This selective and opinionated overview of English-language scholarship on the philosophical method(s) of Plato's Socrates discusses whether this Socrates has any expertise or method, how he examines others and why, and how he exhorts others to care about wisdom and the state of their soul.

This paper explores a distinctive form of social interaction—interpersonal inquiry—in which two or more people attempt to understand one another by engaging in conversation. Like many modes of inquiry into human beings, interpersonal inquiry partly shapes its own objects. How we conduct it thus affects who we become. I present an ethical ideal of conversation to which, I argue, at least some of our interpersonal inquiry ought to aspire. I then consider how this ideal might influence philosophical conceptions of the (...) self. (shrink)

This article discusses madness and saintliness in Dostoevsky’s novels and investigates how the madman and the saint discern between good and evil. I first explore the metaphysical, spiritual, and moral universe of Dostoevsky’s characters by drawing on William Desmond’s philosophy of the between. Second, I argue that the madman’s misconstrual of reality can be grasped as an idolatrous, divisive, and parodic imitation of the good. Third, I reflect on disembodied discernment. In some cases, due to the weakness of the moral (...) agent, the good cannot be properly embodied in space and time, even if a person exhibits ethically sound discernment. Fourth, I look at examples of holy discernment and examine how, through love, the genuinely good person is able to transform idolatry into a universal and cosmic sacramentalism. (shrink)

This work is a critical introduction to Alfred Schutz’s sociology of the multiple reality and an enterprise that seeks to reassess and reconstruct the Schutzian project. In the first part of the study, I inquire into Schutz’s biographical con- text that surrounds the germination of this conception and I analyse the main texts of Schutz where he has dealt directly with ‘finite provinces of meaning.’ On the basis of this analysis, I suggest and discuss, in Part II, several solutions to (...) the shortcomings of the theoretical system that Schutz drew upon the sociological problem of multiple reality. Specifically, I discuss problems related to the struc- ture, the dynamics, and the interrelationing of finite provinces of meaning as well as the way they relate to the questions of narrativity, experience, space, time, and identity. (shrink)

One hundred years on from the infamous premiere of The Rite of Spring, Stravinsky’s epoch-defining ballet continues to evoke controversy and contention in both musicological and performance circles. Even to call it a ballet is to overlook, or compound, its problematic identity. Throughout its life span, most audiences will have encountered, valorised and identified the work as a landmark of orchestral musical modernism heard primarily, perhaps even exclusively, in concert halls and on audio recordings with not a dancer, theatre stage (...) or set in sight. Still to this day it thus remains one of music’s more remarkable split personalities: bifurcated along formalist and contextualist lines by Stravinsky’s ret⁠rospective and opportunistic assertion that he had written “un oeuvre architectonique et non anecdotique.”. (shrink)

Intersemiotic translation (IT) was defined by Roman Jakobson (The Translation Studies Reader, Routledge, London, p. 114, 2000) as “transmutation of signs”—“an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems.” Despite its theoretical relevance, and in spite of the frequency in which it is practiced, the phenomenon remains virtually unexplored in terms of conceptual modeling, especially from a semiotic perspective. Our approach is based on two premises: (i) IT is fundamentally a semiotic operation process (semiosis) and (ii) (...) IT is a deeply iconic-dependent process. We exemplify our approach by means of literature to dance IT and we explore some implications for the development of a general model of IT. (shrink)

Drawing on recent developments in dialogic approaches to learning and teaching, I examine the roots of dialogic meaning-making as a concept in classroom practices. Developments in the field of dialogic pedagogy are reviewed and the case for dialogic engagement as an approach to classroom interaction is considered. The implications of dialogic classroom approaches are discussed in the context of educational research and classroom practice. Dialogic practice is contrasted with monologic practices as evidenced by the resilient of the IRF as the (...) default discourse structure in classrooms. Recent evidence suggests the IRF is resistant to attempts to introduce interactive approaches to whole class teaching. Discussion of dialogic practice as a vehicle for increasing pupil engagement at a deep level and raising the quality of classroom interaction is illustrated through a consideration of Philosophy for Children, which is identified as a dialogic approach to classroom practice which has transformative potential for children's learning. Philosophy for Children offers an approach to pedagogy which enables teachers to value pupil voice and promote reflective learning. As such it has much to offer the current debate on dialogic teaching and learning. Research evidence suggests it will promote improved pupil outcomes on a range of assessments. (shrink)

