The feeling of clarity can be dangerously seductive. It is the feeling associated with understanding things. And we use that feeling, in the rough-and-tumble of daily life, as a signal that we have investigated a matter sufficiently. The sense of clarity functions as a thought-terminating heuristic. In that case, our use of clarity creates significant cognitive vulnerability, which hostile forces can try to exploit. If an epistemic manipulator can imbue a belief system with an exaggerated sense of clarity, then they (...) can induce us to terminate our inquiries too early — before we spot the flaws in the system. How might the sense of clarity be faked? Let’s first consider the object of imitation: genuine understanding. Genuine understanding grants cognitive facility. When we understand something, we categorize its aspects more easily; we see more connections between its disparate elements; we can generate new explanations; and we can communicate our understanding. In order to encourage us to accept a system of thought, then, an epistemic manipulator will want the system to provide its users with an exaggerated sensation of cognitive facility. The system should provide its users with the feeling that they can easily and powerfully create categorizations, generate explanations, and communicate their understanding. And manipulators have a significant advantage in imbuing their systems with a pleasurable sense of clarity, since they are freed from the burdens of accuracy and reliability. I offer two case studies of seductively clear systems: conspiracy theories; and the standardized, quantified value systems of bureaucracies. (shrink)

Many scholars agree that the Internet plays a pivotal role in self-radicalization, which can lead to behaviours ranging from lone-wolf terrorism to participation in white nationalist rallies to mundane bigotry and voting for extremist candidates. However, the mechanisms by which the Internet facilitates self-radicalization are disputed; some fault the individuals who end up self-radicalized, while others lay the blame on the technology itself. In this paper, we explore the role played by technological design decisions in online self-radicalization in its myriad (...) guises, encompassing extreme as well as more mundane forms. We begin by characterizing the phenomenon of technological seduction. Next, we distinguish between top-down seduction and bottom-up seduction. We then situate both forms of technological seduction within the theoretical model of dynamical systems theory. We conclude by articulating strategies for combatting online self-radicalization. (shrink)

On the first page of 1984, Winston Smith is confronted with several posters featuring the face of Big Brother and the famous sentence, “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.” This may not seem like a promising way to seduce someone, but the seduction of Winston Smith by Big Brother in 1984 is a most unusual love story. I call it a seduction because Winston’s mind and heart are slowly won over in the aptly-named Ministry of Love. Moreover, in the (...) final scene of the novel, Winston gazes, with tears in his eyes, up at Big Brother on the telescreen. The last sentence of the book states, simply, “He loved Big Brother.” How does Big Brother seduce Winston Smith? He certainly does not employ stereotypical methods. Big Brother is not particularly sexy, and his incessant angry shouting does not seem calculated to foster adoration. On top of that, Winston never meets Big Brother in person. His only access is through media: posters, stories, and the telescreen. We all know that it’s hard to maintain a long-distance relationship. Long-distance seduction is even more challenging. So how does Big Brother manage it? To answer this question, I use the theory of seduction first articulated by the philosopher John Forrester (1990, p. 42), who argues that “the first step in a seductive maneuver could be summed up as, ‘I know what you’re thinking.’”. (shrink)

This paper refines a number of theoretical distinctions relevant to deceptive play, in particular the difference between merely misleading actions and types of simulation commonly considered beyond the pale, such as diving. To do so, I rely on work in the philosophy of language about conversational convention and implicature, the distinction between lying and misleading, and their relation to concepts of seduction and bullshit. The paper works through a number of possible solutions to the question of what is wrong (...) with simulation and its difference from strategic fouling, including the argument that games and their rules operate like contracts. I conclude that the wrongness lies in the injustice of unfair advantage gained through actions that silence opposition by resort to unanswerable play. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger broadened the meaning of art to a truth-disclosing event akin to seemingly disparate events such as the founding of a political state, Jesus’s sacrifice for all humankind, and the questioning of a philosopher. Art makes us pay attention to it by presenting the familiar in a new and unfamiliar context and unsettles our presuppositions and reconceptualizes our way of thinking. I begin by explicating the Heideggerian interpretation of the nature of art by looking at the key concepts that (...) make a work of art work. Then I argue that by themselves, the concept of veiling and the concept of fashion are very familiar concepts to Indonesians, but that the practice of combining these two ideas brings something unfamiliar to that society. This new practice reveals a way of Being that combines religious piety with our current, late-modern, consumer society. The combination of fashion and veiling for piety discloses, in the Heideggerian sense, a new “world” that undermines secular and fundamentalist narratives about the religious agent while still remaining an authentic Indonesian art piece. (shrink)

