A collection of articles on the the principles of social justice from an Australian Catholic perspective. Contents: Forward (Archbishop Philip Wilson), Introduction (James Franklin), The right to life (James Franklin), The right to serve and worship God in public and private (John Sharpe), The right to religious formation (Richard Rymarz), The right to personal liberty under just law (Michael Casey), The right to equal protection of just law regardless of sex, nationality, colour or creed (Sam Gregg), The right to freedom (...) of expression (Damian Grace), The right to choose and freely maintain a state of life, married or single, lay or religious (Marita Winters), The right to education (Anthony Cleary), The right to petition government for the redress of grievances (Paul Russell), The right to a nationality (Andrew Hamilton), The right to have access to the means of livelihood, by migration when necessary (Brenda Hubber), The right of association and peaceful assembly (Michael Hogan), The right to work and choose one's occupation (Ian Blandthorn), The right to personal ownership, use and disposal of property subject to the right of others (Brian Coman), The right to a living wage (Garrick Small), The right to collective bargaining (Keith Harvey), The right to associate by industries and professions to obtain economic justice (Henrik Jurisevic), The right to assistance from society, if necessary from the State, in distress of persons and family (Catherine Althaus), Afterword (James Franklin). (shrink)

Positivist medical historians, guided by the savoir of modern western biomedicine, have long depicted medieval medicine as an aberration along the continuum of scientific and medical progress. Historical epistemology, founded in the ideas of Cavailles, Foucault, Davidson, and Hacking, however, allows the historian to disrupt this false continuum and to unchain medieval medicine from modern medicine. Postmodernist approaches, such as those sourced in Lyotard, Barthes, and Derrida, allow the historian to further deconstruct medieval and modern medical discourse, revealing a multitude (...) of narrative lenses spinning around biomedical and biocultural strands. In liberating these two medical systems and setting them within the distinct historical and epistemological contexts that both shaped and were shaped by them, the historian can revision the theories, practices, and culture of medieval medicine without having to anachronistically justify them according to modern medical discourse. (shrink)

Mutual funds are common investments because they provide a cost-effective and effective means to vary your investments (or possess an assortment of securities -- stocks, bonds, etc.) without having to make a huge starting investment.

In ‘Are Citizenship Tests Necessarily Illiberal?’, Michael Blake argues that difficult citizenship tests are not necessarily illiberal, so long as they test for the right things. In this paper, I argue that Blake’s attempt to square citizenship tests with liberalism fails. Blake underestimates the burdens citizenship tests impose on immigrants, ignoring in particular the egalitarian claims immigrants have on equal social membership. Moreover, Blake’s positive justification of citizenship tests – that they help justify immigrants’ coercive voting power – both neglects (...) the fact that such tests are coercively imposed on immigrants and that the citizenship test Blake envisions does little to help ensure immigrants’ votes are legitimate. Citizenship tests thus aren’t, even in principle, a way of protecting citizens from unjustified coercive power. They are, even under favourable circumstances, an illiberal way of obstructing immigrants’ quest for social equality. (shrink)

The available resources for global health assistance are far outstripped by need. In the face of such scarcity, many people endorse a principle according to which highest priority should be given to the worst off. However, in order for this prioritarian principle to be useful for allocation decisions, policy-makers need to know what it means to be badly off. In this article, we outline a conception of disadvantage suitable for identifying the worst off for the purpose of making health resource (...) allocation decisions. According to our total advantage view: the worst off are those who have the greatest total lifetime disadvantage; advantage foregone due to premature death should be treated in the same way as other ways of being disadvantaged at a time; how badly off someone is depends on the actual outcomes that will befall her without intervention, not her prospects at a time; and all significant forms of disadvantage count for determining who is worst off, not just disadvantage relating to health. We conclude by noting two important implications of the total advantage view: first, that those who die young are among the globally worst off, and second, that the epidemiological shift in the global burden of disease from communicable to non-communicable diseases should not lead to a corresponding shift in global health spending priorities. (shrink)

Generosity is not best understood as an alliance of forces, necessary for mortal beings with limited time and skills. Sociability as generosity exceeds the realm of need and follows directly from our strength of character [fortitudo] because it expresses a positive power to overcome anti-social passions, such as hatred, envy, and the desire for revenge. Spinoza asserts that generous souls resist and overwhelm hostile forces and debilitating affects with wisdom, foresight, and love. The sociability yielded by generosity, then, is not (...) just a form of cooperation we need to survive and produce leisure for study and contemplation. Generosity is not a mere means but a positive expression of freedom, because it is the activity through which a strong soul (and body) transforms enemies into friends. It is not an expression of lack, but of an acquired power that infuses one’s social milieu with empowering love and joy, creating agreements in nature and power where they did not previously exist. Attention to generosity reveals not only that there are social virtues proper to Spinoza’s understanding of freedom but that freedom itself is, by necessity, social. (shrink)

