Personhood in the digital realm

Francois Ost’s recent Raconter la loi (Odile Jacob, Paris 2004) is a fascinating venture that has the great merit, among many others, of thinking about the conceptual nuclei of Law & Literature especially in the direction he adopts of law in literature from a typically European perspective. The author’s central theme is that every policy and every law always springs from a foundation of a tale, which actually acts as a literary matrix for every symbolic struc-ture of human cohabitation. He argues that it is from the imaginative artistic dimen-sion underlying the tale, comprising the imaginative component and the structural component given by language and by the rules that govern narrative, that all the cul-tural products of a given human society derive, with the consequence that law (like any other semantic) should be understood more properly as literature, at least as far as its origins are concerned. Ost then moves from this basic premise to analyse some of the most intense works of literature in the history of Western culture, such as Genesis, The Oresteia, Anti-gone, Robinson Crusoe and Faust, concluding with Kafka’s The Trial, always focus-ing on how literature not only underlies law and with it human cohabitation, but also gives a critical vision of law, while continuing to design and propose possible new rules.

This article identifies shortcomings in contemporary sociocultural anthropological theory, and proposes that John Dewey's evolutionary model of experience can begin to rectify them. Dewey's work foreshadowed many aspects of current critical realism, an alternative to both positivism and relativism/culturism, as laid out by philosopher Roy Bhaskar and utilized by social scientists such as Margaret Archer and Berth Danermark. Recent attention to experience in anthropology has largely overlooked Dewey's great contribution, the keystone of which is his grounding of experience in the nature of humanness as evolved in nature. I augment Dewey's model by explicating 12 trans-cultural features of experience.

In the light of late modern, postmodern and post-critical debates the difficulty of establishing a coherent theoretical framework for both critical pedagogy and youth and community work has been noted by several authors. In this article I will make the claim that critical realism, as a stance within the ontological, epistemological and aetiological paradigms, offers a way to ameliorate a number of tensions in critical pedagogy and youth and community work. Margaret Archer's theories around morphogenesis are particularly useful in re-examining the tensions between essentialist and anti-essentialist views of human nature, identity and community, and structure and agency. In terms of praxis, her method allows us to wish to influence others, without descending into positivity or being satisfied with just uncovering highly individualized accounts of temporary meaning making. She also offers a way of performing critical pedagogy that does not instil a ‘knowing hopelessness’ in people, whereby they are aware of their material conditions, but do not feel enabled to act on their oppression.

An open educational and open-ended resource for whomever is interested in philosophical thinking. In this scholarly handbook you find two kinds of chapters. First, there are chapters that provide a broad introduction into a specific philosophical subdiscipline, such as political philosophy, epistemology or metaphysics. As this collection covers most of the sub-disciplines currently taught at Western philosophy departments, you can legitimately claim that you have been introduced to Western ‘philosophy’ as a whole, understood rather canonically, after having read the entire handbook. Second, there are chapters that introduce slightly more specific topics or philosophical approaches. The open-ended nature of this handbook, means that new chapters will be added in the future. We hope that philosophy will change and grow with time to become more diverse and inclusive and that this handbook will do so as well. We think of philosophy and its evolution as an organic process, as a tree that branches out in many different directions, adding new directions as it goes along. In this handbook, we organize the wide variety of topics that philosophers discuss into four main branches, which represent important subject areas that philosophers have covered. First, there is ‘thinking about societies’, which includes chapters that cover philosophical approaches to matters of obvious societal relevance. How should we organize our societies? How should we treat others? What exactly are cultures and what role do they play in a globalized world? This branch covers philosophical discussions, theories and views on what binds and divides us as societies and communities. Second, there is ‘thinking about humans’, which includes chapters that zoom in on people, the members that make up those societies. Is there something like human nature and what does that look like? How do human minds and bodies relate to each other? Are we free or not? This branch covers what one could broadly call ‘philosophical anthropology’: philosophical discussions, theories and views on what it means to be human. Third, there is ‘thinking about thinking’, which include chapters that focus on the ways in which humans can relate to the outside world. How can we come to know things about that world? What is truth exactly? What are the values and limits of scientific understanding? How do we reason and argue and how do we do so properly? This branch covers philosophical discussions, theories and views on how humans come to believe things about themselves and the worlds they live in. Fourth, there is ‘thinking about reality’, which includes chapters that investigate those worlds in more direct ways. Do things have an essence? What do we mean when we say that some things exist and others do not? How can language help us access the reality out there? This branch covers philosophical discussions, theories and views on the world we, as humans, find ourselves in.

