Search

The ways in which group members experience and interact with one another has been explored in philosophy from Greek antiquity to the present. In modern European philosophy, beginning with the Enlightenment, the problem of ‘the Other’ has been taken up by empirical, idealist, phenomenological and existential philosophers. Based on such philosophical discourse, this article presents a fourfold schema of ‘modalities’ through which people acquire knowledge of one another in groups. The four modalities are as follows: (1) ‘Mind’, the use of reason, cognition and sense data to form a model of the other person’s mental processes; (2) ‘Body’, the intuitive, empathic, embodied perception of others; (3) ‘Gaze’, the establishment of power and authority by scrutiny of each other’s presentation of self; and (4) ‘Face’, the ethical imperative presented by the Other. The ideas of (1) Descartes, Locke and Kant; (2) Merleau-Ponty; (3) Sartre and Foucault; and (4) Levinas are discussed to elucidate each modality. The relationships between the modalities, group analytic theory and neuroscience are explored to build bridges between philosophy, group theory and practice, and the neuroscience of the social brain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In A Realist Theory of Science, Roy Bhaskar provides several transcendental arguments for critical realism - a position Bhaskar himself characterized as transcendental realism. Bhaskar provides an argument from perception and from the intelligibility of scientific experimentation, maintaining that transcendental realism is necessary for both. I argue that neither argument succeeds, and that transcendental idealism can better vindicate scientific practice than Bhaskar's realism. Bhaskar's arguments against the Kantian view fail, for they misrepresent the transcendental idealist position. I conclude that, if they wish to retain their theoretical commitments, critical realists ought to be transcendental idealists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the concept of idealism which help avoid the mind-body problem. It examines the relationship between the mind and the body and the mind and the brain wherein the idealists have as much reason to engage as anyone else. It also cites the mental states of the idealist with no realm of the extramental removes of the concerns.

Honoré de Balzac’s 1836 novellaL'Interdictionis the story of a wife's attempt to have her husband declared legally incompetent by reason of insanity, and of an idealisticjuge d'instruction's investigation of her request. In a procedurally detailed recounting of the investigation, Balzac reflects on the law's role alongside other discourses of authority in defining and adjudicating normal and abnormal behaviour. The eventual discovery that the husband is sane and that the wife's motives in claiming the contrary are grossly self-interested leads the narrator to familiar Balzacian conclusions about the marginalization of virtue – its depiction, indeed, as a form of madness – in a corrupt modern society. Yet the text's constant evocation of questions of plausibility, verisimilitude and realism draws these legal considerations into a self-reflexive dispute about narrative aesthetics, a mise-en-abyme of contemporaneous debates between the literary approach known as ‘idealism’, and Balzac's own nascent conception of the novelist's art, which would one day be known as ‘realism’. Despite its superficial moralizing, the text leads inexorably to the conclusion that idealism – the judge's, the husband's, Balzac's contemporary novelists' – is, simply, impossible, and must always yield to the demands of reality. The novella thus reveals how literature not only engages with legal issues and arguments, but appropriates them for the purposes of intra-literary aesthetic debates about how best to represent the world. Indeed,L'Interdictiongives a sense of how legal and representational disputes can in fact be two aspects of the same fundamental quarrel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Philologia is the property of Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article examines the peak and decline in interest in international small arms control during the trans-First World War period. It traces this process from the 1908 Brussels Conference, through the 1919 St-Germain Convention to the 1925 Geneva Convention, with the coda of the 1935 Royal Commission on the Manufacture of and Trade in Armaments. The research identifies the pivotal role of the 1917 Islington Committee. The article argues that realist and idealist small arms controllers have fundamentally different objectives: practical small arms control has tended to be a realist concern, whereas small arms campaigns are, for idealists, a lever to achieve wider goals. The history of small arms control provides a point of entry into understanding the cycles of international politics. The renaissance of interest in small arms control, the article suggests, is the mirror image of the decline in emphasis during the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The main purpose of this article is to provide an in-depth discussion of John Holloway’s recent book, Crack Capitalism. To this end, the paper offers a detailed account of the key strengths and weaknesses of Holloway’s version of ‘open Marxism’. The analysis is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on six significant strengths of Crack Capitalism: (1) its insistence upon the importance of autonomous forms of agenda-setting for both individual and collective emancipation; (2) its emphasis on the ordinary constitution of social struggles; (3) its fine-grained interpretation of the socio-ontological conditions underlying human agency; (4) its processual conception of radical social transformation; (5) its recognition of the elastic, adaptable, and integrative power of capitalism; and (6) its proposal for an alternative critical theory, commonly known as ‘open Marxism’ or ‘autonomous Marxism’. The second part of the study examines the principal weaknesses