Earth scientists have declared that we are living in “the Anthropocene,” but radical critics object to the implicit attribution of responsibility for climate disruption to all of humanity. They are right to object. Yet, in effort to implicate their preferred villains, their revised narratives often paint an overly narrow picture. Sharing the impulse of radical critics to tell a more precise and political story about how we arrived where we are today, this paper wagers that collective action is more effectively (...) mobilized when we identify multiple agencies and diverse historical processes as sites in need of urgent intervention. (shrink)

How could a philosopher who insists on the exclusion of women from citizenship and state office by virtue of their insuperable weakness be an inspiration for feminism? The puzzles over Spinoza’s egalitarian credentials pose a problem particularly if one understands feminism primarily or exclusively as a demand for equality with men. When feminism is seen as a subcategory of Enlightenment commitments, one may choose to see Spinoza’s misogyny as superficial and as a betrayal of the radical potential of the egalitarianism (...) yielded by his metaphysics. But if feminism is not understood exclusively as one strand of late modern orthodoxy, we might better understand the surprising companionship of Spinoza and feminism. Indeed, Moira Gatens finds the heterodoxy of Spinoza’s thinking with respect to the ruling ideas today to be what is most valuable for feminism. Feminist Spinozism does not add to the chorus of praise for egalitarianism, secular politics, or the authority of reason in contrast to power. The Spinozist feminism pioneered by Moira Gatens and Genevieve Lloyd finds resources precisely in Spinoza’s challenges to late modern common sense, including perhaps especially an ethics and politics grounded in the givenness of human equality. (shrink)

This paper explores Spinoza’s relationship to poetry by considering two prominent allusions to classical literature in Spinoza’s political treatises. Susan James illuminates Spinoza’s worries about the dangers of poetic address. At the same time, Spinoza relies on poetic language and citation to press some central claims. References to Seneca and Tacitus, I suggest, aim to transform the popular imagination with respect to the relationship between government, violence, and domination. Poetic language reinforces his challenge to false solutions to the problems of (...) violence, rebellion, and the precarity of political authority, which preoccupied early-modern political thinkers. (shrink)

Spinoza is widely understood to criticize the role that fear plays in political life. Yet, in the Political Treatise, he maintains that everyone desires civil order due to a basic and universal fear of solitude. This chapter argues that Spinoza represents the fear of solitude as both a civilizing passion and as an affect that needs to be amplified and encouraged. The turbulence of social and political life makes solitude attractive, but isolation undermines the conditions of human power. Although it (...) may seem uncontroversial to understand isolation as something to avoid in political life, this chapter argues that Spinoza deflates the appeal of la vita solitaria even for philosophers and those seeking ethical perfection. (shrink)

This paper develops the implications of Spinoza’s invocation in chapter 6 of the traditional analogy between the oikos and the polis. Careful attention to this analogy reveals a number of interesting features of Spinoza’s political theory. Spinoza challenges the perception that absolute monarchy offers greater respite from the intolerable anxiety of the state of nature than does democracy. He acknowledges that people associate monarchical rule with peace and stability, but asserts that it can too easily deform its subjects. Unchallenged monarchy (...) may be credited with a certain order, “but if slavery, barbarism, and desolation are to be called peace, there can be nothing more wretched for mankind than peace.” This is all familiar to friends of Spinoza, but what kind of democracy is the alternative to those monarchies that tend toward despotism? It is a form of association that, he suggests, resembles a bitterly quarrelsome but nevertheless virtuous family. Thus, he admits that democratic, or popular, rule is typically turbulent and disorderly, but urges his reader to view contentions and disputes as a kind of salutary discord that preserves rather than threatens virtue. (shrink)

In this commentary, I respond to the core question of Ruddick’s paper: How does the theoretical dethroning of humanity force us to reinvent ethics? In so doing, I expand on Spinoza’s profound contribution to the radical rethinking of the subject at the level of ontology. Although Ruddick invokes Spinoza, first and foremost, as a potential resource for ethics in light of climate disruption, I conclude that those resources offer only a glimmer of how to live differently. The work of re-imagination (...) at the level of metaphysics is flourishing, but we have yet to develop its implications for ethics and politics. (shrink)

