It is common for social theorists to utilize the metaphors of ‘flow’, ‘fluidity’, and ‘liquidity’ in order to substantiate the ways in which speed and mobility form the basis for a new kind of information or network society. Yet rarely have these concepts been sufficiently theorized in order to establish their relevance or appropriateness. This article contends that the notion of flow as utilized in social theory is profoundly metaphysical in nature, and needs to be judged as such. Beginning with (...) a discussion of the accelerating timescape that characterizes the network society, it will then move on to examine three main issues with this ‘metaphysics of flux’. First, that the concept of flows unjustly privileges the process of becoming and, as a result, is unable to account for the materiality, substantiality, and agency of the objects being mobilized, and the contingency of their mediation. Second, that it posits the accelerating tendencies of capital as an ontological inevitability, thus discounting resistance to such forces. Finally, that it ignores the human faculty for reason and speculative thought in developing alternative means of political praxis. The solution, it will be argued, is not to abandon metaphysical accounts of the network society, but rather to challenge those accounts that, in exhibiting a crude empiricism, work to justify the status quo. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer an account of social alienation, a genre of alienation engendered by contemporary work that has gone largely overlooked in the ethics of labor. Social alienation consists in a corruption of workers’ relations to their social life and the people that make it up. When one is socially alienated, one’s sociality and close relations exist as a mere afterthought or break from work, while labor is the central activity of one’s life. While one might think that (...) existing solutions to alienated labor would resolve this social alienation, I suggest that such solutions at best leave the problem intact and may in fact contribute to it by giving labor the place of priority in workers’ lives. Resolving social alienation, I suggest, requires rethinking the amount of time we commit to work, the rigidity of the work schedule, and most crucially, the value that we attribute to work as the primary source of purpose in our lives. (shrink)

J. R. R. Tolkien’s four functions of fantasy stories, as developed in his Andrew Lang lecture “On Fairy Stories” (1939), have become a key conceptual tool for discussing human beings’ attraction to fantasy stories, particularly when attempting to push the analysis beyond the literary into the aesthetic, and beyond the aesthetic into the existential. Applying this interpretive key to an analysis of the expanding genre of post-apocalyptic fiction reveals that post-apocalyptic stories, despite superficial differences, are surprisingly close to fairy stories (...) in their aesthetic core and orientation, and that post-apocalyptic stories are well-suited to fulfill—albeit with their own distinctive aesthetic feel—the functions of Enchantment, Recovery, Escape and Consolation. Furthermore, in exploring the function of Consolation, a number of motifs come to surface that suggest the presence of a religious dimension common to many of the most celebrated exponents of the genre. (shrink)

Rahel Jaeggi’s theory of alienation has received less attention than her work on forms of life and capitalism. This theory avoids the problems of traditional theories of alienation: objectivism, paternalism, and essentialism. It also sidesteps post-structuralist criticisms of the theory of alienation. However, Jaeggi’s theory is flawed in two ways: it is not historically specific, and so cannot explain why alienation is a problem for modernity rather than other historical periods, and it is difficult to connect to social critique. I (...) argue that Karl Marx’s later theory of alienation, as interpreted by Moishe Postone and others, is able to avoid the problems that Jaeggi’s theory avoids, and is also able to avoid the flaws in her theory. This suggests that critical theory should focus on a theory of capitalism rather than normative social theory. (shrink)

Introduction Conceptual Distinctions: Work, Labor, Employment, Leisure The Value of Work and the ‘Anti-Work’ Critique Work, Meaning, and Dignity Work and Distributive Justice Work and Contributive Justice Work and Productive Justice Work and its Future BIBLIOGRAPHY .