The idea of active ageing has become one of the most influential perspectives in modern gerontology, social work, and social policy. This paper discusses factors that helped to establish active ageing as a successful theoretical concept that has significantly influenced contemporary social representations of ageing and has a practical impact on social work and policy. The perspective of the philosophy of social science is employed to explain what makes the idea of active ageing so attractive despite the remaining confusions concerning (...) what “activity‘ and “ageing actively‘ means. The paper aims to answer the following question: What makes the concept of active ageing so successful? It draws upon the work of Murray Davis and her insight into the key aspects that make sociological theory “seductive.‘ The paper analyzes in what ways the concept of active ageing fulfills the specific features that, according to Davis, determine the success of social theories. Simultaneously, the paper critically evaluates the ways the idea of active ageing is translated into ageing policy. The case of Czech Republic is used to illustrate the problematic aspect of active ageing policies as well as the specific rhetoric that makes the idea of active ageing so attractive for a broad spectrum of disciplines as well as for social policy. (shrink)

Impartially Optimizing Consequentialism requires agents to act so as to bring about the best outcome, as judged by a preference ordering which is impartial among the needs and interests of all persons. IOC may seem to be only rational response to the recognition that one is only one person among many others with equal intrinsic moral status. A person who adopts a less impartial deontological alternative to IOC may seem to fail to take seriously the fact that other persons matter (...) in the same way that she takes herself to matter. This paper examines this ‘seductive appeal’ of IOC. It argues that IOC is not the only rational way to recognize the fact that each person matters. It presents an alternative conception of how to recognize the status of other persons as beingswho-matter, an alternative that has Kantian rather than consequentialist implications. (shrink)

In 'A Different Story,' Finn Janning uses the Norwegian author Jan Kjærstad trilogy: 'The Seducer', 'The Conqueror', and 'The Discovery' as a fictional frame that organizes his as understanding, analyzing and critique of contemporary HRM and Leadership-Practices.

Theorists of public reason such as John Rawls often idealize constitutional courts as exemplars of public reason. This paper raises questions about the seduction and limits of analogies between theorists’ account of public reason and actual constitutional jurisprudence. Examining the work product of the United States Supreme Court, the paper argues that while it does engage in reason-giving to support its decisions—as the public reason strategy suggests— those reasons are (largely) legalistic and specifically juristic reasons—not the theorists’ idealized moral-political (...) reasons on matters of fundamental principle. But if constitutional courts do not engage on matters of fundamental principle, then a public reason strategy for assuaging democratic worries about judicial review would no longer be open: prominent liberal and deliberative democratic theorists could no longer point to the alleged superiority of constitutional courts to speak in the name of, and for, the people’s shared political principles. The paper extends beyond the U.S. case study by pointing to three institutional factors explaining the disanalogy between what some constitutional courts do and what public reason theories require them to do. It concludes with considerations about whether the public reason strategy might be more successfully applied to international courts. (shrink)

The cultural practice of flirtation has been multifariously scrutinized in various disciplines including sociology, psychology, psychoanalysis and literary studies. This paper frames the field of flirtation in Bourdieuian terms, while focusing narrowly on the semiotic economy that is defining of this cultural field. Moreover, seduction, as a uniquely varied form of discourse that is responsible for producing the cultural field of flirtation, is posited as the missing link for understanding why flirtation may be a peculiar case of non-habitus, contrary (...) to the received notion of cultural field as set of goaloriented practices and actionable habituses. This argument is pursued by highlighting the endemic traits of ambivalence and constant reversibility of signs or multimodal semiotic constellations in the discourse of seduction, while seeking to demonstrate that seduction, and by implication the cultural field of flirtation, does not necessarily partake of a teleological framework that is geared towards the consummation of sexual desire. This thesis is illustrated by recourse to a scene from the blockbuster ‘Hitch’. (shrink)

This article proposes a rigorous method to “map” the law on to the facts in the legal analysis of “sexual consent” using a series of mandatory questions of law designed to eliminate the legal errors often made by decision-makers who routinely rely on personal beliefs about and attitudes towards “normal sexual behavior” in screening and deciding cases. In Canada, sexual consent is affirmative consent, the communication by words or conduct of “voluntary agreement” to a specific sexual activity, with a specific (...) person. As in many jurisdictions, however, the sexual assault laws are often not enforced. Reporting is lowest and non-enforcement highest in cases involving the most common type of assailants, those who are not strangers but instead persons the complainant knows, often quite well -- acquaintances, supervisors or co-workers, and family members. Reliance on popular narratives about “seduction” and “stranger-danger” leads complainants, police, prosecutors, lawyers, and trial judges, to truncate legal analysis of the facts and leap to erroneous conclusions about “consent.” Wrongful convictions and perverse acquittals, questionable plea bargains and ill-considered decisions not to charge, result. This proposal is designed to curtail the impact of pre-judgments, assumptions, and biases in legal reasoning about voluntariness and affirmative agreement and produce decisions that are legally sound, based on the application of the rule of law to the material facts. Law has long had better tools than the age-old and popular tales of “ravishment” and “seduction.” Those tools can and should be used. (shrink)

I discuss the aesthetic power of painful art. I focus on artworks that occasion pain by “hitting too close to home,” i.e., by presenting narratives meant to be “about us.” I consider various reasons why such works may have aesthetic value for us, but I argue that the main reason has to do with the power of such works to transgress conversational boundaries. The discussion is meant as a contribution to the debate on the paradox of tragedy.