Debating Humanity explores sociological and philosophical efforts to delineate key features of humanity that identify us as members of the human species. After challenging the normative contradictions of contemporary posthumanism, this book goes back to the foundational debate on humanism between Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger in the 1940s and then re-assesses the implicit and explicit anthropological arguments put forward by seven leading postwar theorists: self-transcendence (Hannah Arendt), adaptation (Talcott Parsons), responsibility (Hans Jonas), language (Jürgen Habermas), strong evaluations (Charles Taylor), reflexivity (Margaret Archer) and reproduction of life (Luc Boltanski). Genuinely interdisciplinary and boldly argued, Daniel Chernilo has crafted a novel philosophical sociology that defends a universalistic principle of humanity as vital to any adequate understanding of social life. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Explorations of the structure-agency dialectic as a tool for framing equity in science education

This paper presents a conceptual-discursive analysis of Immanuel Kant’s texts from the viewpoint of the ontological essence of humanity (the so-called human nature). On the basis of a functional-pragmatic methodology, the author proposes a metalanguage for a pragmatic conceptual analysis of Kant’s philosophical discourse, together with his own idea of a human as a person, human being, individual, character, and bearer of human traits. The paper consists of two parts. Part One presents the principles by which the human personality is structured, as well as the fundamental methodological questions of the essence of humanity. Part Two analyzes Kant’s notion of “human nature” in both the formal aspect and that of systematic localization. It also considers the issues of social pragmatics and the empirical motivation of “human nature,” which arise from a discursive analysis of texts by Kant. The author attempts to demonstrate that Kant was one of the first philosophers to discern the specificity of human nature in social relations of human personality, which he presented neither in a causal-deterministic form (as a spiritual substance handed down from generation to generation) nor an essentialist one (as a timeless transcendental essence), but rather as a function of social experience for a particular human being (both pragmatic-teleological and transcendental-a posteriori).