By revealing the centrality of stories to action, to social life and to inquiry together with the implicit assumptions in polyphonic stories about the nature of humans, of life and of physical reality, this paper examines the potential of stories to transform civilization. Focussing on the failure of environmentalists so far in the face of the global ecological crisis, it is shown how ethics and political philosophy could be reconceived and radical ecology reformulated and reinvigorated by appreciating and exploiting the (...) potential of stories. This could enable radical ecologists to effect the major social and economic changes necessary to meet the global ecological crisis. What we need, it is argued, is a new, polyphonic grand narrative. (shrink)

This paper explores Bakhtin’s reception of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre with a view to assess how Bakhtin’s interest in this early chronotopical masterpiece can be understood in the wider context of his utopian thinking and his political eschatologies. Bakhtin reads Goethe’s novel as a critique of totalitarian forms of Socialist Realism as well as Dostoyevsky’s bourgeois realism. Like his contemporary Ernst Bloch, Bakhtin praises the complexity and richness of Goethe’s concept of realism. In the wake of Hermann Cohen, Georg Simmel (...) and Friedrich Gundolf to whom Bakhtin alludes and whom he quotes, Goethe is regarded as a modern literary and anthropological role model, the epitome of Bildung. For Bakhtin, Goethe’s and Rabelais’ writings about the carnivalesque constitute complementary forms of reflection of and agents for social and cultural transformation in modernity. (shrink)

Among the works of the ancient Greek satirist Lucian of Samosata, well-known for his scathing and obscene irony, there is the novel True History. In this work Lucian, being in an intense satirical mood, intended to undermine the values of the classical world. Through a continuous parade of wonderful events, beings and situations as a substitute for the realistic approach to reality, he parodies the scientific knowledge, creating a literary model for the subsequent writers. Without doubt, nowadays, Lucian’s large influence (...) on the history of literature has been highlighted. What is missing is pointing out the specific characteristics that would lead to the placement of True History at the starting point of Science Fiction. We are going to highlight two of these features: first, the operation of “cognitive estrangement”, which aims at providing the reader with the perception of the difference between the convention and the truth, and second, the use of strange innovations (“novum”) that verify the value of Lucian’s work by connecting it to historicity. (shrink)

The article engages Bakhtin’s corpus with Nietzschean ideas in order to draw out critical resources for the social theory of ‘community’. It begins by considering both thinkers’ debt to neo-Kantianism, and proceeds to relate the ‘will to power’ to Bakhtin’s early intersubjective phenomenology of intentional acts. This interpretation is then extended to Bakhtin’s conception of art, where aesthetics stands in tensile relation to ethics in the exercise of authorial will. Bakhtin’s later work might be seen as elaborating more complex terms (...) for describing will and event, now as composite embodiments of multiple intentions within art, discourse and language, thus suggesting a novel approach to ‘communality’ in modern social life. (shrink)

_An exploration of philosophical and religious ideas about humor in modern philosophy and their secular implications._.

This paper attempts to reconcile two apparently opposed ways of thinking about the imagination and its relationship to literature, one which casts it as essentially concerned with fiction-making and the other with culture-making. The literary imagination’s power to create fictions is what gives it its most obvious claim to “autonomy”, as Kant would have it: its freedom to venture out in often wild and spectacular excess of reality. The argument of this paper is that we can locate the literary imagination’s (...) complementary power of cultural articulation in this fictional activity. The suggestion is that we should conceive of the literary imagination as expressing its interests in culture not mimetically but by producing a certain kind of meaning. This meaning is irreducibly narratological, and understanding it helps us to see the role of narrative in bringing into harmony the literary imagination’s interests in both the imaginary and the real. (shrink)

One may distinguish between three broad conceptions of linguistic meaning. One conception, which I will call “logical”, views meaning as given in reference (for words) and truth (for sentences). Another conception, the “monological” one, seeks meaning in the cognitive capacities of the single mind. A third, “dialogical”, conception attributes meaning to interaction between individuals and personal perspectives. In this chapter I directly contrast how well these three approaches deal with the evidence brought forth by fictive interaction. I examine instances of (...) fictive interaction and argue that intersubjectivity in these instances cannot be reduced to either referential-logical or individual-cognitive semantic notions. It follows that intersubjectivity must belong to the essence of linguistic meaning. (shrink)