YouTube has been implicated in the transformation of users into extremists and conspiracy theorists. The alleged mechanism for this radicalizing process is YouTube’s recommender system, which is optimized to amplify and promote clips that users are likely to watch through to the end. YouTube optimizes for watch-through for economic reasons: people who watch a video through to the end are likely to then watch the next recommended video as well, which means that more advertisements can be served to them. This (...) is a seemingly innocuous design choice, but it has a troubling side-effect. Critics of YouTube have alleged that the recommender system tends to recommend extremist content and conspiracy theories, as such videos are especially likely to capture and keep users’ attention. To date, the problem of radicalization via the YouTube recommender system has been a matter of speculation. The current study represents the first systematic, pre-registered attempt to establish whether and to what extent the recommender system tends to promote such content. We begin by contextualizing our study in the framework of technological seduction. Next, we explain our methodology. After that, we present our results, which are consistent with the radicalization hypothesis. Finally, we discuss our findings, as well as directions for future research and recommendations for users, industry, and policy-makers. (shrink)

Change has traditionally been perceived as something to be avoided in favor of stability. This can be witnessed in both individual and organizational approaches to change. In this paper, change as a process of becoming is analyzed. The author relates change to seduction to introduce new perspectives to the concept. The principal idea is that the process of change is a seductive experience. This assumption highlights the positive aspects of becoming, growing, and changing. In doing so, reference is made (...) to the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, as well as the humanistic psychology of Carl Rogers, to analyze seduction, as presented in The Seducer’s Diary by the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. The qualification of this claim is based on this reading. Finally, a conclusion is offered through brief comments on the relationship between seduction, personal growth, and self-actualization. (shrink)

Pressuring someone into having sex would seem to differ in significant ways from pressuring someone into investing in one’s business or buying an expensive bauble. In affirming this claim, I take issue with a recent essay by Sarah Conly (‘Seduction, Rape, and Coercion’, Ethics, October 2004), who thinks that pressuring into sex can be helpfully evaluated by analogy to these other instances of using pressure. Drawing upon work by Alan Wertheimer, the leading theorist of coercion, she argues that so (...) long as pressuring does not amount to coercing someone into having sex, her consent to sex answers the important ethical questions about it. In this essay, I argue that to understand the real significance of pressuring into sex, we need to appeal to background considerations, especially the male-dominant gender hierarchy, which renders sexual pressuring different from its non-sexual analogues. Treating pressure to have sex like any other sort of interpersonal pressure obscures the role such sexual pressure might play in supporting gender hierarchy, and fails to explain why pressure by men against women is more problematic than pressure by women against men. I suggest that men pressuring women to have sex differs from the reverse case because of at least two factors: (1) gendered social institutions which add to the pressures against women, and (2) the greater likelihood that men, not women, will use violence if denied, and the lesser ability of women compared to men to resist such violence without harm. (shrink)

The scientific study of socio-cultural phenomenon requires a translocation of topics elaborated from the social perspective of the individual to a rationally ordered rendition of processes suitable for comprehension from a scientific perspective. Scholarly curiosity seeded from exposure in the natural setting to economic, political, socio-cultural, evolutionary, processes dictates that study of the self, should be a science with a necessary place in the body of world literatures; yet it has proven difficult to find a perspective to contain discussions of (...) topics in a coherent manner for scientific approach: for example, anthropology, the study of mankind, finds difficulty elaborating definition for the orientation of study; it is a member of the same set that contains it. In this presentation, based on features indigenous to a supposed distant perspective that is exposed employing experiences of history and criteria of common sensory perception, it is conjectured that a civilization lifetime pathology is contemporarily active. Example is taken from philosophical and sociological discourses, modern science theory, medicine in pursuit of international health issues, to capture conceptually a role of motions of external agents occurred within the interval of observation, elaboration of concepts, choice of directions, as a source of paradox and confusion. In supposition that does not escape simple logic, ubiquitously appealing to the experience bound senses for understanding, hidden motions, common to both observer and observed, are hypothesized to render from a sense of familiarity, a continued frustration in attaining an understanding of the self and nature. A psychical seduction is proposed to exist, related to historical behaviors associated with centrism and asceticism, produces eccentric interpretations that are bound modernly to logical circular, centric geometrical reasonings; world conceptualizations are conjectured to acquire an avoidance of a state of ‘motionless’ rather than death within selection processes. Projection by the imagination upon the unknown is conjectured to result in a seduction by an active ‘live-wire” embodied to motions occurred to a distant surface. (shrink)

