Delimitations is divided into fifteen sections arranged under four headings. Part 1, "Closure of Metaphysics," characterizes Sallis's interpretation of the end of metaphysics. Part 2, "Openings--To the Things Themselves," contains discussions of texts drawn from Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger. These discussions open ways toward a post-metaphysical thinking which will reveal "the things themselves." Part 3, "Clearing," is comprised of analyses of Heidegger which "displace" the dominance of such metaphysical notions as "meaning" and "end." Part 4, "Archaic Closure," concludes the work (...) with reflections on the Allegory of the Cave and a Heraclitus fragment. (shrink)

[T]he essays collected here... further determine the limits of experience as well as salvage something essential from that which takes place at the very limit of political and aesthetic experience. Included here are critical readings of such seminal figures as Locke, Kant, Nietzsche, Adorno, Foucault, Fanon, Lacoue-Labarthe, Badiou, and Rancière." -Cover.

The contemporary agonist thinker, Chantal Mouffe argues that conflicts are constitutive of politics. However, this position raises the question that concerns the survival of order and the proper types of conflicts in democracies. Although Mouffe is not consensus-oriented, consensus plays a role in her theory when the democratic order is at stake. This suggests that there is a theoretical terrain between the opposing poles of conflict and consensus. This can be discussed with the help of concepts and theories that seem (...) to be standing between the two, namely compromise, debate and the borders of democracy. I will argue that we can reveal this position with the theoretical analysis of compromise in the works of F. R. Ankersmit on the historical origin of representative democracy, and Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson on the role of compromise in divided communities. J. S. Mill’s view of colliding opinions offers a moderate agonistic understanding of politics, while the concept of debate plays a similar role for Márton Szabó, a contemporary Hungarian political theorist. Finally, Mouffe’s position stands at the conflictual end of this spectrum, although conflicts are delimited on the normative ground of democracy. (shrink)

Abstract: This article offers a perspective on the role of philosophy in relation to other academic disciplines and to society in general. Among the issues treated are the delimitation of philosophy, whether it is a science, its role in the community of knowledge disciplines, its losses of subject matter to other disciplines, how it is influenced by social changes and by progress in other disciplines, and its role in interdisciplinary work. It is concluded that philosophy has (...) an important mission in promoting clarity, precision, and open-mindedness in academic research and in society at large. (shrink)

This article offers a perspective on the role of philosophy in relation to other academic disciplines and to society in general. Among the issues treated are the delimitation of philosophy, whether it is a science, its role in the community of knowledge disciplines, its losses of subject matter to other disciplines, how it is influenced by social changes and by progress in other disciplines, and its role in interdisciplinary work. It is concluded that philosophy has an (...) important mission in promoting clarity, precision, and open‐mindedness in academic research and in society at large. (shrink)

Objects generate time; time does not generate or change objects. That is the central thesis of this book by the philosopher Graham Harman and the archaeologist Christopher Witmore, who defend radical positions in their respective fields. Against a current and pervasive conviction that reality consists of an unceasing flux-a view associated in philosophy with New Materialism-object-oriented ontology asserts that objects of all varieties are the bedrock of reality from which time emerges. And against the narrative convictions of time as (...) the course of historical events, the objects and encounters associated with archaeology push back against the very temporal delimitations which defined the field and its objects ever since its professionalization in the nineteenth century. In a study ranging from the ruins of ancient Corinth, Mycenae, and Troy to debates over time from Aristotle and al-Ash'ari through Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead, the authors draw on alternative conceptions of time as retroactive, percolating, topological, cyclical, and generational, as consisting of countercurrents or of a surface tension between objects and their own qualities. Objects Untimely invites us to reconsider the modern notion of objects as inert matter serving as a receptacle for human categories"-. (shrink)

La Philosophie de la religion demande une délimitation par rapport à des philosophies religieuses et la science religieuse. L'étude de quelques auteurs représentatifs montre ensuite une certaine convergence théorique autour du problème de la « contingence » dont la « maîtrise » socio-pratique implique aujourd'hui souvent tout le sens du « réel ». La tâche critique d'une philosophie de la religion consiste alors à plaider pour une ouverture des valeurs humaines vers l'« inconditionnel », et cela dans l'intérêt même d'une (...) « libertégénérosité » à sauvegarder. The Philosophy of religion requires demarcation comparatively to any religious philosophical thought and the science of religion. The study of several representative scholars points out that the problem of « contingency » is able at present to permit some conformity concerning theoretical positions. Frequently, the social and material « control » of this contingency of our world of life is forming the exhaustive sense of that what means « Reality » Therefore, it is a critical necessity of the philosophy of religion to demonstrate that human values are including orientation to an « inconditional ». (shrink)