I discuss three tiers of technological innovation: mild innovation, or the acceleration by technology of a human activity aimed at a good; moderate innovation, or the obviation by technology of an activity aimed at a good; and radical innovation, or the altering by technology of the human condition so as to change what counts as a good. I argue that it is impossible to morally assess proposed innovations within any of these three tiers unless we rehabilitate a natural-law ethical framework. (...) And I offer some moral starting points within such a framework, in connection with innovations of each of the three types. (shrink)

Søren Kierkegaard is well-known as an original philosophical thinker, but less known is his reliance upon and development of the Christian tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins, in particular the vice of acedia, or sloth. As acedia has enjoyed renewed interest in the past century or so, commentators have attempted to pin down one or another Kierkegaardian concept (e.g., despair, heavy-mindedness, boredom, etc.) as the embodiment of the vice, but these attempts have yet to achieve any consensus. In our estimation, (...) the complicated reality is that, in using slightly different but related concepts, Kierkegaard is providing a unique look at acedia as it manifests differently at different stages on life’s way. Thus, on this “perspectival account”, acedia will manifest differently according to whether an individual inhabits the aesthetic, ethical, or religious sphere. We propose two axes for this perspectival account. Such descriptions of how acedia manifests make up the first, phenomenal axis, while the second, evaluative axis, accounts for the various bits of advice and wisdom we read in the diagnoses of acedia from one Kierkegaardian pseudonym to another. Our aim is to show that Kierkegaard was not only familiar with the concept of acedia, but his contributions helped to develop and extend the tradition. (shrink)

This essay revisits the topic of how we should measure the things that matter, at a time when we continue to mismeasure our lives, as we hold fast to outworn myths of usefulness, popularity, and the desire to influence others. /// Three central, unquestioned presumptions have come to govern much of contemporary society, education, and the professions. They are: the high value placed on usefulness, on the passion to achieve popularity, and on the desire to influence others. In this essay, (...) the psychologist-philosopher author makes the case against these presumptions, presumptions which lead to exclusionary commitments that stand in the way of human cultural development. (shrink)

Pre-publication certification through peer review stands in need of philosophical examination. In this paper, philosopher-psychologist Steven James Bartlett recalls the arguments marshalled four hundred years ago by English poet John Milton against restraint of publication by the "gatekeepers of publication," AKA today's peer reviewers.

In a series of radio broadcasts, one of which is translated for the first time in this issue (pp. 21-34), Adorno and Becker claimed that modern education is profoundly inadequate. Their views on education draw heavily on Kant’s notion of Enlightenment as a process for the development of personal and social maturity and responsibility. As such, education cannot just be a training but must itself be a developmental process which takes into account not only social and political realities but also (...) the complex psychodynamics involved in learning. However, Adorno and Becker arrive at a position that is close to self-contradictory, unable to solve the paradox inherent in the idea of an education that is at once authoritative and non-conformist. This might arise from their failure to reflect on the nature of their own dialogue, and it is suggested that friendship offers the social model of a dynamic relationship of the type they sought to articulate. Despite the fact that the discussion took place in 1969, in a climate of educational debate radically different from today’s, their work raises issues and poses questions of the profoundest importance 30 years on. (shrink)

I argue in defense of Aristotle's position that contemplation is the proper use of at least some of one's leisure and that, consequently, leisure education must consist in teaching the inclination and capacity for contemplation. However, my position is somewhat more flexible than Aristotle's, in that I allow that there are other activities worthy of some leisure. My argument examines Aristotle's own comments on the importance of theoria as well as commentaries by Ackrill, Nagel, Broadie, Green and Telfer. In the (...) conclusion I argue that there are good reasons to think that studying Philosophy is one of the best strategies for leisure education. (shrink)

This paper reviews Aristotle’s problematic relationship with modern economic theory. It argues that in terms of value and income distribution theory, Aristotle should probably be seen as a precursor to neither classical nor neoclassical economic thought. Indeed, there are strong arguments to be made that Aristotle’s views are completely at odds with all modern economic theory, since, among other things, he was not necessarily concerned with flexible market prices, opposed the use of money to acquire more money, and did not (...) think that the unintended consequences of human activity were generally beneficial. The paper argues however, that this interpretation goes too far. The Benthamite neoclassical theory of choice can be seen as a dumbing down of Aristotle’s theory, applicable to animals, not humans. Adam Smith and Karl Marx were deeply influenced by Aristotle’s work and both started their main economic works with Aristotle: Smith ultimately rejecting, and Marx ultimately developing Aristotle’s views of the use of money to acquire more money. Possibilities for the future development of a new Aristotelian Economics are explored. (shrink)

