In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Japan, France, and East-West Aesthetics: French Literature, 1867-2000Carol S. GouldJapan, France, and East-West Aesthetics: French Literature, 1867-2000. By Jan Walsh Hokenson. Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2004. Pp. 520. $80.00.Jan Walsh Hokenson's masterful work, Japan, France, and East-West Aesthetics: French Literature, 1867-2000, traces the migration of the Japanese aesthetic into French art, through French literature, and ultimately into Western modernism and postmodernism. Despite the title, this (...) book goes beyond French poetics, for it deals with some philosophical views about knowledge and art, and it offers an extended argument for the value of comparative studies, including comparative philosophy. The author moves easily among the areas of literature, art, and philosophy, all of which she discusses with authority.Her story begins with the birth of 'japonisme,' the term coined by critic Philippe Burty in 1876 to refer to the passion-artistic and commercial-for things Japanese. She identifies three waves of japonisme in French literature: pre-World War I, between the wars, and post-World War II. She leads the reader through each of these waves, detailing the cultural and artistic milieu in each and closely analyzing key figures.For the origins of japonisme, Hokenson takes us to the studio of Parisian engraver, printmaker, and designer Felix Bracquemond in 1856, which was just after the end of Sakoku. Bracquemond, according to the "most persistent legend," [End Page 699] opened a box of Asian ceramics and discovered that they were wrapped in extraordinary materials-layers of Hokusai woodcut prints the likes of which he had never seen. He summoned members of his circle, which included Manet, Degas, and Whistler (pp. 13-15). It is thus through an intriguing historical contingency that this relatively inexpensive, mass-produced art form would become the inspiration for some of the most personal and expensive art works today. More relevant to Hokenson's interest, however, is the fact that these woodcuts would be a seminal force in the direction of French letters.Had Bracquemond not had the vision to see the artistry of these prints or had the shipper used a different packing material, would Western painting and literature have taken a different turn? Would the West have seen impressionism, symbolism, or art nouveau? Would Proust, Claudel, Mallarmé, and others have written different works? From Hokenson's account one gleans that the French avant-garde eye was ready to see Hokusai and others, for artists felt that the mimetic view of art had led them to an impasse. Visual and literary artists were ready to abandon the Renaissance ideals of verisimilitude, perspective, the integrity of space, and the linearity of time. They were ready to accept the fragmentation of picture space, perspectivism, and suggestiveness that were all characteristic of the Japanese aesthetic.She explains how Henri Bergson, with his theories of intuition and subjective time, provided a philosophical foundation for the artistic commitments of the early japonistes. She documents the access many of the japonistes had to Bergson. Bergson, like the japoniste poets and painters themselves, emerged from a French tradition of using subjectivity as a starting point. The reader sees this respect for the subjective interact with various Japanese influences over the course of the twentieth century. The receptiveness to the haiku exemplifies this phenomenon, as it begins from a fleeting, intuitive, personal experience. She points out that "by 2000, the haiku was almost a commonplace in French poetry" (p. 407).Although she says little about what Bergson may have absorbed from the japonistes, she does tell of the little-known influence exerted by the Japanese phenomenologist Kuki Shūzō in 1928 on Jean-Paul Sartre. Both Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir either forgot this relationship or forgot to mention it in their respective narratives about the development of existentialism. Indeed, this was not discovered, Hokenson reports, until the 1980s. She rightly points out that that this changes the usual story about French philosophy in the early twentieth century, for it means that Sartre became acquainted with German phenomenology before 1932 and from someone other than Raymond Aron (pp. 333-334, 343, 474 n. 10). In a fascinating discussion of Kuki's... (shrink)

