In this paper, we present how a dialectical perspective on phenomenological psychopathology, called Dialectical Phenomenology (DPh), can contribute to current needs of psychiatric diagnosis. We propose a three-stage diagnostic methodology: first- and second-person stages, and synthetic hermeneutics stage. The first two stages are divided into a pre-dialectical and a dialectical phase. The diagnostic process progresses in a trajectory of increasing complexity, in which knowledge obtained at one level is dialectically absorbed and intertwined into the next levels. Throughout the article, we (...) offer some examples of each step. In overall, the method starts off from the patient's own narrative, proceeds to two stages of phenomenological reduction designed to guarantee the scientific validity of the object, and concludes with a hermeneutical narrative synthesis that is dialectically composed of the patient's and psychopathologist's shared narratives. At the end of this process, the initial first-person narrative is transformed into a specific scientific object, a full dialectical phenomenological psychiatric diagnosis. This form of diagnosis constitutes a comprehensive alternative for an integral assessment of the complexities of human psychological alteration, bringing together both the interpretation of the suffering person and the scientific categories of psychiatry. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn recent work, Maeve Cooke has criticised Jürgen Habermas’s post-metaphysical model in order to motivate an alternative “post-secular” conception of the state, which involves the replacement of the “institutional translation proviso” with the “nonauthoritarian reasoning requirement”. I provide a qualified defence of the Habermasian model by arguing that it does not lead to the kind of negative consequences regarding legitimacy and solidarity Cooke attributes to it. This, in turn, means that Cooke’s proposal for the secular foundation of political authority on (...) a post-secular basis is insufficiently motivated. In the process, I argue that the point of departure for the debate about religion in the public sphere shared by both Habermas and Cooke – the picture of the “total” religious citizen – should be rejected because it presupposes an overly simplistic view of religions and religious identities. (shrink)

It is widely held that reflexivity is the defining feature of selfhood: the ability of the self to stand in a certain relation to itself. The question of how exactly to theorize this self-relation, however, has been the source of ongoing debate. In recent years, Kantian and post-Kantian approaches such as Christine Korsgaard’s constitutivism and Richard Moran’s commitment view, have attempted to establish the priority of the agential over the epistemic self-relation, thereby re-orientating the debate away from metaphysics and epistemology (...) towards ethics and moral psychology. Despite the important progress they make towards a de-alienated and reified understanding of the self-relation, however, I argue that the Kantian paradigm is ultimately inadequate because its methodological individualism makes it incapable of accounting for the irreducibly social dimension of the self-relation and, therefore, of successfully making the transition from ethics to social and political philosophy. In other words, an adequate ontology of the self-relation is possible only as a social ontology. In order to motivate this thesis, I appeal to two examples that expose the “social deficit” of the Kantian approach: Frantz Fanon’s phenomenology of race/racism in “The Lived Experience of the Black” and the phenomenon of cultural collapse in Jonathan Lear’s Radical Hope. I then go on to provide a sketch of an alternative approach based on the notion of “self-appropriation”, distinguishing it from Rahel Jaeggi’s use of the term in her recent critique of alienation, in the process. (shrink)

In discussions of the conservation of culturally significant architecture, awareness about issues of temporality and its theoretical import has been approached from varied, partial, perspectives. These perspectives have usually focused on accounts of temporality that focus on the past and the present—and more rarely the future—without considering either the complete spectrum of human temporality or its ontological bases. This article addresses this shortcoming with a phenomenology of conservation grounded on the fundamental attitudes of cultivation and care. After a phenomenological and (...) existentialist analysis of Cesare Brandi’s thought—focusing on his paradigmatic Theory of Restoration—his attitude comes forth as a limited instance of the modern conservation attitude that is concerned exclusively with architecture as art. This attitude results in a limited temporal intentionality. Following Ingarden and Ricoeur, the existential approach here applied to the deduced dimensions of the space and time of Dasein—in Heidegger’s terms—outlines the grounding of conservation on an existential interpretation of the more fundamental notions of cultivation and care. This interpretation suggests a solution for the modern impasse with an existential account of both the artistic grounding of architecture and its characterization as the place that temporally accompanies Dasein. Architecture thus emerges as a manifold being, constituting existentially the space for the authentic human being, whose temporal consciousness compels it to cultivate and care about that space, thus enriching the possible approaches to conservation as a collective endeavor. (shrink)

In spite of the growing public awareness of those who would identify as transgender, very little has changed in attitudes that would accord such people full approbation. The author takes the reader on a 40‐year journey of discovery that has led her to an abiding interest in and dedication to the issues faced by people who do not fit within the gender binary of Western society. As well as describing a personal experience with someone who identifies as transsexual, the author (...) relates two troubling experiences from her nursing career. Included in the discussion are linguistics, sexuality, and vocabulary. A personal epistemology is explored that incorporates unknowing, intuition, and embodiment, and the difference this view can make to the care of those who identify as gender‐diverse. (shrink)