I introduce and compare Russian and Japanese notions of community and space. Some characteristic strains of thought that exist in both countries had similar points of departure, overcame similar problems and arrived at similar results. In general, in Japan and Russia, the nostalgia for the community has been strong because one felt that in society through modernization something of the particularity of one's culture had been lost. As a consequence, both in Japan and in Russia allusions to the German sociologist (...) Ferdinand Tönnies' book Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft are frequent. In the end I associate the Japanese as well as the Russian ideas with neo-Darwinian versions of the theme of evolution as it has been developed by Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari. (shrink)

Research on meaningful work has not embraced a shared definition of what it is, in part because many researchers and laypersons agree that it means different things to different people. However, subjective and social accounts of meaningful work have limited practical value to help people pursue it and to help scholars study it. The account of meaningful work advanced in this paper is inherently normative. It recognizes the relevance of subjective experience and social agreement to appraisals of meaningfulness but considers (...) them conceptually incomplete and practically limited. According to this normative account, meaningful work should be meaningful to oneself and to others and is also meaningful independent of them. It sets forth grounds for evaluating some work to be more meaningful than other work, asserting the possibility that one could be mistaken about the meaningfulness of one’s work. While it thus proscribes some claims to meaningful work, it also opens up potential new avenues of inquiry into, among other things, self-aggrandizing and harmful work that is experienced as meaningful, morally valuable work that is not experienced as meaningful, and the distinction between experienced and normative meaningfulness. (shrink)

In this dissertation I argue that Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of human nature, of human flourishing and of virtue can fill the gap, identified by Elizabeth Anscombe in 1958, between Aristotle’s account of the virtuous life and contemporary sceptical moral philosophy, which is variously described as subjectivism, consequentialism, emotivism, and sophistry. Furthermore, I argue that a Thomist account of the practicably lived virtuous life is both relevant and applicable to officers and soldiers serving in the British Army of today, because it (...) offers a complete account of the human moral life, as opposed to the consequentialist, emotivist and deontological approaches to ethical judgement and reasoning currently prevalent in Western societies, which inform the worldview of both officers and soldiers. These approaches, however, offer only partial accounts of ethics based on impoverished understandings of human nature and, thus, inevitably have a detrimental effect on both the articulation of British military doctrine and on the actual moral conduct of officers and soldiers. I further argue, therefore, that the British Army needs to consciously return to the traditional Western approach to moral education based on the idea of the deliberate formation of virtuous character, which is very different from contemporary Western educational approaches, but which will better prepare British Army officers and soldiers for “the violent school of war”, as Thucydides calls it. (shrink)

My concern in this essay is not so much with the invisible work or hidden labor produced by neoliberalism, but rather with what Joseph Pieper describes as an emerging culture of “total work”. More than the sheer number of hours of work, Pieper diagnoses a transformation in the way we view work. Work has become the exclusive point of reference for how we see and define ourselves. We are, Pieper feared, increasingly incapable of seeing beyond the working self. The human (...) being has become the human worker. Historically, the ideal of leisure offered a counter vision to this tendency. Michael Oakeshott notes that while human beings must attend to the necessities for survival, they are most especially distinguished by their capacity for leisure—by an ability to pursue questions, conversations, and explorations that transcend the realm of production and consumption. To overlook and exclude leisurely pursuits is to diminish our humanity. (shrink)

