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2016

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Articles 61 - 90 of 1022

Full-Text Articles in Philosophy

Lawrence Of Arabia’S War: The Arabs, The British And The Remaking Of The Middle East In Wwi, Bruce M. Garver Nov 2016

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 …

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Victims Without Philosophy: Intellectuals And Power; General Theory Of Victims, Stanimir Panayotov Nov 2016

Victims Without Philosophy: Intellectuals And Power; General Theory Of Victims, Stanimir Panayotov

International Dialogue

There does not exist an easy way to discuss François Laruelle and it is impossible to be ecstatic about his writing. The two books under scrutiny here—Intellectuals and Power and General Theory of Victims—are, however, a relatively accessible introduction to the machinic parlance that Laruelle superposes onto philosophy’s presumed legibility. The human instance he discusses in both works is that of the victim. These two books could be both beneficial for and alienating to the wider readership in humanities: not for lack of originality (or even clarity), but due to the signature-style of conceptual resistance in Laruelle’s language. Virtually every-one—from …

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How We Fight: Ethics In War, Roger Bergman Nov 2016

How We Fight: Ethics In War, Roger Bergman

International Dialogue

As indicated by the editors, the ten essays in this volume “arose from a conference on just war theory held at the University of Sheffield [United Kingdom] in August 2010” (vii). The authors are all academics and all but two are philosophers; the outliers are professors of law and of politics. The emphasis is indeed on just war theory, not investigation of the development of the just war tradition over many centuries in theological, philosophical, or legal contexts, or of its application to historical cases from the remote or recent past. One should not look here for scholarly illumination, say, …

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What Fanon Said: A Philosophical Introduction To His Life And Thought, Terrence L. Johnson Nov 2016

What Fanon Said: A Philosophical Introduction To His Life And Thought, Terrence L. Johnson

International Dialogue

Frantz Fanon’s imprint on twentieth century political philosophy and strikingly poignant role in shaping black radical traditions throughout the African Diaspora in the 1960s and 1970s is undeniable. Black activists and intellectuals found refuge in his writings, where blackness was made visible, embodied and cultivated into an epistemic resource for mapping revolutionary responses to antiblack racism, colonialism and gender and sexuality. Stokely Carmichael, the chief architect of the Black Power movement in the U.S., routinely referred to Fanon’s writing in his public speeches on Black Power, and for many others in the U.S. and throughout the African Diaspora Fanon’s writings …

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The Great Depression In Latin America, N. Clark Capshaw Nov 2016

The Great Depression In Latin America, N. Clark Capshaw

International Dialogue

This book is an edited collection of essays on the effect of the Great Depression on various Latin American countries. Though not all Latin American countries are addressed, there is sufficient coverage to enable some generalizations, comparisons, and contrasts for the region, and to infer some general lessons about the enduring effect of the depression on the region. The countries addressed include Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, and Cuba.

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Welcome To The Desert Of Post-Socialism: Radical Politics After Yugoslavia, Joseph L. Derdzinski Nov 2016

Welcome To The Desert Of Post-Socialism: Radical Politics After Yugoslavia, Joseph L. Derdzinski

International Dialogue

True to its title, or at least its secondary title, Welcome to the Desert of Post-Socialism: Radical Politics After Yugoslavia minces few words in its radical assessment of the past twenty years’ impact on the societies, politics and economies of the post-Yugoslav Balkans. With an eye toward the pitfalls of a forced political and economic liberalization, the contributors’ unalloyed assessments that liberalization’s disruptions and malaise have made life all the worse reinforces an important perspective and critique into the West’s unshakable belief in the twinned powers of democracy and the market.

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Repeating Žižek, J. Jesse Ramírez Nov 2016

Repeating Žižek, J. Jesse Ramírez

International Dialogue

It has become a genre protocol for reviews of Slavoj Žižek’s books to comment critically—and, too often, dismissively—on his tremendous output. His newest books, of which there seem to be several each year, not only echo previous ones, but also reproduce whole passages verbatim. Terry Eagleton has called Žižek “one of the great self-plagiarisers of our time, constantly thieving stuff from his own publications” (Eagleton 2014). While I have contributed to this genre protocol in a past review, I have come to regard Žižek’s furious publishing pace as, in part, a strategy to make a living as a radical intellectual …

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Whistleblowers, Leaks, And The Media: The First Amendment And National Security, Heidi Kitrosser Nov 2016

Whistleblowers, Leaks, And The Media: The First Amendment And National Security, Heidi Kitrosser