The current dominant approach on the assessment of critical thinking takes as a starting point a conception of criticality that does not commit to any substantive view or context of meaning concerning what issues are relevant to be critical about in society or in life. Nevertheless, as a detailed examination of the identification of assumptions shows, when going from the theory of critical thinking to the praxis of producing and evaluating arguments, the critical person will inevitably make such commitments from (...) particular perspectives, using particular contexts of meaning. But then she may fail to take notice of relevant ones and may end up using her critical powers in a mercenary way. It is then proposed, in the context of assessment of critical thinking, to choose and use some privileged contexts of meaning, while making them available for critical scrutiny and allowing for the possibility that new ones be brought up by those being assessed. (shrink)

Theologians and philosophers remain rather indecisive about the notion of desecularisation. I suggest that desecularisation should be considered relevant insofar as it interacts with other notions belonging to contemporary thought, namely: radical secularisation, desacralisation, deconstruction, and dis-enclosure. I argue that desecularisation can be understood as belonging to the same movement as the one marked by deconstruction and dis-enclosure. Staging this interaction will yield the following: the necessity of secularising secularisation itself, the importance of differentiating between secularisation and desacralisation, the rightful (...) belonging of desecularisation to the events of deconstruction and dis-enclosure at the “end” of metaphysics, and the need to rewind the ideological abuse of secularisation. (shrink)

The philosophical orientation of Gadamerian hermeneutic phenomenology is explored in this paper. Gadamer offers a hermeneutics of the humanities that differs significantly from models of the human sciences historically rooted in scientific methodologies. In particular, Gadamer proposes that understanding is first a mode of being before it is a mode of knowing; what this effectively offers is an alternative to the traditional way of understanding in the human sciences. This paper details why the work of hermeneutics is not to develop (...) a procedure for understanding, but to clarify the conditions of understanding. In this explication, the author examines the hermeneutic experience and, in the process, relates it to both the practical and the historical horizons of the lifeworld of health professionals, particularly nurses. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology<, Volume 7, Edition 2 September 2007. (shrink)

The Issues at Issue: Heidegger declares metaphor to be a function of metaphysics. Ricoeur's tension theory of metaphor takes the understanding of metaphor beyond metaphysics. Ricoeur's theory of metaphor is a theory of metaphorical statement not of naming. The classical, lexical theory of metaphor focuses on a primary meaning of each metaphor. As such metaphor is merely ornamentation in language. What it names could more appropriately be accomplished in literal language. In contrast, metaphor is understood by Ricoeur to be a (...) semantic event made possible by three kinds of tensions. One may understand symbols to function with the same metaphorical tensions. In the case of symbols, however, these tensions function not at the level of the sentence but rather of the narrative. Metaphor and symbol both have an ‘ontological priority’ over other elements of discourse and experience. They ‘work’ because of the event character of both understanding and experience. Understanding and experience have event as their condition of possibility. Metaphor and symbol both have a ‘temporal priority’, as well, for they serve as the shock to think ‘more’. This can occur, however, because they are part of a circularity that is non-metaphysical, that is, the circularity of the event character of the Being-of beings. Hence, just as metaphors are always ‘larger’ than the sentence, so are symbols always ‘larger’ than the narrative. (shrink)

This is a response to two reviews of our book "Science Unfettered: A Philosophical Study of Sociohistorical Ontology." We clarify the relationship between the ontological and the ontic, the key phrases: 'being-in-the-world,' the 'facticity' of human existence. We show where the sources of reviewers misunderstandings lie.

The present article addresses the question of whether, and to what extent, critical thinking should make attunement to current social and political landscapes central to its practice. I begin by outlining what I consider to be the basic positions in the debate about the political contextualisation of critical thinking, which are referred to as the crypto-Enlightenment and the critical pedagogical models. I argue, on the basis of various strands of research, that there is a prima facie case to be made (...) in favour of the critical pedagogical position that favours forefronting the social and political context of critical thinking and thinking in general. I then draw attention, however, to problems of coherence and justification in the critical pedagogical position, before turning, finally, to an alternative grounding of critical thinking that takes seriously the historical and social contextualisation of thinking without the coherence problems of critical pedagogy. My conclusion is that while the critical pedagogical model is right to point to the fatal incompleteness of Enlightenment-style critical thinking due to its failure to properly acknowledge the norm-saturated nature of historical consciousness, critical pedagogy itself fails to offer a coherent alternative to the problem of integrating value and rationality in a more full-blown grounding of critical thinking. I suggest that a hermeneutical model that integrates the rational, axiological and historical moments in consciousness provides a more satisfying foundation for understanding the trajectory and purpose of critical thinking. (shrink)

