Prominent Interpretations Research Articles

Algunas interpretaciones de la filosofía de Wittgenstein

The following article presents and analyzes some of the most controversial and prominent interpretations that have been made about Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Not before without clarifying that for Wittgenstein himself, this work and the ones that will be discussed, would be senseless for him.

The Paradoxes of Decent Work in Context: A Cultural Political Economy Perspective

Scientific discourses of decent work can be roughly grouped into two main lines of interpretation. The first, optimistic line sees the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) decent work agenda as indicative of counter-hegemonic forces successfully injecting post-neo-liberal norms into global labour regulation. Specifically, feminist scholars have welcomed the emergence of decent work, because of its explicit concern with non-standard work, informal labour and care work. The second, more pessimistic line is critical of the decent work agenda, seeing it as compatible with or even reinforcing neo-liberal hegemony, especially because of its embrace of soft labour regulation and corporate social responsibility. This article aims to analyse the paradoxes of decent work by putting this discourse in its historical and theoretical context. The article first draws on the framework of Cultural Political Economy (CPE) to identify competing ‘economic imaginaries’ of decent work. Two prominent interpretations will be juxtaposed to outline a ‘feminist’ and a ‘business case’ decent work imaginary. Second, the article interrogates two different ILO initiatives, each of which is underpinned by one of these decent work imaginaries, in terms of the ways they may challenge or reinforce neo-liberal hegemony – the Domestic Workers Convention and the Better Work Programme.

What is Enshrined in Morality? Understanding the Grounds for Nietzsche’s Critique

It is a truism that Nietzsche is a critic of morality. But what does Nietzsche have against this institution of morality? I consider the prominent interpretation of Brian Leiter’s that Nietzsche takes morality to task for its bad effects in hampering the flourishing of great individuals and cultures. There are good reasons, I argue, to resist this reading as the best, and certainly as the exclusive, account of the grounds for Nietzsche’s criticism of morality. I go on to propose an alternative construal that sees Nietzsche as objecting to the expressive character of moral values themselves (an under-explored notion in anglophone ethics and social philosophy that I seek to elucidate in the paper). My project, in the first instance, is the exegetical one of understanding what is going on in Nietzsche’s texts when he criticizes morality. Nonetheless, there are important philosophical lessons to be learned here from Nietzsche’s work, if not necessarily about the actual failings of morality itself, then about the kinds of ethical and ideological objections that philosophers and cultural critics can sensibly raise. One of the central styles of critique that we see in Nietzsche’s work, exemplified especially in his criticism of morality, involves interpreting social and cultural phenomena, as one might interpret texts or works of art, with an eye toward extracting the meaning or significance they have in light of the ideals they enshrine, and then attacking them, on broadly ethical grounds, on account of this. It thereby creates the space for criticizing institutions not just for what pernicious effects they have, but for the intrinsically objectionable character of what they express.

Agricultural protection and support in the European Economic Community, 1962-92: rent-seeking or welfare policy?

The European Economic Community's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has found a lot of scholarly attention. While economists stress the irrationality of the CAP and explain its striking persistence by rent-seeking behavior, a prominent interpretation among historians is that the CAP should be interpreted as welfare policy for farm households. I subject the latter hypothesis for the period 1962–92 to an empirical test and find that the combined benefits from subsidies, import protection, and political prices gave much more benefits to European agriculture than any welfare policy could have achieved. If one still wants to find arguments legitimizing the political rents (or part of them) that agriculture received through the CAP one has to consider non-economic arguments (food security in the Cold War) or external effects (protection of the environment or landscape).

In defence of Socrates: Socrates’ arguments against Thrasymachus’ account of justice

It seems that the most prominent interpreters of Plato?s Republic agreed upon that Socrates? argumentation against Trasymachus is neither satisfying nor convincing. In this paper, I will attempt to point out what is the validity and argumentative power of Socrates? refutation of the immoralist account of justice. His arguments do not only have the refutative value, but they also provide us with some important general insights into the nature of techne, ar?te, pleonexia, eudaimonia, etc., as well as with the direction of the further discussion in the Republic.

