The paper develops the claim that in The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard conceptualizes a demoralized understanding of sin. Rather than interpreting sin as moral guilt, he proposes a concept of sin that takes the form of alienation. The claim is unfolded in a three-step argumentation: First, we identify crucial hermeneutical issues and stress the role of the pseudonyms within Kierkegaard’s writings. Second, we offer a detailed analysis of the theory of self-consciousness developed by Anti-Climacus. Finally, using the romantic interpretation of (...) Kierkegaard as a foundation, we demonstrate how Anti-Climacus conceptualizes sin as alienation. (shrink)

In teaching a class on what is arguably the most "sensational" area of anthropological study, i.e., the practices, beliefs, and behaviors that have been essentialized as magic, witchcraft, and religion by western theorists, one is faced with the problem of legitimizing something that many of our students view as unbelievable. Teaching a course in this area at a small, liberal arts college in Maine, I had to come to terms with just these sorts of problems, i.e., how do we get (...) people to enter into, posit and understand other ways of seeing and being that are radically different from their own? This paper discusses the structure (emic/etic) that I use to expose my students to problems of framing and understanding various ethnographic works through performing them, interpreting them, and debating them in class. (shrink)

El artículo propone una defensa conceptual de una concepción liberal y democrática de la educación. Por cuanto la principal función de la educación del individuo consiste en su socialización y la existencia de individuos educados es la garantía mínima de un proceso social creativo y rico, el desarrollo de la democracia está íntimamente ligado al desarrollo de la educación en general y al de la educación ciudadana en particular. Por esa razón el político, en un sistema democrático, debe ser un (...) pedagogo. La reflexión, eminentemente conceptual, termina con la presentación de un ejemplo de la historia política reciente de Colombia. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 3, Page 581-591, September 2021.

The everyday novelties of contemporary society require emotional reflexivity, but how can it be researched? Joint interviews can give more insight into the relational and embodied nature of emotional reflexivity than analysis of text-based online sources. Although textual analysis of online sources might be useful for seeing how people relationally negotiate what to feel when feeling rules are unclear, interviews allow observation of emotional reflexivity as done in interaction, especially if there is more than one interviewee. This highlights not only (...) the relational, but the embodied aspects of emotional reflexivity, and shows how it is a useful concept for researching aspects of emotionality not well addressed by other concepts such as “emotional intelligence” and “emotion work.”. (shrink)

For over a decade, practice-based research degrees in art and design have formed part of the United Kingdom research degree education portfolio, with a relatively rapid expansion in recent years. This route to the PhD still constitutes an innovative, and on occasion a disputed, form of research study and students embarking upon the practice-based doctorate find themselves in many ways undertaking pioneering work. To date there has been a dearth of empirical studies of the actual experiences of such students. This (...) article, based upon qualitative interviews with 50 students based at 25 institutions, represents an attempt to begin to fill this lacuna. The article charts the biographical change which students undergo as they pursue their doctorates. It examines the ways in which they construct, maintain, and modify their identities whilst in the role of ‘creator/maker’, and seek to manage and combine the different modes of being required of a ‘creator’ and a researcher. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the origins of social understanding. Drawing upon philosophical writings, I highlight those features of affectively patterned interpersonal relations that are especially important for a very young child's growing awareness and knowledge of itself and other people as people with their own minds. If we were without our biologically based capacities for co-ordinated emotional relatedness with others, we should lack something essential for acquiring the concept of 'persons' who have subjective experiences and (...) psychological attitudes towards the world. I illustrate some implications of this thesis by reviewing the phenomena of early childhood autism. (shrink)

In this paper I consider how thinking emerges out of human infants' relatedness towards the personal and non-personal world. I highlight the contrast between cognitive aspects and cognitive components of psychological functioning, and propose that even when thinking has become a partly separable component of the mind, affective and conative aspects inhere in its nature. I provide illustrative evidence from recent research on the developmental psychopathology of autism. In failing to adopt a developmental perspective, contemporary theorizing has displaced thinking from (...) where it is properly situated - intimately woven with feeling as well as action, and infused with qualities of interpersonal relatedness from which its structure is derived. (shrink)

