Philosophy Commons^™

Terrence Malick Beyond Nature And Grace: Song To Song And The Experience Of Forgiveness, Elisa Zocchi

Journal of Religion & Film

In The Tree of Life Terrence Malick poses the question of the relation between the order of grace and the order of nature in the cosmos and in human existence, a question presented through the relation of mother and father in the O'Brien family. The aim of this article is to analyze this issue and to present the role of glory in The Tree of Life as the transfiguration of nature operated by grace. Specifically, the example of forgiveness as one strand of this glory seems to be an helpful tool to understand the movie. Forgiveness, already present in The …

A Physcialist Theory Of Managing Impediments To Democracy And Peace Building In The Balkans, Rory Conces

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The post-conflict societies of Bosnia and Kosovo continue to be plagued by the deleterious effects of ethno-nationalism and ethnic enclaves. Unfortunately, this mix impedes both democracy and peace building within these Balkan countries. One way to promote such building is for these enclaves to collapse, thereby allowing multiethnic societies to develop. This essay proposes that enclaves be dealt with physically by ridding them of those evocative objects that help to create and maintain enclaves. By getting physical in this way, how¬ever, we find ourselves in a dilemma, caught on the horns of legality and expediency. Yet there is a promising …

Review Of The Slow Professor: Challenging The Culture Of Speed In The Academy, Rory J. Conces

Philosophy Faculty Publications

I entered the academy having inherited a particular view of higher education from my mentors. They informed me about what I would face if I were lucky enough to land a teaching position. Not surprisingly, what they shared with me was an accurate foretelling of what I have experienced, including the exhausting Retention, Promotion, and Tenure (RPT) process, with its focus on research, teaching, and service – and ranked in that order!

It was after a quarter century of being a professor that I was fortunate enough to stumble upon The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the …

The Glocal Hiv/Aids Epidemic And The Need For An Extended Theory Of Power In International Relations, Annika Hughes

International Dialogue

This paper argues for an extended theory of power in International Relations (IR), using the example of the glocal HIV/AIDS epidemic. It will argue that world power relations depend not only on military, economic, social and cultural power, but also on the power of the human body itself. This argument builds on the author’s own theory of glocalised world power, which combines a Foucaultian with a structurationist approach to argue for the existence of four-faced power relationships across the following twelve interdependent sites of power: 1) time; 2) space; 3) knowledge and aesthetics; 4) morality and emotion; 5) identities; 6) …

Table Of Contents, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

Table of Contents for Volume 7

Agamben’S Comic Messianism: Giorgio Agamben: Beyond The Threshold Of Deconstruction; Agamben And Politics: A Critical Introduction, Anthony Curtis Adler

International Dialogue

The publication of Giorgio Agamben’s The Use of Bodies in 2014, followed the next year by Adam Kotsko’s English translation, marked a momentous event in the history of more recent continental thought, bringing to a close one of the most far reaching and ambitious scholarly and philosophical labors of the twentieth century. Initiated in 1995 with Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Agamben’s project, named after the first volume, would come to comprise nine separate books, published at fairly regular intervals over the course of twenty years. While neither Kevin Attell’s Giorgio Agamben: Beyond the Threshold of Deconstruction (BTD) …

Notes From The Editor, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

Notes from International Dialogue's Editor-in-Chief, Rory J. Conces for Volume 7.

Bosnia’S Paralyzed Peace, Oliver P. Richmond

International Dialogue

This study offers a powerful blow by blow analysis of the attempts to create peace in BiH since the Dayton Agreement. According to Christopher Bennett, Dayton provided a “balance of terror,” was full of unrealistic deadlines, and aimed at providing internationals with an exit strategy (81) and international involvement constantly suffered from an “enforcement gap” (110) derived from the contradiction between trusteeship and democracy as well as limited resources (114). It has even reinforced existing power structures (the ethnos rather than the demos (116, 182), connected to para-states, and undermined democracy. A “new ethno-national reality now exists” even extending to …

War And Individual Rights: The Foundation Of Just War Theory, Nathan Wood

International Dialogue

Rights are a cornerstone of much contemporary moral and political philosophy. They tell us what we are owed by others, what protections we enjoy against both private citizens and against the state, and they inform us of the restrictions on our freedom that morality and law demand.

Adam Smith: His Life, Thought And Legacy, Sarah Otten

International Dialogue

Since the publication of the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith by Oxford University Press in the 1970s and 80s, there has been increasing interest in the philosophical aspects of Smith’s writings. While in the public mind, he is associated with economics through his second book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, (Wealth of Nations) Adam Smith was a professional philosopher, holding the chair of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University for eleven years. It was a period he regarded as “the most useful, and, therefore, as by far the happiest” …

The Legacy Of Iraq: From The 2003 War To The “Islamic State”, Kieran Mcconaghy

International Dialogue

Benjamin Isakhan’s The Legacy of Iraq attempts to take a holistic look at the totality of political developments and relationships in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The book has contributions from more than a dozen experts in aspects of Iraq’s history and politics.

