend geworden met zijn korte essay De Indringer (2000). Hierin beschrijft hij het proces rondom de harttransplantatie die hij in 1990 onderging: de operatie, de beproevingen, de medicatie om afstoting te voorkomen, de kanker die daar het gevolg van was en die moest worden bestreden met chemokuren. Nancy beschrijft hoe het hart van een vreemde ander – de indringer – tot de kern van zijn hele wezen is doorgedrongen. Zo schrijft hij: ‘Nooit eerder ben ik met een dergelijke scherpte geraakt door de vreemdheid van mijn eigen identiteit, een vreemdheid die me desondanks altijd zonneklaar was (…).’. (shrink)

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

Humans, like all organisms, have evolved to survive in specific environments, while some elect or are forced to live and work in extreme environments. Understanding cognition as it relates to environmental conditions, we use 4E cognition as a framework to explore creativity in extreme environments. Our paper examines space arts as a case study through the history, present practices, and future possible arts in the context of humans beyond the Kármán boundary of the Earth’s atmosphere. We develop a proposed taxonomy (...) of space arts, based on prior taxonomies, and provide specific exemplars of space art developed by artists in space or for use by astronauts in space. Using examples of space art since the birth of the space age, we discuss 1) how human survival in extreme environments requires investment in the space arts, driven by consideration of all biopsychosocial factors and 2) how new scientific and engineering discoveries could be consequences or examples of creative thinking driven by artists in the various types of space art. We conclude by discussing possible benefits of space art, future research applications, and advocate that all space actors, government or private, involve artists in all projects beyond the Kármán Boundary of the Earth’s atmosphere. (shrink)

Many of the most popular genres of narrative art are designed to elicit negative emotions: emotions that are experienced as painful or involving some degree of pain, which we generally avoid in our daily lives. Melodramas make us cry. Tragedies bring forth pity and fear. Conspiratorial thrillers arouse feelings of hopelessness and dread, and devotional religious art can make the believer weep in sorrow. Not only do audiences know what these artworks are supposed to do; they seek them out in (...) pursuit of prima facie painful reactions.Traditionally, the question of why people seek out such experiences of painful art has been presented as the paradox of tragedy. Most solutions to the paradox of tragedy assume that the reason we seek out tragedies, horror films, melodramas, and the like is because they afford pleasureful experiences. From there, theorists attempt to account for the source of this pleasure, a pleasure assumed to be had from representations of events from which we do not derive pleasure in real life. I argue that this assumption is suspect: the motive for seeking out devotional religious art, melodrama, tragedy, and some horror is not clearly to find pleasure. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Elements of Tragedy and Its Definition Plot and Character Simple and Complex Plots Good and Bad Tragic Plots Conclusion Notes Bibliography.

The present study considers whether poetry is capable of providing insight that can illuminate our lives, doing so from the perspective of Aristotle’s understanding of tragedy, fear, and the emotions more generally. It argues that and explains how fear as understood by Aristotle can foster insight in a tragedy’s audience, depicts the nature and the bases for such insight, and suggests several ways in which insight that fear can bring to tragedy can be especially or particularly illuminating. (...) The argument for these conclusions proceeds by considering Aristotle’s understanding of fear, noting particularly its epistemological powers. It then turns to fear’s realization in response to tragedy, arguing that and explaining how tragedy’s form and a number of its distinctive features can shape fear in ways that more readily foster insight than is to be found in fear felt in more ordinary circumstances. The conclusion reached is that on Aristotle’s understanding fear in response to tragedy can prove particularly illuminating, and can illuminate our ordinary lives. (shrink)

This article contributes to research on emotion expression, attributions, and discrete work emotions by developing an observer-focused model to explain the outcomes of crying at work. Our model is focused on crying as a form of emotion expression because crying may be driven by different felt emotions or be used as a means of manipulation. In addition, the model focuses on observers, who must form perceptions of the emotion expression in order to determine an appropriate response. This model is particularly (...) valuable because it addresses the reality that an observer will develop an impression of another person’s emotion and intention, and that this impression may not always align with the reality of the emotion being experienced by the expresser. (shrink)

Robert R. Williams offers a bold new account of divergences and convergences in the work of Hegel and Nietzsche. He explores four themes - the philosophy of tragedy; recognition and community; critique of Kant; and the death of God - and explicates both thinkers' critiques of traditional theology and metaphysics.

