This paper engages with the theme of disgrace from a Bourdieusian point of view. Starting out from a specific definition of ‘grace’ in terms of misrecognition, it goes on to consider some of the ways in which disgrace can be generated and some of the ways it can be handled by the disgraced party. While there are certainly many intra-field modalities of the genesis of disgrace, including violation of the rules of the game, the paper also emphasizes (...) that disgrace can be generated by cross-field events, necessitating a switch of perspective from individuals in one field to individuals in multiple fields. This is also true of strategies for coping with disgrace. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction: Williams's Critique of Moral Theory Disgrace and Greek tragedy The Problem of Power The Evaluation of Social and Political Institutions.

Fraudulent behavior was not unfamiliar to any of Israel’s patriarchs. Despite this, the Bible’s historiography nonetheless gives voice to two contradicting tendencies. The first aims to teach that, for every transgression that is committed, God will punish the transgressor; the other, in tension with the first, tries to lessen a figure’s guilt by finding extenuating circumstances. This paper focuses on Israel’s patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who serve as national archetypes. From among the patriarchs’ sins, we will examine only the (...) most prominent, acts of lies, deception, and fraudulence, and we will consider whether the deceivers were commensurately punished and whether any effort was made to justify them. (shrink)

Perhaps no other novel has received as much attention from moral philosophers as South African writer J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace . The novel is ethically compelling and yet no moral theory explains its force. Despite clear Kantian moments, neither rationalism nor self-respect can account for the strange ethical task that the protagonist sets for himself. Calling himself the dog man, like the ancient Cynics, this shamelessly cynical protagonist takes his cues for ethics not from humans but from animals. He (...) does not however claim much in the way of empathy or understanding of animals, and his own odd motives remain a puzzle throughout the stages of his ethical transformation. Many scholars approach Coetzee’s text through an ethics of alterity, and even argue that Disgrace is exemplary in this regard. Kristeva’s rendition of alterity ethics brings us close to the novel’s vision, and yet the novel points towards a more primordial basis for ethics in the search for meaning through the human encounter with other animal species. (shrink)

This article situates Dostoevsky’s short story A Disgraceful Affair in a Lacanian, psychoanalytic context in order to interrogate Bakhtin’s reading of Dostoevsky’s poetics through his concepts of the ‘carnivalesque’, the ‘chronotope’, and the ‘threshold’. Focusing on ‘shame’ and ‘repetition’ as functions of Otherness in this story, it will analyse the aesthetic means by which Dostoevsky constructs a ‘new’ pathological subject. It argues that in this neglected short story Dostoevsky’s protagonist can be analysed much like the ‘subjects’ of poststructuralism, creating a (...) split subject of ‘Russian’ history. (shrink)

Bruce L. Kinzer provides the first comprehensive investigation of J.S. Mill's multifaceted engagement with the Irish question, the fundamental issues inherent in British-Irish politics.

In "Worlding World Literatures and Coetzee's Disgrace" Miaomiao Wang explores the concept of world literature as world-making activity, which gains in elliptical refraction, translation, and mode of reading. With the example of J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace, Wang illustrates cultural variations between the original English text and the Chinese translation of Disgrace through cultural filtering and literary misreading. Further, Wang analyzes images of "otherness" in Coetzee's text with regard to East Asia, especially in China, through the assimilation of the (...) cultural rules of national literature and its literary discourse thus making it part of world literature. Wang argues that cultural variation and the images of otherness can be attributed global importance as an emerging world literary canon and its aesthetic ideology. (shrink)

How can educators and their students interrogate the ethics and politics of suffering in ways that do not create fixed and totalized narratives from the past? In responding to this question, this essay draws on J. M. Coeetze’s Disgrace, and discusses how this novel constitutes a crucial site for bearing witness to the suffering engendered by apartheid through inventing new forms of mourning and community. The anti-historicist stance of the novel is grounded on the notion that bearing witness to (...) suffering without betraying it means refusing to represent it, that is, refusing to translate history and speak of it; instead, the novel’s characters remain inconsolable before history. The essay builds on these ideas and considers whether educators and their students need to (re)learn the limits of historicism in comprehending conflict, oppression, otherness and suffering; also, it examines the educational implications of such a pedagogical task. (shrink)

Abstract:This article is concerned with the role of Buddhist philosophy, and more broadly of non-Western philosophies, within the discipline of philosophy as this is professed and practiced today. I begin by deliberately engaging in a game of definitions to demonstrate that, whichever of the definitions standardly employed to deny non-Western philosophy the prestigious moniker, Buddhism nevertheless wins: it does count as philosophy. Having made that point, however, I go on to effectively undermine it by pointing out that anyone can win (...) the game if they get to make up the rules. Given that the score is arbitrary, then, I show up the game itself as absurd. On this basis, I ultimately cry foul at the perpetuation of a game still so plainly played on fields far from level, and therefore argue against excusing philosophers engaged in it of the charge of racism. (shrink)