What is philosophy about? Has it a content all its own? A method? This paper examines a few responses to these questions. At the extremes are the Proper Content and the No Content views. The former identifies philosophy with a delimited set of core issues. The latter, abandoning any proper subject-matter for philosophy, identifies it with a core modus operandi. Neither of these is especially compelling. More dynamically conceived is the Vanishing Content view which sees philosophy (...) as continually and inevitably abandoning its business to newly emerging sciences, acting largely as an exploratory initiator of inquiry which is ultimately eliminable. Though promising, this view underrates the resilience and adaptability of philosophy, especially its current drive to forge alliances with and ultimately amalgamate itself into newer areas of study. This tendency is explored via the Partners-for-Progress view, which foresees philosophy becoming dependently indistinguishable from the theoretical wings of various autonomous disciplines. Finally, I examine the Family Inheritance view, which suggests that philosophy cannot merely vanish into the sciences because of idiosyncrasies in its very institutions which are self-sustaining and, more than most, deeply beholden to its own past which it keeps ever present. (shrink)

The goal of improving public health involves the use of different tools, with the law being one way to influence the activities of institutions and individuals. Of the regulatory mechanisms afforded by law to achieve this end, criminal law remains a perennial mechanism to delimit the scope of individual and group conduct. However, criminal law may promote or hinder public health goals, and its use raises a number of complex questions that merit exploration. This examination of the interface between criminal (...) law and public health brings together international experts from a variety of disciplines, including law, criminology, public health, philosophy and health policy, in order to examine the theoretical and practical implications of using criminal law to improve public health. (shrink)

Kant's relation to religion and theology is complex since he tries both to delimit theology's influence and to inherit its discursive power. The essay explores the different critical strategies and rhetorical means that Kant uses to deal with theology: theological analogies and metaphors in his systematic thought, a new kind of,philosophy of religion,' a political theology of civil society, and finally a specific way of reading the Bible.

An attempt to compare the approaches of Alfred North Whitehead and Jacques Derrida might appear extremely unrewarding from the outset. Derrida has often been hailed (and reviled) as a figure who rejects many key concepts in the philosophical lexicon, amongst them those of subjectivity, rationality, creativity and progress. Whitehead, on the other hand, may seem to hold uncritically to the notion of a metaphysical system in which every element of our experience can be interpreted, so that everything of which we (...) are conscious ‘shall have the character of a particular instance of the general scheme’.1 In our modern world, furthermore, Whitehead argues that it is the business of philosophers and students and practical men ‘to recreate and re-enact a vision of the world...penetrated through and through with unflinching rationality’.2 In this article I wish to show that Whitehead’s understanding of philosophy converges with Derrida’s in certain significant respects, and that this clearly illustrated when we relate both of them to Edmund Husserl. I will begin with brief outlines of Derrida’s account of the philosophical tradition, of his deconstruction or delimitation of subjectivity, and of the way in which his understanding of philosophical openness is influenced by the work of Husserl. I will then proceed to show how many of the ideas found in Whitehead’s metaphysics resemble those of Derrida. Other aspects of this metaphysics would certainly be inimical to the latter, but need not be seen as fixed in stone. This is recognized by Whitehead himself, who has a fallibilistic and revisionary understanding of the philosophical enterprise that is akin to Husserl and Derrida. My conclusion, however, is that Whitehead is closer to Husserl in concentrating on the reconstructive side of philosophy, a side which Derrida has ultimately neglected. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Method in Ancient PhilosophyDavid K. GliddenJyl Gentzler, editor. Method in Ancient Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Pp. viii + 398. Cloth, $72.00.The fifteen papers in this collection constitute revisions of conference proceedings and reflect the varied interests of participants. The ensemble exhibits a thoroughly modern methodology. Whatever and however various ancient methods of philosophy may have been, in Anglo-American scholarship it is standard practice to first (...) address established scholarly interpretations as the primary entry point to critical discussionóoften displacing antiquity with a critical vocabulary of philosophical modernity. Scholars may come to understand each other better, but at the risk of asking the wrong questions or sacrificing ancient texts themselves as mere means of producing papers.Most scholars are progressives. They believe philosophy has advanced past the comparatively primitive wisdom of antiquity, and so such scholars feel perfectly entitled to make better sense of ancient texts, by patiently explaining what the ancients would have meant had they only been able to get it right. There are, of course, exceptions. And some papers in this collection suggest deeper faith in our philosophic fathers. So, the battle between the ancients and the moderns is joined once more, between those who would adorn their papers with footnotes for their peers and those who would attempt more anthropological an inquiry into ancient philosophic practices.Ian Mueller and Robert Bolton each address the same passage in Plato's Phaedo, both beginning with an article from Vlastos, first published in 1969. Mueller thoughtfully explores three different yet related accounts of what we might call scientific method in explaining Plato's views on natural change. Bolton wonders whether scholars are asking the wrong questions. Patricia Curd attempts a progressivist account of Eleatic thought, notwithstanding her recognition of the paucity of ancient sources. Complete with elaborately numbered sentences, Gail Fine focuses primarily on Burnyeat (1976) on Plato on Protagoras. Constance Meinwald presents a rather near-sighted account of two passages in the Philebus that employ the peras-apeiron distinction, with a view toward Plato's allegedly modernist mathematization of understanding. Lesley Brown revisits five pages of the Sophist that were hotly debated in the 1960s. With charity and elegance, she offers several plausible solutions to puzzles posed by previous scholars. Sometimes time smoothes over differences.A. A. Long's essay on Plato's presentation of Socrates in the Theaetetus might appear more philosophically anthropological. Yet Long reveals progressive sympathies, suggesting that Plato dispatches Socrates in the Theaetetus, so as to prepare the way for a more rigorously academic form of philosophizing, such as that exhibited in the Sophist. [End Page 111] In this way, Long speculates, Plato abandoned practical ethics for the academic life of research, so familiar to university professors and conference participants. It might be hard to square such speculation with Plato's Laws and the reception of Plato's writings among his own contemporaries. Still, Socrates' shifting role in Plato's dialogues is well worth pondering.By comparison, T. H. Irwin's contribution is wonderfully old-fashioned. His paper addresses the background knowledge to be presumed by ancient readers of Plato's dialogues and how that knowledge is artfully put to use in Plato's depiction of Socrates' reflections on the unity of virtue. By speculating on Plato's relation to his ancient readers, Irwin displaces many modernist preoccupations, though not without himself falling victim to that peculiar scholarly obsession of dating Plato's dialogues by their doctrines.With characteristic conservatism, Gisela Striker cautions scholars not to over-read Aristotle's Prior Analytics. While that extraordinary work may have deep implications for the history of formal logic, it probably was instead intended to be part of a general account of argument. In a similar vein, Charlotte Witt attempts to rescue Aristotle from scholars who would delimit Aristotle's multifarious uses of the "for the sake of" explanation, which altogether pervade his metaphysics, physics, biology and ethics. Yet, Witt soon finds herself competing in a contest over interpretive distinctions, a sport that will certainly never capture Aristotle's own authorial intentions.Facing another mass of scholarship, in this case on Aristotle's dialectic, C. D. C. Reeve sensibly attempts to... (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the tendency in philosophy to become an excessively theoretical enterprise, an enterprise aspiring to such highly generalized viewpoints on reality, mind, language, or ethics that its “findings” lose touch with lived experience and with broader intellectual concerns and become highly “scholastic,” wedded to abstractions, ideals, dichotomies, and principles that do not find any clear application in everyday life and discourse. I distinguish two types of reaction to this philosophical tendency, a quietist versus a pragmatist (...) reaction, the one being entirely hostile to philosophical thought, the other attempting to revitalize philosophy with practical, or dynamic, models of philosophical activity. Following Dewey, I offer a diagnosis of over-theorizing in philosophy, and suggest a remedy, focusing on the inseparable connectedness of a philosophical observer with “objects” of her observation, be it reality, mind, value, or knowledge, which (so I claim) both motivates and delimits the philosophical aspiration for generality and transcendence. Along the way I discuss relevant contributions by Wittgenstein, James, Dewey, Putnam, Nagel, Elgin, Feyerabend, Williams, Quine, Kitcher, and Pettit. (shrink)