본 논문은 孟子 <告子>편의 구성과 주제에 대하여 밝힌 것이다. 기존의 孟子 사상을 논하는 연구물들은 <告子>편의 텍스트를 많이 활용하고 있다. 그 내용은 대부분 ‘性’에 대한 철학적 담론이 주가 되고 있으며, <告子>편 전체가 마치 전체가 ‘性善說’을 논한 篇이라는 인식이 자리 잡고있다. 그러나 이러한 연구들은 <告子> 章句 上의 일부 텍스트를 위주로 논의되었고, 上, 下를 총체적으로 다루는 연구로 나아가지 못하였다. 따라서 본 논문은 <告子>편 전체를 단락별로 나누어 분석해보고자 한다. 본고는 <告子>편의 구성을 모두 10개의 단락으로 분절하였다. 단락 분석의 방법은 論語 의 선행연구 방법을 채택하였고, 맥락에 맞게 내용별로 하나 이상의 장을 주제별로 묶어서 하나의 단락으로 본다. 첫 번째 단락은 1~6장으로 ‘본성은 선하며 仁義가 내재되어 있다.’는 것을 밝혔다. 두 번째 단락은 7~10장으로 ‘외부 환경에 따라 不善해진 왕과 신하들이 본성의 선함을 회복해 仁義의 정치에 힘써야한다.’는 것을 밝혔다. 세 번째 단락은 11~15장으로 ‘위정자의 본성인 仁義를 비유를 통해 제시하였다.’는 것을 밝혔다. 네 번째 단락은 16~18장으로 ‘仁義를 닦는 天爵에 힘써야 한다.’는 것을 밝혔다. 다섯 번째 단락은 19~20장으로 ‘성인의 도인 仁義를 법도로 삼아야한다.’는 것을 밝혔다. 이상은 章句 上이며 이론제시 및 전반부에 해당한다. 여섯 번째 단락은 21~24장으로 ‘仁義 政治의 실천덕목인 ‘禮’와 ‘孝’가 제시되었다.’는 것을 밝혔다. 일곱 번째 단락은 25~26장으로 ‘앞 단락의 구체적 사례로 폐백과 실천 방식’에 대하여 밝혔다. 여덟 번째 단락은 27~32장으로 ‘당대 군주와 위정자가 富國强兵이 아닌 仁義 政治를 구현해야한다.’는 것을 밝혔다. 아홉 번째 단락은 33~35장으로 ‘벼슬을 하기 위한 군자의 자질로 好善, 禮, 敬, 行’을 밝혔다. 열 번째 단락은 36장으로 ‘心志를 세우는 것이 仁義 政治의 실현방법이다.’는 것을 밝혔다. 이상은 章句 下이며 上에서 밝힌 이론적 제시를 통하여 이를 실현할 수 있는 실천적 방향으로 결론짓는 방식으로 나아가고 있다. 이로서 <告子>편의 주제는 단순히 본성이 선하다는 것을 밝히는 데에 그치지 않고, 선한 본성 곧 仁義의 자질을 회복하여 잘 지켜나가는 사람만이 군자로서 왕도정치를 구현할 수 있음을 밝혔다.This paper presents an investigation into the organization and topics of the Goja book of Mencius. Previous studies that discussed the ideas of Mencius made much use of texts from the Goja book, mostly dealing with philosophical discourses about “sex.” There is a perception that the whole content of Goja addressed “the theory that human nature is fundamentally good.” Those studies, however, focused their discussions on some texts from Janggu Sang in the Goja book, never proceeding to address the entire Sang and Ha. The present study thus set out to analyze the whole Goja book by section. The investigator divided Goja into ten sections by employing the method of section analysis for the Analects of Confucius in previous studies. One or more chapters were put in the same section based on context and content. Section 1 spans from Chapter 1 to Chapter 6, demonstrating that “human nature is fundamentally good and has humanity and justice in it.” Section 2 encompasses Chapters 7~10, stating that “the king and his subjects, that have been evil due to the external environment, should restore the goodness of their nature and devote themselves to the politics of humanity and justice.” Section 3 contains Chapters 11~15, arguing that “humanity and justice, part of a politician s nature, has been proposed through figure of speech.” Section 4 includes Chapters 16~18, maintaining that “they should work on their natural nobility of cultivating humanity and justice.” Section 5 includes Chapters 19 and 20, arguing that “they should take humanity and justice, the morality of saints, as their custom.” Those belong to Janggu Sang, proposing theories in the former half. Section 6 spans from Chapter 21 to Chapter 24, showing that “courtesy and filial duty, the practice of virtues of politics of humanity and justice, have been proposed.” Section 7 includes Chapters 25 and 26, discussing “Pyebaek and methods of practice as the specific cases of the previous section.” Section 8 includes Chapters 27~32, arguing that “the contemporary monarchs and politicians should carry out politics of humanity and justice instead of national prosperity and military power.” Section 9 contains Chapters 33~35, mentioning “Hoseon, courtesy, respect, and action as the qualities of a man of virtue to hold government positions.” The final Section 10 is Chapter 36, stating that “keeping one s will right is to practice the politics of humanity and justice.” Those belong to Janggu Ha, reaching a conclusion toward practicable directions to implement them by proposing the theories addressed in Sang. Those findings indicate that the topics of Goja go beyond the demonstration that human nature is fundamentally good and maintain that only those who restore and practice their good nature or the qualities of humanity and justice can carry out benevolent royal politics as men of virtue.

