O presente artigo devota-se a descrever e analisar o endereçamento à infância em algumas obras cinematográficas de Abbas Kiarostami. Para tanto, a argumentação volta-se inicialmente à contextualização da Revolução Iraniana de 1979, responsável pelo fim do regime monárquico do Xá Reza Pahlavi, que tinha a laicidade e a modernidade como motes, e pelo o início da República Islâmica do Irã, centrada na figura do Aiatolá Khomeini e apoiada na tradição islâmica. Nesse cenário, destaca-se o papel do Instituto para o Desenvolvimento (...) Cultural da Criança e do Adolescente, referido como Kanun. Fundado com o propósito de criar obras de cunho educativo durante o regime do Xá, o Kanun foi de fundamental importância para a produção artístico-cultural do país, tanto antes quanto depois da Revolução. Especialmente, seu departamento de cinema, no qual vários cineastas iniciaram suas carreiras (entre eles, Kiarostami, o primeiro diretor do departamento), é considerado o berço do movimento reconhecido como o Novo Cinema Iraniano. Assim, o presente trabalho debruça-se sobre as narrativas acerca da infância presentes em tais filmes, considerando a ambiência pós-revolucionária e, presumidamente, a tarefa de construção de um novo sujeito histórico a partir de um marco outro para a infância. Mais especificamente, o trabalho oferece uma análise articulada de seis obras cinematográficas de Kiarostami produzidas no período de 1970 a 1989. Em todas elas é possível testemunhar uma interrogação sobre a posição das crianças naquele contexto societário. Após uma discussão sobre o uso de filmes como fonte investigativa, apresentam-se três movimentos argumentativos identificados em tais obras, intitulados respectivamente: a criança à margem da sociedade; a criança no centro da sociedade; e a criança da revolução. Ao final das discussões, propõe-se que o cinema de Kiarostami consistiu em um ponto de inflexão das modalidades de veridicção-subjetivação ali correntes. Tratava-se, assim, em um tipo peculiar de exercício ético-político, por meio de uma experimentação narrativa que se valia do universo infantil como ocasião de prospecção dos ideais do processo revolucionário. (shrink)

We present a nonparametric approach to prediction of the n-back n \in {1, 2} task as a proxy measure of mental workload using Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) data. In particular, we focus on measuring the mental workload through hemodynamic responses in the brain induced by these tasks, thereby realizing the potential that they can offer for their detection in real world scenarios (e.g., difficulty of a conversation). Our approach takes advantage of intrinsic linearity that is inherent in the components of (...) the NIRS time series to adopt a one step regression strategy. We demonstrate the correctness of our approach through its mathematical analysis. Furthermore, we study the performance of our model in an inter-subject setting in contrast with state-of-the-art techniques in the literature to show a significant improvement on prediction of these tasks (82.50% and 86.40% for female and male participants, respectively). Moreover, our empirical analysis suggest a gender difference effect on the performance of the classifiers (with male data exhibiting a higher non-linearity) along with the left-lateralized activation in both genders with higher specificity in females. (shrink)

Abstract:The article presents a phenomenological-hermeneutic account of everyday aesthetics based on the Playful Eye, an experiential method for encountering the "Other" through contemplative, somatic, and embodied practices informed by the concept of play. The experiences co-curated with participants—illustrated here by a Playful Eye event held in Osh, Kyrgyzstan—are grounded in an understanding of the relationship between the self and Other, cultivating a sense of inner truth that is unconcealed when the sensing agent experiences itself through being sensed. It is contended (...) that everyday aesthetics provides a muted, fleeting experience of the Other, the seamless and ceaseless succession of the parts that constitute the totality of engagement with the world. This transformative understanding as "extended self," also evident in many Indigenous traditions, can provide the common ground for dialogue, empathy, and compassion in contexts where conflicting values and beliefs might otherwise result in indifference or hostility. (shrink)