American History X (hereafter AHX) has been accused by numerous critics of a morally dangerous cinematic seduction: using stylish cinematography, editing, and sound, the film manipulates the viewer through glamorizing an immoral and hate-filled neo-nazi protagonist. In addition, there’s the disturbing fact that the film seems to accomplish this manipulation through methods commonly grouped under the category of “fascist aesthetics.” More specifically, AHX promotes its neo-nazi hero through the use of several filmic techniques made famous by Nazi propagandist Leni (...) Riefenstahl. Now most critics admit that, in the end, the film claims to denounce racism and attempts to show us the conversion of the protagonist to the path of righteousness, but they complain that nonetheless the film (perhaps unintentionally) ends up implicitly promoting the immoral worldview it rather superficially professes to reject in its final act. This charge of hypocrisy is connected to another worry: the moral conversion in the film is said to fall flat because the intellectual resources on display to support the character’s racism are not counterbalanced by equally explicit (but superior) arguments for the anti-racist position ultimately embraced by the character. In other words, just as the devil is said to get all the good lines in Milton’s Paradise Lost, in AHX the racists get all the arguments. This has been taken to be a morally problematic flaw of the film. Critics lament that Derek’s conversion seems to result not from relevant logical inferences and valid rational argumentation but from overly simplistic and arguably egoistic insights (e.g., “has anything you've done made your life better?”) combined, perhaps, with a hackneyed cliché (in prison, one of his best friends is a black person!) In this paper I’ll attempt to rebut these charges and defend the film as a powerful, and powerfully moral, work of art. I’ll be suggesting that the seductive techniques employed allow for many viewers a degree of sympathy towards the protagonist that is crucial, both for making that character’s more horrific actions especially unsettling, and also for making his eventual conversion plausible and ultimately compelling. I’ll also argue that the manner in which his conversion is presented is in fact subtler than many critics have allowed: Derek’s transformation is not artificial or implausible but is depicted as resulting from a cumulative series of emotionally powerful life events and personal engagements. It is certainly true that it is not represented in the way some would seemingly have preferred, i.e. as straightforwardly resulting from a process of gradual intellectual improvement in Derek’s reasoning on questions of race and politics. However, I’ll argue that the decidedly emotional basis of his moral evolution is both refreshingly realistic and no hindrance to accepting his conversion as rational. Finally, properly understanding the legitimacy of the emotional foundations of much moral thought will also allow us to appreciate the ways in which our initial worries about this film’s (not insignificant) ability to persuade viewers through the engagement of emotions need not, in itself, be seen as a barrier to endorsing the film as a morally praiseworthy work. (shrink)

The no-miracles argument and the pessimistic induction are arguably the main considerations for and against scientific realism. Recently these arguments have been accused of embodying a familiar, seductive fallacy. In each case, we are tricked by a base rate fallacy, one much-discussed in the psychological literature. In this paper we consider this accusation and use it as an explanation for why the two most prominent `wholesale' arguments in the literature seem irresolvable. Framed probabilistically, we can see very clearly why realists (...) and anti-realists have been talking past one another. We then formulate a dilemma for advocates of either argument, answer potential objections to our criticism, discuss what remains (if anything) of these two major arguments, and then speculate about a future philosophy of science freed from these two arguments. In so doing, we connect the point about base rates to the wholesale/retail distinction; we believe it hints at an answer of how to distinguish profitable from unprofitable realism debates. In short, we offer a probabilistic analysis of the feeling of ennui afflicting contemporary philosophy of science. (shrink)

The juxtaposition of models of God and Christian faith may seem repugnant to many, as models are tentative and faith aims at an abiding certainty. In fact, for many Christians, using models of God in worship amounts to idolatry. By examining Biblical and extra-Biblical views of idolatry, I argue that models are not idols. To the contrary, the practice of God-modeling inoculates Christians against one of the most seductive idols of our age: the love of certainty. Furthermore, by examining meditations (...) upon certainty in Melville’s Moby Dick and the early discourses of the Buddha, I suggest that overweening conviction is a vice that hinders rather than guarantees Christian discipleship, and that Christian faith is better defined as any or all of the following: relative confidence in propositions, faithful relationship, and a virtue of disciplined credulity. (shrink)

Inflationists have argued that truth is a causal-explanatory property on the grounds that true belief facilitates practical success: we must postulate truth to explain the practical success of certain actions performed by rational agents. Deflationists, however, have a seductive response. Rather than deny that true belief facilitates practical success, the deflationist maintains that the sole role for truth here is as a device for generalisation. In particular, each individual instance of practical success can be explained only by reference to a (...) relevant instance of a T-schema; the role of truth is just to generalise over these individualised explanations. I present a critical problem for this strategy. Analogues of the deflationist’s individualised explanations can be produced by way of explanation of coincidental instances of practical success where the agent merely has the right false beliefs. By deflationary lights, there is no substantive explanatory difference between such coincidental and non-coincidental instances of practical success. But the non-/coincidental distinction just is an explanatory distinction. The deflationist’s individualised explanations of non-coincidental instances of practical success must therefore be inadequate. However, I argue that the deflationist’s prospects for establishing an explanatory contrast between these cases by supplementing her individualised explanations are, at best, bleak. The inflationist, by contrast, is entitled to the obvious further explanatory premise needed to make sense of the distinction. As such, pending some future deflationary rejoinder, the deflationary construal of the principle that true belief facilitates practical success must be rejected; and with it the deflationary conception of truth. (shrink)