Violent xenophobic episodes in South Africa, 2008 and 2015

A comparison between the 2015 and 2008 violent xenophobic episodes in South Africa is made, identifying both similarities and differences. Since government and other commentators, in both 2015 and 2008, differ considerably in deciding whether these episodes ought to be considered as essentially xenophobic in character, a number of prominent interpretations employed by these commentators will be identified and discussed. The perpetrators mobilised during these events are drawn from the same pool as the protesters mobilised during current country-wide violent service delivery protests. Accordingly, this article concludes by suggesting that an insightful interpretation covering both categories of actors belonging to South Africa’s urban working and under-class may be made. The violent collective behaviour that is becoming widespread country-wide stems, to a significant extent, not from their deep-seated xenophobic attitudes, but rather from the unfulfilled expectations of what they believe should be their just entitlements.

Leviathans Old and New: What Collingwood Saw in Hobbes

SummaryR. G. Collingwood presented his major work of political philosophy, The New Leviathan, as an updated version of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. However, his reasons for taking Hobbes's great work as his inspiration have puzzled and eluded many Collingwood scholars, while those interested in the reception of Hobbes's ideas have largely neglected the New Leviathan. In this essay I reveal what Collingwood saw in Hobbes's political philosophy and show how his reading of Hobbes both diverges from other prominent interpretations of the time and invites us to reassess Hobbes's complex association with the origins of liberalism. In doing so, I focus on Collingwood's science of mind, his ideas on society and authority, and his dialectical theory of politics, in each case showing how he engaged with Hobbes in order to elucidate his own vision of civilisation. That vision is based on the development of social consciousness, which involves people coming to understand the body politic as a joint enterprise whereby they confer authority upon those who rule.

Phronēsis in Aristotle: Reconciling Deliberation with Spontaneity

A standard thesis of contemporary Aristotelian virtue ethics and some recent Heideggerian scholarship is that virtuous behavior can be performed immediately and spontaneously without engaging conscious processes of deliberative thought. It is also claimed that phronēsis either enables or is consistent with this possibility. In the Nicomachean Ethics, however, Aristotle identifies phronēsis as the excellence of the calculative part of the intellect, claims that calculation and deliberation are the same and that it is the mark of the phronimos to be able to deliberate well. He also insists that for an action to count as virtuous it must issue from rational choice, which he characterizes as determined by deliberation. It thus seems that any exegetically respectable attempt to explain virtuous action within an Aristotelian framework would need to integrate with some account of deliberative choice. This creates a tension in Aristotelian scholarship. In this paper, I shall formalize this tension in terms of an apparently inconsistent triad of claims and shall examine the merits of at least one prominent interpretation of phronēsis with respect to its reconciliation.

Babel and the Fear of Same-Sex Marriage: Mapping Conservative Constellations

Abstract This paper looks at recent allusions to the Babel story as they appear in conservative political and religious discourse to refer to same-sex marriage as a problem of sick egalitarianism and democracy. Liberalism, and a certain kind of democracy, is said to create an imposing and tyrannical neutrality, a neutrality that leads to stagnation and self indulgence, including same-sex relations. This constellation of discourse is explored in relation to the most prominent interpretation of Genesis 11, Josephus’ political retelling in Antiquities of the Jews. Josephus’ version voices fears about tyranny, collectivity, and too much pleasure – themes that are clearly echoed in contemporary references to Babel. The paper shows how the Babel story thus becomes a story about sick egalitarianism associated with same-sex relationships. Tracing this genealogy, the essay argues that such citations of Babel indicate that the fear of gay marriage may actually be a fear of too much democracy.

Ineffably Effable: The Pinnacle of Mystical Ascent in Gregory of Nyssa'sDe vita Moysis

In his commentary on the Song of Songs, Gregory of Nyssa describes a three-step progression of the soul to God, an ascent which ends in the darkness of God's ineffability. Though some of Gregory's most prominent interpreters understand Moses' ascent into the darkness to be the definitive encounter with God in De vita Moysis as well, it is here argued that in De vita Moysis Gregory of Nyssa makes the culminating moment, not the apophatic experience of the darkness, but the encounter with the celestial tabernacle, Christ. Gregory thereby suggests that the mystical ascent to God ends in the encounter of God as both unknowable and known, transcendent but also incarnate.

The interpretation of phrase-medial prosodic prominence in Japanese: is it sensitive to visual and discourse context?