Abstract. Drawing on Black radical thought, some political theorists have elaborated a notion of ‘fugitive freedom’ that challenges us to understand freedom beyond the canonical concepts of ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ liberty. The idea of fugitive freedom concerns the vast liminal space between being enslaved and enjoying complete political (or ethical) liberty. Whereas for traditional political theory, there are two ‘conditions’ or ‘statuses’ assigned to subjects (‘free’ or ‘slave’), reflection on slave narratives and the history of maroon communities points to freedom (...) expressed in escape, flight, and movement away from domination. Fugitive freedom is enabled and sustained through quotidian, clandestine practices of communication, concealment, care, and refuge. Inspired by these exhortations to reimagine the forms that freedom can take, this paper finds in Spinoza a notion of fugitivity, understood as a counter-power, animated by the desire to escape domination, generate solidarity, and forge mental community. (shrink)

Buddhist philosophy asserts that human suffering is caused by ignorance regarding the true nature of reality. According to this, perceptions and thoughts are largely fabrications of our own minds, based on conditioned tendencies which often involve problematic fears, aversions, compulsions, etc. In Buddhist psychology, these tendencies reside in a portion of mind known as Store consciousness. Here, I suggest a correspondence between this Buddhist Store consciousness and the neuroscientific idea of stored synaptic weights. These weights are strong synaptic connections built (...) in through experience. Buddhist philosophy claims that humans can find relief from suffering through a process in which the Store consciousness is transformed. Here, I argue that this Buddhist 'transformation at the base' corresponds to a loosening of the learned synaptic connections. I will argue that Buddhist meditation practices create conditions in the brain which are optimal for diminishing the strength of our conditioned perceptual and behavioural tendencies. (shrink)

In this essay, we aim to ground an alliance between Cynthia Willett’s theory of an ethics of eros and Hasana Sharp’s argument for a politics of renaturalization. Both approaches seek a vocabulary and practices for ethical life, which is not circumscribed by the requirement of rationality and is deeply attentive to relationships. The relations to which an ethics of eros and renaturalization must attend include social relations – the tender ministrations of mothers, lovers, and friends that sustain and nourish (...) (and sometimes threaten) each of us. Our lives, bodies, and minds, however, are also deeply involved with the nonhuman environment. Our existence depends on air, water, bacteria, shelter, and infinite other nonhuman beings. Our desires and needs include a habitable environment and even "biophilia." The increasing fragility of our ecosystems suggests that there is more need than ever for an ethics that goes not just beyond man – although that is certainly an ongoing project – but beyond the human. This essay is an attempt to ally our approaches in the feminist effort to produce a broad basis for ethics, allowing for a robust consideration of nonhuman nature. (shrink)

This paper offers an interpretation of Spinoza's theory of ideas as a theory of power. The consideration of ideas in terms of force and vitality figures ideology critique as a struggle within the power of thought to give life support to some ideas, while starving others. Because ideas, considered absolutely on Spinoza's terms, are indifferent to human flourishing, they survive, thrive, or atrophy on the basis of their relationship to ambient ideas. Thus, the effort to think and live well requires (...) attention to the collective dimensions of thinking life, where "collective" refers to a transpersonal accumulation of ideal power that includes human as well as nonhuman beings. Because it is a matter of force and power rather than truth and falsity, the project of thinking otherwise entails an effort to displace and to reorganize ideas that is best undertaken by coordinating and galvanizing many thinking powers. (shrink)

This essay examines how two seventeenth-century feminists use the language of slavery and servitude to describe and protest the domination of women and girls. From their experiences of being forcibly confined to convents at a young age, Arcangela Tarabotti and Gabrielle Suchon demonstrate how the deprivation of knowledge, the restriction and destruction of social and kinship relations, and the impediments to the exercise their free wills impose upon them forms of slavery. The language of “slavery” and “servitude” plays a distinctive (...) role in their writing, the examination of which locates them in wider traditions of moral and political thought, helps us to understand their complaints, and allows us to appreciate their innovative, feminist adaptations of these discourses. The essay concludes with some reflections on how to think about the use of the idiom of slavery applied to the oppression of white Europeans, which is so common in the early modern period, contemporaneous with the rise of the transatlantic slave trade. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between violence and the domination of speech in Spinoza’s political thought. Spinoza describes the cost of such violence to the State, to the collective epistemic resources, and to the members of the polity that domination aims to script and silence. Spinoza shows how obedience to a dominating power requires pretense and deception. The pressure to pretend is the linchpin of an account of how oppression severely degrades the conditions for meaningful communication, and thus the possibilities (...) for thinking and acting in common. Because it belongs to human nature to desire to share our thoughts with others, Spinoza believes that most people experience efforts to control our communication to be acutely intolerable. As a result, such unbearable violence threatens the political order that deploys it. I conclude with some speculative remarks about why, in the Theological-Political Treatise, Spinoza consistently deploys the superlative form of the adjective violentus in reference to the domination of thought and speech rather than to other modes of political violence. (shrink)