Considering the role of human interactions in infectious disease outbreaks and cooperation in mitigating natural disasters consequences, ecological threats to human survival have been among proposed drivers of collectivism. Utilizing established and novel measures of parasite stress and natural disasters, we investigated their association with collectivism in a large sample of countries (N = 188). Linear mixed-effect models indicated that after controlling for national wealth, neither natural disasters nor infectious disease can predict collectivism scores. Null results were consistent across different (...) measures of threats, suggesting that previous findings can be attributed to small, non-representative samples of cultures. When universal patterns are a major concern, drawing conclusions based on small, nonrepresentative subsets of cultures risks promoting unreliable findings. Future cross-cultural research will benefit from data-driven exploratory methods to uncover factors previously unexamined in the theory-driven studies of collectivism. (shrink)

Avicenna (980-1037) is perhaps the most provocative figure in the history of thought in the East. He was the product of the impact of Greek thought on Islamic teachings; his environment was that of the Persian Renaissance in the tenth century. This book attempts to present Avicenna's life and works to the general reader.

The idea of “style” emerges at several important points throughout Husserl’s oeuvre: in the second part of the Crisis of the European Sciences, the lectures on intersubjectivity published in Husserliana XV, and in the analyses of transcendental character and intersubjectivity in the second book of the Ideas. This paper argues that the idea of style, often overlooked, is in fact central to understanding Husserl’s conception of the person and intersubjective relations, its role in the latter captured in his odd turn (...) of phrase, “intuitive flair.” Moreover, by showing the interdependence between the ideas of style and institution (Stiftung), I argue that institution also has a central role in Husserl’s account of constitution and personhood. The relevance of the relation between institution and style goes beyond Husserlian phenomenology. In his late writings, Merleau-Ponty makes this relation the centerpiece of his attempts at an “indirect-ontology.” Thus the investigation of Husserl’s concept of style that I carry out here becomes an important propaedeutic for the study of style that Merleau-Ponty calls for in his later work. In brief, the concept of style has an important role to play in any phenomenological account of personhood and intersubjective relations. (shrink)

This volume addresses some of the most prominent questions in contemporary bioethics and philosophy of medicine: ‘liberal’ eugenics, enhancement, the normal and the pathological, the classification of mental illness, the relation between genetics, disease and the political sphere, the experience of illness and disability, and the sense of the subject of bioethical inquiry itself. All of these issues are addressed from a “continental” perspective, drawing on a rich tradition of inquiry into these questions in the fields of phenomenology, philosophical hermeneutics, (...) French epistemology, critical theory and post-structuralism. At the same time, the contributions engage with the Anglo-American debate, resulting in a fruitful and constructive conversation that not only shows the depth and breadth of continental perspectives in bioethics and medicine, but also opens new avenues of discussion and exploration. (shrink)

Public health is concerned with how to improve the population’s health. At times, though, actions to improve the community’s health may collide with individual civil rights. For example, a public health response to a bioterrorism attack, such as smallpox, may require relaxing an individual’s due process protections to prevent the smallpox from spreading. This tension lies at the heart of public health policy. It also must be considered in discussing the concept of human rights in health.Proponents of incorporating the concept (...) of human rights in health emphasize the importance of both individual rights and collective rights. They argue that observing human rights is not only consistent with broad public health goals, but necessary to their attainment. To many human rights advocates, the concept is not limited to protecting against governmental intrusion. Accordingly, they emphasize the government’s obligation to promote attainment of human rights by, for instance, providing adequate health care. (shrink)

This paper examines the development and technological mediation of the concept of solidarity. We focus on the workplace as a focal point of solidarity relations, and utilise a phenomenological approach to describe and analyse those relations. Workplace solidarity, which has been historically concretised through social objects such as labor unions, is of particular political relevance since it has played an outsize role in the broader struggle for social, economic, and political rights, recognition, and equality. We argue that the use of (...) automated decision support systems in labor process management may negatively affect the formation of these relations. As solidarity motivates collective political action and risk-taking, the mediation and potential obstruction of solidarity relations by ADS is politically significant. We contribute to the growing literature on the “future of work” problem in elucidating the technological mediation of workplace solidarity. (shrink)

This text seeks to situate sociolegal studies in a global context.