Health-related quality of life measures aim to assess patients’ subjective experience in order to gauge an increasingly wide variety of health care issues such as patient needs; satisfaction; side effects; quality of care; disease progression and cost effectiveness. Their popularity is undoubtedly due to a larger initiative to provide patient-centered care. The use of patient perspectives to guide health care improvements and spending is rooted in the idea that we must respect patients as self-determining agents. In this paper I look (...) at the two main orientations to quality of life measurement: standardized and individualized measures. I argue that while these measures are attempts to provide for patient self-determination, they both fail to do so. In their place I suggest a new approach which overcomes their respective difficulties: a dialogic approach. (shrink)

This paper explores the dominant rational approach to informed consent and challenges the appropriateness of this approach to ethical decision‐making with people with dementia. In dementia care a dominant assumption exists that people are not autonomous because of their inability to make decisions and exercise freedom of choice. The rational understanding of autonomy being the capacity to exercise freedom of choice means that health and social care professionals feel justified in making decisions on behalf of the person with dementia. If (...) a person cannot consent to an intervention then a proxy is used to make the decision. This paper argues that such an approach reinforces the mind‐body dualism that dominates health and social care discourse. Whilst acknowledging the place of proxy decision‐making, it is argued that there is a need to hear the voice of the person with dementia that goes beyond rational understandings of what is heard and that does not reinforce separation of the mind and body. An understanding of the person through their ‘narrative identity’ is proposed and illustrated through a case example. Drawing on the philosophy of Ricoeur it is argued that an individual's narrative identity can be developed and used to underpin informed consent decisions. Using a case example it is argued that paying attention to an individual's narrative identity provides a way of respecting the autonomy of the individual with dementia in a way that is consistent with their overall life plan. (shrink)

If you do not wish to construe philosophical discourse as simply a discourse of cognition, a theoretical discourse; if you think it is also a practical, ethical discourse: how should you write? How should you frame the ethos, the authority of your discourse? This article re‐presents an extended preface I wrote and rewrote obsessively over a period of nearly two years in an effort to forge a voice and mode of address adequate to my sense of philosophical discourse as a (...) practical discourse, whilst also being accountable to the generic requirements of a PhD. As the textual record of this struggle, the value of this text must remain primarily in its capacity to evoke or provoke similar generic memories or ambitions in the reader. (shrink)

Mentorship, often viewed as a central capacity of leadership, is acknowledged as influential in growing nurse leaders. Mentoring relationships are perceived as empowering connections offering a dynamic guided experience to promote growth and development in personal and professional life. A hermeneutic phenomenological approach informed by Heidegger and Gadamer was used to explore understandings and experiences of mentorship for nurse leadership by 13 Australian nurse leaders. We found that learning and transformation associated with becoming a nurse leader mentor was experienced as (...) an enduring evolutionary process. Participants' life journeys provided experiences that developed their understandings and established their personal identity as a leader and mentor. We considered the journey motif in terms of its inextricable connection with lived time and used Heidegger's ecstasies of temporality as a lens to understand how the temporal dimensions of past, present and future influenced and shaped the development of nurse leader mentors. We found that our temporal existence influences interpretation of ourselves and the world. Individuals can benefit from multiple separate mentoring interludes, with different mentors, over a lifetime. For some nurses, becoming a leader and mentor is a lifelong transformative process that grows from diverse experience and influential role modelling rather than formal instruction. (shrink)

The metaphor of host and guest has value for exploring the practice and role identity of nurses on inpatient mental health units. Two complementary texts, one from the ancient Zen record of Lin‐chi, and the other from the contemporary hermeneutic philosopher Richard Kearney, are used to elaborate meanings of host and guest that can be applied to the situation of mental health nurses. In a doctoral study with a hermeneutic design, I addressed the topic of nurse–patient relationship using an interpretive (...) framework that included sources from Buddhist thought. The positions of host and guest emerged from interviews with nurses as one interpretive theme to open up new understanding of the topic. The two texts, originally distant in era and culture, both employ the host and guest metaphor. They are applied to extracts from interviews to open up discussions of hierarchy, status, patients' perspectives, otherness and resistances as features of nurses' complex experience. These provide insights into understanding practice and suggest implications for how institutional environments shape practice. An intercultural reading of texts can provide a source of new understanding of nurse–patient relationships. (shrink)

Mentoring relationships occur across a range of nursing contexts and are shown to have multiple, favourable personal and professional outcomes. Specifically, mentoring has been associated with the development of nurse leaders. This study describes features that are integral to initiating mentoring relationships that focus on nursing leader development. These significant features are addressed in relation to the nursing literature. Thirteen nurse leaders from eastern states of Australia were interviewed during 2005 and 2006 about their understanding and experiences of mentoring for (...) leadership. Their narratives were analysed using a hermeneutic phenomenological methodology. Mentoring relationships for nurse leadership were revealed as developing from esteemed connections between two people. Mentors were shown to unconditionally champion their mentee’s careers, and mentees were shown to possess a leadership vision for nursing. The findings of this study have implications for establishing mentoring relationships for nurse leader development. Consideration should be given to the specific focus and context of these relationships to ensure that the full potential of the mentoring process is realised. It is also important to better understand the key aspects that contribute to the phases of mentoring relationships for nurse leader development because they are shown to influence the dynamic and function of these relationships over time. (shrink)