It is argued that the increasing interest in the use of phenomenological methods in sport psychology could help rescue research in this area from its current obsession with measurement and prediction. Phenomenology proceeds from a very different set of philosophical assumptions from the natural science approach that underlies most research and practice in sport psychology. Phenomenology insists that psychology should focus on meaning and investigate the essence of human experience. The concept of anxiety occupies a central position within phenomenological perspectives (...) in psychology. This paper examines the experience of anxiety in sport by drawing on applied sport psychology work undertaken with professional footballers in the English Premier League (EPL). The phenomenology of anxiety is considered by distinguishing between May's psychological account and Heidegger's philosophical perspective. Anxiety is viewed positively by both philosophical and psychological phenomenology due to its links to the idea of authenticity. This is discussed in depth in the paper and consideration will be given to how this connects to important sources of meaning and identity in sport, such as spirituality and religious belief. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to formulate several observations on the psychological relations between vita contemplativa and vita activa which manifest in the context of the two following problems: what basic psychological mechanisms may propel an agent to forsake one type of life for the sake of another; and what effect an agent’s deep involvement in VC may have for his attitude towards VA as well as for his manner of pursuing VA. In the paper, the distinction is made (...) between VC in the strong sense and VC in the weak sense, and it is argued, among others, that the two features of VC in the strong sense—selflessness and otherworldliness—make VC a desirable complement of VA : the involvement in the public sphere motivated by VA is likely to be not only more effective, but also more durable than the involvement propelled by disappointment with the private VA. Therefore, human beings should not be thought of as divided into two rarely interpermeating categories namely those who are ‘psychologically destined’ for VC and those who are ‘psychologically destined’ for VA. Rather, the opposite seems to be true, namely that there exist strong motivational links in the direction from VC to VA. (shrink)

This essay consists of an examination of the work of three thinkers who conceive of liberal education primarily in teleological terms, and, implicitly if not explicitly, attempt to offer some answer to the question: what does it mean to be fully human? John Henry Newman, T. S. Eliot, and Josef Pieper developed their understanding of liberal education from their own intellectual and religious experience, which was informed by a specifically Christian conception of the place of education in a fully developed (...) human life. I suggest that the strength of their understanding of liberal education derives from its connection to the various small cohesive religious communities to which they were connected. Nonetheless, this insularity was also the primary weakness because each writer ended universalising what was in fact a particular and unique cultural and religious experience instead of providing convincing proof of a single human nature with a single telos. I will contrast this teleological conception of liberal education with that of Michael Oakeshott and his student Kenneth Minogue, both of whom wrote about education in a post-religious era in which the earlier consensus had completely broken down. They both celebrated the variety of practices which human beings have invented for themselves over the past several centuries (and past several millennia), and did not appear to suffer from the lack of any unifying single human telos. I will suggest that their understanding of practice insulated them from the need for a single unifying telos. (shrink)

Weaving and unweaving the fabric of sacrifice -- A description of Greek sacrificial ritual -- Sacrificing Socrates: the mise-en-scène of the death scene of the Phaedo -- The search for the most fitting cause -- The so-called genuine philosophers and the work of soul -- Athens at twilight.

This paper argues that the accelerating pace of life is reducing the time for thoughtful reflection, and in particular for contemplative scholarship, within the academy. It notes that the loss of time to think is occurring at exactly the moment when scholars, educators, and students have gained access to digital tools of great value to scholarship. It goes on to explore how and why both of these facts might be true, what it says about the nature of scholarship, and what (...) might be done to address this state of affairs. (shrink)

This article reflects upon the relationship between philosophy and theology. It further considers the persisting relevance of the specifically Hellenic inheritance of philosophy as contemplation and the Delphic exhortation, “Know thyself!” It concludes with reflections upon the role of imagination in relation to the philosophical idea of God as the supreme and transcendent causal principle of the physical cosmos.