In this article, I consider the structure of interpersonal emotional relations. I argue that current cognitive-developmental theory has overestimated the role of conceptual thinking, and underestimated the role of intrinsic social-emotional organization, in the early development of such feelings as jealousy, shame, and concern. I suggest that human forms of social experience are shaped by a process through which one individual identifies with the bodily expressed attitudes of other people, and stress the diversity of self–other relational states. I draw on (...) studies in developmental psychopathology, and specifically research in autism and borderline personality disorder, to illustrate some implications of this viewpoint. (shrink)

A concept of critical thinking is developed based on the Socratic method and called accordingly a Socratic model. First the features of critical thinking stressed in this model are stated and illustrated. The Socratic method is presented and interpreted, then taken to yield a model of critical thinking. The process of internalization by which the Socratic model helps us to become critical thinkers is described. Argument analysis is considered as a widely used instructional strategy adaptable for teaching critical thinking on (...) the Socratic model. This Socratic model is advanced as one helpful way of organizing our ideas about critical thinking, helpful in unifying disparate factors and anchoring them in the humanist tradition. (shrink)

The distinction between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ is challenged by arguments that ‘sex’ is equally a social construction, initiating a selfreflexive effort to return feminism to its foundational grounding. This article concerns intersexuality and transsexualism as two bodily forms that further suggest ‘sex’ as socially inscribed. I argue that feminist theory needs to ascertain whether the artificial emphasis on sexual difference, contra nature, is better able to effect social change than conjoined efforts to expose ‘sex’ as a construction intended to ground (...) divisions. Recent support for ‘multiple genders’ often remain dependent on a morphological notion of ‘sex’, and, as such, may not constitute a radical challenge to our current ‘sex’/‘gender’ system. (shrink)

Little sociological attention is directed to dreams and dreaming, and none at all is directed to how people tell one another about dreams. Ordinary settings in which dreams are told mimic the conditions of “breaching” experiments and should produce anomie, but dream telling proceeds without trouble. Foundational orientations of ordinary dream talk assimilate into professional dream studies, where dream narratives are “data” and the analysis of narratives is “dream analysis.” That such practices proceed without trouble poses some interesting problems for (...) sociology in terms of how anyone experiences “constraint” in the telling and hearing of dreams. (shrink)

Many philosophers contend that selfhood involves a uniquely first-personal experiential dimension, which precedes any form of socially dependent selfhood. In this paper, I do not wish to deny the notion of such a “minimal” experiential dimension as encapsulating the very givenness of experience as for a certain subject, such that experiences are accessible to this subject in a way that they are not for others. However, I do wish to deny any temptation to view minimal experiential selfhood as ontogenetically more (...) primitive than socially constituted selfhood. That is, the ‘thinnest’ construal of minimal experiential selfhood fails to properly account for characteristics that are essential to human selfhood; namely, the intimate, embodied interactions that unfold at the incipient moments of human life. I argue that taking the ontogenesis of embodied human existence seriously involves accepting the de facto equiprimordiality of minimal experientialiasm with a ‘minimal’ form of relational selfhood, i.e. the co-constitution of experience through engagements with others. (shrink)

The term community in ethics and bioethics traditionally has been used to designate either a specific kind of moral relationship available to rational agents or, in contrast, the context in which any sense of rational agency can even be understood. I argue that bioethics is better served when both selves and community are expressed through a more processive language that highlights the functional character of such concepts. In particular, I see the turn to processive community in bioethics as a turn (...) towards method, contextualization, and narrative. In clinical practice, such a processive account demands that bioethics concentrate on methods of developing healthy dialogue and deeper understanding from within the problematic situation rather than trying to fix problems using ethical tools developed from outside the present situation. Community, I argue, is in and of the interactive processes of inquiry itself. Such inquiry, such communitying, requires that we engage individual patients in context; it demands more than simply gaining their permission or mere consent; it demands developing a supportive environment for participation. (shrink)

In the target article, Brendel and Miller (2008) attempt to bring pragmatic insights to bear on research ethics through the approach called freestanding pragmatism that John Arras (2001) brought sq...

