This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 35.1 (2005) 3-6MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Whispers of the Flesh Essays in Memory of Pierre KlossowskiIan JamesRussell Ford Pierre Klossowski—novelist, essayist, painter, and translator—was one of the most startling, original, and influential figures in twentieth-century French intellectual culture. The older brother of the well-known painter Balthus and a close associate of Georges Bataille, Klossowski's diverse oeuvre includes novels, philosophical essays, and translations, as well as paintings and (...) films. Confined thus far to an undeserved but somehow fitting shadow existence in the margins and notes of theorists who have become mainstays of Anglo-American criticism, Klossowski's own work has increasingly become a focus of critical interest for its decisive contribution to the development of thought and aesthetics in France from the 1950s onward. Born in 1905, the eldest son of Polish émigrés, Klossowski spent his first ten years in Paris in an artistic milieu, heavily influenced by the neoimpressionism of figures such as Bonnard and Derain. His father, Erich Klossowski de Rola, was a painter and art historian, the author of an important monograph on Daumier. His mother, Baladine, was also a painter and trained under Bonnard. While still a teenager Klossowski was introduced to the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, with whom he became close and who in turn introduced him to the novelist André Gide. At eighteen he became Gide's secretary and assisted him with the drafts of his famous novel Les faux-monnayeurs.Not until 1930, however, did Klossowski's own career properly begin, when he translated with Jean-Pierre Jouve a collection of poems by Friedrich Hölderlin. Throughout his life Klossowski was a prolific and influential translator from both German and Latin into French, translating amongst others Nietzsche, Kafka, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein from the German, and Suetonius, Virgil, Augustine, and Tertullian from the Latin. While working for the prominent Parisian psychoanalyst René Laforgue, Klossowski published his first philosophical essay on the Marquis de Sade in 1933 in the Revue française de la psychanalyse. Scandalized by Klossowski's Nietzschean-inflected psychoanalytic interpretation of Sade's writing, Laforgue dismissed Klossowski immediately. Throughout the 1930s Klossowski made a number of key friendships and acquaintances, most importantly with Georges Bataille, but also many others, including Walter Benjamin, André Masson, Jean Wahl, and Maurice Heine. During this period he published several articles and collaborated with Bataille on the review Acéphale and in the avant-garde experiment of the Collège de Sociologie (where, it is said, he would attend meetings dressed in a soutane). During the war years Klossowski trained in a number of Catholic seminaries, a vocation which ultimately failed and led to the writing of his first novel, La vocation suspendue. In the postwar period he married [End Page 3] a war widow, Denise Morin Sinclair, who had been interned in Ravensbrück for her activities in the Resistance and who became the model for Roberte, a key figure in much of Klossowski's fiction and painting. After the war Klossowski began to publish the influential works for which he will chiefly be remembered: literary-philosophical essays on Sade and Nietzsche (among others), as well as six important novels written between 1950 and 1965, La vocation suspendue (1950), the three works, originally published separately, which went on to form the Lois de l'hospitalité trilogy—Roberte ce soir (1954), La révocation de l'Édit de Nantes (1959) and Le souffleur ou le théâtre de société (1960)‚—and, finally, Le Baphomet (1965).Klossowski's seminal 1947 work, Sade mon prochain, was one of the first full-length literary and philosophical studies of Sade's work to be published in France and marked a decisive break from earlier accounts. Whereas earlier treatments of Sade had focused either on biographical detail or on the medical and psychosexual import of his life and writing, Klossowski's reading was concerned with the intertwined figures of law and transgression in Sade's work. After Sade mon prochain French intellectuals and writers... (shrink)