Disgrace , by J.M. Coetzee, is a story of a rape; more, it is a tale in which the victim of the rape, Lucy Lurie, is silent. She demands neither sympathy nor justice for what happens toher, presenting herself as neither a victim nor someone seeking revenge. Instead she stands as a witness, and does so by adopting an attitude reminiscent of the thinking of Simone Weil—rejecting the possibility of rights, and not looking for explanations. Rape, Coetzee thus suggests, (...) is an act without meaning, a trauma whose reality cannot be exorcised through narration. Fittingly, therefore, the novel ends with a tableau of Lucy growing flowers in her garden; living, like Candide, without rationalisation or consolatory myth. (shrink)

The focus of this article is two texts, ‘Advancing Luna – and Ida B. Wells’ (1982) by Alice Walker and Disgrace(1999) by J.M. Coetzee, both of which present ethical problems for the reader. The texts share a common event, an incident of black-on-white, male-on-female rape. In each case the white woman keeps silent about the rape and the narrative is troubled by that silence. I read the dilemma of these texts as at once ethical, political and aesthetic and I (...) explore that multi-faceted problem through three perspectives – the issue of silence, the narrative structures of the texts and the impossibility of resolution. The texts repeatedly question my reading position, not least in that they both suggest that the silence of the white woman might, in certain circumstances, be a condition for political progress. (shrink)

In June 2002, Arthur Andersen LLP became the first accounting firm in history to be criminally convicted. The repercussions were immense. From a position as one of the leading professional services firms in the world, with 85,000 staff in 84 countries and revenues in excess of $9 billion, Andersen effectively ceased to exist within a matter of months. Although Andersen’s conviction related specifically to a charge of obstructing justice, public attention focused on the audit relationship between Andersen and its major (...) client, Enron Corporation, particularly the actions (and inactions) that had allowed Enron to post spectacular year-on-year earnings and profit growth. As well as examining events leading up to the demise of Andersen, the case provides an opportunity to consider the broader controversy over accounting and corporate governance practices and, more generally, the pressures found within organisations that can foster unethical conduct. The case was prepared from public sources. (shrink)

This text seeks to rethink the relationship between literature and the gendered construction of national boundaries. It does so by proposing a reconsideration of the terms singularity, difference and literariness while analysing two talked-about and best-selling postcolonial novels, Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee and Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk.

For healing the land and human relationships to land are a step toward healing a troubled relationship, borne of a history, which is painful for native people and shameful for settlers. Protection...

The most disturbing gift that Disgrace presents to its readers is the hushed resolve with which Lucy Lurie emerges from her rape to reaffirm her way of life. To consider that way of life, the reader is first invited to align oneself with David Lurie's initial normative reading of his daughter's rape; but then, in a second important step, to join in the change of mind by which David overcomes this initial blindness. Imagine what accepting the invitation to take (...) both of these steps demands of the reader: Will you let yourself undergo a change of mind with David to resee Lucy as resolute and proactive? Will you allow yourself to think along with Lucy that horrific violence does not demand retaliation?Descriptions of... (shrink)

By the slant of their aims, presidential candidates rely on their own rhetorical arsenal to win the acquiescence of the public. Hedges and boosters, two subcategories of metadiscourse markers, are among the rhetorical tropes which assist politicians to increase or decrease commitment, blur or sharpen the boundaries between good and evil, and bolster or emasculate solidarity. Despite the many functions hedges and boosters can play in political discourse, studies that address these devices in relation to their persuasive effect in televised (...) presidential debates cross-linguistically are tremendously scant. To this aim, the current study examined the hedging and boosting strategies used by the winners of American and Iranian presidential elections during one of their latest televised debates. A bottom–up method of analysis was adopted to analyze the debates in terms of hedges and boosters, and a functional model in light of what surfaced in the analysis along with awareness of the existing literature was proposed. The study showed that not only were the frequencies significantly different, but the functions these devices fulfilled were also varied cross-linguistically as the winners of both groups demonstrated diverse tendencies towards using hedges and boosters. (shrink)

“That is no country for old men” is the famous first line of Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium,” which reflects upon aging, art, and immortality. Yeats sug­gests in his poem that the aged ought to move from the sensual, physical world of their youth to a world of intellect and timeless beauty. We em­ploy this poem and that line to explore the aging male protagonists in two recent novels: Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men, and J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace. We (...) suggest that though both of the novel’s pro­tagonists have aspirations to ’sail to Byzantium’, various factors ranging from their characters to the problematic realities of contemporary south­west America and South Africa make such a wholesale, successful journey impossible even though some progress is made. (shrink)

Disgraced ex-president Richard Nixon is walking on a beach when he meets his neighbour and poet, Raymond Carver. History has chosen to revere one man and revile the other, yet when they sit down to tell each other their life stories, it seems their experiences are not so different after all.

