In this essay I describe how my involvement in the political struggles of an immigrant domestic workers' collective inspired me to hang out not only with the workers, but also with the writings of María Lugones and Hannah Arendt. The essay invites the reader to engage in a playful rereading of Arendt's notion of the worldlessness of laboring in the private realm by putting her into dialogue with Lugones's notion of the hangout that defies the public–private split Arendt adamantly insists (...) on in all her writings. By following the complex physical, mental, and emotional itineraries of immigrant domestic workers to, from, and in-between a number of places and spaces, I demonstrate how their stories blur the line between public and private, and therefore also between the unfreedom of the body and the presumed escape into the political public. I describe the women's experiences as the living promise of a world that allows for an embodied fluid movement between labor, work, and the freedom “inherent in action” (Arendt 193, 153). (shrink)

Abstract In this paper, I ask why Aristotle thinks that ethical virtue (rather than mere self-control) is required for practical wisdom. I argue that a satisfactory answer will need to explain why being prone to bad appetites implies a failing of the rational part of the soul. I go on to claim that the self-controlled person does suffer from such a rational failing: a failure to take a specifically rational kind of pleasure in fine action. However, this still leaves a (...) problem: could there not be someone who (unlike the self-controlled person) took the right kind of pleasure in fine action, but who failed to be virtuous on account of bad appetites? If so, would such a person be practically wise but not virtuous? I end with some suggestions about how Aristotle might answer this. (shrink)

The ArgumentMost historians of science share the conviction that the incorporation of the corpuscular theory into seventeenth-century chemistry was the beginning of modern chemistry. My thesis in this paper is that modern chemisty started with the concept of the chemicl compound, which emerged at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, without any signifivant influence of the corpuscular theory. Rather the historical reconstruction of the emergence of this concept shows that it resulted from the reflection (...) on the chemical operations in the sixteenth-century metallurgy and seventeenth-century pharmacy. I argue that the reversibility of these operations and their understanding as crafts (metallurgy) or chemical arts (pharmacy) were decisive factors for the emergence of the first ideas about chemical compounds in the seventeenth-century pharmaceutical works written by pharmaceutically trained authors, influenced by the Paracelsian image of nature. There is a direct line of descent from these authors to E.F.Geoffroy (1675–1742), who integrated the first scattered ideas of chemical compound into a general concept comprising chemical artefacts as well as natural bodies. (shrink)

Let T be simple, work in Ceq over a boundedly closed set. Let p ∈ S(θ) be internal in a quasi-stably-embedded type-definable set Q (e.g., Q is definable or stably-embedded) and suppose (p, Q) is ACL-embedded in Q (see definitions below). Then Aut(p/Q) with its action on pC is type-definable in Ceq over θ. In particular, if p ∈ S(θ) is internal in a stably-embedded type-definable set Q, and pC υ Q is stably-embedded, then Aut(p/Q) is type-definable with its action (...) on pC. (shrink)

El presente trabajo constituye una aproximación a la tradición sofista desde la perspectiva nietzscheana. De modo más específico, analizamos hasta qué punto los planteamientos de los sofistas y la contienda que se desarrolla entre ellos le sirven al filósofo como una herramienta para enfrentarse a la tradición platónica. Para ello, describimos primero ciertas características propias de la competencia entre estos oradores, las cuales resultan compatibles con la valoración nietzscheana del devenir. En segundo lugar, relacionamos la interpretación de Nietzsche del homo (...) mensura con el perspectivismo y el escepticismo propios de su pensamiento. Por último, explicamos cómo la expresión «cultura del conocimiento desinteresado», referida a los sofistas, apunta a marcar un contraste frente a la seriedad de la tradición socrático-platónica contra la que Nietzsche combate. (shrink)

Abstract:Spirituality is an undeniable human need and is thus the subject of increasing interest among management scholars and practitioners. In this article, we propose using archetypal psychology as a framework for understanding the human need for spirituality more clearly because it provides important insights into spirituality and organizational life. Because most spiritual needs reside in the deepest aspects of the self, an archetypal approach helps us recognize not only that we have spiritual needs but alsowhywe have them. We present three (...) common archetypes and their implications in a management context. That is followed by an application of the archetypal approach to some of the more spiritually corrosive aspects of organizational life and a discussion of the implications of archetypes as a source of motivation. (shrink)

By considering the nature of the relationship between patient and healer, The Healing Bond explores the responsibilities of both, with a special emphasis on the therapeutic responsibility. The editors and contributors examine both orthodox and unorthodox forms of healing practice and apply a variety of professional and analytic perspectives to the medical profession as a whole. They look at specific areas of health such as midwifery, psychoanalysis, naturopathy, the relations between medicine and state, and the appeal of "quacks." Particular issues (...) of current concern are also discussed, including medical litigation, codes of ethics among complementary practitioners and cooperation between orthodox and complementary medicine practitioners. Contributors: Mary Douglas, Calliope Farsides, David Peters, Roy Porter, Richenda Power, Margaret Stacey, Robert Sumerling, and Gillian Vanhegan. (shrink)

Despite the intransigent nature of many of the problems discussed, the contributors to this volume demonstrate the possibilities for developing a viable alternative politics.