This volume, the result of an ongoing bridge building effort among engineers and humanists, addresses a variety of philosophical, ethical, and policy issues emanating from engineering and technology. Interwoven through its chapters are two themes, often held in tension with one another: “Exploring Boundaries” and “Expanding Connections.” “Expanding Connections” highlights contributions that look to philosophy for insight into some of the challenges engineers face in working with policy makers, lay designers, and other members of the public. It also speaks (...) to reflections included in this volume on the connections between fact and value, reason and emotion, engineering practice and the social good, and, of course, between engineering and philosophy. “Exploring Boundaries” highlights contributions that focus on some type of demarcation. Public policy sets a boundary between what is regulated from what is not, academic disciplines delimit themselves by their subjects and methods of inquiry, and professions approach problems with unique goals and by using concepts and language in particular ways that create potential obstacles to collaboration with other fields. These and other forms of boundary setting are also addressed in this volume. Contributors explore these two themes in a variety of specific contexts, including engineering epistemology, engineers’ social responsibilities, engineering and public policy-making, engineering innovation, and the affective dimensions of engineering work. The book also includes analyses of social and ethical issues with emerging technologies such as 3-D printing and its use in medical applications, as well as social robots. Initial versions of the invited papers included in this book were first presented at the 2014 meeting of the Forum on Philosophy, Engineering, and Technology, held at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, USA. The volume furthers fPET’s intent of extending and developing the philosophy of engineering as an academic field, and encouraging conversation, promoting a sense of shared enterprise, and building community among philosophers and engineers across a diversity of cultural backgrounds and approaches to inquiry. (shrink)

A distinctive focus of 19th- and 20th-century Latin American philosophy is the convergence of identity formation and political liberation in ethnically and racially diverse postcolonial contexts. From this perspective, Omar Rivera interprets how a "we" is articulated and deployed in central political texts of this robust philosophical tradition. In particular, by turning to the work of Peruvian political theorist José Carlos Mariátegui among others, Rivera critiques philosophies of liberation that are invested in the redemption of oppressed identities as conditions (...) for bringing about radical social and political change, foregrounding Latin America's complex histories and socialities to illustrate the power and shortcomings of these projects. Building on this critical approach, Rivera studies interrelated epistemological, transcultural, and aesthetic delimitations of Latin American philosophy in order to explore the possibility of social and political liberation "beyond redemption.". (shrink)