This article challenges Kieran Oberman’s derivation of a right to immigrate from the right to internal movement, residence, and employment. His argument depends on a cantilever strategy, which finds it illogical to recognize one right without recognizing an analogous second right. This differs from a direct argument, which derives a right directly from an essential human interest, and an instrumental argument, which identifies one right as a means to protecting another right. The strength of a cantilever argument depends on the (...) direct or instrumental foundations of the initial right and the aptness of the analogy between it and the new right that one seeks to establish. Oberman’s argument fails on both accounts. First, his defense of the initial right to internal movement, residence, and employment, although portrayed as a direct argument, actually rests on inapt cantilever analogies with other rights, such as freedom of speech or religion. Second, the overall cantilever argument for deriving the right to immigrate fails, because immigration across fiscally separate states is not analogous to movement, residence, and employment within a single, fiscally unified state. Instead, a right to travel and visit is the proper outcome of Oberman’s argument. (shrink)

The qualities of great works of art, their profundity, their insight into the human condition, are epitomised in Brakhage's films, which are, I argue, from the beginning related to and inseparable from a philosophical attitude toward existence. His films emerge out of an authentic 'existential' mode of attunement, a mind-set wherein the potential for human transcendence is framed and filmed within its intractable relationship to death, the most extreme possibility of non-existence. Brakhage not only views existence in a philosophical manner, (...) beyond this, he engages in philosophical inquiry in a fundamental way through the medium of film. The films arise from and respond to what Karl Jaspers views as the ultimate source of philosophy, namely, 'the will to authentic communication,' which embraces 'wonder leading to knowledge, doubt leading to certainty, forsakenness leading to the self.' This amounts to the philosophical struggle to arrive at a sense of metaphysical coherence and existential familiarity, i.e., the precarious undertsanding of belonging to the world in communion with others. This essay seeks to elucidate and detail, through a series of interpretive gestures, the philosophical themes present to Brakhage's silent films by way of a reading that emerges from the phenomenological-ontological tradition in philosophy. In doing so, I hope to interpret Brakhage's filmic art as conveying a legitimate source of human understanding, which contributes to our interpreting and discoursing about the world and our lives in new and revelatory ways. (shrink)

Incorporating Gadamer and other thinkers from the continental tradition, this essay is a close and detailed hermeneutic, phenomenological, and ontological study of the dialectic practice of Plato’s Socrates—it radicalizes and refutes the Socrates-as-teacher model that educators from scholar academic ideology embrace.

While theorists of cultural pluralism have generally supported tribal sovereignty to protect threatened Native cultures, they fail to address adequately cultural conflicts between Native and non-Native communities, especially when tribal sovereignty facilitates illiberal or undemocratic practices. In response, I draw on Jürgen Habermas' conceptions of dis-course and the public sphere to develop a universalist approach to cultural pluralism, called the 'intercultural public sphere', which analyzes how cultures can engage in mutual learning and mutual criticism under fair conditions. This framework accommodates (...) cultural diversity within formally universalistic parameters while avoiding four common criticisms of universalist approaches to cultural pluralism. But this framework differs from that of Habermas in two ways. First, it includes 'subaltern' publics, open only to members of cultural subgroups, in order to counter relations of 'cultural power'. Second, it admits 'strong' publics, democratic institutions with decision-making powers. Finally, I show how the subaltern, strong institutions of tribal sovereignty contribute to the fair discursive conditions required for mutual learning and mutual critique in an intercultural public sphere. Key Words: Habermas • Kymlicka • Native peoples • sovereignty • tribal. (shrink)