In the paper it is argued that bridging the digital divide may cause a new ethical and social dilemma. Using Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons, we show that an improper opening and enlargement of the digital environment (Infosphere) is likely to produce a Tragedy of the Digital Commons (TDC). In the course of the analysis, we explain why Adar and Huberman's previous use of Hardin's Tragedy to interpret certain recent phenomena in the Infosphere (especially peer-to-peer communication) may (...) not be entirely satisfactory. We then seek to provide an improved version of the TDC that avoids the possible shortcomings of their model. Next, we analyse some problems encountered by the application of classical ethics in the resolution of the TDC. In the conclusion, we outline the kind of work that will be required to develop an ethical approach that may bridge the digital divide but avoid the TDC. (shrink)

The Crying of Lot 49 is widely recognized as a significant contemporary work that frames the desire for meaning and the quest for knowledge within the social and political contexts of the '50s and '60s in America. In the introduction to this collection of original essays on Thomas Pynchon's important novel, Patrick O'Donnell discusses the background and critical reception of the novel. Further essays by five experts on contemporary literature examine the novel's "semiotic regime" or the way in which it (...) organizes signs; the comparison of postmodernist Pynchon and the influential South American writer, Jorge Luis Borges; metaphor in the novel; the novel's narrative strategies; and the novel within the cultural contexts of American Puritanism and the Beat movement. Together, these essays provide an examination of the novel within its literary, historical, and scientific contexts. (shrink)

In Tragedies of Spirit, Theodore D. George engages Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit to explore the philosophical significance of tragedy in post-Kantian continental thought. George follows lines of inquiry originally developed by Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, and Derrida, and takes as his point of departure the concern that Hegel’s speculative philosophy forms a summit of modernity that the present historical time is called to interrogate. Yet, George argues that Hegel’s larger speculative ambitions in the Phenomenology compel him to turn to the (...) resource of tragedy in order to give voice to issues of incommensurability, discontinuity, otherness, strife, and crisis. From this standpoint, Hegel’s interest in the tragic proves to be more pervasive and to run deeper than has previously been recognized. The author shows that Hegel’s reliance upon the tragic not only stretches and tests assumptions of speculative philosophy, but also illuminates original insights into human finitude. While situating Hegel’s approach to tragedy as part of a broader response to Kant, George also contextualizes Hegel’s interest in tragedy with reference to figures in German Idealism and Romanticism, such as Schelling, Hölderlin, and Schlegel. (shrink)

I argue that the tragedies envisioned by the Symposium are two, both of which are introduced in the dialogue: (i) within months of Agathon's victory, half the characters who celebrated with him suffer death or exile on charges of impiety; (ii) Socrates is executed weeks after the dramatic date of the frame. Thus the most defensible notion of tragedy across Plato's dialogues is a fundamentally epistemological one: if we do not know the good, we increase our risk of making (...) mistakes and of suffering what are sometimes their catastrophic consequences. (shrink)

First published in 1953, Tragedy and the Paradox of the Fortunate Fall argues that our response to tragedy is made up of a series of responses: the impact of experience which produces the archetypes of belief; the formation of the archetype of rebirth; the crystallization of the archetype of rebirth in the myth and ritual of the ancient Near East; the transformation of myth and ritual in the religions of the ancient world, including Christianity; the formalization of the (...) archetype of rebirth into the concept of felix culpa, the paradox of the fortunate fall and finally the secular utilization of the paradox of the fortunate fall as the substance out of which tragedy is made. This book will be of interest to students of literature, philosophy and history. (shrink)

It has recently and rightly been observed that Plutarch is exceptional as a prose author in the finesse with which he employs tragedy in his Lives. And, one might add, in the extent to which he does so. His dislike for the sensationalism of ‘tragic history’ was no obstacle to his use of ‘the sustained tragic patterning and imagery which is a perfectly respectable feature of both biography and history’. The primary purpose of the present discussion is to draw (...) attention to the profound importance of tragedy, particularly of Euripides' Bacchae, to the Carrhae narrative in Plutarch's Crassus. It is argued that details in Crassus'; version of Carrhae recall the tragedy of Pentheus and, in so doing, substantially advance the portrayal of Crassus' character. (shrink)

This commentator has no argument with the explanations given by Soltis. Yet a different approach to the phenomenon of crying might be fruitful. Neonates elicit care. It is hypothesized that non-neonates evolved to mimic, when in need, the appearance of the neonate by crying and by shedding tears, thus inducing helping behavior by the spectator.

The human experience of meaning‐making lies at the roots of consciousness, creativity, and religious faith. It arises from the basic experience of separation from a loved object, suffered by all mammals, and, in general terms, from the experienced gap between ourselves and our environment. We fill the gap with transitional objects and symbols that reassure us of basic continuity in ourselves and in the world. These objects and symbols also serve the neurognostic function of demonstrating what the world is like. (...) Thus, humanity lives by faith, as manifested in its pattern‐making capacity, and not by literal sight. (shrink)

I ARGUE THAT WE RECEIVE PLEASURE FROM TRAGEDIES BECAUSE WE ARE PLEASED TO FIND OURSELVES RESPONDING IN AN UNPLEASANT WAY TO HUMAN SUFFERING AND INJUSTICE. THE PLEASURE IS THUS A METARESPONSE, AND REFLECTS FEELINGS WHICH ARE AT THE BASIS OF MORALITY. THIS HELPS EXPLAIN WHY TRAGEDY IS SUPPOSED TO BE A HIGHER ART FORM THAN COMEDY, AND PROVIDES A NEW WAY OF SEEING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE MORALITY OF AN ARTWORK AND ITS VALUE.