The expression “repressed memory” was introduced over 100 years ago as a theoretical term purportedly referring to an unobservable psychological entity postulated by Freud’s seduction theory. That theory, however, and its hypothesized cognitive architecture, have been thoroughly debunked—yet the term “repressed memory” seems to remain. In this paper I offer a philosophical evaluation of the meaning of this theoretical term as well as an argument to question its scientific status by comparing it to other cases of theoretical terms that (...) have either survived scientific change—such as “atom” or “gene”—or that have perished, such as “black bile”. Ultimately, I argue that “repressed memory” is more like “black bile” than “atom” or “gene” and, thus, recommend its demotion from our scientific vocabulary. (shrink)

If one believes that vagueness is an exclusively representational phenomenon, one faces the problem of the many. In the vicinity of Kilimanjaro, there are many many ‘mountain candidates’ all, apparently, with more-or-less equal claim to be mountains. David Lewis has defended a radical claim: that all the billions of mountain candidates are mountains. This paper argues that the supervaluationist about vagueness should adopt Lewis’ proposal, on pain of losing their best explanation of the seductiveness of the sorites.

"Correlation is not causation" is one of the mantras of the sciences—a cautionary warning especially to fields like epidemiology and pharmacology where the seduction of compelling correlations naturally leads to causal hypotheses. The standard view from the epistemology of causation is that to tell whether one correlated variable is causing the other, one needs to intervene on the system—the best sort of intervention being a trial that is both randomized and controlled. In this paper, we argue that some purely (...) correlational data contains information that allows us to draw causal inferences: statistical noise. Methods for extracting causal knowledge from noise provide us with an alternative to randomized controlled trials that allows us to reach causal conclusions from purely correlational data. (shrink)

The hole argument purportedly shows that spacetime substantivalism implies a pernicious form of indeterminism. We show that the argument is seductive only because it mistakes a trivial claim (viz. there are isomorphic models) for a significant claim (viz. there are hole isomorphisms). We prove that the latter claim is false -- thereby closing the debate about whether substantivalism implies indeterminism.

The argument from illusion/hallucination have been proposed many times as supporting the strong conclusion that we are always perceiving directly sense-data. In Sense & Sensibilia, Austin argues that this argument is based on a “mass of seductive (mainly verbal) fallacies”. In this paper, I argue that Austin's argumentative moves to deconstruct the argument from illusion is better understood if they are seen as due to his implicit commitment to some disjunctivist conception of perception. His considerations should be taken as a (...) depth discussion about how to conceive perception. If we conceive the perceptual capacity disjunctively, even the weaker conclusion that we sometimes perceive sense-data does not hold. In response to Austin, Ayer claimed that the strong conclusion of the argument from illusion could be sustained by the method of the possibility of error. I argue that this method alone does not sustain that conclusion and the controversy turns back to the conflict between different conceptions of perception. The argument from illusion is philosophically interesting by putting in evidence the problem of how the perceptual capacity should be articulated and conceived. Although matters of fact are relevant to this question, they alone do not decide it. (shrink)

Since the death of Jacques Lacan, Jean Laplanche is now considered to be one of the worlds foremost psychoanalytic thinkers. In spite of the influence of his work over the last thirty years, remarkably little has been available in English. Essays On Otherness presents for the first time in English many of Laplanche's key essays and is the first book to provide an overview of his thinking. It offers an introduction to many of the key themes that characterise his work: (...) seduction, persecution, revelation, masochism, transference and mourning. Such themes have been increasingly both in psychoanalytic thought and in continental philosophy, social and cultural theory, and literature making Essays On Otherness indispensable reading for all those concerned with the implications of psychoanalytic theory today. (shrink)

In a reflective and richly entertaining piece from 1979, Doug Hofstadter playfully imagined a conversation between ‘Achilles’ and an anthill (the eponymous ‘Aunt Hillary’), in which he famously explored many ideas and themes related to cognition and consciousness. For Hofstadter, the anthill is able to carry on a conversation because the ants that compose it play roughly the same role that neurons play in human languaging; unfortunately, Hofstadter’s work is notably short on detail suggesting how this magic might be achieved1. (...) Conversely in this paper - finally reifying Hofstadter’s imagination - we demonstrate how populations of simple ant-like creatures can be organised to solve complex problems; problems that involve the use of forward planning and strategy. Specifically we will demonstrate that populations of such creatures can be configured to play a strategically strong - though tactically weak - game of HeX (a complex strategic game).We subsequently demonstrate how tactical play can be improved by introducing a form of forward planning instantiated via multiple populations of agents; a technique that can be compared to the dynamics of interacting populations of social insects via the concept of meta-population. In this way although, pace Hofstadter, we do not establish that a meta-population of ants could actually hold a conversation with Achilles, we do successfully introduce Aunt Hillary to the complex, seductive charms of HeX. (shrink)