In Hurrian, timer/timar ‘dark’ appears exclusively in the phrase timerre eženi “the dark earth”. It has been suggested that this phrase and its reflexes in Hittite and Greek derive from the common religious trope of “the devouring earth” originating in northern Mesopotamia, with Hurrian providing the first attestation. However, the atypical morphology of the adjective, which cannot be derived from a noun and does not have the normal VC root pattern of Hurrian, and the semantic field, with Hurrian having borrowed (...) many words for colors, make a native Hurrian origin for timer/timar unlikely. It is suggested instead that the adjective, as well as its counterpart timiraš ‘a dark/black color ’ in the Kassite language, was borrowed from Indo-Aryan *tam-[e]r, probably as a result of a shared Indo-Aryan cultural superstratrum. While no alternatives are offered, such an etymology calls into question a Hurrian origin for the religious concept of “devouring earth.”. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Pierre Bayle developed an expansive theory of toleration in his Commentaire philosophique by arguing that tolerance is a universal principle of natural law. However, by situating toleration in natural law rather than positive law, Bayle was brought into theoretical conflict with the Old Testament injunction that the state should punish idolatry. To resolve this conflict, Bayle drew upon the work of early modern Hebraists, particularly the Catholic biblical scholar Richard Simon. Bayle adapted Simon’s idea that theocracy uniquely shaped the (...) institutions of ancient Israel to argue that prohibitions against idolatry should be exclusive to the Hebrew republic. Bayle argued that the Mosaic Law did not punish someone for their sincerely held religious beliefs but only prohibited treason, and these circumstantial laws should not be emulated by other states. This allowed Bayle to contend for the moral veracity of the Old Testament and the notion that toleration is an unconditional principle of natural law. Bayle’s use of Simon displayed the revolutionary potential of textual critical scholarship in the early modern period, as he adapted Simon’s critical ideas to his own aims of promoting religious toleration within the ecclesiastical and civic spheres of his own confessional context. (shrink)

Do past state actions, such as the American conquest of northern Mexico, the British colonization of South Asia, and the Spanish expulsion of the Sephardim and Moriscos, grant contemporary Mexicans, South Asians, and the descendants of the Sephardim and Moriscos a particular right to immigrate to the United States, the United Kingdom, and Spain respectively? In this paper I examine three theoretical models for addressing this question: retrospective responsibility for historic injustice; the principle of coercively constituted identities; and the theory (...) of remedial responsibility. I argue that remedial responsibility best justifies a particular right to immigrate through responsibility for the past for three reasons. First, it relieves us of the epistemological task of establishing causal responsibility. Second, it lessens the normative task of identifying a theory of unjust harm to establish moral responsibility. Finally, it facilitates the normative task of ranking the claims to immigrate of different individuals. (shrink)

In this dissertation I argue that universal attributes are the metaphysical ground of similarity, and that the ultimate reason embracing realism is that an explanation of similarity must posit the existence of universals. Other arguments for the existence of universals are ultimately motivated by the desire to explain phenomena, such as laws of nature, general predication, and general knowledge, that seem to depend on similarity. ;This work is structured on metaphilosophical principles of Lawrence Lombard and Lawrence Powers. Within this framework (...) I defend principles for assigning weights to theoretical values such as ontological economy, explanatory power, and accordance with commonsense beliefs, and develop a realist semantic position that I use to interpret and defend an argument for the existence of universals from premises that include a simple similarity statement. ;Attributions of similarity to objects are often made with respect to kind-determining attributes or with respect to determinable attributes. I provide a realist se mantic account of such attributions, including an account of attributions of degrees of similarity. While our ways of speaking and thinking about similarities can be explained using a realist approach, nominalist theories cannot explain this central aspect of our experience. Also, nominalist theories require sweeping rejections of commonsense claims. I argue that the ontological economy of the most plausible nominalist theories is not as great as is often supposed. Thus, if we can make sense of the concept of a universal, we should accept realism. ;Because the role of universals as the ground of similarity is the ultimate motivation for positing the existence of universals, the concept of a universal is essentially associated with that role. I support this view of universals by defending a criterion of identity for universals formulated in terms of their role in grounding similarities, and disproving alternative realist criteria of identity for universals. For example, I show that Armstrong is unsuccessful in his attempt to base a criterion of identity for universals on the causal roles of universals. By providing a criterion of identity of universals, in terms of their role in grounding similarities, the essential nature of universals is demonstrated. (shrink)