This article examines the relation between two key, but seemingly opposed concepts in Jan Patočka’s thought: epoché and the concrete institutional polis. In doing so it attempts to elucidate the inextricable relation between phenomenology and politics in the work of the Czech philosopher, and illustrate more broadly the possibilities for approaching the political from a phenomenological perspective. The article provides a phenomenological interpretation of “care for the soul” as closely linked to Patočka’s reformulation of the core phenomenological notion of epoché. (...) It argues that in Patočka’s work, the epoché, traditionally conceived as a radical stepping back from the world must be rendered differently, not only as a negative freedom, but as the foundation of positive politics. Thus, the authors argue that there is a thematic and conceptual continuity between Patočka’s phenomenological studies and his political work. (shrink)

An ongoing debate among legal scholars and public health advocates is the role of litigation in shaping public policy. For the most part, the debate has been waged at a conceptual level, with opponents and proponents arguing within fairly well-defined boundaries. The debate has been based either on speculation of what litigation could achieve or on ideological grounds as to why litigation should or should not be used this way. With the exception of Rosenberg's study of how litigation shaped policy (...) in civil rights, abortion, and environmental matters, there is almost no empirical support for either position.In recent years, the most ardent proponents of litigation as public policy have been public health advocates. Perhaps out of frustration with the inability to achieve desired public health goals through the legislative branch of government, public health advocates have pursued litigation as an alternative strategy. Beginning with tobacco class action litigation in the early 1990s and continuing with litigation against gun manufacturers at the end of that decade, public health advocates have waged a veritable litigation assault aimed at changing how public health policy is formed. (shrink)

Understood historically, culturally, politically, geographically, or philosophically, the idea of Europe and notion of European identity conjure up as much controversy as consensus. The mapping of the relation between ideas of Europe and their philosophical articulation and contestation has never benefited from clear boundaries, and if it is to retain its relevance to the challenges now facing the world, it must become an evolving conceptual landscape of critical reflection. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Europe provides an outstanding reference work (...) for the exploration of Europe in its manifold conceptions, narratives, institutions, and values. Comprising twenty-seven chapters by a group of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into three parts: • Europe of the Philosophers • Concepts and Controversies • Debates and Horizons Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy, politics and European studies the Handbook will also be of interest to those in related disciplines such as sociology, religion, and European history and history of ideas. Darian Meacham is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Maastricht University, The Netherlands. He is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology and the co-editor of Thinking After Europe: Jan Patočka and Politics (2016) Nicolas de Warren is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Studies at Pennsylvania State University, USA. He is the author of Husserl and the Promise of Time (2010), A Momentary Breathlessness in the Sadness of Time (2018), and Original Forgiveness (2020). (shrink)

"To my knowledge, there has never [before] been a volume that analyzes, in one place, the actual language of science--those elements of thinking that are acknowledged to be the basis of scientific thought. . . . [Thus] this is a very important book, contributing to several fields: science, education, rhetoric, medicine, and perhaps even philosophy. . . . Darian's erudition is truly astonishing." --Celest A. Martin, Associate Professor, College Writing Program, University of Rhode Island From astronomy to zoology, the (...) practice of science proceeds from scientific ways of thinking. These patterns of thought, such as defining and classifying, hypothesizing and experimenting, form the building blocks of all scientific endeavor. Understanding how they work is therefore an essential foundation for everyone involved in scientific study or teaching, from elementary school students to classroom teachers and professional scientists. In this book, Steven Darian examines the language of science in order to analyze the patterns of thinking that underlie scientific endeavor. He draws examples from university science textbooks in a variety of disciplines, since these offer a common, even canonical, language for scientific expression. Darian identifies and focuses in depth on nine patterns--defining, classifying, using figurative language, determining cause and effect, hypothesizing, experimenting, visualizing, quantifying, and comparing--and shows how they interact in practice. He also traces how these thought modes developed historically from Pythagoras through Newton. (shrink)

