Public health ethics, like the field of public health it addresses, traditionally has focused more on practice and particular cases than on theory, with the result that some concepts, methods, and boundaries remain largely undefined. This paper attempts to provide a rough conceptual map of the terrain of public health ethics. We begin by briefly defining public health and identifying general features of the field that are particularly relevant for a discussion of public health ethics.Public health is primarily concerned with (...) the health of the entire population, rather than the health of individuals. Its features include an emphasis on the promotion of health and the prevention of disease and disability; the collection and use of epidemiological data, population surveillance, and other forms of empirical quantitative assessment; a recognition of the multidimensional nature of the determinants of health; and a focus on the complex interactions of many factors—biological, behavioral, social, and environmental—in developing effective interventions. (shrink)

This anthology of philosophical essays explores the interpersonal and political contexts in and against which the films of ten major postwar filmmakers were made.

Focusing on four cases presented by Lloyd Wells, M.D., this paper addresses the relationship of clinical psychopathology to the philosophical concept of narrative identity. The paper begins with a review of the debate among historians, literary critics, and philosophers over the referential status of narrative identity, that is, whether the narrative self is a fictive structure unrelated to lived life or whether ordinary life is in fact lived narratively. Agreeing with those philosophers who argue for the reference of narrative identity (...) to actual life, the author analyzes the four cases from the perspective of narrative identity to determine what light this philosophical concept sheds on the various psychopathologies. Then, having used the philosophical concept to illuminate psychopathology, he reverses direction and questions what psychopathology has to offer philosophy and its notion of narrative identity. The author argues both that the philosophical concept of narrative identity contributes to our understanding of psychopathology and that psychopathology offers challenges to the philosophical notion of narrative identity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 8.4 (2001) 343-346 [Access article in PDF] Kimura Bin on Schizophrenia James Phillips With "Cogito and I: A Bio-Logical Approach," Kimura has continued his research into the core disturbance in schizophrenia. In his work, he has combined an original phenomenological approach with some fundamental concepts taken from his native Japanese and Zen culture. As in the work of others in the tradition of (...) phenomenological psychiatry, he has focused on a basic disturbance that underlies the positive symptoms found in schizophrenic conditions. In what follows, I will attempt to relate this current effort to some of his previous work on schizophrenia. I will conclude this commentary with some remarks on what I find problematic in the treatment of Heidegger.In "Cogito and I," Kimura plunges us directly into the core ego disturbance of schizophrenic patients by quoting two patients who, each in his own words, describe a pathological split between what we may call a "subjective" and an "objective" I or self. The latter is the self that acts and is recognizable by others (and by the patient) as the agent acting in the world. The former, the subjective self, is the non-objectified sense of self or self-awareness that accompanies all our actions. The two must be integrated, and it is a failure of this integration that is at the basis of the schizophrenic's ego disturbance.We can gain further clarification of this central notion in Kimura's treatment of schizophrenia through reference to some of his other discussions of the topic. In "Reflection and Self in the Schizophrenic" (Kimura 1992b), he invokes Husserlian terminology to discuss the same polarity within the self. 1 In this study, he distinguishes "simultaneous reflection" (the subjective self) from "secondary reflection" (the objective self). In the latter, the self is a noematic object of reflection; it is the image of myself after the act, the I that has done something and can now be captured in reflection. While "Cogito and I" describes the schizophrenic split as between the noematic self and the noetic self of simultaneous reflection, "Reflection and Self in the Schizophrenic" locates the split further back within the noetic self. Kimura distinguishes in the noetic self an observing I from the I that is moving toward action, both prior to the noematic self of secondary reflection. "One could say that a subjective self here accompanies an other self no less subjective and observes it constantly 'from behind'. There is no objective, noematic self involved here; a sole noetic self splits into two simultaneous 'moments' which occupy alternitively the places of seeing and seen, and which nonetheless remain subjective-noetic" (Kimura 1992b, 118). Pélicier emphasizes this Husserlian analysis in his exposition of Kimura Bin's phenomenological treatment of schizophrenia: The Self is never grasped as an object, but rather experienced in a noetic mode. On the other hand, the representation (l'image), as an object of consciousness, and in a certain manner all representations (images), as objects of consciousness, are of the noematic [End Page 343] order in Husserl's sense. Kimura insists then on the difference between this auto-perception (jikaku) in the noetic register and its content, which, itself, is noematic. Starting from this analysis, Kimura poses to himself the question of the nature of schizophrenia.... (Pélicier 1984, 32) In still another treatment of the theme, "Pathology of the Immediate" (Kimura 1992c), Kimura Bin focuses on the role of language in the structure of the self. The circuit of simultaneous and secondary reflection described above is played out in the pre-linguistic and linguistic dimensions of the self. Simultaneous reflection is immediate and fugitive in a manner that escapes articulation but at the same time, very readily flows into a secondary reflection that exists only as a mediated, articulated, noematic self. As Kimura puts it, "As for the I, which seems apparently the most immediately given, this also, when it becomes conscious of itself as 'I,' is constituted equally as an experience mediated by a negative differentiation that inserts itself between the 'I' that is in the process of becoming... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.1 (2002) 61-63 [Access article in PDF] Arguing from Neuroscience in Psychiatry James Phillips PHILIP GERRANS "A One-stage Explanation of the Cotard Delusion" provides an elegant example of the application of neuroscientific findings to known clinical phenomena in psychiatry. Gerrans argues that, in the cases of the Cotard and Capgras delusions, a one-stage explanation is sufficient to account for the clinical phenomena. That (...) is, the neuroanatomic defect and the consequent anomalous experience are sufficient to produce the delusion. According to Gerrans, we do not need to postulate that the delusion will emerge only if the anomalous experience is filtered through a faulty reasoning process (a two-stage explanation). Against the argument of Young and Leafhead (1996) that Cotard and Capgras delusions stem from the same neuroanatomic deficit and differentiate only in being processed differently—thus requiring a two-stage explanation—Gerrans argues that the respective neuroanatomic defects are in fact different, and that, therefore, the two delusional syndromes differ at the first stage and do not require the two-stage explanation suggested by Young and Leafhead.I do not have an opinion as to who is right in this disagreement, and I will devote these remarks to explaining why I do not have an opinion. In developing this explanation I will touch on what I find problematic in many discussions of neuroscience, neurocognitive models, and clinical psychiatry; I will thus use this article to highlight those problems.On the face of it, one would think that the issue raised by Gerrans should admit of a simple resolution. He argues that Capgras and Cotard delusions derive from different neural defects. Young and Leafhead, on the other hand, base their two-stage argument on the argument that the two delusions derive from the same neural defect. So which is it? Neuroscientists should be able to settle the issue and end the dispute. Gerrans remarks "that we need to look more closely at the CN [cognitive neuropsychiatric] explanation of the Capgras delusion." As he describes it, face recognition involves two components, a cognitive and an affective component, with separate neuroanatomic substrates. An individual successfully recognizes the face of a friend or acquaintance when she matches the cognitive recognition (cognitive component) with the affective tone of familiarity (second component). When there is a lesion in the neural substrate of the affective component, she may recognize the face but without the tone of familiarity. In her effort to understand her affective experience of the face as alien rather than as familiar, she may conclude that her friend has been replaced by a double. Thus we have the Capgras delusion.Let us now unpack this explanation. According to Gerrans, researchers have hypothesized [End Page 61] two anatomatically distinct pathways involved in face recognition. He writes: "Initially... these separate neuroanatomic substrates were hypothesized to lie in separate dorsal and ventral processing pathways, but the most persuasive hypothesis is that of Breen et al. that face recognition is performed in the ventral visual processing pathway, whereas covert [affective] recognition effects result from the activation of pathways connecting the ventral pathway and the limbic system. It is damage to these latter pathways that gives rise to the Capgras delusion."In other words, the explanation of Capgras delusions depends on a neurocognitive model, itself based on an unspecified base of neuroanatomic data. When Gerrans writes that "[t]he Capgras delusion arises in cases where, following a neurological accident, the pathways connecting the FRU [Face Recognition Unit] to the limbic system are damaged leaving ventral pathways and hence overt recognition unimpaired...," he means that the Capgras delusion arises in that manner if the proposed model bears any relation to the reality of the living brain and if real Capgras patients have suffered the hypothesized lesion. At this point the reader is struggling with the following questions: (1) What are the hard neuroanatomic data underpinning the neurocognitive model? (2) What is the argument for developing this model (single Face Recognition Unit with independent pathways to cognitive and affective components of face recognition) out of the hard data? (3) What is the evidence... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Madness of the Philosophers, Madness of the ClinicJames Phillips (bio)KeywordsPhilosophy, insanity, moral, natural, Hegel, KierkegaardDaniel Berthold's "Talking Cures: A Lacanian Reading of Hegel and Kierkegaard on Language and Madness" is an eloquent discussion of speech, silence, and the 'talking cure' in the three figures highlighted in the title. There is much to admire in this paper. The treatment of speech and silence in the thought of Hegel and (...) Kierkegaard, with many well-chosen quotations, offers much for reflection, both with respect to these philosophers and more generally with respect to the human condition. This is a paper that deserves more than one reading. I find nothing to criticize here and intend the following as further discussion of the themes Berthold has brought to us. Taking his cue from Lacan and reading back into the nineteenth-century figures from the perspective of Lacan's emphasis on language and what he (Lacan) terms the Symbolic, Berthold explores the question of madness in Hegel and Kierkegaard. In my remarks, I connect Berthold's analysis with older traditions of madness, distinguishing what I call the madness of the philosophers and the madness of the clinic.With the phrase, madness of the philosophers, I refer to a longstanding philosophic tradition that opposes reason and passion and attributes madness to an excess of the latter. In Berthold's paper, Hegel is the representative of this position, with his description of madness as a regression into the primitive "life of feeling." As Berthold puts it:For Hegel, madness is a "reversion" or "withdrawal" or "sinking back" of the rational consciousness into the primitive world of instincts and drives, or what Hegel calls "the life of feeling" (Gufühlsleben), which he locates in "the soul," where the "mind is still in the grip of nature"... The soul is "the form of the dull stirring, the inarticulate breathing of the spirit through its unconscious individuality" (in seiner besusstlosen Individualität)... The mind becomes "mastered" by the archaic, unconscious drives of the soul: "the natural self... gains mastery over the... rational consciousness."