This book identifies the turning points in Habermas's work and his transition from one stage to another in the development of his theoretical oeuvre. Habermas began his academic career as part of the Frankfurt School, but the two key points at which his career changes trajectory are moving from historical materialism to normative idealism and playing with some of the ideas of liberalism. Normative idealism is an ahistorical theory that insists on the independence of the normative from material reality, severing (...) the connection between base and superstructure that Marx wrote about. The break with the basic concepts of Marxism enabled Habermas to build his own discursive (critical) theory, which, especially since the end of the 1980s, takes the ideas of liberalism seriously. This book makes a systematic, multidimensional and detailed analysis of Habermas's theoretical oeuvre in two dimensions, chronological (in the order in which Habermas worked on certain topics) and thematic (enclosing certain thematic units). (shrink)

Well-known predictors of prejudice toward Muslims include social dominance and authoritarianism. However, a gap exists for variables reflecting a rejection or mitigation of ideological motivations associated with prejudice toward Muslims. We examined if quiet ego was related to positive attitudes toward Muslims, and whether this could be explained by lower levels of authoritarianism, social dominance, and the motivation to express prejudice. We explored this possibility across two studies of adults in the United States. In Study 1, regression results showed quiet (...) ego was directly associated with positive attitudes toward Muslims. Study 2 utilized path analyses and found that the direct relationship between quiet ego and positive attitudes toward Muslims was explained by associations between quiet ego and lower endorsement of authoritarianism, social dominance, and the internal motivation to express prejudice toward Muslims. Moreover, these associations held when accounting for several correlates of intergroup attitudes. (shrink)

The paper offers a critical appreciation of sand in the Japanese tradition of karesansui 枯山水gardens. At first, sand is approached from a phenomenological standpoint, then described in relation to the Daoist ideals of “blandness” (dan 淡) and its original function in Shinto shrines. The following sections draw an East-West comparison between the sand garden at Ginkaku-ji 銀閣寺 and the sand sculptures by the Basque artist Andoni Bastarrika, and between the sand garden at Shisen-dō 詩仙堂 and the Renaissance garden at Villa (...) di Castello. The main purpose is to illustrate the philosophical significance of sand in respect to the aesthetic expression of such Buddhist-influenced notions as ku 空 (“emptiness”), yuge 遊戲(“play”), kire-tsuzuki 切れ続き(“cut-continuance” or “dis/continuity”) and the dialectic of conventional and ultimate reality. (shrink)

Dans la philosophie japonaise, le temps, traditionnellement, n’a jamais été pensé comme séparé de l’espace. Plutôt que de concevoir l’espace-temps de manière abstraite, elle a toujours eu tendance à penser l’expérience d’une temporalité indissociable de la spatialité, une « temporalité spatiale ». À partir de deux créations conceptuelles japonaises, l’une médiévale et l’autre contemporaine, l’une ontologico-existentielle et l’autre esthétique, uji et kire respectivement, nous explorerons deux façons d’exprimer la nature vivante du temps à partir du flux du devenir, celles (...) de Dōgen Kigen et Ōhashi Ryōsuke. Elles ne traitent pas le temps comme une succession d’instants ou comme le récipient neutre du flux des événements, mais comme le cours de la vie appréhendé à partir d’une situation et d’un moment spécifiques. (shrink)