This paper looks at the ways in which Mikhail Bakhtin had appropriated the ideas of Kant and of the Marburg neo-Kantian school. While Bakhtin was greatly indebted to Kantian philosophy, and is known to have referred to himself as a neo-Kantian, he rejects the main tenets of neo-Kantianism. Instead, Bakhtin offers a substantial re-interpretation of Kantian thought. His frequent borrowings from neo-Kantian philosophers (Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, and others) also follow a distinctive pattern of appropriation, whereby blocks of interconnected ideas (...) are removed from their original context, and made to serve Bakhtin’s own—substantially different—philosophical purposes in the context of his own thought. Bakhtin’s thought thus remains original even as he is borrowing ideas from others. (shrink)

The study of the processes and methods through which elements of Hegelian philosophy and aesthetics have been appropriated and adjusted to the needs of Marxist–Leninist criticism is essential for understanding Bolshevik–Marxist aesthetics in the process of its consolidation into an official doctrine in Soviet Russia. By looking at the career of the Bolshevik Commissar of Enlightenment, Anatoly Lunačarskij, it is possible to discern the extent to which the process was forged by the unsanctioned presence of Goethe and Hegel. The article (...) traces their important contributions in the causes of sustaining revolutionary romanticism and its eventual overcoming in favor of the rationality and solemnity of socialist realism. (shrink)

Trumpeter Don Cherry was fond of saying that 'there is nothing more serious than fun'. And philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer seems to echo his words when he writes: 'Seriousness is not merely something that calls us away from play; rather, seriousness in playing is necessary to make the play wholly play'. Individuals, communities and cultures the world over delight in the play of musical sound and debate its play of meanings. For specialists, musical discussion often hinges on cryptic symbols and (...) impenetrable codes, but for everyone, understanding music relies on basic cognitive and social processes. By musicking together -- to borrow Christopher Smalls' evocative phrase for taking part in any way in musical activity -- we bond with one another and create shared meanings. We also define or express ourselves within and against a musical community and a historical and cultural tradition. (shrink)

Renewed interest in collective memory has raised the need for conceptual elaboration of the topic and how it can be studied. In an attempt to clarify how it fits into interdisciplinary discussion the following conceptual oppositions are laid out: memory versus remembering, collective versus individual remembering, history versus collective memory, and strong versus distributed versions of collective remembering. Collective memory is then analyzed from the perspective of M. M. Bakhtin's understanding of ‘text’ in which a ‘language system’ is contrasted with (...) an ‘individual, unique, and unrepeatable’ pole of textual analysis. These ideas are harnessed to examine forms of dialogicality that shape collective memory, especially in politically contested cases such as Estonian and Russian accounts of conflict over the past century. (shrink)

The great German theorist Niklas Luhmann argued long ago that meaning is the central construct of sociology. We agree, but our scheme of stochastic processes—evolved over many years as identity and control—argues for switchings of intercalated bits of social network and interpretive domain as the core of meaning processes. We thus challenge Luhmann's central claim that modern society's subsystems are based on communicative self-closure. We assert that there is refuting evidence from sociolinguistics, from how languages are put together and how (...) languages' indexical and reflexive devices are used in social action. Communication is about managing indexicalities, which entail great ambiguity and openness as they are anchored in myriad netdom switchings across social times and spreads. In contrast, Luhmann's concept of communication revolves around binary codes governed recursively and algorithmically within systems in efforts to reduce complexity from the environment. We conclude that systems closure does not solve the problem of uncertainty in social life. In fact, lack of uncertainty is itself a problem. Order is necessary, but order at the edge of chaos. (shrink)

This essay addresses moral hazards associated with the emerging doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). It reviews the broad acceptance by the Vatican and the World Council of Churches of the doctrine between September 2003 and September 2008, and attempts to identify grounds for more adequate investigation of the moral issues arising. Three themes are pursued: how a changing political context is affecting notions of sovereignty; the authority that can approve or refuse the use of force; and plural foundations (...) for human rights in a religiously and otherwise plural world such that the human rights protection does not become tyrannical. (shrink)

There are several linguistic phenomena that, when examined closely, give evidence that people speak through characters, much like authors of literary works do, in everyday discourse. However, most approaches in linguistics and in the philosophy of language leave little theoretical room for the appearance of characters in discourse. In particular, there is no linguistic criterion found to date, which can mark precisely what stretch of discourse within an utterance belongs to a character, and to which character. And yet, without at (...) least tentatively marking the division of labor between the different characters in an utterance, it is absolutely impossible to arrive at an acceptable interpretation of it. As an alternative, I propose to take character use seriously, as an essential feature of discourse in general, a feature speakers and listeners actively seek out in utterances. I offer a simple typology of actions in discourse that draws on this understanding, and demonstrate its usefulness for the analysis of a conversation transcript. (shrink)