The Dispossessed has been described by political thinker Andre Gorz as 'The most striking description I know of the seductions—and snares—of self-managed communist or, in other words, anarchist society.' To date, however, the radical social, cultural, and political ramifications of Le Guin's multiple award-winning novel remain woefully under explored. Editors Laurence Davis and Peter Stillman right this state of affairs in the first ever collection of original essays devoted to Le Guin's novel. Among the topics covered in this wide-ranging, international (...) and interdisciplinary collection are the anarchist, ecological, post-consumerist, temporal, revolutionary, and open-ended utopian politics of The Dispossessed. The book concludes with an essay by Le Guin written specially for this volume, in which she reassesses the novel in light of the development of her own thinking over the past 30 years. (shrink)

Since at least the second half of the 19th century, the U.S. federal government has enjoyed “plenary power” over its immigration policy. Plenary power allows the federal government to regulate immigration free of judicial review and thereby, with regard to immigration cases, minimize the Constitutional protections afforded to non-citizens. The justification for granting the U.S federal government such broad powers comes from a certain understanding of sovereignty; one where limiting sovereign authority in cases like immigration could potentially undermine its legitimacy (...) and thereby lead to something like a Hobbesian “state of nature.” One of the potential downsides of allowing the federal government to have such broad powers, however, is the potential to place non-citizens in a situation analogous to what Giorgio Agamben has called the “state of exception.” This situation appears to leave us with the following dichotomy: without something like the plenary power doctrine a political community will end up with a state of nature, but with something like the plenary power doctrine they end up with a state of exception. This essay offers a two-part response to this dilemma. First, it argues that the plenary power doctrine goes against the spirit of the U.S. Constitution, specifically the Fourteenth Amendment. Non-citizens, even undocumented immigrants, are entitled to more Constitutional protections than they currently enjoy. Second, since extending these protections is more consistent with the spirit of the Constitution, I argue that curtailing the federal government’s power over matters of immigration does not undermine its sovereignty, but promotes it. In short, with regard to immigration, it is a false but seductive dichotomy that constitutional democracies must choose between a state of nature and a state of exception. (shrink)

The combination of sex and horror may be disquieting to many, but the two are natural (if perhaps gruesome) bedfellows. In fact, sex and horror coincide with such regularity in contemporary horror fiction that the two concepts appear to be at least partially intertwined. The sex–horror relationship is sometimes connotative rather than overt; examples of this relationship range from the seduction overtones of 'Nosferatu' and the juxtaposition of nudity and horror promised by European exploitation filmmakers to the sadomasochistic iconography (...) of 'Hellraiser'. In other cases, sex and horror are balanced in a manner that thoroughly blurs the distinction between porn and horror. The sustained presence of sex-horror in film suggests that these two elements fit together and the combination is a source of pleasure (entertainment, fascination, intellectual stimulation and so forth) for many. Yet sex-horror is broadly perceived to be disturbing and these negative reactions indicate that sex-horror is a source of trepidation, moral disdain or disgust for some. Thus, it appears that sex-horror inspires directly competing responses. One might conclude that sex-horror itself is paradoxical; that it holds two directly oppositional meanings simultaneously. However, as I will illustrate in this chapter, these dual responses are not as contradictory as they might first appear to be. (shrink)

At 252e1 to 253c9 in Plato’s Sophist, the Eleatic Visitor explains why philosophy is a science. Like the art of grammar, philosophical knowledge corresponds to a generic structure of discrete kinds and is acquired by systematic analysis of how these kinds intermingle. In the literature, the Visitor’s science is either understood as an expression of a mature and authentic platonic metaphysics, or as a sophisticated illusion staged to illustrate the seductive lure of sophistic deception. By showing how the Visitor’s account (...) of the science of philosophy is just as comprehensive, phantasmatic and self-concealing as the art of sophistry identified at the dialogue’s outset, this paper argues in favor of the latter view. (shrink)

A complex, polyvalent phenomenon, the kiss, once embedded in a literary text, is first and foremost a cipher to be decoded. Texts effectively expose its many-sidedness: not merely its potentially seductive power or ostensible expression of affection, but, no less compellingly, its risky demeanors, its capacity to establish dominance, to terrorize, to subdue, to belittle, to ingratiate, even to infuriate. Variously bestowed, retracted, avowed, disavowed, meaningful, meaningless, the kiss can become, as it does in the work so named by Kate (...) Chopin, a multi-layered form of contrivance, the incarnation of tempting, albeit ultimately invidious, non-realities. Though, perhaps, not manifest at first blush, a careful reading reveals that each occasion marked by the “joining of lips” yields an odd sequence of awkward and oft deleterious, consequences: motion is superseded by motive, candor by disingenuousness—all in an unending slew of backward and forward slippages. Thus is engendered the metaphorization of an altered reality—structured all but exclusively upon the relentless deceits it proffers. Jubilation and despair come and go, as though wholly inter-changeable; acceptance and rejection, promulgation and rescission are converted into mere variants of the same gestures of ambivalence, if not of travesty. One might thus conclude that the kiss adopts significance worthy of note only as a metonym for and of factitiousness, vacuity and thinly-veiled distortion. Chopin’s script adeptly explores the multifarious comportments and consequences of the kiss: an act fashioned as a “weapon” of dubious value, as a tactical strategy, as a play-act borne of ulterior objectives and, which, as such, deftly prostitutes itself, willingly, nefariously. In the given context, the kiss-act lays bare the heroine’s ostensible “liberation” to be more imagined than real. Her would-be triumph over gendered subjugation exists, if at all, as but an ill-conceived romantic daydream—destined to slake gradually into a woeful destiny of loneliness and imprisonment. Chopin’s brief narration center-stages betrayal, challenges authenticity and valorizes consummate illegitimacy. -/- . (shrink)