It is increasingly suggested that shortages in the supply chain for human blood could be met by the development of techniques to manufacture human blood ex vivo. These techniques fall broadly under the umbrella of synthetic biology. We examine the biopolitical context surrounding the ex vivo culture of red blood cells through the linked concepts of alienation, immunity, bio-value and biosecuritization. We engage with diverse meanings of synthetic blood, and questions about how the discourses of biosecurity and privatization of risk (...) are linked to claims that the technology will address unmet needs and promote social justice. Through our discussion we contrast communitarian ideas that culturing red blood cells ‘extends the gift’ of adult blood donation with understandings of the immunitary logics that underpin the cord-blood economy. (shrink)

The viability of enactivist philosophy in providing descriptions of biological phenomena across the phylogenetic spectrum relies in large part on the scalability of its central concepts, i.e. whether they remain operative at varying levels of biological complexity. In this paper, I will examine the possibility of scaling two deeply intertwined concepts: cognition and surrounding world. Contra some indications from Varela and others, I will argue that the concept of embodied cognition can be scaled down below the level of the organism. (...) I will draw upon the “cognitive biology” espoused by Kováč and Monod’s studies of protein behaviour to make this case. The downscaling of embodied cognition below the level of the organism has ramifications for how we understand the concept of surrounding world. Reconfiguring the relation between these two central bioenactive concepts has further consequences for what ontological commitments bioenactive thinking leads to, and what paths of investigation it points us toward. (shrink)

This article provides an overview of the relation between synthetic biology and philosophy as understood from within the Ethics, Philosophy and Responsible Innovation programme of BrisSynBio (a BBSRC/EPSCR Synthetic Biology Research Centre). It also introduces the special issue of NanoEthics devoted to synthetic biology and philosophy.

This paper investigates the relation in Patočka’s thought between the concepts of the “front” and the “solidarity of the shaken”, which we find in the Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, particularly the sixth essay, “Wars of the Twentieth Century and The Twentieth Century as War”, and the phenomenological analysis of corporeity that we find in Patočka’s work from the late sixties, namely, “The Natural World and Phenomenology” (1967). We argue for a reading of the “front” and the “solidarity (...) of the shaken” that emphasizes the importance of the body and intercorporeity. Based on this we argue for an interpretation of Patočka’s “absolute” as life’s transcendence of itself. (shrink)

The hospital gown is a particularly charged article of clothing. For the chronically ill and disabled, the ritual of donning the gown signals a change of identity from “person” to “patient.” This essay chronicles the metamorphosis of a standard hospital gown into a work of wearable art that showcases the glittering pregnant body. Rather than thinly shrouding nakedness, this gown reveals the nude, gravid, and disabled figure as not only worthy of artistic concentration, but full of wonder and enchantment. This (...) work emerges from the author’s decade-long collaborative practice with her sister, Devan Stahl, as her experiences living under the medical gaze are compounded in the pursuit of motherhood. The _Imaging Gown_ takes up past and present visual cultures of medicine and re-presents them with sublime sensibilities that affirm the patient perspective. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe aim of this article is to sketch a phenomenological theory of political institutions and to apply it to some objections and questions raised by Pierre Manent about the project of the European Union and more specifically the question of “European Construction”, i.e. what is the aim of the European Project. Such a theory of political institutions is nested within a broader phenomenological account of institutions, dimensions of which I have tried to elaborate elsewhere. As a working conceptual delineation, we (...) can describe institutions as stable meaning structures. As such, the definition encompasses phenomena like the European Commission, Belgium, marriage, the Dollar, the Labour Party, but also political subjects themselves. In order to develop said theory of institutions, I will draw primarily upon resources in the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and John Searle. (shrink)

NOTE FROM THE EDITORS OF THE JBSP Questions about the relations between environmental crises, health and injustices have become increasingly important to phenomenological inquiry in recent years. T...