A central finding in experimental research identified with Embodied Cognition (EC) is that understanding actions involves their embodied simulation, i.e. executing some processes involved in performing these actions. Extending these findings, I argue that reenactment – the overt embodied simulation of actions and practices, including especially communicative actions and practices, within utterances – makes it possible to forge an integrated EC-based account of linguistic meaning. In particular, I argue: (a) that remote entities can be referred to by reenacting actions performed (...) with them; (b) that the use of grammatical constructions can be conceived of as the reenactment of linguistic action routines; (c) that complex enunciational structures (reported speech, irony, etc.) involve a separate level of reenactment, on which characters are presented as interacting with one another within the utterance; (d) that the segmentation of long utterances into shorter units involves the reenactment of brief audience interventions between units; and (e) that the overall meaning of an utterance can be stated in reenactment terms. The notion of reenactment provides a conceptual framework for accounting for aspects of language that are usually thought to be outside the reach of EC in an EC framework, thus supporting a view of meaning and linguistic content as thoroughly grounded in action and interaction. (shrink)

This paper outlines and demonstrates the viability of a consistent dialogic approach to the semantics of utterances in natural language. Based on the philosophical picture of language as dialogue, adumbrated by Mikhail Bakhtin and incorporating work in conversation analysis and cognitive-functional linguistics, I develop a method for analyzing both the function and the content of human utterances within a unified philosophical framework. I demonstrate the viability of this method of analysis by applying it to a brief conversational exchange (in Hebrew), (...) which is analyzed here in full detail. (shrink)

Ecofeminism, a new vein in feminist theory, critiques the ontology of domination, whereby living beings are reduced to the status of objects, which diminishes their moral significance, enabling their exploitation, abuse, and destruction. This article explores the possibility of an ecofeminist literary and cultural practice, whereby the text is not reduced to an "it" but rather recognized as a "thou," and where new modes of relationship-dialogue, conversation, and meditative attentiveness-are developed.

There are several strategies for exposing the defects of established moral discourse, one of which is critical argumentation. However, under certain specific historical circumstances, the apparent self-evidence of established moral discourse has gained such dominance, such a capacity of resistance or incorporation, such an ability to conceal its basic vulnerability that its validity simply seems beyond contestation. Notwithstanding the moral subject’s basic discontent, he or she remains unable to challenge the dominant discourse effectively by means of critical argument. Or, to (...) borrow a phrase from Michel Foucault, individuals find themselves faced with a certain rationality, a moral regime that dominates moral discourse to such an extent that they cannot offer any resistance without raising the suspicion of being unreasonable. They (that is, we) find ourselves confronted with a discourse quite unable to recognize its own deficiencies. Although we are forced to accept its basic claims, our chronic discontent nevertheless persists. That is, although we are forced to participate in this discourse, we remain basically ambivalent, and our attitude towards established morality contains both a Yes and a No. Then, all of a sudden, the basic vulnerability of the dominant regime dawns on us or is revealed to us – and this is the experience of laughter. (shrink)

The Vita Heliogabali in the Historia Augusta consists of a political-biographical first section (1.4–18.3), generally considered to be historically useful, followed by a fantastic catalogue of the emperor's legendary excesses (18.4–33.8), generally dismissed as pure fiction. While most of these eccentricities are probably inventions of the “rogue scholar,” it is argued that the grand recital of imperial antics, more than just a detachable appendix, serves a demonstrable ideological purpose and is informed by a unifying rationale, which in turn helps explain (...) the “Lampridian” Elagabalus as historiographical construct. Within the sequence of Antonine biographies Elagabalus, ultimus Antinonorum, marks the climax in a progressive tendency towards tyranny and is accordingly styled as transcendental despot; multiple topoi from the literary tradition provide the generic coordinates for this larger-than-life portrait. Food and sex in particular, both typical elements in this context, are inflated in Heliog. into major thematic systems to signal the emperor's tyrant status, to bring out his distinctive attention to aesthetics, and to enhance the Life's literary cohesion. (shrink)

The question discussed in the present paper is whether actions that are free can be thought of as rational. According to one view, no free action could be rational. According to another, all free actions must be rational. I argue that both these positions are false and that there is no necessary connection between freedom and rationality. Some free actions are rational, others are not.

