Philosophy Commons^™

Political Realism In Apocalyptic Times, Gonzalo Bustamante Kuschel

International Dialogue

Alison McQueen’s book is a significant contribution to political theory and to the use of the history of political thought as a source of categories for thinking about current problems. Her central thesis revolves around three assumptions. First, the existence of “political realism” understood as a particular approach to evaluating politics—characterized by a defense of its own autonomy,1 political agonism,2 the rejection of both utopia and moralization in politics, and the preeminence of order and stability over any other criterion, including justice, in political decisions (10–12). This definition of “political realism” allows the author to group other writers who, though …

Art As A Political Witness, Lenore Metrick-Chen

International Dialogue

Kia Lindroos and Frank Möller, the editors of this volume, raise a serious question: Can art increase political awareness either through witnessing itself or by creating witnesses in its audience? Wisely, the book does not attempt to provide a single, definitive answer to these questions; instead, the editors explain that they selected authors who examine aesthetic forms of expression, with the intention of an inquiry into an expanded idea of who is a witness. Beginning with the definition of witness from the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles as someone “who is or was present, and is able to …

Panel Discussion: Are Reparations Possible? Lessons To The United States From South Africa, Richard Goldstone, Lewis Gordon, Alecia Anderson

International Dialogue

Introduction: On September 25, 2019, the Honorable Richard Goldstone joined Dr. Lewis Gordon f or a conversation about reparations at the University of Nebraska at Omaha ( The public discussion was offered as part of a series of events for Human Rights Week. It was co sponsored by the Goldstein Community Chair for Human Rights, the Schwalb Cent er for Israel and Jewish Studies, and the UNO Department of Black Studies. Goldstone and Gordon were brought to the University of Nebraska at Omaha by the Leonard and Shirley Goldstein Center for Human Rights.

The Honorable Richard Goldstone, Dr. Lewis Gordon, …

The Omnibus Homo Sacer; What Is Philosophy?, Sotiris Mitralexis

International Dialogue

The Omnibus Homo Sacer brings together in 1336 pages all volumes of the twenty-year Homo Sacer project by Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, written between 1990 and 2015, starting with Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life and concluding with The Use of Bodies. In line with Agamben’s division of the project, the Omnibus edition is divided into four parts (Part 1: Homo Sacer; Part 2: State of Exception, Stasis, The Sacrament of Language, The Kingdom and the Glory & Opus Dei; Part 3: Remnants of Auschwitz; and Part 4: The Highest Poverty & The Use of Bodies). Since the volumes …

Restating Orientalism: A Critique Of Modern Knowledge, Katlin Marisol Sweeney

International Dialogue

Wael B. Hallaq’s Restating Orientalism: A Critique of Modern Knowledge interrogates what he proposes are canonized misconceptions of Orientalism by examining the trends in discourse that have emerged since the publication of Edward Said’s seminal work in 1978. It builds on Hallaq’s other contributions to the field on the topics of modernity, politics, and Islamic law over the last forty years, most notably Sharī’a: Theory, Practice, Transformations (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity’s Moral Predicament (Columbia University Press, 2013). In the paratextual material, Hallaq advises readers to treat Sharī’a and The Impossible State as …

Is Tap Dance A Form Of Jazz Percussion?, Aili W. Bresnahan

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This essay considers whether tap dance might be categorized as a kind of feet- and body-created jazz percussion rather than as a musical form of dance. Its focus is thus primarily ontological, although there is much to be said about the experience and value of tap dance that goes beyond ontology. The nature of tap dance is then investigated in historical, functional, and culturally contextual ways, after which the essay shows how the answers to the historical and functional questions are best solved by cultural and contextual considerations. Finally, this essay concludes that yes, tap dance is a form of …

The Philosophy Of Dance, Aili W. Bresnahan

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This encyclopedia entry surveys the field of philosophy of dance both within and beyond Western philosophical aesthetics.

Making The War Colleges Better, Richard A. Lacquement Jr

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

Functional Corporate Knowledge, Mihailis Diamantis

William & Mary Law Review

The line between guilt and innocence often turns on what a defendant knew. Although the law’s approach to knowledge may be relatively straightforward for individuals, its doctrines for corporate defendants are fraught with ambiguity and opportunities for gamesmanship. Corporations can spread information thinly across employees so that it is never “known.” And prosecutors can exploit legal uncertainties to bring knowledge-based charges where corporations were merely negligent in how they handled information. Whereas knowledge as a mens rea has unique practical and normative properties that vary with a corporation’s size and industry, corporate law treats knowledge just like any other mental …