Recent corporate disgraces and corruption have heightened concerns about ethically questionable behavior in business. The construct of ethically questionable behavior is an under-portrayed area of management field research, and deserves further studying, especially in sales positions. This study uses four variables from the human resource management field to explain the ethically questionable behavior of sales representatives in the pharmaceutical industry. These variables include frame pattern, commission structure, behavior control type, and marketing norm perceptions. This work uses a 2  2 (...)  2  2 subject experimental design, and 328 fully completed questionnaires for logistic regression analysis. Results suggest that a medical representative in a loss frame, in a high commission structure, in loose behavior control, and in a low perception of marketing norm, is more likely affected by heuristic biases and make an ethically questionable choice. (shrink)

An essential text for understanding Socrates, Xenophon's Memorabilia is the compelling tribute of an affectionate student to his teacher, providing a rare firsthand account of Socrates' life and philosophy. The Memorabilia is invaluable both as a work of philosophy in its own right and as a complement to the study of Plato's dialogues. The longest of Xenophon's four Socratic works, it is particularly revealing about the differences between Socrates and his philosophical predecessors. Far more obviously than Plato in the dialogues, (...) Xenophon calls attention in the Memorabilia to his own relationship with Socrates. A colorful and fully engaged writer, Xenophon aims above all to convince his readers of the greatness of Socrates' thought and the disgracefulness of his conviction on a capital charge. In thirty-nine chapters, Xenophon presents Socrates as an ordinary person and as a great benefactor to those associated with him. (shrink)

It is often suggested that our desires vary in motivational strength or power. In a paper expressing skepticism about this idea, Irving Thalberg asked what he described, tongue in cheek, as "a disgracefully naive question" (1985, p. 88): "What do causal and any other theorists mean when they rate the strength of our PAs," that is, our "desires, aversions, preferences, schemes, and so forth"? His "guiding question" in the paper seems straightforward (p. 98): "What is it for our motivational states (...) to have some degree of power to generate behavior?" Yet, he argued, ''as soon as we endeavor to clarify what philosophers of action and drive theorists in psychology mean by motivational strength, we run across one obscurity after another" (p. 103). This essay is an attempt to answer a more specific version of Thalberg's question. (shrink)

The logical hexagon (or hexagon of opposition) is a strange, yet beautiful, highly symmetrical mathematical figure, mysteriously intertwining fundamental logical and geometrical features. It was discovered more or less at the same time (i.e. around 1950), independently, by a few scholars. It is the successor of an equally strange (but mathematically less impressive) structure, the “logical square” (or “square of opposition”), of which it is a much more general and powerful “relative”. The discovery of the former did not raise interest, (...) neither among logicians, nor among philosophers of logic, whereas the latter played a very important theoretical role (both for logic and philosophy) for nearly two thousand years, before falling in disgrace in the first half of the twentieth century: it was, so to say, “sentenced to death” by the so-called analytical philosophers and logicians. Contrary to this, since 2004 a new, unexpected promising branch of mathematics (dealing with “oppositions”) has appeared, “oppositional geometry” (also called “n-opposition theory”, “NOT”), inside which the logical hexagon (as well as its predecessor, the logical square) is only one term of an infinite series of “logical bi-simplexes of dimension m”, itself just one term of the more general infinite series (of series) of the “logical poly-simplexes of dimension m”. In this paper we recall the main historical and the main theoretical elements of these neglected recent discoveries. After proposing some new results, among which the notion of “hybrid logical hexagon”, we show which strong reasons, inside oppositional geometry, make understand that the logical hexagon is in fact a very important and profound mathematical structure, destined to many future fruitful developments and probably bearer of a major epistemological paradigm change. (shrink)

The Alcibiades was widely read in antiquity as the very best introduction to Plato. Alcibiades in his youth associated with Socrates, and went on to a spectacularly disgraceful career in politics. When Socrates was executed for 'corrupting the young men', Alcibiades was cited as a prime example. This dialogue represents Socrates meeting the charming but intellectually lazy Alcibiades as he is about to enter adult life, and using all his wiles in an attempt to win him for philosophy. In spite (...) of its ancient reputation, many modern scholars have thought that the Alcibiades is not by Plato and it has therefore lacked a decent commentary. This edition remedies that lack. The notes explain difficulties of linguistic, literary and philosophical detail. The introduction includes a discussion of the dialogue's authenticity, and of the consequences that acknowledging its authenticity has for our conception of Plato's intellectual development. (shrink)