(2009, 301)Taking off from Lacan in his interpretation of Hegel, Berthold associates reason with language—or, in Lacan's terminology—the register of the Symbolic. Hegel's "life of feeling"—or of passion—is inarticulate, primitive, and vulnerable to madness.Berthold analyzes Kierkegaard in these categories. On the one hand, Kierkegaard is driven to silence, subjectivity, and inwardness as the native [End Page 313] ground of faith. On the other hand, he recognizes something maddening in his extreme solitude, and acknowledges his need to write as a form of self-therapy: "If I stop [writing] for a few days, right away I become ill.... So powerful an urge, so ample, so inexhaustible [is my need to write], subsist[ing] day after day for... years." Kierkegaard's compromise is his "indirect communication." By Berthold's account, Kierkegaard's silence does not rate very high for Hegel and Lacan. For Hegel it represents a regression into the primitive "life of feeling." For Lacan, Kierkegaard's silent inner self is "a myth—a 'shapeless vapor,' 'absolutely nothing.'" As we shall see, Kierkegaard's ambivalence toward silence and speech (or writing) does not fit neatly into the equation of silence and madness.What, however, in contrast to this madness of the philosophers, is the madness of the clinic?1 It is madness caused by disease, whether the latter be understood in ancient terminology of humors, or more modern terminology of brain disease. For a quick review of how clinical madness has played off against the madness of the philosophers, we can turn to the philosophers themselves, invoking Plato as our first guide, because he speaks of both kinds of madness. On the one hand, with his tripartite division of the soul, he is one of the inaugurators of the philosophic vision of madness as an overcoming of the rational part of the soul by the appetitive side. On the other hand, he implicitly endorses the Hippocratic, medical view of madness with a statement like this: "A man who commits one of these crimes might be suffering from insanity, or be as good as insane either because... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Non-Cartesian Frameworks”James Phillips (bio)Whither psychoanalytic theory and practice? This is the question raised by Louis Berger as he confronts psychoanalysis’s response to the collapse of Cartesianism that has shaken the foundations of other humanist disciplines (as well as the natural sciences) and has finally caught up with Freud’s heirs. Anyone wanting evidence of this shakeup in psychoanalysis need only consult the final 1994 issue of (...) the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis. For the seventy-fifth anniversary edition of the journal, the editors organized a symposium on “The Conceptualization and Communication of Clinical Facts in Psychoanalysis.” In his foreword to the 300-page issue, the editor, David Tuckett (1994, 865–70), evokes the theoretical pluralism that has beset the field and asserts what is the presupposition of all the articles that follow: There are no theory-free facts, and the challenge now is to deal with this reality.I think I can assume, however, that for Berger these papers would mostly fall into his category of “not going far enough.” He invokes a Cartesian representationalism, critiqued variously by Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Castoriadis, that continues to infect even such discussions of fact and theory in psychoanalysis as those in the landmark volume of the International Journal. Thus, though that volume may represent the official announcement of the death of positivism in psychoanalysis, it stops short of announcing the profession’s entry into the postmodern era. Indeed, it should be noted that in much contemporary discussion, an awareness of the issues of theoretical pluralism and fact/theory dilemmas rests quite comfortably with the most blatant examples of representational thinking. The object-relations tradition, for instance, remains such a dominant force that most of us would have a hard time giving up our talk of internal objects and internal representations.Berger’s presentation of the three critics of representational thought is clear and enlightening. The inclusion of Castoriadis is important because he, unlike Heidegger and Wittgenstein, is a clinician. Berger’s application of this critique of representation to psychoanalysis, and specifically to the question of the theory/practice relationship, is also developed in a meaningful way. (For a development of the critique of representational thinking that emphasizes the role of Locke in expanding the Cartesian tradition, see Nasser 1994.) Since I am in agreement with the thrust of Berger’ s presentation and have little to add to it, I will focus my comments on one area that I think does warrant further discussion—the relations between the postmodern and other postempiricist or postpositivist traditions. Although some writers (e.g., Leary 1994; Silverman 1994) tend to group movements such as postmodernism, hermeneutics, [End Page 187] and social constructionism together, Berger’s argument singles out postmodernism as the only truly nonrepresentational postempiricist movement.Of the other non-Cartesian traditions, Berger says that “their tacit retention of representationalism (including its concomitant, the theory/practice dichotomy) demonstrates their failure to identify, adequately understand, or avoid key Cartesian difficulties and limitations. They fail to appreciate the effects which accompany enframing.” He adds later: “I have been making my point with examples drawn mostly from the American Middle School, but I submit that any analytic position that invokes models or analogous logical formalisms—e.g., hermeneutic, self-psychological, constructionist, action linguistic—is subject to the identical criticisms.” I wish to take up the case of hermeneutics and question whether its differentiation from postmodernism does indeed revolve around the issue of representational thought. Sorting this issue out will bear on the final conclusions of Berger’s paper. It is true, as Berger points out, that hermeneutic discussion in psychoanalysis often involves a comparison of (representationally articulated) models; but that is not the whole story regarding hermeneutics. Remember, after all, that Heidegger—directly in Being and Time (1962, 62), and indirectly through his profound influence on Gadamer—was a pivotal figure in the development of hermeneutics. Heidegger considered his analysis of man’s precognitive enmeshment in the world to be a “hermeneutic of Dasein.” For his part, Gadamer’s analysis of man’s relations to others and to the world concludes in a relationship that is mediated through a language that is fully dialectical and... (shrink)