In this essay, I propose a reading of two contrasting passions, two kinds of erōs, in the "Symposium." On the one hand, there is the imperialistic desire for conquering and possessing that Alcibiades represents; and on the other hand, there is the productive love of immortal wisdom that Diotima represents. It’s not just what Alcibiades says in the Symposium, but also what he symbolizes. Alcibiades gives a speech in honor of Socrates and of his unrequited love for him, but even (...) here Alcibiades recounts his attempted seduction of Socrates as a failed conquest, as an unsuccessful attempt to violently take possession of something that Socrates has within him. Even more importantly, in 416 BCE (the dramatic date of Agathon’s symposium) Alcibiades was soon to encourage his fellow countrymen to set off on the ruinous Sicilian expedition. Alcibiades’s actions behind-the-scenes of the "Symposium" reveal the clearest manifestation of his imperialistic erōs (for political power in Athens). They also constitute some necessary background to the dialogue, which Plato’s Athenian readers would have had in mind. Where else can we catch a glimpse of this disastrous desire? It is best illustrated in Thucydides’s "History." I show that the beginnings of this political passion can already be seen in Pericles’s funeral oration (2.35-46, specifically 2.43.1) and that after Pericles’s death, Alcibiades stokes this erōs to such a fevered pitch that the Athenians agree to launch the tragic venture against Sicily. Opposed to this political passion, is Diotima’s. She tries to reorient this misguided erōs and presents an alternative form of desire for everlasting wisdom (philosophia). (shrink)

This paper traces the role of American technocrats in popularizing the notion later dubbed the “technological fix”. Channeled by their long-term “chief”, Howard Scott, their claim was that technology always provides the most effective solution to modern social, cultural and political problems. The account focuses on the expression of this technological faith, and how it was proselytized, from the era of high industrialism between the World Wars through, and beyond, the nuclear age. I argue that the packaging and promotion of (...) these ideas relied on allegorical technological tales and readily-absorbed graphic imagery. Combined with what Scott called “symbolization”, this seductive discourse preached beliefs about technology to broad audiences. The style and conviction of the messages were echoed by establishment figures such as National Lab director Alvin Weinberg, who employed the techniques to convert mainstream and elite audiences through the end of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Holography, the three-dimensional imaging technology, was portrayed widely as a paradigm of progress during its decade of explosive expansion 1964–73, and during its subsequent consolidation for commercial and artistic uses up to the mid 1980s. An unusually seductive and prolific subject, holography successively spawned scientific insights, putative applications and new constituencies of practitioners and consumers. Waves of forecasts, associated with different sponsors and user communities, cast holography as a field on the verge of success—but with the dimensions of success repeatedly (...) refashioned. This retargeting of the subject represented a degree of cynical marketeering, but was underpinned by implicit confidence in philosophical positivism and faith in technological progressivism. Each of its communities defined success in terms of expansion, and anticipated continual progressive increase. This paper discusses the contrasting definitions of progress in holography, and how they were fashioned in changing contexts. Focusing equally on reputed ‘failures’ of some aspects of the subject, it explores the varied attributes by which success and failure were linked with progress by different technical communities. This important case illuminates the peculiar post-World War II environment that melded the military, commercial and popular engagement with scientific and technological subjects, and the competing criteria by which they assessed the products of science. (shrink)

In this essay, I present an alternative philosophical approach to meta-curating. While the debate surrounding the meta-curating of content often centers around technology like post-digital art, I prefer to take a broader perspective and examine its ontological implications. I consider the realist or anti-realist assumptions of meta-curating through Jean Baudrillard’s concept of seduction and Giorgio Agamben’s idea of spectrality. Both simulacrum and spectrality tend to support an anti-realist approach to meta-curating where the value of the object is made fragile (...) when constantly predetermined by a superficially seductive or spectrally floating context. Against meta-curating as anti-realist, I argue that meta-curation is realist. As a case, the seductive and the spectral in Zaha Hadid’s Morpheus in Macao demonstrate that meta-curating does not completely disregard, but rather raises the question of how to establish an antifragile realism prompted by an architectural object. (shrink)