The article examines the concept of human nature as articulated by the American philosopher Francis Fukuyama and analyzes his critical stance towards transhumanism as a worldview and technological movement that challenges traditional conceptions of humanity. The author explores Fukuyama’s key philosophical notions, such as “human nature” and “Factor X”, which he regards as an essential normative core necessary to preserve ethical responsibility, universality of rights, and social stability of democratic institutions in an era of radical technological change. According to Fukuyama, technological interventions in human nature threaten to erode the foundations of public morality and generate new forms of social inequality. The article also analyzes Fukuyama’s concept from the perspective of Orthodox anthropology, revealing a fundamental difference in approaches to understanding human nature. While Fukuyama draws on biological and secular approaches, advocating the need to preserve the unchanging core of human essence, Orthodox theology views humans as integral spiritual and physical beings, endowed with the image of God and destined for deification. The article emphasizes that the Orthodox tradition not only preserves the natural status quo, but offers a path to spiritual perfection through collaboration with God. The article concludes by arguing that Fukuyama’s secular anthropology is insufficient to address the profound existential and ethical questions posed by both theology and transhumanism, emphasizing the need to integrate an Orthodox anthropological perspective into contemporary scientific and philosophical discourse.

Commercial practices that exploit consumer behavioural biases (behavioural exploitation) are an increasingly prevalent issue in online choice architectures. EU policymakers have started to expressly regulate such practices. What remains unclear about this type of regulation is when an online choice architecture exploits biased consumers. What is the legal meaning and significance of exploitation in the digital environment? Even though the concept of exploitation is frequently used in scholarship concerning behavioural exploitation such as “dark patterns”, it is rarely defined. The concept’s normativity is mostly ignored, remains underdeveloped, and lacks solid foundations. This Article aims to close this gap by developing a theory of exploitation for (behavioural) consumer law in the EU that applies to online choice architectures and unfair commercial practices in general. The Article eschews welfare analysis and instead relies on the philosophical discourse on exploitation theory. Even though this discourse is mostly ignored by the literature, the Article submits that this analytical framework fits better with the existing goals and scheme of EU consumer law compared to an approach to legal analysis that is driven by promoting consumer welfare through market efficiency. Ultimately, the Article defends the autonomy theory of exploitation and contends that regulating behavioural exploitation in online choice architectures means regulating for autonomy.

This article discusses the concept of intermediality, comparing traditional visual poetry and contemporary digital poetry. It shows that today’s somewhat fashionable concept of intermediality can actually be traced in the transposition of the classic concept of intertextuality from philosophical discourse, especially as developed by Barthes and Kristeva, to the domain of mediological discourse. The article briefly summarizes the tradition of visual poetry from antiquity to modernism, emphasizing its structure as basically concrete; that is, it implies a material and medial component of language or writing (écriture). This structure calls attention to its self-referential and referential aspect. The digital poetry that continues the line of development of concrete poetry, as it appeared in the 1950s and 1960s, belongs to a broader area of new media poetry that includes any experimental poetry that uses the “new” media. The problematic concept of intermediality can best be explored in a digital environment such as the holographic poetry (or holopoetry) of the noted and versatile contemporary Brazilian artist Eduardo Kac. Kac’s holopoetry is a special space-time event in the context of the holographic projection of the text in order to display its multilinearity, which primarily means breaking with the linearity of classic poetry printed in a book. Based on an examination of Kac’s holopoem “Havoc” from 1992 (in this example, the poem’s graphic integrity is temporarily lost), the paper challenges the simplistic deconstructivist interpretation that is applied to Kac’s poems and often to digital poetry in general: namely, that these poetic events can most persuasively be seen as figures for the unattainability of “pure” presence/absence, materiality/immateriality, reality/virtuality, and so on. The author argues that the “polluted” reading as a reading against metaphysics and tradition in the case of new-media poetry is unconvincing because the visually evident and naïve representation of a (would-be) Derridaean différance is nothing more and nothing less than the Baudrillardean simulacrum: an imaginary representation of the unreal. The author concludes by suggesting that the basic intermedial problems of contemporary digital poetry remain the same as in traditional visual poetry; that is, that they are only reproduced in the new media environment. Their new “materiality” and the extensive possibilities of technical manipulations that they offer should not deceive us that they ipso facto imply completely new ontological dimensions.