This paper outlines Spinoza’s two diametrically opposed views on the question of sexual equality. In the Political Treatise, he contends that women are naturally inferior to men, and that they are unable to practice virtue. Yet, he presents an antithetical portrait of Eve in his retelling of the Fall in the Ethics. There, Eve’s nature accords perfectly with Adam’s, and their relationship might have promoted virtue in each of them. Attention to Spinoza’s version of the Fall reveals the profound importance (...) of the human bond for the enjoyment of freedom, and the possibility that women are not categorically excluded from Spinoza’s vision of virtue. (shrink)

Like any broad narrative about the history of ideas, this one involves a number of simplifications. My hope is that by taking a closer look Spinoza's notorious remarks on animals, we can understand better why it becomes especially urgent in this period as well as our own for philosophers to emphasize a distinction between human and nonhuman animals. In diagnosing the concerns that give rise to the desire to dismiss the independent purposes of animals, we may come to focus on (...) a new aspect of what needs to change about contemporary thinking on species divisions. In what follows, I will bring out Spinoza's contradictory and ambivalent remarks pertaining to the specific differences between humans and animals. It is my suspicion that this ambivalence continues to plague us today. Like Spinoza, we want to say that humans are like and unlike animals. As a simply descriptive claim, it may be true and innocuous. Yet, the way we affirm our proximity and distance from nonhuman animals requires careful attention. Spinoza viewed this proximity as a source of danger. We might do well to emphasize, with thinkers such as Donna Haraway (2003),how our proximity and difference are also sources of pleasure and power, both to be able to enjoy the affectionate bond that can often develop between humans and our animal companions but also to quell the anxiety that might encourage us to exploit and abuse them. (shrink)

In this open peer commentary, we categorize the possible “neuroscience in national security” definitions of misuse of science and identify which, if any, are uniquely presented by advances in neuroscience. To define misuse, we first define what we would consider appropriate use: the application of reasonably safe and effective technology, based on valid and reliable scientific research, to serve a legitimate end. This definition presents distinct opportunities for assessing misuse: misuse is the application of invalid or unreliable science, or is (...) the use of reliable scientific methods to serve illegitimate ends. Ultimately, we conclude that while national security is often a politicized issue, assessing the state of scientific progress should not be. (shrink)

This essay contends that Spinoza provides a valuable analysis of the ‘‘affective’’damage to a social body caused by fear, anxiety, and ‘‘superstition.’’ Far from being primarily an external threat, this essay argues that terrorism and the promulgationof fear by the current administration in the United States pose a threat to internalsocial cohesion. The capacity to respond in constructive and ameliorative ways tocurrent global conflicts is radically undermined by amplifying corrosive relationshipsof anxiety, suspicion and hatred among citizens. Spinoza presents a portrait (...) of natural and political existence as deeply relational and ‘‘affective’’ such that human freedom and power depend upon the concern for the affective and passionatedispositions of human bodies and minds. In order for democracy, the power of themany, to exist effectively, the social body must be ruled by ‘‘joyful passions’’ rather than ‘‘sad passions,’’ which are destructive and debilitating by nature. (shrink)

(Selection) In her provocative introduction to the interdisciplinary collection Extinction, Claire Colebrook diagnoses posthumanism as “delusional,” “symptomatic,” and “psychotic.” Now that we live in what geologists informally call the “anthropocene” – a new epoch in which a preponderance of the earth’s systems are irreversibly altered by human activity – she claims that it is dangerous, insane even, to imagine that the traditional, “Cartesian” idea of man as master of nature is invalid. The declaration of the death of man betrays a (...) willful denial of humanity’s destructive capacity. The dream that man is disappearing like a “face drawn in the sand at the edge of the sea” is a symptom of a psychosis that protects us from the truth of man’s irretrievable imprint: eroding coral reefs, melting glaciers, gaping ozone, thousands of extinct species, and so much more. Colebrook’s is not only an indictment of French post-structuralism. She issues no less a challenge to feminist posthumanisms, which have launched influential assaults against the Cartesian figure of the self-possessed subject (who, we must admit, has few defenders in Continental philosophy generally). Does the heralding of the anthropocene demand a critical revival of Cartesian humanism? Must we affirm that humans are exceptional after all? (shrink)

