Philosophical Movement Research Articles

The Pragmatic Case Study Method for Creating Rigorous and Systematic, Practitioner-Friendly Research

Psychotherapy case studies have the capacity to link directly to the work of practitioners because these studies are grounded in the same type of setting in which clinicians function, that of the single case. Not surprisingly, then, case studies have played a most important role in the development of a wide range of therapy models, like psychoanalysis, behavioral therapy, and client-centered therapy. However, until recently, case studies as a method of research have fallen into disuse because they have been viewed as subjective and journalistic. This situation has changed with the growth of the philosophical movement of postmodernism, which has encouraged pluralism in the social sciences, and in turn stimulated new approaches to the case study as a serious method for psychotherapy research. This paper reviews one such approach, the pragmatic case study method, which is grounded in the fast-growing "mixed methods" model in the social sciences that seeks new ways to integrate qualitative and quantitative research designs and data. This paper begins with an overview of the growing variety of types of psychotherapy research, indicating where case studies fit in and describing a new design that integrates the use of pragmatic case studies with randomized clinical trials. The paper then lays out the basic structure of the pragmatic case study, in the context of viewing therapy as a complex adaptive system and, in a related fashion, as an example of Peterson's (1991) "Disciplined Inquiry" model of professional practice. The paper next provides a more concrete idea of the pragmatic case study by summarizing guidelines for writing such a case study for this PCSP journal, and by describing the structure of a specific example of a pragmatic case study published in the journal, the case of Caroline by Ueli Kramer. Finally, the paper describes how the pragmatic case study can be integrated with other types of case study designs.

Fenomenologi Alfred Schutz: Studi tentang Konstruksi Makna dan Realitas dalam Ilmu Sosial

Abstract: Alfred Schutz phenomenology is one of the important thougt in phenomenology development as philosophical movement. Simultantly, Schutz’s phenomenology critizes and modifies Husserl concept of phenomenology and Weber concept of ideal type actions.This paper uses Friedrich concept to give a map of mode scientist in order to clarify Schutz phenomenological position in development of social science. In context of social science Schutz phenomenology position implies to qualitative methods research especially in observation structure to the object of research social emphasize by phenomenology.

The Collaborative Autonomy Model of Medical Decision-Making

While the bioethical principle of beneficence originated in antiquity, the ascension of autonomy, or "self-rule," has redefined the physician-patient relationship to the extent that autonomy often dominates medical decision-making. Philosophical and social movements, medical research atrocities, consumerism, and case law have all had their influence on this paradigm shift. Consequently, the contemporary physician encounters an uncertainty in medical practice on how to resolve conflicts that arise in the pursuit of valuing both autonomy and beneficence. This is especially true in the practice of neurologic critical care where physicians may be advising comfort care measures for neurologically devastated patients while surrogates request physiologically futile interventions. This conundrum has been an important subject of the bioethics and social science literature but often this discourse is not disseminated to the clinicians confronting these issues. The purpose of this essay is to present a history of the principles of autonomy and beneficence and then present a shared medical decision-making model, collaborative autonomy, to provide guidance to neurologic critical care providers in how to resolve such dilemmas. Clinical vignettes will help illustrate the model.

Organic Interfaces; or, How Human Beings Augment Their Digital Devices

Organic Interfaces; or, How Human Beings Augment Their Digital Devices

The Specificity of Logical Empiricism in the Twentieth-Century History of Scientific Philosophy

In the first decades of the twentieth century, many philosophers and philosophical movements attempted to make philosophy scientific by analogy with science. Such attempts vary with respect to the strategies adopted for implementing the analogy. In this article, I single out the specificity of logical empiricism’s strategy, by comparing it to some of its most relevant contemporary scientific philosophies, such as Russell’s method of analysis, Husserl’s phenomenology, neo-Kantianism, and American pragmatism. Logical empiricism sees philosophy as continuous with science, by reducing the problems of philosophy to problems in mathematical logic. The other scientific philosophies postulate a specificity of philosophy, by maintaining a special domain for it and also a specific methodology, while requiring this methodology to be scientific in a manner analogous to the general method of the special sciences. I argue that this distinction helps to revise and possibly to settle some of the debates concerning our understanding of both the genealogy and the development of the movement, such as the conjectural derivation of its scientific philosophy from Russell’s analytic philosophy or from a special brand of Austrian philosophy and the complex relationship with its German and American contemporaries.

Some Heterodox Analytic Philosophy

Analytic philosophy has been the most influential philosophical movement in 20th century philosophy. It has surely contributed like no other movement to the elucidation and demarcation of philosophical problems. Nonetheless, the empiricist and sometimes even nominalist convictions of orthodox analytic philosophers have served them to inadequately render even philosophers they consider their own and to propound very questionable conceptions.