The privatization of France Telecom in 1997 led to the implementation of a profit-oriented financialization strategy. An unforgiving work environment was developed, which has unsettled many employees. Between February 2008 and October 2011, 69 employees took their own life. Many left notes blaming management for having privileged the interests of shareholders over those of employees. Through interviews with employees and professional practitioners associated with FT, we reveal that employees strongly resented the company’s use of financialization policies to maximize shareholder value. (...) Pursuit of such policies led to the de-institutionalization of socially prescribed norms that were applied commonly in Continental European workplaces. Feelings of anomie, disgrace, futility and isolation ensued among employees. This case highlights an important effect of a modern corporation’s adoption of financialization policies. It points to the need to improve workplace sensitivities and the ethical dispositions of companies and their managers. (shrink)

In Part 1, I contend (using Coriolanus as my mouthpiece) that Keeley and Clarke have failed to show that there is anything intellectually suspect about conspiracy theories per se. Conspiracy theorists need not commit the ‘fundamental attribution error’ there is no reason to suppose that all or most conspiracy theories constitute the cores of degenerating research programs, nor does situationism - a dubious doctrine in itself - lend any support to a systematic skepticism about conspiracy theories. In Part 2. I (...) argue (in propria persona) that the idea that there is something suspect about conspiracy theories is one of the most dangerous and idiotic superstitions to disgrace our political culture. (shrink)

In the Doctrine of Right, Kant claims that killings motivated by the fear of disgrace should be punished less severely than other murders. I consider how Kant understands the mitigating force of such motives, and argue that Kant takes agents to have a moral right to defend their honour. Unlike other rights, however, this right of honour can only be defended personally, so that individuals remain in a 'state of nature' with regard to any such rights, regardless of their (...) political situation. According to Kant, we should be lenient in these cases because the malefactors are caught between two kinds of authentic normative demand, at a point where the proper authority of the state collides with a certain authority which individuals must claim for themselves. (shrink)

Susan Okin has written an important book on justice and the family. Animated by the experiences that contemporary feminism has sought to articulate, and guided by a principled hostility to the subordination of women that continues to disgrace American life, she argues that the current ordering of domestic life in the United States is unjust and that its alteration ought to be made a matter of public policy.Families, according to Okin, are not havens in an otherwise heartless world. Instead (...) the current division of domestic labor marks them as the centerpiece of a broader system of inequalities between men and women. Justice condemns those inequalities and commands their remedy through the transformation of our domestic practices. Because the division of domestic labor is so fundamental to injustice, we need in particular to ‘encourage and facilitate’ equal sharing by parents in the responsibilities of child-rearing, and in the more quotidian chores that provide the material foundation of modern domesticity. (shrink)

This translation of Nietzsche’s early _Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen_ consists of four long essays and notes for a fifth. Nietzsche planned these works as part of an extremely ambitious critique of German culture. Although the project was never completed, the essays thematically linked and should be considered as a whole. This book, which presents these important works together in English for the first time, unifies the essays, provides introductions and annotations to each, and translates them in a way that does justice to (...) the brilliance and versatility of Nietzsche’s style. The dominant idea of Nietzsche’s project is the regeneration of culture through a radical reshaping of modern educational institutions. Nietzsche believed that philosophy, the arts, and the ennobling study of antiquity had all been corrupted by systematic miseducation, the work of so-called educators, who, as culture-philistines, had disgraced the highest of vocations. In response to this fragmented modern world, Nietasche argues for the creation of a”manworthy” culture with a single uniftying style—a style that integrated theology, philosophy, education, classical scholarship, journalism, and art in a seamless, dynamic whole. This style, Nietzsche contends, can best be realized by heeding the great creative examples of the pre-Socratic philosophers, Schopenhauer, and Wagner, and by reforming education, above all the study of history and the archaic culture of Greece, so that it serves, rather than obstructs, the needs of human life. The essays include _David Strauss: Writer and Confessor_, introduced and translated by Herbert Golder; _History in the Service and Disservice of Life_, introduced by Werner Dannhauser and translated by Gary Brown; _Schopenhauer as Educator_, introduced by Richard Schacht and translated by William Arrowsmith; _Richard Wagner in Bayreuth,_ introduced and translated by Gary Brown; and _We Classicists_, introduced and translated by William Arrowsmith. (shrink)