"Out of the box! ". Qui n'a pas entendu cette injonction destinée à ceux que l'on somme d'être créatif? Si nos sens délimitent sans peine des murs et des portes, de quoi se compose la boîte de laquelle on nous enjoint de sortir? Qui la construit et à quoi sert-elle? Nous avons pris au sérieux ce banal mot d'ordre managérial et avons bâti une théorie sur l'innovation. Ce n'est pas une "boîtes" que nous avons identifiée, mais trois "cubes" qui formatent (...) nos identités, nos usages et nos objets. Sujet, verbe, objet tout marché fonde en même temps un récit et s'appuie sur la même grammaire que nous avons apprise sur les bancs d'école. Les neufs dimensions réunies par les trois cubes sont des productions historiques. Elles sont le produit d'un nombre impressionnant d'acteurs : Etats, organismes administratifs, partis politiques, arts, aménagement du territoire, syndicats patronaux ou ouvriers, associations de consommateurs, médias, médecine, droit, formation, police, langue, leaders d'opinion, structures faîtières, etc. Le lecteur découvrira que l'innovation exprime un paradoxe : l'innovation est nécessaire pour les entreprises ; elle aussi est un danger pour ces dernières ; elle doit enfin être domestiquée et "cubée" pour organiser une concurrence. Si l'innovation était débridée, aucun marché n'y résisterait... Trois cubes comme paradoxes de la créativité et de la liberté ; il faut bien des murs, savoir de quoi ils sont faits et où ils sont érigés pour s'évader de temps en temps. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Entanglement: How Art and Philosophy Make Us What We Are by Alva NoëFrederik M. Bjerregaard-NielsenNOË, Alva. The Entanglement: How Art and Philosophy Make Us What We Are. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2023. 288 pp. Cloth, $27.95In The Entanglement, Alva Noë sets forth a minimal yet meaningful definition of art and philosophy and asks how they make us what we are. Art and (...) class='Hi'>philosophy are the modes of practice that disrupt and disorganize our habitual ways of doing things, everything from dancing to language, to philosophy and art themselves. They are the reflection at a distance of what we do. “In this sense, then, art is disruptive. Always: everywhere.” From this basis, he tackles a wide range of phenomena from dancing, seeing, writing, and so forth, to introduce a distinction between these as everyday phenomena and their function as art. This delimitation is not material, nor intrinsic to any of the analyzed phenomena; rather, it depends on each practice’s ability to disrupt, disorganize, and force upon us the question of what dancing, seeing, writing is at all. Noë provides an example: At an art exhibition one is confronted with a painting that is ungraspable, foreign, meaningless. But, through a mediation (pointers from a friend, new knowledge of the era, analyses of the style, and so forth) the painting starts becoming significant; it starts to make sense. The viewer is stopped in her tracks, and a painting that was before closed is now opened up to a new perception, a new way of seeing.But Noë extends this aesthetic domain to experience and perception. In perception, we are actively engaged in achieving the things around us, achieving the world. And, in art, this habitual way of attainment is obstructed, for art presents us with new ways of seeing, listening, feeling, and so forth. Noë thus challenges common (especially neuro-aesthetic) views on perception and experience in favor of a more phenomenological approach by which he accentuates the active engagement in the world by which perception and experience come about. And this aesthetic domain, broadly understood, is the locus of showing how we, through these disruptive practices, create new ways of doing, perceiving, understanding, and, even further, create ourselves. We “all operate in a space of significance held open by art.” In other words, it is through a reassessment of the aesthetic that Noë shows how art and philosophy make us what we are. For what we are, for Noë, is this ability of disruption, development, and creation of ourselves. This is what makes us human. Human nature is therefore essentially cultural, a disruption of habit and new avenues of development, but one that is rooted in our body as a horizon of possibilities. Even though he does not conclude on this phylogenetic question, Noë does seem to suggest that the species’s ability to generate art (exemplified by early cave paintings) and philosophy are foundational [End Page 724] to its development or, more strongly, necessary to it being what it is. He thus proposes an alternative to the traditional schism of the nature/nurture and natural/cultural debate, which takes this wide view of aesthetics as its central term.One might raise the question whether the text would have benefited from more thorough analyses of the thinkers who are at play, sometimes at the margin, sometimes at the foundation of the disruption Noë’s text attempts, notably: Merleau-Ponty, with his extensive analyses of habit and style and their place in our life engaging behavior; Derrida’s deconstruction of phonocentrism, which attacks written language’s subordination to the spoken and asks the fundamental question of the ontology of language as such; or perhaps most present by its absence, Nietzsche’s grandiose thought of the human being and life itself as an aesthetic phenomenon. For Nietzsche thereby incorporated both ontology and critique in the sphere of aesthetics in his revaluation of all values. This, quite like Noë, allowed Nietzsche to set forth the human being as a creature of its own creation. These authors are given brief treatments, relegated to footnotes, or left out entirely.But such a critique might be too... (shrink)

Omar Rivera’s Delimitations of Latin American Philosophy: Beyond Redemption is an important contribution to the interpretation of central figures and questions of the Latin American philosophical tradition, particularly Peruvian Marxist José Carlos Mariátegui and questions of identity and liberation. Rivera establishes productive dialogues between foundational figures such as Simón Bolívar, José Martí, and Mariátegui and decolonial thinkers like María Lugones, Aníbal Quijano, and Gloria Anzaldúa to posit delimitations of Latin American philosophy that might allow it to move beyond (...) redemptive logics that essentialize identities and reinscribe oppressions in narratives of liberation. This review explores the central arguments of the book and proposes a philosophical and a political issue that emerges from them. (shrink)