This article discusses the concept of intermediality, comparing traditional visual poetry and contemporary digital poetry. It shows that today’s somewhat fashionable concept of intermediality can actually be traced in the transposition of the classic concept of intertextuality from philosophical discourse, especially as developed by Barthes and Kristeva, to the domain of mediological discourse. The article briefly summarizes the tradition of visual poetry from antiquity to modernism, emphasizing its structure as basically concrete; that is, it implies a material and medial component of language or writing (écriture). This structure calls attention to its self-referential and referential aspect. The digital poetry that continues the line of development of concrete poetry, as it appeared in the 1950s and 1960s, belongs to a broader area of new media poetry that includes any experimental poetry that uses the “new” media. The problematic concept of intermediality can best be explored in a digital environment such as the holographic poetry (or holopoetry) of the noted and versatile contemporary Brazilian artist Eduardo Kac. Kac’s holopoetry is a special space-time event in the context of the holographic projection of the text in order to display its multilinearity, which primarily means breaking with the linearity of classic poetry printed in a book. Based on an examination of Kac’s holopoem “Havoc” from 1992 (in this example, the poem’s graphic integrity is temporarily lost), the paper challenges the simplistic deconstructivist interpretation that is applied to Kac’s poems and often to digital poetry in general: namely, that these poetic events can most persuasively be seen as figures for the unattainability of “pure” presence/absence, materiality/immateriality, reality/virtuality, and so on. The author argues that the “polluted” reading as a reading against metaphysics and tradition in the case of new-media poetry is unconvincing because the visually evident and naïve representation of a (would-be) Derridaean différance is nothing more and nothing less than the Baudrillardean simulacrum: an imaginary representation of the unreal. The author concludes by suggesting that the basic intermedial problems of contemporary digital poetry remain the same as in traditional visual poetry; that is, that they are only reproduced in the new media environment. Their new “materiality” and the extensive possibilities of technical manipulations that they offer should not deceive us that they ipso facto imply completely new ontological dimensions.

Résumé Dans le Traité de la nature humaine , Hume identifie la philosophie à la science de la nature humaine et la présente comme une science capitale : c'est à partir d’elle que les autres savoirs pourront être conquis. Dans les Essais moraux, politiques et littéraires , un autre rapport de la philosophie et des savoirs se fait jour. C’est désormais en philosophe politique que Hume s’intéresse aux rapports réciproques unissant l’état des sciences et des savoirs aux conditions politiques de la société où ils naissent, progressent ou déclinent. L’article montre comment ces deux modalités du discours philosophique de Hume sur les autres savoirs s’articulent.

While critical views inherited from the past still influence our appraisal of fashion, its pervasiveness in contemporary society calls for an explanation. In this article I attempt to show how the importance of fashion in our society is the result of a combination of a structurally modern space and Romantic cultural ideals. I conclude that, despite its frivolous appearance, fashion is not only a powerful social indicator, but also a particular means of bringing together the diverse and often contradictory demands of our human nature through a peculiar exercise of practical judgment. The prominence of fashion in our societies demands an explanation and, although this kind of explanation is usually reserved for sociologists, it is also true that changes in society have become one of the dominant issues in philosophical discourse. A glance at contemporary philosophy shows that social issues have become the starting point – and sometimes even the finishing line – for a large section of philosophical debate or, at least, of philosophical debate which is ‘relevant’ (from a sociological point of view). Whatever the case, this justifies philosophy’s novel interest in fashion, an interest that in no way replaces that of the sociologist since the philosopher approaches social life, 1. This text is the product of a re-elaboration of different materials previously published in Spanish and Italian. CSFB_1.1_Gonzalez_065-086.indd 65 10/13/10 1:24:27 PM