Spinoza was generally silent on the topic of women. Despite Spinoza's sometimes noxious remarks on women, several feminist theorists have found resources and inspiration in his philosophy. The promising features feminist theorists have thus far identified in Spinoza's philosophy can be placed into three major categories: anti‐individualism; the conatus doctrine; anti‐dualism. Spinoza's philosophy might be understood as a unique and comprehensive form of structural analysis. Feminists are also keenly interested in how domination is interiorized, how it comes to form the (...) first‐person experience of individuals and/ or the psychology of groups. Egalitarian feminism draws on the liberal feminist tradition, according to which there are no morally relevant differences between men and women. Sexual difference feminism is often misunderstood to assert an essential difference between women and men, to assert the importance of recognizing one axis of difference, the sexual difference between male and female. (shrink)

Non-communicable diseases now account for the majority of the global burden of disease and an international campaign has emerged to raise their priority on the post-2015 development agenda. We argue, to the contrary, that there remain strong reasons to prioritize maternal and child health. Policy-makers ought to assign highest priority to the health conditions that afflict the worst off. In virtue of how little healthy life they have had, children who die young are among the globally worst off. Moreover, many (...) interventions to deal with the conditions that cause mortality in the young are low-cost and provide great benefits to their recipients. Consistent with the original Millennium Development Goals, the international community should continue to prioritize reductions in communicable diseases, neonatal conditions, and maternal health despite the shifts in the global burden of disease. (shrink)

This essay examines Elizabeth Grosz's provocative claim that feminist and anti-racist theorists should reject a politics of recognition in favor of "a politics of imperceptibility." She criticizes any humanist politics centered upon a dialectic between self and other. I turn to Spinoza to develop and explore her alternative proposal. I claim that Spinoza offers resources for her promising politics of corporeality, proximity, power, and connection that includes all of nature, which feminists should explore.

I begin this paper with a survey of the textual evidence for a new Cartesian subject, a post-Cartesian Cartesian individual, for whom the life of the body, its passions, and its relationships are central. In the second section, I consider his remarks on hatred, which complicate his view embodied life. Even if Descartes’s study of the passions in his treatise as well as his correspondence calls for a more nuanced understanding of the Cartesian person, we will find in his attention (...) to embodiment a conflicted and wary human being for whom relationships can be nourishing and sweet just as easily as they can be noxious and bitter. (shrink)

After the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, most states enacted new measures to constrain international mobility. By May 8th, 2020, more than 93% of the world’s population lived in states with special entry bans and more than three billion lived in countries whose borders were almost completely closed to non-citizens. Can such measures be justified? If so, would this undermine the open borders view? This paper examines these questions. It argues, first, that, although short-term entry bans and other similar measures (...) designed to protect public health can be justified, these bans need to be designed with a number of exemptions, in particular, for asylum seekers and refugees. Even in times of pandemic, completely closed borders are indefensible. It argues, second, that although extreme versions of the open borders position may have difficulty accepting this conclusion, other versions of the position can consistently justify special entry restrictions. (shrink)

Although Spinoza’s words about intuition, also called “the third kind of knowledge,” remain among the most difficult to grasp, I argue that he succeeds in providing an account of its distinctive character. Moreover, the special place that intuition holds in Spinoza’s philosophy is grounded not in its epistemological distinctiveness, but in its ethical promise. I will not go as far as one commentator to claim that the epistemological distinction is negligible (Malinowski-Charles 2003),but I do argue that its privileged place in (...) Spinoza’s system belongs primarily to its ethical importance, by which I mean that intuition’s value is prized by virtue of the agency it confers upon those who enjoy it. Spinoza often notes that what distinguishes the “wise man” is that he is more powerful, able to do more. That is,the wise and free person with whose description the Ethics culminates is set apart not, first and foremost, by virtue of possessing a scientific account of the true cosmological order. The Ethics is perhaps called an ethics, rather than a treatise on metaphysics or knowledge, because it concludes with a demonstration of how one comes to be able to do what is best and to live a more joyful life. Intuitive science is essential to the characterization of the power to think and live well. (shrink)

Balibar presents Spinoza as a profound critic of " the anthropomorphic illusion. " Spinoza famously derides the tendency of humans to project their own imagined traits and tendencies onto the rest of nature. The anthropomorphic illusion yields a gross overestimation our own agency. I argue in this essay that the flip side of this illusion is our refusal to extend certain properties we reserve exclusively to ourselves. The result is that we disregard the power of social and political institutions because (...) they do not resemble us. The anthropomorphic illusion therefore causes us both to overestimate our power as singular individuals and to underestimate the power of social and political institutions. If we understand ourselves and institutions as " transindividuals " rather than on the illusory model of substantial individuality, it is unproblematic to attribute individuality to collective powers, like the commonwealth, and makes better sense of how we are determined by external forces. (shrink)