A consensus has emerged among many normative theorists of cultural pluralism that dialogue is the key to securing just relations among ethnic or cultural groups. However, few normative theorists have explored the conditions or incentives that enable inter-group dialogue versus those that encourage inter-group conflict. To address this problem, I use Habermas’s distinction between communicative and strategic action, since many models of inter-group dialogue implicitly rely upon communicative action, while many accounts of inter-group conflict rest upon strategic action. Drawing on (...) explanatory accounts of inter-group conflict, I outline five strategic logics of group conflict, what I call the resource, political, information, positional, and security logics. I then argue that these strategic logics cannot be overcome by three motivations commonly thought to support communicative action: moral-cognitive consistency, the normative characteristics of modernity, and publicity constraints. At this point, I turn to an empirical case, the reception of African-American concerns within the Jewish public sphere prior to the Second World War, in order to suggest that, although strategic incentives might hinder inter-group dialogue, they may also encourage it. In conclusion, I provide three recommendations for how theorists might utilize strategic incentives in order to recognize which actors, policies, or institutions can encourage inter-group dialogue. (shrink)

An adequate approach to any of Aristotle's qualitative parts of tragedy must be grounded in an understanding of their hierarchical ranking within the Poetics. Any "whole" must present "a certain order in its arrangement of parts" ,1 and in a drama each part is "for the sake of" the one "above" it. Contrary to Rosenstein's formulation, for instance, the Aristotelian view is that character as a form "concretizes" and individualizes thought as matter. Rosenstein's question as to whether "these . . (...) . indeed form a genuine disjunction" should not even arise. By ignoring the hierarchy, and therefore collapsing it, Rosenstein weakens his otherwise sound assertion that tragedy is not philosophy. Such is the result, whether intended or not, of holding that "thought must also be some form or concretization of action, just as plot and character are" . This vocabulary seems to suggest in the end that a tragic work is organized by philosophical "themes." "To understand spoken thought as an object of imitation in this manner is to understand it not merely as a content or object being imitated . . . but as the supposedly valid expression of an interpretation of the doings of the aesthetically worked world generally. . . . Thought in this sense becomes theme" . · 1. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations of Aristotle are from The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon . James E. Ford responds in this essay to Leon Rosenstein's "On Aristotle and Thought in the Drama" . An assistant professor of English at Brigham Young University—Hawaii Campus, he is currently writing on interpretative theory. See also: "Metaphor and Transcendence" by Karsten Harries in Vol. 5, No. 1. (shrink)

The sounds that make up spoken words are heard in a series and must be mapped rapidly onto words in memory because their elements, unlike those of visual words, cannot simultaneously exist or persist in time. Although theories agree that the dynamics of spoken word recognition are important, they differ in how they treat the nature of the competitor set—precisely which words are activated as an auditory word form unfolds in real time. This study used eye tracking to measure the (...) impact over time of word frequency and 2 partially overlapping competitor set definitions: onset density and neighborhood density. Time course measures revealed early and continuous effects of frequency (facilitatory) and on set based similarity (inhibitory). Neighborhood density appears to have early facilitatory effects and late inhibitory effects. The late inhibitory effects are due to differences in the temporal distribution of similarity within neighborhoods. The early facilitatory effects are due to subphonemic cues that inform the listener about word length before the entire word is heard. The results support a new conception of lexical competition neighborhoods in which recognition occurs against a background of activated competitors that changes over time based on fine-grained goodness-of-fit and competition dynamics. (shrink)

Recently, there has been considerable interest in large language models: machine learning systems which produce human-like text and dialogue. Applications of these systems have been plagued by persistent inaccuracies in their output; these are often called “AI hallucinations”. We argue that these falsehoods, and the overall activity of large language models, is better understood as bullshit in the sense explored by Frankfurt (On Bullshit, Princeton, 2005): the models are in an important way indifferent to the truth of their outputs. We (...) distinguish two ways in which the models can be said to be bullshitters, and argue that they clearly meet at least one of these definitions. We further argue that describing AI misrepresentations as bullshit is both a more useful and more accurate way of predicting and discussing the behaviour of these systems. (shrink)