International Dialogue

In 2000, President Bill Clinton vetoed a bill that would have criminalized all unauthorized leaks of classified information.1 In his veto message, Clinton agreed that “unauthorized disclosures can be extraordinarily harmful to United States national security interests and that far too many disclosures occur.” But the bill failed, in his view, to balance national security interests with “the rights of citizens to receive the information necessary for democracy to work.” The bill threatened to chill even “appropriate public discussion [or] press briefings” by Government officials. Similarly, it could have “restrain[ed] the ability of former government officials to teach, write, or …

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Trouble In Paradise: Political Economy And Cultural Criticism: Trouble In Paradise: From The End Of History To The End Of Capitalism, Edward Sandowski, Betty J. Harris Nov 2016

Trouble In Paradise: Political Economy And Cultural Criticism: Trouble In Paradise: From The End Of History To The End Of Capitalism, Edward Sandowski, Betty J. Harris

International Dialogue

Slavoj Žižek’s title Trouble in Paradise is also the name of a 1932 movie directed by Ernst Lubitsch, a movie which Žižek begins discussing as his first topic in his introduction. But the title obviously also reflects the notion that there is a difference between the superficial appearances of social life (often publically attractively depicted, with supporting justifications, sustaining collective illusions) and a time of deep societal troubles. Žižek says about his own title: “The ‘paradise’ in the title of this book refers to the End of History (as elaborated by Francis Fukuyama: liberal democratic capitalism as the finally found …

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The Soul Of Armies: Counterinsurgency Doctrine And Military Culture In The Us And Uk, Aaron Edwards Nov 2016

The Soul Of Armies: Counterinsurgency Doctrine And Military Culture In The Us And Uk, Aaron Edwards

International Dialogue

The Soul of Armies by Austin Long is a much-needed counter-balancing analysis to the steady flow of hagiographies that have appeared over the past decade on the counter-insurgency operations undertaken by the United States and United Kingdom around the world. Long challenges many of the prevailing assumptions underpinning the increasingly malleable doctrine of counter-insurgency.

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Civics Beyond Critics: Character Education In A Liberal Democracy, Eric R. Boot Nov 2016

Civics Beyond Critics: Character Education In A Liberal Democracy, Eric R. Boot

International Dialogue

It is quite common to make the argument that a stable liberal democracy requires high levels of compliance with the law. Scholars disagree, however, how such reliable and widespread compliance can be achieved. Roughly, liberals have traditionally emphasized the importance of arriving at compliance by way of autonomous and critical reasoning, whereas others (communitarians and republicans chiefly) argue that autonomous motives are notoriously weak and can, therefore, not by themselves bring about a high enough rate of compliance. The exclusionary importance accorded to autonomy by (many) liberals bars the state from cultivating the habits, sentiments and civic virtue upon which …

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Music And International History In The Twentieth Century, Frédéric Ramel Nov 2016

Music And International History In The Twentieth Century, Frédéric Ramel

International Dialogue

For several decades, musicologists have dealt with the role of music in international relations using their own tools. They have focused on musical change in the context of modernity, especially how traditional music and folk music interact with music from other localities. Paradoxically, musicologists have contributed more to the field of international relations than historians or political scientists. Fortunately, those in history and political science have initiated an acoustic turn which aims to fill the gap. Jessica Gienow-Hecht is one historian who has promoted this movement thanks to her well-known monography dedicated to cultural American-German relations in early twentieth century …

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Interactive Democracy: The Social Roots Of Global Justice, David Reidy Nov 2016

Interactive Democracy: The Social Roots Of Global Justice, David Reidy

International Dialogue

In this book, Carol Gould tries to envision a future for democracy that is both faithful to what she takes to be its philosophical and normative ground and well-matched to the political challenges of advancing global justice. These challenges arise because the social and institutional world is increasingly complex, with the relevance of state boundaries diminishing significantly in recent decades when it comes to identifying and evaluating agents, acts and effects on the global stage. I begin by reconstructing and summarizing what I take to be her central line of argument.