Book Information Off the Beaten Track. Off the Beaten Track Heidegger Martin, trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, 291, AUS$49.95 By Heidegger Martin., trans. Julian Young. and Kenneth Haynes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 291. AUS$49.95.

In 1933 the philosopher Martin Heidegger declared his allegiance to Hitler. Ever since, scholars have asked to what extent his work is implicated in Nazism. To address this question properly involves neither conflating Nazism and the continuing philosophical project that is Heidegger's legacy, nor absolving Heidegger and, in the process, turning a deaf ear to what he himself called the philosophical motivations for his political engagement. It is important to establish the terms on which Heidegger aligned himself with National Socialism. (...) On the basis of an untimely but by no means unprecedented understanding of the mission of the German people, the philosopher first joined but then also criticized the movement. An exposition of Heidegger's conception of Volk hence can and must treat its merits and deficiencies as a response to the enduring impasse in contemporary political philosophy of the dilemma between liberalism and authoritarianism. (shrink)

This paper addresses the role of categories and dimensions in the classification of psychopathology. While psychopathology does not sort itself out neatly into natural categories, we do find rough, symptom-based groupings that, through refinement, become diagnostic categories. Given that these categories suffer from comorbidity, uncertain boundaries, and excessive “unspecified disorder” diagnoses, there has been a move toward refining the diagnoses with dimensional measures. The paper traces efforts both to improve the diagnostic categories with validators that allow at least partial validity (...) and to introduce dimensional measures into the diagnostic manual. Drawing from the philosophical pragmatism of Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, which emphasizes the practical, effect-sensitive consequences of a theory along with an emphasis on empirical evidence and the progressive, probabilistic character of knowledge, the paper argues that these efforts must be guided both by scientific validity and clinical utility. (shrink)