Rorty finds that my own appropriation of Spinoza toward a re-conception of ideology critique falls short, however, by (a) failing to “take Spinoza’s mind-body identity seriously” and by (b) advocating a “battle of ideas” rather than an enlargement of perspective. She presents an illuminating analysis of how, according to Spinoza, dichotomies serve as blunt provisional tools that become counterproductive once understanding is reached. She suggests that I preserve certain distinctions to the detriment of my own liberation project, such as the (...) distinction between the truth of an idea and its persuasive force. As part of criticism (a), she admonishes me for neglecting the importance of material conditions, and with criticism (b) she suggests that the imagery of battle misconstrues the project of becoming rational and the power of truth. Below I will try to show that we do not disagree about either the importance of material conditions for a project of political transformation or the identity of mind and body in substance. We do disagree, however, about the character of ideology critique. I will offer an example, in an attempt to demonstrate why it is neither a distortion of Spinoza nor strategically counterproductive to understand the project of thinking as an effort of what I call “resistant reconstruction” within the attribute of thought. (shrink)

Against the common understanding that the Ethics promotes a "radical anti-emotion program," I claim that Spinoza describes an immanent transformation of love from a form of madness to an expression of wisdom. Love as madness produces the affects that another tradition unites in the seven deadly sins, such as lust, gluttony, envy, greed, and pride. Spinoza, however, never condemns these affects as such. Within each affect one can find its "correct use" (E5p10schol), which enables us to love and to live (...) otherwise. As we come to understand our beloveds as determinate expressions both of nature's power and of our own ability to persevere in being, we find conditions for our liberation within these most burdensome of passions. More specifically, as we diminish our tendency to imagine what we love in terms of its finitude and susceptibility to loss, we are determined to love and to know both others and ourselves by the joyful passions. Ultimately, Spinoza's portrait of love suggests ways of life that generate the satisfaction of our possessive desire with the collective and inclusive love of, certainly, the eternal and immutable thing, but also the eternal and immutable in things, in each other, and above all, in ourselves. In other words, Spinoza's economics of love and possession point up the desire to appropriate our own power in and of community, and in of nature. (shrink)

In examining Judith Butler's treatment of Spinoza insofar as it reflects the tenacity of a commitment to the need to "honor the death drive," a need often justified by the ethical and political resources it provides, this essay asks about the basis of this need for feminist theory. From whence does it come? What ethical and political work does a primary vigilance toward our destructive and death-bent urges do? Thus, I begin with a review of Butler's treatment of Spinoza, and (...) proceed to make some suggestions about what motivates her creative appropriation of his principle of conatus. Finally, without demanding that Butler represent Spinoza's philosophy accurately, I propose that Spinoza's philosophy allows a very strong acknowledgment of destruction, including self-destruction, without conceding the necessity of an ethics or politics of anxiety. Like Butler, and perhaps even more radically, Spinoza insists upon our opacity to ourselves, our irreducible and original multiplicity and constitutive relationality, as well as the inability finally to demarcate the boundaries of the self. Yet his ethics culminates in what he calls a "remedy for the affects," in an endeavor to displace and minimize sad passions, like anxiety. In concluding, the question for feminist theory remains: Which are the best fictions, models of selfhood, and modes of speculation for the displacement of anxiety, aggression, and the passions that trigger violence agianst ourselves and others in a misogynist, homophobic, and racist culture? If I am not able to answer these questions in the course of this brief essay, I hope to underline the importance of asking them. (shrink)

In what follows, I substantiate the argument that there are at least two senses in which Spinoza’s principles support revolutionary change. I begin with a quick survey of his concerns with the problem of insurrection. I proceed to show that, if political programs can be called revolutionary insofar as freedom is their motivation and justification, and insofar as freedom implies an expansion of the scope of the general interest to the whole political body, Spinoza ought to be called a revolutionary. (...) Finally, I contend that, even if he does not praise mass insurrection, he finds its guarantee in the laws of human nature itself, which cannot tolerate tyranny. And, thus, it is in a revolutionary vein that Spinoza cites Seneca repeatedly: violenta imperia nemo continuit diu (TTP 5.8, 16.9). (shrink)

The writings of Simone Weil support a feminist philosophy of education that locates freedom in self-determined creative work within contexts of necessity. In particular, Weil’s discussion of Force, the Good, Work, Method and Time provide criteria for a feminist philosophy of education, in terms of educational ends and means. Philosophy for Children is relevant to each of these themes, in various ways.