Abstract The aim of this paper is to discuss which stance towards the allocation of labor and leisure would be defensible from the perspective of modern liberal political theory. There is a long tradition in philosophy defending an ideal of leisure, but this tradition has been rightly criticized for being too perfectionist. A liberal perspective seems more attractive in not dictating how much time people spend in labor or leisure, but leaving this choice to individuals. The question is whether this (...) is possible. After scrutinizing the traditional philosophical defense of leisure I focus on Robert Goodin and his collaborators' recent proposal to think about labor and leisure in terms of ?temporal autonomy?. I show that their concept is a great improvement over the older philosophical theories, both in its conceptualization of labor and leisure and in its ambition to leave labor/leisure choices to individuals. Nonetheless, it contains an important unresolved ambiguity about whether discretionary time maximization is a desirable end. Since the exercise of one's temporal autonomy can undercut the temporal autonomy of others in society, this leads to a dilemma. This dilemma can be resolved either in a libertarian or in a sufficientarian direction. I provide a cautious defense of the sufficientarian conception of temporal autonomy, because it accounts for the intuition in the older tradition of leisure that it is important not to be overwhelmed by the demands of labor, while also retaining the liberal emphasis on individual choice. (shrink)

In this article, the author argues that complexity theories have limited use in the study of society, and that social processes are too complex and particular to be rigorously modeled in complexity terms. Theories of social complexity are shown to be inadequately developed, and typical weaknesses in the literature on social complexity are discussed. Two stronger analyses, of Luhmann and of Harvey and Reed, are also critically considered. New considerations regarding social complexity are advanced, on the lines that simplicity, complexity (...) that can be modeled, and incondensible complexity permeate society simultaneously. The difficulty of establishing complexity models for processes involving ongoing interpretation is discussed. It is argued that the notions of system and environment need recasting in social studies. Existing social studies and literature, it is argued, reflect a polymorphous, contextual, contingent, labyrinthine, dramatic and political face to social complexity. Students of social complexity must be literate in such studies. (shrink)

The paper has been written from a philosophical perspective and triggered by the recurrent discussions in psychology about the most suitable methods to study our multifaceted subjectivity. Its main point is that a phenomenological understanding of the human person provides a robust and also flexible philosophical framework for psychology. The first part discusses three classical distinctions –individual/general; explaining/understanding; induction/interpretation– which, in spite of possible deficiencies, are useful to illustrate the specificity of the human sciences relative to the natural sciences. If (...) not understood as an either-or dichotomy these distinctions represent the search of the right balance to reflect the complexity and richness of psychological science. The second part presents the phenomenological notions of ‘vital reduction’ and ‘personalist reduction’, where reductions does not take on an eliminativistic meaning, but of directing the mind’s gaze to attend to what is originally the case. The ‘vital reduction’ reveals a subject of experience at the center of the lifeworld, and the ‘personalist reduction’ sees in rationality –i.e., the power to grasp the meaning of things and to recognize other subjects of experience­– a deeper dimension of the subject, who we can thus call a person. Psychology and phenomenology converge in disclosing the person-centeredness of our lifeworld. (shrink)

?Achievement is doing what well?? A competitive democracy tends to repress this question as inegalitarian; it uses the slogan ?Whatever you do, do well?. But this slogan could not be taken seriously, nor is it really egalitarian. Our actual hierarchy of activities is based on an unargued and arbitrary consensus; it is an example of the way audiences control performers. Doubts about ?true achievement? are not merely ?philosophical?. Noting repressed concern about this issue suggests hypotheses to help explain some social (...) tensions, e.g., over women's liberation. The love of competition might or might not make achievement more likely. (shrink)

Based on the assumption that phenomenology is a style not just of thinking, but also of perceiving and acting, this paper shows how, through specific assignments and practices, phenomenological research can become personally as well as professionally meaningful for students. Disciplined practice helps students to attend to experience even though culturally and educationally ingrained habits devalue its importance. By working together in groups, the phenomenon under study is more likely to come alive for the student researchers, and articulating the core (...) of an experience no longer to seem so daunting. The practice of phenomenology also helps students to recognize that slowing down and giving their full attention to experience is restorative, productive, and deeply satisfying. (shrink)