Engages and extends the feminist philosopher Lorraine Code's groundbreaking work on epistemology and ethics.

Challenges readers to reconsider the moral standing of plants.

Translated from: W.V.O.Quine, W. H. O. (1986): Philosophy of Logic. Second Edition. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, 47-61.

The entextualization and recontextualization of speech via transcription is a fundamental methodology of discourse analysis. However, particularly for researchers concerned with sociopolitical issues in discourse, transcription is not a straightforward tool but a highly problematic yet necessary form of linguistic representation. Recent commentators have critiqued the inconsistency of researcher transcripts; by contrast, this article seeks to understand rather than remedy such variability, conceptualizing diversity in transcripts as a kind of linguistic variation. Examining four different types of variation in transcription practice (...) — global format choices based on an analytic focus on content versus form, variation in the details of transcription format in reproducing one's own or others' transcripts, orthographic variation in a single transcript, and variation in translation — the article argues that although reflection about the transcription process cannot overcome the difficulties inherent in this methodology, it can allow scholars to be more attentive to their own transcription choices and their limitations and to make these explicit in their writing. (shrink)

Dmitri Nikulin is one of the few contemporary philosophers to have devoted books to the topic of dialogue and the dialogical self, especially in the last fifteen years. Yet his work on dialogue and the dialogical has received scant attention by philosophers, and this neglect has hurt the ongoing development of contemporary philosophical work on dialogicality. I want to address this lacuna in contemporary philosophical scholarship on dialogicality and suggest that, although Nikulin’s account is no doubt insightful and thought-provoking, it (...) is problematic for two main reasons: first, his account fails to recognize the proper relationship between dialogue and agency; and second, his enumeration of the necessary and sufficient conditions for dialogue contains conceptual inconsistencies. (shrink)

Recent decades have witnessed a growing interest in narrative both in certain areas of philosophy and in the study of religion. The philosophy of religion has not itself been at the forefront of this narrative turn, but exceptions exist—most notably Eleonore Stump’s work on biblical stories and the problem of suffering. Characterizing Stump’s approach as an apologetic orientation, this article contrasts it with pluralistic orientations that, rather than seeking to defend religious faith, are concerned with doing conceptual justice to the (...) range of possible human perspectives, both religious and nonreligious. By discussing various examples, the article makes a case for narrative philosophy of religion, especially in its pluralistic form. (shrink)

The essay examines the Underground Man's ambivalent position in Dostoevskij's hierarchy of values in light of the Nietzschean concept of ressentiment To elucidate the problem of free will in Notes from Underground, I propose to supplement Nietzsche's theory with the concept of ressentiment as developed by Max Scheler, whose endorsement of Christian love as a means of overcoming ressentiment suggests an affinity with Dostoevskij's own deeply religious worldview. With the help of Schelerian phenomenology, I read the novel as an early (...) statement of the problem of Christian freedom in Dostoevskij's oeuvre. Like the "Pro and Contra" section of The Brothers Karamazov, Notes from Underground turns our attention to the "costs" of the Christian ideal: in a world exposed to the ultimate horizon of desire through Christ, those lacking the serenity of faith may be doomed to the merciless torment of ressentiment. (shrink)

Contemporary approaches to the study of suicide tend to examine suicide as a medical or public health problem rather than a moral problem, avoiding the kinds of judgements that have historically characterised discussions of the phenomenon. But morality entails more than judgement about action or behaviour, and our understanding of suicide can be enhanced by attending to its cultural, social, and linguistic connotations. In this work, I offer a theoretical reconstruction of suicide as a form of moral experience that delineates (...) five distinct, yet interrelated domains of understanding: the temporal, the relational, the existential, the ontological, and the linguistic. Attention to each of these domains, I argue, not only enriches our understanding of the moral realm but also provides a heuristic for examining the moral traditions and practices that constitute contemporary understandings of suicide. (shrink)

semantic minimalism and moderte contextualism.

