Plurality Of Modes Research Articles

Elemental Optics: Nicholas of Cusa, Omnivoyance and the Aquatic Gaze

There has been much recent debate about the nature of the omnivoyant image that introduces Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione Dei. In this paper, I argue that Cusa’s concept of contraction and his ‘radical perspectivism’ lead us toward stretching the concept of omnivoyance beyond a simple dichotomy between a phenomenology of the image and a phenomenology of the icon. Instead of putting such emphasis on what is seen by the omnivoyant, we should think an omnivoyant optics starting from the material milieu from which it sees. To this end, I define the concept of omnivoyance through the concept of the elemental. Using both the concept of an element derived from Presocratic Ionian philosophy and recent French and American continental philosophy, I put these discourses into conversation with Cusa in several ways: (1) the way omnivoyance functions as a substratum of contracted seeing rather than as a transcendence, (2) its operation as a pure frontality without objectifiable aspects, and (3) the way in which omnivoyance implies not only a gaze that sees ‘all and each’ (Cusa’s formula for omnivoyance) but also a plurality of modes of vision. To help us understand this enlarged concept of omnivoyance, I use the example of animal vision, particularly the gaze of the whale. With respect to cetacean vision, I deploy Melville’s metaphysical speculations in Moby Dick as our primary guide.

Daoism, humanity, and the Way of Heaven

AbstractThis article argues for a cross-culturally pluralistic conception of spiritual exemplarity. Three main modes of exemplarity are identified, distinguished by their underlying aspirations, which I label ‘allegiance’, ‘enlightened insight’, and ‘emulation’. After challenging some attempts to privilege the modes of exemplarity characteristic of theistic religions, I argue that perhaps the fullest example of the aspiration to emulation is the form of Daoism presented in The Book of Zhuāngzǐ. I conclude that what one finds across different cultures and traditions is a plurality of modes of spiritual exemplarity that should be acknowledge and explored, rather than given more reductive analyses that narrow our sense of the variety of ways of living a spiritual life.

Spiritual exemplars

ABSTRACTThis paper proposes that spiritual persons are an excellent focus for the study of ‘living religion’ and offers a methodology for doing so. By ‘spiritual persons’, I have in mind both exemplary figures – like Jesus or the Buddha – and the multitude of ‘ordinary’ spiritual persons whose lives are led in aspiration to the spiritual goods the exemplars manifest (enlightenment, say, or holiness). I start with Linda Zagzebski’s recent argument that moral persuasion primarily occurs through encounters with exemplars of moral qualities, of a sort that invite admiration and emulation. A plurality of modes of spiritual exemplarity is distinguished, each reflecting a distinct form of spiritual aspiration, which will show in the lives of the members of different traditions. I develop this claim by focusing on the ways that spiritual aspirants can encounter exemplars through their depictions in spiritual narrative. It emerges that narrative encounters can activate certain forms of admiration and enable certain forms of emulation if they depict the suffering of exemplars.

Semiotic work

This article imagines a tussle between Multimodality, focused on ‘modes’, and Applied Linguistics (AL), based on ‘language’. A Social Semiotic approach to MM treatsspeechandwritingas modes with distinct affordances, and, as all modes, treats them as ‘partial’ means of communication. The implications ofpartialityconfound long-held assumptions of the sufficiency of ‘language’ for all communicational needs: an assumption shared by AL. Given MM’s plurality of modes and the diversity of audiences,designmoves into focus, with a shift from competent performance toapt design. Principles of composition — e.g.linearityversusmodularity— become crucial, raising the question at the heart of this paper: how do AL and MM deal with the shape of the contemporary semiotic landscape?

The limits of autonomy in Latin American social policies

Latin American social protection systems show that the fundamental ambivalence of modernity is captured by the twin notion of liberty and discipline in the context of a plurality of modes of socio-political organization. According to this understanding, this article analyses the potential of the so-called Conditional Cash Transfer programmes, which are widespread in the region, to strength or reduce personal autonomy. These programmes are promoted by claiming their virtues to reduce poverty and impose good behaviour on poor people in order to improve the ‘human capital’ of future generations. However, numerous elements challenge these alleged virtues: arbitrary selection of beneficiaries, interference in people’s lives, stigmatization of recipients, inability to achieve universal coverage and act in a preventive manner with regards to urgent needs, the creation of poverty traps and informal working, etc. Taking these elements into account, this article explains how these programmes do not improve people’s autonomy and political independence.

The Epistemological Significance of the Theory of Social Representations

ABSTRACTThe theory of social representations must be understood in terms of its proper epistemology so that it can accomplish its full potential in social sciences. This is often difficult to achieve because researchers comprehend it in terms of concepts that are part of static and individualistic Newtonian epistemology rather than in terms of dynamic and relational Einsteinian epistemology. This article considers three signposts that Moscovici identifies and analyses in the theory of relativity, namely the relation between epistemology and science, theory and method, and the argument against the explanation of effects by their causes. The following question is posed: are these signposts also characteristic of the theory of social representations? This question is examined focusing on interactional epistemology, theory and method and the diversity of natural thinking and communication. Moscovici's Psychoanalysis shows that natural thinking appears in a plurality of modes according to the situation in which it takes place and according to social groups towards which it is directed. Natural thinking is controversial and communication‐centred. Different professionals, groups and lay people use different kinds of speaking and different communicative genres when they try to resolve “the same” problem. The article suggests that bringing together dialogicality, dialogical linguistics and the theory of social representations may open up new possibilities for theoretical developments in social psychology.

Les nouveaux intellectuels religieux saoudiens : le Wahhabisme en question

This article is about the “new religious intellectuals” who have played a key role in the debates which have shaken the Saudi kingdom since the late 1990s. Since that period, most of these intellectuals have become prominent figures in the “islamo-liberal” movement, which emerged out of part of the Islamist opposition, and calls for democratic reform within an Islamic framework, as well as a revision of the dominant Wahhabi religious discourse. In this article, we will mainly focus on the question of religious reform. We will show how these intellectuals have based their critique of Wahhabism on a plurality of modes, which correspond to the different legitimizing discourses of the reformist movement these intellectuals represent. We will finally examine the limits of this critique: while the regime can, if it suits its temporary interests, tolerate, and even encourage, a degree of religious criticism, it cannot let this criticism turn into what many of these intellectuals consider as its natural corollary, i.e. political criticism.

Begriffliche und psychologische Ordnung bei Spinoza

Spinoza's metaphysical thesis that there is only one substance in the universe but a plurality of modes, each of them falling under an attribute, raises a crucial question. How are modes of thinking, i.e. ideas, related to modes of extension? This paper intends to show that there are at least two answers, depending on an understanding of the equivocal term ‘idea’. If ideas are taken to be mental acts, they are identical with modes of extension. If, however, they are understood in the “objective” way, namely as the conceptual content of mental acts, they correspond to modes of extension. It is argued that this method of disambiguating the term ‘idea’ not only helps to understand Spinoza's famous doctrine of parallelism but that it also provides a solution to two puzzling problems: the possibility of “active affects” and the existence of an eternal mind.