A comprehensive account of denial viewed not only psychoanalytically but also philosophically.

The first part of this study is a reflection on the writings of Lowi and Briefs, and deals with the transition from the ideal of liberty to interest-group liberalism in the United States. In the second part I offer an analysis of Hegel’s attempt to combine the ideals of justice and liberty within a political economy. The third part deals with further issues of economic justice raised by the Bishops’ recent Pastoral Letter.

Adriaan Peperzak’s knowledge of the history of philosophy and his Continental philosophical nexus gives his Before Ethics a unique and welcome flavor. In eight essays on contemporary ethics written between 1969 and 1997, Peperzak analyzes our utilitarian, Kantian-deontological, and virtue-oriented ethical convictions in a thorough and enlightening manner.

In this paper, I will first draw attention to the central fact that Freud describes in his article on “Negation”; i.e., “recognition of the unconscious on the part of the ego is expressed in a negative formula.” Technically, such a negative formula is called denial. Second, I will ask whether such denials are accidental or necessary in the life of consciousness. To answer this question I will use the philosophical system of Hegel. I will make use of his ideas at (...) two levels of generality. At the first level of generality, I will analyze one of Hegel’s most famous and influential passages: “Lordship and Bondage.” Hegel presents this passage as a necessary moment in the development of consciousness. If we find in that passage a necessary denial, then we can argue that denial is not just a fact but is, at least in any philosophical anthropology akin to Hegel’s, a necessity. At the second level of generality, we will then quote two statements by Hegel, one about the nature of the will and one about the path to truth for consciousness. Both statements will be clarified by Hegel’s analysis of “Lordship and Bondage.” Both statements will be used to demonstrate that Hegel affirmed explicitly the necessity of negativity in the life of consciousness. (shrink)

The concept of merit good is a problematic concept in economic theory. The concept was introduced in 1956 by Richard Musgrave. In 1990, on the occasion of an international conference on the concept of merit good, John Head wrote that the concept of merit good raises methodologically difficult and controversial issues. The concept raises doubt about the ultimate normative authority of the consumer sovereignty principle. I will demonstrate that the concept deserves the attention of the philosophical profession for multiple reasons.

This essay offers a philosophical analysis of the role of the father-figure in the family. I argue that a Cartesian approach to this question is useless, and that Hegel, while he offers the beginning of an adequate analysis, falls short of the multiple-function model which an adequate analysis requires.

What follows is an argument that can be used to justify the introduction of philosophical, and specifically ethical, discourse into a wide range of university courses. The argument advanced is, we hope, both sufficiently formal to convince administrators, and sufficiently broad to convince students, of the practical importance that at least one area of philosophy has for the successful pursuit of even the most praxis-oriented career.

This book is an anthology of both previously published and unpublished material consisting of four parts: "Poe and Lacan," "On psychoanalytic reading," "Derrida and responses," and "Other readings." The heart of the anthology is, however, the debate between the psychoanalyst Lacan and the philosopher Derrida. The debate concerns the interpretation of a story written by Poe, "The Purloined Letter." To his long essay on Poe, Lacan gave pride of place by pulling it out of chronological order and placing it as (...) the first essay in his Ecrits. Lacan uses Poe's story to clarify and illustrate the explanatory power of two master concepts in his own theory: the imaginary and the symbolic. Derrida, in "The Purveyor of Truth," reflects critically on Lacan's theory and his selective use of Poe. The anthology acknowledges that it only includes roughly half of Derrida's original article. Nevertheless, Derrida's article still gives the impression of a hastily composed publication. Lacan's essay, however, gives the impression of being overworked. (shrink)

This book by a Harvard comparative law professor is philosophically important because it takes the position that law is not just an instrument to solve conflicts between human beings. Law is constitutive of meaning because legal language and legal concepts influence the manner in which we perceive the reality.

This book is possibly the first synthetic presentation of the whole of Lacan's theory. It is not just an explanation of Lacanian texts like the now standard text of Muller and Richardson, Lacan and Language. Nor is it just a presentation of a central problem like Dor's Introduction à la lecture de Jacques Lacan, which uses the graph of desire to introduce the reader to Lacan. Finally, it is more comprehensive than Lemaire's Jacques Lacan, where we only get an introduction (...) to the early Lacan, with the exclusion of his doctoral thesis. This book by Julien gives an insight into the oeuvre of Lacan in such a way that nonanalysts can grasp the significance of the Lacanian project for their own discipline. (shrink)

This bibliography is a tremendously useful publication. In the preface, Michael Clark gives us an indication of what he excluded, specifically among the secondary and the background works. Impressive is the fact that he includes works in nine languages. A further idea of the thoroughness of this bibliography is given by the fact that he lists not less than 13 prior bibliographies used to compile his own bibliography.

The importance of Lacan's thought for philosophical reflection has become obvious since the publication of A. de Waelhens's book Schizophrenia. De Waelhens, an historian of modern philosophy and a phenomenologist in his own right, became convinced by studying psychoanalysis and particularly the writings of Lacan that a Cartesian self-awareness was even less possible than Husserl had shown. De Waelhens also learned from Lacan that to be a subject is different from being conscious, or that there is thought in man elsewhere (...) than in his consciousness. De Waelhens's study of Lacan, furthermore, demonstrated the importance of language in the constitution of the subject. (shrink)