Law's Authority Comes from its Ability to Create a Moral Obligation to Follow it

This paper assesses competing views on the question as to whether morality is a necessary precondition for creating an authoritative obligation to follow the law. Firstly, the scope of the discussion is defined. Then, the positions of Legal Positivism and the opposing jurisprudential camp of Natural Law are outlined by evaluating the rivalry between the two philosophical movements. Next, Ronald Dworkin’s theory is examined in light of the debate as to whether law should be connected with morality. The question is also explored through a variety of practical examples and judicial decisions. In conclusion, it is submitted that morally-underpinned laws serve as an essential requirement for having a workable and efficient legal system where its subjects are under a genuine authoritative duty to obey the law.

Nostalgias perdidas en Rayuela de Cortázar

The article seeks to detect, at a philosophical level, any similarities between Cortázar's novel Rayuela, and some of the principal premises of the so-called School of Frankfurt, as well as of the (slightly later than the novel) philosophical movements of poststructuralism and postmodernism. Special mention is made of Auschwitz as the agent that determined the transition to the aforementioned movements, and which, to a certain extent, also permeates Rayuela. In the end, Rayuela proves to be something like a ‘pre-postmodern’ novel, in the sense that it introduces many of the characteristics of a typically postmodern novel, without being able yet to radically break with the modernist tradition.

Contemporary Humanism: Sartre’s Existentialist Humanism and Heideggerean Humanism

The present study investigates the concept of humanism in terms of the two forms of contemporary humanism, namely Sartre’s existentialist humanism and Heideggerean humanism. The aim is to explore the concept in detail and to present the views of Sartre and Heidegger on humanism and to shed a light on the discrepancy of the two views and disprove the arguments of some of the critics who claimed their similarity. Firstly, the concept is explained in terms of different classifications according to the historical era they became prominent and the philosophers or philosophical movements the concept was associated with. Then Sartre’s existential humanism is discussed in relation with his “being-for-itself” and idea of human freedom. Sartre’s view of humanism is followed by Heideggereanhumanism which isstudied in association with Heidegger’s concepts of Dasein and Being. The investigation ends with the emphasis of the difference between Sartre’s and Heidegger’s views of humanism. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n6p665

The Encrypted Prospect: Existentialist Phenomenology, Deconstruction and Speculative Realism in “To Autumn”

Despite critical interrogations of the mastery communicated by both the prospective view and the prospect poem genre, the explicit prospect continues to suffer from accusations of imperialism, class privilege and labor exploitation. I show how Keats's “To Autumn” anticipates this critique by instancing an implicit, encoded or encrypted prospect. The irrealization, sublimation or aestheticization of nature and the local by culture and poetic media at the heartland of the encrypted prospect produces, however, as many epistemic, epistemological and existential problems as it solves. Keats's poem proleptically undertakes this problematization in relation to the interpretative potential of deconstruction by placing it in interaction with its existential-phenomenological inheritance and its present-day inheritor, the philosophical movement known as Speculative Realism. The end result is a becoming-slimy of the Romantic (media) ideology that insists upon a Modernist-New Critical poetics of difficulty as a (formal) window opening onto the (global) world.

Material Difference: Modernism and the Allegories of Discourse by William D. Melaney (review)