Kant's treatment of pure aesthetic judgement can ignore ugliness, since an analytic of the ugly, according to a recent essay by Paul Guyer, uncovers the aesthetic impurity of the criteria against which we judge ugliness. Free beauty, as Kant expounds it, does not admit a contrary, and hence a Kantian account of ugliness, such as Guyer's, must look elsewhere in order to scrabble together terms for its definition. Yet if we recognise the ugly by its unsuitability as an object of (...) pure contemplation, then we have made a disinterested judgement of free ugliness. The pleasure of the harmony of the faculties, which is a pleasure in the way the world and our faculties fit together, observes itself contradicted by ugliness. (shrink)

Arendt’s reading of Kant’s aesthetics as political theory has proven contentious, as exegesis regarding the Critique of the Power of Judgment and still more as description of the concerns and norms of political action. Although Arendt’s politicisation of aesthetics is more fraught than she at times admits (but less reckless than some of her critics maintain while also more anarchic than some of her defenders acknowledge), I argue her insight into the republican promise of the model of non–conformist sociability that (...) Kant discerns among aesthetic judges is worth securing. Arendt appeals to Kant’s sensus communis, pure aesthetic judgement, impure aesthetic judgement and works of art in order to make sense of a mode of political sociability that avoids both atomisation and uniformity. For Arendt, the various ways political history and philosophy have conceived political bodies have been less adroit at preserving the openness of the political than Kant’s aesthetic community. (shrink)

Our lives are dominated by technology. We live with and through the achievements of technology. What is true of the rest of life is of course true of medicine. Many of us owe our existence and our continued vigour to some achievement of medical technology. And what is true in a major way of general medicine is to a significant degree true of psychiatry. Prozac has long since arrived, and in its wake an ever-growing armamentarium of new psychotropics; beyond that, (...) neuroscience promises ever more technological advances for the field. -/- However, the effect of technology on the field of psychiatry remains highly ambiguous. On the one hand there are the achievements, both in the science and practice of psychiatry; on the other hand technology's influence on the field threatens its identity as a humanistic practice. In this ambiguity psychiatry is not unique - major thinkers have for a long time been highly ambivalent and concerned about the technological order that now defines modern society. For the future, the danger is that the psychiatrically real becomes that which can be seen, the symptom, and especially that which can be measured. Disorders and treatments might become reduced to what can be defined by diagnostic criteria and what can be mapped out on a scale. -/- This book exams how technology has come to influence and drive psychiatry forward, and considers at just what cost these developments have been made. It includes a range of stimulating and thought-provoking chapters from a range of psychiatrists and philosophers. (shrink)

James Phillips’s _Sternberg and Dietrich: The Phenomenology of Spectacle_ reappraises the cinematic collaboration between the Austrian-American filmmaker Josef von Sternberg (1894–1969) and the German-American actor Marlene Dietrich (1901–1992). Considered by his contemporaries to be one of the most significant directors of Golden-Age Hollywood, Sternberg made seven films with Dietrich that helped establish her as a style icon and star and entrenched his own reputation for extravagance and aesthetic spectacle. These films enriched the technical repertoire of the industry, challenged (...) the sexual mores of the times, and notoriously tried the patience of management at Paramount Studios. Sternberg and Dietrich: The Phenomenology of Spectacle demonstrates how under Sternberg’s direction Paramount’s sound stages became laboratories for novel thought experiments. Analyzing in depth the last four films on which Sternberg and Dietrich worked together, Phillips reconstructs the “cinematic philosophy” that Sternberg claimed for himself in his autobiography and for whose fullest expression Dietrich was indispensable. This book makes a case for the originality and perceptiveness with which these films treat such issues as the nature of trust, the status of appearance, the standing of women, the ethics and politics of the image, and the relationship between cinema and the world. Sternberg and Dietrich: The Phenomenology of Spectacle reveals that more is at stake in these films than the showcasing of a new star and the confectionery of glamor: Dietrich emerges here as a woman at ease in the world without being at home in it, as both an image of autonomy and the autonomy of the image. (shrink)

Toward A Sociological Imagination builds on the ideas C. Wright Mills expressed in The Sociological Imagination for an approach to the scientific method broad enough to open up to the full range of knowledge within the sociology discipline. In this book, nine sociologists and one philosopher provide detailed tests of the utility of the approach within diverse substantive sociological areas.