This paper is a comparative study of Alfred Schutz and Jose Ortega y Gasset, with special attention to their respective characterization of social reality. For this purpose, the author draws on the explicit references Schutz and Ortega directed towards one another and develops a critical comparison of their theoretical systems. In addition to the reciprocal references which appear in their published works, valuable documentary evidence is provided by Schutz's letters and, first and foremost, by his marginal notes preserved in his (...) own copy of Ortega y Gasset's Man and People. As far as the critical comparison of Schutz's and Ortega's theories is concerned, the weight of the discussion falls on Ortega's Man and People. A careful reading of this essay allows us to successively invoke the key components of Schutz's phenomenological characterization of the structures of the life-world. According to this strategy, and after some preliminary sections devoted to contextual, biographical, and sociocultural matters, the following topics are comparatively discussed: (1) the philosophical foundations of sociology, with particular attention to Ortega's doctrine of the Other as potential danger; (2) the taken-for-granted dimensions of the social world; (3) the multiple spheres of reality, and their structuration around the fundamental core of the radical reality of the I (for Ortega) or the paramount reality of everyday life, as the intersubjective world of culture (for Schutz); (4) the influence of pragmatism on their theoretical systems; (5) their strikingly similar characterization of the perspectivist stratification of the social world; (6) the inexhaustible complexity of the problem of intersubjectivity. Obviously, the common influence of Husserl, Weber, Scheler, and Bergson casts light upon the comparative consideration of any of these issues. (shrink)

After justifying its centrality in the Schützian project of founding interpretive sociology, I present the theory of relevance as the cornerstone of Schütz’s constitutive phenomenology of the natural attitude, conceived of as the investigation of the meaningful construction and the structures of the lifeworld. Through what I call the life-plans approach, I contend that the essence of every sociocultural world has to be found in a thick network of intersubjective and hierarchized relevance structures upon which personal life-projects are built. This (...) proposal is based on Schütz’s subordination of the theory of action to the theory of relevance, which challenges every atomistic view of social action. The interplay of relevance structures in the field of consciousness and especially the focus on imposed relevances encourage us to reflect on the scope of human freedom. Lastly, I examine the everlasting tension in Schütz’s thought between the anti-rationalistic potential of the theory of relevance and the methodological rationalism inherited from Weber and the Austrian marginalists. (shrink)

Although volunteering is the most organized and formal manner of altruism, the two subjects are rarely connected in literature. In this article reviewed is the egocentric approach that is found in four social disciplines: psychology, sociology, economics and socio-biology , and the way that studies on altruism are based on Utilitarian philosophy and on the homo economicus perception of man. All of the above have influenced the study of volunteerism: the research questions, the study areas, and the conclusions on the (...) essence of volunteering. We then review a different approach based on Deontological philosophy: the alter-centric approach, already influencing the study of altruism. New directions of approaching and studying volunteerism are suggested. (shrink)

This article proposes "equality" as a topic for interactionist research. By drawing on the perspectives of Herbert Blumer, Alfred Schutz, and Harold Garfinkel, an attempt is made to lay the theoretical groundwork for studying the interpretive and experiential aspects of equality. Blumer's fundamental premises of symbolic interactionism, Schutz's analysis of relevance and typification, and Garfinkel's treatment of reflexivity and indexicality are explicated and applied to the subject of equality. I then draw upon the moral theory of John Dewey to suggest (...) the positive role that interactionist theory and research might play in the resolution of problematic situations that are framed in terms of equality. Collectively, the complementary aspects of Blumer's, Schutz's, Garfinkel's, and Dewey's thought are used to justify and launch a program of research on a neglected yet important topic: the social construction of equality in everyday life. (shrink)

We propose that firms that engage in morally imaginative sensemaking will manage society's changing ethical expectations more effectively than those engaging in habituated sensemaking. Specifically, we argue that managers engaging in habituated sensemaking will tend to view changes in expectations as threats and respond to them defensively. In contrast, morally imaginative managers will tend to see these same changes as opportunities and address them by proactively or interactively engaging stakeholders in learning processes. We contribute to the literature on moral imagination (...) by highlighting the value of moral imagination relative to conventional sensemaking, and by positioning moral imagination as an ongoing mode of sensemaking. While we recognize that managers' capacity to continuously address changing ethical expectations using moral imagination is constrained by cognitive limitations, we posit that morally imaginative sensemaking may economize on cognitive resources over time by enabling managers to avoid managing ethical issues unproductively based on habit. We also contribute to the issues management literature by calling attention to two underlying factors, managerial sensemaking mode and firm enterprise strategy, that drive companies' approaches to issues management. (shrink)