There has been much philosophical interest regarding the ‘hierarchy of evidence’ used to determine which study designs are of most value for reporting on questions of effectiveness, prognosis, and so on. There has been much less philosophical interest in the choice of outcome measures with which the results of, say, an RCT or a cohort study are presented. In this paper, we examine the FDA’s recently published guidelines for assessing the psychometric adequacy of patient-reported outcome measures. We focus on their (...) recommendations for demonstrating content validity and also for how researchers should weigh up the sum of psychometric evidence when choosing these measures. We argue that questions regarding judgment and understanding meaning of these measures should play a more central role in determining their adequacy. (shrink)

In this paper I lay out the ground for a creative dialogue between Buddhist thought and contemporary nursing. I start from the observation that in tracing an arc from the existential human experience of suffering to finding compassionate responses to suffering in everyday practice Buddhist thought already appears to present significant affinities with nursing as a practice discipline. I discuss some of the complexities of entering into a cross‐cultural dialogue, which is already well under way in the working out of (...) Western forms of Buddhism, and which is beginning to be reflected in nursing literature. I introduce philosophical hermeneutics as a useful framework for elaborating an open and constructive exchange. I then discuss key Mahayana Buddhist concepts of emptiness and two truths that lead to a dynamic and open way of understanding reality and responding in the world. I turn to examples of original texts to give a flavour of the varied and distinctive forms of literature in the Buddhist tradition. This is intended partly to keep the reader alert to cultural difference (from a Western standpoint, that is) while exploring the creative potential of Buddhist thought. Hermeneutics again provides a framework for interpretation. This paper establishes a philosophical ground for a critical and creative dialogue between Buddhist thought and nursing. (shrink)

This paper discusses findings from a research study that investigated the experience of being a breastfeeding woman in New Zealand. The study was motivated by a desire to better understand why the majority of New Zealand women wean their infants before 6 months of age, despite the benefits of prolonged breastfeeding being well accepted. Nineteen women, who were breastfeeding or had recently breastfed, were engaged in unstructured interviews about their experience, and the results were examined using a reflective lifeworld research (...) methodology. The findings presented here demonstrate that women often employ an interpretive framework that is aligned with the philosophical tradition of Descartes’ mind–body split, also know as Cartesian dualism. This leads to a widely held perception of the breast as an object, which emerged in the participants’ narratives and is explored using Heidegger's philosophical interpretation of equipment. We conclude that the objectification of the breast in our society fails to provide women with language that describes the breastfeeding experience in a meaningful way, thus undermining women's ability to articulate and reconcile their embodied breastfeeding experiences. (shrink)

Philosophical hermeneutics is underrepresented in the literature on music performance. Given the shift from Cartesian subjectivism to anti-subjectivism in the contemporary literature on improvised musical performance, it is somewhat surprising that hermeneutics does not figure more prominently. Since hermeneutics is characterized by a dialectical to-and-fro—the hermeneutical conversation—between interpreter and subject matter, it would appear to offer a strong foundation for an anti-subjectivist account of improvised musical performance. The aim of this essay is to offer such an account. Drawing primarily on (...) the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Luigi Pareyson, this essay works through ideas related to the performer’s interpretation of pre-composed musical works, the context and content of the performance event, and the relational character of musical performance. It is argued that improvised musical performance necessarily relies upon a certain hermeneutic relationality. (shrink)

This paper explores the influence and use of agrarian thought on collective understandings of food practices as sources of ethical and communal value in urban contexts. A primary proponent of agrarian thought that this paper engages is Paul Thompson and his exceptional book, The Agrarian Vision. Thompson aims to use agrarian ideals of agriculture and communal life to rethink current issues of sustainability and environmental ethics. However, Thompson perceives the current cultural mood as hostile to agrarian virtue. There are two (...) related claims of this paper. The first argues that contrary to Thompson’s perception of hostility, agrarian thought is popularly and commercially mobilized among urban populations. To establish this claim I extend Charles Taylor’s notion of a social imaginary and suggest that urban agriculture can be theorized as an agrarian imaginary. Entwined with the first claim is the second, that proponents selectively use agrarian history to overemphasis a narrative of virtue while ignoring or marginalizing historical practices of agrarian violence, exclusion and dispossession. I do not discount or deny the significance of agrarian virtue. By situating agrarian thought within a clearer virtue ethics framework and acknowledging potential manifestation of agrarian vice, I suggest that the idea of agrarian virtue is strengthened. (shrink)