Dance Rhythm, Aili W. Bresnahan

Books and Book Chapters by University of Dayton Faculty

This chapter proposes a theory of dance rhythm as distinct from rhythm in dance. First, it distinguishes natural and intentional rhythm, constructed from combining theories by Dewey and Margolis. It then defends this account by exploring musical and non-musical connections between rhythm and dance. It argues that dance rhythm can arise in conjunction with music, or that it can – though need not – follow music, or that it can set the musical rhythm, or be completely independent of music, though natural or internal bodily rhythms can underpin both. Finally, it asserts the existence of dance that might be naturally …

Dialogue Between Islam And Environtmental Ethics Through The Seyyed Hossein Nasr Thought, Aulia Rahman Nugraha, Naupal Asnawi

International Review of Humanities Studies

Islam is often regarded as a religion that teaches anthropocentrism through the concept of the caliph in which humans occupy a central position on earth. However, the concept of the caliph itself is a complex concept where the special status of humans always implies a moral obligation. Through alternative explanatory methods and critical reflection, the authors try to clarify the concept of the caliph and show the teachings of Islam that are environmentally friendly through the thought of Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Philosophy and environmental ethics of Nasr have two major projects, namely the resacralization of nature and the clarification of …

Letters On The Aesthetic Deformation Of Man, Katya Mandoki

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Friedrich Schiller wrote Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man hoping to elevate human potential through the arts for the development of free citizens of the Republic, and also in reaction to the decline of the French Revolution into a Reign of Terror. Nowadays, with the prominent role social networks have acquired in human relations, aesthetics is an invaluable tool for capturing attention in marketing and political propaganda, no less than in recruitment and indoctrination by terrorist organizations. Adopting a pragmatics approach, we will examine Schiller’s relevance today regarding uses and abuses of aesthetics related to terrorism, focusing on the …

Reflections On The Aesthetics Of Violence, Arnold Berleant

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Violence has long been a factor in human life and has been widely depicted in the arts. This essay explores how the artistic and appreciative responses to violence have been practiced, understood, and valued. It emphasizes the difference between the aesthetics of distant, disinterested appreciation and the engaged appreciative experience of violence in the arts, and insists on the relevance of their behavioral and ethical implications.

Introduction, Emmanouil Aretoulakis

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

The Aesthetics Of Terrorism And The Temporalities Of Representation, Robert Appelbaum

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

Representations of terrorism, in fiction and non-fiction, summon their readers and viewers to examine terrorism in any of at least four modes of temporality: the past, the past perfect, the continuous present, and the simple present. This essay explains those modalities and shows how they work with reference to novels, a film documentary, and contemporary American television, including the documentary Black September and the series NCIS. The modalities are ideological as well as narratological functions and are sometimes employed to occlude the historical and pragmatic dimensions of terrorist violence. Terrorism is always already aesthetic and “hyperreal,” in Jean Baudrillard’s …

Isis And Futurist Terrorism Versus Cyberpunk, Thorsten Botz-Bornstei

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

The origin of science fiction is twentieth-century Futurism. For the largest part of the twentieth century, science fiction maintained an optimistic attitude towards the future. At the end of the 1970s, the modern, optimistic, and futurist vision of the future, typical for avant-garde movements of the 1930s, took a negative turn and became dark, pessimistic, and cynical, in a postmodern sense; it became what would be called, in a word, ‘cyberpunk.’ In this article, I want to show that the terrorist organization generally known as ISIS (Islamic State) intends, or rather intended, to go back to futurism and modernism by …

Dismantling Bodies: The War On Terror, And The Wound Aesthetic Of Csi: Crime Scene Investigation (2000-2015), Christopher J. Davies

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This paper interrogates the aesthetic signature of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000-2015). Utilizing a selection of representative episodes airing during George W. Bush’s first term, I analyze how CSI mobilizes a particular aesthetic of wounding in which wound sites, bodily and geographic, may be understood to serve as vulnerable apertures through which underlying threads of critical engagement with the direction of the 9/11 discourse may be aspirated from within the body of the text. Specifically, I approach the wound sites of CSI as sources of war-on-terror critique that serve political double-duty. On the one hand, CSI’s injury-centric narratives and …

The Power Of Horror: Abject Art And Terrorism In Don Delillo’S Falling Man, Kelsie Donnelly

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This paper argues that Don DeLillo’s 2007 novel, Falling Man, engages with abject art to disrupt the pre-existing systems of signification and dualistic rhetoric that characterized state and media responses to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The novel engages with one of the most controversial areas of 9/11 discourse: claims that the attacks were an artistic spectacle. Falling Man posits that if art is to continue to grapple with the meanings of 9/11, it must depart from familiar discourses of tragedy and triumph and embrace radical artistic responses. The novel fulfills this through its engagement with abject …

Table Of Contents, Regennia N. Williams

The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs

No abstract provided.

Madiba And Martin: A Bibliography Compiled By Martha Ruff, Martha Huff

The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs

No abstract provided.