John Dewey’s concept of the “problematic situation” is a core component of his epistemology and his social philosophy, grounding his anti-elitist view of inquiry as initially hunch-guided and aiming toward growth in meaning and control. I consider two novel counterarguments to Dewey’s definition of a situation, the “Cunning Manipulator,” which refutes his delimitation of a problematic situation in terms of qualitative experience, and the “Anxious Compulsion,” in which following one’s hunches causes a downward spiral. Given these challenges, I (...) propose a revised Deweyan epistemology that recognizes the possibility of “qualitative disunity” and of “vigilant inquiry” as a response to it. The concept of “qualitative disunity” sheds light on disagreements on the topic of normativity between classical and neopragmatism. (shrink)

1. Je souhaiterais aborder un certain aspect de Philosophie des expériences radicales pour suggérer un autre point de vue de lecture possible venant compléter la perspective critique qui structure l’ensemble de l’ouvrage de Stéphane Madelrieux, celle d’une remise en cause de l’“empirisme métaphysique” au nom d’un empirisme naturaliste “et non matérialiste” (Madelrieux 2022: 372). Il peut être utile de revenir à la question de la délimitation du contexte français de réception de certains aspec...

This paper follows the implications of Gadamer’s hermeneutics after Truth and Method in which the forming of social life, and with it the idea of worldly understanding, receives greater attention. I argue that the emphasis in his later writings on worldly understanding draws less on the idea of the hermeneutic circle and problematic of the Geisteswissenschaften in which the concept of tradition is prominent than on the movement in language and the encounter with the other. As in the example of (...) translation, I argue that this movement has the character of passage from one place to another that holds within it an element of opacity. The development of this issue draws on a comparative analysis with the work of the Caribbean philosopher Édouard Glissant. From this analysis I show how Gadamer’s hermeneutics addresses the issue of understanding across cultures and in mixed cultures. (shrink)

Virtue ethical inspired approaches to practical and professional ethics have long been endorsed across various disciplines. Journalistic ethics is no exception. Call such approaches Virtue Ethical Journalism (VEJ). Virtue ethics has also drawn considerable attention from the field of moral psychology, though not all of it is supportive. Among the critics, some take the view that character traits and virtues are not effective enough in guiding people’s behavior. As a result, they conclude that traits should be minimized in ethical thought. (...) Call this stronger view character skepticism. VEJ has taken character skepticism seriously. Many responses to character skepticism defending VEJ, however, raise similar points as those that defend a more general theory of virtue ethics from such skepticism. I argue, however, that such responses to character skepticism are not up to the task of defending VEJ. Accordingly, VEJ would benefit from novel responses to character skepticism or significant revision. (shrink)

We propose an extension of minimal intuitionistic predicate logic, based on delimited control operators, that can derive the predicate-logic version of the double-negation shift schema, while preserving the disjunction and existence properties.

Epictetus' thought is defined by an antithesis of mine and not-mine, which is an antithesis of externals and self. From this arise a number of questions for Epictetus‘ theology, which are addressed in this paper: How is the self delimited from God, given that God is all-pervading? Is God inside or outside the self? In which way is God the cause, creator and shaper of the self? And how does human agency and self-shaping through prohairesis spell out within this determinst (...) framework? If, as will become apparent in the discussion of the previous questions, the shape and activities of human selves originate from God and should be perfectly aligned with God, in which sense is there still a separate, individual human self? (shrink)

Contributions of science of culture to the research in organizational communication field. The present paper aims to discuss the conditions of likelihood ofinserting a methodological option in the field of organisational communication, an option that rose from the project of Ernst Cassirer to formulate a general theory of symbolic forms. In fact, it is about stating a theoretical and methodological frame capable of answering a concrete need, phenomenological in nature, to study the communication structure of organisations not as a given (...) fact, not as a finite and given construction, but as an ensemble of spiritual manifestations which build and enforce the human being. Access to the methodological contributions of symbolic form philosophy in the research of organisational communication is suggested by Cassirer himself through the thesis according to which the goal of his studies on symbolic forms will be truly attained only if its problematic will be reengaged and debated by each disciplinary field in turn. In this context, the thoretical frame suggested here delimits an approach which takes as its starting concept the immediate alternative of the concept of society, in other words the concept of culture, whose content is inextricably linked with the fundamental forms and propensities of the spirit. The main task of such a research frame is to approach the original source of human action, the cultural products - the words of the language, the images of the myth, of art, the intellectual symbols of knowledge, etc. From this point of view, the ground of organisational communication can be delimited and clarified to the extent in which it is regarded from the perspective of its subject, meaning in what regards the thinking in act of this communication. It is about a key mutation brought about by the methodology of the symbolic form philosophy, the mutation from object towards subject. In order to understand the organisational communication one must start from its subject, following the hypothesis that there is organisational communication in what regards the human being to the extent in which there is organisational communication in humans, since individual himself became, at a certain point, organisational communication. Therefore, the trasfer of methodological contribution herein proposed is based not on the capacity to approach organisational communication in its entirety, but on that of the subject as animal symbolicum and as inhabitant of a community which permanently insitutes a world within which he communicates, to which he refers and which he changes. The research in organisational communication participates, from this point of view, to the field of science of culture. (shrink)