Bernard Rimé effectively reorients emotions and emotional disclosure in a more social and interpersonal direction, outlining the intricate interplay between emotion generation, emotional sharing, and social integration. However, he also takes a hard line on the intra-psychic emphasis of emotional disclosure, which he frames as the product of an individualistic “Lone Ranger” perspective. In many ways Rimé's critique is on target, but it does not fully credit research and theory demonstrating the benefits of private, self-to-self disclosure. This commentary proposes a (...) reconciliation between Rimé's social structuralist perspective and an intra-psychic, self-based perspective. George Herbert Mead's symbolic interactionism, which suggests that the people can relate to their own selves as with another person, provides the basis for this accord. (shrink)

Research in the field of Chinese as a foreign language education has been increasing in the past decades. However, the number of studies on CFL teacher identity is limited. To bridge the gap, this study employed a qualitative method to explore Chinese CFL teachers’ identity formation and reformation in Australian contexts. A Chinese-Australian language program was studied to examine the challenges, struggles and developments of Chinese CFL teachers who came to Australia to pursue professional growth. Five Master’s theses and three (...) interview participants were included to paint a picture of how Chinese CFL teachers interact internally and externally with a new environment. Guided by Mead’s theory of self and other, we found that Chinese CFL teachers’ identity formation and reformation in Australian classrooms are deeply influenced by their self-identification and their integration with others in the community. Cultural connectedness is a key for organizational attitudes in the relationship of self and other. Chinese CFL teachers were found lacking the wholeness of self in Australian contexts, which led to obstacles in teacher identity construction. Insufficient communication between self and other resulted in their positioning crisis. (shrink)

Herbert Blumer was a key figure in what came to be identified as the Chicago School of Sociology. He invented the term ‘symbolic interactionism’ as a label for a theoretical approach that derived primarily from the work of John Dewey, George Herbert Mead and Charles Cooley. But his most influential work was methodological in character, and he is generally viewed today as a prominent critic of positivism, and of the growing dominance of quantitative method within US sociology. While this picture (...) is broadly accurate, it neglects an important strand in his methodological thinking. He was committed to the goal of a science of social life, while at the same time he was uncertain whether such a science is possible. In his Appraisal of Thomas and Znaniecki’s The Polish Peasant, he identified a serious dilemma facing this project: the problem of how a scientific approach can be made compatible with the distinctive nature of human social life. In the first chapter of his most influential book, Symbolic Interactionism, he advocates a naturalistic approach to case study, and seems to treat this as avoiding the dilemma. However, there is evidence to suggest that, even towards the end of his life, he regarded the problem as still unresolved. In this article, I examine both sides of Blumer’s dilemma, and whether his attitude towards it changed. However, my interest here is not only historiographical. I evaluate Blumer’s arguments and show that his intellectual struggle with this issue remains relevant today, despite the shifts that have taken place in social science methodology and the philosophy of science since his death. (shrink)

Analytic induction (AI) is an interpretation of scientific method that emerged in early twentieth-century sociology and still has some influence today. Among the studies often cited as examples are Becker’s articles on marijuana use. While these have been given less attention than the work of Lindesmith on opiate addiction and Cressey on financial trust violation, Becker’s work has distinctive features. Furthermore, it raises some important and interesting issues that relate not only to AI but to social scientific explanation more generally. (...) These concern, for example, the presence and nature of causal systems in the social world, the relationship between historical and generalizing approaches, the character and role of social scientific theories, and how they are generated. In this article Becker’s research is examined in detail, and these issues explored through comparisons with the work of Lindesmith and Cressey. (shrink)

The concept of instinct espoused in psychology in the early 20th century and the contemporary concept of psychological adaptation invite comparison. Definitions of both employ the notions of inheritance, selection, functional specificity, and species typicality. This article examines how psychologists before the rise of behaviourism sought to establish instinct as a psychological phenomenon. One of the consequences of doing so was a decoupling of psychological and physiological forms of instinct. This led to a failure of constraint in the usage of (...) the term instinct and the abandonment of the project to establish it as foundational. I argue that the notion of psychological adaptations at the heart of contemporary evolutionary psychology as espoused by John Tooby and Leda Cosmides invites similar difficulties and may come to share a similar fate. (shrink)