An early work that lays the foundation for establishing a “polemical” dimension to psychoanalysis. We certainly have the unconscious that we deserve, an unconscious for specialists, ready-made for an institutionalized discourse. I would rather see it as something that wraps itself around us in everyday objects, something that is involved with day-to-day problems, with the world outside. It would be the possible itself, open to the socius, to the cosmos...—from The Machinic Unconscious: Essays in Schizoanalysis In his seminal solo-authored work (...) The Machinic Unconscious, Félix Guattari lays the groundwork for a general pragmatics capable of resisting the semiotic enslavement of subjectivity. Concluding that psychoanalytic theory had become part and parcel of a repressive, capitalist social order, Guattari here outlines a schizoanalytic theory to undo its capitalist structure and set the discipline back on its feet. Combining theoretical research from fields as diverse as cybernetics, semiotics, ethnology, and ethology, Guattari reintroduces into psychoanalysis a “polemical” dimension, at once transhuman, transsexual, and transcosmic, that brings out the social and political—the “machinic”—potential of the unconscious. To illustrate his theory, Guattari turns to literature and analyzes the various modes of subjectivization and semiotization at work in Proust's In Search of Lost Time, examining the novel as if he were undertaking a scientific exploration in the style of Freud or Newton. Casting Proust's figures as abstract mental objects, Guattari maps the separation between literature and science, elaborating along the way such major Deleuze-Guattarian concepts as “faciality” and “refrain,” which would be unpacked in their subsequent A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Never before available in English, The Machinic Unconscious has for too long been the missing chapter from Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus project: the most important political extension of May 1968 and one of the most important philosophical contributions of the twentieth century. (shrink)

One of the most provocative claims in current climate ethics is that we ought to have fewer children, because procreation brings new people into existence and thereby causes large amounts of additional greenhouse gas emissions. The public debate about procreation and climate change is frequently framed in terms of the question of whether people may still have any children at all. Yet in the academic debate it is a common position that, despite the large carbon impact of procreation, it is (...) still permissible to have one or two children per couple, if having children is needed for the parents' lives to go well. In this article, we propose a defence and a principled formulation of this procreative prerogative: agents are permitted to procreate if the goods that procreation provides are essential to their lives going well and cannot be replaced by other goods, nor be realized by lower‐emissions alternatives. This principle implies that procreative decisions require case‐by‐case assessment in which agents' self‐reflection, individual circumstances, and social context play a significant role. (shrink)

How do opinion diversity and belief polarisation affect epistemic group decision-making, particularly if decisions must be made without delay and on the basis of permissive evidence? In an agent-based model, we track the consistency of group opinions aggregated through sentence-wise majority voting. Simulations on the model reveal that high opinion diversity, but not polarisation, incurs a significant inconsistency risk. These results indicate that epistemic group decisions based on permissive evidence can be particularly difficult for diverse groups. The results also improve (...) our understanding of what can reasonably be expected of expert groups, and where expert advice might have limits. (shrink)

How does one arrive at a life in politics and policy? What happens to one's ideals when confronted with the reality that the only way to get things done in Washington is compromise? Who are the men and women who help shape our national agenda, and what drives their work? Dispatches From the Eastern Front provides fascinating, intensely personal, yet universal answers to these central questions. Recounting four decades inside Washington politics, Gerald Felix Warburg brings remarkable candor to a most (...) unusual memoir. An idealistic California baby boomer transported to the intimidating world of Capitol Hill policymaking at a young age, Warburg finds himself working to reform nuclear energy, strategic arms control, and foreign policy. As his access and power grow, greater challenges loom: how to maintain principles while cutting deals, and how to balance public purpose with private interests. An eclectic career reveals the slow and often painful development of emotional intelligence for work at the highest reaches of the public arena. (shrink)

Roger Boscovich, belonging to XVIII century, halfway from Newton to Faraday, is traditionally considered as a newtonian philosopher. Nevertheless, following Berkson’s suggestion, he could be a Field Theory forerunner. In this work, we will try to go on with the idea of this suggestion in order to show this possible Boscovich’s contribution.

A sala de aula era clara, arejada, ampla e comportava vinte e cinco crianças de 6 anos de idade. Elas moravam num bairro da periferia da cidade, onde estava localizada a escota. Eram, portanto, crianças filhas de famílias de baixa renda. A professora era jovem, entusiasmada, democrática, residia perto da escola, fazendo parte da mesma comunidade das crianças. Ela estava fortemente incorporada pelo trabalho pedagógico fundamentado em Freinet. A classe era dividida em "ateliers", que as crianças chamavam de "caninhos", distribuídos (...) da seguinte maneira: o cantinho da Construção, cujos materiais eram blocos de madeira, caixas de papelão em diversos tamanhos e paus de vassoura coloridos, grandes, médios e pequenos; o das Artes continha tintas, pincéis, giz, giz de cera, lápis de cor, "a caixa de carimbos", papel jornal, roupas usadas de adulto, maquiagem, cola, tesoura e material de sucata; o cantinho da Escrita guardava o quadro-negro, lápis, cadernos de desenho grandes, folhas de papel de computador, papel pardo e papel sulfit; no da Biblioteca estavam os livros de estória e revistas diversas; o do Museu era identificado por objetos curiosos trazidos de casa pelas crianças, tais como pedras consideradas por elas diferentes e bonitas, vidros contendo areia colorida trabalhada artisticamente. [...] Palavras-chave: Carimbos; Pré-Escola; Biblioteca escolar. (shrink)

The Spirit and the Screen explores pertinent pneumatological issues that arise in film and asks how Christian convictions and experiences of the Spirit might shape the way one thinks about films and film-making.