The debate over the ethics of radically, technologically altering the capacities and traditional form of the human body is rife with appeals to and dismissals of the importance of the integrity of the human species. Species-integrist arguments can be found in authors as varied as Annas, Fukuyama, Habermas, and Agar. However, the ethical salience of species integrity is widely contested by authors such as Buchanan, Daniels, Fenton, and Juengst. This article proposes a Phenomenological approach to the question of species-integrity, arguing (...) in favor of a phenomenon of species-recognition that carries an ethical pull. Building on Husserl’s Phenomenological account of empathy and the lived-body, as well as Schopenhauer’s concept of compassion as an ethical urphenomenon, I develop a “Phenomenological species concept” , which I argue has the ethical significance that biological species concepts do not. The PSC reorients the debate over human alteration and species integrity. (shrink)

The article addresses Merleau-Ponty's later philosophy of nature in relation to two of its central operating concepts, behaviour and latency. It then examines some contemporary arguments for an extended evolutionary synthesis from the perspective of this philosophy of nature. I argue that Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of nature may provide a productive ontological grounding to the extended evolutionary synthesis.

In this article we discuss the question of whether a robotic carer could every really care. We argue that care is largely a matter of expressive and performative states rather than internal cognitive or emotional ones. We address the question of "authenticity" in caring and care work.

Contents INTRODUCTION: PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO THE POLITICAL IN PATOČKA AND MERLEAU-PONTY 11 1. Memory and community 11 2. Patočka 18 3. Merleau-Ponty, Husserl and institution 22 4. The political context 28 5. Status of the current research 32 6. Overview of the chapters 34 CHAPTER 1: THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL EPOCHĒ AND THE POLITICAL 39 1. Introduction 39 2. Criticism of Husserl’s notion of the lifeworld 46 3. The a priori of the World 49 4. The subject and the epochē 56 5. (...) Epochē to polis 61 6. Two ways into the epochē: myth and “le bouc émissaire” 76 7. A “public/private” distinction in the performing of the epochē 84 CHAPTER 2: THE BODY AT THE FRONT: CORPOREITY AND COMMUNITY IN JAN PATOČKA’S HERETICAL ESSAYS IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY. 89 1. Introduction 89 2. The front 94 3. The double determination of life: Patočka and Foucault on “war” 98 4. Rooting 126 5. The body at the front 135 CHAPTER 3: LOOKING-IN ON EUROPE 145 1. Introduction 145 2. Post-Europe 147 3. Globalization as shaking 157 4. The idea of culture 162 5. Looking-in on Europe 164 6. The borders of Europe: towards a post-European democracy 175 a. Polemos and boundary 175 b. The skin and the soul 178 c. Europe and the boundary 190 CHAPTER 4: HUSSERL ON STIFTUNG AND STYLE 201 1. Introduction 201 2. Husserl’s concepts of retention institution and the possibility of an “institutional unconscious” 202 a. Retention 202 b. Husserl’s notion of institution in §50 of the Cartesian Meditations 210 c. Difficulties 220 d. Retention as unconscious 221 3. Husserl´s concept of style in Ideas II 236 a. Introduction 236 b. Institution and style 237 c. Style 243 d. Style and intersubjectivity 248 e. Style and politics in Merleau-Ponty 254 4. §15 of the Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: “Reflection on the method of our historical manner of investigation” 259 a. Stiftung as the task of history 259 b. Endstiftung 269 c. Endstiftung and Style 272 5. Community and surrounding world in section three of Ideas II 274 6. “The Origin of Geometry” 291 CHAPTER 5: STIFTUNG AND STYLE IN MERLEAU-PONTY 303 1. Introduction 303 2. Institution and Style 304 a. event/advent 304 b. The opening of a field 308 c. The relation to the past, or subterranean communication across time: Urstiftung—Nachstiftung—Endstiftung 310 d. Style 312 e. Latency 314 3. Three painters: Matisse, Cézanne, and Vermeer 319 a. Matisse 319 b. Cézanne 325 c. Vermeer 337 4. The historical field 344 a. The field of praxis 344 b. Symbolic matrices 355 c. Matrix institutions 361 CHAPTER 6: THE NOBLE MEMORY: SURVIVAL, DEMOCRACY AND RESISTANCE 371 1. Introduction 371 a. “Resistance” and “survival” 371 b. The plaque 372 c. “Inertia” and “movement” 378 d. Difficulties 383 e. Vulnerability 385 2. Institution and parliamentary democracy 391 a. Merleau-Ponty’s support for parliamentary democracy 391 b. An institution of institutions 396 c. “Regime” and “corps de l’État” 400 d. Survival 406 e. Institution and reparation 421 f. Institution and revolution 423 g. Democracy, epochē, and virtù 424 h. Concrete political action 429 3. Resistance 430 a. The “mythical” past and the “verbal-Wesen of society” 432 b. The generality of freedom and the unconscious 441 c. Endstiftung, Telos and Truth 442 CONCLUSIONS 451 BIBLIOGRAPHY 471. (shrink)