Feeling that they must aim for certainty in their claims, each side presents its version of reality, monologically, simply for acceptance or rejection by the other. In this form of argumentation, one individualistically formulated, systematic, finished version is pitted (in an essentially Neo-Darwinian struggle) against another. By its very nature, such a form of rational argumentation prevents the construction of a shared version of things; it is not dialogical. In attempting to recover what has been rendered ’rationally-invisible‘ by our modern (...) modes of (monological) reasoning, I first explore the "structures of passion and feeling" (Raymond Williams) embodied in the ways in which people in a community interrelate themselves. Attention to such structures illuminates the nature of argument in a novel, dialogical, light: those who share in such structures do not share in a system of foundational principles or a logical framework, but in a "living tradition" (MacIntyre) or "living ideology" (Billig et al.). Bakhtin‘s concept of the utterance is then explored as the basic unit for understand dialogical communication and argument within such living traditions. (shrink)

The Bakhtin Circle’s conception of language is very much still alive, still productive, in the language sciences today. My claim in this paper is that to understand the Bakhtin Circle’s continuing relevance to the language sciences, we have to look beyond the linguistic theory itself, to the philosophical groundwork laid for this project by Bakhtin in what he himself referred to as his philosophical anthropology. This philosophical anthropology, at the center of which stands an architectonics of self—other relations, opens the (...) door for a radical rethinking of what language is and how it works; a rethinking that in turn opens up and coincides with new directions being explored in the language sciences today. Within the context of Bakhtin scholarship, this paper also argues for taking Bakhtin’s early philosophical works more seriously when discussing the Bakhtin Circle’s conception of language. (shrink)

Despite the ongoing consideration of the ethical nature of human resource management (HRM), little research has been conducted on how morality and ethics are represented in the discourse, activities and lived experiences of human resource (HR) professionals. In this paper, we connect the thinking and lived experiences of HR professionals to an alternative ethics, rooted in the work of Bauman (Modernity and the Holocaust, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1989; Theory, Culture and Society 7:5–38, 1990; Postmodern Ethics, Blackwell, Oxford, 1991; Approaches to (...) Social Enquiry, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1993; Life in Fragments, Blackwell, Oxford, 1995) and Levinas (Otherwise than Being, or, Beyond Essence, Duquesne University Press, Pittsburgh, PA, 1998). We argue that the study of HRM and ethics should be contextualized within the discourses used, the practices and activities of HR professionals. Through the analysis of interview data from 40 predominantly Canadian HR practitioners and managers we experiment with Bauman’s notion of ‘moral impulse’ to help us understand how HRM is both a product and perpetuator of moral neutralization in organizations. We suggest that HRM as it is practiced is concerned with distancing, depersonalizing, and dissembling, and acts in support of the ‘moral’ requirements of business, not of people. However, we also recognize that HR practitioners and managers are often confronted with and conflicted by actions and decisions that they are required to take, therefore opening possibilities and hope for an alternative ethical HRM. (shrink)

The essay examines the Underground Man's ambivalent position in Dostoevskij's hierarchy of values in light of the Nietzschean concept of ressentiment To elucidate the problem of free will in Notes from Underground, I propose to supplement Nietzsche's theory with the concept of ressentiment as developed by Max Scheler, whose endorsement of Christian love as a means of overcoming ressentiment suggests an affinity with Dostoevskij's own deeply religious worldview. With the help of Schelerian phenomenology, I read the novel as an early (...) statement of the problem of Christian freedom in Dostoevskij's oeuvre. Like the "Pro and Contra" section of The Brothers Karamazov, Notes from Underground turns our attention to the "costs" of the Christian ideal: in a world exposed to the ultimate horizon of desire through Christ, those lacking the serenity of faith may be doomed to the merciless torment of ressentiment. (shrink)

CDA has become widespread not only in Europe but also in the international arena. The concept and practice of the ‘critical’ may become problematic when they cross cultural, social and political boundaries. This paper focuses on the meanings of the English word critical and on the Chinese words used to translate it. We assume that the meaning of each set of words is linked to the historical discourse practices in which it emerged. We briefly examine the cultural and socio-political histories (...) of the two sets with a view to stimulating questions concerning the question: Is the concept and practice of critique culturally relative or a human universal? We suggest some ways in which this fundamental question, not hitherto posed in CDA, may be approached in today's global scientific environment. (shrink)

This article explores two central notions of ‘dialectics’ and ‘dialogics’ based on the work of Vygotsky and Bakhtin respectively, as well their varying interanimations within Stalin-Marxist Russian societyIt is proposed that these two positions are incommensurably located alongside one another in contemporary education. I argue that Bakhtin offers diametrically oppositional educational provocations to those of Vygotsky.The implications of these interpretations will be explored with consideration of their underlying philosophical incompatibilities and contradictions, as well as the opportunities such a consideration pose (...) for educational practice today. (shrink)