In asserting that the desire to possess what we cannot exclusively and permanently have lies at the root of human misery, Spinoza's Ethics discloses a problem that requires a political response. Although the final part of the Ethics appears to be the least practical of Spinoza's writings, it nonetheless foregrounds the tangible problem of our desire for possession, our desire to have what gives us joy. Moreover, it proposes a remedial practice by means of which this problematic desire might generate (...) satisfaction and strength rather than frustration and suffering. The "remedy for the affects" demands a reorientation of one's possessive desire corollary to the fundamentally affective and affirmative understanding of justice propounded in Spinoza's political writings. The cure for the possessive lovesickness portrayed in the Ethics, I aim to show, entails institutions of justice insofar as they operate upon our proprietary desires. (shrink)

Robert Grosseteste.--Thomas of York.--Roger Bacon.--John Pecham.--Richard of Middleton.--Duns Scotus.--Conclusion.--Bibliography (p. [409]-412).

To succeed, every organization including theatre necessarily requires human and material resources. The material resources cannot on their own function. It is the human capital within the organization that utilizes and drives the materials in a certain direction in order to achieve predetermined objectives. This places the human capital in a pivotal role and justifies the attention often paid to personnel matters in organizations. Personnel themselves have to be managed. One potent avenue for adequately managing human resources towards the realization (...) of predetermined goals and objectives is good and effective communication. This paper examines the options open to the Theatre Administrator (the head of theatre organizations)) in order to foster coherence and adequately harmonize theatre personnel towards achieving the goals of guaranteeing satisfaction, having a full house and maximizing profits. (shrink)

The nucleus accumbens orchestrates processes related to reward and pleasure, including the addictive consequences of repeated reward (e.g., drug addiction and compulsive gambling) and the accompanying feelings of craving and anhedonia. The neurotransmitters dopamine and endogenous opiates play interactive roles in these processes. They are released by natural rewards (i.e., food, water, sex, money, play, etc.) and are released or mimicked by drugs of abuse. Repeated drug use induces conditioned down-regulation of these neurotransmitters, thus causing painful suppression of everyday pleasure. (...) As with many spiritual traditions, Buddhism provides strong advice against the pursuit of worldly pleasures to attain the ‘‘good life.’’ In contrast, many forms of meditation give rise to an immense and abiding joy. Most of these practices involve ‘‘stilling the mind,’’ whereby all content-laden thought (e.g., fantasies, daydreams, plans) ceases, and the mind enters a state of openness, formlessness, clarity, and bliss. This can be explained by the Buddhist suggestion that almost all of our everyday thoughts are a form of addiction. It follows that if we turn off this internal ‘‘gossip of ego,’’ we will find relief from the biochemical dopamine/opiate down-regulation, which is, perhaps, the perpetual concomitant of our daily rumination. (shrink)

(Selection) Despite its contemplative, earnest, and, at times, disarmingly conversational tone, Spinoza's Religion is a rather provocative book. The epithets thrown at Spinoza throughout the early modern period—referring to the Theological-Political Treatise as that most "pestilential book," "forged in hell" by a godless rebel and atheist—are today badges of pride. Spinoza is celebrated among scholars and in popular culture for his uncompromising iconoclasm. He is admired for his refusal, following his ban from Judaism as a young man, to align with (...) any religious faith. Regarded as a staunch critic of religion, Spinoza is credited with paving the way for secular morality, guided by scientific and rational knowledge. With Spinoza's Religion, Carlisle urges us to understand the Ethics as a fundamentally religious text, which, at the same time, transforms our ideas of what religion is. (shrink)

Nosotres, biólogues, ecologistas y otres profesionales dedicados a proteger la vida, les escribimos con una solicitud urgente. Les pedimos muy comedidamente que su organización o institución emita un comunicado oficial condenando la crisis en curso y abordando los impactos ambientales y humanitarios en Palestina.