Both an emphasis on logic and an emphasis on rhetoric lead to a kind of care for language. However, in early Greece this care for language through the lens of logic manifested in the drive to ‘get it right’, whereas in early China the care for language manifested in the pervasive concern for zhengming, for using names properly. For the early Chinese thinkers, especially the early Confucians, this was not predominantly a linguistic affair—zhengming is a key component of moral cultivation. (...) As we explore the ethical import of Confucian role ethics, we need to pay attention to the philosophical vocabulary of this worldview and to how our understanding of these crucial terms changes if persons are seen as relational—a central premise of Confucian role ethics. In this essay I argue against reading zhengming as fagu, merely a conservative retrieval of historical meaning, as suggested by the political philosopher Hsiao Kung-chuan, among others. Instead, I argue for three theses: (1) although stubbornly persistent, ‘rectification of names’ is not an adequate translation for zhengming; (2) the conservative reading of zhengming is problematic and needs to be rethought as an hermeneutic process intersecting past meanings, present circumstances, and future possibilities; and (3) zhengming is, in an important sense, the ‘art’ of Confucian role ethics, for achieving moral competency in this tradition is a matter of constantly revising one's roles and relationships. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the notion of experience, whose conceptual analysis seems to be often neglected or at least not sufficiently made explicit in the current discourse on Everyday Aesthetics. In our investigation this notion will be tackled, in particular, through the lens of such concepts as Erlebnis, Erfahrung, and Lebenswel t, which are drawn from the continental philosophical tradition. Purpose of the paper is to present a provisional framework aimed at clarifying that a more accurate conceptualization of experience allows (...) for a better contemporary reflection on the aesthetics of everyday life. (shrink)

The existence of a plurality of communities, a diversity of norms, and the ultimate contingency of all decisions in modern societies complicates the task of academics and practitioners who wish to be ethical. In this paper, we envisage and articulate a dialogical, communitarian approach to embedding business ethics that requires business ethicists to more reflexively engage with practitioners in working on and representing the normative criteria that people in organisations use to deal with moral dilemmas in business. We promote the (...) idea that business ethicists should not only cross the divide between normative ethics and empirical research, but also take a step beyond the empirical to become more active change agents. As potential exemplars of this approach in practice, we explore how self-critique and cross-disciplinary collaboration in education and teaching might be used by academics to engage current and future business ethicists, as well as managers, in dialogic partnership. In an organisational context, we also propose a three-part approach to embedding reflexive ethics in practice, through dialogic research, debate, and re-presentation of ideas. We contend that our approach has more efficacy than the traditional grand theories of ethics or more focused theories of business ethics, such as Integrated Social Contract Theory; it has the potential to provide more grounded, and therefore more practical, advice to academics, current and future business ethicists, and business practitioners. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this study, the learning experiences of four elementary school teachers who were basketball coaches were explored. Specifically, the learning experiences gained through observing professional basketball coaches’ sessions were examined by employing van Manen’s hermeneutic-phenomenological approach, which focuses on the thematic analysis of lived experiences. Previous coaching studies that have focused on the professional development of coaches have revealed that observing elite coaching sessions could be a major source of practical coaching knowledge because coaches could learn from experienced coaches. (...) Quantitative studies of this learning effect have revealed that observers learn new coaching methods from a general perspective. However, this study revealed that teachers give specific meaning and value to observed phenomena from the perspective of personal interest based on their coaching or teaching beliefs. This learning was interpreted from a multifaceted perspective, which was evident from their coaching interests and questions. This study disclosed that teachers reflect on their coaching philosophy, methods and attitude. Furthermore, even if teachers generally tend to highlight their coaching methods, this has a qualitatively complex nature because the meaning and value given to coaching methods varied in each teacher’s reflection. The perspective of problem-solving highlighted how to answer their personal questions based on practical coaching problems by observing a coaching session. Discovering the methodological differences between the observation session and the daily coaching session were highlighted. (shrink)

The article analyzes the conception of a trading zone as a space of action and belief coordination. P. Galison proposed the conception based on anthropological and linguistic analogies. The article reviews the anthropological analogies aimed at building up the conception and the legitimacy of their use. The conclusion is that the analogies used are not accurate enough. If the tribes interacting in trading zones have a common history, material culture, and practices, they can hardly have significant differences. If they are (...) not in possession of all these characteristics, they are unlikely to remind us of different groups of scientists who participate in common researches. The article also contains the hypothesis that acceptance of a common habitus is a condition subject to which the scientists can arrange the mutual understanding space. It issues new challenges to the scientific community, as all people related to university education also accept the scientists’ habitus. (shrink)