The discourse of tragedy has significant value in a military context, reminding us of the temptations of hubris, the prevalence of moral dilemmas, and the inescapable limits of foresight. Today, however, this discourse is drawn upon too heavily. Within the tragicized politics of nuclear and drone violence, foreseeable and solvable problems are reconceptualized as intractable dilemmas, and morally accountable agents are reframed as powerless observers. The tragedy discourse, when wrongly applied by policymakers and the media, indulges the very (...) hubris the tragic recognition is intended to caution against. This article clarifies the limits of “tragedy” in the context of military violence and argues for a renewed focus on political responsibility. (shrink)

In the first year of life, infants' utterances change from high-intensity crying to low-intensity acoustic sound strings, acoustically labelling the first word. This transition implies: (1) decoding of phonetic sounds, (2) encoding of phonetic sounds, and (3) a unique linking of an articulated sound to a specific object. Comparative, ontogenetic, and phylogenetic aspects are considered for multilevel selective pressures.

According to True Detective's creator, Nic Pizzolatto, season two aimed at tragedy, taking inspiration from the archetypical tragedy Oedipus Rex to focus on characters confronting a knowledge that has ultimately fated their path. But, where Aristotle identified the necessity of including "incidents arousing pity and fear" to bring about tragedy's famous katharsis, season two speaks more to Friedrich Nietzsche's views on tragedy—specifically, his views of the ancient Greek dramatist Euripides. Where tragedy once focused on only (...) the "grand and bold traits" of the human condition, Nietzsche says, Euripides focused on the moral concerns of the masses. Against season two's backdrop of civic corruption—land‐grabs and pork‐barrels—the tragedy takes up a modern form of morality for the masses that creates a barrier to tragic wisdom: namely, feminist morality. Rust's philosophical outlook establishes the Apollonian function of tragedy by providing a filter through which to confront the "difficulties of the human condition" expressed in the mysteries of Carcosa. (shrink)

In this article I elaborate and defend a rights-based understanding of climate politics, that is, one that takes climate politics to concern the rights to access of natural resources as opposed to people’s economic incentives. The argument contains two parts. The first is negative: to demonstrate that the tragedy of the commons as a story of climate change is inadequate. The second is positive: to suggest a more satisfactory framework, which I call the tragedy of the few. In (...) this view, climate politics is neither primarily mitigation nor economic incentive politics, but one of distributing rights to access natural resources in a fair and environmentally-friendly way. By changing both the narrative and underlying methodological assumptions, my goal is to enable us to accommodate the rights to access natural resources as a key moral issue in climate politics. I begin by sketching the main features of the tragedy of the commons and demonstrate its inadequacy. I then provide an account of the rights-based view of climate change that consists of two arguments. First, I demonstrate the normative side of the argument by highlighting the importance of environmental rights, and second, I outline the empirical side of the argument by discussing recent studies on the properties of natural resources and on the corporate agents who extract the resources that emit greenhouse gasses. (shrink)

In contemporary Western societies, infants in the first 3 months cry more than at any other time during their life. Although this crying is believed to function to assure nutrition, protection, and mother-infant interaction thought to be essential for later attachment, it also predisposes to complaints of excessive crying (“colic”), discontinuing breast-feeding, and, in the extreme case, child abuse. A resolution of this apparent paradox is proposed based on evidence that elements of caregiving are important determinants of some aspects of (...) early crying. It is argued that early human crying under caretaking conditions typical in Western societies is characterized by prolonged crying bouts, that it is specifically the length of crying bouts (rather than frequency or pattern) that is affected by caregiving practice, and that prolonged crying bouts are probably not characteristic with caretaking practices typical in non-Western societies and possibly in our evolutionary past. It is suggested that caregiving behaviors may recruit normal physiological functions that potentiate cry bout duration in Western caregiving contexts, but reduce it in others. Frequent, short bouts are sufficient, and probably better suited than long bouts, to promote all the positive and presumably adaptive functions claimed for infant crying. Furthermore, they may have provided a mechanism by which infants could enhance their own fitness. (shrink)

In this commentary, the idea of reciprocity potential indicators is tied in with ultimate accounts on sex differences in social sensitivity. It is proposed that, rather than crying, smiling is a more likely cooperative signal. The possibility of coevolution and polymorphism in perceptual and signalling systems are also discussed briefly, with a reference to Theory of Mind and Machiavellianism.

Philosophical anthropologies that emphasise the role of the emotions can be used to expand existing notions of moral agency and learning in situations of great moral complexity. In this article we tell the story of one patient facing the tough decision of whether to be tested for Huntington’s disease or not. We then interpret her story from two different but compatible philosophical entry points: Aristotle’s conception of Greek tragedy and Karl Jaspers’ notion of Grenzsituationen (boundary situations). We continue by (...) indicating some ways in which these two positions may be used for reflecting upon different perspectives involved in clinical decision-making, those of patients, clinicians and bioethicists. We conclude that the ideas we introduce can be used as hermeneutic tools for situating learning and dialogue within a broader cultural field in which literature and art may also play important roles. (shrink)