The polarities of democracy framework is founded on critical theory ideas that seek to achieve social change by overcoming oppression and violence, which both endanger humanity's survival. Benet expanded the theory by utilizing Johnson’s concept of polarity management as a conceptual framework. Viewing the polarities of democracy model as a unifying paradigm can help in organizing, leading, and evaluating democratic social change activities aimed at creating healthy, sustainable, and just communities. According to the argument, Democracy is seen as a remedy (...) for oppression rather than a mere dichotomy. In order to reach that point, it's important to recognize the presence of 10 values, with each being crucial on its own yet not enough individually, forming five polarity pairs. The study aimed to explore the perspectives of Haitian educators and other instructors familiar with public education in rural areas on the challenges and opportunities for enhancing access to quality public secondary education in places such as Pointe L’Abacou, Haiti. Throughout the study, all five pairs were considered, but three pairings of the polarities of democracy theory were used to address this gap. (shrink)

Public secondary schools are scarcely available to children in rural Haiti who want to continue their education beyond primary school. While some remote communities may offer private schools, poor families simply cannot afford to send their children to private schools or even move to a city where they have options to attend public secondary schools. The research examined the perspectives of well-informed Haitian educators and other educators who were familiar with the issue of limited access to public secondary education in (...) rural areas of Haiti. The research further determined that the problem can't be solved unless we look at how the country's educational system was affected by Dominance and Abuse of Power by the Elites and other oppressive factors. 20 educators in Haiti and the United States participated in semi-structured interviews to compile data that were analyzed through the prism of Benet's Polarities of democracy theory. The findings indicated that Education for rural residents is undervalued by the government. Political and personal agendas are given more priority. Closing the gap between urban and country life is critical. More public secondary schools for rural areas need to be established, which will need a paradigm shift in the education system of the country. (shrink)

The limited access to public secondary education in rural regions of Haiti has impacted children who want to pursue their education beyond the primary level. This generic qualitative study aimed to explore the perceptions of informed Haitian educators and other educators who were knowledgeable about the lack of access to public secondary education in rural Haiti, specifically through the framework of polarities of democracy theory. Data were gathered by conducting semistructured interviews with 20 educators who were situated in both Haiti (...) and the United States. NVivo 14 was used to organize, code, and analyze the data. Thematic analysis revealed three themes: (a) the government prioritizes political and personal interests over rural residents’ education, (b) disparities need to be reduced between urban and rural areas, and (c) a revolution in education is needed to build more public secondary schools for rural residents. Public policy recommendations included investing in training rural individuals to create a database of academics who can meet local students’ educational demands. Positive social change can occur by enhancing governmental services, implementing strategies to revitalize the agricultural sector in rural regions, and promoting active participation of rural residents in shaping the design of public schools to ensure effective secondary education for their children. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of generics in social cognition. First, we explore the nature and effects of the most common form of generics about social kinds. Second, we discuss the nature and effects of a less common but equally important form of generics about social kinds. Finally, we consider the implications of this discussion for how we ought to use language about the social world.

Marjorie Perloff is a distinguished commentator on the literature of this century, best known for her work on Futurism, one of the pre-First War international and inter-art avant garde movements. Radical Artifice takes on the avant garde since 1960, observed from the angle of the institutions of popular culture -- in particular television talk shows, and graphic advertisements. The project of the book is to respond to Charles Bernstein's decree: "There is no natural look or sound to a poem. (...) Every element is intended, chosen. That is what makes a thing a poem" (qtd. 35). "Why, Perloff asks, "is the natural now regarded with such suspicion?" (35). (shrink)

This chapter uses the distinction between speculative and analytic philosophy as a background against which to present the summaries of the articles on the nature of philosophy by Mary Whiton Calkins, Dorothy Walsh and Marjorie Glicksman. Calkins and Walsh (in her first contribution) examine the relationship between philosophy and metaphysics: Calkins identifies philosophy with speculative metaphysics while Walsh argues that any ethical theory requires some underlying speculative metaphysics. In Walsh’s second contribution, she further argues that philosophical language rightly is (...) characteristically different from the languages of science, logic and poetry. Glicksman, finally, addresses the question how to deal with the multiplicity of views concerning the nature of philosophy. (shrink)

This article defends Marjorie Suchocki’s position against two main objections raised by David E. Conner. Conner objects that God as a single actual entity must be temporal because there is succession in God’s experience ofthe world. The reply is that time involves at least two successive occasions separated by perishing, but in God nothing ever perishes. Conner also objects that Suchocki’s personalistic process theism is not experiential but is instead theoretical and not definitive. The reply is that his dismissal (...) of Part V of PR is arbitrary, the interpretation of all experience is theoretical, and no metaphysical interpretations are absolutely definitive, including PR as a whole. Also, Conner ignores religious experience. (shrink)