As organizations place greater emphasis on environmental objectives, business educators must produce the next set of leaders who can champion corporate environmental sustainability initiatives. However, environmental sustainability represents a polarizing topic with some students dismissing its importance and legitimacy. Limited research exists to understand student behavioral influences on sustainability education, especially as it translates to environmental sustainability behavior in the workplace. This gap challenges our ability as educators to understand how to best teach environmental sustainability in order to reach diverse (...) student mindsets. We apply the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to address this gap, investigating the influence of student attitudes, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control on environmental sustainability intention and behavior. A structural model tested with student survey data finds that student attitude represents the strongest influence on environmental sustainability intention. The model also validates that subjective norm affects sustainability intention with students considering professors along with business leaders and politicians as valid references for sustainability knowledge. To tie the results to effective educational interventions, we use the TPB to organize an extensive review of the sustainability pedagogy literature and identify specific teaching recommendations for increasing the effectiveness of environmental sustainability education. (shrink)

The field of emotion regulation has developed rapidly, and a number of emotion regulatory strategies have been identified. To date, empirical attention has focused on contrasting specific regulatio...

This volume studies the origin and evolution of philosophical interest in Aristotle's Categories, and illuminates the earliest arguments for Aristotle's approach to logic as the foundation of higher education.

What is it about conspiracies that make them so attractive and easy to believe yet difficult to debunk? Is the epistemological process of debunking the best or only pedagogy for dislodging conspiracies? Are all conspiracies irrational and/or unverifiable? To what extent, if at all, do today’s social media conspiracies differ from conspiracies in the past?

We develop an account of laboratory models, which have been central to the group selection controversy. We compare arguments for group selection in nature with Darwin's arguments for natural selection to argue that laboratory models provide important grounds for causal claims about selection. Biologists get information about causes and cause-effect relationships in the laboratory because of the special role their own causal agency plays there. They can also get information about patterns of effects and antecedent conditions in nature. But to (...) argue that some cause is actually responsible in nature, they require an inference from knowledge of causes in the laboratory context and of effects in the natural context. This process, cause detection, forms the core of an analogical argument for group selection. We discuss the differing roles of mathematical and laboratory models in constructing selective explanations at the group level and apply our discussion to the units of selection controversy to distinguish between the related problems of cause determination and evaluation of evidence. Because laboratory models are at the intersection of the two problems, their study is crucial for framing a coherent theory of explanation for evolutionary biology. (shrink)

The effectiveness of case-based learning in ethics education varies widely regarding how cases are presented. Case process instruction may impact case-based ethics education to promote sensemaking processes, ethical sensemaking strategy use, and ethical decision making (EDM) quality. This study examined two teaching techniques, notes and review, and participants completed note-taking and review activities examining a case-based scenario during an ethics education course. Results suggest that providing case notes in outline form improves sensemaking processes, strategy use, and EDM quality. In addition, (...) combining processes of provided notes and passive review results in incremental, additive performance via certain ethical sensemaking strategies and EDM quality. (shrink)

Public education is not just a way to organise and fund education. It is also the expression of a particular ideal about education and of a particular way to conceive of the relationship between education and society. The ideal of public education sees education as an important dimension of the common good and as an important institution in securing the common good. The common good is never what individuals or particular groups want or desire, but always reaches beyond such particular (...) desires towards that which societies as a whole should consider as desirable. This does, of course, put the common good in tension with the desires of individuals and groups. Neo-liberal modes of governance have, over the past decades, put this particular educational set up under pressure and have, according to some, eroded the very idea of the common good. This set of contributions reflects on this state of affairs, partly through an exploration of the idea of publicness itself – how it can be rearticulated and regained – and partly through reflections on the current state of education in the ‘north’ and the ‘south.’. (shrink)

Feminism was born in controversy and it continues to flourish in controversy. The distinguished contributors to this volume provide an array of perspectives on issues including: universal values, justice and care, a feminist philosophy of science, and the relationship of biology to social theory.