Due to the language-specific prosodic architecture, a phrase-medial pitch expansion in Japanese may signal either a narrow contrast or the beginning of a new syntactic phrase. To examine how visual and discourse context affects the tug of war between these two interpretations, three eye-tracking experiments tested the interpretation of a pitch expansion in referential contexts that varied in the plausibility of contrastive interpretation. The results showed that the degree of structural interpretation was inversely related to the plausibility of contrastive interpretation. Although there was no direct evidence of contrastive processing of the pitch prominence, participants responded to the trials with the pitch expansion much slower than to those without the expansion only when the contrastive interpretation of the pitch prominence was contextually infelicitous. These results suggest that the phrase-medial pitch expansion may have been simultaneously processed for contrast and structural disambiguation. However, the task that demanded resolutions of standing referential ambiguities seemed to make the structural disambiguation the best use of the prosodic cue.

The Blood from Abel to Zechariah in the History of Interpretation

The saying in the Gospels about the blood ‘from Abel to Zechariah’ has generated a number of theories regarding the identity of Zechariah and why Jesus specifically mentions these two victims. While a prominent interpretation today regards the names as pointing to the bookends of the Hebrew Bible, the Greek and Latin Fathers had their own peculiar ways of solving the exegetical puzzles connected to the saying. It seems that the invention of the printing press, and the stable sequence of books it created, exerted an influence on the development of the popular modern view.

Paranormal activity and the Horror of Abject Consumption

The essay analyzes how Paranormal Activity (Schneider, Blum, & Peli, 2009) and Paranormal Activity 2 (Peli, Goldsman, & Williams, 2010) render consumption as a site of abjection. Our analysis begins by noting two prominent interpretations of the films: as genre-changing minimalist works and as soothing morality tales in which overleveraged suburbanites are punished. Putting these readings into conversation, we maintain that these films entrench audiences in the grip of consumption – the drive that fuels consumerism and materialism. Using Julia Kristeva's work on abjection, we argue that the films' much-praised minimalist style positions consumption as abject, as that which both disgusts and attracts audience members but offers no release from the dizzying drive for more. We maintain that these films display consumption as an urge for possession that cannot be stabilized or sublimated. They accomplish this end by using stylistic strategies that violate horror conventions and ask the audience to become enraptured with consuming the films. Ultimately, we use this analysis to suggest how abjection is theoretically enriched when it is coupled with an understanding of the contemporary movements of style.

Another Contribution to the Succession Narrative Debate (2 Samuel 11–20; 1 Kings 1–2)

The segment of the biblical history of the monarchy which narrates events leading to the succession of Solomon to the throne of David in 1 Kings 2, known as the Succession Narrative or Court History, continues to generate inconclusive debate as to its extent, its relation to the historical work of which it is a part, and its ideology. On this last point, its characterization of the principal actors and its realistic narration of events have led some commentators to conclude that its author is expressing a basically negative view of David, Solomon, and the institution of monarchy. After arguing for limiting the extent of the Succession Narrative to 2 Samuel 11–20 and 1 Kings 1–2, the present article disputes two of the most prominent interpretations of the text: that of W. Dietrich, who reads it as containing a basically negative Grundschrift of early date rewritten some two centuries later to present a favourable view of the principals; and that of J. Van Seters, for whom it is a late post-exilic composition, informed by an anti-messianic ideology and inserted into the Deuteronomistic History to present a decidedly negative view of David and Solomon. This article concludes that the Succession Narrative is a homogeneous and coherent text and that it is in no sense an indictment of David, Solomon, and monarchy in general.

‘We Cannot Give One Millimetre’? Liberalism, Enlightenment and Diversity

This article challenges a prominent interpretation of the liberal tradition which seeks to divide that tradition, from its origins, into two competing strands, one committed to reason (however defined) as a normative ideal, and the other, involving no such ideal, centred on a commitment either to negative liberty or the political management of diversity. This dichotomous account seeks to enlist the inaugural figures of John Locke, Immanuel Kant and in one case John Stuart Mill as the origins of that part of the liberal tradition committed to reason. This article will show that such claims have no foundation in the most inaugural figure cited, and that, as a consequence, liberalism, from its origins, has had a far deeper commitment to negative liberty and diversity than to any necessary connection with reason.