Starting from the question of the identities—in a given text—of author and reader, subsumed under the broader question of “self” and “other” in exteriority, this essay attempts a theological response in three critical moments: the first follows the transcendental tradition of Western thought from the turn towards transcendental subjectivity to the collapse of the dialectics of subjectivity in “postmodern” thought; the second moves the problem of exteriority from the realm of recognition that of promise and expectation ; and the third (...) formulates a Trinitarian ontology of distance that accommodates this eschatology. (shrink)

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Herman Dooyeweerd’s New Critique of Theoretical Thought in 1985 and the 10th anniversary of his death in 1987, I explore his theory of theory. Dooyeweerd distinguished theory as conceptual knowledge of abstracted functions from everyday knowing as integrated knowledge of wholes. He tried to show that critical theorizing requires philosophical integration, self-awareness, and religious knowledge of the origin of ourselves and creation. In the course of developing his view Dooyeweerd touched on many (...) issues that are still current for us today, in particular issues around foundationalism. A brief evaluation in the context of our contemporary philosophical scene closes the essay. (shrink)

Although Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas are often cited in support of “faith and reason,” the doublet achieved prominence in that form only in the nineteenth century. The encyclical Fides et ratio can be seen as forming Aeterni patris, Humani generis, and Dei verbum into a tradition. Indeed, it looks back to the nineteenth century and remains at best uninterested in twentieth-century thought. One difficulty with the expression is that each of “faith” and “reason” can be defined against “experience,” and there (...) is a danger that the doublet “faith and reason” invites abstraction from all contexts, including exegesis and love, imagination, and sacrament. Properly understood, “faith and reason” implies “faith and reason and . . .” The encyclical is unclear at crucial moments. It begins to speak of reason, then slides into talk of rationalism. It regards a crisis of rationalism as leading to nihilism, but the conclusion is hastily drawn, at best. It underlines the importance of metaphysics and is critical of “the end of metaphysics,” but confuses different senses of the word. (shrink)

Kai Nielsen’s recent book Philosophy and Atheism is discussed here. The main point is that Nielsen’s arguments against Christianity can be turned against his own rationalist atheism with similar results, namely that the position seems incoherent from its own point of view. Christianity is unempirical and irrational by certain arguments, but the position assumed underneath those arguments does not survive treatment by those same arguments. Nielsen’s dependence on arguments that undermine the position assumed in these arguments should make him open (...) to the suggestion that these arguments may not be relevant to the assessment of the validity of a religious position. (shrink)

Liberalism is no longer defensible as a strategy for coping with conflicts in a pluralistic society, but is itself one of the pluralities in conflict. Hence its strategy for coping with plurality---tolerant suspension or privatization of the deep commitments that are the roots of conflict, coupled with rational discussion to form a public consensus not connected to the plurality of commitments---can no longer serve as a common sense approach for all citizens. In this paper I explore as a solution the (...) continuation of discussion toward shared public policy, but now discussion openly tied to underlying commitments. Truth in this context is pursued not as a matter of argument, but as fruitful consequences of action. (shrink)

Can one say everything? Does one have the right to say everything? This essay distinguishes these two questions, and seeks to clarify them with reference to two French writers for whom the questions are central: Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Derrida. Blanchot considers the questions with respect to the Marquis de Sade and Louis‐René des Fore˘ts. For Blanchot, the right to say everything is not supported by an appeal to the integrity of the self; rather, it is linked to a kenosis (...) of the “I.” His account leaves important questions unaddressed. For Derrida, however, the right to say everything is enshrined in modern democracy and sustained by reference to a “democracy to come.” Brief as it is, Derrida's response to the questions is the most satisfactory that we have to date. (shrink)

This essay discusses four definitions of beauty from Western philosophy in light of recent experimental work from the more modern fields of psychology and biology. The first idea, derived from Plato, that beauty consists of relationships between parts, is partially confirmed by recent psychological experiments on infants and adults. The second idea, that beauty consists of one salient feature amid a mass of details, is more recent, perhaps from Hume, and is confirmed by some experiments on adults, but this finding (...) has not been replicated in non-Western cultures. The third idea, that beauty is based on utility, occurs in Plato but is more difficult to support through experiments; biology suggests that a longing for beauty, not merely for survival, is an evolutionary target. Finally, the fourth idea, that beauty is a type of cognitive pleasure, is a constant thread from Plato through the work of Aquinas and Kant and seems to confirm a preference for an optimum level of complexity by adults, but cannot explain a parallel preference for complexity in human infants. (shrink)

Conceptual understanding and knowing other-wise: Reflections on rationality and spirituality in philosophy.