Este artigo visa analisar de que modo as questões pertinentes à situação do Paraguai do Pós-Guerra da Tríplice Aliança serviram de instrumento de luta político-partidária entre nacionalistas e autonomistas durante a campanha presidencial argentina de 1873 e 1874. Para isso, foram consultados alguns jornais de Buenos Aires, uma vez que eram os principais canalizadores dos debates públicos e difusores de representações. Da análise das fontes pode-se apontar que a facção autonomista fez daquele conflito, da ocupação do Paraguai e das questões (...) pendentes daquele evento uma das suas principais armas de combate em sua luta eleitoral contra o nacionalismo. (shrink)

Under which conditions are we epistemically justied to believe that what other people tell us is true? Traditionally, the answer has either been reductionist or anti-reductionist: Either our justication reduces to non-testimonial reasons, or we have a presumptive, though defeasible, right to believe what we are told. However, different cases pull in different directions. Intuitively, someone asking for the time is subject to different epistemic standards than a surgeon consulting a colleague before a dangerous operation. Following this line of thought, (...) this paper develops an account of testimonial justication that captures our reductionist as well as our anti-reductionist intuitions. It is argued that the speaker’s commitment to an epistemic norm, as well as the hearer’s understanding of that norm, gives the hearer a presumptive right to believe what she is told. However, this justication doesn’t apply to situations with high practical risks. Here, the hearer needs reductive reasons to believe that her interlocutor is especially qualied to give her the desired information. (shrink)

This round table discussion takes the diversity of discourse and practice shaping modern knowledge about childhood as an opportunity to engage with recent historiographical approaches in the history of science. It draws attention to symmetries and references among scientific, material, literary and artistic cultures and their respective forms of knowledge. The five participating scholars come from various fields in the humanities and social sciences and allude to historiographical and methodological questions through a range of examples. Topics include the emergence of (...) children's rooms in US consumer magazines, research on the unborn in nineteenth-century sciences of development, the framing of autism in nascent child psychiatry, German literary discourses about the child's initiation into writing, and the sociopolitics of racial identity in the photographic depiction of African American infant corpses in the early twentieth century. Throughout the course of the paper, childhood emerges as a topic particularly amenable to interdisciplinary perspectives that take the history of science as part of a broader history of knowledge. (shrink)

This essay examines the nature of man within the scope of situational philosophy. It explores the writing of William Golding to subvert intellectual error on racism. Besides, it challenges any claim to absolute moral refinement since existential situation set the stage for the unfolding of man. The radical transformation of Jack Merridew and the situational response of Ralph are used as philosophical base to explain the dynamism of man in the face of changing situation. However, the analysis of some scholars (...) on the black race reveals a fundamental philosophy that misses many fundamental points. This paper therefore advocates an incursion into appropriate political framework and dismissal of race based supremacist philosophy. (shrink)

This paper argues against the idea of climate change refugeehood. Drawing on political realism, it reconstructs the idea and function of refugeehood in international politics. Refugees are not the agencyless victims merely in search of rescue by states of the Global North, as the idea of climate refugeehood as a form of humanitarian refugeehood would have it. Nor are they simply a function of reparative justice, or of defending international state legitimacy. To liberal democracies, refugees are those fleeing political oppression. (...) They hold an important political function in inter-state relations in undermining rival political systems and strengthening liberal democratic regimes, both ideally and materially. The idea of climate refugeehood collides with the role refugeehood plays in international politics, the reasons for their admission, and the conceptualization of their plight and function. It ought, hence, to be rejected. (shrink)

Wittgenstein was hostile towards set theory; see his remark in §22 of RFM II: ‘I believe and hope that a future generation will laugh at this hocus pocus’. At the same time, he says that what philosophy owes set theory is ‘tremendous’ and that this is something ‘deep’. I want to clarify these two statements and to reconcile them. The hocus‐pocus remark is mainly directed at the temptation to talk about an own world of sets, focussing on extensions and thereby (...) forgetting the actual mathematical manoeuvres leading to them. Wittgenstein does not shy away from using set‐theoretical symbols and expressions, but he regularly deprives them of their genuine set‐theoretical character. When speaking of the ‘depth’ we encounter with regard to set theory, what he means is the depth explained in PI §111: It arises ‘through a misinterpretation of our forms of language’, and this is particularly so in set theory. (shrink)