To achieve its goals of managing andrestricting access to psychiatric care, managedcare organizations rely on an instrument, theoutpatient treatment report, that carriessignificant implications about how they viewpsychiatric patients and psychiatric care. Inaddition to involving ethical transgressionssuch as violation of patient confidentiality,denial of access to care, spurious use ofconcepts like quality of care, and harassmentof practitioners, the managed care approachalso depends on an overly technical,instrumental interpretation of human beings andpsychiatric treatment. It is this grounding ofmanaged care in technical reason that I (...) willexplore in this study. I begin with a reviewof a typical outpatient treatment report andshow how, with its dependence on the DSM-IV,on behavioral symptoms and patient`functioning'', on the biomedical model ofpsychiatric illness, and on gross quantitativemeasures, the report results in a crude,skeletonized view of the human being as acongeries of behavioral symptoms and functions. I then develop the managed care construal ofhuman existence further by showing itsgrounding in technical reason, exploring thelatter in its modern embodiment and deriving itand its opposite, practical reason, fromAristotle''s distinction between technical andpractical reason, techne and phronesis. Inthis analysis of the role of technical reasonin managed care, I point out that managed caredid not have to develop its rationale de novobut could rather lift its arguments, e.g. thebiomedical model, from contemporary psychiatryand simply apply them in a restrictive manner. Finally, I conclude this study by arguing forpsychiatry''s status as a discipline ofpractical knowledge. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Limits of Self-ConstitutionJames Phillips, MD (bio)I am in general agreement with the authors that a psychoanalytic or psychodynamic approach is a good response to simple pruning procedures. That said, however, I do have questions about how they develop their argument.I was surprised at the very notion of pruning, and quite surprised that it is as popular as the authors suggest. The idea that Pete should deal with (...) his inappropriate outbursts by erasing or pruning that aspect of his personality seems so ridiculous that it beggars belief. It leaves one wondering whether Pete, or anyone agreeing with this argument, is credulous enough to think you can just prune away an undesirable part of yourself.The authors write:Importantly, this expulsion is often thought to be a good thing not simply because the undesirable elements are morally wanting but because in some important sense, they are not really a part of the agent proper. This point many seem extravagantly wishful, but is intuitively plausible.Really, “intuitively plausible” that personality traits are not part of the agent? I can understand that the agent may not grasp his or her involvement in the undesirable trait, but to argue that the trait is in reality not part of agent is a very odd claim on the part of the authors.When the authors write that “It would be difficult to exaggerate the prominence of the pruning view of agential self-constitution in philosophy,” they are strongly connecting the notions of pruning and self-constitution. I am aware that self-constitution is a major theme for philosophers like Korsgaard. The authors strongly embrace this principle in drawing out their arguments.In a footnote to their article the authors claim that various notions of a “true self” imply a pruned self. For Winnicott, an originator of the “true self,” this note of pruning does not hold. Winnicott contrasts the true self, a sense of self based on spontaneous authentic experience and a feeling of being alive, with a false self, a defensive veneer without the vivacity of the true self. The notion of pruning simply does not belong in this discussion.What the authors and their supporting philosophers leave out are two limitations to self-constitution. For the first, let me invoke another philosopher, Martin Heidegger, and his notion of “thrownness”—Geworfenheit. We are “thrown” into the world in the particular circumstances of our birth. We do not self-constitute our beginnings; we are plunged into them. The question then becomes what we make of these beginnings. [End Page 209] If they are undesirable, we can brood over them, or we can attempt to overcome them. And as we all know, if the beginnings are bad enough, we may not be able to overcome them.The second limitation to self-constitution resides in the “self.” Does the individual constitute him or her self, or is it more a matter of the self developing out of dialogic relationship of self and other? Here I invoke another philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, who has addressed this issue from a number of perspectives. At a deictic level, the “I” or the self is a shifter that takes on a different meaning depending on its context. At the level of pragmatics, the individual is engaged in illocutionary speech that is addressed to another person, implying, in simple terms, that we live in dialogue. Still more pertinent to this discussion, Ricoeur notes that self-knowledge is not straightforward: “the self does not immediately know itself, but only knows itself indirectly by way of the detour through the cultural signs of all sorts that make us say that action is symbolically mediated” (Ricoeur, 2016, p. 240). And finally, Ricoeur argues for the priority of alterity over reflexivity. “Pushing further yet the primacy of alterity over reflexivity, some will emphasize the dependence of personal identities on identifications with... heroes, emblematic characters, models and teachers” (p. 248). To clarify this statement, Ricoeur is contrasting self-constitution through reflection with a self-other relationship in which the self needs the other to constitute itself—and, of course, he is making a case for the latter.Although I am questioning the authors’ concepts of... (shrink)