Should Students Take Smart Drugs? If this were a straightforward question, you would not be reading about it in a philosophy magazine. But you are, so it makes sense that we try to clarify the terms of the discussion before wading in too far. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it), when philosophers set out to de-obfuscate what look to be relatively forthright questions, things usually get more complicated rather than less: each of the operative terms at (...) stake in the question, ‘should students take smart drugs?’ opens us up onto larger debates about the nature of medicine, health, education, learning, and creativity as well as economic, political and social structures and norms. So, in a sense, a seemingly rather narrow question about a relatively peripheral issue in the education sector morphs into a much larger question about how we think about and value learning; what constitutes psychiatric illness and in what ways should we deal with it; and what sort of productivity should educational institutions like universities, but also secondary and even primary schools value and be oriented towards? (shrink)

There is a growing recognition within cognitive enhancement and neuroethics debates of the need for greater emphasis on cognitive artefacts. This paper aims to contribute to this broadening and expansion of the cognitive-enhancement and neuroethics debates by focusing on a particular form of relation or coupling between humans and cognitive artefacts: interaction-dominance. We argue that interaction-dominance as an emergent property of some human-cognitive artefact relations has important implications for understanding the attribution and distribution of causal and other forms of responsibility (...) as well as agency relating to the actions of human-cognitive artefact couplings. Interaction-dominance is both indicated and constituted by the phenomenon of “pink noise”. Understanding the role of noise in this regard will establish a necessary theoretical groundwork for approaching the ethical and political dimensions of relations between human cognition and digital cognitive artefacts. We argue that pink noise in this context plays a salient role in the practical, ethical, and political evaluation of coupling relations between humans and cognitive artefacts, and subsequently in the responsible innovation of cognitive artefacts and human-artefact interfaces. (shrink)

A review of advertisement studies shows that there has been little attempt to examine infomercials in terms of rhetorical appeals and persuasive strategies. Therefore, this study sought to contribute to the existing literature by exploring the persuasive elements of Apple infomercials through Aristotle’s modes of persuasion to reveal the most frequent persuasive language features and structures and to study how such elements were utilized to promote the products and services of the company. A top-down approach based on Aristotle’s modes of (...) persuasion was adopted to identify the rhetorical appeals of logos, ethos and pathos as well as the promotional tokens and patterns in the text. The descriptive findings provided evidence to demonstrate that although all the rhetorical proofs were employed in the corpus, emotional appeal was the most dominant. The findings of this research open new horizons for further studies on infomercials in general and persuasive rhetoric in specific. (shrink)