Ethics Of Mobility, Globalization, Political Economy, And Culture: Refugees, Terror And Other Troubles With The Neighbors: Against The Double Blackmail, Edward Sandowski, Betty J. Harris

International Dialogue

Slavoj Žižek’s Refugees, Terror and Other Troubles with the Neighbors-Against the Double Blackmail is yet another book demonstrating Žižek’s ability to seize on major contemporary social phenomena and to bring to bear on a topic, with provocative results, his unusual combination of traits. He is very much a European educated by study and travel into an especially vivid awareness of the connections of Western Europe (and the UK), with Central and Eastern Europe (including his native Slovenia), and much of North America. He has an expansive sense of being European that includes a sense of special kinship with historical and …

Human Rights And Cultural Diversity. Core Issues And Cases, Stener Ekern

International Dialogue

As clearly explained on the very first page, this book is about “the troubled relationship between the promotion of human rights and the promotion of cultural diversity.” Its purpose is to discuss (and overcome, I presume) some of the “core areas of anxiety” that this trouble speaks of. Anyone working with human rights, academically or in more applied ways, will be familiar with the anxieties that arise from trying to reconcile individual and collective rights in a consistent and convincing manner. A book holding the promise of taking you one step further towards simultaneously handling the issues of individual moral …

The Empty Place: Democracy And Public Space, Asma Mehan

International Dialogue

The relationship of public space to democracy is dominated by two competing, yet intertwined, theoretical bases: political philosophy and spatial theory. But how does the architect make political space? Can architectural practice create political space through design? In this book, Teresa Hoskyns theorizes that the converging point between theoretical foundations and democratic practices is “participation” within “social production of space.” Therefore, “participation” from joint perspectives of architecture and political philosophy has been studied in two different frameworks: the theoretical and the practical. Unlike most previous works on the relationship between architecture and democracy, Hoskyn’s book transcends the spatial and political …

Hitler’S American Model: The United States And The Making Of Nazi Race Law, Michael J. Kelly

International Dialogue

Yale’s James Whitman jumps straight into academic controversy with his new book outlining how the lawyers of the Third Reich modeled their anti-Jewish race laws on older Jim Crow era laws in the United States. Prior American and German scholars had previously tackled this hypothesis with mixed results—some dismissing the idea or playing it down, others acknowledging some limited influence. After plumbing primary sources from the Nazi government, however, Whitman goes much further and plants his flag squarely in the influence camp. The sources, read soberly, paint a different picture. Awful it may be to contemplate, but the reality is …

The Making Of Salafism: Islamic Reform In The Twentieth Century, Matthew Vondrasek

International Dialogue

Henri Lauzière takes the reader on a multi-dimensional counterintuitive journey with The Making of Salafism: Islamic Reform in the Twentieth Century. The book might be more aptly titled The Conceptual Construction of Salafism as its most illuminating and insightful features focus more on linguistics and heuristic devices rather than history or political developments. Through detailed analysis of language, religion, history, and politics, Lauzière shows how Salafism, as it is understood today, represents a misunderstood construction that is often portrayed back into history onto primary sources. Perhaps the most important parts of the text help the reader “unlearn.”

The Good Crisis: How Population Stabilization Can Foster A Healthy U.S. Economy, Owen G. Mordaunt

International Dialogue

Even though there is a notion of a birth dearth, this text aims at debunking the common belief that a population that is not growing due to declining fertility spells disaster for our world. The population has declined over time, but in reality the world continues to add 83 million people each year. Some birth dearthers, citing low fertility in affluent nations, express concern about “moral decay” (vi). For example, “smaller and unconventional families” will harm the United States because there will be fewer children and there will not be enough people to care for the elderly (vii). The authors …

Scorsese’S Silence: Film As Practical Theodicy, Ian Deweese-Boyd

Journal of Religion & Film

Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence takes up the anguished experience of God’s silence in the face of human suffering. The main character, the Jesuit priest Sabastião Rodrigues, finds his faith gutted by the appalling silence of God as he witnesses the horrific persecution of Christians in seventeenth century Japan. Yujin Nagasawa calls the particularly intense combination of the problems of divine hiddenness and evil the problem of divine absence that resists resolution through explanations that have typically characterized the theodicies offered by philosophers. Drawing on the thought of Ignatius of Loyola, this essay explores the way …

The Little Hours, Frederick Ruf, Kathryn Wade

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of The Little Hours (2017), directed by Jeff Baena.

The Expected Places Of Religion And Communities In Film, William L. Blizek

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In the 2014 movie, Spotlight, religion, represented by the Catholic Church, has an expected place for the community—the City of Boston, Massachusetts. And, the community of Boston, represented by the institution of a free press, has a corresponding expectation of the Church. In this paper, I explore these expectations as they are identified in the Oscar winning film, Spotlight.