Reviewed by: Material Difference: Modernism and the Allegories of Discourse by William D. Melaney Salvatore Pappalardo William D. Melaney , Material Difference: Modernism and the Allegories of Discourse Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2012, 255 pp. William D. Melaney's Material Difference: Modernism and the Allegories of Discourse, a comparative study of Modernist prose and poetry, attempts to place modern literature at the juncture of two evolving philosophical movements that will later develop into Deconstruction and Critical Theory. The author adopts a double-pronged approach to Modernism, emphasizing the productive tension between two different hermeneutic approaches that are often regarded as irreconcilable. It is the convergence of these critical discourses, and the use of the interpretive tools they offer, that illuminate the ways in which Modernist art appears predisposed to allegorical completion in its aspiration to break with historical continuity [End Page 329] and its simultaneous acknowledgement of tradition. The main argument of the book, a powerful and compelling claim, is the notion that formalist and historicist approaches to literature, which evolve from fundamentally different philosophical traditions with roots in idealism and materialism, display structurally relevant points of contact and can therefore be utilized as complementary critical tools. Melaney constructs the theoretical backbone of his argument by emphasizing the critical relationship between Peter Bürger and Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno and Jacques Derrida. Rather than emphasizing the divergences of these theoreticians, Melaney looks for parallels and common ground. He further conducts an analysis of allegorical prose and allegorical poetry thanks to case studies of Joyce, Kafka, Malraux and Andric on the one hand, Rilke, T.S. Eliot, Williams and Stevens on the other. Two final sections on the semiotics of reading and Modernism and material difference conclude this twelve-chapter study. Melaney begins to interrogate the theoretical compatibility of the two hermeneutic paradigms by contrasting the historicist foundation of Bürger's Theory of the Avant-garde with the critical materialism of Benjamin's work on Modernism. Bürger's theory rests upon an evolutionary and linear historicism, in which artistic invention cannot produce a complete rupture since its production depends upon its very own socio-historic circumstances. Benjamin, instead, regards historical reality as a discontinuous field of virtual writing that remains open to interpretive exigencies. Melaney continues to trace these traditions by comparing Adorno to Derrida, claiming that the opposition between their speculative systems is merely conventional. Since in Adorno the materiality of the artwork resists Hegelian Aufhebung, i.e., the sublation resulting from the dialectical movement of the Spirit, the work of art can produce a counter-history that opposes teleological progression. Melaney couples Adorno's unorthodox reading of Hegel with Derrida's discussion of the trace as an ideality that resists metaphysics. Allegorical modernism represents, according to the author, the textual site of convergence of these two movements. The author presents eight case studies as substantive evidence of his claims. Indeed, the great merit of this truly comparative endeavor is the attempt of combining a theoretical discussion on materiality and allegory with the analysis of authors writing in a variety of different languages. Melaney discusses James Joyce's aesthetics of displacement in the "Oxen of the Sun" episode in Ulysses, underlining the tension between the mythographic effort of the novel and the genealogical presentation exhibited in this particular chapter. The critical importance of the essay "Ulysses, Order and Myth" elegantly prefigures the deferred chapter on T.S. Eliot, where the author argues for the possibility of an autobiographical approach to a founding figure of New Criticism. A discussion of Augustine and the role of autobiography in the conceptualization of time help Melaney in his provocative interpretation [End Page 330] of the "autobiographical trace" in the reading of The Four Quartets. Franz Kafka's novels and short stories are presented through the non-historical aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy. For the author, Kafka's exposure of the ironic fallacies of a language that is indeterminate and thus fails to record traumatic memory constitutes the promise of a potentially ethical future, free of the pronouncements of the past. André Malraux's novel La condition humaine suggests the possibility of a dialectical resolution of political conflict, but at the same time frustrates expectations...

Introduction to the philosophy of Gabriel Marcel

The article introduces the basic terms of the issues raised in the work of G. Marcel, the founder of French existentialism which is a major philosophical movement of the twentieth century. It explores the evolution and classification of "existentialism", existential-phenomenological method, the original ontological theses. The author comes to the conclusion that religious and philosophical doctrine of Marcel is a variant of post-theism in modern Western culture as a diversity from traditional interpretation of reality.

Heidegger on Assertion, Method and Metaphysics

In Sein und Zeit Heidegger makes several claims about the nature of ‘assertion’ [Aussage]. These claims are of particular philosophical interest: they illustrate, for example, important points of contact and divergence between Heidegger's work and philosophical movements including Kantianism, the early Analytic tradition and contemporary pragmatism. This article provides a new assessment of one of these claims: that assertion is connected to a ‘present-at-hand’ ontology. I also indicate how my analysis sets the stage for a new reading of Heidegger's further claim that assertion is an explanatorily derivative phenomenon. I begin with a loose overview of Heidegger's position and then develop a sharper formulation of the key premises. I go on to argue that existing treatments of the supposed link between assertion and the ‘present-at-hand’ are unsatisfactory, and advance a new, ‘methodological’, interpretation of that link. Finally, I sketch the implications of my interpretation for the further claim that assertion is explanatorily derivative.

Against Invisibility: Negritude and the Awakening of the African Voice in Theology

This paper discusses the emergence of Negritude and its contribution to the early development of African theology. The Negritude movement of the 1930s and 40s understands itself as a literary and philosophical movement that responds to colonial domination. It awakened a cultural voice African priests used to become legible in the discipline of Christian theology. Negritude was a contested category. For some, it was nothing more than a nativist philosophy that promoted a metaphysic of race; for others, Negritude was an initiative to recover African cultural values. This paper traces the Senghorian tradition of Negritude that began as a philosophy of black identity but evolved into a mode of thought that inspired blacks to reimagine African alternatives to the colonial state. Senghor's proposal of African socialism was a component of the broader struggle that influenced the development of a theology of liberation in Africa.

The Origin of the Division between Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism

Abstract The division of Ancient Platonism into Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism is a fairly new one. The conceptual foundation of this division was cemented in Jacob Brucker’s pioneering Historia critica philosophiae (1742-67). In the 1770s and 1780s, the term ‘Neoplatonism’ was coined on the basis of Brucker’s analysis. Three historiographical concepts were decisive to Brucker: ‘system of philosophy’, ‘eclecticism’ and ‘syncretism’. By means of these concepts, he characterized Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism as opposing philosophical movements, the former being a genuine form of Platonism, the latter a false form. However, the division is untenable and we ought to abandon it.