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Voices Of The Undocumented, Ramón Guerra Nov 2016

Voices Of The Undocumented, Ramón Guerra

International Dialogue

In the foreword to Val Rosenfeld’s Voices of the Undocumented, she illustrates the background for the collection of oral histories from immigrants. The immigrants in the collection are primarily from Latin American countries and have arrived in the San Francisco, California area without any documents to provide either residency or other legal status. The precarious nature of their existence in the United States underscores the very essence of this compilation and provides a running theme that connects the narratives of these individuals as told and recorded through oral history. While Rosenfeld refers to a preliminary personal draw to learning about …

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Divergent Paths: The Academy And The Judiciary, Paul E. Mcgreal Nov 2016

Divergent Paths: The Academy And The Judiciary, Paul E. Mcgreal

International Dialogue

In Divergent Paths: The Academy and the Judiciary, Judge Richard Posner proposes a partnership between the federal judiciary and law schools.1 He provides a sweeping critique of the federal judiciary and suggests ways in which law schools can address these failings. His critiques fall under the headings of structural deformations (e.g., method of appointment, lifetime tenure), process deficiencies, (e.g., legal formalism in judicial opinion writing, lack of curiosity), and management deficiencies (e.g., poor staff management, lack of collegiality). The corresponding solutions include law schools providing continuing education for federal judges and changing their curricula to include new knowledge and skills. …

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Politics Of Religious Freedom, Amanda Ryan Nov 2016

Politics Of Religious Freedom, Amanda Ryan

International Dialogue

When tackling the topic of “religious freedom” what are policy-makers and academics trying to define? Is religious freedom a universally defined set of liberal human rights from a secular state, or is religious freedom also seen in religious states? The Politics of Religious Freedom goes into the depths of complexity that is “religious freedom.” The book explores what religious freedom is in a variety of settings: South Asia, North Africa, Middle East, Europe, the United States, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Brazil.

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Freedom And The Incarnation, Timothy Pawl, Kevin Timpe Nov 2016

Freedom And The Incarnation, Timothy Pawl, Kevin Timpe

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

In this paper, we explore how free will should be understood within the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, particularly on the assumption of traditional Christology. We focus on two issues: (i) reconciling Christ's free will with the claim that Christ's human will was subjected to the divine will in the Incarnation; and (ii) reconciling the claims that Christ was fully human and free with the belief that Christ, since God, could not sin.

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Taking Charge Oct 2016

Taking Charge

SIGNED: The Magazine of The Hong Kong Design Institute

In a recent lecture at HKDI titled "Kungfu, Techne and the Future of Work" the author Chan Koonchung, whose recent novel The Fat Years was an international bestseller, dissected the nature and evolution of our working lives. Here he lays out his thoughts in a thought-provoking essay.

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Review: Interspecies Ethics By Cynthia Willett, Thomas E. Randall Oct 2016

Review: Interspecies Ethics By Cynthia Willett, Thomas E. Randall

Between the Species

This paper provides a review of Cynthia Willett's book Interspecies Ethics. Willett aims to outline the beginnings of biosocial eros ethics – an ethical outline that sketches the potentiality of a cross-species cosmopolitan ideal of compassion (agape), derived through acknowledging and emphasizing the existence of spontaneous, playful interaction between social animals. Though this book is recommended for offering an innovative framework from which to explore the possibility of non-anthropocentric cross-species ethic, readers should be wary of expecting to find a fully-fledged moral program detailing how this would work.

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A Political Allegory, Philosophical Discussion Group, Armstrong State University Oct 2016

A Political Allegory, Philosophical Discussion Group, Armstrong State University

The Philosopher's Stone

No abstract provided.

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Try Leaving Your Comfort Zone — You Might Learn Something About Yourself, Bruce Janz Oct 2016

Try Leaving Your Comfort Zone — You Might Learn Something About Yourself, Bruce Janz

UCF Forum

I’m in Cape Town, South Africa, as I write this. I’ve been heading to South Africa about once a year or so for a while now, and before that I spent a fair bit of time in east Africa – Kenya, mostly, but also Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania. In September, I was in Nigeria for the first time.

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In What Sense Are You A Person?, Pamela Barone, Antoni Gomila Oct 2016

In What Sense Are You A Person?, Pamela Barone, Antoni Gomila

Animal Sentience

According to Rowlands, personhood in nonhuman animals calls for a unified mental life and pre-reflective self-awareness provides this. The concept of “person” is fuzzy. Any attempt to define it with necessary and sufficient conditions faces the problem of borderline cases satisfying only some of the conditions to varying degrees. We ask about the implications of a metaphysical sense of personhood for its moral and legal sense. Finally, we address Rowlands’s reliance on pre-reflective self-awareness and present our own criteria for personhood.