Bourdieu’s thought is disturbing. Provocative. Scandalous even, at least for those who do not easily tolerate the unmitigated truth about the social. Nonetheless his ideas, among the most important and innovative of our time, are here to stay. This thought has taken form in the course of a career and through works on diverse subjects that have constructed a far-reaching analytical model of social life, which the author calls more readily an anthropology rather than a sociology. In their totality, they (...) constitute today an original and powerful proposal to explain human practices. In the face of criticisms commonly leveled at Bourdieu’s thought (notably the charge that it reduces everything to a single schematic model), it is important to identify the spirit of his enterprise. Early on, it is true, his thought drew on a few fundamental concepts—the trilogy habitus, field (champ), practice (pratique)—to which it constantly returned, and followed a clearly defined trajectory. At the same time, however, he continually reformulated, adapted, and refined his analytical model, depending on the operations to which he subjected new objects of inquiry. The regenerative and transformative force of his thought was supported by two convictions. First, that there being nothing more vain than theory for theory’s sake, it is preferable that theoretical production originate in the study of concrete and occasionally very specific cases. Second, that in order to escape stereotypical classifications, boundaries separating disciplines are best transgressed, thereby favoring new constructions of the object of inquiry. (shrink)

It has been argued in Dawid that physicists at times generate substantial trust in an empirically unconfirmed theory based on observations that lie beyond the theory’s intended domain. A crucial role in the reconstruction of this argument of “non-empirical confirmation” is played by limitations to scientific underdetermination. The present paper discusses the question as to how generic the role of limitations to scientific underdetermination really is. It is argued that assessing such limitations is essential for generating trust in any theory’s (...) predictions, be it empirically confirmed or not. The emerging view suggests that empirical and non-empirical confirmation are more closely related to each other than one may expect at first glance. (shrink)

ANGIE PEPPER | : This paper attempts to bring some clarity to the debate among sentientists, biocentrists, and ecocentrists on the issue of who or what can count as a candidate recipient of justice. I begin by examining the concept of justice and argue that the character of duties and entitlements of justice sets constraints on the types of entities that can be recipients of justice. Specifically, I contend that in order to be a recipient of justice, one must be (...) the bearer of enforceable moral claim rights. I then suggest that this has important implications for the dispute among sentientists, biocentrists, and ecocentrists. In brief, I show that sentientists cannot exclude nonsentient entities from the domain of justice merely by denying that they have “the right kind of interests,” and biocentrists and ecocentrists cannot move seamlessly from some feature of living things or ecosystems to entitlements of justice. I further argue that ultimately this disagreement on the bounds of justice bottoms out in a normative disagreement about which entities possess moral claim rights, and that the case for biotic or ecosystem rights has yet to be convincingly established. | : Le présent article vise à clarifier le débat parmi sentientistes, biocentristes et écocentristes autour de la question de qui ou de ce qui peut valoir comme un récipiendaire légitime de justice. Pour débuter, j’examine le concept de justice et soutiens que la nature des obligations et droits de la justice impose des contraintes sur les types d’entités pouvant être récipiendaires de justice. Plus particulièrement, je prétends que tout récipiendaire de justice doit être titulaire de droits de revendication morale applicables. Je propose ensuite que cette thèse a des conséquences importantes pour la querelle parmi les sentientistes, les biocentristes et les écocentristes. En bref, je démontre que les sentientistes ne peuvent exclure les êtres nonsentients du domaine de la justice simplement en niant qu’ils ont des « intérêts de la bonne sorte », alors que les biocentristes et écocentristes ne peuvent passer sans difficultés d’un aspect quelconque des êtres vivants ou des écosystèmes à des droits de justice. Enfin, je soutiens que ce désaccord sur les limites de la justice repose, en fin de compte, sur un désaccord d’ordre normatif à propos des entités possédant des droits de revendication morale, et que l’argument pour des droits propres aux êtres vivants ou aux écosystèmes n’a toujours pas été prouvé de manière convaincante. (shrink)

This article offers a novel interpretation of enacted knowledge through the lens of Wang Yangming’s theory of the unity of knowledge and action. By framing Wang’s concept of knowledge within an enactive model, it advances a holistic perspective that integrates mind, body, and world, as well as knowledge and action, into a unified whole. To bridge historical analysis with contemporary philosophical discourse, this article engages in dialogue with Harvey Lederman’s introspective model, offering a complementary framework that, together, provides a more (...) precise and comprehensive understanding of Wang’s philosophy. Moving beyond Lederman’s dichotomy of correspondence and identity, I introduce a third interpretation of ‘unity’: the Continuum Thesis. This interpretation places a more fundamental focus on the original condition of moral knowledge, presenting it as a singular entity that inherently integrates the distinct aspects of knowledge and action. By asserting that ‘action just is knowledge’, Wang indeed affirmed their original unity. (shrink)