Less Is Not More: Neural Responses to Missing and Superfluous Accents in Context

Prosody, particularly accent, aids comprehension by drawing attention to important elements such as the information that answers a question. A study using ERP registration investigated how the brain deals with the interpretation of prosodic prominence. Sentences were embedded in short dialogues and contained accented elements that were congruous or incongruous with respect to a preceding question. In contrast to previous studies, no explicit prosodic judgment task was added. Robust effects of accentuation were evident in the form of an "accent positivity" (200-500 msec) for accented elements irrespective of their congruity. Our results show that incongruously accented elements, that is, superfluous accents, activate a specific set of neural systems that is inactive in case of incongruously unaccented elements, that is, missing accents. Superfluous accents triggered an early positivity around 100 msec poststimulus, followed by a right-lateralized negative effect (N400). This response suggests that redundant information is identified immediately and leads to the activation of a neural system that is associated with semantic processing (N400). No such effects were found when contextually expected accents were missing. In a later time window, both missing and superfluous accents triggered a late positivity on midline electrodes, presumably related to making sense of both kinds of mismatching stimuli. These results challenge previous findings of greater processing for missing accents and suggest that the natural processing of prosody involves a set of distinct, temporally organized neural systems.

The Capability Approach: Insights for a New Poverty Focus

AbstractThe concepts of poverty, social exclusion and deprivation are widely employed but often problematic. This paper discusses some problems with prominent interpretations of these concepts and how Amartya Sen's capability approach can provide a conceptual framework that can overcome these problems. It is argued that the capability approach can reflect the many ways that human lives are blighted and that it thus offers a promising framework for poverty analysis. Six insights for poverty analysis provided by the capability approach are discussed.

On the Prospects for Ontology: Deflationism, Pluralism, and Carnap's Principle of Tolerance

AbstractIn this paper, I critically discuss recent work on the role that the principle of tolerance plays inRudolfCarnap's philosophy. Specifically, I consider how two prominent interpretations ofCarnap's principle of tolerance can be used to argue forCarnap's anti‐metaphysical views. I then argue that there are serious problems with these arguments, and I diagnose those problems as resulting, in part, from a tension between competing goals ofCarnap's philosophical project.

Tort Law and the Inherent Limitations of Monetary Exchange: Property Rules, Liability Rules, and the Negligence Rule

Legal scholars have extensively analyzed legal entitlements in terms of more fundamental component parts, most notably with the remedial structures entailed by property and liability rules. Contrary to the claim made by some scholars, I argue that the negligence entitlement is not fully constituted by a property rule, liability rule, or any combination thereof. The entitlement that generates the negligence rule, though partially constituted by both property and liability rules, is best described as a behavioral rule that obligates duty-holders to exercise reasonable care. The breach of this primary duty creates a second-order duty to pay compensation for the proximately caused physical harms, but the payment of compensatory damages does not fully exhaust or satisfy the underlying entitlement. This component of the entitlement explains why duty-holders are subject to punitive damages and perhaps even criminal negligence liability if they choose to act unreasonably in exchange for the payment of compensatory damages. The entitlement takes this form due to the inherent inadequacy of the compensatory damages remedy, an inadequacy that is most pronounced in cases of wrongful death but applies more generally to many instances of physical harm. The article concludes by identifying the distinctive features of the negligence entitlement that must be accounted for by any normative theory seeking to adequately explain tort liability, a condition that is not satisfied by prominent interpretations of tort law, including leading accounts based on the fault principle, pluralism, allocative efficiency, and corrective justice. The underlying rationale for tort liability cannot be derived from a structural (non-normative) analysis of entitlements, but the entitlement structure of the negligence rule still has important implications for the normative theory of tort law.

An Entire Nest of Contradictions

Defending Kant against the charge that his ethics is formalistic has prompted some prominent interpreters to stress the humanity formulation of the categorical imperative. In this paper I argue that this more sophisticated account of Kantian ethics generates a deeper and more philosophically interesting Hegelian criticism (located primarily in the Phenomenology of Spirit). Hegel's claim that the moral worldview is rife with dialectical conflict serves as a criticism both of Kant's conception of the moral self and of his more basic assumptions about the proper philosophical reply to the challenges posed by dogmatism and skepticism. As I will argue, the moral worldview unselfconsciously preserves elements of dogmatism and skepticism, even as it claims to be self-critical. Hegel's strategy, then, is to accuse Kant of falling into a kind of practical antinomy that makes his account of the moral self existentially unsatisfying and, ultimately, incoherent.