of Crack Capitalism: (1) the counterproductive implications of the preponderance of negativity, owing to a one-sided concern with critique, cracks, and crises; (2) conceptual vagueness; (3) an overuse of poetic and metaphorical language; (4) the absence of a serious engagement with the question of normativity; (5) a lack of substantive evidence; (6) a residual economic reductionism; (7) a simplistic notion of gender; (8) the continuing presence of various problematic ‘isms’; (9) the misleading distinction between ‘doing’ and ‘labour’; (10) a reductive understanding of capitalism; (11) an unrealistic view of society; and (12) socio-ontological idealism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In his work on neurophenomenology, the late Francisco Varela overtly tackled the well-known "hard problem" of the (physical) origin of phenomenal consciousness. Did he have a theory for solving this problem? No, he declared, only a "remedy." Yet this declaration has been overlooked: Varela has been considered (successively or simultaneously) as an idealist, a dualist, or an identity theorist. These primarily theoretical characterizations of Varela's position are first shown to be incorrect. Then it is argued that there exists a stance (let's call it the Varelian stance) in which the problem of the physical origin of primary consciousness, or pure experience, does not even arise. The nature of the "hard problem" of consciousness is changed from an intellectual puzzle to an existential option. The role of ontological prejudice about what the world is made of (a prejudice that determines the very form of the "hard problem" as the issue of the origin of consciousness out of a pre-existing material organization) is downplayed, and methodologies and attitudes are put to the fore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quine's web of belief is influenced by, and encompasses, the entire scope of reality. It is established with a minimalist vocabulary, and is an efficient and integral vehicle toward his metaphysical end unambiguous ontological commitment, which leads to a somewhat bleak but rigorous membership in the world. Physical objects exhaust the domain of substance, and man becomes a mere four dimensional physical object. All states of mind are psychologized, or reduced to their impact on behaviour. Effectively, idealist criticisms have not simply been taken note of, but idealism has been hijacked, and the result is a new kind of empiricism and an original view of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I make use of this reply to McLennan to offer an overall perspective on the development of my work, normatively, empirically and theoretically, and in its earlier neofunctionalist and later cultural-sociological phase. I argue that, despite periodic suggestions that my cultural sociology seeks to push sociology towards an absolute subjectivity, the social-epistemological framework of 'multidimensionality' around which I organized my first work, Theoretical Logic in Sociology, still holds. Cultural sociology introduces a method and theory for understanding a dimension of social life, it is not an attempt to explain every part of social life. There is still structural power according to this perspective, but the nature and force of this power must be understood differently. It is a mistake for social science to take a 'realist' path, either in its epistemology or in its mode of explanation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The years between 1880 and 1970 saw a great deal of discussion of social policy issues, including the circumstances of elderly people. Whilst considerable attention has been paid to proposals for old-age pensions, little has been said on ideas of care and the social theory which nourished them. This article discusses the views on care of Herbert Spencer, and those expressed in the majority and minority reports of the Royal Commission on the poor laws of 1909, conventionally described as representing the views of the Bosanquets and the Webbs repectively. Spencer's concern with 'filial obligation' is examined, and the differing emphases on institutional care and compulsion between the Bosanquets and the Webbs are discussed. The theoretical and conceptual roots of these position are analysed, drawing on recent work which suggests that whereas Spencer's thought is non-idealist, that of the others is fundamentally idealist, with agreement over social ends, but not eh means to their realization. The article clarifies key divergences in social and political principles in thinking about care for older people, with relevence to present-day circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this present research is to expand upon the foundation that codes of ethics are more useful guides to managers in their behavior and decision-making when managers are more familiar with code content and intentions. We explore whether the impact of code familiarity on code usefulness differs: (a) under varying conditions of turbulence and (b) between persons with relativist versus idealist personal values. Data have been collected from a sample of 1700 executives in member companies of the U.S. Direct Selling Association, and responses were received from 286 (16.8% returned). Perceptions of ethics code familiarity and usefulness decline as business turbulence increases. The decline in familiarity/usefulness was more pronounced for managers with a relativistic ethical orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author comments on Bruno Latour's article "On Interobjectivity," published within the issue. He pointed out the important differences between Latour's text and activity theory. One of these differences is Latour's argument on simian interaction. It is considered as an ingenious way to demonstrate the evolutionary significance of objects for humans. Another one is Latour's definition of the point of departure for analysis. The author recognized Latour as a determined critic of dialectics since he depicts dialectics as the ultimate pinnacle of dualism.