People seem more divided than ever before over social and political issues, entrenched in their existing beliefs and unwilling to change them. Empirical research on mechanisms driving this resistance to belief change has focused on a limited set of well-known, charged, contentious issues and has not accounted for deliberation over reasons and arguments in belief formation prior to experimental sessions. With a large, heterogeneous sample (N = 3,001), we attempt to overcome these existing problems, and we investigate the causes and (...) consequences of resistance to belief change for five diverse and less contentious socio-political issues. After participants chose initially to support or oppose a given socio-political position, they were provided with reasons favoring their chosen position (affirming reasons), reasons favoring the other, unchosen position (conflicting reasons), or all reasons for both positions (reasons for both sides). Our results indicate that participants are more likely to stick with their initial decisions than to change them no matter which reasons are considered, and that this resistance to belief change is likely due to a motivated, biased evaluation of the reasons to support their initial beliefs (prior-belief bias). More specifically, they rated affirming reasons more favorably than conflicting reasons—even after accounting for reported prior knowledge about the issue, the novelty of the reasons presented, and the reported strategy used to make the initial decision. In many cases, participants who did not change their positions tended to become more confident in the superiority of their positions after considering many reasons for both sides. (shrink)

Unlike natural-born citizens, many immigrants have agreed to undertake political obligations. Many have sworn oaths of allegiance. Many, when they entered their adopted country, promised to obey the law. This paper is about these agreements. First, it’s about their validity. Do they actually confer political obligations? Second, it’s about their justifiability. Is it permissible to get immigrants to undertake such political obligations? Our answers are ‘usually yes’ and ‘probably not’ respectively. We first argue that these agreements give immigrants political obligations. (...) We then argue that getting immigrants to undertake such obligations is morally wrong. This is because it makes immigrants’ political obligations more burdensome than those of natural-born citizens. We conclude that the practice of getting immigrants to undertake such obligations should be abolished. (shrink)

The current informal practice of pharmacometrics as a combination art and science makes it hard to appreciate the role that informatics can and should play in the future of the discipline and to comprehend the gaps that exist because of its absence. The development of pharmacometric informatics has important implications for expediting decision making and for improving the reliability of decisions made in model-based development. We argue that well-defined informatics for pharmacometrics can lead to much needed improvements in the efficiency, (...) effectiveness, and reliability of the pharmacometrics process. The purpose of this paper is to provide a description of the pervasive yet often poorly appreciated role of informatics in improving the process of data assembly, a critical task in the delivery of pharmacometric analysis results. First, we provide a brief description of the pharmacometric analysis process. Second, we describe the business processes required to create analysis-ready data sets for the pharmacometrician. Third, we describe selected informatic elements required to support the pharmacometrics and data assembly processes. Finally, we offer specific suggestions for performing a systematic analysis of existing challenges as an approach to defi ning the next generation of pharmacometric informatics. (shrink)

Spinoza's Political Treatise constitutes the very last stage in the development of his thought, as he left the manuscript incomplete at the time of his death in 1677. On several crucial issues - for example, the new conception of the 'free multitude' - the work goes well beyond his Theological Political Treatise, and arguably presents ideas that were not fully developed even in his Ethics. This volume of newly commissioned essays on the Political Treatise is the first collection in English (...) to be dedicated specifically to the work, ranging over topics including political explanation, national religion, the civil state, vengeance, aristocratic government, and political luck. It will be a major resource for scholars who are interested in this important but still neglected work, and in Spinoza's political philosophy more generally. (shrink)

KEY POINTS In Canada, commercial data brokers collect deidentified patient data from pharmacies, private drug insurers, the federal government and medical clinics without patient consent. Although pharmaceutical companies are the data brokers’ primary customers, academics and nonprofit and public entities also use commercial data sets, given the absence of a coordinated public approach to collecting these data across Canada. Risks of commercialized patient data include loss of anonymity, surveillance and marketing, discrimination and violation of Indigenous data sovereignty. Coordinated infrastructure for (...) the collection and coordination of health data across Canada and updated privacy legislation would protect individuals and communities and enable appropriate data uses. (shrink)

In the prehistoric time, there was an inclination of human beings to protect their existence by living in societies. They confine themselves in the society because of having their qualities of mutual love and amity. The general tendencies of human beings are to develop bonds. These bonds happen in various ways. Society cannot survive without bonds. Bonds have significance in philosophical discussion. In the history of contemporary philosophy, applied philosophy is one of the several other aspects. Applied philosophy deals with (...) Human rights, Euthanasia, Feminism, Abortion, Animal rights, Bonds etc. Brenda Almond, a leading figure in applied philosophy, has offered arguments in favor of her viewpoint regarding the importance of human bonds. In this paper, Almond‟s view on the nature and significance of bond has been analyzed. However, bond has also been studied from ethical perspective in this paper. And finally, it is claimed that marriage and cosmopolitanism make bonds stronger. Philosophy and Progress, Vol#61-62; No#1-2; Jan-Dec 2017 P 147-164. (shrink)