Reflections on the contrast between the titles of Popper’s Objective Knowledge and Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge led Haack to explore how Polanyi’s ideas might be used to correct some of the distortions caused by Popper’s refusal to allow any role in epistemology to the knowing subject, and thus to throw light on such questions as the relations between the knower and the known, between epistemology and psychology and sociology of knowledge, and between subjectivity and objectivity. Key words: epistemology; philosophy of science; (...) Karl Popper; Michael Polanyi; knowing subjects; personal judgment. (shrink)

This essay is an experimental project. It proposes that the theme of participation issues in an insightful, distinctive, comprehensive, and coherent interpretation of human experience. My personal history is a test case.

The objective of this paper is to discuss some of the foundational issues centering around the question of integrating education in human values with professional engineering education: its necessity and justification. The paper looks at the efforts in ‘tuning’ the technical education system in India to the national goals in the various phases of curriculum development. The contribution of the engineering profession in national development and India’s self-sufficiency is crucially linked with the institutionalization of expertise and the role of morality (...) and responsibility. This linkage can be created through a proper understanding of the social role of the profession—what motivates the professionals and what makes professional life meaningful. Value education facilitates the process of moral maturity and the development of a ‘holistic’ mindset. This paper deals with the need to create such a mindset, the human values associated with it and gives examples of efforts to impart such education through ‘action-oriented’ programmes introduced in some institutes of engineering in India. (shrink)

The special issue focuses on the impact of antipoverty measures—accounting for social and structural dimensions in the poverty experience and moving beyond an income-only focus—in five country cases: China, India, Norway, Uganda, and the United States. Particularly, we focus on the implications of shame in the delivery of antipoverty measures, as an individual and social phenomenon that relates to feelings of self-inadequacy, as well to a lack of dignity and recognition. We analyze delivery interactions through an analytic framework of rights, (...) discretion and negotiation, as this enables us to parse out how policy delivery interactions presumed or enabled individual choice, ability, control, and voice. We suggest social citizenship can structure the relationships between welfare recipients and administrators. As a concept, it expands the objects of social rights beyond the materiality of human life to include intangible processual elements in the construct of rights. (shrink)

This paper presents the concept of the idealization of the interchangeability of phases of life as an enhancement, or rather as a further development of Alfred Schutz’s general thesis of the reciprocity of perspectives. It claims that the according figure of thought is a constitutive part of acts of understanding in everyday life where, in order to understand each other, individuals of different age-groups have to overcome the difference of perspectives that are attached to their particular ages. This is accomplished (...) by a specific assumption that is also applied in the case of intrasubjective, autobiographical understanding. By discussing its sociological significance as well as its philosophical background, this paper introduces the idealization of the interchangeability of phases of life as a fundamental and universal figure of understanding. (shrink)

Resumen En este artículo me propongo revisitar de manera sucinta y sistemática los li-neamientos centrales de la teoría de la subjetividad de Sigmund Freud, persiguiendo el objetivo de mostrar la vigencia filosófica y teórico-social de la misma. Para ello, procedo en tres pasos: en primer lugar expongo el modo en que el autor construye su concepción del "sujeto del Inconsciente" a través de un enfrentamiento con la noción de "sujeto cartesiano". Luego, examino la tensión entre natura y nurtura que puede (...) rastrearse en su tratamiento del problema de la "pulsión" [ Trieb]. Y, finalmente, reseño su descripción de la estructura tripartita del aparato psíquico, poniendo especial énfasis en su noción de la subjetividad escindida y en el análisis del origen intersubjetivo del "Superyó" [Über-Ich].In this paper, I intend to systematically revisit the main lines of Sigmund Freud's theory of subjectivity, with the aim of showing its current relevance within the fields of philosophy and social theory. In order to do so, I will proceed in three steps. First, I will scrutinize the way Freud elaborates his account of the "subject of unconsciousness" arguing against the conception of the "Cartesian subject". Then, I will examine the tension between nature and nurture, which can be found in his treatment of the problem of "drives" [Triebe]. Finally, I will sketch out his description of the three-fold structure of the psychical apparatus, putting special emphasis on his conception of the "split subjectivity" and on his analysis of the intersubjective origin of the Superego [Über-Ich]. (shrink)