Medical knowledge as well as clinical practice are characterized by inescapable uncertainty. There are many reasons this is the case, but foremost among them is that almost everything in medicine is inevitably vague, be it something linguistic such as the term “illness”, or something extra-linguistic such as the condition referred to as illness. If we ask ourselves, then, what the term “illness” means exactly, on the one hand; and how we may precisely delimit the condition illness, on the other; we (...) shall realize that to answer these and similar questions requires specific methods that enable us to adequately cope with vagueness. As we shall see below, fuzzy logic provides us with just such methods. (shrink)

Le mot «milieu» est précieux pour souligner que les installations humaines – l’architecture, la ville – tiennent compte de leur environnement, naturel ou bâti. Avant de configurer «un monde», l’art humain configure un lieu et même l’élit et le transfigure en le métamorphosant, faisant de milieux donnés des «lieux» habitables voire mémorables aux multiples formes de délimitations, d’échanges et de devenir. La notion de milieu habité est mise en perspective et pensée en termes de limites, passages, liens et métamorphoses.

Cet ouvrage vise à délimiter le champ d'investigation de la philosophie de l'esprit. Il comprend huit chapitres. Le premier, le plus général, se veut une première délimitation du champ d'investigation de la philosophie de l'esprit à l'aide de ses trois concepts clés: l'intentionnalité, la rationalité et la conscience. Le chapitre suivant se veut une réflexion plus générale sur les motivations philosophiques qui commandent des jugements si opposés sur le statut ontologique et épistémologique de la psychologie du sens commun. Le chapitre (...) IV dresse un tableau de ces différents programmes et des grands courants de la philosophie de l'esprit, en commençant par le behaviorisme, le physicalisme, le fonctionnalisme et le connexionnisme. Les trois chapitres suivants porteront sur les problèmes et débats liés à la naturalisation des trois propriétés principales de l'esprit, des trois problèmes principaux de la philosophie de l'esprit, soit les concepts d'intentionnalité, de rationalité et de conscience. Le chapitre V porte, d'une part, sur la nature de l'intentionnalité et les différents concepts de directionnalité (aboutness) que l'on retrouve actuellement en philosophie de l'esprit ; d'autre part, il s'agira pour nous de décrire et de classer les différents programmes de naturalisation de l'intentionnalité. Le chapitre six est ouvre de nouvelles perpectives en ce qu'il porte sur la nature de la rationalité et sur les différentes tentatives et arguments en faveur de sa naturalisation. Le chapitre VII s'attaque au problème central de la philosophie de l'esprit, à savoir la conscience. (shrink)

American distance running legend Steve Prefontaine – ‘Pre’ – claimed that he was an artist and that his races were works of art. In this article, I examine and defend Pre’s claims. Using Robert Stecker’s definition of art as a guide, I argue that a race can be a work of art – specifically, performance art. I then argue that Pre’s 3,000 m American record race at the 1972 Bislett Games in Oslo, Norway, and his 5,000 m final at the (...) 1972 Munich Olympics illustrate his view of himself as an artist and are works of art in Stecker’s sense of achieving excellence in fulfilling an artistic function. (shrink)

The work of Arnout Geulincx (1624?1669), a Flemish Cartesian that developed a highly curious ?parallelistic? view on the universe, shows striking prima facie resemblances to Stoicism. Should we label Geulincx a reinventor of Stoic tenets, albeit within a strict Cartesian theoretical framework? To answer this question, my contribution begins by discussing relevant aspects of Stoicism and by introducing the ?existential? philosophy of Geulincx, whose metaphysical views on man brought him to adopt an ethics based upon absolute obedience and humility. (...) It will discuss Geulincx's own views on the Stoics and, finally, compare Geulincx's philosophy with the Stoic world view. The main argument will be that, despite a deep affinity and many parallels, one crucial difference remains, as the dualism any true Cartesian metaphysics implies has important consequences for Geulincx's ethics in general and for his view on man in particular. As we will see, man plays a very peculiar role in the cosmic drama that we call the ?universe? (shrink)

La problématique générale de ce symposium est celle de la confrontation de la philosophie, considérée dans son unicité comme une démarche critique à laquelle rien de ce qui est humain n’est étranger et les religions dans leur diversité à travers l’espace et le temps. Il en résulte des types de rapports très divers, selon que la philosophie emprunte aux religions certains thèmes de sa réflexion ou que, par ses concepts, elle contribue à la théorisation dogmatique de celles-ci. La question essentielle (...) demeure aujourd’hui celle des rapports entre la raison philosophique et les croyances religieuses, que l’on en fasse l’histoire ou qu’en fonction des évolutions de l’une et des autres dans le monde contemporain, l’on tente d’en inventer des formes nouvelles. (shrink)

This chapter shows how public philosophy presents multifaceted opportunities for us not only to contemplate the ethics and politics of our food supply and food choices but also to act upon these reflections. It also discusses the role of philosophers in food activism and considers the more egalitarian possibilities of food in a post‐COVID‐19 world. Philosophy can be used to assess the ethics and power inequalities within the food industry. The aim is to expand “foodie culture” into an (...) ethical foodie culture while highlighting vegetarian restaurants and creating accessible vegetarian recipes. Food systems include animals, humans, and the ecosystem, which are embedded within neocolonialist practices of “former” colonial powers exercising economic and cultural dominion over formerly colonized nations. Food choice can be a form of activism for anyone but especially for women of color who bear the disproportionate brunt of the harms associated with the factory farming industry and climate change. (shrink)

Children are surrounded by a lot of problems here and there, and they often show any tendency to answer them promptly. In this paper, I argue that helping children understand their problems properly before answering them is one of the good ways of meta-thinking teaching in philosophy for children, and then I suggest how teachers help them do so.