In diesem Aufsatz, werde ich die Frage des Naturalismus in Plessners Philosophie des organischen Lebens und seiner amerikanischen Rezeption, in besonders die philosophischen-biologischen Schriften von Marjorie Grene, untersuchen. Die amerikanische Philosophin Grene war die Hauptvertreterin Plessners im Englischen Sprachraum in 20sten Jahrhundert, die Plessners anthropologischen Argumentation in ihren Schriften zur Philosophie der Biologie aufgenommen und verwendet hat. Grene kritisierte in ihren frühen Schriften Heidegger, Sartre, und die Existenzphilosophie, die das menschliche Dasein von der Natur radikal absondert und die negative (...) Affekte wie Angst hervorhebt, in Vergleich mit Plessners weiterem Blick der Leibhaften, Sinnlichen, Tierischen Entwicklung des menschlichen Lebens. Die menschliche Existenz kann nicht dualistisch, wo „keine Brücke über den Abgrund zwischen Mensch und Tier führt,“ sondern nur biologisch-lebensphilosophisch oder ökologisch verstanden werden. Plessner und Grene setzen sich mit dem Reduktionismus des modernen Naturalismus auseinander und zeigen, wie das Natürliche weiter und ergänzt gedacht werden muss, weil der Naturalismus keine ausreichenden Begriffe für die Auslegung der Erscheinungen und Ausdrucksformen des organischen Lebens besitzt. Die Unterscheidung zwischen der "zentrischen Positionalität" des Tiers und der "exzentrischen Positionalität" des menschlichen Tiers ermöglicht eine holistisch aber differenzierte Beschreibung der Natur und Kultur, insbesondere die natürlichen Künstlichkeit, die der Kultur und das des gesellschaftlichen Lebens. Diese sind Grundlage für die geschichtliche und soziale Bildung, Aufbau, und Strukturierung der natürlichen Spontaneität, Produktivität, und Expressivität des Lebens und ermöglichen die dezentrierte, utopische, und persönliche Individuation der einzelnen Menschen im Lebenszusammenhang, was wichtige soziologische und auch ethische und politische Konsequenzen für Plessner und Grene hat: Der Mensch ist ein natürliches biologisches Individuum, das durchaus fähig ist, eine verantwortliche Person zu werden , und zwar durch die umfassende Beteiligung an (oder als ein einzigartiger Ausdruck) einer Kultur. (shrink)

Naturalist views of persons, such as those of the philosophers Annette Baier and Marjorie Grene, emphasize that human persons are cultural animals: We are living, embodied, organic beings, embedded in nature, the product of Darwinian evolution, but dependent on culture. Such naturalist views of persons typically eschew science fiction and look askance at the philosophical fantasies and thought experiments that often populate philosophical treatments of personal identity. Marge Piercy’s dystopian, cyberpunk, science fiction novel He, She and It weaves a (...) complex tale around the debate over the status of its central character Yod, a cyborg created in a lab but humanized through the efforts of two women, Malkah Shipman and her granddaughter Shira Shipman. Is Yod a person, despite having been engineered in a lab for a specific purpose? Piercy’s tale both challenges and ultimately supports a naturalist view of persons while simultaneously forewarning us of possible new styles of persons to come. (shrink)

This book is the first volume featuring the work of American women philosophers in the first half of the twentieth century. It provides selected papers authored by Mary Whiton Calkins, Grace Andrus de Laguna, Grace Neal Dolson, Marjorie Glicksman Grene, Marjorie Silliman Harris, Thelma Zemo Lavine, Marie Collins Swabey, Ellen Bliss Talbot, Dorothy Walsh and Margaret Floy Washburn. The book also provides the historical and philosophical background to their work. The papers focus on the nature of philosophy, knowledge, (...) the philosophy of science, the mind-matter nexus, the nature of time, and the question of freedom and the individual. The material is suitable for scholars, researchers and advanced philosophy students interested in (history of) philosophy; theories of knowledge; philosophy of science; mind, and reality. (shrink)

This open access book presents a comparative study of two classics of world literature, offering the first sustained study of what unites and divides the Nicomachean Ethics and the Bhagavad Gita. -/- Asking what the texts think is the nature of moral action and how it relates to the highest good, Roopen Majithia shows how the Gita stresses the objectivity of knowledge and freedom from being a subject, while the Ethics emphasizes the knower, working out Aristotle’s central commitment to the (...) idea of substance as the primary building block of the world. Yet both the Gita and the Ethics explain variety in human behaviour in terms of three driving forces. Both agree moral agency is a construct that is a function of background, education and habit, presupposing a cultural, political and economic infrastructure. -/- What distinguishes the texts is how the content of right action is generated. Reading them together, alert to their individual accounts of how the practical relates to the reflective dimensions of life, Majithaia enriches our understanding of two cornerstone texts in the Greek and Indian philosophical traditions. -/- The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollectionsdotcom. Open access was funded by The Marjorie Young Bell Faculty Fund and The Hart Almerrin Massey Endowment. (shrink)