This paper examines the metaphor of harmony as a criterion of hermeneutic understanding. Taking harmony as a play of integrated parts within a dynamic whole, we can see the hermeneutic task of interpretation as a process of harmonizing parts meaningfully with each other and with the larger whole. Holding up a sufficiently rich notion of harmony as an ideal of interpretation can guide our hermeneutic practices. After distinguishing subtle differences in the Greek and Chinese conceptions of harmony, I argue that (...) the Chinese conception more closely aligns with the metaphysical and epistemological assumptions of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s approach to hermeneutic understanding. In the end, I suggest that these insights can lead us to progress in social harmony. (shrink)

Following Foucault, ‘critique’ could be regarded as being the art not to be governed in this way or as a project of desubjectivation. In this paper it is shown how such a project could be described as an e‐ducative practice. It explores this idea through an example which Foucault himself gave of such a critical practice: the writing of ‘experience books’. Thus it appears that such an e‐ducative practice is a ‘dangerous’, public and uncomfortable practice that is not in need (...) of pastoral care but requires generosity, presence and attention. As such it demands a pedagogy of experience which is to be invented in order to ‘make’ oneself into a question, to transgress the limits of a governmental regime. (shrink)

This study examines the sources of human divergence as arise from Wilhelm Dilthey’s writings. While Dilthey assigns a central role to the human subject, he never synthesizes his major ideas on subjectivity into a unified theory of subjective uniqueness. I will show that such a theory can be derived from his writings through the combination of three ideas that appear in them. These ideas are: (1) the thesis that human understanding is possible because of psychological content that is shared by (...) both the creator and the interpreter; (2) the belief that this shared content is the only content that exists within human beings, meaning that there is no unique psychological content; and (3) the perception of this inner universal content as an accumulation of life-possibilities. When joined together, these ideas create an inspiring theory of human divergence, according to which the uniqueness of an individual is determined through partial realization of universal possibilities. (shrink)

The French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, is emerging as one of the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th century, having published widely on philosophy, literature, language, psychoanalysis, art, politics, and cinema. However, because of the ‘experimental’ nature of certain works, combined with the manner in which he draws upon a variety of sources from various disciplines, his work can seem difficult, obscure, and even ‘willfully obstructive’. In an attempt to resist such impressions, this paper will seek to provide an (...) accessible introduction to Deleuze's work, and to begin to discuss how it can be employed to provide a significant critique and reconceptualization of the theoretical foundations and therapeutic practices of psychiatry, psychotherapy, and mental health nursing. In order to do this, the paper will focus upon Deleuze's masterwork, and the cornerstone to his philosophy as a whole, Difference and Repetition; in particular, it will discuss how his innovative and challenging account of time can be employed to provide a conception of human life as a ‘continuity’, rather than as a series of distinct ‘moments’ or ‘events’. As well as discussing the manner in which his work can provide us with an understanding of how life is different and significant for each human being, this paper will also highlight the potential importance of Deleuze's work for logotherapy, for the recent ‘turn’ to ‘narrative’ as a psychotherapeutic approach and for contemporary mental health care's growing interest in ‘social constructionism’. As such, this paper also seeks to stimulate further discussion and research into the importance and the relevance of Deleuze's work for the theory and practice of psychiatry, psychotherapy, and mental health nursing. (shrink)

The relationship between memory and history, which has preoccupied historiography and the philosophy of history since the middle of the nineteenth century, took a particular course in France at the end of the millennium. The forms this relationship took in this particular context have been the subject of heated debate around whether the reconstruction of the past should bear the sign of a moral imperative or, on the contrary, it should be kept away from any moral conditioning. To address this (...) question and underline its particular relevance to the present, I will revisit a significant debate, based around Paul Ricoeur’s interpretation of the duty of memory developed in his book Memory, History, Forgetting. I will do this by means of a three-step approach. First, a short introduction will provide several guidelines for understanding the issues at stake in the debate in which Ricoeur was caught and explanations regarding the significance of the main notions around which the discussions took place, i.e., the duty and work of memory. Second, I will identify how historical debates, political decisions and civic concerns about the past gradually coagulated into two different “camps” in France during the 1980s and 1990s, i.e., the advocates of memory against those of history, foreshadowing the emergence of a historiographical crisis, the stakes of which I will analyse in detail. Finally, I will show how Ricoeur’s solution to this debate, i.e., an incomplete dialectic between the duty and the work of memory, developed on the horizon of justice, continues to have relevance for the present, being an innovative form of “defatalizing” the past. (shrink)