La philosophie de M. Heidegger, encore en plein développement, ne peut pas être présentée dans un simple système. Dans ses dernières publications, M. Heidegger insiste sur la différence et la distance qui existent entre Etre et les « étants » . Pourtant cet Etre a besoin de s'installer en sa vérité dans les « étants ». L'histoire de la métaphysique occidentale est l'histoire de l'oubli de l'Etre, du subjectivisme et du nihilisme. Cette négligence trouve quand même son origine dans l'Etre (...) lui-même. L'Etre est infini et en même temps, dans son essence, fini. M. Heidegger veut ainsi indiquer que la différence entre l'Etre et tout ce qui est ne peut être comprise par une dialectique quelconque. L'Etre se soustrait à la logique de la raison humaine. Il n'est pas un fondement ni un « étant » suprême, ni une base métaphysique), mais un processus mystérieux de s'ouvrir, c'est-àdire arriver et disparaître dans l'horizon du temps. Quand l'homme se vainc comme subjectivité, il se place dans cette ouverture, cette transcendance pure qui manifeste l'Etre. Il surmonte les « étants » délimités, se rendant compte de leur stabilité falacieuse. Ici, tout ce qui est se montre dans sa particularité, dans le secret de sa contingence et se trouve ainsi dans le cercle lumineux de l'Etre. (shrink)

1, this article chooses three famous sayings, discusses the laozi philosophy the dialectical thought and its modern significance. And the suggestion, the philosophy needs to make the contribution for the world peace 2, the atomic bomb and the violence, threaten humanity's life, is this century characteristic. The science is developed, the humanity has not obtained the perfect happiness, on the contrary actually is the threat which the world trend perishes. Take this fact as the example, has proven the (...) Laozi "为学日益,为道日 损." Dialectical thought. 3, "民不畏死,奈何以死惧之" Laozi speech, its meaning is, regarding the death, feared with did not fear, is relative, may transform. Resolves the contradiction with the military force, died threatens others, if others do not fear death, you do not have themeans. Explained person's will, it cannot use the military force to conquer. Must solve the various countries dispute, is impossible with the military force. 4, the Laozi thought what the world is weakest is the water, it may have the flood tremendous strength, is because has an invariable intention. Always unceasingly flows, achieved the horizontal position, or the condition is tranquil, only then stops. But the humanity similarly has one forever invariable intention, is requests the equality, request peace. Therefore people's intention, is the invincible tremendous strength. This is a truth. (shrink)

Some self-knowledge must be arrived at by the subject herself, rather than being transmitted by another’s testimony. Yet in many cases the subject interacts with an expert in part because she is likely to have the relevant knowledge of their mind. This raises a question: what is the expert’s knowledge like that there are barriers to simply transmitting it by testimony? I argue that the expert’s knowledge is, in some circumstances, proleptic, referring to attitudes the subject would hold were she (...) to reflect in certain ways. The expert’s knowledge cannot be transmitted by testimony because self-knowledge cannot be proleptic. (shrink)

Et si la meilleure manière de se découvrir philosophe était de se sentir interpellé par les interrogations de la vie? La vie quand elle nous bouscule et bouleverse, quand elle nous fait basculer dans d'imprévisibles vertiges... N'avons-nous pas été un jour saisi de plein fouet par l'étrange sentiment du vertige? Vertige d'exister, vertige du doute. vertige de vivre, vertige d'aimer, vertige du désir, de la beauté, de la liberté, mais aussi vertige du mal, de l'angoisse, du temps, de la mort... (...) Pourquoi le vertige? Le vertige est toujours lié à la question du pourquoi, mais c'est un pourquoi qui nous jette en bordure d'abîme. Nous perdons pied devant d'impossibles réponses. Ce n'est pas seulement la raison qui bascule. C'est nous-même, c'est notre vie. Et si c'était là notre condition même? Ne sommes-nous pas des êtres finis, éphémères, contingents et mortels? Qu'y a-t-il donc derrière nos vertiges? Peut-on en dire les lieux, en délimiter les contours, essayer d'en explorer les voies? Le vertige est proposé ici comme un lieu d'éveil et comme l'exercice d'un travail sur soi : salutaire arrachement au confort, aux conventions, aux habitudes acquises. Mais aussi ouverture aux manifestations insoupçonnées de la vie, appel à l'invention de soi, aux remodelages de nos choix. Expériences que nous souhaitons propices à d'étonnantes découvertes. Elles peuvent conduire à la lumière d'un autre regard sur soi. (shrink)