The Film Theories of Bazin and Epstein: Shadow Boxing in the Margins of the Real

When in 1958 André Bazin published the first volume of What is Cinema?, he was already recognized as French film's pre-eminent thinker. His position at Cahiers du cinéma and his influence on the young directors who were to launch the New Wave guaranteed his centrality and his influence. What is nevertheless surprising about this unparalleled success is how fundamentally conservative his writing was. His belief that ‘true realism’ constituted the ontology and the essence of cinema was remarkably out of step with the major philosophical movements of his time. Paradoxically, it was not Bazin but Jean Epstein who best explained and defined the modernity of cinema. A reading of Epstein's Le Cinéma du diable will allow us to appreciate just how paradoxical it was that it was Bazin and not Epstein who was ‘selected’ to present cinema to a France immersed in existential and post-existential thought.

Introduction of Pragmatism in Vietnam

Pragmatism is a philosophical school of scientific trend in non-classical philosophical movement formed in late nineteenth century, flourished in early twentieth century. It is the most unique contribution of American thought to the philosophical treasure. This movement penetrated deeply into the American ideological, political, cultural, and social life and became "semi-official philosophy of American lifestyle". During the development process, pragmatism widely circulated in many countries around the world such as England, Italy, Austria, Germany, China, and Vietnam... Pragmatism had influence in Vietnam from about 1945, when a delegation from the University of Michigan arrived in Saigon to help reform the training program at the National Institute of Administration. From that time, Pragmatism was taught in the Institute. Together with educational process, Pragmatism was also spreaded through the establishment of national politics in southern Vietnam, and through lifestyle and activities of American soldiers. Until now pragmatism has had much influence on the social life of Vietnam. However, there has not been any research related to this problem, as no studies on the introduction and development of pragmatism in Vietnam. In this paper, we introduce the processes influence and stages of development pragmatism in Vietnam. This study will have a great theoretical significance.

Ideologies in Law Time: The Oxford History of the Laws of England

In the introduction to the newOxford History of the Laws of England 1820–1914, the authors suggest that their task is to tell the “history of the law itself.” This review essay examines what can be learned from a history told from law's internal point of view rather than through the perspectives of other disciplines, such as economics or philosophy. It considers whether and how the common law responded to industrialization and laissez-faire ideology, the influence of salient philosophical movements—such as utilitarianism—on statutory change, and how all history is an exercise in ideology. In considering the public sphere, it suggests that this work should form the inspiration for further inquiry.

Ksiądz profesor dr Aleksander Usowicz CM. Wspomnienia

The paper presents the personality and the scientific record of Rev. prof. Aleksander Usowicz CM. He was an acknowledged representative of the neo-Scholasticism, the main philosophical movement in the mid 50 of 20th c. at the Theological Faculty of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow.In fact, scientific interest of Usowicz went beyond the field of philosophy. He was also interested in theology. Among many lecturers he delivered, the most important was one about the introduction to theology. Its aim was to provide students with the basics of the history of theological thought.It must be remembered that Usowicz was a reviewer of the habilitation work of Fr. Karol Wojtyła. He was also a tutor and scientific supervisor of many later professors of philosophy and theology.

The Romantic machine: utopian science and technology after Napoleon

In the years immediately following Napoleon's defeat, French thinkers in all fields set their minds to the problem of how to recover from the long upheavals that had been set into motion by the French Revolution. Many challenged the Enlightenment's emphasis on mechanics and questioned the rising power of machines, seeking a return to the organic unity of an earlier age and triggering the artistic and philosophical movement of romanticism. Previous scholars have viewed romanticism and industrialization in opposition, but in this groundbreaking volume John Tresch reveals how thoroughly entwined science and the arts were in early nineteenth-century France and how they worked together to unite a fractured society. Focusing on a set of celebrated technologies, including steam engines, electromagnetic and geophysical instruments, early photography, and mass-scale printing, Tresch looks at how new conceptions of energy, instrumentality, and association fueled such diverse developments as fantastic literature, popular astronomy, grand opera, positivism, utopian socialism, and the Revolution of 1848. He shows that those who attempted to fuse organicism and mechanism in various ways, including Alexander von Humboldt and Auguste Comte, charted a road not taken that resonates today. Essential reading for historians of science, intellectual and cultural historians of Europe, and literary and art historians, The Romantic Machine is poised to profoundly alter our understanding of the scientific and cultural landscape of the early nineteenth century.