Psychotherapy is commonly described as a “talking cure,” a treatment method that operates through linguistic action and interaction. The operative specifics of therapeutic language use, however, are insufficiently understood, mainly due to a multitude of disparate approaches that advance different notions of what “talking” means and what “cure” implies in the respective context. Accordingly, a clarification of the basic theoretical structure of “talking cure models,” i.e., models that describe therapeutic processes with a focus on language use, is a desideratum of (...) language-oriented psychotherapy research. Against this background the present paper suggests a theoretical framework of analysis which distinguishes four basic components of “talking cure models”: (1) a foundational theory (which suggests how linguistic activity can affect and transform human experience), (2) an experiential problem state (which defines the problem or pathology of the patient), (3) a curative linguistic activity (which defines linguistic activities that are supposed to effectuate a curative transformation of the experiential problem state), and (4) a change mechanism (which defines the processes and effects involved in such transformations). The purpose of the framework is to establish a terminological foundation that allows for systematically reconstructing basic properties and operative mechanisms of “talking cure models.” To demonstrate the applicability and utility of the framework, five distinct “talking cure models” which spell out the details of curative “talking” processes in terms of (1) catharsis, (2) symbolization, (3) narrative, (4) metaphor, and (5) neurocognitive inhibition are introduced and discussed in terms of the framework components. In summary, we hope that our framework will prove useful for the objective of clarifying the theoretical underpinnings of language-oriented psychotherapy research and help to establish a more comprehensive understanding of how curative language use contributes to the process of ther-apeutic change. (shrink)

This paper describes the first phase of an ongoing education and research project guided by three main intentions: (1) to create opportunities for phronesis in the classroom; (2) to develop new understandings about phronesis as it relates to nursing care generally and to caring for specific groups, like formerly incarcerated adults; and (3) to provide an opportunity for formerly incarcerated adults and graduate nursing students to participate in a dialectical conversation about ethical knowing. Gadamer's writings on practical philosophy, phronesis, and (...) the Socratic dialectic provide the philosophical foundation and framework for the project. The first phase in the project was a 4‐h class within a graduate‐level health promotion course during which 30 nursing students and three formerly incarcerated panelists engaged in a dialectic conversation about what it means to care for formerly incarcerated adults in a meaningful way. After the class, two focus groups were conducted, one with the students and one with the formerly incarcerated panelists. Findings articulated participants' prejudices and assumptions prior to the class, expanded sense of phronesis, and ability to consider nursing practice within a larger ethical framework. Panelists and students left the class with a deeper understanding of one another and expressed an openness towards continued dialectic conversations together. Use of the Socratic dialectic within nursing curricula reflects a current and critical trend in nursing education to bring non‐epistemologic forms of knowledge into the classroom. (shrink)

In contrast to educational policies in the U.S., which assume an individualistic path of success and promote the assimilation of students, this essay argues for pedagogies where teachers focus upon facilitating the development of strong relationships en route to creating exciting educational environments and fertile contexts for social justice movements. Powerful teachers model the process whereby a commitment to appreciating the perspectives of individual students is combined with the orchestration of a dynamic intersubjective context, because such contexts call out the (...) strongest performances of individuals. Viewing educational events in terms of the patterns and rhythms that transpire in a particular social fields allows educators ways to create powerful educational environments even in neocolonial contexts that pit students and teachers against one another. Viewing educational events as social fields also allows us to understand how the common classroom, which focuses each student on the material in front of them, creates impotent individuals who dissociate themselves from others. (shrink)

Recently the relevance of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger has been critiqued in nursing literature. However, this critique is based primarily upon an appropriation of Heidegger that does not reflect an understanding of meaning as grounded in temporality. Therefore, this paper aims to (1) explicate Heidegger's grounding of meaning, (2) briefly contrast Heidegger's and Husserl's notions of the origin of meaning, (3) describe how Heidegger was first introduced to nursing, and (4) illustrate through examples from a research study how the (...) philosophy of Heidegger might inform the phenomenological researcher. (shrink)

This essay attempts to retrieve the notion of ‘common sense’ within the writings of Descartes and Montaigne. I suggest that both writers represent distinct traditions in which the notion is employed. Descartes represents a modernist tradition in which common sense is understood to be a cognitive faculty, while Montaigne represents a humanist tradition in which common sense is understood as a political virtue. I also suggest that both writers work with the notion as a way of responding to diversity in (...) the world. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the notion of common sense employed by Descartes and Montaigne emerges out of the scholastic tradition and the assertion that both writers are responding to the educational consequences of scholasticism. I also discuss how the reconstruction of Descartes in this paper can provide some ground for raising new questions about the Cartesian project and educational philosophy. Finally, I gesture toward the idea that the humanist tradition with its understanding of common sense as political virtue can provide benefit for contemporary responses to diversity. (shrink)