Under what conditions are we justified in believing what people tell us? Traditionally, the answer has either been reductionist or anti-reductionist. Either our justification reduces to non-testimonial reasons, or we have a presumptive, though defeasible, right to believe what we are told. However, some philosophers have argued that we need to look beyond this dichotomy. Following this line of thought, this paper examines and criticizes a recent proposal by John Greco. According to Greco, testimony has two functions: (1) passing on (...) information within an epistemic community; (2) receiving information from an outside source. (1) calls for anti-reductionism, while (2) requires reductive reasons. In response to Greco, several cases are presented, showing that his position leads to counterintuitive consequences. In the light of this result, an alternative, risk-dependent, account is put forward. It is argued that the practical risks connected to receiving false information determine which epistemic treatment is appropriate. (shrink)

Nowadays, the question about the possibility of speaking about “art” in the context of a massive evolution of audiovisual technologies, and their comprehensive influence in a globalized world, is at stake. In this sense, contemporary art, despite its similarities with technique’s modus operandi, does not work with the goal to facilitate humankind access to natural and artificial resources. On the contrary, art fosters the viewing of the indisposition, opacity and retractability of those very same materials of which the works are (...) made. In summary, while technique opens new spaces, designates places and creates networks of meaning, contemporary art however, shows how those opening processes are tangled with the creation of marginality, within and against the ideological investments on certain political axis of power. (shrink)

A first impression matters, in particular when encounters are brief as in most doctor-patient interactions. In this study, we investigate how physicians’ body postures impact patients’ first impressions of them and extend previous research by exploring posture effects on the perception of all roles of a physician – not just single aspects such as scholarly expertise or empathy. In an online survey, 167 participants ranked photographs of 4 physicians in 4 postures. The results show that male physicians were rated more (...) positively when assuming open rather than closed postures with respect to all professional physician roles. Female physicians in open postures were rated similarly positive for items related to medical competence, but they tended to be rated less favorably with respect to social skills. These findings extend what is known about the effects of physicians’ body postures on the first impressions patients form to judge physicians’ medical versus social competencies. We discuss practical implications and the need for more research on interaction effects of body postures and physician gender on first impressions. (shrink)

El filósofo Mario Bunge ha sido el más notable investigador de la epistemología en nuestros días. Su preferencia por la ciencia y su rechazo hacia la pseudociencia son evidentes. Así, se reconoce que la filosofía de Bunge fue analítica. En consecuencia, Bunge también manifestó su desacuerdo con aquellas filosofías (en su mayoría continentales) que son anticientíficas o que no hayan promovido el estudio de la ciencia. De este modo, se analizan las razones por las que Bunge rechazó a Hegel, Husserl (...) y Heidegger. Este rechazo lleva a investigar las bases del negacionismo y la posverdad y, finalmente, se realiza un balance entre la postura de Bunge y el florecimiento de la desinformación en la actualidad. (shrink)

São duas as obras de Foucault privilegiadas neste estudo: As palavras e as coisas, de 1966, e Nascimento da biopolítica, de 1979. Uma das razões pelas quais é possível criar linhas diagonais de interpretação entre estes dois momentos da obra de Foucault é que em ambos os textos ele se debruça sobre a economia política de Smith, com um rigor tamanho que nos pareceu possível extrair daí o esboço de uma breve história do pensamento econômico. O objetivo deste artigo é (...) esboçar esta história, definir as condições de emergência da economia política na epistèmê moderna, entender simultaneamente em que medida a economia assumirá a função de base de cálculo que irá impor à razão governamental moderna uma modalidade nova de limitação dos seus desígnios. (shrink)

How does Christian philosophy address phenomena in the world? Felix Ó Murchadha believes that seeing, hearing, or otherwise sensing the world through faith requires transcendence or thinking through glory and night. By challenging much of Western metaphysics, Ó Murchadha shows how phenomenology opens new ideas about being, and how philosophers of "the theological turn" have addressed questions of creation, incarnation, resurrection, time, love, and faith. He explores the possibility of a phenomenology of Christian life and argues against any simple separation (...) of philosophy and theology or reason and faith. (shrink)