“To See My Home Before I Die”: The Trip To Bountiful, Memento Mori, And The Experience Of Death, Margaret Sullivan

Journal of Religion & Film

This article analyzes the portrayal of death in Peter Masterson’s 1985 film The Trip to Bountiful. My claim is that the experience of death, in the film, functions as a tool both for the elderly main character’s increased self-understanding and for her conscious, ethical action. I enter this discussion through an examination of late deconstruction’s ethical turn and the argument that aporetic unknowing, if experienced and endured, leads to the chance for real, authentic action. I then demonstrate how the film depicts such an aporetic encounter with death, and do so, in large part, by focusing on the film’s final …

Gnosticism, Technology And The Soul In Cuarón's Gravity, Karli Brittz

Journal of Religion & Film

Situated within the Digital Age, where technology and science have made life in space possible, Alfonso Caurón's award-winning space-thriller, Gravity, explores critical notions of the relationship between technology and the soul. More specifically, Cuarón’s depiction of space voyage illustrates the dualistic approach to the soul in relation to technology, especially the gnostic mind/body split and its manifestation in the Digital Age. This intersection between technology and the soul is a notion of increasingly importance in contemporary society, however it is often evaded in literature. Accordingly, it is crucial to analyze and unpack films, such as Gravity, that confront audiences with …

The Property Of Mass: An Interdisciplinary Metaphysical Investigation, Benjamin Hayworth

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

The property of mass as used in the physical sciences is somewhat of a metaphysical conundrum. Not only has the definition of mass changed with various paradigm shifts in physics, but the powers belonging to the property have also varied. In my study, I begin by examining the historical context surrounding the term, including the changes to its definition. In doing so, it is revealed that various definitions of mass are used and circulated in general discussion, so a cogent criterion of identity is established by which each definition can be measured. After determining the distinctions between each mass term, …

Notes From The Editor, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

Notes from International Dialogue's Editor-in-Chief, Rory J. Conces for Volume 6.

Table Of Contents, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

Table of Contents for Volume 6

Tales Of Humanitarian Intervention Gone Awry: The Emergence Of Humanitarian Intervention: Ideas And Practice From The Nineteenth Century To The Present; The Conceit Of Humanitarian Intervention, Richard Falk

International Dialogue

Ever since manitarianthe fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union there has been an upsurge of international undertakings that have claimed humanitarian justifications for military interventions in foreign societies. A second kind of justification for such interventions all of which are launched by Western countries (especially the United States) was associated in this period with the global “war on terror” initiated during the presidency of George W. Bush in response to the 9/11 attacks of 2001 on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In other words, this upsurge in interventions draws partly on …

Failure Of Multiculturalism? Immigration, Radical Islamism, And Identity Politics In Europe, Fatos Tarifa, Monica Di Monte

International Dialogue

This paper addresses the issue of how Europe’s ethnic and cultural mix is changing drastically by the large numbers of culturally diverse, especially Muslim immigrants, as well as problems that Western European governments face today as they try to deal with unintended consequences of their liberal policies of multiculturalism. In light of this discussion, radical Islamism and identity politics are seen as long-term challenges for all liberal democracies. We argue that extremist voices among the right-wing populist parties in many Western European countries opposed to immigration and increasingly mobilized around the issue of Muslim minorities, may spur resentment and political …

Philosophers In Search Of Life..., David A. White

International Dialogue

If, after reading the above title, someone has ventured this far—the opening sentence—then he or she has doubtless conquered any urge to dismiss the contents of this piece (and do something else...) because the title is so blatantly silly. Onlya philosopher would be so sadly quixotic as to feel a need to become involved in a “search” for life. Dwelling in the realm of the living is where we humans spend all our waking hours. Furthermore, all of us settle into sleep for a greater or lesser amount of time and once in that state (discounting the differentiating factor of …

Rawls’S Political Liberalism, Matthew Jones

International Dialogue

The contribution that John Rawls has made to political philosophy, and liberal political philosophy more specifically, should not be underestimated. His two key texts, A Theory of Justice (1971), and Political Liberalism (1993), not only reinvigorated social contract theory, but set the foundation for much of the contemporary debate surrounding the nature of the liberal democratic state given the fact of reasonable pluralism. If the European philosophical tradition, as noted by Alfred North Whitehead, should be seen as a series of footnotes to Plato, then contemporary Anglo-American political philosophy, especially if it intersects with aspects of liberal political philosophy, could …

Lawrence Of Arabia’S War: The Arabs, The British And The Remaking Of The Middle East In Wwi, Bruce M. Garver

International Dialogue

Seldom does a newly published book both enlarge our understanding of its subject and enhance our appreciation of its principal primary sources. In Lawrence of Arabia’s War, Neil Faulkner admirably achieves both objectives. In the first instance, he thoroughly and critically discusses British foreign policy and military operations in the Middle East and North Africa from 1914 through 1922, with emphasis upon British relations with the Arabs, primarily the desert-dwelling Hashemite sherifs as opposed to the landlords and officials who dominated millions of Arab small farmers and city dwellers. Whenever appropriate, he carefully examines relations between the British and their …