This paper discusses the contribution that the work of Sally Gadow makes to understandings of interpretive inquiry and it's potential to inform and influence nursing practice, research, and education. The discussion draws on several of Gadow's published works that make explicit her understandings of what it means to be interpretive, to be open to multiple truths, to hear multiple voices, to have a history, to be experienced, and to recognize agency in language. Situating this discussion of Gadow's contribution in opposition (...) to a metaphysics of genius is intended to move our understanding of particular work past the subjectivity that produced it, past the subjectivized responses to the work, past the reporting on myself – my thoughts, my perspectives, my experiences – to explore, to see the worthwhileness or even the possibilities of exploring the work itself and the worlds it evokes. This paper is a deliberate attempt to disrupt the call to the author to save us from the task of interpreting the questions that the work itself places us under. Gadow's work itself points us away from a valorization of the voice of the author of the work, a single voice, and towards a cultivation of a worldly repose where each interpretive account points us to some longstanding whole to which the work belongs and from which it gains its sense and significance. (shrink)

The focus of the paper is on Gadamer’s claim that “Aesthetics has to be absorbed into hermeneutics.” Our initial aim is to contextualize the statement, emphasizing its controversial nature, given that the context specific meaning of the claim can seem commonsensical. Accordingly, the first part of the paper is devoted to developing the historical tension between philosophy and art. Towards the latter half of the paper, the task is to examine Gadamer’s thesis in light of this history. Evaluating Gadamer’s position (...) within the philosophical tradition, we will take recourse to Bubner’s critique of an “aesthetics of truth.” While judging Bubner’s critique to be accurate, we will also stress certain peculiarities that potentially undermine his critique—especially as it concerns Gadamer. Here, the most critical aspect has to do with his critique of the notion of “the work,” which figures as the cornerstone of his critique of modern-day aesthetic theory. We will show that insofar as Bubner argues from a critique of the work anchored in modern art, then, as far as Gadamer is concerned, he is arguing from a notion of the work that was never theoretically espoused to begin with. We will conclude with an argument for the claim that the artwork on Gadamer’s account is hermeneutically structured. For only on such a conception, we argue, can he be taken as living up to his promise of doing justice to the experience of art. (shrink)

This essay provides a close study of the international horizons of Kallol, a Bengali literary journal, published in post-World War I Calcutta. It uncovers a historical pattern of Bengali intellectual life that marked the period from the 1870s to the 1920s, whereby an imperial imagination was transformed into an international one, as a generation of intellectuals born between 1885 and 1905 reinvented the political category of . Hermeneutics, as a philosophically informed study of how meaning is created through conversation, and (...) grounded in this essay in the thought of Hans Georg Gadamer, helps to reveal this pattern. While translocal vistas of intellectual life were always present in Bengali thought, the contours of those horizons changed drastically in the period under study. Bengali intellectual life, framed within a center (the foreign) and tik (international), as opposed to bilāt (England, or the West), to name the world abroad. The world outside empire increasingly became a resource and theme for artists and writers. Major changes in global geopolitical alignments and in the colonial politics of British India, and the relations between generations within Bengali bhadralok society, provide contexts for the rise of this international youth imagination. (shrink)

The ArgumentScience consists in progress by innovation. Scientists, however, are committed to all kinds of traditions that persist or recur in society regardless of intellectual and institutional changes. Merton's thesis about the origins of the scientific revolution in seventeenth-century England offers a sociohistorical confirmation of this revisionist view: the emergence of a highly rational scientific method out of the religious-ethical sentiments of the English Puritans implies that scientific knowledge does indeed grow out of – and not really against – customary (...) modes of thought.In tracing the intellectual origins of this view back to the religious controversy between Protestants and Catholics, the essay demonstrates that the essential conflict between them with regard to natural science stemmed from their antagonistic conceptions of tradition and its function in the production of genuineknowledge– of religious as well as of natural affairs. Whereas the Protestants believed only in those truths that are immediately revealed by God to each man through his reason, the Catholics adhered to truths that are related to men or “made” by them through culture and history. (shrink)

A common argument in favor of using reprogenetic technologies to enhance children goes like this: parents have always aimed at enhancing their children through upbringing and education, so why not use new tools to accomplish the same goal? But reprogenetics differs significantly from good childrearing and education, in its means, if not its ends.

Incorporating Gadamer and other thinkers from the continental tradition, this essay is a close and detailed hermeneutic, phenomenological, and ontological study of the dialectic practice of Plato’s Socrates—it radicalizes and refutes the Socrates-as-teacher model that educators from scholar academic ideology embrace.

This article examines and synthesizes two different approaches to determining the content of business ethics courses and the manner in which they ought to be taught. The first approach, from a political perspective, argues that the institutional framework within which business operates ought to be tested by theories of distributive justice. The second approach, from the perspective of virtue theory, argues that we ought to examine the character of individual employees and the responsibilities associated with the roles which these individuals (...) play within organizations. I argue that Gadamer's interpretation of Aristotle's notion of phronesis shows an inseparable, bidirectional, conceptual link between the approaches of politics and virtue as well as providing insight into how business ethics might best be taught. (shrink)