Libertarians like Robert Kane believe that indeterminism is necessaryfor free will. They think this in part because they hold both (1) thatmy being the ultimate cause of at least part of myself is necessary forfree will and (2) that indeterminism is necessary for this ``ultimateself-causation''. But seductive and intuitive as this ``USCLibertarianism'' may sound, it is untenable. In the end, nometaphysically coherent (not to mention empirically valid) conception ofultimate self-causation is available. So the basic intuition motivatingthe USC Libertarian is ultimately (...) impossible to fulfill. (shrink)

Abstract: In 1934 Gadamer delivered the lecture Plato und die Dichter. Its central topic was the relationship between poetry, philosophy and politics in Plato’s thought. Gadamer developed an original phenomenological investigation on Plato’s ethical-political philosophy and the role that art played in it, in which the dimension of language and the meaning of utopia are structural for his arguments. This article aims, in the first place, to elucidate some political dimensions of Plato und die Dichter. In order to do this, (...) I will carry out a critical review of Donatella Di Cesare’s and Dennis Schmidt’s contemporary readings of these aspects. In the conclusions, after briefly analysing in the third section the relationship between phrónēsis, aretḗ and andreía in the Platonic dialogues, I will try to demonstrate how these notions illuminate the question of the seduction of power (neglected by Schmidt in his reading of Gadamer’s Plato), as well as the inseparability of this problem with respect to the dialectical conception of utopia. It will be suggested that it is possible, from and beyond the Gadamerian reading of Plato, to rethink the idea of civil disobedience and the political value of the myth from standpoint of utopia. // Resumen: En 1934 Gadamer pronunció la conferencia Plato und die Dichter,cuyo tema central era la relación entre poesía, filosofía y política en el pensamiento platónico. Allí desarrolló una original investigación fenomenológica sobre la filosofía ético-política de Platón y el lugar que el arte ocupaba en ella, en la que la dimensión del lenguaje y el significado de la utopía son estructurales para sus argumentaciones. El presente artículo se propone, en primer lugar, elucidar algunos aspectos de la dimensión política de Plato und die Dichter. Para ello, se realizará una revisión crítica de las lecturas contemporáneas de estos aspectos por parte de Donatella Di Cesare y Dennis Schmidt. En las conclusiones, tras analizar brevemente en el tercer apartado la relación entre phrónēsis, aretḗ y andreía en los diálogos platónicos, intentaré demostrar cómo estas nociones alumbran la cuestión de la seducción del poder (descuidada por Schmidt en su lectura del Platón gadameriano), así como la inseparabilidad de este problema con respecto a la concepción dialéctica de la utopía. A partir de esto último se sugerirá que es posible, a partir y más allá de la lectura gadameriana de Platón, repensar la idea de “desobediencia civil” y el valor político del mito desde el punto de vista de la utopía. (shrink)

It is difficult to be a philosopher in this postmodern era. This is so because philosophers, who heretofore have been the archetype of persons eager to engage in reasoned discourse, regardless of their differences, suddenly seem unable to talk to each other, primarily due to claim by postmoderns that non-postmoderns are naïve in their blindness to the fact that truth the claims cannot be true in any objective sense, and that claims to objectivity have been used maliciously throughout the ages (...) to wield oppression. After exploring some of the seductive arguments of the post-modern position, and suggesting a re-working of the non-post-modern position, this paper will conclude that philosophical educators carry a heavy responsibility for limiting the real-life damage that has been produced by this philosophical truth-storm by siding firmly with its less contentious opposite by becoming guardians of the possibility that claims can be false. (shrink)

social transformations in modern Portugal.

In light of the recent developments featuring women around the world reclaiming their autonomy and self-respect in the face of male domination, it is becoming increasingly urgent to rethink the ancient “curse” on woman and the way that it has not only allowed but condoned male oppression and domination over women throughout the centuries. Rather than read the text through the traditional Aristotelian lens used by Church fathers to describe woman as the seductress and man as the legitimate authority over (...) woman’s corrupt nature, this paper proposes a radical re-reading of the “curse” of Genesis 3:16 as a redemptive rather than a punitive moment wherein the woman is given back her power as the ezer kenegdo of man, and man is given back his kingdom lost and his reign over the whole of Creation, or mashal, through the woman’s love, or teshuqah. This will entail that the two key concepts mashal and teshuqah be profoundly re-interpreted from a Hebrew inter-textual perspective rather than through a Greek philosophical lens. (shrink)

In ‘Burnt Norton’, the first of his ‘four quartets’, Eliot selected two Heraclitus’ fragments as epigraphs. In quoting fragment B 60 (‘the way up and the way down are one and the same’) he was reminding his readers that entrance into a spiritual life calls for both engagement and withdrawal, for both descending and ascending. And in quoting B 2 he reaffirmed Heraclitus’ conviction that most people fail to recognize the truth even when it is directly presented to them. In (...) his later Cocktail Party Eliot revisited these themes by converting a depiction of a failed social gathering into an exploration of forms of authenticity. He also exploited the dual nature of the Heraclitean daimôn—as external overseer and as the soul which lies within each person—to transform an account of a gathering of friends and strangers into an extended reflection on the conflicts lying within each human soul. (shrink)