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Neo-Sentimentalism And The Bodily Attitudinal Theory Of Emotions, Chun Nam, Emile Chan Oct 2016

Neo-Sentimentalism And The Bodily Attitudinal Theory Of Emotions, Chun Nam, Emile Chan

Lingnan Theses

Section 1 of this thesis investigates one issue in meta-ethics, namely, the nature of moral judgments. What are moral judgments? What does it mean by "wrong" when we assert "Killing is wrong?" Neo-sentimentalism is a meta-ethical theory which holds that the judgment that killing wrong is the judgment that it is appropriate to have a particular negative emotion towards the action. In other words, to judge that murder is wrong is to judge that we have a right reason for having a negative emotion towards the behavior. In the framework of neo-sentimentalism, the concepts of wrongness consist of negative emotions. …

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The Consequences Of Narrative, Kylie Mosbacher Oct 2016

The Consequences Of Narrative, Kylie Mosbacher

IdeaFest: Interdisciplinary Journal of Creative Works and Research from Cal Poly Humboldt

No abstract provided.

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“Hot” So Fast, Alex Howe Oct 2016

“Hot” So Fast, Alex Howe

Animal Sentience

Mark Rowlands’s target article offers a lucid, systematic treatment of a notion of personhood that has had significant influence in philosophy. The orthodox interpretation of this notion of personhood has been that it requires cognitive capacities not possessed by animals. Rowlands disputes this. However, I think his objections to the orthodox, higher-order thought (HOT) theories of mental unity may be too quick. In this commentary, I show two separable places where Rowlands’s objection to HOT theories of mental unity falls short.

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The Ideology Of Madness: The Rejected Artist Vs. The Capitalist Society In As I Lay Dying, Jared R. Mcswain Oct 2016

The Ideology Of Madness: The Rejected Artist Vs. The Capitalist Society In As I Lay Dying, Jared R. Mcswain

Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research

This article examines the character of Darl Bundren in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying from the position that he is an artist functioning in a society that ultimately rejects and condemns him through the vessel of ideological conceptions of madness. Topics explored include the ideology of madness, the ideological project of capitalism, queering as a weapon to support an ideology, essential characteristics of “the artist” type, and the consequences of perceived madness.

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Consciousness And The Unity Of Mind, Mark Rowlands Oct 2016

Consciousness And The Unity Of Mind, Mark Rowlands

Animal Sentience

Several types of objection have been raised against the arguments I presented in my target article, “Are animals persons?” Among the objections are the following: (1) the claim that animals are persons is of little significance, (2) my use of the Lockean conception of the person is questionable, (3) whether a creature qualifies as a person is a matter of social construction rather than objective fact, (4) reflective consciousness is more important than I realize, (5) my reliance on implicit self-awareness in the account of personhood is ill-advised, (6) my account entails that too many creatures qualify as persons, and …

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The Impossibility Of A Civil Society, Isidoro Talavera Oct 2016

The Impossibility Of A Civil Society, Isidoro Talavera

Learning Showcase 2016: A Celebration of Discovery, Transformation and Success

We will never be able to achieve a liberal civil society because limitations of a civil society cannot be seen to be just a matter that it sometimes operates in an arena where contradictory forces are at play-where imperfect people organize around democratic and liberal values, and also around values that can be defined as uncivil to protect their group-based interests. The five conditions prohibit a liberal civil society because when applied each of which seems, when independently considered, to be plausible, but when taken together in fact conflict and are logically incompatible. Accordingly, one may argue that civil society …

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Insects: Still Looking Like Zombies, Christopher S. Hill Oct 2016

Insects: Still Looking Like Zombies, Christopher S. Hill

Animal Sentience

In arguing that insect brains are capable of sentience, Klein & Barron rely heavily on Bjorn Merker’s claim that activity in the human mid-brain is sufficient for conscious experience. I criticize Merker’s claim by pointing out that the behaviors supported by midbrain activity are much more primitive than the ones that appear to depend on consciousness. I raise a similar objection to Klein & Barron’s contention that insect behaviors are similar to behaviors that manifest consciousness in human beings. The similarity is weak. I also respond to the related view that integrative activity in mid-brain structures is sufficient to explain …

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Zen Noir Vis-À-Vis Myers-Briggs Personality Typology: Semiotic Multivalency As Grounds For Dialog, Edward J. Godfrey Oct 2016

Zen Noir Vis-À-Vis Myers-Briggs Personality Typology: Semiotic Multivalency As Grounds For Dialog, Edward J. Godfrey

Journal of Religion & Film

Marc Rosenbush’s film, Zen Noir (2004) is at first glance a Buddhist film wherein a troubled detective finds himself at a Zen temple with a murder to solve. But upon further investigation, it becomes evident that the film can also be understood in terms of Myers-Briggs personality typology, which is an extension of the personology and depth psychology of C.G. Jung. This suggests a multivalency which allows the imagery of the film to be interpreted in two different ways; as both suggesting Zen enlightenment and Jungian individuation. To assist with this comparison, this paper introduces the Ten Ox-Herding Paintings of …

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