Is Confucian Discourse Philosophy? Eske J. Møllgaard (bio) Recently some philosophers have claimed that it is a scandal that non-Western traditions are excluded from the curriculum in Western philosophy departments. I consider the case of Confucianism and argue (1) that the central features of Confucian discourse are different from those of philosophical discourse, (2) that the historical conditions that gave rise to Confucian discourse sets it apart from the formation of Western philosophy, and (3) that Western philosophers often misread Confucian discourse because they assimilate it to philosophical discourse. I conclude that in order to do justice to the Confucian masters we must read their discourse in accord with its own nature and aims. The question whether there was philosophy in traditional China has been discussed for a century. In the beginning of the twentieth century Chinese scholars argued that ancient Chinese thought had to be systematized using Western categories in order to become philosophy. In this way "Chinese philosophy" (Zhongguo zhexue 中國哲學) was created.1 After the rise of China as a global power some Chinese scholars opposed this assimilation of traditional Chinese thought to Western philosophy.2 The question whether traditional Chinese thought is philosophy has been debated in the West as well. Many articles and whole issues of journals of Chinese and comparative philosophy have been devoted to this question.3 The following is a contribution to this ongoing debate but is limited to considering Confucian discourse. I dispute the claim that Confucian discourse is philosophy and best understood when discussed by philosophers. I agree that Western philosophy should open up to non-Western philosophy, but accepting non-Western discourses as philosophy should be based on rational debate and not on moral outrage at being excluded. To be sure, there is a certain violence in exclusion, but there is also violence in inclusion,4 and perhaps philosophy must be violent in order to maintain itself and not sink into syncretism. And many Confucians would be sad to see Confucian thought being assimilated to analytic philosophy with its set of problems and record of solutions taught in universities in the kind of English that is now used for global communication. [End Page 1029] In a recent book Brian Van Norden argues for the inclusion of non-Western philosophy in the curriculum of Western philosophy departments. Van Norden is a specialist in Confucianism, and in order to show Western philosophers that Confucian discourse is philosophy, he highlights an argument by the important early Confucian Mencius 孟子 (born around 380 b.c.e.), namely Mencius' "reduction ad absurdum against the claim that human nature is reducible to desires for food and sex."5 There is much to admire in Mencius, but skillful argumentation is not what first comes to mind. Mencius himself says that he does not like to engage in argument, and nobody in the Confucian tradition admired Mencius because he was skillful in his argumentation. Confucians read Mencius because they believed that he was able to speak the words of the sages. According to Mencius, there is a certain rhythm in history: now order, now disorder (yizhi yiluan 一治一亂). In times of disorder, the difference between humans and animals disappears and wild animals take over the world of human beings. Order comes about when a sage again separates beasts from humans. In Mencius' own day humans were again sinking to the level of animals, and it was Mencius' ambition to follow in the way of the former sages and, by opposing the teachings of Yang Zhu 楊朱 and Mo Zi 墨子, separate humans from animals. Mencius says: I too want to correct the hearts of men, put an end to depraved doctrines, oppose one-sided actions, and banish excessive words and phrases, and thus continue the [work of] the three sages [Yu 禹, the Duke of Zhou 周公, and Confucius 孔子]. How could I be fond of argumentation!? The case is that I have no other recourse. He who can oppose Yang and Mo with words is a follower of the sages.6 Mencius does not like to argue (bian 辯), but he wants to speak the words (yan 言) of the sages, or, as Mencius calls it, the "one good word" (yi shanyan 一善言). This word...