This book, the first of its kind, surveys the career of the renowned Australian-German theatre and opera director Barrie Kosky. Its nine chapters provide multidisciplinary analyses of Barrie Kosky’s working practices and stage productions, from the beginning of his career in Melbourne to his current roles as Head of the Komische Oper Berlin and as a guest director in international demand. Specialists in theatre studies, opera studies, musical theatre studies, aesthetics, and arts administration offer in-depth accounts of Kosky’s unusually wide-ranging (...) engagements with the performing arts – as a director of spoken theatre, operas, musicals, operettas, as an adaptor, a performer, a writer, and an arts manager. Further, this book includes contributions from theatre practitioners with first-hand experience of collaborating with Kosky in the 1990s, who draw on interviews with members of Gilgul, Australia’s first Jewish theatre company, to document this formative period in Kosky’s career. The book investigates the ways in which Kosky has created transnational theatres, through introducing European themes and theatre techniques to his Australian work or through bringing fresh voices to the national dialogue in Germany’s theatre landscape. An appendix contains a timeline and guide to Kosky’s productions to date. (shrink)

In "Truth and Politics" Hannah Arendt defends opinion against the judgment of the philosophical tradition. This defense risks misinterpretation as epistemologically nihilistic unless read in conjunction with Arendt's position on facts and acting in concert. What Arendt prizes in opinion is its performative dimension rather than its constative dimension where it falls short of truth. It is opinion as action that Arendt rehabilitates: she subscribes to the philosophical tradition's harsh verdict on the pseudotruths of an anonymous and repressive public opinion. (...) For opinion to be an action, for action to be recognizable as such, there has to be a world beyond each given opinion and action on which they leave a mark. This world, irreducible in its diversity and historical contingency to rational truth, is the arena common to facts and action. To acknowledge the facts is to trust in the testimony of others, but if this trust is not to be gullibility, if it is not to mistake the facts for lies and vice versa, it stands in need of judgment. (shrink)

With "Literature and the Right to Death", Blanchot makes his most sustained contribution to the debate initiated in France by Kojeve and Hippolyte concerning Hegel's philosophy. At times Blanchot's reading is forced and idiosyncratic. Yet this reading has another motivation than the succinct and faithful paraphrase of the earlier thinker. Arguably Blanchot positions himself within Hegel’s terminology in order to rethink the sense of the expression 'the philosophy of art'. What is with Hegel an objective genitive becomes a subjective genitive. (...) The rules therefore change. Whereas Hegel offers in his lectures on aesthetics an expatiation on art fixed under the gaze of philosophy, Blanchot installs art as the subject and submits the conventions and expectations of philosophical discourse to its procedures. In the light of this reversal, what might otherwise be judged a deviation or a lapse with respect to the genre of the philosophical essay can be seen to play its role in Blanchot's reassessment of the relations between metaphysics and literature. (shrink)

First published in 1865, this book puts forth a new ethical system that aims to provide practical guidance on how to live a good life based on reason, empathy, and social responsibility. The author argues that traditional religious and philosophical systems have failed to keep up with the changing social and economic conditions of modern life and proposes a set of principles that are grounded in the needs and aspirations of ordinary people. The book covers a wide range of topics, (...) including work, family, education, politics, and the environment. A thought-provoking read for anyone interested in ethics and social justice. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Nancy revisits first philosophy's question of the relationship between the many ways of Being and defines ontological community and community more broadly by the communication/equivocation of the ways of Being rather than a common substance. Objections that Nancy's position is apolitical and ethically ambiguous take insufficient notice of the different task he has set himself. The preposition "with" names this new ontological conception of community, relieving it of a unifying point. A fraternal community of family resemblances without a father is (...) uncovered that allows for critical reflections on both Heidegger's fundamental ontology and Freud's speculations on the primal horde. (shrink)

Book Information Off the Beaten Track. Off the Beaten Track Heidegger Martin, trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, 291, AUS$49.95 By Heidegger Martin., trans. Julian Young. and Kenneth Haynes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 291. AUS$49.95.

