Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Tyrannies Gave Rise To Martial Arts, But Enlightened Martial Philosophies Reveal A Better Way, Michael Andregg

Comparative Civilizations Review

Most of this brief review will be academic history, but one of the truisms of the martial arts is that it is never strictly “academic.” Words on paper cannot express some things at the heart of the art. Many of the most thoughtful masters of various schools have worried about how to cultivate students with the discipline and philosophical background to be “safe” for polite society. This is a similar problem for police departments and even armies. The best wish to train professionals in ways of being deadly, without empowering undisciplined people to harm innocents. Therefore, part of this paper …

No Cell For The Soul: Prison, Philosophy And Bernard Stiegler - A Short Appreciation, Rod Earle

Journal of Prison Education and Reentry (2014-2023)

Bernard Stiegler was a French philosopher who served 5 years in prison for a series of bank robberies committed in his youth. He died in August 2020, aged just 68, a professor celebrated in the highest ranks of continental philosophy. Stiegler subsequently published over 30 books, at the core of which is the series tellingly gathered under the title ‘Time and Technics’. His essay, ‘How I became a philosopher’, convinced me he, and it, should be on every prison philosophy course. In this article I outline why, as a convict criminologist, I feel an affinity with Stiegler’s project.

What Is Philosophy In Prison? George Eliot And The Search For Moral Insight, Alison Liebling

Journal of Prison Education and Reentry (2014-2023)

I argue in this article that people in prison make excellent philosophers, for reasons related to what they are deprived of. I also suggest that great novels constitute, or at the very least, introduce us to, philosophy. Some of the deepest questions about human life can be addressed by fusing philosophical thinking with empirical research in prisons. Prisoners talk with depth and insight about what it is to feel human, what matters most in human experience, and the importance of the ‘vibrations of fellow feeling’.

Empathy, Animals, And Deadly Vices, Kathie Jenni

Animal Studies Journal

In Deadly Vices, Gabriele Taylor provides a secular analysis of vices which in Christian theology were thought to bring death to the soul: sloth, envy, avarice, pride, anger, lust, and gluttony. She argues that these vices are appropriately singled out and grouped together in that ‘they are destructive of the self and prevent its flourishing’. Using a related approach, I offer a secular analysis of gluttony and cowardice, examining their roles in common failures to empathise with animals. I argue that these vices constitute serious moral failings, for they enable continuing complicity in animal abuse and undermine integrity. While Taylor …

Book Review: David J. Rosner. Catastrophe And Philosophy, John Berteaux

Comparative Civilizations Review

In Chinese, the word “catastrophe” is composed of two characters: 危机 The first character represents danger and the second is the symbol for opportunity, suggesting as my son so aptly put it, “We should never let a ‘good’ disaster go to waste.” In much the same light, philosopher David Rosner’s sensible and probing anthology, Catastrophe and Philosophy, directs us to observe that, “catastrophes are catastrophes not only because they bring widespread death and destruction in their wake, but also because they fundamentally challenge the basic ‘sense making’ feature of the human mind and our need for a meaningful world.” …

St. Thomas Aquinas And The Third Hellenization Period, Demetri Kantarelis

Comparative Civilizations Review

In this paper, I assert that currently the world has been experiencing the Third Hellenization Period that started with the Italian Renaissance, instigated by the teachings of the theologian and philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 CE). Unlike philosophers in previous periods (First and Second Hellenization as well as Medieval), St. Thomas preached that Truth is a function of both Natural Revelation and Supernatural Revelation. This resulted in, simultaneously, Christianizing Aristotle (St. Thomas’ most referenced philosopher) and Aristotleizing Christianity, thus opening up the doors to human reason that had been muted during the Medieval centuries.

I also assert that the basic …

Creaturely Love: How Desire Makes Us More And Less Than Human By Dominic Pettman, Gina M. Granter

The Goose

Review of Dominic Pettman's Creaturely Love: How Desire Makes Us More and Less than Human.

What Would Animals Say If We Asked The Right Questions? By Vinciane Despret, Nathan Tebokkel

The Goose

Review of Vinciane Despret's What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions?

Heidegger's Way Of Being By Richard Capobianco, Brian Mccormack

The Goose

A review of Richard Capobianco's Heidegger's Way of Being.

Hyperobjects: Philosophy And Ecology After The End Of The World By Timothy Morton, Bart H. Welling

The Goose

Welling reviews Timothy Morton's book Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2013).