Evidence from egocentric space is cited to support bicoding of navigation in three-dimensional space. Horizontal distances and space are processed differently from the vertical. Indeed, effector systems are compatible in horizontal space, but potentially incompatible (or chaotic) during transitions to vertical motion. Navigation involves changes in coordinates, and animal models of navigation indicate that time has an important role.

In “Whole Life Narratives and the Self” David Lumsden (2013) has provided us with a clear review of the debate over narrative and personal identity and has staked out his own position in that debate. Arguing against neo-Lockean views of an atomistic self, he defends a narrative component in personal identity. Specifically, he argues that personal identity or self involves “a bundle of narrative threads” (p. 1), but does not require the grand unity of a master narrative—a whole life narrative. (...) It follows for him that the understanding—and treatment—of fragmented psychiatric states does not require whole life narratives. In his analysis, he is both defending a philosophical position regarding narrative and personal .. (shrink)

In commenting on Hamm, Buck, and Lysaker’s “Reconciling the Ipseity-Disturbance Model with the Painful Affect in Schizophrenia”, let me first acknowledge the authors’ fine work in delineating this issue. They review very clearly the history of theoretical models of schizophrenia, including biological, psychoanalytic, and phenomenological approaches. They emphasize the need to include accounts of subjective experiences of persons with schizophrenia, and for this they underline the role of phenomenological research. In the latter, they note an emphasis on cognitive and perceptual (...) disturbances, with an apparent neglect of painful affective experience. To demonstrate the neglect, they focus on the work of Louis.. (shrink)

Glover proposes a planning–control model for the parietal lobe that contrasts with previous formulations that suggest independent mechanisms for perception and action. The planning–control model potentially solves practical functional problems with a proposed independence of perception and action, and offers some new directions for a study of human performance.

While explaining a large proportion of any variance, accounts of the speed and accuracy of targetting movements use techniques (e.g., log transforms) that typically reduce variability before ''explaining'' the data. Therefore the predictive power of such accounts are important. We consider whether Plamondon's model can account for kinematics of targetting movements of clinical populations.

Dr. Otto Doerr-Zegers's article is so interesting and insightful that I have nothing critical to say about it. On the other hand, in finding Greek, mainly Platonic, origins for psychotherapy, he offers us much to think about. In this brief commentary I will attempt to draw out some of the implications of his analysis for contemporary psychotherapy.Doerr-Zegers's analysis begins with a reflection on Socrates' Maieutics, Socrates' invoking the midwife metaphor to convey his use of dialectics to bring forth the ignorance (...) of his interlocutor. Dörr recognizes that Maieutics is a kind of psychotherapy in that, like psychotherapy, it involves a "treatment by the word." He takes this verbal dimension of the treatment back... Read More. (shrink)

Atypical among Heidegger’s numerous discussions of poets is the condemnation of Rilke in the 1942-43 lecture course Parmenides. At stake is the definition of “the open” (das Offene): Rilke reserves the open for animals as freedom from conceptual determinacy, whereas Heidegger reserves it for human beings as the place of Being in which things first appear as what they are. The open, for Heidegger, names the existential conception of place (as distinct from a geographical point) and features in his life-long (...) attempts to articulate the relations between language, human existence, poetry and the everyday. By denying that human beings have access to the open, Rilke runs athwart this project and by denying it in a poem he confounds the expectations that Heidegger harbours with respect to the work of art as a site of the opening up of aesthetic experience, within the everyday, to ontological questioning. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMatthen proposes a functional definition of art as that which is designed to elicit what he calls facilitating pleasure. While this definition has the air of a theory that unites disparate strands of aesthetic thought over the last several centuries, the linkages it assumes between pleasure and art require a support stronger than the historical polysemy of the contested term ‘aesthetic’. The co-existence of meanings within the tradition is not itself evidence that these meanings are philosophically co-ordinated. To define art (...) by this facilitating pleasure is reductive—with respect both to the objects that count as art and to the attitude that people adopt toward these objects. (shrink)